<p>^^No apology intended.</p>
<p>I know that, lol.</p>
<p>Its all a matter of degree. Colleges are aware and are concerned with their rankings, particularly peer rankings. Some are obsessed with it. Some are determined to reach the elite status of top 20 schools in national university rankings and have done some insidious things to boost applications and appear most selective. But MOST schools simply know who they are, who their student “clientele” is and have an overall mission to serve their communities without too much regard to national rankings. Curious but not obsessed. </p>
<p>Attracting top academic talent is alway laudable. What they really want is someone who can write a check.</p>
<p>As for what the College of Saint Rose did in Albany…it is also a matter of survival. Nobody forces kids to respond or apply. If it works for them, fine. If the school doesnt deliver the goods when kids arrive, they will transfer. </p>
<p>Sadly, we are a prestige hound society and that means the top schools are overloaded with wannabe applications and lots of really solid schools in the lower second tier or third tier are overlooked by kids/parents, when THOSE schools may well be a much better fit for their kid and their kid may well do much BETTER in college there, than at some place where they will be stressed, overloaded and out of place. </p>
<p>The fact that it improved their USNWR rankings at Saint Rose is really secondary. I strongly suspect they did it to improve their gender balance, improve minority students and for simple economic survival. I agree with Hawkette for once, its good marketing.</p>
<p>(What WashU-Stl has been doing is a horse of a different color…and really questionable…even though I really like that school.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, you’ve inadvertently hit the nail on the head. US News supposedly considers the quality of the undergraduate student body, which it measures by looking at the SAT scores and class rank of the entering freshman class. Except that at many schools, a succession of entering full-time freshman classes is only a fraction of the total undergraduate student body; the student sitting next to you may be a part-time student or even a full-time student in the continuing education division, or a transfer student from another school who might not have been admitted as a freshman because the school wants to keep its SAT scores up to protect its US News rankings. But if that’s the case, then the SAT figures reported in US News present a distorted picture of the student body, and schools can manipulate the data by keeping a larger fraction of their student body “off the books,” just as the law schools did. A number of cash-strapped LACs recently announced they were increasing the size of their student body to bring in additional tuition revenue; some of them did it by increasing the number of transfers, because that way any dilution in the quality of the student body wouldn’t show up in their US News scores. Columbia, notoriously, refuses to include the SAT scores of students in its School of General Studies in the figures it reports to US News, even though General Studies students make up a substantial fraction of its undergraduate student body and take the same classes as Columbia College and SEAS students. Keeping these students off the books is transparently a way of gaming the US News rankings, exactly analogous to the practice of some law schools of admitting some students as part-timers and then allowing them to transfer in to full-time status after their first year, when their LSAT scores won’t count in the US News rankings. Fact is, undergraduate institutions are doing the same kinds of things law school are doing. </p>
<p>And I’m sorry, but an undergad institution’s going SAT-optional IS directly analogous to the University of Michigan Law School’s high-GPA-no-LSAT policy. SAT-optional is transparently an open invitation to HS students with high GPAs but mediocre SATs to apply and have their GPA/class rank counted to boost the school’s average for US News purposes, while masking the sub-par SAT score. I’ve heard admissions officers at some highly ranked SAT-optional LACs as much as admit this, with one saying, “We generally have to assume if a student doesn’t submit SAT scores that probably means they’re low relative to the kinds of students we’re looking for, and that can be a factor in our decision; it means the rest of the application has to be that much stronger, but every year we do admit some students in this category.” In other words, if your SAT scores are low, just don’t tell us because telling us will only hurt your chances of admission. Why? Because if you tell us, we have to tell US News.