Leigh made a 34 on the ACT. Bill made a 23. Which of the two do you want attending your academically selective college? According to a traditional or merit-based admissions standard, the answer is almost certainly Leigh, whose aptitude and prior learning mark her as the stronger candidate by far. Yet, following the logic of Landscape, the College Board’s quietly insidious “contextualization” resource, admissions officers may find themselves shunting Leigh aside in Bill’s favor. Developed in 2018 and broadly available since 2020, Landscape is a free admissions dashboard that allows decisionmakers to “consider each student within the context of where...
