Sarah Lawrence & US News - another monopoly

Parents Forum
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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?

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Obviously if the school does not consider SAT scores, then SAT score range is totally irrelevant to the question of reach/match/safety -- a good score won't help anyone get in, a weak score won't keep anyone out.</p>

<p>As to "quality" of a school.... there is no reason whatsoever to think that quality of a school correlates to SAT scores. If anything, it is misleading: the colleges that have successful in recruiting high-scoring students have seen their rankings go up over the years, but does that mean that the colleges have improved in the quality of their course offerings and teaching?</p>

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<p>They should sue US News. First send a letter to US News saying that if they don't take Sarah Lawrence off the rankings (list them as "unranked") they'll sue. Then when they don't comply sue the crap out of them.</p>

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<p>And just wait for US News to **** off a college like Princeton....(which has more money than God) then Princeton should sue class action and sue US News into the ground. Princeton has the financial resources to sue US News out of business many times over. Imagine if a bunch of other ****ed-off colleges pitched in.</p>

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<p>
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But so far, no one has come up with alternative means of helping students select which schools to apply to.

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Marite, the Princeton Review gives SLC an "Academic Rating" of 96 (Harvard gets 98) -- and a "Selectivity Rating" of 90 (Harvard gets 99). Princeton Review also lists each colleges criteria for admission.</p>

<p>Personally, I found that as a much more sensible way of getting a sense of figuring out reach/match/safety than the US news system -- and while I see many flaws in the PR "methodology" -- I found it a much more user-friendly source of information for my kids. Both my kids seemed to prefer that book to other college guides I purchased; in fact there was a little bit of a tiff last year between my 2 kids over temporary custody of the book. There are some notable glitches in the PR book & web site, but for the most part it gives a good ballpark -- and it makes sense to me to look at quality of academics as somewhat different than the degree of difficulty of getting admitted. Quite simply it lets students find and target colleges with strong academics that are somewhat easier to get into. </p>

<p>If anything, the focus on SAT scores is simply misleading -- and may explain why there are so many disappointed students and parents on this board each April, dismayed because they have been waitlisted or rejected, frustrated when they learn that some other kid with lower scores has been admitted. If there was more focus on specifics and less on numbers, kids might make some better choices.</p>

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<p>I've always believed that a narrative gives more info than a letter grade or a numerical ranking. My son's K-8 public school didn't give grades, but teachers wrote wonderful narrative descriptions of what and how the students were learning. Drove some parents crazy.</p>

<p>Same with the college search. We read narrative descriptions of the schools to guess-timate "fit", then visited to get a better feel for fit. Then my son picked where to apply, with 2 in the safe range re: acceptance rate. SL, had he applied, would have been considered a reach/match, not a safety. Acceptance rate is a useful guide, but can also be deceptive because some schools are looking for students who fit, not stats.</p>

<p>Top 10 lists can be fun, but they're pretty much meaningless. We never bought the magazine, but the Fiske Guide----priceless.</p>

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<p>calmom:</p>

<p>Thanks. I have not looked at the PR and the only reason I've looked at USN&WR was that it was available online. The problem with Academic Rating or any other kind of rating such as PA are the criteria it's based on. What does it mean for Harvard to have a AR of 98? or SLC of 96? What are these based on? what is the significance of the gap? </p>

<p>SAT ranges are ranges. If 75% of the admitted students have SAT scores above a certain number, it means that 25% have SAT scores below that. Prospies who have SAT scores below that figure can decide whether or not to spend $75 applying. There's a college in the Boston area that has a slightly larger endowment than SLC. It has a lower PA, but that has deemed to be illegitimate. But its reported median SAT score is 1060--the national average.
If I knew little about SLC and that college, I could use that reported SAT score as a guide to help me figure out whether I should apply. It would not be the only factor. But I believe the antidote to flawed information is not less information. It's more.</p>

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<p>


Which brings up another issue, not related to SLC and SATs. My daughter applied to one of the top-ranked LAC in the country because she was interested in aspects of the school's "personality". By all measures it would be a reach and, given the cost of college applications, she might have passed on it. But they offered free application if completed on-line. She was accepted, we're waiting on FA decision, and it may very well be near the top in her final decision process. There are many interesting schools that offered her free applications and I'm sure many can argue they do that to either boost their selectivity by turning down more applicants, or the do it to boost rankings by getting their foot in the door with better applicants (from ratings perspective!). But this was from a school with nothing to gain since they already shows a huge endowment and the highest ratings in most any ranking you could name. Why can't more schools do this, or even offer a discount for Common applications? </p>

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But SLC doesn't use, ask for, or collect that data, so what's the use of beating them up over a data point they don't use for selection? That information isn't part of their process. Why do you need it to decide if SLC is a "match" for you?</p>

