<p>Given your preference for action over mere criticism, I thought you would have admired Reed's decision to bow out of the rankings process. When I started at Reed in 1985, the issue of the college's participation in the rankings was a very hot topic. This was long before the rankings played a major role in college admissions--in fact, they were only two years old at that point--and Reed's ranking during those early years was quite respectable."</p>
<p>Spoony, it's one thing for Reed to drop out of the USNews and another to talk relentlessly about the rankings, and painting themselves as victims of a system that deserves nothing but scorn. The fact is simple: Reed is, and has been, milking the USNews ranking controversy for ... all it is worth. Recognition of a school by prospective students and families is worth a pot of gold -just think of the cost of the mailings and other publicity that add up to as much as $400 per student. Fueling the controversy -and making sure USNews has access to sufficient data through their CDS public posting- has cynically worked VERY well for Reed. </p>
<p>For the record, the best and most balanced article I read about Reed was published by none else than USNews in its latest ranking edition. For a company so despised by Reed and its new Dean, that was one hell of an offer to bury the hatchet -not to mention the disclosure a VERY objective and favorable ranking that brought Reed to a rank that only blindfolded die-hard fans would object to.</p>
<p>Erica, isn't the real question whether anyone NEEDS to go to a private college? I strongly believe all private collages should be what they want to be, take who they want to take. I just wonder if the Drew community knew what they were taking on in choosing a new leader who decided to quickly shift a major policy. Are they prepared for the consequences? Unfortunately, today many equate a lowering of their US News ranking as a decline in the value of their degree.</p>
<p>Blue, you have to admire their marketing savvy. A school in the PNW with 1200 students now has many more people who have heard of it than they did a few years ago!</p>
<p>The point I was trying to make, albeit not too well, was that the common application is a component of the cookie cutter approach to admissions. By Drew using the common application, they are doing nothing to customize the information they receive about a student that might be pertinent only to Drew. If Drew really wanted to get to know a student in depth beyond what other colleges request, it seems a good first step would be to customize their application to their needs, not just accept the same application most others accept (see University of Chicago Uncommon Application).</p>
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"ericat bucknell: $$$for athletes evil? A bit of hyperbole, don't you think? Athletes recruited by DivI schools are not all illiterate Vince Young types."
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<p>Should that not be rephrased as:</p>
<p>$$$for athletes evil? A bit of hyperbole: Athletes recruited by DivI schools are not all illiterate Vince Young types.</p>
<p>Has Vince Young now become a poster child for illiterate Black Americans who happen to throw a mean spiral and run like an Olympian? I assume that you had access to his academic records at the University of Texas to back up such a claim.</p>
<p>How can the education at Reed be ranked against other schools? As if one is better than the others?</p>
<p>Reed thought the US News rankings was not an accurate barometer of the quality of education you can get at the school. Isn't that why Reed wanted out of the rankings? Isn't that Reed's choice?</p>
<p>Reed was a great school before US News and it is a great school now. You can get a top notch education at Reed, so what is the problem?</p>
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Erica, isn't the real question whether anyone NEEDS to go to a private college?
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<p>nobody needs to go to a private college. thats why we have public colleges and loan programs. but i agree that who a private college chooses to admit and spend its money on is solely, within legal reason, an institutional decision. all i attempted to point out is that there is a very dangerous flip side when less-endowed colleges begin to offer merit aid. and as such, a colleges decision to offer or eliminate merit aid involves far more than agreeing or disagreeing to the concept in principle.</p>
<p>what this means is that for a school like drew this move is not necessarily usnews suicide. the current policy results in a lower than otherwise possible yield for everyone not receving merit aid, meaning that while top top range of students would decrease without merit aid, the 25th percentile would likely increase. in addition, the changing yield dynamic may allow admissions to accept fewer students. not that any of this matters, anyway. dropping the sat requirement will trump any move in terms of usnews impact, especially if sat scores are misreported.</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>on vince young, i think his six (out of 50) on the wunderlic speaks for itself. he may not be illiterate, but wow.</p>
<p>oh, and my names eric. i was 'at bucknell' until i decided it would be a good idea to graduate last weekend. not sure what i was thinking!</p>
<p>Merit scholarships serve the purpose of attracting students to the institution that might not otherwise attend. It would be interesting, if not particularly fair, if schools could figure out how to award them only to students who were sure not to attend otherwise (to avoid needless subsidies of wealthy families), but that's not going to happen. Merit scholarships serve the institution as much as the student recipient.</p>
<p>I really question the SAT correlation number in the first article - I suspect it's based on limited sample populations - at Ivy League schools, for example, I'd expect SATs to be a weak predictor of GPA due to the selection process. But if I took a thousand random kids with scores distributed throughout the SAT range, sent them to the same college, subjected them all to the identical rigorous coursework, and graded all of the classes on a normal curve with a "C" center point, I think you'd see pretty darn high correlation between SAT and GPA.</p>
<p>xiggi, you are obviously not a football fan or you'd be well aware of Vince Young's academic inferiority. Eric is right about Young's Wonderlic score speaking for itself. I believe he received the lowest score in the history of NFL draft use of this test. That, and not his race, is the reason I used him as an example of an illiterate athlete. Have you ever heard him speak? Texas has an abysmal record of athlete graduation rates, particularly for blacks. You are the one who finds his race to be significant in this discusion, xiggi. I am not dealing in stereotypes or speaking about a "poster child." I am addressing the problems of a specific athlete. His course selections at Texas have been covered in the media. They were, as expected, a joke. If he is not up to the rigors of the NFL offense, he will be equipped for virtually no other career. Very sad.</p>
<p>Congrats, Eric. Are you entering the world of finance? I'm impressed that you handle the family investments!</p>
<p>Roger: Read Kill the Messenger by Herbert Walberg for a fascinating account of high-stakes standardized tests. There is a strong correlation.</p>
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Faculty members naturally want better-prepared students, though they are not quite willing to admit that that means fewer students from disadvantaged circumstances.
