What impresses college admissions officers? This is one of many questions students ask as they enter the college admissions process. But, instead of just writing essays, building a résumé and submitting transcripts, students now have the opportunity to participate in moderated dialogues to improve their chances of admission.
Co-founded by Sal Khan of Khan Academy, the Dialogues program provides Zoom meetings for students to discuss various topics, such as climate change and mental health. These discussions are recorded and placed into a portfolio for colleges. Six schools have already begun to use this platform: Northwestern, University of Chicago, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Washington University in St. Louis and Colby College.
One Harvard student argued in a New York Times opinion article that Dialogues won’t be a sincere way to understand students’ tolerance to various issues. Instead, it’ll be another merit for students to fake.
U-High senior Mulan Wu doesn’t plan on submitting her own portfolio, but she is interested in the program and thinks it has the potential to match up to its goals.
“I think it’s a pretty good way for a college to see the character of the students they’re going to be admitting,” Mulan said. “However, I feel like they should be making a more widespread thing, like, they should be advertising it more and telling more people about it.”
U-High college counselor Matt Mettille thinks that the program might bring added stress and pressure to students already struggling to get done with required work.
“I worry a little bit for students, knowing that the process, the admissions process, in general, is already fraught with stress and anxiety,” Mr. Mettille said, “and so it [might be] one more thing you have to think about.”
In an email to the Midway, the admissions team at Northwestern University explained the reason that they wanted to join the Dialogues pilot because they “see the premise of Dialogues as particularly well aligned with Northwestern’s priorities around supporting free expression and engaging across difference.” They emphasized that, “student who submit a Dialogues Portfolio will not be given any measurable advantage in the admissions process over students without any Dialogues materials; rather, we intend to treat Dialogues portfolios as one among many optional, supplemental materials that can evidence a student’s academic and intellectual foundation beyond their high school transcript, and further help us understand how a candidate’s vision for college aligns with Northwestern’s institutional values, academic culture, and campus community.”
Meanwhile, MIT and Vanderbilt withdrew from the college dialogues after “hearing some concerns” about the pilot.
Mr. Mettille is also concerned that the dialogue portfolios will be too expansive to be looked at in detail.
“The portfolio, if you submit it, there’s potentially hours of dialogue that the colleges have access to,” Mr. Mettille said, “and knowing how quickly a full application gets read, I think I just have a hard time thinking admissions officers, especially at these elite institutions that are part of it, are going to ever dig into that.”
As students begin to apply themselves through the pilot program, colleges and applicants are left to wonder if Dialogues will be able to match up to its goals of eliciting civil discourse, or if it will become “a new virtue for applicants to fake.”
