<p>"believe it or not, there are kids whose parents are not wealthy, not even middle class, who are extremely bright and intelligent and DESERVING of the best education available."</p>
<hr>
<p>I could go on and on about how offensive I take comments as to how accepting "low-income" students is a degradation of any sort to Amherst but I'll just second zspot9..... equating poverty with intellectual aptitude is as absurd as an orangutan with sun screen eating escargot..... yeah pretty absurd.</p>
<p>And the horrors - accepting students whose SATs may be <em>gasp</em> 1360! The HORRORS! Perhaps even kids who went to **** schools and could only afford to take the test once, without the benefit of tutors and prep books and an educated background! Amherst would certainly be lowering its standards there!</p>
<p>"And the horrors - accepting students whose SATs may be <em>gasp</em> 1360! The HORRORS! Perhaps even kids who went to **** schools and could only afford to take the test once, without the benefit of tutors and prep books and an educated background! Amherst would certainly be lowering its standards there!"</p>
<p>SAT does not require you to understand difficult materials. It is a test of fairly simple math and English usage with a slight trick to it. It is basically a IQ test. I don't care where you went to school, by the end of high school you should know the material if you were a serious student.</p>
<p>And, yes, it can be prepped, and coached, etc. But it is also quite easy to prep for it without much help or money. There should be no excuse for the low scores if you were a serious student.</p>
<p>Quite frankly, dedankin, you have misconstrued my words. When my D was rejected at her first choice school, we had those same feelings, and that is what I was saying. Apparently, you are so bitter that you can't even accept acknowledgment and support of your feelings. As to whether or not you are a wonderful person, from what I infer here, you have wonderful stats, and are bright, and a hard worker. What isn't so wonderful about that? I happen to prize those qualities. But yes, I guess I was wrong - I didn't know you.
Rest assured, that this, too, shall pass. D is very happy where she is - something I wouldn't have bet on at the time. And I now know that this is where she was meant to be. And there is someplace that you are meant to be, and you will also be very happy there. Good luck!</p>
<p>"believe it or not, there are kids whose parents are not wealthy, not even middle class, who are extremely bright and intelligent and DESERVING of the best education available."</p>
<p>I agree with you 100%.
I guess what I am trying to say is that lowering the standard is not the answer. An admission to elite school like Amherst should be based solely on merit of the student, be it an academic one or personal qualities.</p>
<p>"SAT does not require you to understand difficult materials. It is a test of fairly simple math and English usage with a slight trick to it. It is basically a IQ test. I don't care where you went to school, by the end of high school you should know the material if you were a serious student.</p>
<p>And, yes, it can be prepped, and coached, etc. But it is also quite easy to prep for it without much help or money. There should be no excuse for the low scores if you were a serious student."</p>
<p>How do you account for the strong correlation between wealth, whiteness, maleness, and high SAT scores?</p>
<p>andystar, I'm assuming you don't attend Amherst, correct me if I am wrong. Please do not make any statements about how admission at Amherst "should" be. As a student there, I like that it isn't entirely white and Asian wealthy Northeasterners and Californians, and I think most students admit that it makes for a far richer academic and social experience. The admissions officers know what they are doing, and I like the direction they're moving towards. If you don't dig it, apply elsewhere.</p>
<p>It is not about accepting low-income students. It is about drop a significant academic standard and accept obviously unqualified students in order to meet their quota of receiving "low-income minority." I know they accepted an URM student from a near-by inner-city school with a SAT less than 1500. This inner city school is an underperfoming school in Massachusetts and one of the worst high schools in the city. Amherst should know very well what kinds of quality they are getting and how much likely these students are not going to succeed. There are many brilliant and qualified low-income students out there, but a minority from a poor inner-city school fits conviniently the data they are looking for. But this is not just Amherst, isn't it most of the elict schools take students like this just to let their schools look "affirmative?" The scary thing is that president Marx actually set the goal to get more of these kinds of students. Amherst is not going to be Amherst very soon.</p>
<p>Anecdotes are meaningless; people very rarely know every aspect of other students' applicants, even their standardized test scores. They don't accept any "unqualified" applicants, though perhaps they define "qualified" differently than you do - and I am very glad that they do! </p>
<p>Black students at Amherst have one of the highest graduation rates in the country (first a few years ago, now second only to Harvard). Obviously they have what it takes to succeed!</p>
<p>I also know many low-income, URM kids who have been rejected by Amherst, many of them high-achieving. Don't act as though you know everything that goes on behind the admissions office doors.</p>
<p>"As a student there, I like that it isn't entirely white and Asian wealthy Northeasterners and Californians, and I think most students admit that it makes for a far richer academic and social experience."</p>
<p>There is no disagreement here.</p>
<p>However, the method proposed to achieve this is wrong.</p>
<p>It is NOT about lowering standards. You have to read beyond the somewhat sensationalist Business Week article to find the true spirit of Marx's initiative.</p>
<p>I know it's pretty laborious to go through all the links and articles, but I'll highlight the main points.</p>
<p>From President Marx's response to the Business Week article - (<a href="http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/%7Eastudent/2005-2006/issue18/news/02.html%5B/url%5D">http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~astudent/2005-2006/issue18/news/02.html</a>)
