<p>^Percentages matter, in racial diversity as in intellectual peers. After all, an OSU Honors student can’t spend 100% of his time hanging out with 100 Honors students–and academically, this is impossible because Honors courses make up a minority of any student’s education.</p>
<p>Percentages matter and percentages don’t matter. </p>
<p>Depends what you want.</p>
<p>And I know this is hard to believe, but we can learn quite a bit from people that aren’t as smart as us.</p>
<p>Where have you guys been? I posted the exact family income of Swarthmore’s financial aid students pages ago:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/FAStats.pdf[/url]”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/FAStats.pdf</a></p>
<p>The Questbridge numbers are wrong. For the current academic year, 27% of Swarthmore’s financial aid students have family incomes below $60,000. 41% below $80,000. 52% below $100,000.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that using the US median family income is a relevant statistic, when you are looking at academic qualifications in the top 1% or 2% of all US high school students. Obviously, the median household income of academically qualified students is going to be higher. Swarthmore doesn’t accept high school dropouts or B students, C students, or D students. I don’t know how you get around that.</p>
<p>Right…just what I said…Swat gives more need based aid to middle class and upper middle class families than the poor. Throw the Pell grant information into the mix and it is obvious.</p>
<p>To enlarge on dstark’s point, the definition of diversity for whites in academia is bringing in people who look different but otherwise are as much like them as possible. The partial exception is for African-Americans; dominant whites appreciate being flagellated about slavery, while at the same congratulating themselves about doing something (generally superficial) about racism and talking about the other bad racists in society.</p>
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<p>What do you mean they don’t share it? Swarthmore does. They have very detailed information on their website about the GPA you would expect to need for med school admissions, to be considered a serious applicant for the very top Med Schools (like Harvard), etc. I don’t know how they could share it any more information:</p>
<p>[Swarthmore</a> College :: Health Sciences Office :: Guide for Applying to Medical School for Swarthmore Undergraduates and Alumni/ae](<a href=“Guide for Applying to Medical School for Swarthmore Undergraduates and Alumni/ae :: Health Sciences Office :: Swarthmore College”>Guide for Applying to Medical School for Swarthmore Undergraduates and Alumni/ae :: Health Sciences Office :: Swarthmore College)</p>
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<p>BTW, there’s a mom of a Swarthmore grad here on College Confidential who’s grad is currently in a PhD program at MIT, if I recall. This grad missed the cut-off for Phi Beta Kappa at Swarthmore (top 15%).</p>
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Not at all hard to believe. Depends on what you want to learn. (I mean that non-facetiously.)</p>
<p>As previous posters have conceded, elite schools like Swarthmore do not seek diversity of academic ability. I reject your implication that lacking diversity of academic ability makes a college “not diverse.”</p>
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<p>True. And I think it’s fair to say that most Swarthmore students have had and will continue to have throughout their lives ample opportunity to learn from people who are not as smart as they are.</p>
<p>They also are fortunate enough to get the rarer converse opportunity – to have at least four years during college to learn from a lot of peers who are even smarter than they are.</p>
<p>When we were considering free UMASS honors program for our daughter, we came to the conclusion that she had already gotten the benefit of 12 years of school with the kids at UMASS. Terrific kids, learned a lot from them, time to broaden the horizons and stretch a little bit.</p>
<p>“I reject your implication that lacking diversity of academic ability makes a college “not diverse.”” </p>
<p>That’s not my implication. You’re rejecting a fantasy.</p>
<p>Interesteddad…I’m not criticizing your daughter’s choice.</p>
<p>^^If you imply that a school is less diverse for lacking “people that aren’t as smart as us,” that is essentially equivalent to implying that a school is less diverse for lacking diversity of academic ability.</p>
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Whether you intended this very reasonable inference is beside the point.</p>
<p>“If you imply that a school is less diverse for lacking “people that aren’t as smart as us,” that is essentially equivalent to implying that a school is less diverse for lacking diversity of academic ability.”</p>
<p>I never did that. Again…a fantasy.</p>
<p>Edit…
“And I know this is hard to believe, but we can learn quite a bit from people that aren’t as smart as us.”
