<p>
[quote]
But they do care about what U. S. News is writing about them enough for the president of SLC to write an op-ed for the Post!
[/quote]
No, they just don't want US News to make up lies about them. </p>
<p>They don't use the test in their decision process. </p>
<p>That's not the same as assuming that their students all have test scores 200 points lower than they did before the school dropped the test. </p>
<p>US News can do one of 2 things: they can continue to assume the test scores are the same as before, because SLC has NOT changed their overall admission process. They always were very holistic and approach and focused heavily on writing abilities.</p>
<p>Or US News can be honest and move SLC to a "could not rank" category. If enough colleges drop the test or go test-optional, in the long run US News would either have to change its methodology for ranking or forego passing judgment on an ever-growing list of schools. So then the college practices would drive the ranking system, rather than US News driving college practices.</p>
<p>Well personally I think SATs are just as subjective as APs. They are not universal. Being an international student I have not had the same opportunities. Therefore, SATs are not "universal indicators" as many people presume. SATs are only effective to a certain extent and if one college chooses not to use it anymore, I don't think that that means the college is any less exclusive. Personally, I don't see what a SAT tells a college admissions officer about a student. It doesn't tell you that student that a student is well read or anything about their vocabulary or even writing skill, because who can be expected to write an essay in only 25 minutes. It is possible that some people don't write essays very well in that time. My friend who got into Yale got a 7 on his essays but has As in English class. </p>
<p>I mean the exam is 4 hours long. And secondly, it's multiple choice. Multiple choice gives you the answer and it's more about deciphering which answer is right out of three incorrect ones...as opposed to giving the answer. The SAT 2 Literature exam for example gives you the answer. What about if you were forced to write about the passage they give you. I'm quite sure that if the exam asked you to write an essay instead of answer multiple choice question. The typical 800 student might not do so well.</p>
<p>The main trouble with SATs are that they disregard the fact that students OUTSIDE the American school systems have been taught differently. One cannot forget how much culture influences the educational system. Living in the Bahamas, I've been trained to write essays in timed exams instead of answering multiple choice. On top of that, a lot of cognitive psychology studies have shown that different cultures have different ways of storing and organizing data. </p>
<p>I think anyone who is so anxious to presume SATs are such great indicators are unable to realize how restrictive it is.</p>
<p>^^^
SAT has its problems, but the fact that it disregard how international students are educated is not one that needs to be addressed. It is just like other countries' college entrance exams have their problems, but the fact they disregard how American students are educated are not one of their problems that need to be addressed.</p>
<p>I never said that those exams are not restrictive. I merely pointed out that a school's decision not to use SATs anymore does not mean that it's no longer exclusive. It does not mean it's not of high standard. Removing the SATs from the admissions process just opens more doors to students outside the American school system. Also, I mentioned those points earlier not to say other methods are GREAT, everything has flaws, but more to indicate, from my perspective, its pitfalls because I feel many are a bit too dependent on SATs as an indicator of a student's intelligence or potential to grow intellectually at a college. Also, I did it to highlight the positive aspects of choosing to remove SATs from a school like Sarah Lawrence's admission process. I could go on for days about other schools and their exams but that's unnecessary as we're not talking about those schools.</p>
<p>There is a thread on comparing European pre-college education to U.S. Nobody mentioned SAT as an obstacle, in fact they laughed at how easy the SAT is.</p>
<p>It is easier to find international students that can score high in the SAT than international that can write English essay well by SLC's standard.</p>
<p>Of course, if SLC want to be the kind of school that emphasize writing, they should have an admission standard that reflects that, regardless of whether it is hard or easy for the international student.</p>
<p>European...Bahamian? There's more than one type of international student. If Europeans say it's easier that doesn't mean international students from the Caribbean find it easy. </p>
<p>But I mean I don't even get the point if the student is better at answering multiple choice than writing an essay in college. What will that tell you about the student's potential at the school anyway? I mean the student will be writing essays not answering multiple choice questions.</p>
<p>And I think SLC's admission process shows that quite well. They require you to write two essays and give an analytical paper. But get back to me after I found out if I got into Sarah Lawrence or not and I can send you an essay I've written on my own and tell you my SAT scores and you tell me if you my SAT scores reflect my writing and thinking skills</p>
