<p>(I also just want to acknowledge that the first article I mentioned is very controversial, is currently backed with very little - to no - data, and is certainly in a prejudice light. Just a warning. Supposedly there is more information that includes data coming out on this topic, but I have yet to see it)</p>
<p>Something to keep in mind about that first article… the author is an alum that is perhaps the most disliked member of any CMC class in the last ten years. He spent his four years on campus making enemies of countless students and faculty members and is personally responsible for hateful articles about members of the CMC community. No one at CMC is taking this story at all seriously because of the lack of credibility this alum has on campus. He is a good writer and certainly researches/provides his own evidence, but I wouldn’t take his accusations at all seriously.</p>
<p>A question for the group: if the SAT scores of the admitted students are lower than reported, why was that done when the applicants are supposedly so stellar? We have all heard recent anecdotes (and seen Naviance graphs) about super-achievers who were denied admission. I would be more inclined to think this score manipulation is to cloak the academic scores of athletes rather than minorities. Athletics are a far higher priority at CMC than at the other 4 consortium colleges. Perhaps Voss did this to cover for those scores, if the school administration pressured Admissions to recruit/admit athletes with less than top profiles. Given that there are only a few hundred spots, that does not leave too many scores to average.</p>
<p>It looks like the DISTRIBUTION of the scores was being manipulated, the average was just a side effect of that action:</p>
<p><a href=“Bringing a Positive Change to Your Community”>Bringing a Positive Change to Your Community;
<p>I have no idea if athletes at CMC have lower scores than non-athletes, but I do know that many companies, particularly in the investment banking and finance fields with which I am familiar, highly value participation on a collegiate team. From their experience, many of the qualities they are looking for like teamwork, discipline, character, work ethic, competitiveness, etc are exhibited in athletes. So if CMC placed a high value on admitting students with an athletic background, it is understandable.</p>
<p>Good point parent57. Though no doubt we have all met people with these qualities (teamwork, discipline, character, work ethic) who were not varsity athletes in college.</p>
<p>xiggi wrote:
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<p>I’m not so sure about that:</p>
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<p>All I can say, is that I share your concern about Middlebury and have probably posted more than my share of comments on the subject over the years. I’m not sure, however, that the “everyone does it” argument is going to hold water; every day seems to bring some additional layer of misconduct here and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few more shoes to drop (we haven’t heard from the California Attorney General’s Office, yet or from the Feds.)</p>
<p>“every day seems to bring some additional layer of misconduct here”</p>
<p>JW, are you aware of additional layers of misconduct not included in President Gann’s initial statement?</p>
<p>Also, can you enlighten me what state laws were broken. I was not aware the AG was involved in this matter.</p>
<p>I didn’t find Charles Johnson’s article (the first article in post no. 139) to be that inflammatory towards CMC nor do I reject his rationale as to why the numbers were possibly manipulated. I actually thought it was an interesting timeline of events that helped explain why this could have occured.</p>
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<p>Well, if you really want me to. The point is, that President Gann’s only gave a general outline of the situation. A “senior administrator” inflated the college’s SAT scores. Fine. A lot of us took this to mean that the administratotor involved simply took the avg raw score and added a few points to it. It turns out that in order to present USNews with a plausible record, they had to actually change the <em>individual</em> scores of 3/4 of all incoming freshmen. that’s a slightly differnt order of malfeasance.</p>
<p>Charges or not, investigation or not, its fraud plain and simple. But government won’t lock up its own cronies and it wouldn’t even make sense to as long as the people who are victims of the fraud–the parents and students paying the tuition—don’t care that they were defrauded by the school. From everything I have read most of the victims are ambivalent about the whole thing.</p>
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<p>If there’s a federal law that’s being broken, odds are there’s a state law equivalent. Attorneys general in most states are sworn to overseeing charitable organizations within their states and a private college could be defined as a charity.</p>
<p>As far as the Feds are concerned, it now seems that in order to provide USNews with complete records, Vice President Vos would have had to falsify the data supplied to the Integrated Post-Secondary Data System (IPEDS) which is a government agency:
[The</a> Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System - Home Page](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/]The”>IPEDS)</p>
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<p>Nothing wrong with pure speculation. It is impossible to provide any counter to speculation. :)</p>
<p>btw: for those that ask what laws might be broken. The short answer is no law per se. BUT, such numbers are used by bond-rating agencies and other creditors for ‘investing’ in a college with a credit line. If the numbers are fraudulent, then so is the application for the credit line/bond. Whether such fabrication is material to the bond holders/creditors is the question. And that to me, is why CMC hired legal counsel to investigate, instead of a Big Four or PR firm. Everything the law firm collects is protected by privilege.</p>
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<p>JW, the context of my post was relly about recalculating the rankings AND publising new data. I expect Morse to post on his blog that they recalculated the numbers and that the impact was X or Z. They will NOT go back and change the rankings as they have a policy that precludes amending past publications. </p>
