Students as young as 14 now have the opportunity to start a college application — reducing or inflaming stress, depending on who gets asked.
The Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success is an organization of more than 80 colleges and universities that will offer online tools and an application to make the college process easier for high-school students, according to The New York Times.
That way, students can show nuance and talent beyond a GPA to give them a better chance at admission.
The colleges that are part of the coalition argue that it benefits students who will be more aware of what courses they should take through high school and set goals.
Coalition President James G. Nondorf told The New York Times that Deciding you want to go to one of our kinds of schools, you have to be doing things all through your high school years.”
To critics, that’s part of the problem. For a high-school freshman to immediately think of college creates more pressure on them to perform while adjusting to high school. Instead of exploring new interests, they aim to complete a checklist for college.
Similar to micro-scholarships, it has the potential to harm learning. Instead of high-school juniors and seniors feeling the pressure from college admissions, all students would feel it. Instead of taking a class outside their comfort level, students might stick with something familiar where they already excel. Instead of reducing pressure and matching students with a good-fit college, it could increase anxiety and narrow a more well-rounded education.
For now, it’s too early to tell. The concerns might be overblown. Students could have better information to develop their educational path. The effects might be benign like some educational data mining.
Most new higher education initiatives generate a large buzz, but tend to go the way of MOOCs. Interesting, but not revolutionary. It’s hard to predict a revolution anyway, which makes most buzz utopian on its face. Given the high levels of stress in elite high schools that prepare students for college from the moment they walk through the door, however, an increase in pressure and stress from starting the college hunt earlier seems likely for some portion of the student body.
When a culture pushes college as the only pathway to social and economic advancement, starting the competition earlier isn’t always going to produce the desired results.
