South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
College admission may depend on high school
At Cypress Bay High School in Weston two years ago, 238 students applied to the University of Florida for fall admittance, and 37 percent heard “yes” from the state’s top-ranked university.
Twenty three miles away in Fort Lauderdale, 10 Dillard High School students applied to UF that year. None got in, according to an admissions database for Florida’s state universities.
Eleven Dillard students also tried to get into Florida International University that fall. None of them were accepted into the Miami school, either. In contrast, nearly 80 percent of Cypress Bay’s 231 FIU applicants got in.
Across the state, students at Florida high schools in more affluent communities are more likely to get into Florida’s state universities than students from high schools in lower-income neighborhoods, according to an Orlando Sentinel analysis of 2017 admissions data.
The same pattern will likely hold when Florida State University and the University of Florida release 2019 admissions decisions in the next two weeks. And it has likely been true at the other universities, including Florida International University, that have
been sending out admissions decisions since fall.
The admissions disparities stem in large part, many experts say, because admission to any of Florida’s 12 public universities requires submission of ACT or SAT scores. Marks on those college admission exams are typically higher for students from wealthier families.
Cypress Bay’s average SAT score that year was 1133 out of 1600; Dillard’s was
884, according to the College Board, which makes the exam.
“Test scores are a huge factor, and that is usually one of the reasons a student doesn't get accepted into a four-year school,” said Cathy Barton, the college and career counselor at Harmony High School in Osceola County.
High schools in middleincome communities do better than those in low-income neighborhoods — but often fall short of those in affluent areas, the database shows.
At Spanish River Community High School in well-off Boca Raton, for example, about 49 percent of the students who applied to UF — the state’s top-ranked university — got in. At Coral Springs High School, where
67 percent of the students are from low-income families, the UF acceptance rate was 32 percent, and at Boynton Beach Community High School, with a poverty rate above 74 percent, none of the school’s 10 UF hopefuls were accepted.
For high school seniors, and their parents, test score worries add to their stress about college acceptances, no matter where they live.
“I think there is a lot of pressure on the students,” said Dave Arnott, whose younger son is a senior at Cypress Bay High.
The teenager has been accepted into the University of Central Florida and, like thousands of others, is anxiously waiting on FSU and UF, set to release admissions notices on Jan.
31 and Feb. 8, respectively. “Every year it gets harder and harder to get into schools in Florida. It’s because the schools are fantastic schools and out-ofstate-schools are very expensive,” said Arnott, whose son also applied to a few out-of-state-universities. “To me, it’s amazing every year. You see the SAT scores, the GPAs,” he said. “I think kids are very attuned to how increasingly difficult it is.”
Though a one-year snapshot — which doesn’t include the smaller number of students admitted for summer term starts — the database offers a window into admissions decisions at Florida’s universities, which accept about 20 percent of Florida’s high school graduates.
The universities recently faced criticism from Georgetown University researchers, who slammed taxpayer-supported selective universities, here and across the nation, for “misguided admission practices” that rely too heavily on test scores and unfairly close doors to some students.
Some Florida high school guidance counselors share those fears, saying capable students can be left behind when test scores carry so much weight in admissions decisions. They note that at lower-income schools, fewer students usually apply to four-year universities, often because of family finances but also, they say, because they assume their test scores mean they won’t get in.
Others, among them some university admissions officers, say the scores provide a standardized measure when high school grading practices can vary, helping schools eliminate teenagers ill-prepared to tackle college classes.
High school grades and the number of challenging classes on student transcripts — what guidance counselors call “strength of schedule” — matter a lot in college admissions and often count more than test scores. At FSU, for example, more than 54 percent of the students admitted last year had taken calculus in high school. The university touts that fact, which speaks to the value its admissions office places on advanced The acceptance rate at University of Central Florida has dropped from 48 percent to 43 percent in the past decade. Florida State University university touts that 54 percent of the students admitted last year had taken calculus in high school.
courses.