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I completely fail to see what “otherwise” I need. My point was to show that, as you say, the US News rankings are “bogus” because “they do get manipulated.” The stories about law schools manipulating their US News ranking is “highly relevant” to that discussion. These stories also show that institutions of higher education have both the motivation and the means to manipulate their US News rankings. The means they use to do so have been more widely reported in the law school context; the very same means, or closely analogous ones, are also widely available in the undergraduate context, and the motive in each case is exactly the same. It’s a highly competitive business in which reputation matters enormously in the competition for top students, the attention of employers, and the approval of parents, trustees, donors, alumni, even faculty. Like it or not, US News has become the chief arbiter of schools’ reputations, both at the undergraduate level and in some graduate/professional programs like law. School administrators understand this, most of them hate it, but many feel they have no other choice but to play the game. And so there’s a lot of effort going into the competition for higher US News rankings. Some of it arguably produces real gains in educational quality, but IMO most of it goes into smoke-and-mirrors and diverts college and university administrators’ attention from actually improving the quality and affordability of their product.</p>
<p>Well, you and I will have to agree to disagree. As far as I know, schools like Wash U, Tulane, Clemson, Duke, and on and on do NOT turn down students but then make them an offer to enroll as part time students. That is what the article said the law schools are doing. Now the student may choose to do that, but that is far from the college manipulating the situation. I do not see those situations as comparable at all, so I don’t think it pertains to the undergraduate discussions. Similarly, Wash U, for example, might turn down a student and then accept them as a transfer because they did well somewhere else freshman year, but unless you can show me they went back to recruit that student to reapply, which is absurd, that is hardly something they really control. Just silly. This is what I mean by “over-painting” the picture.</p>
<p>Oh, and as a percentage of schools out there, not many are SAT optional. So if all these schools were really as fixated as you say on their ranking, why aren’t they all doing it? Wash U is supposed to be such an manipulator of the system, but they still require it. Doesn’t make much sense. Like I said, they are not angels, but they are as bad as you seem to want to make them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, they don’t; at least, not as far as I know. But a lot of undergraduate institutions do consciously manipulate the size of their undergraduate student body by admitting a significant number of transfers who escape the US News SAT radar, which applies only to entering freshmen. That’s functionally the equivalent of what the law schools are doing.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While the impact of transfer admissions is real, there is little evidence that this is an issue that interests USNews. And for the good reason that this phenomenon is more prevalent at institutions they already have to support (by leveling the playing field as they say.) It is obvious that tracking the transfer students and using their admssion data would cause most public schools to lose the benefit granted to them by a generous PA. </p>
<p>Compare the total number of transfer admissions at the entire top 25 LACs or the entire top 20 universities to the total at … Berkeley alone, and you’ll see why this information serves absolutely no purpose for Robert Morse. It would mean moving away from the stated objectives.</p>
<p>Well, Duke admitted only 40 transfers, Chicago about 100, Washington University about 100, other top schools seem to be in that range. Considering that includes both 2nd and 3rd year students, if I am reading it right, that isn’t enough to make a difference. And your reasoning seems bizarre anyway. All these schools have full classes each year, then people flunk out, leave, whatever and they replace them with transfers. They only have so much space with dorms and other facilities, and virtually all have at least a freshman residency requirement. They have no trouble completely filling their class, so I am not sure how they are manipulating anything with regard to this area. Law schools are different, you don’t have to live on campus.</p>
<p>I think I am back to thinking you believe in the grassy knoll.</p>
<p>bc,
LOL- You sound like a major conspiracy theorist. Maybe the answer is to convene an educational Warren Commission to investigate these nefarious administrative games. I hear that Arlen Specter is going to be out of work in November of this year and maybe he can reprise his lawyerly role and help the colleges explain all of this. </p>
<p>Given your conviction, I’m curious to know how much you think a single school could change its USNWR ranking with all of the manipulations you assert. U Michigan got 71 points in the latest USNWR ranking. How many more points could an administrative sharpie get 'em by playing the same games as the bad boys? </p>
<p>Re your statement,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>isn’t that a bit hyperbolic? IMO, USNWR is hardly the chief arbiter. For the vast majority of families and parents and employers who are even aware of it, USNWR is a starting point and another tool to use in the college search process. Anybody with a brain is not taking it literally. </p>
<p>As for how the colleges see it, all entities have some operating difficulties not of their own making. A good administrator (college president/provost) understands this and addresses it as a normal course of achieving his/her institutional mission and goals. USNWR’s ratings are Public Relations and if a President or Provost can’t intelligently or adequately respond to what is going on and how his/her school is being portrayed, then that person is not the right one for the job. It’s not that hard. </p>
