Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

Poll of the week

Fifty people have been indicted in the largest college admissions scam the Department of Justice has ever prosecuted, in which wealthy parents are accused of manipulating standardized-test scores and faking athletic accomplishments to get their children admitted to selective universities. In light of this news, we wanted to see what Americans think should matter in the college admissions process, so we looked at a Pew Research Center survey released last month that asked respondents to determine whether eight criteria should be “major” or “minor” factors in the college admissions process, or “not a factor” at all.

The top criterion Americans thought colleges should consider was high school grades — 67 percent said grades should be a major factor and another 26 percent said they should be a minor factor. Although some schools — including the University of Chicago and Wake Forest University — have stopped requiring standardized test scores as a part of the admissions process, 47 percent of respondents said performance on such exams should be a major consideration and 41 percent said it should be a minor one. (Americans were not asked whether scores should count less if, as the DOJ alleges, the applicants’ parents paid for someone else to take the exam.) Community service was rated the third most important factor — 21 percent of respondents said it should be a major factor and another 48 percent said it should be a minor factor.

Conversely, respondents in the Pew survey felt that athletics shouldn’t be a high-level consideration, which must be a disappointment for parents who, according to prosecutors, paid to make it look like coaches were recruiting their children. Just 8 percent of Americans said athletic ability should be a major factor in college admissions, while 34 percent thought it should be a minor consideration.

Outside of this scandal, the most controversial aspect of college admissions has historically been affirmative action. Americans have long shown a dislike for considering race and ethnicity in the college admissions process. The Pew survey was no different, with 73 percent saying it should not be a factor, even more than the percentage who were unimpressed by the idea of legacy admissions (68 percent said that whether a family member had attended the school should not matter). What’s more, a majority of adults, regardless of their own racial or ethnic backgrounds, said race and ethnicity should not be a factor in college admissions — 78 percent of non-Hispanic whites said so, along with 65 percent of Hispanics, 62 percent of blacks and 59 percent of Asian-Americans.

The responses in the Pew poll suggest people want merit to matter most in deciding who gets into college and who doesn’t. But as this week’s indictments show, the reality of that process is far more complicated.

From ABC News:





Largest college admission scandal in US history busted

Other polling nuggets

Trump approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 41.6 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 53.5 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -11.9 points). At this time last week, 41.9 percent approved and 53.3 percent disapproved (for a net approval rating of -11.4 points). One month ago, Trump had an approval rating of 41.5 percent and a disapproval rating of 54.1 percent, for a net approval rating of -12.6 points.