<p>As a current Scripps student, I can say that CMC’s recent news is a-buzz on campus. And most people I’ve spoken too aren’t terribly surprised. Particularly that it was CMC. Now, if Harvey Mudd had copped to falsifying scores, that would’ve been an enormous shocker. </p>
<p>Well, is it not understandable that someone could be irritated by the advent of bad news? Is it not understandable to be defensive when facing a flurry of aspersions that might greatly exceed the acceptable in tone and content? </p>
<p>Perhaps this is a good time to separate the “content” comments from plain ad hominems. The fudging of the numbers at CMC was plain wrong. It does hurt anyone associated with CMC. It is a stake that reaches the deepest part of our heart. And, so do the comments,</p>
<p>As far as I am concerned, despite the hurtful nature, and in some cases peppered with a good dosis of malice, CMCers HAVE to accept that people have the absolute right to criticize the school and its officials. Actually, people have the right to voice negative opinions about CMC as often as they want. The Dutch like to say “Tall trees catch more wind than small ones.” That is the price one pays for reaching the apex in its field. </p>
<p>So, keep loading the shotguns and shoot freely. People who love and support CMC and are thankful for having received a world class education and enjoyed our years at the Claremont Consortium HAVE to accept the repercussions of what amounted to a very irresponsible decision by someoene who showed how frail humans can be. </p>
<p>It is your right to throw stones and pillory with abandon and glee. Just remember that the recipients might suffer more from the imperfection of our institution than from the attacks by outsiders.</p>
<p>On a final note, as some have written, expect this story to “have legs” and expect more schools to start internal investigations. Many officials will take a closer look at the proverbial mirror as they know that audits and investigations will shadder the image rather easily. You can expect a wave of corrections in the numbers reported to ranking agencies in the very near future.</p>
<p>For the record, a number of sources quoted in the various have no real standing in discussing issues of integrity. Quoting people at Princeton Review (known for its silly surveys that reward multiple entries) and Bob Morse (who has ignored reports of falsification for years) at the USNews is simply hilarious. Having “reporters” from the New York Times racing with the story reaches the summit of cynicism.</p>
<p>Sorry guys for my absence (I am sure all my critics were grief-stricken) but I actually had to work. Don’t have anything to add to this discussion, I think it has all been said. Xiggi is, of course, right as I guess there will be people who will want to shoot freely at CMC. It is probably counterproductive for me to respond to all of them. I thought John Wesley’s measured comments were thoughtful and interesting. We don’t usually agree on a lot of stuff but I thought the lessons he took from this unfortunate incident have merit, although I am a supporter of the consortium despite the inevitable tensions. Anyway, like Xiggi said, keep throwing the stones.</p>
<p>Actually, I wanted to add something to what John Wesley said regarding the consortium. I don’t agree that having these colleges contiguous to each other is the reason why this happened, but I do think the intense pressure on all elite colleges to jockey for position on these various rankings definitely contributed to this sad spectacle.</p>
<p>A comparison of old and corrected reports on the SAT scores of incoming Claremont McKenna students shows that the reported score changes entailed systematic manipulation of the vast majority of the data points that CMC had reported.</p>
<p>This manipulation, which was announced Monday by President Pamela Gann in a schoolwide email, led to Vice President and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Richard Vos’s resignation.</p>
<p>The new, corrected numbers demonstrate a roughly flat trajectory of SAT scores in both the Critical Reading and Math sections. The old, manipulated numbers showed a clear upward trajectory in both mean and median scores.</p>
<p>Critical Reading scores were artificially increased by an average of more than 17 points, a greater amount than Math scores, which were increased by an average of only 10.5 points.</p>