"Marx began by refuting fallacies in the BusinessWeek article, which claimed that Amherst was saving 25 percent of its slots to students qualified for a Pell Grant and expand overall admissions by 120 students for low-income students. 'The article was the first time I heard of such a thing,' assured Marx. 'Journalism does sensationalize. The piece of the article I found most unfortunate [was that] it thought it fair to caricature students–to imply that legacies, athletes or minorities don’t meet the high standards of the College. Our athletes and our legacy students meet very high academic standards to compete for places here and make significant contributions to the learning experience at Amherst. We value all our students, and do not take kindly to the disparagement implied by the article.'"</p>
<p>From the report filed by the Committee on Academice Priorities; The Committee on Academic Priorities is charged by the President after consultation with the Committee of Six to deliberate with the campus community to develop proposals to meet the academic needs of the College over the next decade and beyond. - (<a href="http://www.amherst.edu/%7Ecap/report2006/2.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.amherst.edu/~cap/report2006/2.html</a>)
"Time has stood still in one respect, however. While the College has, without fanfare, led higher education in developing and maintaining need-blind admission and full-need financial aid, the socio-economic profile of the student body remains much the same today as it was twenty-five years ago. Though we compare favorably with our peer institutions, we still enroll less than a quarter of our students from below the top quintile of family income. As a result students from households earning up to the US median family income find themselves part of a small economic minority at the College. </p>
<p>Amherst’s current socioeconomic imbalance undermines our historic mission and puts artificial constraints on the learning community that we form here. Consistent with the College's charter to educate bright, indigent young men, Amherst should aspire to strengthen our leadership position among selective private colleges and universities in admitting talented low-income students (e.g., those eligible for Pell grants).Recent initiatives by the Office of Admission suggest that this portion of the applicant pool can be expanded while maintaining the College’s high academic standards, a finding that we hope will be validated by further cycles of admission. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>We recommend that talented students from less affluent backgrounds be more vigorously recruited and that the Trustees seek funds to meet the additional aid burden.</p></li>
<li><p>We recommend that the Trustees consider significant reductions in the loan burden of all our students, as has been done for our highest-need students, in particular to avoid the limit that loans may impose on future career aspirations. </p></li>
<li><p>We recommend that the proportion of non-US students admitted be increased from about 6 to about 8 percent. </p></li>
<li><p>We recommend that admission for non-US students be made need-blind.</p></li>
<li><p>We recommend that entering classes be increased by between 15 and 25 students. "</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That is from the actual text of the written recommendations made by the CAP. Note the committal to both increasing the social mobility of the school while maintaining the high academic standards which identify the school.</p>
<p>You can quibble based on specific kids you think should or should not have been accepted. But the large and small of it is, the Admissions Office admits the best and the brightest based on an overlapping set of criteria, many of which are objective. They try to admit only the best and the brightest, and even what little quarter is given for URMs is negligible. Even the outliers in the low end of the admitted spectrum (mainly athletes) score in the 1300s on the SAT. There simply is no such thing as an unqualified Amherst student, anomalous anecdotal examples aside.</p>
<p>"It is not about accepting low-income students. It is about drop a significant academic standard and accept obviously unqualified students in order to meet their quota of receiving "low-income minority."</p>
<p>The word "quota" in above sentence is very disturbing for some reason.</p>
<p>Disturbing and blatantly false, however. </p>
<p>Their methods are not wrong. They are a private college and may employ whatever methods they see fit to construct a class which best fits their institutional goals. If you don't like it, don't apply.</p>
<p>refer to my previous post...inform yourself</p>
<p>"If you don't like it, don't apply."</p>
<p>I hope it was as simple as that.
Unfortunately, I have already made $200,000 investment in future prestige of Amherst.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Even the outliers in the low end of the admitted spectrum (mainly athletes) score in the 1300s on the SAT. There simply is no such thing as an unqualified Amherst student, anomalous anecdotal examples aside.
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<p>According to the common data set, there are quite a few Amherst students with subpar scores on the SAT (less than 600 on either the CR or the M test) or the Act (less than 24). The data indicates that something like 30 first years did poorly on one test or the other. . .</p>
<p>As is the case at *every school in the nation<a href="possibly%20excepting%20Caltech?">/i</a>. </p>
<p>andystar, I suggest you transfer if you are so opposed to sharing a school with minorities who may even have sub-1400 scores! You knew about Amherst's educational mission, nobody forced you either to apply or to attend.</p>
<p>Edit: <a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/factsandfigures.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/factsandfigures.html</a> They're rare, but it happens all over. And those students likely have a lot to contribute to the academic environment, even if they may not have done as well on one test as you did. Perhaps you could learn something from them.</p>
<p>I think that, now that Marilee Jones stepped down, people need a new school to pick on. ;)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Edit: <a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/...ndfigures.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.brown.edu/Administration/...ndfigures.html</a> They're rare, but it happens all over. And those students likely have a lot to contribute to the academic environment, even if they may not have done as well on one test as you did. Perhaps you could learn something from them.
[/quote]
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<p>I was just responding to the specious claim by another poster that everyone at Amherst has impeccable SAT credentials. It's never been true so there would not be anything inconsistent with Amherst admitting high-achieving low-income kids, some of whom will inevitably have subpar SATs.</p>