<p>This story is already on the NYT.</p>
<p><a href=“Claremont McKenna College Says It Exaggerated SAT Figures - The New York Times”>Claremont McKenna College Says It Exaggerated SAT Figures - The New York Times;
<p>Those who applied RD now have to make a choice. Those who applied ED… Tough situation.</p>
<p>The school reported SAT averages that were not their own to US News. New York Times and LA Times among other newspapers have the story.</p>
<p>[Claremont</a> McKenna College inflated freshman SAT scores, probe finds - latimes.com](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sat-20120131,0,4214724.story]Claremont”>Claremont McKenna College inflated freshman SAT scores, probe finds)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/education/claremont-mckenna-college-says-it-exaggerated-sat-figures.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/education/claremont-mckenna-college-says-it-exaggerated-sat-figures.html</a></p>
<p>It isn’t that tough. I mean, if you pre-order and pay for a 55 inch TV, and then you are delivered a 23 inch TV and told “Sorry we never had 55 inch TVs to begin with, it was just a marketing lie”, don’t you think you can exit that deal?</p>
<p>Not sure I understood that analogy. Are you saying you would still go there or not?</p>
<p>i don’t think that this is even a reason to want to “exit that deal.” a school is not their median SAT scores…everything else that drew prospective students in still stands. it’s not as though CMC has suddenly ceased to be an incredible college, or as though their programs have diminished in reputation - a single admission statistic, especially one like this, has no bearing on the academics actually being offered at CMC. this mishap doesn’t change the quality of the education that you would receive. and it’s also an exaggeration to make it sound like this one little thing created a complete misrepresentation of the school - the difference between a 75th percentile CR/M score of 1510 versus 1480 is hardly dramatic. i’m sure all of their actual statistics aren’t far off what those reported were.</p>
<p>i applied ED2 and i’m happy to stick with the contract i signed. claremont mckenna is an amazing school and i would never turn down the incredible opportunity to go there because of something this trivial.</p>
<p>CMC is still a very fine institution, and I suspect this will be a temporary setback only.</p>
<p>The president seems to be handling the situation fairly well, with her open disclosure and her letter to the CMC community. However, I would suggest she could extend the expressions of good faith and integrity yet further by immediately instituting more merit scholarships at the College, underlining CMC’s determination to rise in the rankings through a renewed investment in the most talented students. This might go quite a distance in righting the wrong.</p>
<p>RICHARD VOS inflated the scores by an average of 10 or 20 points. The school and its professors are still amazing</p>
<p>You are right the school is not just SAT scores… The issue here is that, for some people, the misrepresentation of scores is more important than SAT scores per se. Wouldn’t it be possible that some people would prefer to go to a school with slightly lower stats but with a completely clean reputation?</p>
<p>My understandig is that the applicant can only apply ED II to one school. Some applicants may have chosen to aply EDII to CMC over some similarly good school (say school B). These people now may question whether they made the right choice because, suddenly, school B may become more desirable. In addition, should the applicant who now prefers school B be accepted ED II by CMC, could he/she have legitimate grounds to renege on the previous ED II commitment? I am not quite sure about the answer to this question.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, one person reported inaccurate scores and he was immediately dismissed. Although no one is excusing this behavior, it doesn’t change CMC. It still is an excellent school and one would be very fortunate to have the opportunity to go there (11 to 12% acceptance rate). Let’s not exaggerate the difference in scores: the combined median score was 1400 instead of 1410. It is still higher than 99% of all colleges and universities.</p>
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<p>As the L.A. Times article suggests, the dishonesty at CMC is really just the tip of the iceberg. But I bet that this news will make some folks at Vassar happy because it should bump their recent acceptance-letter snafu out of the headlines!</p>
<p>In the past, I’ve heard of manipulation of score averages by elimination of some students who might, for example, be admitted under special circumstances. Odd that this guy couldn’t find a plausible method of boosting the scores a few points in a less blatant manner.</p>
<p>There is a major distinction between Vasser and Claremont here. The situations are not comparable.</p>
<p>Vasser made a technical error, a goof. While it may have caused heartbreak for many folks, its a clerical-like error.</p>
<p>Claremont was intentionally trying to mislead prospective applicants and seeking to gain unfair advantage in the rankings.</p>
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<p>Another similar trick is to admit applicants from the wait list almost immediately after the decisions are out but then not count these students’ scores among the “admitted students.” Granted, the college knows that it may lose some of these students by not offering them an acceptance from the get-go, but it’s one more example of how the stats can be tweaked in a way that isn’t entirely kosher but that isn’t blatantly dishonest either.</p>
<p>“However, I would suggest she could extend the expressions of good faith and integrity yet further by immediately instituting more merit scholarships at the College, underlining CMC’s determination to rise in the rankings through a renewed investment in the most talented students.”</p>
<p>I would much rather see a renewed investment in education. If anything good comes out of this, I hope it’s that people realize that college is about more than a few points on the SAT and a few spots in the rankings.</p>
<p>But this IS blatantly dishonest.</p>
<p>Maybe Voss did this because his bonus structure was partially tied to this statistic? Amazing that no one else knew about this in all of these years (since 2005). </p>
<p>The leader is the one who sets the tone, so hopefully the next Dean of Admissions will reflect a different tone. Perhaps a person who does not announce to a room of 500 people that athletics is one of the top three things they look for in prospective students (along with academics and leadership).</p>
<p>If I were an ED applicant I would ask to be released from binding decision to attend so that I could reconsider, that’s all. When someone sells you something based on false information, you have that right.</p>
<p>Yeah its still a great school…but much of this reputation is based on selectivity and the idea that it is a selective school with students with high test scores. That’s a major part of rankings quite honestly. If you woke up tomorrow and they were limit down 20 spots in the rankings would your perception of the school be the same? No it would be quite different, even though it contained the same faculty and staff and history.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why distinctions are being drawn between a little lie about scores versus a big lie about scores. They probably lied as much as they could without it becoming obvious to more people. </p>
<p>The result of the lying alters students perceptions of the school and themselves. The end result before the scandal broke is that virtually every student who was admitted believed his or herself was lucky to have been admitted to a school with SAT scores higher than his or her own and that he or she brings some sort of outside intangibles to the table that the admissions office chose to value over his or her scores. In fact that wasn’t the case at all. The admissions office seems to have been quite obsessed with SAT scores at the end of the day.</p>
<p>A college is a sum total of many people’s talents, intelligence and morals. After students start their first year, admissions is a thing of the past for them, except that it determines who their peers will be. Many people work to make that school what it is. It is illogical to paint the entire organization with one brush. Again though, I wonder how he got away with it for so many years. Surely he was not the one who compiled the data? I would be more concerned that it reflects on his boss’s priorities, than the quality of the education.</p>
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<p>I agree with Prophet, that is dishonest. It’s lying by omission, something that is really hard to teach to children, and many adults do not understand either. I think that the scary thing is whether or not the college used any of these tactics AND bumped the number up. </p>
<p>All of these things are why the rankings can only be taken with a grain of salt by anyone looking at colleges.</p>