Aaron Gifford reports in GovTech.com:
A new artificial intelligence tool can rate non-cognitive traits such as positive attitude, conscientiousness, communication and critical thinking. AI reviews and scores essays and recorded interviews with admissions counselors. The product is useful to schools that want to take a closer look at “borderline” applicants who may have slightly lower grade point averages or test scores than admitted students, but offer leadership, communication and critical thinking. The value proposition is to “synthesize large amounts of information from diverse sources” while freeing up employees in short-staffed admissions offices. It also has the potential to scour an applicant’s social media and incorporate “facial analysis” of expressions, eye or lip movements from video interviews into the algorithm.
A new artificial intelligence tool from Student Select can rate non-cognitive traits, such as positive attitude and conscientiousness, as well as performance skills like communication and critical thinking. For graduate school candidates at Rutgers and Rocky Mountain universities, the application process could go much deeper than transcripts and standardized test scores. And yet, admissions officers at both schools expect to notify all applicants of their acceptance status sooner than competing institutions.
The two universities are the first to use AI software from the data science company Student Select in their admissions process. Will Rose, the company’s chief technology officer, said both schools signed on for the conscientiousness subscription-based service for the current academic year. Five other U.S. schools, which he declined to name because final contracts have not been signed yet, are utilizing Student Select right now for fall 2023 applicant pools.
In an interview with Government Technology on Tuesday, Rose said the product in its current formis mainly useful to competitive graduate schools that want to take a closer look at “borderline” applicants who may have slightly lower grade point averages or test scores than the automatically admitted students, but enough to offer by way of leadership, communication and critical thinking to nudge them over the line.
“It’s not intended to make admissions decisions [for the school] at all,” Rose said, adding that the technology broadens yet streamlines the selection process, but it does not replace human admissions counselors. “The goal is to get the acceptance letters out faster.”
Rose said his company custom builds a machine learning model for customers based on their rubrics for selection, which can include grades, scores and any quantitative or qualitative data considered in the application process. The schools can determine if they want to omit test scores, such as the GRE or GMA, from the review process or lessen the weight of those scores when looking at overall qualifications of applicants.
He said admissions counselors use Student Select to establish three tiers of applicants: The first tier is those who exceed all criteria and are automatically admitted, the second pertains to borderline applications which trigger additional steps, and the third is made up of those who don’t meet minimum requirements and would be rejected.
For those tier two applicants, Student Select uses AI to review and score their essays and previously recorded interviews with admissions counselors. In a demonstration of the product, Rose noted that the product can rate non-cognitive traits, such as positive attitude and conscientiousness, as well as performance skills like communication, leadership and critical thinking. Based on the scores of those attributes, admissions officers can decide to accept or reject the candidate, conduct a second interview, or wait-list them for future consideration.
All applicants are notified of their status in a matter of days or weeks, not months.
Rose said Student Select reduces or even eliminates age, racial and socioeconomic bias in the consideration process because the technology does not look at dates, candidate names or ZIP codes. It can also analyze the school’s historic admissions data, which admissions officers or administrators can review to identify underrepresented groups. Rose maintained that, historically, higher test scores “correlate with affluent people,” and under that assumption, institutions can elect to replace standardized test scores in their rubrics with other qualifying data identified by Student Select.
“It’s not our recommendation whether schools replace [standardized test scores] with different data,” Rose said, “but programs want to do that.”
Rose said Student Select can also be built for the undergraduate selection process and interfaces with Common App, an online tool for high school students to access college applications. He added that Student Select has the potential to integrate with tools that verify the authenticity of submitted essays and identify improper use of ChatGPT.
Student Select has been on the market for about a year now, Rose said. He acknowledged that there are many software tools in the college admissions space, including a program from Kira Talent that is used only for analyzing applicant interviews, but he is unaware of others that use AI to identify and score an applicant’s insights and skills.
According to a video on its website, the value proposition of Student Select is its ability to “synthesize large amounts of information from diverse sources” while freeing up employees in short-staffed admissions offices to spend more face time with the prospective students. It also has the potential to scour an applicant’s social media presence and incorporate “facial analysis” of expressions and eye or lip movements from video interviews into the algorithm, but both measurements are considered controversial in the admissions process, so they are not currently in use, according to the video.
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However, the use of AI in university admissions also raises concerns about privacy and fairness. Some argue that AI algorithms may not always account for cultural and socioeconomic differences that can impact an applicant's experiences and achievements. Additionally, there are concerns about the potential for bias in the algorithms themselves, as they may reflect the biases of their creators or be trained on biased data sets.
It is important for universities to consider these issues carefully and transparently communicate their use of AI in admissions to applicants and the public. While AI can bring benefits to the admissions process, it must be implemented in a thoughtful and responsible manner to ensure fairness and equity for all applicants.
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