Sarah Lawrence & US News - another monopoly

Parents Forum
261

<p>dstark:</p>

<p>We don't know if a peer group stays the same year in year out. Perhaps in the immediate future it does. but over time? When is it necessary to review peer grouping? On what grounds?</p>

<p>I remember when Duke's and WashU's reputation were far lower than it is now; when some colleges deliberately set out to attract better students by throwing merit aid at them. All succeeded in raising their reputations and their USN&WR rankings. And these were not chimeras. There WAS real improvement at these institutions. And thus the peer institutions did change.</p>

<p>The same might well happen to SLC given its financial troubles. I looked up the NABUCO chart and I saw that SLC ranks well below colleges that would be considered merely regional institutions.</p>

<p>My question regarding SLC is an honest one. Where does SLC think it should be ranked?</p>

<p>As for Bates, I understand that it is SAT-optional, which means that it reports the SAT scores of the students who do submit. It is not too far-fetched to believe that the submitted scores tend to be the higher ones.
How much they should be discounted, I do not know. But I do not think some discounting is dishonest and misleading.</p>

262

<p>marite raises a kind of interesting question, if one has any kind of faith in the value of SAT ranges as predictors of applicants' admissions success, or of the caliber of the student body or whatever.</p>

<p>So I eyeballed it, instead of doing the actual math of some kind of peer group average SAT range. And I found that:</p>

<p>If SLC's Peer Group is the schools just above and below it in the USN&WR rankings (LACs ranked ca. 45-48), it's USN&WR-generated range (subtracting one SD or about 200 points) would be:</p>

<p>950-1130</p>

<p>OTOH, if SLC was "given" an SAT range one SD <em>above</em> most of USN&WR's Tier 3 LACS - seems logical to me, and probably more logical than subtracting a full SD from its peers - their SAT range would be:</p>

<p>1190-1350 </p>

<p>Pretty different ranges, I would say.</p>

263

<p>If they supply the median income of the full-payers, and the percentage of folks receiving need-based aid, there's no need to provide SAT scores to find their peer group.</p>

264

<p>
[quote]
It is not too far-fetched to believe that the submitted scores tend to be the higher ones. How much they should be discounted, I do not know. But I do not think some discounting is dishonest and misleading.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Bates's own research (and numerous other institutions') show that the non-submitters' scores are very significantly lower than submitters. On some levels, USNews's methodologiy is pretty sophisticated. It's amazing that they don't come up with some formaula that says: "if you report 90% of your enrolled class's SATs, small penalty; if you report only 50%, a larger penalty, and so on." As it is now, there's only a penalty if a school fails to report 50% of their students' scores. </p>

<p>Some SAT-optional schools do the ethical thing and report the scores of both submitters and non-submitters. (Muhlenberg did this for years, and I think that Bowdoin does, though I'm not sure any more.)</p>

265

<p>Interesting read: Inside</a> Higher Ed: Endowment Envy
that includes comments from the president of Bard College, certainly an SLC peer school.

[quote=Leon Botstein, president of Bard College]
"I think that universities are in danger of a kind of fiscal arrogance, in which many of them are becoming as much banks and investment companies as institutions of education, research and culture," said Leon Botstein, president of Bard College. </p>

<p>"There's nothing wrong with raising money," said Botstein, whose college is about to start a $350 million campaign. "But the magnitude of the latest campaigns coming from institutions that are already among the wealthiest in American higher education creates a false impression that there is a correlation between money and excellence in higher education," Botstein said. "We need to focus on education and culture, not trying to become Fort Knox universities that are repositories of wealth," he added.</p>

<p>...."There's this confusion between wealth and quality," he said, and the mega-campaigns are going to add to it. And what the campaigns will create," he added is "a more enormous mal-distribution of resources."</p>

<p>What the latest campaigns amount to, he said, are "four giant country clubs raking in huge dues from a sense of social entitlement. The wealthy universities should start spending the money they have," he said, "and they would do much more good. They are just making walls of wealth around them, amidst a crumbling educational and cultural landscape."

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Some of the comments are good, too:

[quote]
Greed</p>

<p>I felt sick reading this article. An institution such as Harvard, or any of the other billionaires, with its huge endowment, could, with its annual interest/dividends alone, afford EVERY YEAR to underwrite the entire tuition bill of its entire student body, pay good wages to its entire professoriate and employees, and still have money left over for taking care of infrastructure, maintenance and other needs. Do the math ? it will do you good. Instead, however, what you will see, is the usual, continual increases in tuition with all sorts of flim-flam excuses of why this is necessary and a big preten[s]e at how the institution is using all its new-found wealth for need-based student aid for those who cannot afford it. There is a major con-game going on, where big contributors are being left with an impression their money is going to be used for scholarships and aid when in reality the rest of the students are g[o]uged by higher tuition and costs. This is pure greed and more than a little disgusting.

