Wait Chapel

Additional assessment options

Sternberg’s PowerPoint presentation includes sample questions for how to determine intelligences other than analytical intelligence. Short story tasks, where an applicant chooses two titles out of twelve to write about; oral stories, where an applicant sees a collage of images and then tells […]


Holistic vs mechanical assessment

Scott Highhouse, professor of industrial-organization psychology at Bowling Green State University, challenged the current assumption that “holistic approaches” to college admissions is better than mechanical ones. “I’m not going to advocate for the SAT,” he said right off the bat, but for standardized […]


Educational experience varies according to discipline

Panelist Steve Chatman presented findings from his study with University of California students that suggest those factors predicting success vary according to what discipline a student chooses. “Academic major impacts a students experience, and we deal with it very little as a profession,” […]


Texas rethinks admissions

Bruce Walker, vice provost and director of admissions at the University of Texas, gave one of the most interesting and impassioned presentations of the conference. He described Texas’ “top 10 percent solution,” adopted 10 years ago. That guarantees admission to every in-state student […]


A case for the SAT

Another panelist, Nathan Kuncel, from the University of Minnesota, suggested that SAT tests do correlate with success and that even small statistical relationships make a difference in finding good students. His findings stated that SAT tests do offer measurements that can predict success. Among […]


The SAT and GPA

Wake Forest economics professor Kevin Rask presented his research on correlations between the SAT and college GPA. Can high GPAs be correlated to something other than high SAT scores? About a third can be explained by just a student’s high school academic record. […]


Unintended consequences

John Douglass, senior research fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, offered an interesting look at the UC’s system’s attempts over the last 40 years to deal with the SAT. Decisions about test requirements are often based on politics and on marketing by the […]


About

On April 15 and 16, 2009, Wake Forest University hosted top admissions officers and leading researchers from Berkeley, Duke, Harvard, Ohio State, Princeton, Texas, Virginia, Yale and other universities along with the director of data research for U.S. News & World Report for the Rethinking Admissions conference.

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