CSUN University News Clippings

Survey of ‘State of College Admission’ Finds Counselor Workloads Rising

(October 21, 2009)

By Jacques Steinberg
Published: 10/20/09

On the Times’s Web site, you can find an article I’ve written about the “2009 State of College Admission,” a report by the National Association for College Admission Counseling being released on Tuesday morning.

In the report, the association attempts to wrap a measuring tape around various aspects of the frenzied admissions process. It finds, for example, that nearly half of all public high school counselors have had students added to their caseloads this year — with each of those counselors experiencing an average increase of more than 50 students.

Another statistic that caught my eye, one that I’d not seen reported previously: on average, fewer than 1 in 3 students can expect to be accepted off of a college admissions office’s waiting list.

But if those statistics threaten to raise the pulse rates of applicants and parents alike, there is also much in the report that falls in the category of news you can use.

For example, there is an entire chapter (No. 4) dedicated to “factors in the admissions decision.” In it, you will find that 61.5 percent of colleges reported that the “strength” of an applicant’s curriculum — or how rigorous it was — was of “considerable importance” in weighing an admissions decision. That is second only to “grades in college prep courses” (which 74.9 percent characterized as considerably important) and, perhaps reassuring to some, ranked ahead of “admission test scores” (54.3 percent.)

Publication: The New York Times