In 2015, the Consortium began a partnership with the City University of New York (CUNY) to implement an innovative pilot program that granted admission to 4-year CUNY colleges for a select group of Consortium graduates who were strong students even though they did not meet CUNY’s SAT cut-off scores.

Since 2015, several hundred students have matriculated at CUNY colleges through this program, and the results of their progress are impressive.

THE PROBLEM

According to a 2012 report by the Community Service Society, decreasing numbers of students of color from across NYC were gaining admission to CUNY’s 4-year colleges, in part as a result of CUNY’s growing reliance on strict cutoff scores on college entrance exams.

Consortium students, particularly students of color from low-income families, were being accepted at test-optional private colleges but denied entry to CUNY 4-year colleges.

THE PILOT

Given CUNY’s role as an engine of economic and social mobility, Consortium educators were seriously concerned when they noticed that many of their students were not being admitted into the four-year CUNY colleges because of their SAT scores, even though many of these students were getting into private colleges and had strong academic records.

Beginning in 2015, cohorts of Consortium students who had fulfilled their high school graduation requirements with high-quality work but who had SAT scores below the cutoff were admitted to CUNY 4-year programs based on rigorous criteria agreed upon by the Consortium and CUNY.

Several hundred students have now matriculated at a CUNY 4-year college through the admissions pilot program. Researchers from CUNY, funded through the Learning Policy Institute, followed pilot students over time to assess their academic progress in college, and the results are impressive. 

THE RESULTS

The 2020 report that statistically tracked Consortium students at CUNY found that “learning experiences structured around performance-based assessments support student advancement and can help narrow race, class, and linguistic gaps in secondary and higher education achievement.”

Despite lower SAT scores, students in the pilot have higher first-semester GPAs than their peers from New York City public schools, are more likely to earn at least 80% of their first-semester attempted credits and are far more likely to persist within the CUNY system within 1 year of enrollment than peers who graduated from other New York City schools, even though these peers, on average, had higher SAT scores. 

In general students in Consortium schools begin high school more educationally and economically disadvantaged than their peers and are more likely to graduate from high school, attend college, and persist in college than demographically similar peers. These gains were even more pronounced for Black and Latinx students. 

Qualitative interviews that our staff conducted in 2021 with Consortium graduates in the pilot program echoed these results and revealed other important aspects of how a Consortium education supports success in college. Stay tuned -- we will be sharing more from these interviews soon. 

The convincing results of this small pilot have had a broad impact beyond the schools in the Consortium. As a 2020 Learning Policy Institute report states:

“This small pilot has opened an institution-wide conversation about admission criteria, racial/economic equity, and academic success in one of the largest urban systems of higher education in the country… The pilot study helped seed conversations within CUNY about ways to view college readiness through a wider aperture, rather than simply focusing on test scores and GPA.” — Michelle Fine & Karyna Pryiomka

Webinar: Using Performance Assessment in College Admissions

This webinar looks at the outcomes of the Pilot and was designed for K-12 counselors and leaders, admissions staff, leaders from higher education systems, and state and district policymakers interested in leveraging performance assessment to support student preparation, transition, and success in postsecondary education.