Education Week - November 5, 2014 - 9

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS > Tracking news and ideas in educational technology
www.digitaldirections.org
Digital Tools Predict College Admissions, Link Employers
LinkedIn unveils
University Finder
By Anne Flaherty
Associated Press
For many high school seniors, fall
means deciding where to apply for
college and maybe visiting a guidance
counselor. A growing roster of
online data crunchers is hoping to
help.
The popularity of social-media
sites and advancements in the ability
of software to analyze the vast
amounts of information that are
now online give members of the
class of 2015 more online tools than
ever to help chart their next step,
even if finding the right college is
an inexact science.
The professional-networking site
LinkedIn, for one, recently released
its University Finder, which identifies
colleges that are popular hiring
spots for certain companies.
Parchment.com pools student
data to predict an individual's
college-admission prospects. And
Admitted.ly pairs students with
colleges based on such factors as
body piercings and whether applicants
go to church.
Those sites are joining the game
of college rankings as yet another
tool to help high school students
pick the right college. That has
some education experts excited
about the benefits of the new services,
but others are rolling their
eyes.
"For many families and students, the
admissions process is very opaque,"
said Matthew Pittinsky, a co-founder of
the education technology giant Blackboard
who is now the chief executive
officer of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Parchment.
"And what's happening now is
that [students] are beginning to share
data with each other ... to bring transparency"
to the process.
But Lloyd Thacker, the executive
director of the Education Conservancy,
a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit
working to improve the collegeadmissions
process for students, has
a different take: Such sites are one
more way to profit from senior-year
angst and encourage group-think.
"Technology has no inner logic," he
said. "Just because it's there doesn't
mean we should use it."
New College Landscape
Picking a college is nothing like it
once was. In 1980, there were 3,150
colleges and universities, according
to the U.S. Department of Education,
and a primary factor for many
students was location.
Now, there are close to 4,700
schools across the country, many of
which go out of their way to attract
out-of-state students because of the
tuition money they bring in. Many
schools might seem more selective
than they really are, and students
worried about getting turned down
apply to lots of schools as a way to
hedge their bets.
Halle Lukasiewicz, 18, said she
remembers the day Northwestern
University, a private university in
Evanston, Ill., and her top choice,
began emailing acceptance letters.
A chatroom devoted to Northwestern
hopefuls on a site called
College Confidential was buzzing.
High school students were posting
whether they had been accepted to
the school.
Ms. Lukasiewicz, an occasional
user of the site, found she could not
look away even though her mother
begged her to stop."My heart was
racing," she said.
Now a Northwestern freshman
studying radio, television, and film,
Ms. Lukasiewicz said she's not sure
the site added much value other than
to stress her out. She credits her parents,
a good guidance counselor, and a
company called AcceptU with helping
her find the appropriate school and
prepare an attractive application.
"You can't assess whether someone's
going to get in based on numbers,"
she said. "It's not just luck, but
everyone's different. There are very,
very capable students who don't get
into top colleges, and no one really
knows why. It just happens. ... But
I think it's extremely important for
students not to get fazed by other
people on the Internet telling them
they're not going to get in."
Company Connections
Among the new sites is LinkedIn's
University Finder, which pulls data
from its 313 million profiles to find
EDUCATION WEEK | November 5, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 9
Northwestern University
freshman Halle
Lukasiewicz, 18, questions
the value of using online
tools to predict college
admissions. "It's extremely
important for students not
to get fazed by other
people on the Internet
telling them they're not
going to get in," she says.
out which schools and degrees
translate into jobs at certain companies.
For example, if a student
wants to study computer science
and work at ibm, University Finder
shows that a majority of its members
who fit those criteria went to
North Carolina State University, in
Raleigh, or the University of Texas
at Austin. Both schools are near
ibm research facilities.
Parchment, a company that handles
electronic student transcripts,
uses crowdsourcing. Students finalizing
the college-selection process
agree to share with the site such
information as their grades, which
schools accepted them, and where
they chose to go. That information
helps to predict another student's
chances of getting into a certain
school. The site can suggest other
schools and say whether most students
preferred one college over
another.
Other sites, such as StatFuse,
predict admission chances based
entirely on data released by 1,200
popular universities. Factors include
the average grades and test
scores of students accepted.
The New York City-based College
Board, which administers the sat,
says it has nearly 2 million unique
college searches a month on its
site, with the online users examining
a host of factors, from grades
and test scores to desired location, enrollment
size, diversity, and financialaid
needs.
But, while popular, these online
search tools have their limitations.
LinkedIn's University Finder is
limited to professionals who bother
to set up an account with the networking
site and who complete a
profile. It also works on the honor
system because LinkedIn doesn't
verify a person's credentials.
Parchment, StatFuse, and other
predictor sites can't take into account
an excellent application
essay or interview, which can matter
more at some schools than others.
Parchment includes a confidence
rating with its predictions to
indicate schools that more heavily
weigh such factors in the application
process.
Jeremy Goldman, the chairman
of the school counseling department
at Pikesville High School
just outside Baltimore and the
president of the Maryland School
Counselors Association, told Education
Week that while many of the
tools students access online serve
as helpful resources, they can't
replace what he calls the "human
element."
"College planning, future planning,
these aren't things that an
app alone can do," Mr. Goldman
said.
He pointed out that school counselors
have a unique and more
complete understanding of their
students' potential for college than
any software tool because of the
rapport they have established with
each student.
Sean Logan, the director of college
counseling at Phillips Academy in
Andover, Mass., said he understands
the attraction of a search
engine or online chat room, especially
at high schools where there
might be one guidance counselor
for as many as 1,000 students. But
in the end, he said, getting into college
can be a frustrating process
that isn't always predictable, even
for the best students.
"It's part science," he said. "And
part art."
Editorial Intern Sam Atkeson
contributed to this article.
Copyright © 2014 Associated Press.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
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Education Week - November 5, 2014

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