Bryn Mawr College has joined many of the nation’s top colleges and universities in an effort of reshape the college admissions process based on the recommendations of the report Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common Good through College Admissions.
The report calls on schools to promote greater ethical engagement among aspiring students, reduce excessive achievement pressure, and level the playing field for economically disadvantaged students.
“At Bryn Mawr we have long embraced many of the recommendations made in Turning the Tide,” says Chief Enrollment Officer Pelema Morrice. “In addition to academic excellence, we have always placed great value on depth of commitment and an applicant’s desire to make a meaningful contribution to the world when making our enrollment decisions.”
One of the key tenets of the report is the importance of meaningful, sustained community service rather than high-profile or exotic efforts.
From the report: “This service can take the form of substantial and sustained contributions to one’s family, such as working outside the home to provide needed income…The admissions process should clearly convey that what counts is not whether service occurred locally or in some distant place or whether students were leaders, but whether students immersed themselves in an experience and the emotional and ethical awareness and skills generated by that experience.”
Turning the Tide is the first step in a two-year campaign that seeks to substantially reshape the existing college admissions process. The report stems from an exploratory meeting at the Harvard Graduate School of Education hosted by Making Caring Common (MCC), a project that helps educators, parents, and communities raise children who are caring, responsible to their communities, and committed to justice. It was written by Richard Wissbourd in collaboration with Lloyd Thacker, director of the Education Conservancy, and based on a meeting of college admissions deans and other stakeholders in the college admissions process. The goals of the report are to harness the collective influence of college admissions to send a unified message that both ethical engagement and intellectual engagement are highly important and to more fairly capture the strengths of students across race, class, and culture.
For more information and a full list of endorsers, visit the MCC website.