<p>Admissions</a> Utilizes New Tactics : The Emory Wheel</p>
<p>My two cents - It's crazy that a quarter of students here had > 3.98 in high school. Grade inflation...</p>
<p>I hope those students were chosen for more reasons than just GPA.</p>
<p>Well, they had to have right? The SATs of the admitted students is actually slightly lower than previous years. Also, would it really be surprising if they just began to choose numbers, look at our friend in Nashville. Those numbers are absolutely ridiculous (however, again, it’s one of those schools, where if you went to, you wouldn’t be able to see a noticeable difference. Stats. say one thing, environment another). However, I suspect that isn’t the direction we are going in necessarily. If so, I think they would be employing a similar admissions scheme to places like that, where you admit extremely high, enroll lower (but still extremely high because the initial selects were ridiculous) and the stats. would have instead have been higher than usual this year. However, from a stats. standpoint, it appears they are essentially employing the same tactics. </p>
<p>I would rather we do something like this: Try to recruit people like the OP in the ed thread below. I imagine their SAT may not end up ridiculously high, but it’ll be solid (a nice little 13-1400 something), but the credentials/ECs are really good IMO. As one of the “scienceguys” here, it would be really nice if Emory could attract and then ENROLL students with that level of interest in science. That OP will have a greater chance of being what I consider a “good” pre-med student. If you can choose and enroll more people with ECs like that, that display a high degree of passion and aptitude for a field (as opposed to hoop-jumping activities), Emory’s freshman classes would be extremely well-calibrated without having to have a student body with perfect multiple choice test scores. It’s ideal to have this, I think. Seriously, who cares if you only got 13-1400 on a general mc test if you clearly show the potential and desire to make a serious impact in your field of interest in the future? However, to recruit students with that level of passion and pre-developed talent, Emory must make it clear that it has something to offer them. It must market academic programs like undergraduate fellowships, BA/MA, BS/MS programs, etc heavily to make it clear that several departments are very strong and serious academically, perhaps more so than competitor’s programs. </p>
<p>For example, I found that the history program was unusually strong for undergrads. here. It’s so robust that it offers research awards and grants that can total much more than at similarly ranked schools. One such award for research abroad said that awards could actually reach up to 10k! Political Science, Sociology, and Chemistry were also more robust than many near peers in terms of UG oppurtunities (course offerings are usually similar, it’s just that there are usually more robust awards and many more or better fellowships/ study abroad opps. specifically associated with the depts). Again, Emory really needs to learn how to sell its academic strengths (if you can’t compete on social environment because “everyone wants D-1”, then flux your academic muscles to at least attract the best students to the fields that are very strong. The last thing you want is for these depts to waste resources maintaining such opps. when students don’t qualify or lack the passion to pursue them. An annoying example is how the bio dept. has discontinued its BS/MS program. Makes sense, if most of the bio majors weren’t of high enough caliber or passion to consider such an option…I know a student working toward getting it back luckily), especially those that are non-health field related (also, instead selling “health”, just sell the science programs. It’s more broad and will attract more types of students). It’s not good enough to just sit around and assume that people know what we excel in outside of the pre-professions and expect them to apply or express interest.</p>