New standard index RAI for Iowa university student acceptance nearing completion

High school students looking to apply to one of Iowa's public universities soon could know the new standard by which their qualifications will be assessed should their high school not track class rank.

A group charged with standardizing the Board of Regents' admission index for students lacking all the required application data - like high school class rank - is expected to have developed a new systemwide standard for calculating exceptions by Dec. 15.

That standard could be presented to the Board of Regents at its February meeting, and it would apply to applicants for fall 2016, said Mark Braun, with the Board of Regents Office.

Five years ago the board began using a scoring index to assess applicants' chances of success, and thus granting admission, based on four factors: ACT or SAT test scores, cumulative grade-point average, the number of completed high school core courses, and high school rank.

Because a growing number of high schools no longer track class rank - 31.6 percent of freshmen across the three regent universities in fall 2013 didn't have one - the institutions developed alternative methods to gauge admission for those students.

Each university's method was different, however, raising concerns among the board office and a consulting firm hired to review the efficiency of the regents and its institutions.

Following a recommendation from Deloitte Consulting to lessen the ambiguity for those students without class rank, the Board of Regents in September charged staff with standardizing its index calculations.

Right now, students who score at least 245 on this index qualify for automatic admission to Iowa State University, University of Northern Iowa, and the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Students scoring under 245 are considered on an individual basis.

When class rank is not provided, UNI uses an equation that weights differently GPA, ACT scores, and total core high school units; ISU uses an equation to impute class rank based on the ISU student population; and UI uses a sliding scale that changes annually based on parameters like GPA, high school courses, and test scores.

Board of Regents Executive Director Robert Donley has publicly criticized the 'Regent Admission Index” for its shortcomings in those exception cases and also asked for a review, calling out UI specifically by saying it 'does not calculate an RAI for all of its applicants” and students without class rank are excluded from the RAI count.

Donley in a guest opinion for The Gazette praised Iowa State for developing a statistical formula for calculating a score for all applicants and said he discovered the discrepancies following media reports.

The Gazette in June reported that the UI in 2013 admitted 20.8 percent of the applicants it had with scores below the 245 threshold, while ISU admitted 36.9 percent of its low-scoring applicants, and UNI admitted 79.6 percent, according to regent documents.

According to Deloitte, 40 percent of a recent group of UI applicants did not have class rank, and Donley said in his guest opinion that although it might appear ISU admits more students with RAI scores below 245, 'it is impossible for the University of Iowa to determine actual RAI admissions as it does not calculate an RAI formula for all of its students.”