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<p>In my opinion, yes. You’re not the first victim of this, nor will you be the last. The last person to bring this up at this forum actually had better stats than you. I think it is naive to believe that Swarthmore isn’t exceptionally fine-tuned when it comes to juking every stat possible to make itself look good, and if that means passing on people for whom Swarthmore is quite obviously a safety school, so be it.</p>
<p>Again, on “Tufts syndrome” now that we have the actual numbers. Most of the Tufts syndrome speculation centers on very highly qualified white female applicants. White females with Havard stats who got waitlisted at Swarthmore.</p>
<p>Let’s go to the tape.</p>
<p>Swarthmore mailed 967 acceptance letters this year. 56% were mailed to US minority students. Another 7% were mailed to international students. That’s 63%, leaving 37% of the acceptance letters mailed to white US students. </p>
<p>Of the 358 white US students accepted by Swarthmore, less that half were female, because elite colleges have to accept more males to try to balance their enrollment. So that’s fewer than 175 acceptance letters to white US females. Of course, that’s counting Early Decision, which is about 40% of the class. Whites are probably overrepresented in Early Decision, but let’s say the percentages are constent and 60% of the white females got their acceptance letters in the regular decision round.</p>
<p>**That is 105 acceptance letters from Swarthmore to white females in the regular decision round. **I think it’s a fair guess that Swarthmore has more than 105 applications from white females with tip-top Havard level academic transcripts and that, therefore, Swarthmore has no choice but to waitlist some of them, whether they want to or not. To understand why admissions “seems” difficult, you have to look at the impact of varying yield by group at schools like Swarthmore where diversity is a primary goal. Minority students yield at lower rates than white students and, therefore, get a disproportionate share of acceptance letters relative to the proportions in the final enrolled class.</p>
<p>It is what it is. It’s a challenging time for white female applicants from the northeast.</p>
<p>Interesteddad is correct. White female applicants need crazy good stats for the elite LAC’s. The stats the OP posted are stellar, but I have seen some with as good or better stats not get accepted to Swarthmore/Davidson/Williams etc.</p>
<p>Correction:</p>
<p>My math may be off a little. I’m not sure I’m allowing for he different yield in ED and RD. Suffice to say, the number of white females accepted in the regular decision round is still very small, much smaller than the number of white female applicants with great stats.</p>
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<p>Your argument would get you a C-, at best, at Swarthmore. The reason is that your logic breaks down here. If, as you imply, there is no Tufts Syndrome at Swarthmore, but it’s just incredibly competitive for white females to get into Swarthmore, then all of the white females who do get in must have stats at least as good as those posted by the OP. I guarantee you that’s not the case. What is the case is that, in order to produce the admissions numbers it wants, Swarthmore is more aggressive about cutting out the “overqualified” white females as well as the underqualified white females than it is with, say, black females or white males.</p>
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<p>Unless you are prepared to argue that nobody with worse stats gets into these places, then you’re not making a point. All you’re doing is confirming that Davidson and Williams may also have Tufts Syndrome, which would not surprise me.</p>
<p>Two people I know, my niece and daughter (both white and female), got admitted to Swarthmore with better stats than the OP. How is that cutting out “overqualified” females.</p>
<p>Yes, if Tufts Syndrome is giving preference to less qualified non-white females non-white females to create diversity, I suspect most private schools have Tufts syndrome. Maybe Swarthmore more so than other schools.</p>
<p>This study has been posted on CC before, but I thought I’d share…</p>
<p><a href=“http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1287.pdf[/url]”>http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1287.pdf</a></p>
<p>Page 9 has the graph, read a few pages before and after that as well. Does this mean even Princeton has Tufts syndrome? Depends on who you ask.</p>
<p>(This is to support the fact that Tufts syndrome may exist (under the nicer name of “strategic admissions”), not the current debate on white females.)</p>
<p>I have nothing to do with Swat and had promised myself never to post on a Swat board again, but fools rush in…</p>
<p>I do not believe that Swat has Tufts syndrome, and I am not convinced that Tufts does either.</p>
<p>Schools look for fit as much as students do.</p>
<p>Swat has a healthy respect for itself I’m sure as well it should, and I don’t think the Adcom would automatically assume that a highly qualified candidate would choose an Ivy over Swat.</p>
<p>I think they want to ensure that their resources are utilized in the best way possible according to their own mission statement.</p>
<p>As has been noted on other threads, there are students accepted to Harvard who are wait listed at Sarah Lawrence. We might say, “Tufts Syndrome,” or we might say that those students haven’t demonstrated that they would particularly benefit from SL’s unique pedagogy.</p>
<p>There a young man this year who was wait listed at five elite LAC’s and rejected at one and accepted at Harvard. Now if he hadn’t gotten that acceptance to H, he would have been left without a college, and the LAC’s were in no position to know that he wouldn’t be attending.</p>
<p>Something in his application said he wasn’t suited to their schools.</p>
