<p>I was in Borders today and found myself in the Reference section next to a stack of the 2007 edition of Princeton Review's Best 361 Colleges (up from Best 357 in the 2005 edition...grade inflation). I hadn't checked for while, being past the obsessive undergrad stage, and I thumbed through to see what they had to say about Smith.</p>
<p>Up to #1 in the Dorms Like Palaces ratings. Moderately surprised they didn't crack the top 20 in the "accessibility to professors" rankings, though with PR's methodology you have to take all the ratings, both good and bad, with a couple of bagfuls of salt.</p>
<p>Percentage admitted has dropped under the critical 50 percent mark to 48. </p>
<p>Top 10 percent of class has edged up 2-3 points to 61, top 25 percent to 90. </p>
<p>Top of interquartile SAT Verbal has edged up to 710.</p>
<p>Holding constant on paired preferences: Smith applicants often prefer Brown, sometimes prefer Wellesley, rarely prefer Mount Holyoke.</p>
<p>I forget where it ranked (except that I think it outdid Wellesley :) in the "Happiest Students" ranking but I thought it was interesting that six out of the top 10 were womens colleges, including Scripps and Agnes Scott along with the usual suspects (Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke).</p>
<p>Nothing of major import but fun grist for the mill.</p>
<p>You know, I laugh every time I read something from you. It's amazing how similar we are in regards to what we have done with pre-college planning, and the fact that everytime I go into Border's I check out the same materials. <em>lol</em> I am glad to hear that the stats went up, particularly the admission rate %.</p>
<p>I looked around here for zealous Smith parents, and found not one!</p>
<p>"
I looked around here for zealous Smith parents, and found not one!"</p>
<p>Yes, we are too objective to be called zealous.</p>
<p>You know, part of me hopes that Smith's selectivity numbers, as seen in the percentage of applicants admitted, become more competitive with other top liberal arts schools, but then I realize that will mean fewer top women being offered Smith's first rate education. I think a lot of people don't take Smith seriously because of the percentage admitted.</p>
<p>Another statistic reveals something closer to the truth: a majority of students were in the top 10 percent of their classes. Almost all were in the top quarter - and that includes students who attended small, competititve schools where all students are achievers.</p>
<p>When I was helping my d look for colleges, I used the Princeton Review Book and the USNWR magazine as supplements to my personal knowledge of colleges. I know better than to take the ratings as absolutes (I prefer to think of them as groupings), but I do find myself wishing that Smith were higher in the rankings, not because I'm unhappy with the education but because I'd like to see more people take it seriously. If you look at the manufactured rankings by people at CC (on threads such as "Your Own Top 25 LAC ranking"), Wellesley is always included by virtue of being number 4 now (CCers put it much lower), and Smith, with the other single gender schools, is almost always left off. </p>
<p>Naturally, prestige isn't everything - and highly educated people generally recognize the value of a Smith education.</p>
<p>3...right here...posts 1, 2, 3! As stated on the other thread, your daughters, and Smith, are lucky to have you as such strong cheerleaders. (As for objectivity...I recall an earlier thread about women in science where some "additional" objectivity had to be added....)</p>
<p>2boys, am I remembering correctly that you have a daughter at Bryn Mawr? My d. loved that school as well -- and might have gone there if it had been stronger in the department where she wanted to study.</p>
<p>MWFN, I think virtually all the womens colleges are underrated and confess that I do not see much of an objective "gap" between Wellesley and Smith once economic data (thus affecting SAT scores) is taken into account. On the flip side, womens colleges are thus "admissions bargains," giving a lot of bang for the buck at a given performance level.</p>
<p>I admit to having something of a sour attitude about those who view Barnard as a back door to Columbia instead of valuing it for its own sake.</p>
<p>"I admit to having something of a sour attitude about those who view Barnard as a back door to Columbia instead of valuing it for its own sake."</p>
<p>I can understand that. I think the women's colleges need better marketing/PR to escape the stereotypes that have dogged them since the Ivies went co-ed. </p>
<p>They are indeed "admissions bargains" -- and ones which are much needed given the academic achievement of high school girls and the limited number of spots available to them at the elite schools.</p>
<p>Floot, don't feel worse but that 48 percent number is from the 2005 admissions cycle...I don't think that the current edition of PR would have even the Fall 2006 numbers, and it gets worse every year, predicted to peak somewhere between 2008 and 2010, depending upon which demographic analysis you choose to accept.</p>
<p>Btw, in PR's "Student Body" section, they noted that Smith was the kind of place where you hear words like "hetero-normative patricarchy" in common discussion. It is and I choked the first time I heard the usage "hetero-normative."</p>
<p>"Smith was the kind of place where you hear words like "hetero-normative patricarchy" in common discussion."</p>
<p>LOL - and so true!</p>
<p>I cracked up during the Family Weekend talk with Pres. Christ last fall when someone (apologies if it was anyone here) stood up and asked, with a hint of anger, why the students at Smith were not politically active. About a hundred jaws dropped to the floor. Pres. Christ handled it with aplomb, stating very calmly that, in her experience, Smithies were among the most politically active students in the country. </p>
<p>I still wonder what that mother expected of Smithies, because obviously they were not measuring up to her standards.</p>
<p>The context where heard hetero-normative made me laugh. As related: apparently there was a group read of THE JOY OF SEX (don't ask, don't tell), passing it around a circle, reading in turn. Someone asked, "Isn't this awfully hetero-normative?" </p>
<p>I wish I had a <em>little</em> more context but I don't. It does bring to mind a rather famous science fiction & fantasy story called "The Eye of Argon." (You'll probably find it if you Google.) It is execrably bad. It was not published but some editor had the lapse of judgment to make a copy and circulate it. It sometimes surfaces in a writing workshop where, as an exercise, people go around the circle trying to read it. The reader continues until he/she laughs, at which point the manuscript passes. Some of the readings are astonishingly brief. And I do mean <em>astonishingly</em>, as in half a sentence. </p>
<p>I once knew someone who could read two pages without cracking up. Problem was, he was a pretty poor writer himself and tone deaf to numerous issues in the manuscript. But I digress.</p>
<p>X-posted. Seriously, I'd rather see the admissions rate at around 40 percent, an indicator of an increased number of apps and getting the admissions rate under the 50 percent mark that seems to mark "selective" in many people's minds. Of course, Smith and the other womens colleges are dealing with only half the application pool to begin with but that connection is not often made.</p>
<p>There is a hilarious book of short fiction out by Jack Pendarvis called The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure which makes fun of bad fiction writing. Every aspiring writer should read it -- and then learn what is so funny about it. :-)</p>