American colleges and universities play a major role in preparing tomorrow’s leaders. If their student bodies do not reflect the rapidly changing demographics in a country where whites will be the minority within the next fifty years, they will fail at achieving their own diversity goals and be neglecting their responsibility to educate this country’s population equitably. This has ramifications in the workforce and is a very dangerous situation for a country based on equal rights and equal representation.

Since the 2003 Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, colleges and universities nationwide have begun to pay closer attention to their admissions policies and their programs for underrepresented students. The 2003 decision ended a debate as to whether or not diversity as a goal in college admissions was of compelling state interest, and reinforced those admissions policies that took care to assess applicants from a more holistic approach. Institutions of higher education committed to diversifying their campuses are looking for innovative ways to broaden the number of admissions tools they use to evaluate student applicants–and programs they use to support them. They can tap into the pipeline programs that have proven successful in identifying nontraditional students, or they can employ their own programs to support these young people. As new standardized measures are developed and tested, these same institutions can use scores representing non-cognitive traits that can complement the more traditional measures they use in admitting a student body each year.

In 1999, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the development and testing of the Bial Dale College Adaptability Index (BDI) with a 1.9 million dollar grant. The BDI was designed to try to identify non-traditional students who might not score well on standardized tests but who could excel in a competitive college environment because of their drive and ambition to succeed. Based on the assessment process used by The Posse Foundation, the BDI attempts to isolate a set of non-cognitive student traits. The BDI is not a paper and pencil test, but rather a tool used by trained evaluators in a dynamic setting where raters observe students in small groups performing a variety of tasks together. The traits identified include: leadership/initiative skills; communication skills; quality of thinking skills; and negotiation/collaboration skills. The BDI intends to capture characteristics that can predict student success in college.

The study, which began in 1999, employed 33 trained evaluators who scored 837 students from New York City public high schools. Mathematica tracked these students for the next five years. Findings show that the tool has promise in predicting three critical outcomes in college: persistence, leadership, and ability to access available resources (Bial, 2004). The Washington Education Foundation has been using the BDI for the past five years to help evaluate candidates for their Washington State Achievers Scholarships.

The use of multiple measures and proven college access programs can help admissions officers to come closer to a more holistic evaluation of every candidate and have more success at achieving their diversity goals. Maybe more importantly, young people need to know that the current standardized college admissions tests are not the only reflection of their ability.

Who can use BDI scores?
+ Colleges and Universities
+ Scholarship Foundations
+ Employers