<p>People like nyccard are less than worthless. I didn’t respond to his false arguments and neither should you, hawkette. I guess they get their sense of worth by running down schools other than the one they attended.</p>
<p>I can tell you one other thing for sure. New Orleans would never have come back to anywhere close to the extent it has without Tulane and Scott Cowen. The Carnegie Foundation thought so too to the tune of $500,000, and so did Time in naming him one of the top 10 college presidents. I know the barrons, coureurs, nyccards, and bclintonks of this world will have something snarky to say about all that, but who cares? Oh that’s right, Lynchburg is the intellectual center of the universe. Silly me.</p>
<p>Anyone who disagrees with fallenchemist is “less than worthless.”</p>
<p>Your poor manners do not reflect well upon your Tulane education. You’re the one who’s “running down others” by insulting all the posters (not just me) who don’t share your opinion.</p>
<p>That you’re a parent only makes it all the worse.</p>
<p>Lynchburg, no, but Seattle is up there. But for it’s size L has had more political influence than many larger cities.
I thought Cowen did a great job in a difficult situation.</p>
<p>Not true nyccard, many worthy people disagree with me. You just don’t happen to be one of them. You spout opinions with nothing to back them up, besides misstating things. For example, I am not defending gaming of the rankings, I am simply saying not every move that a college makes is to game the rankings. But you are right about one thing. Tulane might indeed have relatively weak academics if by relative you mean to Harvard or Chicago or some others, as a very general statement. But since there are only 49 schools ranked above it by USNWR, and it ranks about #30 based on SAT scores of incoming freshmen of the last 2 classes, I prefer to think it has relatively strong academics compared to some thousands of other schools.</p>
<p>I just fail to see why people like yourself enjoy making such disparaging comments about schools the likely know very little about. You are correct that I have little respect for people like that. How many times have you been to Tulane, exactly?</p>
<p>What jumps out at you from these figures—or ought to—is that while both the size of the freshman class and the size of the total student body at Bowdoin have expanded over the years, the growth in freshman class size has been slow and incremental, in most cases a single-digit change in absolute numbers from year to year and typically no more than a 1 to 2% increase. In contrast, the total student body has expanded in large spasms, with a whopping increase of 68 students in 2004—a year in which the freshman class actually SHRANK a little from the previous year—and another large increase of 54 students in 2009, at a time when the freshman class increased by only 5 from the previous year. </p>
<p>It’s clear these large recent expansions in the student body can’t be explained by a series of increases in previous freshman classes. It appears, then, that when Bowdoin wants to expand—or needs to, for financial reasons—it does so almost entirely by bringing in a large group of transfer students all at once, and then increasing the size of the freshman class only modestly and incrementally over time to make up the difference. Again, there are several virtues to this strategy. First, it buys you more full-pays, since as Bowdoin frankly acknowledges, it’s not need-blind in admissions when it comes to transfer students. According to the New York Times, here’s what a Bowdoin admissions officer said about it:</p>
<p>But admitting a large dollop of transfers has a second and equally important advantage: the SATs and HS class rank of those transfers are off US News’ radar screen, so you can dig deep into the applicant pool without taking a hit in your US News ranking… </p>
<p>I don’t mean to single out Bowdoin for criticism here. It happens to be one of my favorite LACs. But I have little faith in what US News tells me about the strength of Bowdoin’s student body when I know its reported SAT 25th and 75th percentiles are from a self-selected group of applicants who elected to submit SAT scores under Bowdoin’s SAT-optional policy, and when they don’t reflect the statistics of a large number of transfers who were admitted in 2006 and another large group of transfers who were admitted in 2009, in numbers clearly large enough to affect those 25th and 75th percentile medians.</p>
<p>I guess statistics is not your strong suit, bclintonk. If you subject those numbers to a statistical analysis, what it actually tells you is that there is no pattern at all. And to compare a single class, the freshman one, to the number from 2 classes that take transfers, sophomore and junior, is another example of poor methodology on your part. Really, your argument makes no sense anyway. And you make it sound so dirty that they actually need students to pay. The people there may be smart, but I am pretty sure they have not found a way to run the school for free.</p>
<p>And there were no ad hominems (look up the definition); to take 2 years of data that seem to make your point while ignoring the previous 18 is dishonest. Besides which you looked for no alternate explanation. I made one phone call to Bowdoin and found out the reason they cannot expand the freshman class even faster. The freshman all live in freshman only dorms and they are full, already turning some quads into quints. Otherwise they would love to take more incoming students and are exploring ways to do that short of building a new dorm, although that is not out of the picture either I guess. So I repeat, putting venal explanations on everything that takes place statisically with these schools is just wrong.</p>