<p>
[quote]
So.... after peeing on every tree in the yard to mark your territory, I take it you agree with me?
[/quote]
About what? Yes, I think there is a scientific basis for evolution. The late Mr. Gould proved that.</p>
<p>It never ceases to amaze me the lengths to which the very insecure (few in number here, thankfully) will go to justify their school's prominence. So let's ignore the professionals (Fiske, Princeton Review, Atlantic Monthly, U.S. News, etc.) who have been evaluating schools for many years, and take our lead from tainted/biased reports that are given no credibiltiy in enlightened circles. Then, if that's not enough, let's go out and poll the uninformed, who couldn't tell the difference between one ivy and another, and turn the whole thing into a popularity contest. Do you think Joe Blow in Montana knows the subtle, and not so subtle, differnces between Williams and Dartmouth? Heck, do you think many on the east coast do?</p>
<p>You attack established, professional college evaluators, because you claim they are off the mark. The reality is, their research keeps drumming up the same results. The undergraduate college rankings have, for the most part, been very consistent. That should tell you something.</p>
<p>alphacdcd-I've seen you troll, errr criticize, the Revealed Preference paper before. Where do you see the "bias"? The methodology seems pretty sound to me.</p>
<p>I'm not going to defend the Gallup Poll, however. It gives a vague idea of "prestige" and little else.</p>
<p>Bias in, Bias out as the saying goes. Objectivity is lost when employees of an institution produce a paper that purports to evaluate the very institution they work for relative to its peers. This among many other reasons is why the book was a complete failure at the college and high school level.</p>
<p>Many of the most well run high school GC offices, as well as the GC offices of the elite preps, have web sites that contain reading recommendations for high schoolers and their parents. You will see the Fiske Guide, the Princeton Review, "A" Is For Admissions, The Admissions Mystique, etc., but you will never see the study you referenced or the book. That should tell you something.</p>
<p>alphacdcd, do you know the difference between Western and Eastern Montana?</p>
<p>Many western schools have outstanding students that go to east coast schools. While only one or two dozen out of every 500 or so seriously consider these schools, those who do are very serious and very qualified. Last year, our school sent 2 students to Dartmouth (from the west), and I personally ran into another student in hanover last year; now she is admitted Early Decision.</p>
<p>Of course, most students don't look at East Coast schools (a great pet peve of mine), but the difference between northwestern Mass. and Mid-New Hampshire, as well as IVY v. LAC school difference does exist for some of us.</p>
<p>As for the rest of this discussion, rankings DO mean something. Of course HYPSM are more prestigious than the South Dakota School of Mining, but when it comes to ranking Harvard v Yale, or MIT v Stanford, it is a little pointless. Even schools like Swarthmore, Middlebury, and Tufts all have their strengths that for the right student make them better than the top, and the margin of difference between all top 50 schools (with whatever ranking) is far less then their individual strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>And of course, although I believe his/her intentions to be positive, Byerly DOES seem to have a knack for creating conflict; so, to get back to the title of the post, why do you think Princeton and Harvard got 15-20% more applicants and Yale broke even?</p>
<p>alphacdcd- First off, I don't even know what book you're talking about. As for the relative obscurity of the study, it was published October 2004. If the guidance department at my school is representative of the whole, they MIGHT find out about it four or five years from now. Even if they did read it, it is a scientific paper directed at a scientific audience, while all the books you mentioned are intended for consumers. The fact that guidance counselors will get turned off by reading about "Matriculation Tournaments as a Multiple Comparison Problem" doesn't make the findings of the paper any less valuable. It seems that you're proposing that the true measure of something's worth is its reputation. If that's the case, maybe that Gallup poll DOES have some merit...</p>
<p>As for your claim of "bias in, bias out" you (of course) make no mention of methodology. I see no variables in the study that could be tweaked to change the results. While two of the four authors are Harvard Professors, one is at the Kennedy School for Government, where the reputation of Harvard College is of little import. In addition, one of the authors is a professor at Penn. Why, then, is Penn ranked 12th in the Revealed Preference paper (compared to 4th in USNWR)?</p>
<p>"While two of the four authors are Harvard Professors, one is at the Kennedy School for Government, where the reputation of Harvard College is of little import."</p>
<p>Are you serious? Do they not draw their paycheck from the same well? </p>
<p>"If the guidance department at my school is representative of the whole, they MIGHT find out about it four or five years from now."</p>
<p>I didn't reference GC depts. as a whole. I referenced the good ones.</p>
<p>P.S. The studies and book have been neglected for more than just bias. I suggest you look into the GC community's reaction to those studies. Good luck.
