@Middleman68 But they are losing the tippity top full pay kids because of a lack of merit. A top full pay student accepted at Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Colby etc AND HC will probably not choose HC since they all cost the same. The full pay kids they do get (and need) fulfil other institutional goals like legacy, etc. Being test optional really helps them do that without getting dinged in the common data set average test scores. Again, not disparaging the quality of the school, just agreeing with OP’s observation that the reported tests scores are lowish for the perceived quality - especially since only the top students are sending them in (<38% send scores).
@suzyQ7 Agree with you on that point and also think they lose kids the other way too. Kids that get merit at Villanova, Fordham, Providence may turn down a Holy Cross offer.
But your stat on submitting test scores is off. It’s close to 65%
Villanova doesn’t offer a lot of merit and they meet about 85 percent of need. Don’t get me wrong, I love the school. I have a son who is a junior there. But outside of a very competitive presidential scholarship, merit is of the token variety. And like it or not, it’s part of the school’s concerted effort to shake the Vanilla-nova stereotype by attracting different types of kids.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying @suzyQ7 , I just see comparisons that aren’t always apples to apples. There are Catholic schools in the NE where merit is expected and handed out liberally (Scranton, Duquesne, Providence). They also may not possess the types of rankings!accolades spelled out in an earlier post. HC simply takes a different approach. I didn’t think you were questioning quality.
Holy Cross is a fine school with a fine reputation in MA. The only hard part will be affording it. It is very expensive. If you come from the means to pay for it. Congrats.
@wisteria100 CDS says 38% submit SAT and/or 23% submit ACT. Many top scores take and submit both, but I don’t think you can glean that from the CDS. Its a lot lower percentage than some other test optional LACs - Bates (54% SAT, 27% ACT) Weslyan (58% SAT , 41%ACT). Most of the other peer/top schools mentioned on this thread require test scores.
As sticker prices march up to 70+K per year, my belief is that schools that don’t offer merit (especially small ones) will attract less and less top ACADEMIC students since the pool of people willing to full pay is going to get smaller, and they need those full pays to fund the athletic scholarships and the lower (top) social-economic kids.
It’s pretty simple and fairly inarguable. HC is not essentially not interested in pursuing (via academic merit aid) the NMF’s and the Intels. It is very interested in pursuing (via athletic merit aid) the best athletes it possibly can. That message, of course, is not lost on the (very) academic kids. Although it is a number I find difficult to believe, Fordham apparently enrolled 32 NMF’s in 2015 while Holy Cross enrolled 0. And Villanova enrolled 8. (By way of comparison Harvard was over 160).
@suzyQ Appreciate that you get the HC ‘advantages’ of going ‘test optional’ and further agree that schools (except the very top Ivy type) that don’t offer merit aid essentially don’t get many of the top students anymore. Who’s going to Holy Cross when Fordham is less than half the price? Apparently nobody.
I have a thoroughly unscientific feeling that if the full ACT average for the incoming Holy Cross class was tabulated (including those who didn’t voluntarily submit their scores) the number would be quite a bit less than a 29. With a resultant hit in the polls. And if the ‘test optional’ was reversed, fewer would apply thus yielding a decrease in the selectivity rate and another hit in the polls. As I posted earlier, these are not unknown byproducts of the ostensibly altruistic ‘test optional’ decision.
@Middleman: “As far as referring to athletic money as merit, it’s complicated. Several D-1 sports – basketball, for example – require a full scholarship for each player. Others – lacrosse – do not”
It is not really complicated. There are two types of merit aid and they are athletic and academic. Princeton, by its Ivy membership cannot give merit aid. Therefore, there are no (full or partial) athletic scholarships and there are no (full or partial) academic scholarships at Princeton. HC may give both types of merit aid and has chosen its niche.
(It is true that some sports have more athletic scholarships than others but that is not really the point here.)
^That said, HC does a great job with the good (not top) students it has. They have terrific professors, and a very strong alumni association that take care of ‘their own’ - thus the excellent results mentioned in post #17. So if you can qualify for FA, are a great athlete, or are rich enough to shell out 65K+ you will likely have an excellent experience and successful post-college result. That does leave a huge swath of smart ‘donut hole’ New Englanders out of HC and into an equal priced higher ranked school or at school that offers merit. .
Again @Laxmass, I agree with you in that it would be great it Holy Cross offered more merit. But it is both need blind and meets 100% of need which many schools, including Fordham don’t do. I don’t quite understand your comment
“Who’s going to Holy Cross when Fordham is less than half the price? Apparently nobody.”
Fordham can be less pricey is you get merit, but if you don’t get merit Holy Cross is likely to give a better aid package. And this past year they actually were overenrolled in the freshman class, which means there are a lot of kids choosing the school.
And though they do give athletic awards, they aren’t exactly burning up the Patriot league, so perhaps they are taking very good athletes who are also very good students, vs the best athletes who may not be.