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<p>This has been my contention. How good are the professors if the students are already motivated or have a great background in the material.</p>
<p>The trouble with all this talk about merit, need, etc. is that it leaves out the definition of need. For those of you who have been through this process need is defined differently at different schools. It is only when you peel back the onion on how financial aid is awarded at each school that it becomes clear. This impacts anyone who makes less than $200K a year.</p>
<p>I would prefer that the schools address the rampant increase in the cost of attendance. Year after year the increase in tuition has outpaced the inflation rate. This is the face of larger endowments, licensing revenues from research and improved efficiencies through the use of technology.</p>
<p>Sorry about going off topic but it seems that schools focus on their competitive stance in comparison to other schools but not on changing the dynamics of the whole equation.</p>
<p>I am not sure there is a dichotomy between "better-prepared" and "disadvantaged." It depends on the topic and it depends on the expectations.</p>
<p>One summer, my S complained that some course went too slow. Most students had already covered much of the materials, but the isntructor would not depart from the prepared curriculum, even after many students who had originally tried out the class dropped out of it. The level of preparedness had nothing to do with whether the students were "disadvantaged" or not.</p>
<p>"The fact is simple: Reed is, and has been, milking the USNews ranking controversy for ... all it is worth. Recognition of a school by prospective students and families is worth a pot of gold -just think of the cost of the mailings and other publicity that add up to as much as $400 per student."</p>
<p>I don't see the problem. College admissions is a marketplace. If Reed, or any other institution, wants to make some marketing hay out of a long-standing and principled position, that just doesn't bother me. </p>
<p>I see the temptation to accuse Reed of hypocrisy, but the facts aren't always as "simple" as we'd like them to be. The hypocrisy claim doesn't hold up logically, resting, as it does, on the conflation of two distinct ideas: Reed has a problem with the methodology of college rankings; this doesn't mean, however, that they reject the notion that colleges should attempt to brand themselves in order to attract potential students.</p>
<p>Yes, why is it hypocritical to ignore USNews but post CDS data? It's the ranking, one-size-fits-all mentality to which Reed objects. CDS contains a lot of data (more than USNews' chart), enabling a high school student to pick out what is important to her from each participating school, make choices based on many factors, and not have someone else's idea of a ranking be prejudicial. Why is this not a reasonable approach?</p>
<p>BTW, can someone point to places where Reed milks? I know about the Reed web site and the Atlantic piece.</p>
<p>Eagle79, thanks for bringing the cost of attendance into the discussion. About a year ago, a small liberal arts college in Chicago (North Park University) elected to cut their tution rate by about 30% and concurrently reduced the merit assistance that was effectively discounting the 'cost" of tuition. This year North Park experienced a 25% increase in matriculated students - and the school attibutes that increase to the decision to reduce tuition. Here's a link to their page explaining that decision:</p>
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"xiggi, you are obviously not a football fan or you'd be well aware of Vince Young's academic inferiority.
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<p>I happen to be a huge football fan, and I am not about to forget --nor let many people ever forget-- the performance of Vince Young against USC. How would I be "aware" of Vince Young academic inferiority ... by being a football fan? </p>
<p>Now, I'd like to know wonderful magical power you may possess that made YOU aware of the academic inferiority of Vince Young. Actually, I am pretty darn sure you know absolutely nothing about Vince(nt) Young.</p>
<p>Getting back to the original article: It is commonly that the SATs exhibit class bias, etc., and this should be resolved. But even before it is resolved, it should at least be determined to what extent the class bias affects people. Is it 20 points? 200 points? With that knowledge in hand, the universities could choose to (or not to) modify how they look at applicants' scores.</p>
<p>Until that point, the SATs serve the important purpose of allowing for comparisons to be made across schools. Otherwise, it becomes exceedingly difficult to compare a student at high school X with a 3.5 GPA with a student at high school Y with a 4.0 GPA. It may well be that the 3.5 GPA from high school X was far more difficult to earn.</p>
<p>Some will argue that this can easily be resolved by tracking the reputation of the high schools. However, this type of approach could easily harm a first-time applicant from an unknown high school to a selective college.</p>
<p>There are concerns that the SAT's foster gender, socioeconomic and racial bias. Actually there are very sophisicated tools and approaches used to analyze and minimize these biases. Questions and wording that reflect bias are discarded by a process known as DIF analysis. Regardless, there are obvious differences in performance for different groups. It is thought that the essay portion of the new SAT's will "correct" some of the gender bias.</p>
<p>I would agree that the SAT's are of some value both for admissions and for selection of colleges. They seem to be greatly overused in spite of some assertions to the contrary. If you look at the 25-75 spread for various schools you will find a pretty narrow variation. For the old 1600 SAT, the spread for many schools is less than +/- 100 points.</p>
<p>"There are concerns that the SAT's foster gender, socioeconomic and racial bias. Actually there are very sophisicated tools and approaches used to analyze and minimize these biases."</p>
<p>There are, and the CollegeBoard's own studies indicate that (on the old SAT) a 1400 is simply a 1200 plus $100,000 in family income.</p>
<p>Actually, it is a little bit (but not much more) complex than that. The greatest correlations are not with family income, but with the average income of the families of students in the area around the school (or at a private school, those attending). In other words, a income-poor student gets a huge boost from attending school with rich ones. Secondly, there is a strong correlation with highest educational level of one parent. The offspring of a highly educated low-income family also gets a huge boost (one often sees that in refugee families.)</p>