A proposed change in admissions guidelines that could alter who gets into Iowa’s Regent institutions for the first time since the 1950s will go before the Iowa Board of Regents on Monday in Iowa City.

If the Regents vote to approve the proposed admissions index Monday, the 50-percent rule – mandating any Iowa high school student graduating in the top half of their class must be admitted to Iowa’s three state universities – would be replaced.

The Regent institutions would, beginning in 2008, consider a student’s class rank, ACT or SAT score, grade-point average and the number of core subject courses completed.

Across the country, however, some academics and admissions counselors are seeing another change in the works. For years, the well-rounded college applicant was preferred, but schools are now placing an emphasis on students with one focus or passion instead of an array of academic experiences in high school.

“We’ve definitely moved into an era in which the lopsided applicant is preferred to the well-rounded applicant,” said Steven Roy Goodman, college admissions consultant in Washington D.C.

That changing emphasis has not affected admissions at Iowa’s state universities, however, because the Regents’ admissions criteria are so strictly defined, said Phillip Caffrey, ISU associate director of admissions.

Extracurricular activities, such as clubs, bands or athletics, still would not be considered under the new standards, but the new admissions criteria would encourage well-rounded applicants, which are what Iowa State wants, Caffrey said. The more involved students are, the more successful they will be, he said.

“One thing we’ve learned about the students that don’t persist at ISU – meaning they leave after a year – one thing a lot of those students have in common is they’re not well-rounded,” Caffrey said. “They don’t connect with a lot of other students. So if you’re used to being involved, chances are you’ll get more involved in college, and you’ll connect to the university and persist through four years.”

The Regent institutions’ policy of not considering an applicants’ list of extracurricular involvement – however positively it may reflect on the student – in the admissions decision isn’t necessarily a bad thing, said Peter Van Buskirk, vice president for college planning solutions for Peterson’s, an education services company, and former dean of admissions at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn.

Some students with long lists of activities aren’t necessarily more well-rounded, Van Buskirk said. In hopes of impressing college admissions officers, some students – “joiners,” as Van Buskirk called them – sign themselves up for nearly any extracurricular group or activity under the sun.

in that sense, a student with more focused interests may make a better college student, Van Buskirk said.

“It is the substance and the quality of what they’re doing that makes the biggest difference,” he said.