College of NJ-- misrepresenting SAT scores?

Parents Forum
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<p>The low-down on average SAT scores, diversity, class size, prizes and Ph.D's, retention rates - aka the "happiness factor" - or how to (or how not to) choose a college:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Prospective undergraduates are deluged with statistics — from average class size to the number of Nobel Prize winners on staff — with which to take the measure of a college. Is Ms. Carbonell’s story an argument for choosing your college by the numbers?</p>

<p>Not exactly. She attends the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which has some 25,000 undergraduates, 4,100 full-time faculty members and 540 buildings. If she had been looking for an intimate experience, the numbers would have led her elsewhere.</p>

<p>That’s just one of the problems with statistics: they rarely tell the whole story. (Ms. Carbonell’s story is that she signed up for Michigan’s Residential College, a program in which students live and attend classes in the same building. She now lives off campus but continues to take classes in the R.C. building.)</p>

<p>Another problem with numbers: “Often statistics don’t measure what’s important,” says Lloyd Thacker, executive director of the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit group working to improve the college admissions process. For example, the selectivity of a college, measured by how many applicants it denies, provides little information about the educational experience there.</p>

<p>Also, statistics can be fudged. Regard any number you read in a glossy brochure or on a university Web site with skepticism, says Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. “It’s not information,” he says. “It’s marketing.”

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</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/education/edlife/guide.html?ref=education%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/education/edlife/guide.html?ref=education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>This is what I have been telling readers of this community for many months, ie that a large university is made up of many smaller colleges and departments and that students can find themselves in a very intimate academic environment. My CE graduating class was about 35 students, we all knew each other and all the teaching faculty new us. We picniced with faculty, played basketball with faculty and took ASCE field trips with them too.</p>

<p>Years later, I always visited the department offices on trips to Columbus and my favorite profs were always delighted to see me and chat a while to catch up on things.</p>

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<p>Agree 100%. At any large school any decent department will have their own building complete with library and lounge. The students will spend most of their upper level years in that one building and get to know many of the people in the dept very well. My dept had its own I softball team, parties, picnics, and a faculty dinner every year.</p>

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<p>I went to Berkeley - a huge school by any standards. And 25 years later still exchange Christmas cards with one of my professors.</p>

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<p>From the NYT
"This statistical sleight of hand can easily increase an average SAT score. In its online “Facts at a Glance,” the College of New Jersey, for example, reports an SAT math and reading average of 1300 for “regular admits”; for all entering freshmen it was actually 1255."</p>

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<p>Could you give a link or a larger excerpt of the article so we have some context.</p>

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<p>MomOFour: </p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=259062%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=259062&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I'm not sure I'd see that as lying.</p>

<p>The average for admitted students is 1300.
The average for enrolled students is 1255.</p>

<p>I imagine that students who are trying to figure out how they stack up against the average admitted student might be more concerned with the first number than the second.</p>

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<p>Maybe but that is not really the purpose of publishing such data. That's what the percentiles are for. I think they are deliberately overstating the number in order to sell the school to better students. It's IS NJ</p>

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<p>Barron's, I don't see why that tiny mention of TCNJ in that article warrants your totally slanderous topic title. First of all, they are not "lying" as you state, which basically makes your topic title the lie. If TCNJ claims a 1300 SAT average for "regular admits" (not sure if the quotes are from TCNJ or the author). You can call that misleading if you like, if you don't know what "regular admits" means, but don't call it lying. I don't know what your problem is with TCNJ, or NJ for that matter. The article also states,<br>

[quote]
“Everybody lies about their college boards,” says Dr. Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia.