But in increasingly competitive admissions cycles, high test scores are a key as well. Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers is less selective than many of its counterparts, but when it rejects high school seniors, “it’s primarily test scores that lag,” said Marc Laviolette, the school’s director of admissions.
At UCF, the acceptance rate for first-year students has dropped from 48 percent to nearly 43 percent in the past decade, university figures show. This year, the SAT scores for the middle group of admitted students for fall ranged from 1280 to 1370 out of 1600. That means 75 percent of the high school seniors UCF accepted scored in the top 11 percent nationally on the SAT.
UF has the highest average test scores of any of Florida’s universities, with a mid-range of 29 to 33 on the ACT and of 1300 to 1450 on the SAT last year.
Though Florida’s population is growing, most of its state universities aren’t looking to expand their freshmen classes, so more students are competing for roughly the same number of seats, which has led to more selective first-year classes.
More than 50,000 students applied to FSU last year, for example, and though it doesn’t have an official tally yet, the Tallahassee school received more applications this year, making a “yes” from the admissions office even harder to obtain, said John Barnhill, FSU’s assistant vice president for academic affairs.
“We’re probably going to see a number of schools that have applicants that will not be admitted that historically perhaps would have been,” Barnhill said.
Janeen Banasiak, 17, a senior at Fort Myers High School in southwest Florida, in December toured UCF, her top choice for college.
She has a 4.3 grade-point average, took Advanced Placement classes and loaded up her high school schedule with activities and internships. But Janeen’s ACT score was low — 19 out of 36 — compared with UCF’s mid-range, 26 to 30, for that exam.
After her application to UCF was initially deferred, Janeen said she was trying not to worry. “It’s your future. You’re on edge about everything,” she said.
On Thursday, she learned University of Florida is the state’s top-ranked university.
she’d been offered a spot in the UCF Access program, which grants admission to students with below-average academic credentials who complete a six-week summer program.
Her dad, Keith Banasiak, had hoped UCF would look beyond Janeen’s test score. “I’d look at that and say, ‘OK, maybe she’s just not that great of a test taker because you can’t hold that high of a GPA for four years and be that bad of a student,” he said.
Admissions officers say that is true, to a point, though decisions vary by school.
At the University of South Florida, Glen Besterfield, associate vice president and admissions dean, said the school makes “black and white” decisions. “We only really look at the high school GPA and test score,” he said.
But at the University of North Florida, test scores matter less this year. “We’ve realized that four good hours on a test doesn’t make up for four years of grit in high school,” said Karen Lucas, interim associate vice president of enrollment.
UCF takes a similar view, said Gordon Chavis, the associate vice president of enrollment services. “If you’re a hard-working student in high school and you produce the grades, we believe we can offer that student an opportunity to be successful,” he said.
But high schools that post lower test scores struggle to get many students into UCF or Florida’s other selective universities, the database shows.
At Boyd Anderson High in Lauderdale Lakes, for example, the average SAT score in 2017 was 849, below the state average of 1006. That year, 51 students applied to Florida Atlantic University and no more
than nine, or 18 percent, were admitted. The database does not provide an exact figure if the number is between nine and one. The average SAT score at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland was 1089, and 43 percent of the 164 students who applied to FAU got in.
Admissions officers say they reach out to high schools in low-income neighborhoods, encouraging and helping students to apply. They know many students at schools where few seniors are admitted don’t have anyone at home who has been to college and that their high schools aren’t always well-equipped to help.
At Dillard High, for example, where nearly all the students are from low-income families, the college counselor doesn’t have a college degree. He incorrectly told a reporter that UF admits anyone who graduates in the top 10 percent of their high school class.
In contrast, a counselor at Cypress Bay spoke knowledgeably about admissions and the offerings at all of Florida’s state universities.
“A huge part of my job is staying current on what the schools are looking for,” said Shari Bush, a college advisor at the Weston school.
For students who cannot get into state universities, many guidance counselors, parents and admissions officers say starting at a twoyear state college provides a strong alternative, offering students financial and academic benefits, as those schools cost less than universities and often provide smaller class sizes and lessintimidating campuses.