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<p>Prouddad:</p>

<p>It's precisely because I have a lot of experience and have been able to rely on great GCs that I have not felt the need to rely on guidebooks. S1's GC made some recommendations about reaches, matches and safeties. We visited them as well as a few more colleges we'd heard about. The GC's predictions about S's chances of success were spot on.
For S2, we had a list that had little to do with rankings and was based on the excellence and breadth of particular programs. And after nearly 8,000 posts on CC, I've gotten to know a great deal about other colleges.</p>

<p>As for deciding whether SLC is a match or not, absent information, students will probably not apply. There are, after all, all these peer institutions. Maybe SLC is comfortable with that.</p>

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<p>The thing is, there is a LOT of information about SLC in any guide book.. It's just words and not numbers. I guess some people need numbers, others need words and pictures. The kind of student who would fit at SL can probably tell it without the numbers.</p>

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<p>First of all, the PR information is available on line, and unlike USNews, everything on the PR web site is free. Colleges are giving ratings in various areas from 60-99 -- I think that you can basically look at the numbers as being similar to grades. That is, a 99 would be an A+ - a 96 an A - colleges with numbers in the 80s would be "B", etc. (PR doesn't explain it that way, but looking at the numbers it pretty much comes out that way) PR explains the academic rating as follows:
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How hard students work and how much they get back for their efforts, on a scale of 60-99. This rating is calculated from student survey results and statistical information reported by administrators. Factors weighed include how many hours students study outside of the classroom and the quality of students the school attracts. We also considered students' assessments of their professors, class size, student-teacher ratio, use of teaching assistants, amount of class discussion, registration, and resources.

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Student surveys ask students questions about course difficulty, quality of profs, how many hours they study, etc. Not that PR apparently does NOT look at SAT scores to get an academic rating.</p>

<p>The Admissions Selectivity rating is determined as follows
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This rating measures how competitive admissions are at the school. This rating is determined by several institutionally-reported factors, including: the class rank, average standardized test scores, and average high school GPA of entering freshmen; the percentage of students who hail from out-of-state; and the percentage of applicants accepted.

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</p>

<p>PR also includes a "quality of life" rating and a "financial aid" rating. </p>

<p>To give you some other numbers (for comparison) for academic rating: Reed gets a 99; my daughter's college, Barnard, gets a 97 (98 for selectivity). Let's drop down to the LAC's US News ranked about the same as SLC - Rhodes & Gettysburg (tied with SLC at #45): PR ranks Rhodes academics 90, selectivity 93 ; Gettysburg - academics 94, selectivity 94. I could easily find colleges that rank lower than that -- for example, my daughter looked at Goucher as a safety - US News ranks Goucher as #91; PR gives Goucher ratings of 87 for both academics & selectivity. </p>

<p>I'm not going to weigh in on the judgments -- I don't have enough info to know how accurate the academic judgment is, though I know that my d. dropped Goucher from her list after doing an overnight there because from attending a class and talking to students, she felt that she would not be satisfied with academics. </p>

<p>The point is simply that the "can my child get in" question is different than the "will my child be accepted" question -- and the PR rating system gives some good clues as to what academically strong colleges may be somewhat less selective. For example, St. John's of Maryland has a selectivity rating of 88, academic rating of 98.

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But I believe the antidote to flawed information is not less information. It's more.

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Yes, and PR gives much, much more. In addition to numbers, it gives descriptions both from the school administrations and gathered from student surveys that help determine fit -- and it starts off by telling what each school deems important to admissions. The student survey methodology is iffy -- but in my mind more valid that PA -- that is, I think I would rather know what students at Sarah Lawrence think of their experience there than what the presidents of Vassar and Bard think.</p>

<p>In any case, I don't want this post to be an ad for PR -- PR has its flaws. But I just found it much more informative and useful than US News.</p>

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<p>Bethie:</p>

<p>You make a good point. </p>

<p>I suspect, though, that the popularity of USN&WR is due to the fact that it provides numbers. They may be misleading, but the cure is greater accuracy, not disappearance. Some data can easily be ignored (alumni giving, for instance). If USN&WR were not so popular, it would not cause so much angst among colleges.</p>

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<p>Calmom: Thanks. I'll take a look at PR some time.</p>

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<p>


Not quite. I'd say that 85% of the text is on line, and you won't miss the rest ... but there are some parts of the book not fully repeated on line. For example, they have ratings based on student surveys as to how interesting and how accessible the profs are, which are in the book but not available on line.</p>

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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.

