College Admissions Teams are Ranking Students on a 0-10 Scale Based on Factors They Can't Control

Manuela Ekowo was quoted in Business Insider about the use of predictive analytics in college admissions:

The process pulls a multitude of data points into a model that predicts the probability a particular student will apply to a school, choose to attend after they've been accepted, or perform well once enrolled. 

“That's one of the biggest concerns — that students might not be aware of the many ways their data is being used," Manuela Ekowo, a co-author of a paper on predictive analytics in higher education, told Business Insider.

The report, "The Promise and Peril of Predictive Analytics in Higher Education," explained how colleges rank students based on this data. Admissions teams individually score students' likelihood of becoming an applicant, being admitted, and deciding to enroll, usually on a scale of 0-10 based on factors like: race and ethnicity, zip code, high school, and anticipated major, according to the authors.