The Selectivity Myth: Most Colleges LESS Selective, Not More

<p>Did you enjoy your rant, GoalieDad ? I’m glad.
Colleges and universities have changed in character rapidly over the past 100 years. It used to be that engineering, law and medicine were the only vocations that had intruded into the hallowed grounds of intellectual inquiry, and chemistry was on probation. Now Nursing is called a ‘hard science’ (Circa my visit to U-Mass Amherst last month), and the U of Alabama offers Home Economics degrees.</p>

<p>You of all people should realize that colleges are businesses, and their version of good word of mouth advertising is degree completion. If SAT’s have become the centerpiece of admission decisions, it is because their cost, efficiency, and predictive power in finding students who finish degrees is superior to alternatives. It isn’t a conspiracy – it’s business.</p>

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Yes, indeed I enjoyed my rant. Thank you.
Not sure why you are delving into the content of intellectual discourse. Not something I brought up. I was ranting about the process of intellectual discovery in higher education not the subjects. </p>

<p>And while you criticize nursing as a “hard science”, the study of medical care delivery is a legitimate intellectual subject, nursing just being one of the many subject areas within that realm. Laugh as you may, understanding the delivery of personalized care and observation (the nature of nursing work) is legitimate. </p>

<p>Although much of nursing school work is teaching the mechanics of how to administer modern medicine under the guidance of MDs, a great deal of creating better nursing is dealing with the human issues (both provider and patient) that come into play in the nursing profession. A good nursing school will also guide their students to understand their role in the whole healthcare deliver system including how to improve their profession. It can be a fufilling intellectual persuit, not just job training. The fact that U-Mass Amherst calls it a hard science is irrelevant. That is just marketing talking.</p>

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<p>I guess that has changed since my times at Cal. Back in the day, Berkeley wasn’t particularly concerned with their 4-year graduation rates. The running joke my friends and I had with Stanford friends was that if you wanted a guaranteed degree, go to Stanford, where you needed a pulse to get a gentlemans C once admitted. You actually had to work to get that C at Cal. I knew several people who didn’t make it at Cal among my peer group. Can’t say the same for the group of friends I had at Stanford. All of them got their degrees.</p>

<p>Point here is that schools can make it as hard or as easy to get a degree as they want. If the schools are all about pumping out diplomas, they can certainly make it darn hard to fail, regardless of their entering SAT score.</p>

<p>I can’t say that the same attitude about competitivness is true today at either school. </p>

<p>And I’ll agree that if you give me a bunch of students with perfect SAT scores, it is pretty hard to turn them into blithering idiots in 4 years (unless you party too much).</p>

<p>But it takes a really good school to pick out the students with mediocre credentials, but excellent analytical and communications skills and create successes out of them. </p>

<p>And I’ll bet on that second group to be more successful in the long run. </p>

<p>Look at countries where admissions is all about test scores. You don’t see the great discoveries coming from them, nor do you see the great innovators of industry on their alumni lists. If these rocket scientists with great test scores are so great, why aren’t they dominating? </p>

<p>I’ll admit, these countries universities do a great job of turning out a consistent, predictable product (BTW, production management was my specialty). </p>

<p>Getting back to the tomato analogy, I’ve bought some nice looking grocery store tomatos, perfectly shaped, nice color, and without a blemish. Taste? You can’t measure that until you’ve can’t get a refund. </p>

<p>Let me go to a local farm stand where I know the soil is good, the farmer chooses a variety of plant that yields a better internal chemistry for his growing conditions and I’ll cut out the occasasional blemish and settle for a slice that isn’t round. However, since I’ve been able to thoroughly investigate the product’s development before buying it, I’m much more likely to enjoy the taste.</p>

<p>Eating is not a business, but something to nourish the body and soul. We shouldn’t make that mistake with education. It is about personal and community development and nourishes our culture and its ability to grow, not just manufacturing a profit.</p>

<p>I’m sorry, I forgot to push my right wing agenda.</p>

<p>What was the methodology used? When are we just going to stop paying attention to pronouncements made by economists? Does anyone really believe that economics is a “science”. I know that Nobel prizes are given out for this stuff, but that doesn’t make it a science. When was the last time an economist predicted anything with even half the accuracy of a basic high school physics lab experiment?</p>

<p>Thank you goaliedad! I, for one, quite enjoyed your “rant” and agree with it. College Admissions in this country has become a racket.</p>

<p>goaliedad, to add to your point: Many of those shiney “packaged” tomoatoes are arriving with deep psychological injuries. It seems that all of that packaging hurts/■■■■■■■/distorts proper growth.</p>

