12 ms·

For Sale: Sat-Takers’ Names. Colleges Buy Student Data and Boost Exclusivity

152 points by andygcook 7y ago

dpcx 7y ago
I don't think this is new - I'm pretty sure it's how colleges have been getting the names of potential students for _decades_.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  And even if not, the colleges that require SAT scores are requiring them just to weed out potential students they don't want.
- dsr_ 7y ago
  It's a major profit center for College Board. It's how I applied to five schools and was accepted at seven of them -- more than twenty years ago.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Encouraging people with low scores to apply so they can reject and boost their US News ranking via the exclusivity metric is new, though.
- icedchai 7y ago
  It's not. I remember getting mailings 25+ years ago.
jimktrains2 7y ago
Why is SAT not capitalized? Another one of hackernew's automatic title editing gone wrong?
collegespam 7y ago
Throwaway account. I'm currently working on college applications, and found pretty annoying. I've been getting well over a dozen e-mails a day as well as two or three items of physical mail every day, all on colleges, all for the past three months. I've been getting a lower level of the same thing since early high school when I first took the SAT. I made national merit scholar and did well on the SAT; that's when it really picked up. None of them have really convinced me to apply (except for Vanderbilt; they put their financial aid stuff right up front). However , I did get a few useful ones. Most of them were notifying me about info sessions for the colleges. There's also a box on the SAT where you check whether or not you want this or not, though I don't remember if it's opt-in or opt-out. Most of what I get is useless (though as national merit results get processed, I've started getting serious scholarship offers). What I don't like is that most of them are just send stuff to drive up application numbers and drive down acceptance rates, because yes, that's a thing (even though it sounds horrible, and every rejection makes a kid feel like garbage). Mail is cheap, I guess, but I wish colleges would relegate their communications to those they actually wanted.
- utdpromospam 7y ago
  (Throwaway account to respond to your throwaway account) If you’re interested in CS, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, with National Merit, check out UT Dallas. They have a full ride for National Merit, and especially if you’re interested in computer science, there’s a honors program just for CS. Its not a top school or anything, but if money is at all a concern, definitely look into it.
  - acollins1331 7y ago
    I don't need to make a throwaway account to tell the parent that they probably don't want to live in Texas.
    - dang 7y ago
      I unfortunately just saw this, but need to tell you: please don't post regional flamebait to HN. It leads to flamewars like this one, which we emphatically don't want here. We've already had to warn you before about not breaking the site guidelines, and unfortunately it seems like you've been breaking them a lot. That leads to getting banned here, and I don't want to ban you, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended from now on? The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
    - social_quotient 7y ago
      Geez, what’s wrong with Texas?
      - journalctl 7y ago
        It’s hot and you can’t be black/queer/female there.
        ozzmotik 7y ago
        the hot thing is true but as someone who was born and raised in Texas and spent 28 years there I do think that you're somewhat exaggerating with that other bit
imglorp 7y ago
Hint to test-takers and their parents: Opt out of all the contact options when you sign up for the test. Otherwise you'll be receiving 10 kilos of glossy school junk mail a month, hundreds of emails, and a slew of cold calls.
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  Better yet, sign up with a new email address used only for college-hunting. Same when buying a car, etc. The "spam" is crazy. Maybe even get a VOIP number for the same reason.
Kludgist 7y ago
This article isn't about the fact that colleges are buying SAT scores. Yes, that has been done forever. The article is about colleges using mass mailing to dramatically boost applicants and decrease the number of people admitted. They have some interesting interviews with college admissions staff and information about Vanderbilt specifically using this tactic to decrease their admit rate (which makes them look better in ratings). This certainly isn't the only thing driving the massive increase in applications. There are far more students taking the PSATs, more students sending out far more applications (out of paranoia? Pressure?), and more foreign applicants. To some extent, I think it's a positive feedback loop that doesn't require advertising at all to drive it. If you know the admit rate is low (because of all the applications being sent), then it's in your best interest to send out lots of applications -- throwing spaghetti at the wall. Then the admit rate gets lower... Personally, I'm not entirely against this trend. Growing up in a rural area with parents who didn't go to college, I had no idea what was out there. I figured I'd probably go to the state university (which was a good school!), but didn't think much about it. When I started getting mail from colleges, it was a huge help and broadened my horizons. I ended up going to a field-specific college across the country, and really loved it. Not only that, but it was exciting and inspiring that these colleges I had only heard about in movies and books were reaching out to me. I just never thought that would happen. I'm sure I'm not the only kid from middle-of-nowhere West coast who was really inspired by that.
- therealx 7y ago
  How long before someone writes software that walks you through a series of questions (a la turbotax, but more in depth and less shit), and then spits out a series of applications. Of course you'd hand check each one, but until colleges collude on their into process, it seems possible.
  - myoldaccount 7y ago
    This exists; the Common App centralizes applications for 800+ Colleges
    - 7y ago
Bostonian 7y ago
Harvard has been specifically encouraging unqualified black students to apply to lower their acceptance rate for black applicants to show that they don't discriminate in favor of blacks. I am not saying all of their black applicants are unqualified. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/is-harvard-leading-on-black-applicants/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/is-harvard-leading-on-... Is Harvard Leading On Black Applicants? By ROBERT VERBRUGGEN National Review November 5, 2019 10:39 AM
droithomme 7y ago
As is pointed out, there's a box you check if you want to opt in to this. It's called the Student Search Service. It's not a secret and they tell you exactly what is disclosed. https://studentsearch.collegeboard.org/about-your-data https://studentsearch.collegeboard.org/about-your-data If you previously opted-in and change your mind opting back out is simple. https://studentsearch.collegeboard.org/opt-out https://studentsearch.collegeboard.org/opt-out
Hitton 7y ago
Am I only one annoyed with the design of the first graph in the article? What happened to simple web design?
lmkg 7y ago
