In the meantime, Looking back at this: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Emory&s=all&id=139658#enrolmt
The 6 year graduation rates are…interesting. African Americans in the lead? That number should be very sensitive to change as well because there are less of them than say…whites or Asians. Wonder if it means anything at all or if it is some artifact.
@bernie12 You seem to know and care a lot about Emory. What do you think about President Wagner and his resignation? Do you think the president of the university plays an important role? Just wanted to hear your thoughts about all this and the direction you think Emory is headed!
@thecoolboy1234 I feel as if people such as Dr. Sterk (Provost), Pamela Scully, and other people such as Dean Nair over campus life can likely have more influence than the university president as they are more “on the ground” folks who are actually trying to implement things as I type. With that said, I feel as if Wagner had sort of Whitney Houston career lol. Started out amazing and then kind of crashed into mediocrity (or just plain bad), but it really isn’t all his fault. He was a “build, build, build” president so the campus is pretty swanky and facilities are nice and the research enterprise had an upward trajectory for a while, but academically, Emory definitely started to decline after the recession and its bounce back lagged far behind the recovery of the endowment (which suggests the inefficient allocations of monies). Before the recession, the curriculum, especially in things such as the sciences looked far more robust with things such as honors courses and awesome special topics electives. In fact, it looked more like what you would see currently at super elite schools such as Chicago. Furthermore, offerings for super talented freshmen was just much higher (as it is at super elite private schools). Even for a while after the recession, there were some interesting curriculum options in those (like the Program in Citizenship and Democracy was actually a thing and I took a course from one of the visiting professors from ND and it was amazing though he was rigorous for a history professor. Fortunately it has been restored in the form of the Voluntary Core, but I don’t think the “special topics taught by great visiting scholars” component has returned). After the recession, that is when it started looking “less distinctive” so to speak and we looked more like the standard level elite schools.
I feel as a person like Chase was more “hands on” when it came to things such as the quality of the college’s (or university as a whole. He is the one who kind of oversaw the Theology School achieving prominence) programs whereas Wagner seemed more like a business man and it almost appeared as if the College was an afterthought (It obviously took a HUGE hit after the recession, hence what I described above and the department closures and realignments). I hope they choose some that are more hands on, especially with respect to the College. It seems more successful and academically inclined schools (or those who improved dramatically) had their whole leadership behind the improvements and kept a closer eye on it. Right now, it looks like Foreman handles everything (and his decisions make me wonder if he can use extra help sometimes). Perhaps we also need someone else with a clearer and bolder vision to make sure that positive change actually happens in as many facets as possible.
But as of now…with regards to undergraduates, it appears there are positive things happening that suggest that administrators are trying to enhance the intellectual climate dramatically for example. This is why you see a serious QEP (Nature of Evidence-but implementation of this needs work. To make it work, they need events and programs that seek to change the mindset and culture of incoming freshmen. If you can make them care about things like inquiry or curiosity or feel as if that is part of the university ethos, then it won’t work. For example, covering unexciting topics such as “is the earth flat?” during an “evidence townhall” is not going to garner excitement. You have to cover topics that push the buttons of students and make them care and want to carry out a conversation and they must have societal significance. That could have gone deeper and covered issues of how religion and politics influence education or knowledge attainment. They could have chose something touchy such as social justice given all the things happening with regard to it) where most schools just wouldn’t bother (they would choose a QEP with vague language that basically covers what they already do; this way, no new programs need be implemented as a result). There are also things such as: http://college.emory.edu/home/administration/policy/faculty_reports.html (see the one about academic engagement). ILA is now stepping in to play a role as well…http://ila.emory.edu/home/IDEAS/index.html .