<p>A footnote to this old controversy. SL wound up in an unranked category outside the top 100 in the U. S. News Rankings. I've seen one news story describe its placement there, among some pretty obscure colleges, as "purgatory." </p>
<p>I guess I admire their willingness to pay the price; it would've been easy enough to ask for SAT scores post-admission (as many SAT-optional schools do), and submit data based on that, at least for a few years worth of institutional research while they explore the effects of the "no-SAT-thanks" policy.</p>
<p>For once, USnews made the correct decision.</p>
<p>Too bad, USNews does not have the courage to send the rest of the gamers (the whatever-you-want-the-score-to-be-today) frolicking in the same "purgatory."</p>
<p>I wonder what would happen if Harvard, Yale and Princeton decided not to submit their scores, would they be subject to the following as stated in the OP's linked article?</p>
<p>
[quote]
...[with] absent students' SAT scores, the magazine will calculate the college's ranking by assuming an arbitrary average SAT score of one standard deviation (roughly 200 points) below the average score of [their] peer group.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wouldn't it be funny for HYP to drop out of the Top 10 just because they decided not to submit their scores and US News gave them a fake score? I think for the magazine to truly get the message that their rankings suck, the big dogs have to stop playing the game (though I doubt they would).</p>
That's exactly what Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, has asked them to do. Botstien says opposing the rankings won't mean anything until those schools who benefit from them are willing to stand up against them.</p>
<p>I know it is fashionable to beat up on the US news. When we were looking for colleges, the listing was very handy. Here are the categories US news judges a school, and what each categories meant to us. Folks we were making a $200 k decision.</p>
<p> Peer assess- ment score (5.0=highest) - interesting
Average freshman retention rate - useful
2006 actual graduation rate - useful
Faculty resources rank - very useful
% of classes w/50 or more ('06) - extremely useful
% faculty who are full time ('06) - extremely useful
SAT/ACT 25th-75th percentile ('06) - EXTREMELY USEFUL
Acceptance rate ('06) - very useful
Alumni giving rank - who cares
Overall score - interesting
Graduation & retention rank - useful
2006 predicted graduation rate - useful
2006 overperf.(+)/ underperf.(-) - interesting info
% of classes w/fewer than 20 ('06) - extremely useful
Student/ faculty ratio ('06) - extremely useful
Selectivity rank - useful
Freshmen in top 10% of HS class - very useful
Financial resources rank - useful
Avg. alumni giving rate - who cares</p>
<p>Thanks, Simba. It seeems that quite a large chunk of the info US News uses for ranking is useful. I'd agree. (Although I would like to see a university with a nice mix of adjuncts thrown in to bring current, real-world perspectives, so full-time % that is too high would work against a school in my view. And I find freshman retention rate very, very important.)</p>
<p>So while you can have your beefs with US News, I'd hardly think you could argue that the rankings are useless.</p>
<p>I don't think the US News rankings are worthless, but I do think it's highly flawed. I said this in another thread, so I’m just going to echo myself here.</p>
<p>For US News to make more sense to me, it needs to include more output metrics to determine if a school is truly doing it's job. It already includes graduation and retention rates, but how about the # undergrads who end up in top graduate programs? Or the number of students who are recruited and hired by companies upon graduation? Or the # of graduates who are leaders in various fields and industries or Fortune 500 corporations or the world's greatest philanthropic organizations? Also, how about looking at the schools who end up with the most Rhodes, Marshall, Gates Millennium, and Fulbright scholarships a year?</p>
<p>One other poster remarked that US News may not want to do the work if the info is not part of the common data set numbers colleges publish.</p>
<p>Well, I don't think it's too much to ask US News to do more work finding more comprehensive information about schools and their graduates. It's simple research. We know who are the leaders in various industries, Fortune 500 companies, etc. Many graduate schools list where their students went for undergrad. The Wall Street Journal and Business Week kind of does this already with their lists of schools that produce the most CEOs or their list of schools that have the most students in the top graduate programs.</p>
<p>The # of metrics are endless, but showing more outputs can reveal if a school is actually creating thinkers, successful alumni, and future leaders of America and the world.</p>
<p>I don't think that even U. S. New's harshest critics would deny that they make scads of valuable information available. There are few critics of their lists of colleges ranked by admissions rate, graduation rates, tuition, student debt, etc. It's the idea of lumping many metrics together to come up with the almighty ranking number (and the unfortunate power that this number has assumed for many groups, including college trustees, some of the best students, credit agencies, et al.) that makes things the rankings rankle.</p>