It's not just the SAT, either. I took the GRE in order to go back for my Master's. I got a veritable deluge of emails telling me all about wonderful programs all across the country. MBA programs were disproportionately common in the advertisements I received. I can guess a few possible reasons. I fit a demographic profile (returning to school after 8+ years in industry). MBAs are profit centers for universities. Business programs ought to be able to optimize business things like advertising reach and market segmentation. Most email blasts were short-lived, but a few schools still email me on the regular, a year after I finished the program I originally took the test for.
currymj 7y ago
I wish university rankings didn't exist, or at least were never taken seriously by anyone. Failing that, I wish the people making the rankings would just outright admit they're making a subjective list, so at least universities wouldn't waste resources and make these sorts of bizarre decisions trying to game the metrics.
- 2sk21 7y ago
  I wish I could upvote this a hundred fold! University rankings have utterly corrupted an already bad system.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Rankings are awful. They give the impression of constant distance between the ordinal values, e.g., #10 is as far below #1 as #310 is below #300. In reality, things are much more tightly clustered. There are about 20 truly superior schools, and they are much closer to each other than a 1 through 20 ranking would imply. There's not much difference between a 20 and a 10 or even 1. Then there's about 100 second-tier very, very good schools that are similarly clustered. After that, something like 1000 schools are good, solid schools with little tangible difference between number 900 and number 300. Ordinal rankings throw all of this out the window, and students & families end up worrying about choosing between a school in the top 25% or top 27% etc. Non-ordinal ratings instead of rankings would be better, and better show this sort of clustering, but it would still ignore extremely important differences. For example, there may be a school that's fairly middle-of-the-road, okay but not great on an all-around basis, but their proximity to New York City makes their performing arts programs a stand-out top 5 program in the region. But all you get from a US News ranking is that they're rated #768.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Depends what field you want to do - some universities have a particular reputation in particular fields. Cambridge for astronomy would be one example. And I recall back when I started work there where only four or so good UK Uni's to do Compute related degrees at.
kome 7y ago
When people will stop using standardized testing?
peter_retief 7y ago
This is simply disgusting, imagine the amount of hurt and harm to those people deliberately chosen to be rejected!
wills_forward 7y ago
Can we buy a list of colleges who are buying these names? Only seems fair. It'd be an interesting data point to know which schools aren't so desperate.
yellow_lead 7y ago
At least when I took the SAT, there was a checkbox giving permission to spam you with emails. The wording is of course nondirect and the exact type of thing you would need good reading comprehension to detect.
gumby 7y ago
This is a very clever externality attack. The benefit to the institution is described in the article. But it costs the institution nothing: the recruited, unqualified applicant pays an application fee which presumably completely, or more than completely defrays the cost of dealing with the application (a significantly under qualified applicant can be removed from the pool very quickly, at low cost). The applicant not only pays the cash fee but invests some actual time (and emotional energy)* Really little different from popular contemporary business models such as Amazon not paying for the time spent in loss prevention queueing, Macdonalds and Walmart paying "wages" so low that their employees need government financial support, not paying drivers wait time or door dash et all stealing their employees' tips. Now these colleges are shifting the externality onto people they don't plan to do business with! * Perhaps the new common application reduces or eliminates the wall clock time?
_raoulcousins 7y ago
What's new here? I took the SAT in 2001 and checked a box saying it was ok to be contacted. Got tons and tons of junk mail from overpriced colleges I'd never heard of.
bkudria 7y ago
The company I work for is trying to make this process a bit better - it's called RaiseMe: https://raise.me https://raise.me. These name buys are pretty untargeted, and often include only superficial demographic information. The application and admission process is difficult to navigate and not transparent, and ends up disproportionately impacting the chances for immigrants, minorities, and first-generation college students of finding a good match. Our hypothesis is that by surfacing available aid earlier, in smaller amounts ("microscholarships"), and allowing students to explore less-well-known colleges, and opt-in to having their information shared, engages students throughout their HS career, pushes them to achieve academically, and nets them a college better suited for them. We found this to be the case over the last 5 years, given our 300+ college partners and usage in 3 of 4 US high-schools. Our college partners find spending their acquisition budget with us to access (opted-in) rich student data to find interested students that match their profile results in a greater ROI than spending their budget on spamming students and parents with glossy brochures. (We've also found there to be opportunities to help transfer students navigate the transfer process, and help enrolled undergraduate students from dropping out.) By the way, we're hiring.
zenit-mf-1 7y ago
What about the opposite effect : College may loose some good candidates who auto-censure themself because of the admission rate is low?
the_watcher 7y ago
Is this not opt-in on the part of the students? When I took the LSAT, it was definitely an opt-in (possibly default opt-in, don't remember specifically), and it was pretty clear to me that the reason to opt-in was that schools might offer application fee waivers. I did well enough on the LSAT that I was able to apply to only schools that waived the application fee, plus two others that I really wanted to attend. While I think this practice should definitely have an opt-out, I'm not really sure if I think it's a problem that colleges market themselves aggressively. This is probably hard to rigorously study, but my hypothesis is that application rates (particularly to better schools) are going up because applicants are realizing that there is extremely little financial cost to being rejected from a "stretch" school relative to the total cost of a degree and substantial upside, should one get in.
musicale 7y ago
It is an amusing paradox that the same set of colleges, sharing the same set of applicants, can become more "exclusive" by the simple mechanism of having applicants submit applications to more schools. Conversely, if each applicant simply applied to a single school (the final accepting school), it could produce the same attendance result, but with a 100% acceptance rate for every school. This makes me think that acceptance rates are fairly meaningless.
musicale 7y ago
> "Why did you recruit me if you weren't going to let me in?" "To boost our exclusivity" seems like a poor answer.

