Interesting opinion article on admissions policy

<p><a href="http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2005-01-27/opinions/14556%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2005-01-27/opinions/14556&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Just an opinion, though, from a student.</p>

<p>I thought the op-ed piece was interesting.</p>

<p>I actually think the college could do a better job of communicating the very rich tradition of social activism among Swarthmore graduates. Naming the New Dorm Alice Paul Hall will probably help.</p>

<p>I was hoping for Mini's favorite Swarthmore activist, Cathy Wilkerson. But, I don't think her brand of activism (Weather Underground bomb-making) is fashionable these days!</p>

<p>Ironic that the most recent "take-over" of the admissions office was a demonstration against the decision to end football.</p>

<p>I wonder if what the student says in this op-ed is true. That the admissions office will be looking to admit students who are i-banking, doctor and lawyer types to ensure that the college is well-funded. If Mini was reading this, he would say, yes. The rankings dominate every aspect of college admissions policy....too bad.</p>

<p>My Yale interviewer had a sister who was at Swarthmore, and it somehow turned to her saying "...and everyone there is so very kind and compassionate..." "...if they were having an interview for swarthmore and the person was really kind, i think they would accept him then and there!" :)</p>

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<p>No. That would be like these elite colleges needing to recruit rich white kids. They all get applications from more of those than they can possibly accept!</p>

<p>The differences between schools lies with the emphasis put on other qualities in the admissions office.</p>

<p>I don't buy into admissions office "conspiracy theories". I mostly agree with Mini's preppie index arguments, but it's not because admissions offices are cynically casting an eye toward future alumni contributions. Rather, a high preppie index is simply a natural consequence at an elite private college or university. I mean. until a few decades ago, who else went to these schools except rich people? The only elite private schools that do NOT have high preppie indexes are those that have made conscious efforts to alter the makeup of their student bodies.</p>

<p>In Swarthmore's case, the undercurrent of social activism has been there since day one. One of the founders of the college was a key figure in the anti-slavery movement and one of originators of the woman's rights movement. Alice Paul's grandfather was another founder of Swarthmore.</p>

<p>It makes for an interesting campus culture: progressive political ideals with a fairly conservative, hard-working atmosphere in terms of academics and social life. I think those qualities are recognizable even today. Swarthmore's campus culture is definitely a product of its history.</p>

<p>"The only elite private schools that do NOT have high preppie indexes are those that have made conscious efforts to alter the makeup of their student bodies."</p>

<p>Hmmm... can you name such elite private schools without hig preppie indexes? I could have used that list before I applied to schools.</p>

<p>Here ya go, but the numbers are for 2003. It represents a) percentage of students who receive no need-based aid (which likely means the family income, in most cases, is more than $150k, placing them in the top 5% of U.S. families); b) percentage of students from private schools; and c) the combination of (a) and (b) minus the percentage of students who are on Pell Grants (e.g., students with family incomes below $40k, or in the bottom 35% of the U.S. population):</p>

<p>Numbers Represent the “Entitlement” Index minus Pell Grant Shares:</p>

<ol>
<li> Davidson 119-6 113</li>
<li> Washington and Lee 113-3 110</li>
<li> Trinity 119-13 106</li>
<li> Bates 108-9 99</li>
<li> Middlebury 105-8 97</li>
<li> Kenyon 105-8 97</li>
<li> Williams 104-9 95</li>
<li> Colby 100-7 93</li>
<li> Connecticut 102-11 91</li>
<li>Univ. of the South 103-13 90</li>
<li>Bowdoin 98-10 88</li>
<li>Furman 96-9 87</li>
<li>Skidmore 98-13 85</li>
<li>Haverford 96-13 83</li>
<li>Wesleyan 96-14 82</li>
<li>Amherst 96-16 80</li>
<li>Whitman 88-9 79</li>
<li>Swarthmore 91-13 78</li>
<li>Franklin & Marshall 87-9 78</li>
<li>Barnard 95-18 77</li>
<li>Pomona 89-12 77</li>
<li>Colgate 86-10 76</li>
<li>Scripps 88-14 74</li>
<li>Dickinson 85-12 73</li>
<li>Sarah Lawrence 82-12 70</li>
<li>Vassar 81-12 69</li>
<li>Colorado 85-17 68</li>
<li>Lafayette 76-8 68</li>
<li>Hamilton 82-15 67</li>
<li>Denison 79-12 67</li>
<li>Wellesley 80-16 64</li>
<li>Bucknell 75-12 63</li>
<li>Gettysburg74-12 62</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr 76-15 61</li>
<li>Carleton 71-10 61</li>
<li>Union 75-15 60</li>
<li>Oberlin 76-17 59</li>
<li>Claremont-McKenna 71-15 56</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 65-12 53</li>
<li>Macalester 65-15 50</li>
<li>Bard 68-20 48</li>
<li>Mount Holyoke 68-21 47</li>
<li>Depauw 59-13 46</li>
<li>Smith 70-24 46</li>
<li>Occidental 69-27 42</li>
<li>Agnes Scott 66-26 40</li>
<li>Grinnell 53-13 40</li>
<li>Centre 57-18 39</li>
<li>Wabash 38-19 19</li>
</ol>

