<p>one person’s context is another person’s excuse.</p>
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</p>
<p>And the SAT/ACT averages at WUSTL are higher than Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore.</p>
<p>Does that necessarily mean that the quality of undergraduate at WUSTL is better than those three? No, of course not.</p>
<p>ucb and johnwesley,</p>
<p>Let’s add even more context to this comparison….</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins has a habit of sometimes excluding their Peabody students from their data reporting, eg, their standardized test scores, their retention/graduation numbers, etc. However, they will include them for things like Faculty Resource measurements like class sizes where music students will frequently participate in smaller classes. I would agree that standardized test scores aren’t the best way to evaluate music students, but unquestionably there are many schools that would benefit from excluding certain groups of students in their numbers. My suggestion to JHU would be to include or exclude all students from all measurements and provide a clear statement of what is being reported. </p>
<p>Here are some more complete numbers on Johns Hopkins and how it compares with AWS:</p>
<p>1A. For a reported JHU student body of 4744 students<br>
SAT:1290-1510
CR: 45% 700+
Math: 60% 700+
Writing: 43% 700+
ACT: 29-33
ACT: 69% 30+</p>
<p>1B. For those not included in the JHU reported numbers, ie, 333 Peabody Music students (7% of class)
SAT:1040-1340
CR: data not provided
Math: 22% 700+ and 57% 600+
Writing: 15% 700+ and 55% 600+
ACT: data not provided
ACT: data not provided</p>
<p>For AMHERST’s student body of 1697 students<br>
SAT:1330-1520
CR: 63% 700+
Math: 60% 700+
Writing: 60% 700+
ACT: 29-33
ACT: 72% 30+</p>
<p>For WILLIAMS’s student body of 1997 students<br>
SAT:1320-1520
CR: 64% 700+
Math: 60% 700+
Writing: not provided
ACT: 29-33
ACT: 69% 30+</p>
<p>For SWARTHMORE’s student body of 1490 students<br>
SAT:1350-1530
CR: 65% 700+
Math: 59% 700+
Writing: 62% 700+
ACT: 28-33
ACT: 66% 30+</p>
<p>My conclusion from this is that Amherst, Williams, and Swarthmore have stronger student bodies than Johns Hopkins. AWS equal science-heavy JHU in its strongest category (Math) and far surpass it on the other measurements. This gap is even wider if you add in the Peabody students in the calculation of the Johns Hopkins numbers. </p>
<p>Finally, it should be noted that the acceptance rates and yields are also quite different:</p>
<p>25% Acceptance Rate and 30% Yield at Johns Hopkins</p>
<p>15% Acceptance Rate and 38% Yield at Amherst
17% Acceptance Rate and 42% Yield at Williams
16% Acceptance Rate and 39% Yield at Swarthmore</p>
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</p>
<p>The quality of students going into a school may be reflected somewhat by SATs but the quality of the students as they graduate has correlation with on one’s SATs. It is a function of a student’s academic experience over four years. I have lost track of the number of Williams students who have told me the hard part was getting into Williams not staying in Williams. At JHU more student classes are graded on a curve (than at AWS) which forces competition. There are engineering students who take traditional liberal arts math classes which raises the competition for non engineering liberal arts math and science majors. (note Swat has an engineering program as well). About a quarter of the entering class is premed which means student competition increases. I am not saying AWS are poor colleges. They are great colleges. My opinion is that JHU students are forced to work harder and as a result are of a higher quality student, all other things being equal. Although there are always exceptions, I would hire a JHU graduate over a AWS graduate in most circumstances.</p>
<p>
Interesting hawkette. Are these 333 Peabody music students interacting with and taking classes with biomedical engineering students at JHU? Are these “lower scoring SATers” a “drag” on the entire student body at JHU? I mean how can they possibly communicate with each other?</p>
<p>
My conclusion is that if JHU limited itself to the size of “AWS”, the difference in average SAT scores would narrow.</p>
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</p>
<p>The better conclusion is that they have higher average SATs for entering students. A lot happens in four years. The quality of students depends on what happens during those four years.</p>
<p>^^^OMG, give it up, would you? LACs happen to have among the highest retention rates in the country.</p>
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</p>
<p>I don’t know about biomedical engineering, but Peabody students are required to take a non-trivial number of liberal arts courses, some of which are offered at Peabody; but they can and in many cases do take some or even most of their liberal arts classes at the main JHU campus. A few are joint degree students in music at Peabody and a liberal arts major at JHU. They need to be accepted into the relevant JHU school to do the joint degree program, but many transfer in after they’re already at Peabody and thus come in under the radar of JHU’s reported SAT scores. Some are admitted to Peabody, decide they don’t have the talent or desire to make it in the music world, and transfer out of Peabody to other JHU schools, again under the SAT reporting radar. </p>
