College Applicants Get Big Boost From Adobe

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Findings from Adobe’s study—The Deciding Factor, The Case for a More Holistic Measure of Student Success—reveals the average time spent by a college admissions professional to review an application is 11 minutes. Students applying for admission will need to find creative ways to stand out during those 11 minutes!

Students & college admissions professionals overwhelmingly agree that creative skills are a key factor in admissions, yet there is no easy way for students to showcase creativity in the current process. The Deciding Factor study, surveyed 1,000 high school students, 250 college admissions decision makers and 250 high school college placement counselors in the U.S.

Key findings include:

• Creative skills rank among the top 3 deciding factors to admissions decision makers, yet only 20% report that students demonstrate their creativity “very well” on applications.
• Everyone agrees on the importance of demonstrating creative skills on applications:
  • admissions decision makers (95%),
  • college placement counselors (97%) and
  • high school students (88%).
• 69% of students don’t know where to showcase creative skills on applications.
• 84% of students wish they knew how to show creativity on applications, and
• 85% wish they had more ways to show who they are as a person.
• 93% of counselors wish they could give students more guidance on showing their creative skills in applications.
• 90% of admissions decision makers believe colleges need a standardized way to evaluate candidates’ creative skills.

As Covid-19 uncertainty continues, Adobe has partnered with some of the most creative artists & educators to show students how to showcase creative skills & share who they are in unique, visual ways. Tutorials on creative story-telling & packaging, as supplemental content for their college applications, have been created by:

• Artist & photographer Matt Crump,
• Comedic chart/graph artist Matt Shirley, and
• High school teachers whose rap videos have gone viral: Audri Williams & Callie Evans,
• Tutorials from designer Steffi Lynn Tsai, #HipHopEd founder & professor Chris Emdin and more.

Creative tutorials can be found here.

 

[gordo]

And creativity is particularly important in accounting studies.

I'm surprised that Universities are still using humans (a.k.a. ("college admissions professionals") to scan applications. Businesses are increasingly turning to automated résumé screening software which is a more effective and efficient method of denying applicants.