There are statewide admissions standards to state colleges and universities – four years of this, three years of that, etc. – but there also are lots of exceptions, and the Colorado Commission on Higher Education approved a batch of them for high school students graduating in 2010.

Admissions standards, in one form or another, date back to 1986 but have been tweaked in the years since.

Requirements due to kick in for 2010 graduates are:

• 4 years of English
• 4 years of math (2 of algebra and 1 of geometry of equivalents)
• 2 years of science (2 units in the lab)
• 3 years of social science (at least one unit of history)
• 1 year of foreign language
• 2 years of academic electives
  

The exemptions approved by the CCHE include:

• Students who score more than 10 points above the “index” score required by each college. Index scores are calculated using a student’s GPA and ACT or SAT test scores, and range from 110 at the School of Mines to 76 at Metro State.
• Students who are admitted through the “window” colleges can use to admit students who are promising or otherwise desirable  but don’t have great high school records. In the past, each school could admit 20 percent of its students through the window. For 2010, the 20 percent will apply statewide, and schools with smaller windows will be frozen at those levels.
• Students who come from school districts (typically small ones) that can demonstrate they don’t have the variety of classes necessary for students to fulfill the course requirements listed above.
  

Some critics (particularly those with traditional, “seat time” ideas about what students should do in high school) long have complained that the admissions requirements are a sham because there are so many exceptions, But college officials like the flexibility and school districts, especially the littlest ones, don’t like to feel pressured to provide classes they can’t afford.

The whole system may soon be moot, however, because of the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids, passed by the 2008 legislature. In about four years, after a long process of creating new content standards and tests for K-12, the higher ed system will have to align its admissions standards with that new system.

(For the full details on the admissions requirements, read the policy that the commission approved.)

 

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comment form