<p>To personalize the packaging concept just a bit. My DD just wrote a 150 word essay about her love of babysitting. She’s been babysitting/tutoring two neighborhood kids every Sunday for 3 years. She teaches them Spanish and in her essay, expressed her pride when she realized that they, in fact, now understand spoken Spanish. When I first read her essay, I thought, “BABYSITTING?!!!” It’s not chic enough. It’s an old brown paper bag package, whereas everyone has tinsel and razzle-dazzle activities. But then I stepped back. DD is 2nd in her competitive class. She’s happy. She’s well-adjusted. If the schools she’s applying to can’t appreciate a lack of packaging, then she’ll be happy and well adjusted elsewhere. And she’s a real go-getter.</p>

<p>Oxford University’s admissions process is still conducted much like the description posted by Goaliedad. Interim grades are irrelevant. Year end subject matter tests are very relevant. There is a new trend toward a standardized test. But the interview is still crucial.</p>

<p>Mythinks I might be in love with goaliedad. You know, in a “Non-creeperlike” way…from afar. It would never work though…I’m VERY right wing.</p>

<p>I thought of Oxford’s admissions process as well. However, Oxford has been under fire for quite a while since an overwhelming percentage of its admissions come from private(“for pay”) schools. Ultimately, the aristocracy is over-represented at Oxford. “The History Boys” demonstrates the preparation/grooming these kids receive for Oxford admittance.</p>

<p>“Not sure why you are delving into the content of intellectual discourse. Not something I brought up. I was ranting about the process of intellectual discovery in higher education not the subjects.”</p>

<p>I am pointing out University content at the BA/Bsc level, which is for 95% of students advanced vocational studies. A fraction of the remaining 5% continue on to PhD and post-doc, where your desire for intellectual discovery often resides. Freshman admissions filters, outside of say Reed College and St. John’s in Santa Fe are not asking, let alone answering, your questions.</p>

<p>“And while you criticize nursing as a “hard science”, the study of medical care delivery is a legitimate intellectual subject, nursing just being one of the many subject areas within that realm. Laugh as you may, understanding the delivery of personalized care and observation (the nature of nursing work) is legitimate.”
How about babysitting ?</p>

<p>Make up your mind. Is the US the mother of creative invention in the world, or is the US failing due to it’s reliance on standardized testing ? My opinion is that standardized testing is fine for vocational training, and a fraction of people – poorly defined at the beginning of college no matter how we try to find them – will pursue creative thinking in graduate school. The vast majority of these latter people will be foreigners. The US used to be able to rely on immigration to stay at the top of invention, but sadly that is not the case anymore.</p>

<p>Let me tell you an anecdote of chemistry, that I know from home: my son is in HS, but takes courses in upper level maths and chemistry at our local University in a dual credit arrangement. His chemistry Prof, as is typical in the sciences in US universities, identifies students in the classes he teaches as people he would like to mentor, and offers them positions in his research lab. It is apprenticeship for wannabee academics; or at least students who want more than vocational training. If my son decides to join this group, he will be US native student #3; the remainder – and all the post-docs – are visiting foreigners. Welcome to the real world of academics in US colleges.</p>

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<p>I second that. You write very well, goaliedad and college admissions has become a racket. Certainly there are problems with the standardized tests which is why they shouldn’t be the only factor determining admission. Interviews are subjective especially when not all applicants are interviewed by the same person, so again they should just be one component of the admissions decision.</p>

<p>The college admissions has become a racket, at least that is how I feel now after going through the process the last year with my daughter. She is an overachiever, by choice, and her results should have been better. That experience left a bad taste in my mouth and with my son entering high school my attitude is he needs to be himself first. He needs to keep up his grades and stay out of trouble but beyond that any extra activities need to be because he wants to do them, not because they might help him get into a college. When the time comes, we’ll find some place for him to go that is a good match for him.</p>

<p>One interesting data point regarding SAT scores and student creative ability can be seen in this table: [REED</a> COLLEGE PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]REED”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)
which looks at ‘PhD productivity’; that is, the fraction of students completing a bachelor’s in each college’s major who go on to complete PhD.</p>

<p>Feel free to check out their SAT scores; even more fun can be had by looking at the 25th percentile rankings for HM, Cal-Tech, and Amherst.</p>

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<p>Perhaps the content of a BS in Business at Cal has changed since I was there, but for the most part my classes were not how to run accounting software. I particularly enjoyed my cost accounting class where I remember writing about the use of inventory costing strategies in strategic decision making. Hardly the daily assignment of your everyday CPA. </p>

<p>I had professors (once I got beyond the grad students in the low level classes) who got us to think about the theories of a subject and relate it to other disciplines and how making decisions on narrow testing usually results in being highly accurate about something that is totally irrelevant.</p>

<p>And if today’s professors are teaching how to use the latest accounting software and nothing else, they do so because they’ve got input (students) who are all about function (using the software in that $60K/year job awaiting them) and not about intellectual understanding. They are gaming the undergraduate system, just like they gamed the SAT to get into that system. </p>

<p>So if you are arguing that the SAT test is the best way to filter for these trained (but not necessarily educated) students, I’ll grant you that.</p>

