Are high school transcripts about to be disrupted?

Hello everyone!

Over 100 private schools have come together to create the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) which has been tasked with creating a new type of high school transcript that will have a better focus on the knowledge and skills students have acquired. The MTC’s blog succinctly states its mission is “to develop a technology platform that allows the complete record of a student’s Mastery Credits, submitted evidence and institutional standards to be shared with college admission offices for evaluation.”

We’re always excited by innovation. However, we do have some skepticism about the MTC. Let’s first examine this issue from the high schools’ perspective. Are public schools going to be able to devote the additional resources to provide similar reports for their students? How would the teachers even get to know their students at this level when they may only see them for one hour a day? And would this make the MTC appear to favor the wealthier students found more often at private schools?

From the colleges’ perspective, how does this impact the many schools who do not follow the “holistic admissions model” such as the large public universities? Are they going to be forced to hire more admissions staff or are the MTC high schools going to be forced to also produce more traditional transcripts for their students? Are those colleges with the resources to review the MTCs going to first determine the rough proportion of their class to be filled by MTC high school applicants and then use the MTCs to better select from that demographic “bucket”?

I’d like to add that we haven’t exactly had a lot of time to study the MTC given our workload and we’re confident these issues were long ago raised and addressed by the MTC. And, hence, I’d like to conclude by again stressing that we do encourage innovation and wish such projects all the best.

Best of luck with your applications!

Sincerely,

David Petersam
President
AdmissionsConsultants, Inc.
DPetersam@admissionsconsultants.com

AdmissionsConsultants
1.800.809.0800

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