<p>It's interesting to look at a list like U. S. News's list of "A+ Colleges for B Students." This list contains far more information on admissions factors than the standard rankings, but since the list is sorted alphabetically, it encourages users to interact with the list in a very different way than a ranked list, looking for fit instead of rank.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, I don't think it's too much to ask US News to do more work finding more comprehensive information about schools and their graduates.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think USN does the research. It reports data provided by colleges. And post college careers are enormously complex and varied.</p>
<p>Let's take Trevor Corson, who was considering grad school after graduating from Dartmouth. He was very very highly sought by grad programs. In the end, he decided against grad school; he was already a free lance writer and decided to embark on a full time career as a writer. He has since written two extremely well received books one of lobsters, the other one on sushi (I think his undergraduate major was Japanese religion or something like that). So. He did not go to grad school, did not become a prof, or a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer. One mark against his alma mater, Dartmouth. </p>
<p>Or take another case, an East Asian Studies major at Harvard from way back. After graduating, he decided to become a carpenter. He is extremely successful at his craft. Or Mira Sorvino, who wrote a great senior thesis (I'm told) on African-Americans in the PRC. Perish the thought, she did not go to grad school but became an actress. </p>
<p>Or the students who have gone into the army upon graduating. </p>
<p>I would say every single one of these individuals benefited from their education and have done well afterward. But how to assign a value, a numerical value at that, to their career choices? And how to evaluate what role their particular college played in their career choice?</p>
<p>I still think it's important to try to include output metrics though it's harder to incorporate. The way college rankings are now composed it's like ranking car companies based on the type of materials they use to build their cars (i.e GPAs & SAT scores) and the types of factories in which they build their cars (Financial and Faculty resources), without looking at the cars that actually come out of their factories (output metrics). That would be silly if I bought a car based on those first 2 factors alone. So why should I pay for a school only based on those factors?</p>
Actually, it's arguable that you're using SAT data to make a $50 decision, that is whether or not to waste an application fee on a school you might consider a "reach" based solely on standardized-test results of current students. If you're judging the quality of education provided by any school on the SAT scores of the current student body then you're assuming there's some advantage to your student in being at a school where the average student shares the same SAT score as yours, or you're hoping for a halo effect by attending a school where the majority have done better than your student on those same tests. Nothing about SAT tells you anything about how that school performs or how it benefits your student. And that's the point those schools that don't require (or even accept) SAT scores are making: SAT scores shouldn't be a component of ranking. It makes for an interesting statistic to guide applications simply because it is important to those schools that use them in the selection process. But for those that don't, it simply hurts them when prospective students and their families use only the ranking and don't analyze each component to see if the school is really right for them. Personally I think a school that doesn't accept or doesn't require SAT scores for admission probably goes to more effort looking at the total applicant and how they'll fit that school.</p>
<p>Rankings are a short-cut, and SAT scores are an easy metric that has nothing to do with what you'll get for your $200,000. If it's more important to you that your student attends a top-ranked school than that they are provided with a top educational experience, then by all means live or die by the SAT scores. I say this from the perspective of a father whose NMSQT-winning daughter was accepted at more than one of the 2008 USNews top-25 National Universities, attended one, and then transferred to a school now in the un-ranked category where she has found a great fit. That same school wait-listed her when she first applied to college, so downgrading a school's ranking based on SAT or no-SAT does not mean they aren't selective. My D simply did a better job convincing that school that she was a good fit the second time around. And isn't "fit" more important than anything else? I mean we're making a $200,000 decision here! ;)</p>
<p>Yeah, just as students are more than the sum of their numbers (GPA, SAT, ACT, etc.), colleges are also more than their numerical sum. It's as if a university ranked every student that applies without incorporating essays, which essentially are windows into each applicant's world, where admissions officers would be able to cull information like musical talent and athletic prowess that would not be revealed by ranking students strictly by their numbers. </p>
<p>College rankings throw a bunch of schools together and sorts them without taking into account that many of them are very different from each other. (Private vs. Public, small public vs. large public, research-focused universities vs. teaching-focused universities, etc. Yes, I realize that US News does at least separate national universities from regional universities from LACs). Whatever the case, nuances that might make one college be a better choice than another are totally lost when all colleges are thrown into a ranking.</p>