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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Lots of information out there about Landscape, and its role in AO review:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/18l9emm/is_there_really_a_list_of_the_high_schools_of/

"But US colleges can, and some do, use data about high school locations as part of their contextual evaluation. There is actually a College Board product called Landscape which, among other things, is offered for this purpose. You can read a bit about it here:

https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/landscape/comprehensive-data-methodology-overview.pdf

There are two relevant parts of Landscape with respect to your question. As part of the general high school information section, Landscape will categorize high school locations geographically:

Locale: This measure is based on the high school’s location, and relies on the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) system of classifying geographic areas into 4 categories: City, Suburban, Town, and Rural (NCES locale framework).

– City and Suburban types are further divided into Large, Midsize, and Small, based on the population of the city or suburb (e.g., City: Midsize).

– Town and Rural types are further divided into Fringe, Distant, and Remote, based on the proximity of the town or rural area to an urban area (e.g., Rural: Remote).

Landscape also provides various "indicators" for an applicant's residential neighborhood and high school, which are census-tract based:

Neighborhood and high school indicators are provided: (i) at the neighborhood level, which is defined by a student’s census tract, and (ii) at the high school level, which is defined by the census tracts of college-bound seniors at a high school. Applicants from the same census tract share the same neighborhood data and indicators; applicants from the same high school share the same high school data and indicators.

The indicators are:

College attendance: A measure based on the predicted probability that a student from the neighborhood/high school enrolls in a 4-year college (aggregate College Board and National Student Clearinghouse data)

Household structure: A measure based on neighborhood/high school information about the number of married or coupled families, single-parent families, and children living under the poverty line (American Community Survey)

Median family income: Median family income among those in the neighborhood/high school (American Community Survey)

Housing stability: A measure based on neighborhood/high school information about vacancy rates, rental vs. home ownership, and mobility/housing turnover (American Community Survey)

Education level: A measure based on typical educational attainment of adults in the neighborhood/high school (American Community Survey)

Crime: The predicted probability of being a victim of a crime in the neighborhood or neighborhoods represented by the students attending the high school. Data provided by Location, Inc. For more information, please visit http://www.locationinc.com/data.

These 6 indicators are averaged and presented on a 1-100 percentile scale to provide a Neighborhood Average and a High School Average. A higher value on the 1-100 scale indicates a higher level of challenge related to educational opportunities and outcomes.

One of the interesting aspects of this is that high school indicators are (reasonably) determined by the census tracts of the college bound students. As they explain in a footnote:

4. A high school’s college-bound seniors include those who participate in a College Board assessment.

Anyway, point being this is way more sophisticated than a list of high schools in rich zipcodes. But, say, a high school might be categorized as having a Suburban:Large location, and then get relatively low scores on the six "challenge" indicators meaning the college-bound seniors come from census tracts with high college attendance, many two-parent families, high family incomes, lots of owned homes with low vacancies, lots of high-education adults, and low crime.

And of course colleges do not have to use Landscape, or they can supplement it in various ways, as they see fit. But it is helpful to know this exists."

____

"Not a list that crude, but my understanding is products like Landscape (see other post) are regularly used by College Board members in the application process, or some equivalent. This is often implicitly part of what they are referring to when they talk about evaluating applicants in context, resources by type of area (high or low), advantages/disadvantages by type of area, and so on.

Products like Landscape, if the college so chooses, will tag each application with a handy set of residential and high school indicators that the colleges can then look at when evaluating each application. In many cases, many of the competitive applicants are likely to blur together, because of course many of them come from the same sorts of areas and high schools. But if a college is interested in taking context into account in certain cases, or wants to target certain kinds of diversity (still allowed), or so on, it has this sort of product available."

[/quote]
Landscape is used by most colleges. But, no one really knows the extent to which AOs see this aspect. Generally, I don't think they do. Landscape data is not directly showing up in the AO's Slate application review portal. There may be a score somewhere, but it would probably be from the outside enrollment management consultant that uses Landscape data among other factors in the school's yield algorithm. Different schools would be have different algorithms.

What does show up in Slate is website clicks over time. In Slate, AOs can literally hover over a data point on a timeline graph and see what page the applicant clicked on, on a specific date.[/quote]

I am friends with an AO at a T10 and the VP of Enrollment Management at my R1 public. [b]Both have told me that Landscape and other software (algorithm) are used to shape the class (gender balance, majors, financial aid, merit, etc.) post AO application reviews. The report goes back to the Dean of admissions who instructs AO to make cuts or additions were needed.[/b] At my institution and my friend at the T10, the AOs can see the 1-100 percentile scale score described above on Slate within the context of SAT/ACT scores or TO and curriculum rigor. [/quote]
DP. Thanks. It sounds like the bolded is where algorithms really comes into play. [b]My guess is that Landscape may be more useful for the value it adds in the financial area than for score context.[/b] The AOs may really be privy to the entirety of reasoning behind the additions and cuts that the Dean of Admissions makes based on the algorithm results for class shaping.[/quote]
TYPO, should say: The AOs may NOT be privy...[/quote]

PP again: yes, my understanding of the process based on info from my friends is that you are correct about AO's knowledge of the reasoning behind cuts and additions. However, to clarify, it seems like Landscape is primarily used to determine if a high school is under- or over-resourced to put class choices (e.g., 14 APS vs 2 APS vs 0 APS [non available]), grades, and SAT scores (1400 at a school that averages 1100) in context when reading applications and deciding who moves forward in the process (e.g., 2nd round, committee). I'm not sure what you mean by financial area.[/quote]

I think I understand now what you mean by financial area. I was told that the Landscape data is used in the algorithm to shape the class. Both schools use enrollment management software/platform that pulls data from Landscape, Slate and the college's enrolled student database to feed the algorithms that shape the class, determine merit and/or financial aid, and yield. I got to see a demonstration of yield predictions and I was amazed at the complexity of the calculations to predict if an applicant is more likely to accept vs decline. [/quote]
Other PP, talking about financial area. Thank you for describing this. This is exactly what I think drives many college decisions and why sometimes admission decisions seem arbitrary. It seems to me that the more subjective aspects like ECs and essays, while certainly read and considered, and presumably scored for inclusion somewhere in the algorithm, may ultimately play a much smaller role in the admission decision than all this other data.[/quote]

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