So there is more of a silent revolution going on with regard to that (though I would say that the intellectual climate at Emory is perhaps stronger than some “near peers” despite it being pretty pre-professional. When you’re a D-3 school with a skeleton functioning as a de facto primary mascot, you’re going to have a good share of cerebral folks, pre-prof. or not. Current efforts appear to be attempting to organize and unleash all of that energy. All the departmental fellowships and generous internal scholarships/fellowships also incentivize students wanting to achieve academic excellence in a way that extends far beyond grades). There is also the weird increase in interest of undergraduate entrepreneurial endeavors (Emory is starting to look like a non-Tech version of Stanford with all of this momentum. To have hack-a-thons larger than peer schools with sizable engineering entities says a lot). My guess is Emory is trying to go kind of in the direction of Hopkins, but maybe with more innovative teaching. Because Emory is very pre-professional (like them), but is trying desperately to enhance the intellectual climate. When you mix the student body type of Emory with a wannabe Chicago"esque" intellectual climate, you honestly get something like Hopkins (which makes sense as Hopkins are similar structure and strengthwise if you took away their engineering entity. Both excel at all things that get students access to health professions and both also excel at things such as languages and political science) which has sort of a pre-professional slant but also has a strong enough intellectual tradition/intensity such that it draws much more students who go on to academia (an area Emory has never been great at even in its academic prime.
Either way, I like where it is going now in terms of UG environment, I would just like to see leadership become VERY aggressive at achieving it and making sure there is much more consistent programmatic ( namely campus life: I think things like the new DUC and any improvements in reslife programs will help tremendously. For example, why have themed freshman halls if events having to do with themes are not well advertised and then receive low attendance, though this may also play into the intellectual climate issue. You must first get students to care about more than living in a nice dorm) and academic excellence across the board. On the university level, eventually messaging about what Emory does and what it is must become more clear (so that PR and marketing can become better to anyone interested in Emory, UG or not…student or not). It must also be more willing to drop money to build institutes and facilities that can bring in more high caliber faculty in the sciences (social sciences and humanities already do an amazing job). You cannot increase reputation in that realm unless you have the infrastructure to support the big time researchers (or those performing riskier more innovative research that may deviate from the whole “health sciences” scheme of things). That may involve cultural change however (especially among faculty-it has been suggested that ultra high caliber researchers, like Nobel level, are not recruited to Emory in high numbers because it may threaten collegiality and the relatively warm atmosphere…they should let this prospect go if they want to advance and want Emory to have higher impact).
@bernie12 Oh man that was a wealth of information that I am so glad to have read. Although I go to Emory its still hard to know the background scene involving administration and the departments aside from maybe what I hear from professors and articles here and there.
I’m not sure what your profession is but man if Emory had people like you running the show I feel like Emory would be pointed to a much better situation. Thank you for your knowledge and man I really did learn alot and I’m glad to hear that Emory is moving in what you deem in a positive direction.
There were two things that always felt strange to me(stuff that you touched upon a little bit on your comment) with Emory having $7 billion+ in endowment how exactly did Emory suffer from the recession? Although I’m sure there was less donations being made I’m still surprised that Emory took a big hit back in 2008 (I’m guessing around then). Also do you think the lack of undergraduate focus is because president Wagner was so focused on Emory healthcare and all that? While I do deem that Emory should focus more on its undergraduate studies I have to concede that Emory healthcare and hospital to make an important part of Emory as a whole.
Also, this may be a harder one too answer and I have seen you talk about it, why is Emory’s prestige deemed so lowly compared to its peer institutions? I come from California and although I personally love the experience and don’t care what other people say it seems that in lay man’s prestige Emory is rather lacking compared to schools such as UC Berkeley, Vanderbilt, and Wash U. Just wanted to hear your thoughts on that.
Once again I really appreciate your time to post these things as not many people have the wealth of knowledge like you do on our beloved university, Emory.
@thecoolboy1234 : Hah, I’m just a wannabe researcher (computational medicinal chemist)/college-level instructor. And honestly, if you dig around enough on Emory’s websites, you will find all sorts of interesting documents. For example, Oxford is currently already doing its strategic planning and working hard on how it can fix many weaknesses (and man are they blunt about issues they are having in their documents) and figure out which direction to go in. Those were a very interesting read (and I’m sure no elite research university would be as detailed and blunt in such documents, because again, they are about their image and reputation. You wouldn’t put out documents admitting you have bigger challenges).