152 points by andygcook 7y ago

dpcx 7y ago

I don't think this is new - I'm pretty sure it's how colleges have been getting the names of potential students for _decades_.

ryanmercer 7y ago
And even if not, the colleges that require SAT scores are requiring them just to weed out potential students they don't want.
dsr_ 7y ago
It's a major profit center for College Board. It's how I applied to five schools and was accepted at seven of them -- more than twenty years ago.
ceejayoz 7y ago
Encouraging people with low scores to apply so they can reject and boost their US News ranking via the exclusivity metric is new, though.
icedchai 7y ago
It's not. I remember getting mailings 25+ years ago.

jimktrains2 7y ago

Why is SAT not capitalized? Another one of hackernew's automatic title editing gone wrong?

collegespam 7y ago

Throwaway account. I'm currently working on college applications, and found pretty annoying. I've been getting well over a dozen e-mails a day as well as two or three items of physical mail every day, all on colleges, all for the past three months. I've been getting a lower level of the same thing since early high school when I first took the SAT. I made national merit scholar and did well on the SAT; that's when it really picked up. None of them have really convinced me to apply (except for Vanderbilt; they put their financial aid stuff right up front). However , I did get a few useful ones. Most of them were notifying me about info sessions for the colleges. There's also a box on the SAT where you check whether or not you want this or not, though I don't remember if it's opt-in or opt-out. Most of what I get is useless (though as national merit results get processed, I've started getting serious scholarship offers). What I don't like is that most of them are just send stuff to drive up application numbers and drive down acceptance rates, because yes, that's a thing (even though it sounds horrible, and every rejection makes a kid feel like garbage). Mail is cheap, I guess, but I wish colleges would relegate their communications to those they actually wanted.