<p>xiggi,
UCLA and UC Berkeley are by far the worst offenders in the USNWR Top 25 with the transfers. Consider:</p>
<p>Total Number of Transfers</p>
<p>3220 UCLA
2012 UC Berkeley</p>
<p>2691 All 23 of the other schools ranked in the USNWR Top 25 National Universities</p>
<p>^ sorry for being an “offender” by following the California Master Plan on Higher Education.</p>
<p>How would you propose we measure these transfer student academic abilities? A significant portion don’t take standardized tests.</p>
<p>Did they not take a standardized test as a high school student?</p>
<p>Do they have a high school rank?</p>
<p>
44 actually.</p>
<p>2009 - 5
2008 - 3
2007 - 1
2006 - 5
2005 - 3
2004 - 6
2003 - 4
2002 - 5
2001 - 7
2000 - 5</p>
<p>[National</a> Academy of Sciences:](<a href=“National Academy of Sciences”>National Academy of Sciences)</p>
<p>I searched “Claremont McKenna” and it returned this result:
"No members were found in the directory "</p>
<p>Smartass.</p>
<p>
Some may…I don’t have figures. You don’t need a SAT score to be admitted to a community college.</p>
<p>
Probably…but I thought you didn’t like the top 10% rank metric…:rolleyes:</p>
<p>Why are you basing and measuring intellectual capacity on what someone did in high school? Transfers are at least being admitted on more current data.</p>
<p>Xiggi,</p>
<p>I recently had a look at UCLA’s community college transfer student admission rates. The avegage CC GPA is around 3.62, with an acceptance rate of around 12% into the impacted majors – Biz Econ, Econ, Bio, etc. The acceptance rate into less popular majors is higher, averaging approx. 40%, and an overall yeild of 62%. The school of Engineering accepted 24% of the applicants, with ave. gpa of 3.77 and yield of 42%</p>
<p>Berkeley’s stats are similar. The Community College transfers into the UC system feed primarily into the other 7 UC campuses at San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine, Davis, Santa Cruz, Riverside and Merced.</p>
<p>There is a huge economic factor involved here. Many middle and lower/middle income families in CA overtly choose the CC route for the first two years because the cost in tuition is less than half, and the total COA including room/board is about 20% the cost of attening a UC during years 1 and 2.</p>
<p>Those who transfer into UCLA and Berkeley are not your average CC students. They are at the top academically, and most had been accepted and could not afford the full four years, or would have been accepted out of high school had they been able to afford it and applied.</p>
<p>And let me write it before you ask – no, you do not get an A or B in CA community colleges merely by fogging a mirror. Since it is an accepted, structurally designed method of entering the UC system, most students at CC start competing from day 1 for the coveted “cheap back door” slots at UCLA and UC Berkeley. The competition is overt, and the pecking order filters on down through UCSD, then the trio of SB/D/I, then SC, then Riverside, and lastly Merced.</p>
<p>According to Statfinder, Berkeley’s 2008-'09 transfer enrollee average GPA was 3.7.
No other academic statistics are available.</p>
<p>Shame on those students for choosing a less expensive route to a degree. Proof they are unworthy–why waste further higher education on such rabble?</p>
<p>^ I think it’s fantastic California gives students a cheaper option, or at least a second chance. But on this board, if you’re not top in your little insignificant high school world, you’re ****.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>UCB, you were a lot nicer when I corrected the number of NAS members at UCB … upwards. Why resort to an ad hominem when all I did was to inquire about the accuracy of the number 348? After all, I though the OP had included members who might have passed on in the 1900’s or decided to use prescience to add the 200 members who will be added in the 2000s. </p>
<p>Also, why do you feel it necessary to quote the number of NAS members at CMC? It is obvious based on your correct statistics and the others above that an election in the most august NAS body does not have a high correlation with the faculty members who are mostly dedicated to … teaching and educating undergraduates! Unless I am mistaken, doesn’t the NAS attempt to recognize and reward success in original research in the scientific world? In a way, I doubt that the NAS cares much about the type of research that is produced at CMC (by faculty or at one of the multiple research institutes) in obscure fields such as Political Sciences or Economics. </p>
<p>Since waving pompoms to extol the greatness of my alma mater has never been part of my participation on CC, feel free to as many cast aspersions as you want in the direction of that little LAC. After all, since the school is far from perfect, you might end up with a number of correct assessments. </p>
<p>Oh, what is it that we were arguing about? Oh yes, that UCB did not have 348 NAS members. In a way, I am sorry I happened to know the exact number from a previous conversation with you on that precise issue. :)</p>
<p>
You are the one who keeps bringing up Berkeley…so I feel the need to bring up your alma mater.</p>