Evidence of lagging students has some at Oregon State hypothetically raising the question: Should the university boost its minimum GPA requirement?

What are the best ways to measure a high-school student’s readiness for college?

It’s more than just an academic question: Students entering college unprepared, admissions experts say, require more remedial classes, are more likely to leave after their freshman year and take longer to graduate.

Bill Bogley, Oregon State University math professor and associate dean of the University Honors College, said he and his colleagues have noticed a troubling increase in incoming students not able to handle an introductory college math course. Students also are lagging behind in other basic skills, including reading and writing, he noted.

“We all have experiences in the classroom that suggest that students’ abilities to come to campus and take college-level courses is slipping,” he said.

At this month’s meeting of OSU’s Faculty Senate, Mike Quinn, Faculty Senate president and professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Kate Peterson, assistant provost for enrollment management, tackled the question of how best to gauge student readiness during the admissions process.

And they considered a hypothetical possibility: What would be the pros and cons of increasing OSU’s minimum grade-point average requirement for regular admission from 3.0 to 3.25 — the standard in place now at the University of Oregon?

The change in GPA requirements at OSU isn’t being considered presently, Quinn and Peterson emphasized, adding that the discussion was meant more to trigger a dialogue about student preparedness.

Under OSU’s regular admissions protocol, students with an overall high school GPA of 3.0 or higher who have completed 14 units of required course work in key subject areas are automatically admitted. The University of Oregon asks for 16 units.

Those who don’t meet these two criteria can still apply, and other factors such as test scores and their so-called “Insight Resumes,” a series of short essays written by prospective students, also are taken into account.

Determining who’s college-ready

While OSU faculty and staff members agree that ensuring student success is paramount, there are differing theories on how best to determine who is ready for college.

Bogley, for example, doesn’t think increasing high school GPA requirements is the solution, or that 3.25 is a magic number when it comes to predicting student success.

“I think the problem lies elsewhere,” Bogley said. He believes the Oregon University System must work with K-12 schools and community colleges to align curriculum and expectations, so that students are getting the classes and course work necessary to enter college prepared.

While not a cure-all, raising the bar for admissions would have some benefits, Quinn and Peterson reported.

For one, it’s a way to keep up with high school grade inflation, they said. In 1990, the average overall high school GPA nationally was about 2.675. By 2005, that number had jumped to 2.975.

“High school grades are getting higher, so if we hold the bar at the same level, our requirements are actually getting lower,” Quinn said.

When putting together the report they shared with the Faculty Senate earlier this month, Quinn and Peterson also looked at student preparation for Math 111, an entry-level college math course.

Only 42 percent of freshmen taking the OSU math-placement exam achieve a score high enough to place them into this class. If admissions were limited to students with a high school GPA of 3.25 or higher, that figure would increase to 50 percent n still discouragingly low, according to Quinn and Peterson.

Looking at students’ GPAs after one year at OSU, there doesn’t appear to be a strong correlation between college grades and high school GPAs unless you’re looking at the students with GPAs close to 4.0.

Students with a high school GPA between 3.0 and 3.25 earn an average of a 2.50 their freshman year at OSU. Those with a high school GPA between 3.26 and 3.5 earn about a 2.52.

There is, however, a stronger link between high school grades and six-year college graduation rates. Of students with a high school GPA between 3.0 and 3.25, 50 percent graduate from OSU in six years. About 65 percent of students with a high school GPA between 3.26 and 3.5 graduate in that time frame.

Beyond increasing graduation rates and keeping up with grade inflation, another benefit of increasing OSU’s minimum GPA requirement for regular admission could be increasing OSU’s perceived quality. Prospective students, along with ranking matrixes such as the one used by U.S. News and World Report, often look at selectivity when determining how prestigious a school is.

However, increasing GPA requirements could have some major drawbacks detrimental to OSU’s mission as a land-grant university that provides access to a diverse population, according to Quinn and Peterson.

Statistically, students from more affluent families tend to earn higher test scores and better grades. Increasing GPA requirements could hurt diversity on campus.

This year at OSU, about 25 percent of Caucasian freshmen had a high school GPA below a 3.25. For African Americans, it was about 38 percent. About 30 percent of Hispanic freshmen, 28 percent of American Indian freshmen and 25 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander freshmen had GPAs below 3.25 in high school.

There would also be a financial impact if admissions criteria were adjusted.

Of the 2006-07 freshman class, 26 percent of students had a high school GPA below 3.25. That’s 770 students who might have been rejected or been discouraged from applying if OSU raised the admissions bar. OSU could not afford to lose tuition on that many students, especially those paying out-of-state costs, Quinn said.

Counselors

have doubts

Area high school counselors expressed doubts that raising GPA requirements would result in more college-ready freshmen.

The University of Oregon raised its minimum GPA for regular admission from 3.0 to 3.25 several years ago, but that doesn’t ensure that students accepted have the rigorous high school course work needed to succeed in the post-secondary system, said Marc Rosegold, Crescent Valley High School counselor.

Rosegold said he’s heard from admissions officers at UO that they admit 85 percent of applicants with GPAs between 3.0 and 3.25, but those falling below the 3.25 threshold must submit supplementary materials. This is confusing for students, who may be dissuaded from applying if they don’t have a 3.25, even though they might very well be accepted with a 3.0, he said.

Also, comparing GPAs from high school to high school is difficult, since some schools have more rigorous course work than others, according to Rosegold.

He and fellow CVHS counselor Barbara Popoff suggested that if OSU wants to better determine which perspective students are ready for college, admissions staff members could look at a recalculated GPA that only takes into account core classes such as math, literature and social studies. Electives can pad GPAs without accurately reflecting competence in basic skills, they said.

Craig Geffre, a senior at South Albany High School who plans to attend Linfield College in the fall, said he deliberately took precalculus, statistics and AP English to increase his chances for success in college.

It’s frustrating, he said, to study hard every night and know that other students can skip class, copy friends’ homework and still skate by with high enough grades to qualify for college.

“It’s evident these people won’t have the appropriate study patterns you need in college,” he said.

Geffre said he favors harder course work or more emphasis on SAT scores rather than more attention to grade point averages.

“You can receive pretty reasonable grades doing very little as it is,” Geffre said. “And people who challenge themselves sometimes get a lower GPA.”

Broader view at OSU

For the past six years, OSU has been shifting toward a more holistic admissions process, one that looks at an individual’s character and past experiences, not just grades and numbers, Peterson said.

For example, OSU is testing how well the “Insight Resume,” a series of short essays developed by University of Maryland scholar William Sedlacek, does evaluating prospective students.

The questions gauge applicants’ leadership abilities, experiences overcoming adversity, support systems and understanding of diverse cultural communities, among other things.

“It’s really caught on,” Peterson said, adding that the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships also draws on the Insight Resumes when awarding scholarships.

One drawback of the short essays is that scoring them is more labor-intensive than applying an automatic admissions cutoff based on GPA alone, so human resources also must be considered, Peterson said.

Rosegold suggested that OSU might ask for a writing sample in addition to the Insight Resumes. He feels the responses solicited by the Insight Resume are too short to give an accurate idea of how well a student writes.

After this year, OSU should have enough data to determine how well the Insight Resume does at predicting student success, Peterson said. Then the question will be how to balance the Insight Resume with factors such as GPA and SAT scores when deciding which students to admit.

Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518. Jennifer Moody, who covers education for the Albany Democrat-Herald, contributed to this story.