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<p>Bates is a different case from SLC, but I think it's an illuminating one. Bates is SAT-optional for admissions, but requires students to submit their scores post-admission if they have taken any standardized tests. In other words, Bates has scores in hand for nearly every member of their entering class. </p>

<p>Should Bates drop below USNWR's 50% threshhold for submitters this year, they could do what a few schools do: submit to USNews the stats for the entire entering cohort. And that would seem fair to some, since it would make Bates's reported SAT figures directly comparable to those of most of their peer colleges, most of whom are SAT-required. Or Bates could submit the hypothetical 49% of scores from submitting applicants and take the USNews methodology "penalty hit" of 1 standard deviation.</p>

<p>Bates's non-submitting students, on average, have SAT scores very close to 1 standard deviation below those of submitting students, so taking a hit of a full standard deviation imposes a penalty about twice as harsh as it should be for a school with about a 50% SAT-submission rate. (Hope that makes sense.)</p>

<p>On the other hand, Bates currently enjoys close to a 100 point bump upward in their median reported score in USNews compared to SAT-required schools.</p>

<p>As this thread makes clear, different people see such a cases in very different lights: some would say "USNews is faking data"; others would say "Bates is not playing by the same rules as its peers," others read is, "Bates lived by the sword, now she dies by the sword," and still others respond "hey . . . the onus here is on the users of USNews: learn to analyze the data critically before you use it." And these are all reasonable responses, depending on your vantage point.</p>

<p>In any case, the interesting choice in the hypothetical case might not be USNews's, but Bates's.</p>

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<p>
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As for deciding whether SLC is a match or not, absent information, students will probably not apply.

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????<br>
It seems to me that any student who is interested in what SLC has to offer -- which really is unique among all the LACs -- is going to make their decision based on "fit"... not on reach/match/safety. It's a "match" for any student B+ or better GPA, strong high school academics, and strong writing skills; it is probably not quite a "safety" for anyone, though the students who are very strong writers probably know who they are. I would have considered it close to a safety for my daughter, because writing is such a strong point for her. (Obviously, I could be mistaken, but I take my daughter's admission to U of Chicago despite below-range test scores as evidence that she is able to impress an ad com with her writing, given that Chicago has a similar rep for valuing essays highly). </p>

<p>A lot of students won't - and don't - apply because they really don't want the heavily socratic, self-directed educational environment SLC offers. The idea of students selecting classes by going around for a week interviewing the professors may not appeal to all students. Some college students really don't want that close of a relationship with their profs-- there is no hiding in that environment, and the school itself is small enough that everyone knows everyone else as it is, so it probably feels claustrophobic for some. And for others it would represent the ideal of what a college experience could be. </p>

<p>The only sad thing would be if students don't apply because they haven't heard of the school... or if they mistakenly believe that the academics are of poor quality because US News arbitrarily bumps SLC down to the bottom of its list.</p>

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<p>SLC is not well-known to most students. I happen to value SLC myself, because I have a good friend who graduated from there many years ago and is an excellent writer (she is a successful editor, and got a writing job straight out of college). I am thinking more of the average student, the one who does not know Wellesley from Whitman, never heard of Pomona or Grinnell, or Kenyon (another school that values writing) or SLC.</p>

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<p>And if that student writes well and would otherwise be a good fit for the SLC environment, then that student is well served by SLC's no-test policy -- because "average" students tend to also have "average" (or even above-average but not stellar) SAT scores. Wellesley, Whitman, Pomona, Grinnell, Kenyon are all examples of excellent colleges that are increasingly difficult to get into and where "average" level SAT scores may not be good enough. (I am putting "average" in quotes because I am thinking more of the kids who score ~1200 range -- which actually is well above "average" but practically speaking is shaky for most of the colleges you mentioned). </p>

<p>We'll assume for purposes of discussing that our "average" student is the Sarah Lawrence type -- a poet or philosopher or playwright who will thrive in with small classes and a close working relationship with profs, but who may struggle in the impersonal environment of a large state U. </p>

<p>Forcing SLC to manufacture test data for the sake of US News rankings is not the answer.</p>

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<p>By average, I do not mean average stats. I mean the student in the street, the one who has never heard of the top LACS because they're not located in his or her state, who has a GC who is either uninformed or overwhelmed or both and is useless when discussing anything other than the state U and the local cc.</p>

<p>Let's face it, the greatest benefit of USN&WR for colleges is publicity. But this said, nobody is forcing SLC to do anything it does not want to do. It does not have to play by USN&WR rules.</p>

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<p>
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nobody is forcing SLC to do anything it does not want to do. It does not have to play by USN&WR rules.

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</p>

<p>Maybe no one is forcing them, but the price of not playing the game is high. Here's what Myer's said at the close of her op-ed piece:</p>

<p>"Why should we care if we lose our place in their rankings? Because ultimately, so many people take these rankings seriously."</p>

<p>And what she means is not only that SLC could see applications decline, but it would almost surely see its yield of high-end academic admits shrink, it could affect the school's bond ratings, influence the feelings of alums (just ask any prez whose school had dropped how much they hear about it from alums), and more. That's the really pernicious cost of the rankings.</p>

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<p>I personally do not care for the rankings or for rankings more generally. But obviously the public does. USN&WR is giving it what it wants. People take the rankings seriously because rankings matter to them. It matters to alums, to donors, to prospies. If USN&WR adopted a totally different set of criteria, the public would still want these criteria to combine into rankings.</p>

<p>So to return to a question I posed some time ago, what criteria should be used by USN&WR?</p>