But I do hate that stereotype that athletes can’t be good students, because many are, and Holy Cross has one of the highest student athlete graduation rates in the country. In fact, last year in the NCAA tournament, Holy Cross was ranked dead last for basketball, but out of the 68 teams competing, they were ranked #1 academically.
http://time.com/4276806/final-four-ncaa-tournament-academic-rankings/
I wrote this: “Who’s going to Holy Cross when Fordham is less than half the price? Apparently nobody.”
Just after I had written this:
“Although it is a number I find difficult to believe, Fordham apparently enrolled 32 NMF’s in 2015 while Holy Cross enrolled 0. And Villanova enrolled 8. (By way of comparison Harvard was over 160).”
(Note, Fordham offers NMFs merit academic scholarships that - combined with other aid - covers full tuition: https://www.fordham.edu/info/21251/fordham_scholarships_and_grants/2532/scholarships_for_us_citizenseligible_non-citizens)
That list is usually dominated by public schools like Oklahoma and Alabama, who offer full scholarships at little cost to them and load up on OOS students precisely so they can crow that they get the most. No harm in that, I suppose, but their rankings haven’t skyrocketed.
BTW, the students in HC’s traditional area of influence (NE, Mid-Atlantic) have to score much higher than other parts of the country to even qualify.
There was a time (35-ish years ago ) when the typical bright Catholic student where I live would apply to Georgetown, BC, Holy Cross and if not geographically restricted, Notre Dame. And a safety or two.
In my experience (and I do come across a good number of bright students) that has changed. HC seems to be a full notch or two below the other three, as if their academic reputation no longer puts them among or even just barely below that ‘elite’ group. BC posts this on their website:
Top 10 Cross-Application Competitors (in rank order)
- Georgetown University
- University of Notre Dame
- Harvard University
- University of Pennsylvania
- Brown University
- Villanova University
- Boston University
- Cornell University
- University of Virginia
- Yale University
(Of course I realize there are a thousand reasons for the above that may have nothing at all to do with the slip in HC’s reputation I see among the bright college-bound in my limited sample size, but I nevertheless find it somewhat informative on the ‘elite’ question. Number 6 might be a surprise to those not current on Nova’s rising reputation.)
@wisteria100 Not a surprise a Patriot League representative was near or at the top. Yale was in the tournament too and was not counted in the rankings.
@LaxMass - yes Yale was in the tournament as was Duke and they along with all 68 teams were part of the rankings, they just didn’t make it to the top. Now, to be fair, the only metric was athlete graduation rate, but still Holy Cross was #1 and the fun little analysis also had Notre Dame, Villanova and Butler as the the ‘final four’.
And yes, there are as you put it ‘a thousand reasons’ for the BC cross application list having nothing to do with the quality of Holy Cross, the most obvious being that the 10 schools on that list are all Universities with not a LAC on the list. (Holy Cross is a LAC and BC is 3x the size). Most students applying to college have a preference for LAC vs University and this list certainly bears that out. Many kids do not consider Holy Cross or other similar LACS because they do not have a business school or nursing program as BC and many of the schools on that list do. I don’t see Williams, Swat Amherst or any LAC for that matter on that list. Another reason has to do with EA policies. BC, Villanova and UVA, benefit in terms of number of applications they receive by having EA. You have high achieving kids with a reach heavy list applying to Villanova and BC, because if they get a favorable response before Christmas, they can cross some safeties off the list and not have to submit safety apps in Jan -then just wait to see what reaches they get in.
And finally, you keep mentioning that HC is ‘slipping’, but in the established rankings which are based on some type of quantitative metrics (vs qualitative musings) HC seems to be doing just fine.
3 in the Catholic college ranking, ahead of both BC and Villanova, #32 on US News LAC ranking, #25 on Forbes LAC ranking. So not in the same sphere as LACs like Amherst, Pomona and Williams, but all in all pretty darned good.
I echo the other poster that suggested to you, that as an alum, if you have concerns you may want to share them with the school. Perhaps offer to endow a merit scholarship?
@wisteria100: I wrote: “Not a surprise a Patriot League representative was near or at the top. Yale was in the tournament too and was not counted in the rankings.”
You then replied “yes Yale was in the tournament as was Duke and they along with all 68 teams were part of the rankings, they just didn’t make it to the top.”
You are just flat out wrong: “One important note: Ivy League schools, and the military academies, do not report federal graduation rates for their sports programs. So in the men’s tournament, Yale was excluded, while Penn, Princeton, and Army were not counted in the women’s rankings.” This quote is from the link you provided.
I don’t have the time to address the rest of your reply except to note the list is directly related to my observations immediately above the list and has nothing to do with Williams, Amherst, etc.
Comparatively speaking, Duquesne merit and grant package was the worst out of 4 schools my son was accepted to and my wife and I are alumni.
@LaxMass here is the link to the graduation rates - Yale is included
http://nebula.wsimg.com/6729bb35e3e2f1396de38f374d302a86?AccessKeyId=DAC3A56D8FB782449D2A&disposition=0&alloworigin=1
First you wrote this: "In fact, last year in the NCAA tournament, Holy Cross was ranked dead last for basketball, but out of the 68 teams competing, they were ranked #1 academically.
http://time.com/4276806/final-four-ncaa-tournament-academic-rankings/ "
Then I wrote: “Not a surprise a Patriot League representative was near or at the top. Yale was in the tournament too and was not counted in the rankings.”