Regards</p>
<p>While I'm not trying to get into any argument here, I think that saying the report is biased for harvard because it was written by two harvard professors (of 4) is not really sound. It was published in a peer review journal with a detailed methodology. You are pretty much accusing them of academic fraud and undermining the entire process of independent research. Should we doubt the veracity of medical papers published by MGH in the New England Journal of Medicine because MGH publishes it? No, because they have been peer reviewed, critiqued, and accepted by a national board of editors who are experts in such a field. One of the major tenets of academia is that before you accuse a paper of infidelity, you must actually have a sound reason i.e. that your calculations with the same data set did not come to the same conclusions. This form of challenge occurs all the time, and I am sure that you could find someto the NBER study in the literature. </p>
<p>There are many papers critical of Harvard that come out of Harvard. Should we throw those away too?</p>
<p>Your example appears off the mark. Can you imagine the criticism, if in your MGH paper, MGH was evaluating itself relative to its peers. That is not something I have ever seen MGH do or any other reputable institution for that matter. A better example might be why companies use outside, public accounting firms to produce their audits. The public will not accept in house corporate audits (they come with a level of mistrust, even from the most respected corporations).</p>
<p>I will state however that despite what I and others may feel about the writing, I appreciate the fact that the authors have highlighted the advantages offered students in applying ED. This fact escapes many.</p>
<p>On the other hand, to lead students to believe that they can guage acceptance to HYP from their test scores is a problem. The HYP threads are riddled with high SAT scorers who were deferred/rejected, but who would have been led to believe, through the book, that they had a very strong chance of getting in. As so many of us understand, HYP acceptance requires so much more than SAT scores.</p>
<p>If I do not respond further please do not be offended. I need to concentrate time elsewhere.
Regards,</p>
<p>"In another poll, Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence."</p>
<p>that would explain Bush's re-election</p>
<p>ohhhhhhhhh count it</p>
<p>You know what I love most about this board? I love the underlying animosity and urge to prove that we are smarter than the person to whom we talk. How endearing! bah! What a badly constructed sentence! This is why I am not getting in. </p>
<p>March 31/April 1 AHHHHHHHH </p>
<p>Does it help if you're a first generation? </p>
<p>1, 175 out of 22,717? That's like 1 out of 20 applicants. GEEZ</p>
<p>Hopefully the RD pool is not that great because if everyone were as crazy as the EA pooll, then no one would get in except the crazy wackos. But of course, crazy wackos that have my utmost respect!</p>
<p>The RD pool - consisting of those who apply RD for the first time plus the EA deferreds - totals 21,500: 18,500 RD applicants and 3,000 deferreds. From this pool the remaining 835 or so slots in the Class of 2009 will be filled by admitting 1,175 or so. This is assuming they estimate a 70% yield from the RD admits.</p>
<p>mensa, ive been reading every post that you've made in this thread, and i just had to come in here to let you know that you are the biggest smartass prick that ive ever seen on this site - it's almost ridiculous.</p>
<p>who cares if you are in mensa - anyone with a decent IQ should know that an SAT score exhibits a very small portion of a student's academic ability. I didn't take the SATs seriously - i got a 1400 - and i still got into an ivy league school. you know why? because the admissions officers see past the SATs, which is why they are sitting in their admissions chairs, and you are sitting in your pseudo-superior mensa seat, with your head in the intellectual clouds, believing that ur sitting high above everyone else while you're really just daydreaming with your thumb in your butt.</p>
<p>i think mensa is getting to your head, because it just seems like you have a bulging superiority complex that you cannot control, and it just reflects badly on you as a person. id much rather have an inept mind and an emotionally grounded personality than a beautiful mind and the personality of an aristocratic power-tripping *******. you just need to stop saying what you're saying, because you're wrong, and karma will come back and kick you in the ass.</p>
<p>and if it doesn't, then you can come to my college if you don't cut it at HYPS, and ill gladly go neanderthal on your ass and club you to death.</p>
<p>all that i'm trying to say is that it's truly sad, because for a man with such a high IQ, you really just sound like a blithering idiot.</p>
<p>You need to work on that anger, redge124.</p>
<p>you need to work on that ignorance</p>
<p>touche</p>
<p>mensa needs to work on his ego.</p>
<p>So, shall we begin the countdown to the Harvard Massacre of 2005?</p>
<p>yo, what is the exact time / date the Harvard regular admissions decisions will be
e-mailed?</p>
<p>I heard they post the decisions online on March 31. I'm not sure about the exact time though.</p>
<p>If it's anything like EA, they'll start emailing decisions @ 5:00 ET. Not everyone will get an email at the same time, because they send them in batches.</p>
<p>Once you've gotten in, you can log in to an admitted students section on the admissions website using the pin admissions sent you to check application status. During EA decision-time, it was possible to log-in prior to the arrival of the email-decision, so a bunch of us found out we were in before we even got the email. Anyhow, mass panic/craziness ensued. 'Twas weird. Maybe Harvard will fix that glitch this time--I don't know.</p>