<p>Make of the data what you will. It is just data.</p>

<p>Nice to hear you, Interesteddad, remember Cathy Wilkerson, an old acquaintance (I went a different way, and became a pacifist publisher.) Much more tragic than Cathy, though, was her old Bryn Mawr compatriot Diane Oughton.</p>

<p>Anyhow, "History Matters" has been republishing old interviews with Cathy, including her experience at Swarthmore.</p>

<p><a href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6913/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6913/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>My favorite person, though, is the older Swat dropout, the poet Diana DiPrima! Now she is a real piece of work!</p>

<p><a href="http://dianediprima.com/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://dianediprima.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Swarthmore looks like a rich person's school to me. We need rich people fighting for social causes too.
I am surprised Claremont isn't higher.</p>

<p>Very few CMC students come from private schools, and they have more on need-based aid.</p>

<p>And I'm with you - we need MANY more rich people fighting for social causes (especially their sons and daughters, who didn't do anything except get born into the right place, and have special opportunities as a result to be of service. Which is much of what Swarthmore should be about!)</p>

<p>Where is this index from?</p>

<p>And why is that some of these percentages are over 100%? Forgive my ignorance, but isn't it impossible to be over 100?</p>

<p>They aren't "percentages" from 100 (in fact, they are percentages from 200% take away a percentage from 100%). Data comes from a) Princeton Review (for financial assistance and private school status); and b) from Tom Mortenson, college researcher at 'Education Matters" in Iowa (for Pell Grant percentages.)</p>

<p>And to be fair to Swarthmore (as if they need it), of all the colleges I looked at, they are 7th in the amount of need-based aid per student enrolled, something like $10.5k per student. (Mount Holyoke is the highest.)</p>

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<p>I'm not sure that I would describe a terrorist bomber blowing herself to smithereens while manufacturing a bomb as a "tragic" outcome. </p>

<p>These days, I would be more inclined to view it as "fortunate" or perhaps "well-deserved".</p>

<p>I understand that view. I think you would see more in the tragedy if you did a little bit more research about Diane Oughton.</p>

<p>I put no truck in bombmaking: as I noted, I am a pacifist, and when my SDS friends went off the deep end, I went on down a completely different path to becoming a pacifist publisher, more in keeping with Swattie Diane DiPrima than Swattie Cathy. I think, more than anything else, they were "stupid". But I also understand the scale of killing, and the more than 3 million Vietnamese of all political persuasions who died (most as innocent bystanders set upon by both sides), and I know about Oughton's experience in Guatemala at a pretty close secondhand (though it is a VERY long time ago), and I know of my own experiences in Iran and friends who were tortured by the SAVAK, trained in torture at Fort Benning, and tortured as Americans looked on and coached, and I think all must be weighed in justice's scales.</p>

<p>(And, for all we know, Oughton was at the apartment trying to PREVENT the bombmaking when the things went off. People who knew her much better than I did (which was not very well - I think we met twice, and it was years earlier), and the other people in the house, suggest that this could very well have been the case, in which case you might be calling her a hero. Be careful when you judge.)</p>