<p>The manipulation hid year-to-year drops in SAT scores as well. While the manipulated numbers showed CMC’s median Math section SAT score to be constant at 700 from 2004 to 2007, in reality, the median value had dropped to 680 from 700 in 2006 and 2007.</p>
<p>The score manipulations hid the fact that the freshmen admitted in 2011 — the class of 2015 — had mean Critical Reading scores that were the lowest since the class admitted in 2007. Their mean had been boosted by 23 points. The mean Math score of the freshmen admitted in 2007 — the class of 2011 — had been boosted 28 points.</p>
<p>CMC has done the right thing by being as transparent as possible about all this … after the cat was out of the bag.</p>
<p>Now, will USNEWS do the right thing and recalculate its rankings for the past several years based on the corrected CMC data?</p>
<p>Probably not, though CMC will no doubt get a well-deserved downward hit in the rankings this coming August and for years to come as a result of the lower SAT data, sullied reputation and lowered peer review scores, less enthusiastic high school counselor recommendations, etc.</p>
<p>I hope Xiggi is right, and that the silver lining here will be a flurry of investigations and stock-taking within college administrations nation-wide. </p>
<p>This is serious business. Ours is a culture in which higher education is “the coin of the realm.” LOTS of money is at stake, here … from sky-high student debt, to scholarships, to donations to fund billion-dollar endowments, to the relative value of various diplomas. </p>
<p>Government regulation is the only answer. The current practice of self-regulation is a joke (as it nearly always is) – the “small government” scandal behind the scandal that enables and encourages this kind of thing (and worse, no doubt) to happen in the first place.</p>
<p>“There oughtta be a law.” Sure people will still be able to get around the regulation … but they’ll have to get around it to get around it, and the universe of American higher education will be better off for having an additional barrier in place to the corruption that naturally exists as a part of our imperfect human nature.</p>
<p>May I suggest to educate yourself on the issues before continuing with the foam-the-mouth heresy? It might be more helpful to drop the pitchfork and the tar and feathers and spend a bit of time reading about how the rankings do actually work. After spending some time learning how large the impact of the selectivity index truly is, you might understand that a change in the SAT percentile is close to meaningless. I already mentioned how Pomona lost points when its selectivity index went UP, and how Middlebury did its silly elevator ride in the rankings as they maximized the rankings by reporting LOWER scores. If you want to dig deeper in your analysis of rankings, do spend some time comparing a school such as Smith (that reports a constantly mediocre selectivity) to Pomona and Harvey Mudd. Then take a look at the other all-female schools! The selectivity scores are almost trivial in the final analysis, and easily dwarfed by other factors. As some have figured out, a high selectivity index creates a high graduation expected rate. And the opposite as well! </p>
<p>USNews has no ability and no willingness to “recalculate” the rankings. Bob Morse could not care more about this story than he did in the past. Based on the policies and reliance of blatantly manipulated data and “peer” assessments, the integrity of the data is not a great concern of his! Did you see his comments about not being aware of school manipulations? I can guarantee you that he is well aware of Middlebury’s shenanigans and that his “explanation” to continue to accept misleading numbers is that … nobody ever complained about or noticed it! In the meantime, the school continues to obfuscate a part of its entiring class (and the ancillary statistics) and this just at Berkeley does! </p>
<p>Best of luck to you at Wesleyan!</p>
<p>PS As far as the well-deserved downward hit, do not make that wishful thinking THAT apparent. /wink</p>
<p>I happen to agree, and I am concerned with, Chrisb statement:</p>
<p>"
CMC will no doubt get a well-deserved downward hit in the rankings this coming August and for years to come as a result of the lower SAT data, sullied reputation and lowered peer review scores, less enthusiastic high school counselor recommendations, etc.