First off-I don’t think lay prestige is particularly lacking vs. Vanderbilt and WashU overall, there are very regional preferences (and patterns coming to things like that) and Emory has come a long way with that. The only thing is that those two appear more popular because of their admissions departments and how they essentially spam students. If Vandy had higher lay prestige for real, that makes more sense because sports marketing gets them more play so to speak, but I don’t think WashU has much of an edge at all. They also don’t perform much better in World rankings so those that matter likely put these schools in the same category which is scary considering that Emory became a research university in 1995…the fact that it is ever mentioned in the same sentence or paragraph shows how quickly Emory obtained relevance. If Emory spammed students or marketed better (though it doesn’t have a medium or reason like D-1 sports), it would attain more “lay prestige”. However, I think Emory should focus some on this but mostly focus on educating students extremely well. That is something lacking at many even elite research 1 universities that Emory at least genuinely tries to do within its constraints, much like the top LAC’s do. Top LAC’s basically educate so well that they become known for what their students go on to do (basically take over the world and dominate academia haha) even if all of them aren’t the first to come up in the lay prestige wars. If Emory isn’t going to recruit a bunch of Nobel Winners or ultra high impact faculty that draws attention, it can at least try to produce them.
As for monetary allocations: Healthcare systems are not uncommon at elite private or public universities. You just have to make sure they don’t suck up all of the money or that fundraising (a problem in Emory’s last campaign was that too little money was set as a goal for the college whereas a ginormous half billion dollar one was set for the medical school) efforts are strong enough to keep the other entities going strong. Emory has traditionally had a lower allocation for its undergraduate entities (especially the largest one, the college) than other peers and still have (which makes it all the more impressive that it is so academically strong. However, I must say that I think Hopkins is the most “efficient” so to speak). Keep in mind that having new courses, departments, etc actually costs money because you often must hire people to facilitate that or in the case of new science courses, often new equipment (either lab or classroom) is involved. A recession (where the endowment of the college gets clobbered) alongside fast increasing enrollments (to recover revenue sources) is no doubt going effect academics at a school not operating on enough. For example, with higher numbers of freshmen, more sections of introductory courses must be added, or they must be made larger. Since Emory is different and airs on the side of smaller section sizes than peers, it goes with more sections meaning that less professors (especially research faculty) will be available to teach advanced courses. This had a huge effect on departments like chemistry which have smaller faculty than say biology or neurosciences. Something tells me, that especially in the sciences, the College wasn’t that used to contributing money to curricular enhancements through its own offices.
They had the Center for Science Education seeking and applying most external grants, so the trouble showed up once funds specifically for those enhancements started to dry up. They fortunately got the one for chemistry, but it was the first in a while and is also CSE’s last (they are closing, literally by tomorrow 
), and to see the impact in its prime, check out all of these curricular projects and notice how most of those courses basically do not exist anymore:http://cse.emory.edu/home/for_students/graduate_students/hhmi/hhmiccurriculum.html . Reading in between the lines, it becomes obvious that they were much more ambitious before the 2010 grant and then that that grant was not very successful (not many of those changes came to life).
Emory also needs to find much more funding for scholarships (or need based aid for middle income folks) just for the sake of enhancing yield (losing people because of differences in aid packets saddens me especially when going against a lower endowment school). They need to yield more than 10% of those up for scholars consideration and maybe that could happen if they offered more full tuition (and perhaps room/board as well) scholarships. Also, I imagine more pleasant surprises for admits such as "hey we didn’t invite you as a scholars finalist but here is some money anyway on top of whatever fin.aid we give)
Emory has traditionally compensated for its higher admit rates and lower SAT scores with higher endowments than its peers (eg Vandy, Rice, Georgetown, and Berkeley usually rank closest), most of which comes from Coca-Cola. If you look at the US News Ranking methodology in detail, you see that the amount of funding available per student holds a significant portion of the score. One can also argue that in such case the endowments aren’t being used “efficiently.” Recently a lot of it has been used for building student dorms. Using it for increasing the number of need and merit-based scholarships or opening departments in high demand fields such as engineering would probably increase the number of applicants much more.
