<p>I just wanted to jump in and say that I was also in the audience for the Provost’s speech. It was terrible. I’m really surprised that he was the keynote speaker. </p>
<p>My husband and I just figured he had to do the speech because the president is on Sabbatical. We sort of wrote it off. </p>
<p>The rest of the programs were amazing though. The students presenting/speaking were especially good. My son happily turned down Princeton to accept his spot at Stanford.</p>
<p>To those in a position of making an important life decision, achieving a reasonably accurate “peak under the hood” is most definitely not idle conversation. There were many detailed discussions that could have been undertaken, but my sense has been any discussion about Stanford that did not primarily pay homage to its ranking was taboo for several vocal participants here and did undermine a potential for this vehicle to benefit all concerned.</p>
<p>I will continue to conclude that prepared remarks in an august location as a keynote address by the provost with the emphasis he provided does represent the administration’s position. I don’t grasp how you could view this otherwise. </p>
<p>Your pejorative restatement of my comments made previously provide an apt illustration of why many responses to you were necessary:</p>
<p>You said above…"It’s hard to take you seriously when your reasons for believing what you do include such illustrative experiences like “the campus was boring when I briefly visited over the summer” and “look at the websites! USC’s is better.”</p>
<p>What I said was the time (280 hours) I spent on campus over the summers raised concerns and the need and desire to spend time during the school year which I had the opportunity to do as did my daughter.</p>
<p>With regard to the websites my comment was that the websites paralleled my experience with the programs. However, it is of interest in itself to view various department representation across universities. For those who do not have the opportunity to personally visit the departments, talk to administrators, students, attend classes, lectures or colloquia, the websites can contain a relative wealth of information obtained with minimal time or effort. </p>
<p>While we obviously have different perspectives and likely different values, like you, i do not want mine to be misstated or misunderstood. The urgency and stakes for future students trying to establish their perceptions and reality are too high to not provide them accurate, unambiguous positions which are not distorted or marginalized to allow them to reach their own reasoned conclusions.</p>
<p>Wow–taking a break from my writing marathon, and I’m incredulous to discover that this dopey thread is still alive. I have no interest whatsoever in continuing the underlying topic, having said all there is to say about that, but I’ll add a couple of quick comments:</p>
<p>(1) Prof. Etchemendy, who filled in for Pres. Hennessy at the Admit Weekend address, is an absolutely brilliant mathematical and semantic logician–I’m thinking about approaching him to see if he might serve as my advisor, but I’m going to wait until Hennessy is back to ask. I didn’t hear his talk, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more of a “just the facts” kind of thing than Hennessy usually gives, given Etchemendy’s steel-trap mind. He’a probably not as entertaining, nor quite as charismatic, at the podium as Hennessy can be, but Provosts fill in for Presidents on sabbatical; that’s part of their interim job. I’ve never once otherwise heard, or even heard of, any faculty or admins. here touting Stanford’s rankings, in my entire time on campus. (Nor have I ever once heard anyone talking about his gpa, or his SAT scores, or that kind of thing. As I have mentioned previously, people here are generally self-confident and secure, and that was very magnetic to me during my deliberations.)</p>
<p>(2) Welcome to the Farm, soomoo’s son!</p>
<p>And now, back to my remaining paper.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Oh yes, this thread will affect the lives of hundreds - no, thousands - of students for decades to come. You are providing a public service here! How dare we taint the perception of your assertions with facts, evidence - indeed reality? Preposterous!</p>
<p>You keep charging that I or others care so much about rankings, so I looked over my posts in this thread. Out of the 26 of my posts, I presented rankings exactly twice: once, when you were initially asking about the strength of Stanford humanities and social sciences (at the time, you seemed to be under the impression that Stanford’s strength was solely in STEM fields), and once again, when you recently started asserting that USC was superior to Stanford in humanities and communication (when in reality, nearly everyone considers Stanford to be superior in both). Two other times I mentioned rankings - once, to explain that I think undergraduate rankings are absurd and that subject rankings make more sense (although I did not present any), and again, to present you with the critical article from the past Stanford president. Somehow, based on that, you concluded that I must be obsessed with rankings.</p>
<p>Don’t forget that most of our debate focused on capital growth, financial resources, and the integration of undergraduate and graduate education. Don’t forget that you were the first one to levy a personal attack (asserting that I must be hired by Stanford). Don’t forget that when I nicely asked you to point out what it is that you disagree with, and to provide evidence, you bowed out and did not respond. By the way, I’m still interested:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I remembered reading Etchemendy mention the THE rankings in recent Faculty Senate minutes. Straight from the horse’s mouth (emphasis mine):</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>He jokes about the rankings (“I know you feel that we don’t love you” - hahaha). I’m willing to bet these were the rankings he mentioned. And it is a small bit to be proud of - Stanford’s the only university in the world to have made it in the top 5 in all broad disciplines. If this were USC’s accomplishment - hell, if USC made it into the top 20 in any of them - it’d be bellowing it from the rooftops (though they still constantly trumpet the fact that they made it into the top 25 in US News). Apparently, in docfreedaddy’s book, when one Stanford administrator mentions this accomplishment, Stanford should be shamed for it. When USC does it, oh it’s because something “exciting and inspiring and unique” is happening at USC. ;)</p>
<p>I’d give Etchemendy a break right now for his terrible speech: his job as provost is as time-consuming as the president’s (if not more so - look at Stanford’s org chart, the provost manages tons of units), they just finished a $6.2 billion campaign in which the provost is an important fundraiser, and he’s taking on the duties of both president and provost right now while Hennessy is relaxing after the exhausting campaign (which Etchemendy can’t do, as much as I’m sure he’d love to). I feel kinda sorry for him right now - the poor guy can’t get a break. One thing’s for sure: he’s going to make a fantastic president when Hennessy steps down.</p>
<p>It is not even close to true that ‘nearly everyone’ (whoever nearly everyone may be) considers Stanford superior in communications. Here is one meaningless ranking that rates USC’s Annenberg school #5, with Stanford outside the top 10: <a href=“http://annenberg.usc.edu/News%20and%20Events/News/~/media/PDFs/newspro.ashx[/url]”>http://annenberg.usc.edu/News%20and%20Events/News/~/media/PDFs/newspro.ashx</a></p>