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<p>If you took 50 liberal arts colleges and removed all pro-active diversity efforts on the part of the admissions office, the graph of Mini's preppie index would look pretty much like the graph of median SAT scores. The highest scoring colleges would be the "richest"; the lower scoring colleges would be the "poorest". It's inevitable with the high correlation between wealth and test scores.</p>

<p>So, the proper use of Mini's list, IMO, is with a little common sense. Compare two schools with identical SAT scores, and differences in Mini's index probably do provide an accurate indicator of a pro-active admissions philosophy. </p>

<p>I would also caution that there are some regional factors at play. I think it is very difficult to directly compare West Coast and East Coast schools. The ethnic make-up of the regional populations are very, very different -- as is the prevalence of "private school" education. For example, parochial schools are very prevalent in the northeast US, but not necessarily indicative of "rich" kids. Conversely, California is "magnet-school" crazy -- public schools that may not necessarily correlate with "low-income".</p>

<p>Also, the percentage of kids even remotely interested in private colleges in California or the South is very, very low. I think that skews the data in many ways.</p>

<p>Of course, one can unpack the numbers and just look at those receiving no need-based aid. But comparing schools with similar median SATs doesn't completely do it, for, as the CollegeBoard's own numbers suggest, a 1400 SAT (in aggregate, not for any individual student) is just a 1200 plus $100,000 in average annual family income.</p>

<p>"Also, the percentage of kids even remotely interested in private colleges in California or the South is very, very low."</p>

<p>Hmm... I guess that makes me one of the special few. </p>

<p>But fyi, while we're kinda still on the subject of percentage of pell grants, this website, College Results Online at <a href="http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/collegeresults/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/collegeresults/&lt;/a> , provides a free search service that ranks schools by 4, 5, 6 year graduation rates - and it lists convenient data, suggest as % pell grant, URM grad rates, avg fin aid package, etc.</p>

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<p>Right. That was my point. Assuming that neither admissions office makes any affirmative action effort, a school with a median SAT of 1400 is going to have a wealthier (and preppier) student body than an otherwise identical school with a 1200 median SAT.</p>

<p>I think the underlying goal here is to discern the objectives of the college, its efforts to enroll a diverse student body, and the overall "campus culture". After all, if the goal were simply to find the poorest student body, then the list would start and end with academically non-rigorous community colleges.</p>

<p>I suppose it could be reasonably argued that enrolling a class with a median SAT of 1400 is a decision to enroll an elite (i.e. wealthy) student body and that a college should lower its SAT standards. I don't have a problem with that viewpoint.</p>

<p>I'm just saying that it is probably unrealistic to expect two colleges with equally aggressive diversity efforts, one with a 1400 median SAT and the other with a 1200, to enroll the same percentage of low income students. The pool of low income students with 1400 SATs is certainly smaller than the pool with 1200 SATs.</p>

<p>It is quite possible that the combination of higher diversity and lower "stats" may indeed be a more attractive option. I'm only suggesting that shoppers understand some of the practicaly realities of aggressive diversity efforts. Use a little common sense in evaluating the numbers.</p>

<p>Hmm I wonder how intellectual diversity equates with a "pro-active admissions philosophy". These liberal arts colleges have all the intellectual diversity of a Stalinist Poliburo meeting. Fighting the revolution in an LL Bean Vermont barn coat.</p>

<p>Interestingly the assumption appears to be that the SAT score are high because the family is wealthy but it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to pose an alternate hypothesis that the family is wealthy because they are smart and that the child being the product of both good genes and enriched upbringing is also smart.</p>

<p>Why in a meritocracy should anyone object to merit being rewarded? And why would you want to reward mediocrity?</p>

<p>Well, I for one strongly believe the SAT measures nothing except a person's ability to take the SAT. I cannot see how meaningless little puzzles designed to tirck and ensare the test taker in order to create a bell curve could actually claim to measure intelligence. </p>

<p>Furthermore, I know that because I come from an affluent town I have probably had many more opportunities than other people in the nation, such as APs, clubs, extensive field trips, and perhaps better teachers due to higher salaries. There is some class-mobility in the United States, but it is FAR less than what it would be (in my opinion) in a true meritocracy.</p>

<p>Yes, if there was a perfect way of measuring merit it maybe would be wonderful. But I don't think there is any such method - the SAT included.</p>