As mentioned before the higher admit rate is probably due to less PR and marketing and lack of D1 sports. In fact President Wagner specifically mentioned the former reason a few years ago during a Q&A session with students.
Every University’s endowments got hit during the recession in 2008. Not only is it because of fewer donations, but the portions of the endowments that were already invested various assets (eg stocks, bonds, mutual funds, hedge funds, etc…) lot significant value. Of course this applies nearly major university’s endowments in the country as well.
Also, Emory Healthcare and its affiliated hospitals (eg Grady) has its own administrative structure and is operates very separately than Emory. Thus, President Wagner probably has little direct control over it.
The thread asks why is Emory’s admission rate so much higher than its peers. The answer is because fewer students apply. The next question is why are fewer high school students applying to Emory?
Some of that just isn’t true and many of the points overlap and/or are repetitious.
If they could go to a school that had the “balance” (honestly most non-STEM oriented research universities have this) you speak of plus the intellectualism, most probably would. I think you are confusing cultural patterns that develop at certain schools versus what ALL of the schools actually offer. Most non-STEM top privates offer balance, some just simply draw a greater share of more academically intense students. Students merely choose the culture and level of academics they want. However, it helps to be clear and honest about what type of culture is existent at what the school offers. Like…if you can sell the student body that is both happy and intellectually engaged (like Brown, Hopkins, Rice, Chicago) and your environment actually lives up to it, tons of students interested in that will bite (which are a huge amount of students considering elite schools). Also, your argument fails again as Duke students always wish for a better intellectual climate (though I imagine it has improved significantly since they initially started complaining about it). Even at Vanderbilt, which has a very strong “work hard play hard” culture that it has sold and lives up to (part of its success), there always appears to be a solid amount of students who do wish it were more vibrant intellectually. That fervor is just typically much stronger at a place like Duke however (makes sense as these are the folks who compare themselves more to HYP and thus expect a more similar “feel” over time). Duke has “it all” but yet its students always desire more than what you mentioned.
Actually, correction: Duke and Stanford likely have better (or at least brighter) students: A 1550 w/good EC’s and AP credits and standard academics (in class or EC experiences) vs. a 1450 Intel/Seimens finalist or an inventor/entrepreneur. I’ll take the latter two for 500 (I’m sure any faculty member teaching a course would prefer the latter two as well as they can already think at higher than normal levels than many of those who have better on standardized tests) ! And that is exactly what SMART elite schools outside of the Ivies use their scholarship programs and other recruitment tactics to get. They want to snatch them from the traditional places those types go to such as HYP. Their recruitment efforts won’t be used to simply achieve the highest score range possible. They want a threshold students with solid (but not necessarily near perfect) scores that bring hardcore experiences to the table. Such types are more tolerant of tougher academics and will likely make the school look good by “winning” things.They’ve found the balance of finding the optimal SAT range to keep their rank while also not getting almost too superficial or “meh” in terms of admitting standard high achievers. Much like HYP, they are more willing to turn the 2400s down for the imperfect person who won a big prize (also, an incentive to admitting such students is that it is simply less expensive. A Seimens finalist comes in with some of their own funds as do QB scholars for example) or brings more interesting experiences to the school. It isn’t always about the scores. Duke and Stanford have done well showing off what their students actually DO (as have most top 10s). No one is going to go look and say: “Uh oh! Maybe WashU is a better school than Stanford because WashU has higher scores…” Everyone knows what types of things happen at Stanford and it speaks to the quality of students and programs there.