<p>I do think it’s lovely that holistic admissions policies don’t just skim the students with the highest stats. That way, schools maintain some individual personality and students have other ways to show that they would be an asset to the community of a particular school.</p>
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<p>You are assuming the “stats” make much difference. I don’t think they do in the pool of white female Swarthmore applicants because essentially all of them pass a threshold of good enough stats. The numbers are so small that it all the other factors that make the difference. They are trying to build a class so of all academically qualified white female applicants, they are trying to fill the slots: muscians, athletes, community service, science research, somebody to run Olde Club, somebody from Alabama, and so forth. To just say, “this girl had great stats and got waitlisted” ignores a whole range of issues that the admissions office can see and we can’t.</p>
<p>My daughter’s stats weren’t as good as some of these so-called Tufts Syndrome kids. She was probably an Academic 2 – probably about average for Swarthmore. She got in because she “stuff” she had done that would make a Swarthmore admissions officer take notice. I’m sure there were plenty of applicants her year with better “stats”. </p>
<p>Swarthmore’s very high stats actually argue against Tufts syndrome. Obviously, they are accepting plenty of high-stat kids.</p>
<p>The only “stat” that “Tufts Syndrome” even impacts is yield and that’s not even counted in any guidebook ranking. If Swarthmore felt the need to bump their yield, they would do it the old-fashioned way (accept more Early Decision).</p>
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<p>If Swartmore is doing Tufts Syndrome, they are not doing it very well. If I recall, their top five cross-admit schools are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Brown. Effective Tufts Syndroming would avoid accepting students also getting accepted by those schools. You’d want to accept mostly students who got accepted to Goucher or Skidmore so your yield would be high.</p>
<p>ID – I said it didn’t have Tufts Syndrome. Don’t want to be misunderstood. I am a supporter.</p>
<p>I know. </p>
<p>I was just using your quote to seque into admissions officers understanding that they will both win and lose yield decisions to other colleges and universities. Schools like Williams and Swarthmore know they are going to lose applicants to Harvard.</p>
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<p>You have not supplied enough information about these people to make a meaningful point. Were they ED? ED2? Full pay? Legacies? Scholarship? Were they going to need financial aid? There’s a lot more to sussing out Tufts Syndrome than just SAT scores. SAT scores only begin to tell the story.</p>
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<p>It’s not, but it could, in theory, be a contributing factor. These schools want to make their statistics look good while simultaneously adhering to the sexism inherent in American culture. Who better to pass over in the quest to get more international students (especially full-pay onces) and minority students than overqualified white females? They can be guilt-free about it, too, because surely these young women will be able to find an education somewhere else.</p>
<p>Incidentally, one of the Tufts Syndrome victims in recent years who showed up here to talk about it was an Asian female, not a white female. I think someone said she ended up in an Ivy, so Swarthmore was correct in assuming that she was going to have plenty of other options and would probably go elsewhere.</p>
<p>A.E daughter - SAT 2380/2400 1580/1600. GPA UW 5.0 W 4.0. Rank 1/500 (very good public school though sends only about 10% to top universities. But top 5 public in state) NMF and scholar. Lots of leadership, sports, and community service. Asking for financial aid. </p>
<p>Niece was early action so probably isn’t relevant.</p>
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<p>Is your niece older or younger than your daughter?</p>
<p>Older than her</p>
<p>So, your niece is an early write, and your daughter might get some sort of legacy credit for having her older cousin go there (I’m assuming she did actually go there, seeing as how she was ED). I’m not sure if these two qualify as legitimate counterexamples to the presence of Tufts Syndrome at Swarthmore. Not to mention, even with Tufts Syndrome, it’s not like they’re going to turn away 100% of overqualified applicants. They’re just going to be extremely selective about them, rejecting those that aren’t very likely to choose Swarthmore despite having “better” options.</p>
<p>I have to imagine there is some form of of the Pareto Principle at work with regards to acceptance of overqualified applicants at a place like Swarthmore. They can probably use some heuristics to determine which of their applicants with extremely good stats are likely to actually matriculate if accepted and which aren’t. It wouldn’t surprise me if 20% of the overqualified students would represent 80% of those who actually chose to attend if they were all given acceptance letters, and that 20% can be categorized via careful evaluation of admissions material.</p>
<p>I don’t think Tufts’ syndrome means turning away qualified students; I’m pretty sure it’s more focused on yield and retention, though I could be wrong.</p>
<p>Actually, she never mentioned her cousin went there. But, given D’s stats (I know there is a lot more than stats involved) isn’t it more likely that there are limited spots for white females and interesteddad states? If you have a limited number of spots for white females, only those with pretty spectacular qualifications get admitted? I have to admit, D only applied to small LAC’s and a safety public as she wanted a great undergraduate education with a close community. Since I didn’t see her apps, I don’t know if that was evident.</p>