utdpromospam 7y ago
(Throwaway account to respond to your throwaway account) If you’re interested in CS, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, with National Merit, check out UT Dallas. They have a full ride for National Merit, and especially if you’re interested in computer science, there’s a honors program just for CS. Its not a top school or anything, but if money is at all a concern, definitely look into it.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  I don't need to make a throwaway account to tell the parent that they probably don't want to live in Texas.
  - dang 7y ago
    I unfortunately just saw this, but need to tell you: please don't post regional flamebait to HN. It leads to flamewars like this one, which we emphatically don't want here. We've already had to warn you before about not breaking the site guidelines, and unfortunately it seems like you've been breaking them a lot. That leads to getting banned here, and I don't want to ban you, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended from now on? The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
  - social_quotient 7y ago
    Geez, what’s wrong with Texas?
    - journalctl 7y ago
      It’s hot and you can’t be black/queer/female there.
      - ozzmotik 7y ago
        the hot thing is true but as someone who was born and raised in Texas and spent 28 years there I do think that you're somewhat exaggerating with that other bit

imglorp 7y ago

Hint to test-takers and their parents: Opt out of all the contact options when you sign up for the test. Otherwise you'll be receiving 10 kilos of glossy school junk mail a month, hundreds of emails, and a slew of cold calls.

RandomBacon 7y ago
Better yet, sign up with a new email address used only for college-hunting. Same when buying a car, etc. The "spam" is crazy. Maybe even get a VOIP number for the same reason.

Kludgist 7y ago

This article isn't about the fact that colleges are buying SAT scores. Yes, that has been done forever. The article is about colleges using mass mailing to dramatically boost applicants and decrease the number of people admitted. They have some interesting interviews with college admissions staff and information about Vanderbilt specifically using this tactic to decrease their admit rate (which makes them look better in ratings). This certainly isn't the only thing driving the massive increase in applications. There are far more students taking the PSATs, more students sending out far more applications (out of paranoia? Pressure?), and more foreign applicants. To some extent, I think it's a positive feedback loop that doesn't require advertising at all to drive it. If you know the admit rate is low (because of all the applications being sent), then it's in your best interest to send out lots of applications -- throwing spaghetti at the wall. Then the admit rate gets lower... Personally, I'm not entirely against this trend. Growing up in a rural area with parents who didn't go to college, I had no idea what was out there. I figured I'd probably go to the state university (which was a good school!), but didn't think much about it. When I started getting mail from colleges, it was a huge help and broadened my horizons. I ended up going to a field-specific college across the country, and really loved it. Not only that, but it was exciting and inspiring that these colleges I had only heard about in movies and books were reaching out to me. I just never thought that would happen. I'm sure I'm not the only kid from middle-of-nowhere West coast who was really inspired by that.

therealx 7y ago
How long before someone writes software that walks you through a series of questions (a la turbotax, but more in depth and less shit), and then spits out a series of applications. Of course you'd hand check each one, but until colleges collude on their into process, it seems possible.
- myoldaccount 7y ago
  This exists; the Common App centralizes applications for 800+ Colleges
  - 7y ago

Bostonian 7y ago

Harvard has been specifically encouraging unqualified black students to apply to lower their acceptance rate for black applicants to show that they don't discriminate in favor of blacks. I am not saying all of their black applicants are unqualified. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/is-harvard-leading-on-black-applicants/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/is-harvard-leading-on-... Is Harvard Leading On Black Applicants? By ROBERT VERBRUGGEN National Review November 5, 2019 10:39 AM

droithomme 7y ago

As is pointed out, there's a box you check if you want to opt in to this. It's called the Student Search Service. It's not a secret and they tell you exactly what is disclosed. https://studentsearch.collegeboard.org/about-your-data https://studentsearch.collegeboard.org/about-your-data If you previously opted-in and change your mind opting back out is simple. https://studentsearch.collegeboard.org/opt-out https://studentsearch.collegeboard.org/opt-out

Hitton 7y ago

Am I only one annoyed with the design of the first graph in the article? What happened to simple web design?

lmkg 7y ago

It's not just the SAT, either. I took the GRE in order to go back for my Master's. I got a veritable deluge of emails telling me all about wonderful programs all across the country. MBA programs were disproportionately common in the advertisements I received. I can guess a few possible reasons. I fit a demographic profile (returning to school after 8+ years in industry). MBAs are profit centers for universities. Business programs ought to be able to optimize business things like advertising reach and market segmentation. Most email blasts were short-lived, but a few schools still email me on the regular, a year after I finished the program I originally took the test for.

currymj 7y ago

I wish university rankings didn't exist, or at least were never taken seriously by anyone. Failing that, I wish the people making the rankings would just outright admit they're making a subjective list, so at least universities wouldn't waste resources and make these sorts of bizarre decisions trying to game the metrics.

