The College Board’s Landscape tool, launched in 2020 and utilized by HEED Award winners including Binghamton University, State University of New York, provides colleges with a more comprehensive view of applicants by considering their socioeconomic background.
Created to complement standardized test scores, Landscape offers insights into students’ high schools and neighborhoods, helping to contextualize academic performance and achievement. It aims to level the playing field for underrepresented students who may face challenges due to socioeconomic or environmental factors.
Landscape provides data on key indicators: high school environment, neighborhood, and two separate contextual scores for both. These include factors such as the percentage of students at a school receiving free or reduced-price lunch, median family income, and crime rates in the surrounding community. By offering a broader view of an applicant’s circumstances, the tool allows admissions officers to assess how students perform relative to the resources available to them, making the college admissions process more holistic.
The benefits are significant. Students from underprivileged backgrounds may excel academically but find their accomplishments overshadowed when compared to peers from more affluent areas. Landscape helps colleges understand the context in which applicants achieve their scores, emphasizing their resilience and potential. This broader perspective can make the admissions process more equitable, ensuring that those who excel in challenging environments are not overlooked.
Colleges that have adopted Landscape are also seeing it as a way to boost enrollment efforts, particularly in the pursuit of a more diverse student body. The tool offers a concrete method to identify and support students from historically underrepresented groups by identifying high schools and neighborhoods that have a diverse population. Given the Supreme Court’s ban on consideration of race in college admissions last year, this tool has become even more valuable.
In the competitive world of college admissions, the College Board’s Landscape tool is helping both students and institutions bridge the gap between opportunity and achievement, offering a pathway to more equitable access to higher education.
