For most high schoolers, picking where they would like to attend college can be one of the biggest decisions they make. Their junior year is filled with SAT's, ACT's, and applications. While trying to balance keeping a high GPA and a social life, students are being pulled in many different directions. But, that is just the start of the college process.
The college application is a two-way street. Students need to pick colleges that seem right for them, and colleges need to be competitive and pick students that will benefit their university. When I was looking at this topic, I thought the selection process in particular was very interesting. It brought up questions like: How do colleges narrow down students, how do they get enough students to apply, and how do they ensure that enough students will actually attend? All these can be answered by using analytics.
Starting around the start of fall, colleges start marketing themselves as much as they can by running commercials, posting on social media, and campus tours. Their first tactic is to get people hooked. This gives them the opportunity to have the biggest pool of students to pick from. Once the applications are in, the schools will use programs to determine who is accepted. According to an article by College Data, they will sort applicants by GPA, courses and letters of recommendation. For some schools, there will be automatic denials if you don't make the GPA cutoff. From there, they start determining the students they will accept. They have to accept more student than they can actually take, for the reason that some of the students will turn them down and go to other schools. This is where digital analytics come into play again. Depending on the size of the school, this will also regulate how many acceptance letters can get sent out. Business Insider states, "…understanding what types of students will succeed at a college is not only necessary, its laudable. Riddling students who may drop out with student loans isn't good practice for colleges – or prospective students." With the understanding of digital analytics, colleges can make the best decisions for their upcoming school year.
Jackson, Abby. "College Admissions Teams Are Ranking Students on a 0-10 Scale Based on Factors They Can't Control." Business Insider, Business Insider, 27 Oct. 2016, www.businessinsider.com/the-perils-of-using-predictive-analytics-in-college-admissions-2016-10.
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