I dont think test scores really matter that much for measuring the “betterness” of a school. I feel like GPA and class rank are probably better indicators as they show grit and other qualities. It is interesting that Emory doesn’t show avg enrolled stats but admitted stats but on sites like college data (however reliable it is) there is a large discrepancy between enrolled gpa( 3.7 roughly) and admitted (3.8 ish). To me, this implies a lot of people think Emory as a good school, but a good “safety school” in that sense, which is also shown in the low yield rate. Again, Emory is a great school but the statistics and the vibe i get from many others is that its a school that is a tier lower than many of its peers.
@mclovin64 Yes, it is lower than most of its peers (I would say anything ranked higher than 15). It performs worse than others (okay, GeorgeTown would be the closest app. number wise) admissions wise likely due to marketing and definitely because of the financial aid wars which Emory currently loses. You can “buy” student preference. So I think when it comes to 15-25 schools, most students view it as on par, but they aren’t going to seriously consider it unless Emory shells out at least as much aid as those schools (and this just makes sense and has little to do with prestige or perceived academic quality. It’s simply “okay, these are all good, but who is going to make it most affordable?”.
Also, it is typical for enrolled stats to be lower than admitted stats, including the GPA. Some schools slide even further down especially on the scores. They employ a super ambitious “admit extremely high” scheme and then those who get into a more prestigious school go elsewhere unless offered really compelling aid packages (need or merit) so often the 25% at such schools slide more than Emory’s. So it really has to do with the school’s selection scheme. I’m thinking that Emory, last year, could have gotten on this train to success (as did Georgetown like 2 years ago) and start just admitting higher in the first place banking on students getting denied from peer schools. Vanderbilt and WUSTL basically took this route (except they started admitting REALLY high. Like the bottom quartile for RD admits starts at like 1500 and then enrollees look more like the much fewer ED admits whose bottom quartile is more like 1400-1410. I would guess that this scheme banks on those in the lower 1400s and in the 1300s to either get lower financial aid packages from other schools or to simply be denied or waitlisted elsewhere. Furthermore, they likely know that the others will be snatched away by higher prestige schools that cross-admit them, they just have a high threshold to begin with so that they are left with super high stats. HYPM can probably admit at that level and then bank on yielding students on par with that level, so they don’t have to really start at a 1500 bottom-quartile and let it drop. They just start at 1400-1430 or whatever, and let the chips fall). So the slide you see in stats is not uncommon and should be judged with more nuance. The fact is, stats. wise, Emory has yet to aim that high in the first place. And knowing its position in the financial aid wars, it still continues to air on the cautious side. It’s one of the reasons that there is apparently a scholarship fund (I think that a fund needs to be made to make the need-based aid more robust for middle-ranges personally) to eventually deal with the issue of being unable to successfully “buy” higher stats students like many non-Ivy peers.
One has to also consider the entering class size. It’s easier to be very selective with a smaller class size.
Consider the following for some comparable schools based on collegedata.com (interquartile range for enrolled freshman and number of enrolled freshman):
IQR-enrolled Class Size
Dartmouth 30-34 1152
Tufts 30-33 1361
Brown 30-34 1576
Georgetown 30-33 1651
Emory 29-32 1954
Notice the trend? Part of the answer to McLovin64’s question is that Emory has a much larger entering class size as compared to other, very selective schools. Emory enrolled 303 more students than Georgetown last year. For perspective, Swarthmore’s entering class last year had only 388 students, according to collegedata.com.
Emory’s interquartile range for enrolled students is still impressive. For perspective, note the following:
ACT = 30 is 95%
ACT = 29 is 93%
ACT = 34 is 99%
ACT = 33 is 99%
ACT = 32 is 98%
http://blog.prepscholar.com/act-percentiles-and-score-rankings
I’ve also noticed that Emory’s most prestigious merit based scholarships - the Woodruff, Emory and Oxford Scholarships openly emphasize attributes like leadership, entrepreneurship and active engagement instead of simply shooting for candidates with perfect or near perfect standardized test scores.