[/quote]
</p>

266

<p>"We don't know if a peer group stays the same year in year out. Perhaps in the immediate future it does. but over time? When is it necessary to review peer grouping? On what grounds?"</p>

<p>Good questions. Don't know.</p>

<p>"As for Bates, I understand that it is SAT-optional, which means that it reports the SAT scores of the students who do submit. It is not too far-fetched to believe that the submitted scores tend to be the higher ones.
How much they should be discounted, I do not know. But I do not think some discounting is dishonest and misleading."</p>

<p>200 points, as jmmom, points out, is not some discounting.</p>

<p>Bates is probably going to have fewer than 50% of its students submit SAT scores this year. This year there was a lot of publicity from Bates that you don't need SAT scores to apply or get into the school.</p>

<p>It's going to be interesting to see how USNWR handles Bates.</p>

267

<p>As I said, I do not know how much discounting there should be. And yes, it will be interesting to see how USN&WR handles Bates.</p>

268

<p>From the Bates website:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Independent of the admissions process and solely for the purpose of the College's research, students who have taken the standardized tests must submit the official results of these tests upon matriculation.

[/quote]
]</p>

<p>I think that Bates may be another of the schools who has always "done the right thing" and reported all of the scores that they had, including those of non-submitting students. I don't know this first-hand, but it's consistent with the research that they've reported, and shared very generously, on their SAT-optional policy.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bates.edu/ip-optional-testing-20years.xml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bates.edu/ip-optional-testing-20years.xml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

269

<p>MarathonMan88, that link was from Oct 2004.
The latest common data set shows that the number of SAT submitters has dropped to 50.4%.</p>

<p>I hope this link gets to the common data set 2006-2007.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/bates?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&domains=bates.edu%3Bwww.bates.edu%3Babacus.bates.edu&q=common+data+set+2005&sitesearch=bates.edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/bates?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&domains=bates.edu%3Bwww.bates.edu%3Babacus.bates.edu&q=common+data+set+2005&sitesearch=bates.edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

270

<p>Proud dad:</p>

<p>with all due respect, Botstein's comments are nonsense. The job of universities is to be universities. Is the university landscape crumbling? Methinks he's talking about k-12 education. But that's not the job of universities to fix k-12.</p>

<p>As for the comment you excerpted, that, too, is nonsense. SLC is EVEN more expensive than HYP. A couple of years ago, it was actually listed by USN&WR as THE most expensive college. And for good reason: it's endowment is so tiny it cannot afford to give much in the way of scholarships. Its $62 million endowment pales in comparison not just to HYP's but to Berea's $800+million endowment.</p>

<p>So, let's not use SAT scores. Let's forget PA. Lets'forget selectivity as it's so easily maniulated. I'm fine with all that. What criteria should we be using to determine SLC's peer group? This is a serious question. Unless SLC wishes to rely on word of mouth, there must be some way for students to consider whether or not to apply to SLC, what their chances are of admission, etc... (remember those reaches, matches, safeties CC posters are fond of discussing?)</p>

271

<p>Could the endowment be much smaller because SLC's graduates are not generally titans of industry but writers, artists, educators etc...and since SLC graduates are more women than men, women contribute less to their alma maters?</p>

272

<p>Sure, but SLC isn't alone. There are several fringe LACs that don't carry a huge endowment, even if their student population is tiny, too:</p>

<p>school/endowment/enrollment
Sarah Lawrence $62,582,000 1,306
Hampshire College $31,571,000 1,434
Bard College $80,000,000 (old figure) 1,667</p>

<p>There are oddities in those stats, too:
Principia $552,931,000 542 </p>

<p>on a per/capita basis, Principia has double the endowment of Wesleyan University and ten-times that of Kenyon College. Better school?</p>

273

<p>Bard, which has been mentioned as a peer institution, has an endowment of $144 million (per USN&WR) and a student body of 1585 vs. SLC's endowment of $58millions (again, per USN&WR) and a student body of 1340.</p>

<p>There are many colleges whose graduates are not titans of industry but are better endowed. The NACUBO list is quite revealing.</p>

274

<p>


Actually I think it still is if you consider room and board. Though GW, I think, will hit over $50k next year, if I remember correctly. </p>

<p>In defense of SLC's costs, they do have about the lowest student-faculty ratio--even compared to the Ivy league schools that have been taken to task for years as under-reporting that stat with nearly 50% of those reported as faculty actually non-tenure-track and graduate instructors. Most of SLC's faculty are actually actively teaching and advising as "Dons". </p>

<p>And still over half SLC's students receive some financial aid with the average need-based package valued at well over $22,000. That's not that different than Yale. Maybe they're just using their money better (as Bard's pres suggests) instead of banking it?</p>