<p>Nothing wrong with any of that. I think it’s a positive thing for universities to have strong programs in music, theater, dance, art, or whatever, and to select applicants for these program based primarily on their talent rather than their SAT scores. But I have to agree with hawkette on this one: there should be consistency in how these students are counted and reported. My own undergrad alma mater, the University of Michigan, also has a very strong music school, but my guess is they count the music school students in their reported ACT/SAT 25th-75th percentiles. JHU should do the same.</p>
<p>JHU <em>is</em> the size of AWS – all added together.</p>
<p>ucb,
Plenty of schools could say that if we only cut our size, then we’d be as good as ABC College. Heck, a place like Texas A&M could probably make the same claim. They have more 700+ scorers on either CR or Math than AWS combined. Do you think that the student body at A&M is comparable to/better than AWS?</p>
<p>razorsharp,
The differences in the standardized test scores of JHU and AWS are modest, but clear. On this metric, AWS has the advantage.</p>
<p>As it relates to the actual undergraduate learning experience, your claim of JHU doing a better job at educating/preparing its students is…well, it’s just silly. I have read similar claims on CC from partisans who boast that there school is superior and I always gag at the arrogance of the statement. It’s not like Amherst, Williams, and Swarthmore are cupcake schools and only Hopkins really tests and prepares its students and graduates them at a significantly higher level of ability. If you have any substantiation of your view, I’d love to read it. </p>
<p>bc,
I’m pretty sure that U Michigan is one of the schools with music students whose standardized test scores ARE included in their reporting of student body data. It’s a bit easier to find now than in years past, but historically JHU has been very covert in how they present their data and what/who is included. It sure would be nice if all of these schools stopped hiding stuff and just published their CDS for all to see and included the last 5-10 years of data as well on their websites.</p>
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</p>
<p>Not to mention that Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore all beat JHU on the WSJ survey of acceptance into top grad schools.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yes, it would be nice but not necessarily beneficial to the school to be anymore transparent or forthcoming. Including the music school is going to make the median SAT drop from 1400 to 1385, which is going to hurt the school in both the rankings and prospective candidates’ minds.</p>
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</p>
<p>It’s an opinion that I backed by my experience dealing with graduates of those schools (although a little less with Swat.). I didn’t attend Johns Hopkins, I simply picked it as one example of a school that better prepares its graduates for the “real world” than AWS. I could have picked many others. U of Chicago, Cornell easily come to mind. </p>
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</p>
<p>I never made that claim. How can you debate an issue if you make up the other person’s arguments? You are arguing with yourself. </p>
<p>One of the reason retention rates are high at Amherst is that they do so much to keep failing students from leaving the school. If you are a student, that is a good thing. If you are concerned about the quality of the students graduating from the school, it is a bad thing because a student of lesser ability is receiving your diploma.</p>
<p>^^ far be it from us to confuse your personal experience (and incredible bias) with the facts.</p>
<p>"Including the music school is going to make the median SAT drop from 1400 to 1385, which is going to hurt the school in both the rankings and prospective candidates’ minds. "</p>
<p>IMO, the most appropriate and relevant course would be, wherever they have colleges with separate admissions, universities should just report them individually and not aggregate them. That’s what they used to do, in the college guide books in my day.</p>
<p>If’ I’m a potential applicant to an Arts & Sciences college, my admissions odds aren’t much impacted by some separate Music school at Hopkins, for which admissions is evaluated separately, with different criteria. Or some separate Nursing college at Penn. Or the Hotel school at Cornell. When a prospective Arts & sciences applicant evaluates hs/ her admissions chances, and particularly when making comparison to LAcs that don’'t even have these other programs, for most purposes what they should be looking at is the data for the Arts & science college by itself.</p>
<p>But it should be done consistently. </p>
<p>Why should it not “hurt” Hopkins, but lumping all together should “hurt” another university that has a comparable situation?</p>
<p>Then there are the other incomparables. Seemingly the way to avoid reporting lower SAT scores is don’t require applicants who might have lower scores to submit them. Hence, the SAT optional LACs, Columbia’s undergrad College of General Studies. These places seem to all successfully get away with that, with no penalty. So why not Hopkins?</p>
<p>But really, aggregating doesn’t help anybody, it just clouds the issue for a particular applicant to a particular college of a multi-college university, where admissions are done separately by application to a particular college.</p>
<p>I can assure you that Johns Hopkins does not game the USNews report and does not game the Common data set in order to bolster it’s image in any way shape or form.</p>
