Forty years ago, Congress passed the the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which, among other things, allows admitted college students to request a review of their application records from admissions offices. Universities are required to give the information in a 45-day period.
This legislation has been rarely used over the years, but it gained attention recently when discovered by an anonymous newsletter from Stanford University called The Fountain Hopper. The publication then emailed many Stanford students encouraging them to take advantage of the law.
The information students can gain access to may include notes on how admissions officers assess an applicant’s personality, level of leadership and extracurricular activities, as well as the numerical scores applicants are assigned during the admissions process.
Accessing such records allows applicants to see how much emphasis colleges place on standardized test scores and grades in relation to extracurricular activities and essays. It also gives insights into how factors such as affirmative action and legacy affect admissions decisions. However, FERPA does not allow students to request such information from colleges from which they were rejected.
As of Jan. 18, nearly 700 Stanford students, including Class of 2014 alumna Maggie Sun, now a freshman at the school, have requested access to their educational records under FERPA after The Fountain Hopper encouraged students to take advantage of the law.
Sun said such information could potentially de-mystify the admissions process.
“I'm definitely in favor of being able to request admissions documents,” Sun said. “I think it would provide much more transparency into the admissions process.”
According to Sun, many of the Stanford students who requested information did it out of pure curiosity. Others requested the information as a way to prove something to themselves as well as to others.
“There are some kids with legacy here who don't really mind and want to see how much having legacy influenced their admission, and on the contrary there are others who say they don't want to be told that the only reason they got in is because their parents went here,” she said.
In an email, college counselor Saul Lelchuk, who works for the Harvard Square tutoring business in Cupertino, said the surge in requests under FERPA will mostly affect elite schools around the nation, saying applicants at such institutions are evaluated not only by scores and grades, but also by essays and other supplementals to the application.
While providing clarity on the decisions of admissions officers, the requirement of disclosure of information under FERPA could prompt officers to devise more covert ways of assessing applicants, he said.
According to Lelchuk, the law discourages frankness in the admissions process and inhibits officers from doing their job: to truthfully evaluate an applicant’s ability to succeed at the college without worrying about self-censoring their comments.
Another heated issue that FERPA may intersect with is affirmative action. Because students would be able to see their admissions records, they would know if they were accepted based on their racial characteristics.
Colleges, however, have found a way to dodge this question by using code language when making comments on applications. For instance, Lelchuk said Princeton refers to its "educational and institutional needs” when admitting students via affirmative action.
“Barring a sweeping Supreme Court ruling or some equivalent change, I think colleges will continue doing their best to ensure that they have a diverse student body and will make their assessments in a way that allows this process to proceed apace,” Lelchuk said.
Under FERPA, students can also request the “right to amendment,” meaning they can change information in their educational records if they feel it is misleading. Although the school does have to provide the students with their records, it is under no obligation to amend the records. Students cannot request to change set records such as grades, test scores and opinions of an admissions officer.
Lelchuk added that letting students view the opinions of an admissions officer on their application could both lower and raise their self-esteem.
“Learning you were accepted because your father donated money or because a tennis coach really wanted you on the team might hurt one's self-esteem, sure, just as reading glowing comments about oneself on a bad day would probably feel pretty good,” Lelchuk said.
Because students cannot request to see files of colleges they have been rejected from, the complications of seeing morale-lowering comments are minimized. Rejected students will also not get the satisfaction of knowing why they didn’t meet that school’s standards.
Students said another possible effect of the flurry of FERPA requests is to add to competition. For example, if an admitted students share information about what they did to get into a certain college, the trend of younger students could trying to copy by taking the same classes, participating in the same extracurriculars and appearing to have the same interests could become even more pronounced.
“Rather than an emphasis on learning, it [could be] just a competition to get the most points or who can be the closest match with the perfect application,” senior Calvin Shih said.
Senior Anjali Manghnani argued that access to such records will deter students from staying true to their own interests.
“I think [the FERPA request increase] fuels further pressure to conform to a superficial ideal of what colleges ‘want,’” Manghnani said. “In the same sense that you should never change yourself as a person to please other people whether that be for a romantic relationship or a friendship, you should never change yourself to impress colleges.”