[/quote]
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<p>So why lie about TCNJ? I just read an article about TCNJ (This article is actually about TCNJ). They have a program where they accept students with severe learning disabilities who would not otherwise be attending college. These students receive a 2 year certificate, not a degree. Would you insist on including their SAT scores in the college's reported average?</p>

<p>Here is an article about TCNJ, not an article about statistics the merely mentions TCNJ to make a point about many other colleges:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1162973758123090.xml?starledger?nnj&coll=1%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1162973758123090.xml?starledger?nnj&coll=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>"It IS NJ"</p>

<p>Well thank you for displaying in one short phrase both your ignorance and your bias.</p>

<p>If you cannot say something positive, try to avoid being rude!</p>

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<p>I agree that statistics can be deceiving. However, that does not mean that they are deceitful. I do not believe that TCNJ is being deceitful in their reporting. As Dean J pointed out - they are referring to averages of two different groups, one being the students who were admitted and the other being the students who enrolled. TCNJ is a public college that many apply to as a safety, so it makes sense that many of the top students that were admitted did not enroll, thus lowering the average.</p>

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<p>Many colleges report stats (such as SATs) for admitted rather than enrolled students on their websites. It can be deceptive unless you are keyed into it and are aware of what information is actually being provided. Another trick that many colleges use (which has fooled many people I know) is to state, for example, that they are enrolling a freshman class of 500 selected from 8,000 applicants. Unwary readers assume that only 1 of 16 students were admitted, not realizing that 4000 might have been admitted and, of those, only 500 chose to attend.</p>

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<p>As a proud former long-term resident of NJ, I think it has a well earned reputation for being less than the most honestly run state.</p>

<p>Now I assumed that the use of the term regular admits was to draw a line between the regularly admitted AND enrolled students vs the special admits which can be all sorts of things from athletes to legacies and development admits. However most state schools to my knowledge report every enrolled student in the averages. It is well known in NJ that TCNJ is on a campaign to increase its academic image. Would they stretch the rules to do this?? It's NJ.</p>

<p>Got the facts. They highlight the admitted data on the admissions page but their enrolled number is as usual much lower. For 2006 it was 1301 vs 1255. So maybe it's just being misleading as most honest schools put the enrolled data in their admissions data.</p>

<p><a href="http://ir.intrasun.tcnj.edu/factbook/FreshPrep06.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ir.intrasun.tcnj.edu/factbook/FreshPrep06.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Addendum--They actually do keep two sets of data-"regular admits" and all admits with both sets showing the enrolled numbers as in the NYT. So they are being as misleading as I thought.</p>

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<p>USC's reporting seems pretty straightforward. Is there anything here that seems fishy? I know that also have spring admits with lower credentials that doesn't seem to be reported.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/parents/images/profilefreshman2006.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/parents/images/profilefreshman2006.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>My son received info from a small LAC which stated "the ideal candidate for School X has a SAT of 1100 and a 3.0 GPA". </p>

<p>The average student's stats were WAY lower, and not found in any of the college's publications.</p>

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<p>More generally, most colleges put out press releases about the statistics of their ADMITTED classes, which, for all but just a few of the top-tier colleges, will be better than the statistics of the students who actually enroll at that college. And every year I see parents get confused by this statistical sleight of hand. It is true (as pointed out above) that when one is shopping for colleges likely to admit you, what you want to know is the characteristics of the admitted class. But when deciding where to enroll after receiving (we hope) multiple offers of admission, the key characteristic shifts to being the statistics of the ENROLLED class. Most colleges have yields below 50 percent, and most colleges enroll students mostly from the BOTTOM of the group of applicants they admit. </p>

<p>The Education Trust College Results Online Web site is a great resource for getting a reality check on many claims by colleges. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.collegeresults.org/default.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegeresults.org/default.htm&lt;/a> </p>

<p>I agree with Barrons that the Garden State, a fine and beautiful state, is not the state I would nominate for having the most honest official statistics.</p>

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<p>US News tried to end the practice by asking only for enrolled student data. Of course some schools still fudged a bit.</p>

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<p>NJRes--no they don't have to include non matriculated special students. But they should be including athletes, affirmative action or any other non regular admits as do all state schools that publish their data as far as I know. Obviously there was a big difference in the numbers and they went with the higher one. There must be lots of people considered special to bring the score down that much.</p>