<p>But I thought the idea of selective schools (I hate the term) was about schools that actually engage the student in real learning, of building logical structures and comparing how they are used across disciplines. You seem to insist that it only happens in graduate work and is full of foreign students.</p>

<p>The fact that you are seeing students from these foreign countries where school admission is even more highly test driven than US schools should tell you something is seriously lacking in their institutions. And to answer one of your questions it isn’t either or with the mother of creative invention and failure due to emphasis on standardized testing. Our institutions are still a long way ahead of the rest of the world in creating basic academic knowledge. But the more we emulate the rest of the world and its test-taking filtering, the more we lose of that advantage.</p>

<p>If you are ready to write off undergraduate education as vocational training, be prepared to become like the rest of the world. You may like it. A place where the guy knowing the most facts is the one who does the research. Personally, I think they guy who asks the best questions, not knowing the facts will discover far more. It is amazing how much known facts get in the way of real learning.</p>

<p>Personally, I think any chance an undergraduate gets where his/her view of the structure of the world is challenged is a learning opportunity and is far more valuable than any training s/he may get. The more we squeeze it out of education at higher and higher levels, the less of it we will have at the top.</p>

<p>While I got a great education at Berkeley, I learned far more outside of the classroom than inside, particularly because the inmates ran the asylum.</p>

<p>And as to your comment about babysitting, yes, child care delivery is a valid academic subject. I don’t know about how you were raised, but the mechanisms a society employs to nurture its offspring is very important to the psychological and sociological development of future generations. While those couple of hours a week spent with a stranger may seem inconsequential to you as a parent, who delivers the care (extended family, neighbors, or paid professionals) and how/where it is delivered (home/familiar place/clinical environment) can have an impact on how children develop.</p>

<p>So many people pick on teachers as overpaid babysitters, but the fact that we are training (as opposed to educating) teachers is a subject that everyone agrees is an academically important function of universities. So why not the babysitter?</p>

<p>Personally, I think we spend too much time training our kids and not enough time educating them (teaching critical thinking) at all levels. I just happen to be picking on undergraduate education right now because that is the topic in this thread.</p>

<p>“that is, the fraction of students completing a bachelor’s in each college’s major who go on to complete PhD.”</p>

<p>A minor correction: The data show future PhD production in specific fields as a percentage of all graduates of the listed undergrad schools, rather than by specific major (not that it would likely make much difference).</p>

<p>Are you sure, vossron ?</p>

<p>“But I thought the idea of selective schools (I hate the term) was about schools that actually engage the student in real learning, of building logical structures and comparing how they are used across disciplines.”</p>

<p>At singular places like Reed or St. John’s, yes. For the most part everywhere else, no. You should also note that neither St. John’s or Reed teach basket weaving, babysitting, nursing, or business.</p>

<p>^^ Reasonably so:

[nsf.gov</a> - SRS Baccalaureate Origins of S&E Doctorate Recipients - US National Science Foundation (NSF)](<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/]nsf.gov”>Archive Goodbye | NCSES | NSF)</p>

<p>Nowhere in any HEDS discussion have I ever seen undergraduate majors mentioned. The original purpose was to highlight the institutions, and not specifically their majors.</p>

<p>“note that neither St. John’s or Reed teach basket weaving”</p>

<p>A minor correction: Since 1980 Reed has offered an underwater basket weaving class during Paideia, its mid-winter between-semester festival of learning that offers informal, non-credit courses. ;)</p>

<p>[Underwater</a> basket weaving - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving]Underwater”>Underwater basket weaving - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>Thanks for the link vossron, although I don’t think your conclusion is justified based only on this article, which is a summary article that may or may not discuss the entire data set. It seems a bit odd that a study designed to normalize student body size would do so for the college, and not for the department. Not impossible of course, if data collection went only so far, just inconsistent.</p>

<p>I am also not sure that Reed’s table is drawn only from this data set – whatever it may be. They certainly know how many PhD’s by department they are producing.</p>

<p>Cheers, vossron :-)</p>

<p>I pretty much agree with Goaliedad. One thing more about studying at an Ivory tower, however is that it may not be what it is cracked up to be. I went to a very “selective” college but not HYPSM, and found it extremely difficult to engage in any real intellectual discussion as an undergrad. I found a couple of profs who if you sought them out were responsive, and a bit interested. As a whole, it was always my feeling that if I had dropped off the face of the earth no one would have noticed. Now from all reports of my friends, I did not believe the same was the case at Yale, but alas, I was not accepted there. It sounded more like someone was available for the things I wanted but did not get.<br>
I contrast this with my grad school experiences: JD/MBA, taken at another place as a joint degree. There my profs knew me, and actually took an interest. I worked closely with a number of profs on articles, a book, and speaking presentations. I got a great deal of input on my student law review article. If I had vanished, I am sure that someone would have noticed. At least I finally was in a community of scholars.</p>