“I’m a fan of education,” Bush said. “If you need to take this step before this step, all good.”
The universities note they offer automatic admission to state college graduates, creating a path to their campuses, even if it’s not an immediate one.
“We don’t deny students. We redirect them,” said William Hudson Jr., a vice president at Florida A&M University, echoing statements made by his colleagues at other state universities.
Nicola Williams, coordinator for school counseling for Seminole County schools in Central Florida, said the state colleges — which admit anyone with a high school diploma, no ACT or SAT required — serve many students well and look more appealing to some students when the state universities seem to want better tests scores and grades every year.
“They see how competitive it is to get into those four-year schools,” she said. “So some of them are taking another look at the twoyear schools or the state colleges as an option.”
But others note the fouryear graduation rate for students who start at the state colleges is far lower than for those who start at Florida’s universities (27 percent compared with 49 percent). They also know some select that option because they tried the university route and were shut out.
Ruth Camille is a 2015 graduate of Evans High School in Orange County, a school that sits in a low-income neighborhood. After high school, she wanted to attend FAU in Boca Raton, FIU or USF in Tampa, eager to try some place new.
“I didn’t get in,” she said, a result she attributes to too-low ACT scores. She’s now at Valencia College in Orlando with plans to transfer to UCF.
The recent report by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce criticized selective public universities across the country for giving lots of weight to test scores in admissions, arguing it means these taxpayersupported institutions fail to represent the public they serve. Their policies, it said, amount to “affirmative action for already-privileged whites.”
White students more often live in well-off families compared with their black and Latino peers, and they usually post better test scores and then earn disproportionately more spots in those universities, said the “Our Separate & Unequal Public Colleges” report released in November. The report studied seven of Florida’s 12 universities, including FIU, FSU, UCF and UF.
Public higher education systems, the report said, are split into two “separate and unequal tracks,” with white students more often at better-funded state universities and poor black and Latino students more often at under-funded community colleges. Florida’s black students are under-represented in state universities, it said, though Latino students are not, largely because of FIU, where about two-thirds of the student body is Latino.
The study’s authors argued that if admissions offices in Florida, and across the country, relied less heavily on ACT or SAT scores, they would admit a more diverse group of students who would still be successful because the tests aren’t as good a predictor of college success as many believe.
“They may look, on paper, like they’re not as good, but one of the points of the study is, if you let them in, they’re going to graduate,” said Martin Van Der Werf, one of the study’s authors.
Other researchers also say ACT and SAT scores don’t offer much more predictive value for college success than does a close study of a student’s grades and courses. Although many selective colleges rely on them, there is a growing national “test optional” movement. The University of Chicago in June became the most prestigious school to adopt such a policy.
Some wish Florida universities would do the same, or at least give test scores less weight. “Would I love to see that all of them are test-optional? And look at our kids in that holistic approach, and you know the test score wouldn’t hold one of my kids back? “said Erin Wolfgramm, the college counselor at Oak Ridge High in Orlando, a school that has struggled to get students into the state’s fouryear universities. “I absolutely would love to see that happen. Because our kids are capable.”
Florida law, however, requires test scores for admission, and state legislative leaders also have pushed the universities to boost their national rankings. Test scores play a role in those, giving institutions an incentive to select students with high marks. The universities also are under pressure to improve graduation rates, and admissions officers say that makes them leery of accepting students with very low test scores, as they often struggle in college.
“We want them to be college ready,” said Jody Glassman, director of admissions at FIU. “All 12 of us are all trying to figure out who coming here has a higher chance of success of graduating in four years,” she said. “I don’t think any of us are out to be shutting our doors.”
Admissions officers also say they are well aware of the economic and racial divide found on ACT and SAT scores .
“We understand the sort of differences we’re going to see in backgrounds that have a lot of resources and students who have less, and we try to account for that in the admissions office,” said Charles Murphy, director of freshmen admissions at UF. “But the differences are the differences.”
The university faces a “tension,” Murphy added, between its role as a public institution and its “very competitive applicant pool.”