You then replied "yes Yale was in the tournament as was Duke and they along with all 68 teams were part of the rankings, they just didn’t make it to the top. Now, to be fair, the only metric was athlete graduation rate, but still Holy Cross was #1… "
I then replied: "You are just flat out wrong: “One important note: Ivy League schools, and the military academies, do not report federal graduation rates for their sports programs. So in the men’s tournament, Yale was excluded, while Penn, Princeton, and Army were not counted in the women’s rankings.” This quote is from the link you provided.
You now reply “@LaxMass here is the link to the graduation rates - Yale is included
http://nebula.wsimg.com/6729bb35e3e2f1396de38f374d302a86?AccessKeyId=DAC3A56D8FB782449D2A&disposition=0&alloworigin=1”
This other source does not indicate Holy Cross was ranked #1 academically last year in the NCAA tournament
as you originally broadly claimed nor does it indicate Holy Cross was ranked above Yale for ‘athletic graduation rate’ as you subsequently and much more narrowly claimed.
It (your second source) does indicate about ten schools (Butler, Holy Cross, Duke, Middle Tennessee, Dayton, etc.) as having a 100% graduation rate for basketball players and has four schools identified with the highest score (98%) for overall student-athlete graduation rate (Duke, Holy Cross, Notre Dame and Yale).
I’ll assume your other claims, statistics, and citations are more accurate than this particular one (the only one I actually bothered to check BTW).
@LaxMass
This is what it says exactly-
No team entered the NCAA men’s basketball tournament with a worse record than Holy Cross, a Jesuit liberal arts school with 2,855 students in Worcester, Mass.
If the men’s hoops brackets mimicked academic performance, however, Holy Cross would be cutting down the nets. According to new academic rankings compiled by the Washington think tank New America and shared exclusively with TIME, the small college had the strongest academic ranking of all 68 teams in the men’s tournament.
@wisteria100: Now you are flipping back to your first source. The precise source that clearly states: “One important note: Ivy League schools, and the military academies, do not report federal graduation rates for their sports programs. So in the men’s tournament, Yale was excluded, while Penn, Princeton, and Army were not counted in the women’s rankings.”
Beyond that, lets agree that while Holy Cross may no longer be considered an ‘elite school’ (another poster patiently explained [see #20 and #24] why an average enrolled freshman ACT score of 29 derived from a ‘test score optional’ source is not indicative of an ‘elite’ school) it is a very good school. This is leaving aside any question of defining ‘elite’ (the original thread question) or whether or not one ever considered Holy Cross to be an ‘elite’ school. Regardless of size or category. We can also agree that HC skews its merit aid sharply in the direction of athletics rather than academics. That is leaving aside separate issues such as financial aid, need blind admissions, meeting full student need, etc… Further, we can certainly agree Patriot League representatives, like Ivy league representatives (or a school like Duke or Notre Dame), may very well and perennially have among the highest athlete graduation rates in the NCAA Division 1 Basketball, Baseball, Lacrosse, etc. tournament championships.
@wisteria100: Now you are flipping back to your first source. The precise source that clearly states: “One important note: Ivy League schools, and the military academies, do not report federal graduation rates for their sports programs. So in the men’s tournament, Yale was excluded, while Penn, Princeton, and Army were not counted in the women’s rankings.”
Beyond that, lets agree that while Holy Cross may no longer be considered an ‘elite school’ (another poster patiently explained (#20, #24) that an average enrolled freshman ACT score of 29 derived from a ‘test score optional’ source is not indicative of an ‘elite’ school) it is a very good school. This is leaving aside any question of defining ‘elite’ (the original thread question) or whether or not one ever considered Holy Cross to be an elite school or whether or not one even wants Holy Cross to be considered an ‘elite’ school. . Regardless of size or category. We can also agree Holy Cross skews its merit aid sharply in the direction of athletics rather than academics. This is leaving aside separate issues such as other LACs, financial aid, need blind admissions, and fully meeting demonstrated need. Further, we can certainly agree Patriot League representatives, like Ivy league representatives (or a school like Duke or Notre Dame) , may very well and perennially have among the highest athlete graduation rates in the annual NCAA Division 1 Basketball, Baseball, Lacrosse, etc. tournament championships.
I think I am on firm footing with the above.
@patfan23 @wisteria100 Thanks for posting the impressive academic stats of College of the Holy Cross. Of interest ; Kiplinger’s 2017 Top 50 Best College Values (Quality-competitiveness, graduation rates, academic support. Financial measures-cost, financial aid, student indebtedness) places Holy Cross at #27, right between Dartmouth College and Columbia University. In the Top 50 LAC’s, Holy Cross is #15 in the company of Grinnell, Vassar, Colby, Hamilton, among others. So, no worries on the prestige, reputation or “elite” status front for HC students, alumni or parents.