"</p>
<p>I think that the very same fact that Vos chose to inflate the numbers because of the rankings implies that that they will significantly affect CMCs rankings going forward. Furthermore, I share chrisb concern that the negative reputational effect will also be affecting rankings going forward.</p>
<p>One final comment is that, the same way we are now hearing again about past misgivings by Villanova and U.Illinois, one can expect that for quite a while, whenever some other school is caught fudging stats reports, the CMC story will “resurface”.</p>
<p>Dean Gann, the president of the Claremont Consortium taught me corporate tax when she was at Duke Law, and so I hope this passes quickly. Nevertheless, this goes beyond spin and gaming into blatant dishonesty. If admissions cut corners here where else did they do that has not come out yet? </p>
<p>Also, for all those who say it was just a few points, you have to assume the dean of admissions manipulated the scores upward for a reason and no one would know how to increase their rankings better than the dean . </p>
<p>Finally, this is a stain on the school’s reputation that will linger for awhile just because it is so blatant.</p>
<p>That is speculative and based on a set of faulty assumptions. While it is entirely possible that Dean Vos started and continued to produce inflated data, we do NOT know why he did, and we do NOT know what direct impact the 25 and 75 percentiles had on the ranked selectivity index and on the complete ranking. Again, the rankings are not based on simple percentages. </p>
<p>As far as the reputational index, because of geographical and historical cronyism. CMC and other West Coast schools have always had to deal with PA scores that were belied their statistics. The correct reporting of the SAT would not have a made a dent, as those scores could not be any lower in comparison to schools that have long been favored. </p>
<p>If the peers could not care less about selectivity (which the scores for LACs clearly indicate) there are few reasons to believe they will start dealing in facts and abandon their past methods. On the other hand, the publicity generated by this incident and the call for added integrity and transparency might prompt more than a few to shed their bias and lack of knowledge, and start evaluating a school based on its true standing in academic circles.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Obviously, he did not. Probably just a bit more of the posters who continue to show their ignorance of the ranking system in this thread, and in garbage blogs.</p>
<p>Not surprized by this revelation. There is so much manipulation and posturing at the high school level to “win” at the college admissions contest; why would there not be the same level of gamesmanship in college admissions? These same admissions professionals have the control over the mysterious mix of the candidate pool.</p>
<p>It is interesting to note the angry tone of some these posters when they talk about this issue. I know we are all anonymous, but the hostility is definitely palpable, so it makes one wonder if there is something else going on to evoke this emotional response.</p>
<p>I don’t know Dean Vos, but I have spoken to a number of people who do and they are shocked that he would have done something like this. They seem to feel it might be because he tried to de-emphasize SAT scores when evaluating applicants, unlike some other schools. He wanted kids who had other attributes that would contribute to the culture of the school. God knows he rejected thousands of kids with high SAT scores; so if his sole objective was to maintain high SAT scores for USNWR, he could have easily done that. Unfortunately, it seems like he tried to have it both ways. Obviously, this is only a theory because he hasn’t publicly spoken about this yet.</p>
<p>Do we even know if Dean Vos was responsible for inflating the numbers? Yes, he is the one whose resignation (or was it firing?) is in the news, but how do we know if he isn’t taking the heat for somebody else? I’m not trying to be hostile, but I’ve been pondering this question on and off today.</p>
<p>quote: Unfortunately, it seems like he tried to have it both ways
Who is this unfortunate for?
Why can they not have it both ways? The assumption is that applicants can not be found that hold intresting backgrounds and skills and at the same time test at a higher level. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Many top tier college admission offices are able to do so without manipulating numbers.</p>
<p>PlentyQuestions, I don’t know the answer to your question. I do know that in April I see all the kids who post here at the CMC forum announcing their rejection and reporting their stratospherically high SAT scores. So I am pretty sure if Dean Vos was only concerned with SAT scores, he could have admitted many more students with very high scores.</p>
<p>Parent57, sorry it’s taken me so long to reply to your request to point out certain threads and comments/posts to you. It looks like other posters on this thread and on other threads have already done so.</p>
<p>I just thought I’d share this article I ran across today. I have no idea about the validity of it, but it goes into a theory of how Dean Vos cut corners</p>
<p>This really is too bad for CMC and for the 5C’s in general. It’s sad that such great schools that preach the opposite to their students and the public are capable of doing this. However, the CMC students and alumni seem to still be in good spirits. This will pass, like all news does, and CMC will remain an amazing school with upstanding, brilliant students (and alumni)</p>