Should Admissions Be Holistic Or Entrance Exam Based?

To your exhaustive list, I would add
- a complete psychometric analysis to evaluate the personality of the student
- aptitude test for evaluating the mental abilities
- interest test - what kind of work he likes doing
- personal interview
- maybe some physical aspects - fine motor/gross motor skills
- technology adaptability

Will respond in detail later.

 

@Rihana, I hope you will forgive me for a short deviation and a long post here.

The scores, entrance exams, essays etc are for college admissions.
But I would like to talk about life goals.

Let me start with an example - if I had a vacation and I love the beach - I may like to go to Maldives, but my budget may not allow it. So let's say I choose Goa.
Now - my destination is clear. It is ONLY AFTER THAT I book the journey & the stay, and after I reach there, I worry about what photos I would like to save and what I am going to write about the experience.
I dont start with - oh my neighbour travelled in Rajdhani express and said the train is great. Let me take it and go where it takes me.
OR I dont say Air-India flights have great service and in-flight food, let me go wherever it takes me.

Even with a short vacation, we decide the destination and then we think about the journey?
So, why are we doing that with education/careers ? Why are we looking at colleges (the journey) BEFORE we look at the career aspirations (the destination)?

Most people are born with their aptitudes or develop them in their childhood. And their personality is a sum total of their experiences till they turn 13-14-15.
After that, as they grow up, there are some changes in opinions, interests, maybe a few experiences teach them some lessons in people management, communication skills, leadership roles etc. But their basic aptitudes and personalities remain the same.

Now, if career aspirations are built upon a student's strengths, aptitudes, personality traits, interests, leadership styles, motivation factors - it makes the student excel at what he does & be successful at the career and also feel fulfilled & satisfied and happy and productive.

He would not waste time working on his weaknesses & running races that he can never win and fight his low self-esteem and inferiority complex all his life!

At 15-16, if the student is counselled on such a 360 degree view of himself, and also about the various futuristic destinations he can take up, and is given a few research tools for him to evaluate the careers or try them out at a small scale, it makes a huge difference, he can be helped to decide his destination.

Now let us come to your original question.
I will give a few examples with the assumption that the student has decided his destination.

Say, a student decides to be a tour operator + travel writer -
The college would evaluate his Visual Spatial aptitude, his GPS abilities, his ability to care about customers and be responsive to handle any issues during the travel, his interest levels to visit new places, ability to share info with the customers (& write or tell stories creatively).
We need to evaluate -
Visual + Spatial + Linguistic abilities + observation skills + inter-personal relationships + high auditory
+ high EQ (Emotional) + good CQ (Creativity) + good AQ (Adversity) + Problem solving skills.
IQ (Intelligence) may not be a deciding factor, although it should be more than low/medium.
Good relationship oriented leadership style + interest in Adventure + Social + excellent gross motor skills are key to this person ..

The same tests could apply to many other profiles like - a convention manager, event planner, HR Manager, Advertising Director, Film & Photography.


Say another student decides that building & Managing Complex Robotics system is his aspiration -
The college would evaluate him on
Logic+Mathematics + Linguistic to a certain extent + fine motor skills + interest in scientific/tech / Research
+ task oriented leadership style + very very detail oriented + good grasping skills + high visual
+ motivation to gain knowledge + very high IQ + good CQ + step by step worker
EQ & AQ not a factor here, although they should not be low.
This profile could also work as forensic scientists, cyber security, lawyers, economists, biotech, CA accountants and Data scientists...

So I could go on about other careers, but you get the picture...

To get the students to further understand their abilities & interests, they should start small internships at local spaces (schools should monitor the safety/security issues) from their 6th standard.
Life skills, creativity, problem solving etc needs to get integrated into school syllabus.

I know I'm being very idealistic ... and many "coaching centres" may even curse me!
The syllabus till 10th is ok - beyond that, I feel people should only be taught those courses that they are actually going to use in their workspace.

TL/DR - Education System should do a 360 deg evaluation of a student, explain it to him/parents, help a student find his destination and then evaluate him for college admission based on the parameters that would be useful for the career he has chosen.
So the tests would be different for different kinds of career destinations.

Hope I didn't deviate too much from your original question. But this is a small part of what I do everyday with students. This is the kind of guidance I provide to my students' parents.

Keep smiling
HR

 

I bet we'd all forgive. Your posts are so full of energy as well as information, you can post anything anywhere, and all will be well everywhere. You had also given fair warning of a tangent.

I like Rihana's idea of clear cut admission cut-offs based on some manner of exam results. If the contestant didn't make the cut-off, under all the existing criteria, s/he should take a hike to the college where s/he makes the cut-off. The college doesn't have to bother with what is the candidate's aptitude for becoming an explorer or chef. The catalogue says what the college offers, for what price, and the parent/student buys that deal and competes for a slot. That is about the size of that.

In college admissions abroad (in America, for example) the holistic approach invites corruption. The various ways students may get into a desirable college (nothing to do with Vocational Training that you seem to recommend) side stepping fair competition.

However, all that evaluating this, measuring that, being holistic, comes in when the student seeks funding from a parent. The PARENT or whoever funds the investment scheme has to bother with whether or not it is the right thing to do. Can someone with low gross motor skills become a bus driver for a tourist operation ? -- is a consideration for the parent, as well as a tour company doing recruiting in a college for employees who would operate/manage tours, and break-a-leg (a theatrical phrase that means "the show must go on"... in spite of broken whatevers) when they had to step in, and be bus drivers.