@mclovin64 Out of curiosity, where did you end up applying?
@MyOdyssey Well, I think that one combines Emory and Oxford’s numbers. Emory main looks more like Georgetown once you account for that. However, you bring up a point. Emory has held its SAT range at about the same despite the higher enrollment levels that started a while a go. When I went in 2008, the enrollment was always more 1250-1270ish and now it is more like 1350-1400ish (started floating far upward at about my junior year I believe) per entering class. It probably takes a bit too much effort to have stats and enrollment numbers float upward at the same time. However, they didn’t really go down either. Also, to get more students to enroll, that probably also means that they had to admit the same or higher numbers of students even when the applicant pool grew or else they risk not hitting their new target numbers. And yes, like I said, if Emory used its scholars program like some other schools do, then it would likely have increased the stats a lot more, but it chooses to select based upon other talents more often than not and of course will probably try to get a high (okay, most Emory students have high stats, but I mean like within the 75%) stats person with talent in a particular area if they can. I mean, notably, there are things like music, debate scholarships, apparently a Woodruff Research Scholarship, and a scholarship specific for the business school (which will naturally emphasize business-related qualities: entrepreneurship and deep displays of leadership), and if they see a unique background, those students are sometimes offered the Liberal Arts Scholarships. This means that Emory is willing to expand the ideas of what it considers “the best” students even with scholarship admissions. http://college.emory.edu/scholars/about/other-scholarships/index.html
I’ve met one of the Music scholars before and while they are far from academically perfect at Emory, they do overall have a different kind of mind that I think is appreciated on a campus like Emory. Being
“intellectually carbonated” is often not the same as making near perfect grades. Also, the students’ risks in course selection have to be applauded for someone with a large scholarship (he is a music scholar pursuing both the music major and biology major, and is non-prehealth so can pretty much do what he wants with his education and that is what he does!).
@bernie12 Presumably, the interquartile ACT range for enrolled students at “Emory University” on collegedata.com - like collegedata.com’s enrollment figures for “Emory University” - also reflect both Emory and Oxford campuses, as well.
Hence it’s fair to look at “Emory University” as having to fill 1954 seats with highly qualified applicants, as opposed to merely 1500 seats.
@MyOdyssey I hope so, but I always assumed that Emory and Oxford were reported separately. However, today, Oxford students would do little to shift the distribution downward as most of them would fit comfortably within the middle-50 (basically anyone above 1280 or 29, which may be like a bit over half of Oxford) of enrolled students at Emory and some would go to the bottom quartile (of course we have to account for the change in size) and some would indeed be part of the upper-range. Even if these didn’t include both campuses, I would merely expect a slightly wider range, maybe 1 point off the bottom quartile (or maybe not even that, so it maybe gets rounded to 29 again).
i applied most 10-25, including Emory, USC, darmouth, Hopkins etc. Also out of pure curiosity, can you explain why Emory dropped from 17 to 20 in one year (i think it was 2010-2011), at a time when it was doing extremely well i thought.
A) That is a lot of schools…I hope they all have a legit reason you applied or some over-reaching similarities other than them being rated highly.
@mclovin94 I don’t see why it matters, but okay. Because it wasn’t doing extremely well in terms of their metrics…eventually they changed the metrics and certain things counted more and I think it was an area where Emory wasn’t doing that well. Also, the admissions thing (the selectivity being lower than peers) was bound to catch up to it. Again, US News doesn’t really rank academic quality (it ranks things it believes are associated with it, but let’s be real here, if Cambridge and Oxford were ranked by the US, they would be at a disadvantage versus schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, and perhaps many other elites because they are so large in comparison to most top American Universities. In addition to that, their admissions scheme is equivalent to replacing SAT’s w/IB or AP success as they rely on A-level performance in conjunction with a serious interview system that more so tests the students in their area of interest than is a mere metric to screen for “personality”) and actually can be quite sensitive to those metrics. Like I believe Emory’s score remained the same from what I remember, but if other schools keep jacking up their SAT’s every year and it doesn’t, they are eventually going to have a higher score and thus Emory will drop if it refuses to play that game or just doesn’t do it well for some reason. Emory’s drop in the rankings reflects more so what it isn’t and has not traditionally been doing than what it was doing. The ranking basically says: “Emory must participate in the admissions rat-race and should market more heavily to get its name known by counselors and peer institutions”, that sounds like a very perverse incentive to me that got Emory in trouble in the first place (where it pretended to participate in it).