275

<p>I believe that room and board must be considered together with tuition and all other mandatory costs. And, yes, SLC is ceding the most expensive status to GWU this year. </p>

<p>I do not think that the size of endowments is commensurate with quality. There are plenty of schools that are far better endowed than SLC which I considered to be quite inferior.</p>

<p>But this is a side issue to the issue of rankings, and the absence of SAT scores. The issue remains what criteria should be used in assessing the quality of a school, and whether that school should be considered a reach, match or safety?</p>

276

<p>Umm, I guess that depends on their writing sample. Odd that actual talent should be considered over test scores! Reach/match at SLC may simply remain one of those mysteries of life. Apply and find out.</p>

<p>But, permit me a personal question that's been bugging me for a while: What real interest does someone have in these boards who joined in 2004 and has nearly 8,000 posts? i'm not making any character assessment here, but I'm truly curious. I know I have one kid in college and another one applying. That's why I'm here. Mine's not altruistic in the least. But what motivates those with thousands of post who aren't applying or don't have kids who are? Are you here to help others? Or is it more of the Firesign Theater's "to buy an argument"?</p>

277

<p>LOL.Proudad, you've caught me out. I sometimes help. Right now, as you can imagine, there's no student panicking over an essay and pleading for help. I'm afraid the short answer, though, is that I've become addicted. I don't seek to pick fights, though. </p>

<p>As for your first paragraphL first the student has to be aware of the existence of SLC to apply. That's not a given. Second, the student must be willing to include it in a fairly short list (even if the student is happy to apply to 25 schools, the teachers and GC may not be enthusiastic). And 3rd, the apply and see strategy assumes that the student has the money to...apply and see rather than make a more informed decision about whether to apply.</p>

<p>I'm not enamored of USN&WR and actually did not use it when either of my kids were applying. But so far, no one has come up with alternative means of helping students select which schools to apply to. Some of the alternatives suggested list peer institutions. But that brings us back to my question: how to define peer institutions?</p>

278

<p>A lot of people recommended Sarah Lawrence to my daughter, because it fit some of her interests and criteria. It was tough to figure out whether it would be a match or safety, so I remember listing it as both. I looked at percent accepted (45%), and percent in the top decile (33%, with a footnote that this is based on fewer than 51% of the freshmen class). Looking at the website, I see that average HS GPA is 3.6. Given that the application is writing heavy, and therefore unpredictable, I nudged it more into the match category. I would bet that few students could call it a safety school.</p>

<p>As for assessing quality -- should SATs be used to assess quality? That question aside -- I think there are many ways to assess quality. For Sarah Lawrence, one thing I used was the quality of some of its alums, like Barbara Walters, Rahm Emanuel, Carly Simon. (My kid was impressed with JJ Abrams.) The Fiske book, which was our bible, gave it four thingies out of five for academics. That book also points out the freshmen retention rate and 6-year graduation rate.</p>

<p>Sarah Lawrence is not your typical college. I think it is hard to categorize.</p>

279

<p>PD, I did a steadily increasing towards "total immersion" with respect to college search, application, and financing over four years. I asked a lot of questions, learned a lot. Plus I found myself wanting to see how other stories turned out after acceptance and share in return...it's not the end of the book, merely a new chapter. Plus I've made friends here, such as Marite, who I've met in this wonderful & crazy process. And I find that there's not a good way to pay folks back for the knowledge and experience I've gained so I pay forward. </p>

<p>And dare I say that for the past few months I've gleaned useful info about graduate and professional school...and, why, some of it the D even asked me to track down for her.</p>

<p>The only place I buy an argument is in the Parents Cafe in some of the political threads...but if you look at my posting pattern, that's a sideline, not my raison d'etre for being here.</p>

<p>Btw, some of us joined CC before 2004. That's just the date the "new" boards went operational. I first got here when the rocks were still cooling, ferns were shooting tendrils through the soil, nothing had yet crawled out of the sea, and there were only about 50K posts total for the whole board. There are a handful of posters still around who antedate my presence.</p>

280

<p>Marite, there are other sources. There are plenty of books, videos, counselors etc. Sources with more in depth coverage of schools exist.</p>

<p>Post #238 in this very thread from Old but wise.
"One can't blame US News for anything. It's those of you who purchase the magazine that are to blame. If no one bought it, this wouldn't be an issue.</p>

<p>The rankings are silly and meaningless. The criteria US News uses in its rankings may have little or nothing to do with what the student is looking for in a college. </p>

<p>Over thirty years, I advised thousands of students and parents in the college selection process. I never used US News rankings, and never look at them."</p>

<p>I'm addicted too. My kid is a high school senior. So my family is almost done.
I'm going to find out how addicted I am really soon. </p>

<p>Maybe, my kid will end up a transfer student. ;)</p>