That sentence was not talking about diversity. The sentence stands on its own. You didn’t want me to use multiple posts. </p>
<p>To be clear…</p>
<p>Swarthmore is not economically diverse.</p>
<p>I reject the notion that you can’t find your intellectual peers at OSU or that they don’t exist.</p>
<p>Now…
You may want a different atmosphere than OSU.</p>
<p>Boalt Law used to adjust gpas in the 90’s when they considered applicants. Applicants from different schools had their gpas raised and some had their gpas lowered depending on the undergraduate institution. Swarthmore grads received the biggest bumps up in their adjusted gpas compared to any other school.</p>
<p>The most important lack of diversity at Swarthmore is not the lack of diversity of intellectual ability but rather the lack of diversity in values. Does anyone seriously believe that a conservative Christian. or someone who simply was pro-life, or believed conscientiously that same sex sexual relations were immoral, or even that the government should not recognize same sex marriages, would feel comfortable at Swarthmore or (if he happened to end up there) would feel comfortable expressing those views publicly? </p>
<p>From that perspective, I’d wager money that Washington and Lee is MORE diverse–that while the dominant culture of the school is quite conservative, students feel more free to express liberal social values.</p>
<p>I didn’t think you were. You made a point about peer effects from less smart kids (presumably the kind of kids at the state flagship universities). I was simply responding that, yes, we explicitly considered what it would be like learning from those kids in our state, kids my daughter knew well from public high school, for another four years.</p>
<p>Now, maybe UMASS gets the very best students from every other high school in our state except my daughter’s public high school. I don’t know. We looked at who was going to UMASS from her school and gave considerable weight to the peer effects. Afterall, it’s pretty well established in education research that peer effects are significant.</p>
<p>Interesteddad, I hope I am clear in post #212 even though I was addressing the post to Keilexandra. It relates to your last post.</p>
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<p>Please, stop the nonsense about W&L being diverse. It’s nonsense. You sound like David Horowitz.</p>
<p>Again, you don’t know anything about Swarthmore. The President of Swarthmore is an ordained Methodist minister from a small town in Kansas, so yes…I think Christians feel comfortable at Swarthmore. Good grief, they still have separate mens and women’s dorm wings if you want that. They don’t even make men and women share bathrooms like many colleges these days.</p>
<p>My daughter took a course on religious ethics, where the entire course was discussing hot-button moral issues, including abortion, death penalty, war, and so forth. She read every leading Catholic theologians and many conservative religious writers. I dare say that she understands the theological arguments better than 99.9% of the college graduates in America.</p>
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<li><p>The fact that a person is an ordained Methodist minister does not make him a conservative Christian.</p></li>
<li><p>I’m sure that lots of the students in your daughter’s class defended the position that abortion was murder and should be outlawed by the state. Right. I also have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.</p></li>
<li><p>Didn’t someone on this thread talk about how “gay friendly” Swat was? What do you think the reaction would be to a student who stood up and said out loud, in public, that he believed that same sex relations were immoral? </p></li>
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<p>By contrast, I’m certain that both the pro-choice and “gay friendly” views would at least receive a respectful hearing at W & L. But maybe not. I’m less familiar with the atmosphere at such schools, which are atypical in academia.</p>
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<p>It’s a her. Although her husband is also a Methodist minister and had his own church until they moved from Colgate. I have no idea what Rebecca Chopp’s political views are.</p>
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<p>It was a religious ethics course, so they were approaching these issues from the standpoint of theologians, ethicists, and philosophers – not really from the standpoint of people yelling at each other in CNN soundbytes. </p>
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<p>So, you are saying that a college can’t be diverse if it’s gay-friendly. I think I understand where you are coming from now. Like I said, you sound like David Horowitz.</p>
<p>Here you go, by the way. This was an event last month at Swarthmore by the Swarthmore Students Supporting Life group: a talk by a leading pro-life academic and the co-author of a book (with a Swarthmore grad Robert George) called: Embryo: A Defense of Human Life</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.swarthmorephoenix.com/2009/03/26/news/abortion-lecture-presents-conservative-viewpoint[/url]”>http://www.swarthmorephoenix.com/2009/03/26/news/abortion-lecture-presents-conservative-viewpoint</a></p>
<p>The organizers didn’t indicate any problem with shouting or attacks or whatever:</p>
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<p>BTW, the co-author of this book is a well-known conservative professor at Princeton. He was President of the Student Body at Swarthmore:</p>
<p>[A</a> Mind on the Right - Swarthmore College Bulletin](<a href=“http://media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/?p=140]A”>Page has moved)</p>
<p>Briguy, D just put her acceptance and deposit in the mail for the small elite LAC. My preference was for the state flagship/honors/merit scholarship. She had no idea of my preference which I’m glad. Besides us giving her the budget, it was her decision.</p>