2sk21 7y ago
I wish I could upvote this a hundred fold! University rankings have utterly corrupted an already bad system.
ineedasername 7y ago
Rankings are awful. They give the impression of constant distance between the ordinal values, e.g., #10 is as far below #1 as #310 is below #300. In reality, things are much more tightly clustered. There are about 20 truly superior schools, and they are much closer to each other than a 1 through 20 ranking would imply. There's not much difference between a 20 and a 10 or even 1. Then there's about 100 second-tier very, very good schools that are similarly clustered. After that, something like 1000 schools are good, solid schools with little tangible difference between number 900 and number 300. Ordinal rankings throw all of this out the window, and students & families end up worrying about choosing between a school in the top 25% or top 27% etc. Non-ordinal ratings instead of rankings would be better, and better show this sort of clustering, but it would still ignore extremely important differences. For example, there may be a school that's fairly middle-of-the-road, okay but not great on an all-around basis, but their proximity to New York City makes their performing arts programs a stand-out top 5 program in the region. But all you get from a US News ranking is that they're rated #768.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Depends what field you want to do - some universities have a particular reputation in particular fields. Cambridge for astronomy would be one example. And I recall back when I started work there where only four or so good UK Uni's to do Compute related degrees at.

kome 7y ago

When people will stop using standardized testing?

peter_retief 7y ago

This is simply disgusting, imagine the amount of hurt and harm to those people deliberately chosen to be rejected!

wills_forward 7y ago

Can we buy a list of colleges who are buying these names? Only seems fair. It'd be an interesting data point to know which schools aren't so desperate.

yellow_lead 7y ago

At least when I took the SAT, there was a checkbox giving permission to spam you with emails. The wording is of course nondirect and the exact type of thing you would need good reading comprehension to detect.

gumby 7y ago

This is a very clever externality attack. The benefit to the institution is described in the article. But it costs the institution nothing: the recruited, unqualified applicant pays an application fee which presumably completely, or more than completely defrays the cost of dealing with the application (a significantly under qualified applicant can be removed from the pool very quickly, at low cost). The applicant not only pays the cash fee but invests some actual time (and emotional energy)* Really little different from popular contemporary business models such as Amazon not paying for the time spent in loss prevention queueing, Macdonalds and Walmart paying "wages" so low that their employees need government financial support, not paying drivers wait time or door dash et all stealing their employees' tips. Now these colleges are shifting the externality onto people they don't plan to do business with! * Perhaps the new common application reduces or eliminates the wall clock time?

_raoulcousins 7y ago

What's new here? I took the SAT in 2001 and checked a box saying it was ok to be contacted. Got tons and tons of junk mail from overpriced colleges I'd never heard of.

bkudria 7y ago

The company I work for is trying to make this process a bit better - it's called RaiseMe: https://raise.me https://raise.me. These name buys are pretty untargeted, and often include only superficial demographic information. The application and admission process is difficult to navigate and not transparent, and ends up disproportionately impacting the chances for immigrants, minorities, and first-generation college students of finding a good match. Our hypothesis is that by surfacing available aid earlier, in smaller amounts ("microscholarships"), and allowing students to explore less-well-known colleges, and opt-in to having their information shared, engages students throughout their HS career, pushes them to achieve academically, and nets them a college better suited for them. We found this to be the case over the last 5 years, given our 300+ college partners and usage in 3 of 4 US high-schools. Our college partners find spending their acquisition budget with us to access (opted-in) rich student data to find interested students that match their profile results in a greater ROI than spending their budget on spamming students and parents with glossy brochures. (We've also found there to be opportunities to help transfer students navigate the transfer process, and help enrolled undergraduate students from dropping out.) By the way, we're hiring.

zenit-mf-1 7y ago

What about the opposite effect : College may loose some good candidates who auto-censure themself because of the admission rate is low?

the_watcher 7y ago

Is this not opt-in on the part of the students? When I took the LSAT, it was definitely an opt-in (possibly default opt-in, don't remember specifically), and it was pretty clear to me that the reason to opt-in was that schools might offer application fee waivers. I did well enough on the LSAT that I was able to apply to only schools that waived the application fee, plus two others that I really wanted to attend. While I think this practice should definitely have an opt-out, I'm not really sure if I think it's a problem that colleges market themselves aggressively. This is probably hard to rigorously study, but my hypothesis is that application rates (particularly to better schools) are going up because applicants are realizing that there is extremely little financial cost to being rejected from a "stretch" school relative to the total cost of a degree and substantial upside, should one get in.

musicale 7y ago

It is an amusing paradox that the same set of colleges, sharing the same set of applicants, can become more "exclusive" by the simple mechanism of having applicants submit applications to more schools. Conversely, if each applicant simply applied to a single school (the final accepting school), it could produce the same attendance result, but with a 100% acceptance rate for every school. This makes me think that acceptance rates are fairly meaningless.

musicale 7y ago

> "Why did you recruit me if you weren't going to let me in?" "To boost our exclusivity" seems like a poor answer.