<p>For the record, it will be interesting to “discover” the true impact of reporting a lower score. At it stands, CMC is ranked at the 6th most selective schools, which is a few positions behind the leader Harvey Mudd and Pomona. The inflated numbers placed CMC just ahead of Haverford and … Wesleyan. We will be able to see what a drop from 6th in the selection index to 9th or 12th or 15th might mean. However, I do not believe that Morse will take the time to reopen the entire calculations for multiples years and especially address the impact of a lower selectivity on the expected graduation rate element. The precise element that has helped many less selective schools overcome a lower selectivity. This is the element that has penalized Harvey Mudd to a great extent in the past since the most selective school earned the “right” and obligation to graduate close to 100 percent of its graduates, regardless of the diffiiculty of its curriculum. USNews placed HMC dead last in that category for a number of years! </p>
<p>FYI, Bob Morse commented on this in his blog. Now, we should wait and see!</p>
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<p>Without being in the godly secrets, I think that a more plausible scenario is not one that aleters the individual records but one that inflate or deflate the numbers of students in certain categories by removing lower scores and perhaps counting scores from students who did NOT matriculate. As we know, there is an entire debate about superscoring, acceptring late scores, or counting scores from different classes of students and different classes of admitted students. As an example, there have been regular mentions of schools not including athletes or special students in the overall statistics.</p>
<p>For the record, I am pretty certain that this incident will trigger a massive revision of the “exceptions” used at school to report admissions of students who came through Posse and Questbridge. As an example, why does Stanford consider QB admits to be regular admits when they are accepted at about the same time as the SCEA students? Do we know how Pomona (since more than a few Sagehens are active here) reports the scores of the very large number of Posse/Questbridge students they admit? Does Smith include ADA students? And, most importantly, should they? Should transfers impact the rankings of USNews? Are the statistics of transfers at Berkeley not important in defining the selectivity of the school? </p>
<p>And similar questions might be posed throughout the entire world of selective schools!</p>
<p>And, to add to the speculation, allow me to add of mine, which is partially addressed by Bluebayou. I happen to believe that the fudging of the numbers (and need to keep with the “Jones” might have more to do with pressures to report permanently glowing numbers to support financial ratings and campaigns than to impact the USNews rankings. </p>
<p>However, none of the above makes a wrong a bit more right. There are no excuses to justify misrepresenting data. We need more transparency.</p>
<p>@bluebayou “Nothing wrong with pure speculation. It is impossible to provide any counter to speculation”</p>
<p>Bluebayou, you need to read the entire thread. A poster defending CMC wrote “I can ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE that this scandal will not affect employment of CMC grads.” [my emphasys]</p>
<p>What I wrote was to say “no, you cannot absolutely guarantee” (which, btw, even Parent57 agreens that no one can absolutely guarante).</p>
<p>So, I believe that it is much more speculative to “absolutely guarantee” something than it is speculative to provide reasons why the guarantee cannot be taken as granted.</p>
<p>Not previously very familiar with Claremont McKenna, I learned two relevant facts in the past few days. First, CMC erronously reported admissions information to USNWR. Second, Xiggi went to CMC. In my unimportant opinion, on balance, my perception of CMC is enhanced.</p>
<p>Regarding this entire issue, there are a few things I find disturbing:</p>
<p>First, in the beginning of the discussions there was a lot of justifications saying that this was not a big problem because “it was just 10 ponts” or “numbers were fudged just a little”. There was even statements that if you care about this than you were not meant to be at CMC.</p>
<p>Then there were justifications based on the fact that “the academic quality of the students and a CMC education do not change”, thus applicants would still choose to go to CMC.</p>
<p>Now there are some justifications about “none was wronged”.</p>
<p>I tell you who is wronged: some CMC applicants who want/wanted to go to a “clean” place, that is likely to keep its upward ranking trajectory. Those are wronged. In particular ED I and ED II applicants who may have made choices 1-2 months ago, and now may regret their choices.</p>
<p>Here’s official version of the Bob Morse Code</p>
<p>… / … — .–. . / -.-- — …- / …- -. -… . .-. … - .- -. -… / - … … … . -.-. .-… .- .-. . – — -. - / … … / --. .-. . .- - </p>
<p>On a “morse” serious note, here it is:</p>
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<p>First of all, you have to realize that opinions will come in a wide range. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Some will be more understanding than others, and some will be more virulent than others. That’s the way it works! </p>
<p>It is possible that a number of students applied to CMC because of its “upward ranking trajectory.” Although I would dispute that this precise fact as CMC has yoyoed in a narrow band for several years, it is possible that being in the top 10 percent of the LAC was important to some. </p>
<p>However, should students not realize that the USNews could (and should) change in the future. What if Morse were to drop the PA entirely? The alumni giving category? Bring back yield to a large degree? Would it really make a difference if CMC were ranked 5th or 15th? Please take a look at the history of Pomona and Harvey Mudd in the rankings. </p>
<p>The full impact of this deception will not be known for a long time. While it cannot and should not be diminished or ignored, the pendulum should not swing in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>Interesting opinion piece in The Student Life by a Pomona student. [Cracks</a> in the Meritocracy](<a href=“http://tsl.pomona.edu/articles/2012/2/2/opinions/2419-cracks-in-the-meritocracy]Cracks”>Cracks in the Meritocracy - The Student Life)</p>
<p>I feel that there are several separate sets of issues.
One is what this inflation did to enhance the rankings, attractiveness, etc. of the school.
Another is what it may do to the school’s ability to get financing and Federal Funds, once the scores are corrected.
Last, and I am guessing that this is what fca 719 may have been getting at: the culture and values of the school are now is question- it is now more dishonest than previously assumed. To determine what this all means about the soft aspect of the school one must look carefully at exactly what happened and how it happened, and also at how the school is handling the dishonesty.
The fear about this scandal affecting grads’ ability to get employment does seem a bit over-wrought, but this could be a result of the first and third issues above…</p>