Instead of worrying so much about USNWR ratings and issues of prestige, I would be hitting up departmental websites of interests, looking at programmatic options, and curricular offerings, or looking at the content of student publications to actually check if these schools are legit places you would want to be (or just visiting the campuses to feel them out). Pick the school that does what you like well. The rankings don’t really tell much about that and beyond a certain point is just honestly splitting hairs, much like some (ok, most) elite school’s admissions tactics. Profiles of each applicant can be nearly identical, but most ain’t getting in. One usually cannot say that a student who got into one is more deserving (more lucky is probably the word) than the one who was equally qualified but denied. This is kind of like when you try to compare privates like Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory, GeorgeTown, and Notre Dame which are so different yet so similar reputation wise that to focus on reputation and rating differences is honestly just wasting tons of time. As in, you cannot really say that any of these places are overall better than each other. They have similar reputations with academics and completely different strengths in terms of graduate and undergraduate education. For example, in terms of highly populated majors, Emory and Rice look very different from the other 3 (though GeorgeTown and Emory look a little a like given the amount of students who want something political science or business related) which suggests that the student bodies are into different things.
@bernie12 were you lookig mfor this? http://apply.emory.edu/discover/fastfacts.php
@jym626 That does not give detailed data at the level of a CDS. The thing posted by the other poster is closer. Those on the admissions site are naturally the admitted student numbers which are higher than enrolled students. There was one year (maybe the one going into 2014) where they had pamphlets at least breaking down details of Emory’s admission stats (like what brackets of scores and GPA were admitted at what percent kind of like Brown) but then they went back to vague pamphlets. Regardless, that gives little information on who goes there. It merely just shows how high Emory and Oxford were aiming stats wise (I’m sure they know that they will shave off 40 points off of each end when the smoke clears) which isn’t as high as other peers (including those below it. Most of the privates below Emory have higher scores, maybe on par with Emory’s admits or better). Eventually Emory needs to maybe “stretch” a little and risk its yield to boost stats a little. The bottom 25% eventually needs to hit 1300 and the top quartile 1500 for example (for enrolled students). However, I suppose improving retention rate is another way (though honestly, when already at 95%, any higher isn’t much different, but I guess can help swing rankings one way or another when combined with other things) which may mean that it needs more things to entertain top freshmen (like special programs for freshmen).
Emory is very good at serving those who stay, but outside of the humanities and social sciences may not entertain freshmen well (the poor math whiz or top student forced to take an intro. or intermediate economics course for example…I guarantee you most instructors won’t impress or challenge). If Emory’s strength is more so academics than social life, you better give top students here for the academics a compelling reason to stay and some popular departments fall short in this arena. The only way to mitigate this is to have other programs (other than scholars) to create some sort of learning community for these folks (I’m honestly sure this is common at many elites where a select few become convinced they belong at the Ivy or some school that caters better to students with deeper preparation in their field of interest). Apparently something is in the works (through the Institute of Liberal Arts-that link I had earlier, I discussed with a friend involved and he said they are trying to implement such a program in one of the themed freshman halls next year)
I invite all of you to write about how Emory can/should make the jump to an “elite school” on the following Emory survey:
"As we begin the selection process for Emory University’s next president, input from the university community is both vital and welcome. We invite faculty, students, staff, alumni, and friends to consider the following questions.
Your responses will be shared with the Presidential Selection Committee, but your identity will remain anonymous."
http://executivesearch.emory.edu/president/input-feedback.html