<p>The Common Data Set shows that Johns Hopkins reports data for Peabody Music students alongside regular Hopkins students and does not report SAT standardized test scores as a separate entity.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that charge is false. Hawkette just made that up because the CDS clearly shows the contrary.</p>
<p><a href=“Registrar - Homewood Schools (KSAS & WSE) | Office of the Registrar | Johns Hopkins University”>Registrar - Homewood Schools (KSAS & WSE) | Office of the Registrar | Johns Hopkins University; (Section C9, page 9)</p>
<p>FRESHMAN SAT PROFILE:</p>
<p>Provide percentages for** ALL enrolled, degree-seeking, full-time and part-time, first-time, first-year (freshman) students **enrolled in fall 2007… Distinctions are not made between Krieger/Whiting students and other cohorts on this page. Peabody students are included in the SAT standardized score information.</p>
<p>Arguably, Hopkins’ SAT scores are lower because of the Peabody students…(now it makes sense! lol)</p>
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</p>
<p>Your position is based on your opinion and you happen to be wrong; but you are entitled to your opinion. You have not cited any facts johnwesley.</p>
<p>These research university vs LAC threads are always entertaining. No one is going to convince a die hard supporter of one that the other is as good or better. But we keep trying, right?</p>
<p>I really don’t understand the “size” argument. Isn’t Harvard bigger than AWS? And higher stats, too. And think of how impressive poor Williams’ statistics would be if 50% of the kids weren’t athletes (flame)! </p>
<p>Johns Hopkins is a great school (my dad did his post-doc there, so I have some fondness for it); let’s leave it at that and not depend on bashing the elite LAC’s in order to somehow elevate its standing - that’s kind of sad, don’t you think?</p>
<p>I’m a fan of LAC’s, myself (both my kids did the “hard” part by getting into a couple good ones, and one has finished the “easy” part by graduating), but the great research universities are plenty awe-inspiring. I tend to think that most aspiring research scientists wouldn’t really want to go the LAC route, anyway. </p>
<p>My kids aren’t science kids, so I can take a relaxed stand, but I think their educations are/have been just as good at the little LACs as the big universities. Different, perhaps, but just as good.</p>
<p>Hawkette. Where did you ever get the idea that Hopkins reports Peabody SAT scores under a separate umbrella or that Peabody students are not even included in the Hopkins’ undergraduate headcount?</p>
<p>The Peabody student undergraduate admissions process is conducted in a separate finaid/admissions office with a totally different emphasis outside of SAT scores (though Hopkins’ reports it together as one which arguably hurts Hopkins’ more than it helps) and puts emphasis on performance auditions and music related qualities etc…</p>
<p>Professors at Hopkins voluntarily leave to go to a Big 10 university because they are required to teach at the level of Swarthmore, conduct research as though they are a part of a Big 10 university, in addition to a whole host of different responsibilities that are both deep and considerably challenging. Many professors simply give up and leave to go to a Big 10 university because it’s the “easier life” over there.</p>
<p>That was almost a direct quote from a Hopkins professor who left to Columbia because of the heavy emphasis on liberal arts teaching at the quality of Swarthmore and ridiculous reserach obligations required of him as a professor-researcher. Hopkins is crazy, I’m not kidding you.</p>
<p>phead,
I have no interest in making things up on JHU or any other school. Historically, Johns Hopkins has not published a Common Data Set. For the first time that I am aware of, they published one for 2007-08, but they limited the vast majority of it to the students in Krieger A&S and Whiting Engineering. I have searched their website and, unlike nearly all other schools that regularly publish a CDS, I have not been able to find one for Johns Hopkins for 2008-09. </p>
<p>As for my prior posts, here are my data sources:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Peterson’s
<a href=“http://www.petersons.com/ugchannel/code/searches/srchRslt.asp[/url]”>http://www.petersons.com/ugchannel/code/searches/srchRslt.asp</a></p></li>
<li><p>Johns Hopkins CDS which states:</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“The CDS for Johns Hopkins University, with the exception of Section J and part of Section B, focuses exclusively on the full-time undergraduate students enrolled in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering.”</p>
<p><a href=“Registrar - Homewood Schools (KSAS & WSE) | Office of the Registrar | Johns Hopkins University”>Registrar - Homewood Schools (KSAS & WSE) | Office of the Registrar | Johns Hopkins University;
<p>Perhaps you are right and there is information for Peabody on the Hopkins website that would indicate that the Peabody data is included in the various measurements. If you can provide link(s) showing Peabody’s inclusion in the standardized tests and other data, that could potentially clear up our disagreement.</p>
<p>
That’s sort of my point, hawkette. You need to compare apples to apples.</p>
<p>Do I think that the student body at A&M is comparable to/better than AWS? I can’t really say…AWS don’t have 38,000 undergrads. Now, if AWS increased to 38,000 undergrads with an acceptance rate and yield on par with A&M, we could make a determination of which campus is attracting/has the “stronger” students.</p>