Admissions style draws national attention

By: Rachel Spitler

Posted: 3/12/07

Over the past six years, OSU's admissions office has been moving toward more progressive methods of evaluation. For example, re-examining grade point average and SAT scores in favor of methods that aim to provide a more holistic picture of a student's skills and talents.

The success of this method, along with OSU's increase in minority enrollment, has several universities around the country adopting the idea.

Beginning in fall 2004, OSU updated its admissions process to place more emphasis on the other qualities related to success in college.

The university introduced the Insight Resume - six questions adapted from the research of William E. Sedlacek.

The questions are designed to give reviewers a better idea of each applicant's personal strengths, including leadership and group contribution, knowledge in a field, creativity, dealing with adversity, community service, handling systemic challenges, and goals and task commitment.

These methods have been credited with helping to increase diversity and retention at OSU and helping to remedy some of the problems with more traditional methods. For example, research had shown that among Hispanic students, SAT scores and other academic considerations had a tendency to "significantly under-predict" actual college performance, a March 2 article in Inside Higher Ed reported.

It was generally agreed that, in order to allow for such potential, the admissions process needed to assess applicants based on their whole potential.

Currently, Latino enrollment at OSU has been steadily increasing since 1998, and this new method of evaluation could be one of the factors in the increase.

The idea of holistic admissions is nothing new, but before, holistic admissions were all being handled through essay writing.

Michele Sandlin, OSU's director of admissions, said essays are very difficult to score because of their length and the subjectivity involved in reading them, leading to an increase in the time or cost of reviewing applications.

OSU's Insight Resume was the first assessment of its kind that limited students to 100-word answers.

Sandlin said this makes the applications not only easier to score, but also easier for would-be students to fill out.

"They like it because they get to talk about themselves," Sandlin said. "It's very personal. They're not just writing about something esoteric out there."

She added that the limited space helps applicants to decide what pieces of information are most important and to focus on what they are saying about themselves.

As for scoring, each reader receives special training and a specific process for how to rate each submission.

This very simplified method of scoring "removes a lot of the subjectivity," Sandlin said. "[Although] there's always going to be some, no matter what you do."

Still, the majority of applications land in the mid-range of possible scores, with very few at the bottom and even fewer at the top.

These results are used together with each student's academic record in deciding whether or not they pass admission requirements.

The committee that organized this holistic approach has had a statistician working with them from the beginning. Although the changes are still relatively recent, one year's data has been analyzed, and it shows a correlation between doing well on the Insight Resume and succeeding in college.

According to Sandlin, for every one point higher a student scores on the Insight Resume, it becomes 10 percent more likely that he or she will return for a second year of college in good academic standing.

"We're using an instrument that we pretty much developed," Sandlin said.

Now, other colleges and universities have asked for permission to use the Insight Resume questions in their own processes and have given credit to OSU when they have done so.

OSU also recognizes an outside source of inspiration. After years of exhausting all resources, Sandlin said, the admissions staff finally came across William Sedlacek and his book, "Beyond the Big Test: Noncognitive Assessment in Higher Education." The questions of the Insight Resume were all drawn from this book and from Sedlacek's own advice.

Sedlacek had a connection with OSU before this; Larry Roper, vice provost for student affairs, studied under him years ago. Recently, Sedlacek has been personally involved with OSU's implementation of his ideas, and has even helped to train those who would be scoring applications.

---

Rachel Spitler, staff writer

campus@dailybarometer.com, 737-2231

---

In a Feb., 12 version of this article it was stated that OSU "has been moving away from traditional methods of evaluation." While OSU is incorporating the new method into its selection process, it is not in place of more traditional methods.

The Barometer regrets the error.