 

Thanks Rihana, for this wonderful thread. I am not sure how I missed this before now.

For a major chunk of my life, I was exposed to "get good grades and secure admission to top courses" school of thought. In fact, this, as you may already know, is the only way forward in the Indian Education System.

Things changed and my perspective took a 180 degrees turn when I became a significant part of my husband's application process to an MBA program in one of the best ranked Universities in the US. The application process and the MBA experience changed my perspective totally.

I now strongly believe that excellent grades are stepping stones only to remarkable courses at reputed educational institutes and are also an implicit indicator of your intelligence/ attitude/ achievements to the world at large.

Success in career, personal relationships, etc. and the ensuing happiness in life comes from the holistic development of the child. So for me, the bottom line is... irrespective of what the Universities want and ask for, holistic growth and development is the way. Moreover, this automatically ensures that your score/ grades are excellent. So it's a double win.

 

I did not read your opinion on this yet though, Rihanna. Please share your thoughts on this. Also, what are the things you deem important in the holistic development of the child.

 

Hrastro, that was very insightful. Do you live in India? I wish there were more teachers like you around.

Could you please write something on deciding the destination? How can a parent help the child in deciding the destination?

I know a high IQ Indian boy who had opted to study Science after school. After grade 12, he cleared both -the JEE as well as the NEET exams with excellent scores and secured admission in AIIMS and the top ranked IITs. He also got an admit offer with scholarship to an undergrad program from MIT, USA. He was spoiled for choice.

To add to all this conundrum, his parents are medical practitioners and his relatives had studied in IIT/MIT and were pitching their own career paths to him. After counselling, he joined IIT but his parents often say even now (when he's right in the middle of the course) that he still wonders what things would have been like if he had joined the MBBS course at AIIMS. (I think he's not wondering about the undergrad at MIT because after his course at IIT, he will anyway pursue a Master's there! )

 

Yes, in India! Thank you! The world has now become extremely small - most of my classes and counselling happens online now. I have students from all over the world!

Yeah Bachelors in India and Masters abroad is an excellent combination! The regret is probably only due to the fact that the parents are also in the medical fraternity and he knows that industry inside out - it is probably just comfort!
Even with an engineering degree, he can be a part of the medical fraternity - so many applications and innovations of engineering supports the medical industry - he has a great network to leverage if he has start up ideas on medical applications!

Each parent sees only a few qualities of their child - but they dont see a 360 view... so it would be difficult for the parent and child to decide on their own!

99% parents I meet - agree with me when I tell them about their child (because obviously who would know their child better), but left to themselves, they might not be able to make the COMPLETE list of their child's strengths...

There are different categories - personalities, Interests, Hobbies, Work Preferences, Aptitudes, Abilities, Communication styles, Leadership styles, Strengths - each person is unique combination of all such characteristics...

So to answer your question - till the child is <13, try and encourage as many extra curricular activities, let them explore their abilities and aptitudes, let them see for themselves what they are good at, what they get their confidence from, what they enjoy the most...

I'll give an example - I know one 14yo kid who collected and organized other kids to create a cleanup/awareness for their apartment complex (at the beginning of covid). The kid was exhilarated when it was a huge success and people appreciated it.
But as a PARENT can YOU think about what part the child enjoyed? What joy/satisfaction did THE CHILD derive from it?

1. Did they enjoy the leadership challenges - the convincing and organizing in a team?
2. Did they enjoy the appreciation they got from the adults?
3. Did they enjoy helping, working for a better local environment?
4. Did they enjoy sharing the knowledge and making people realize the importance of a cleaner environment?
5. Did they enjoy the planning/setting of a common goal and brainstorming?
6. Did they feel a sense of achievement from the awards they received due to it?

As a parent, you should be evaluating exactly what satisfaction your child is deriving from various different activities and achievements!

After 13, you could get an evaluation done - but study the reports yourself also, dont go blindly with what someone else tells you about YOUR OWN child - use your tarka-vitarka-viveka!

The child (through his research about suggested paths, with help from parents and elders) must make the final decision !

Although a counsellor can suggest the various destinations - they CANNOT/ MUST NOT make the decision for you.

When I meet a family, my SOP says I have to suggest 4 career paths for >13 year old - but I list out at least 20 in my preparation - because I know that during the discussion, I would realise that the child is NOT interested in some and not suitable for a few.

I tell these very clearly and give the child a template to do research, study the careers, and later if they want, I connect them to people who are already in that field - they talk to them and find more about those careers too...

Although aptitude and personality rarely change, INTERESTS might change - especially with <18 kids - so I ensure they research other careers they might be suitable for, but not interested in RIGHT NOW...

My suggestion for any child (and parent by extension) -
Work on YOUR Strengths, NOT Weaknesses!
Dont make urgent uninformed decisions, start early, evaluate different strengths, observe, try out some (scaled-down) internships/projects in different careers, express your ideas about them, research, talk to people in different careers!
Most important: work hard in school (academics opens doors for admissions)

My tagline:
- If you know yourself, you know exactly what you can/cannot do, you know exactly what you love to do and you know exactly where you derive joy from!
Self-awareness is the key to the right destination!
In fact, if you are self-aware, you can have infinite possibilities and achieve anything you want!

Keep smiling!
HR