<p>I am spinning this off the now lengthy Sarah Lawrence vs. US News thread. There was a story in today’s Inside HigherEd that rehashes much of the Sarah Lawrence story, but here’s where it gets interesting:</p>
<p>It looks like there could be some concerted action against some aspects of the rankings. USNWR rankings drive the enrollment decisions of thousands of students, influence college’s standardized testing policies, shape fundraising campaigns, affect the admissions decisions on individual students, divert money in college budgets in ways that they otherwise would not be, drive FA policies, and more. It’s only college presidents who can work against these trends, and they can only do it by working in tandem. Here’s to hoping that this gets interesting!</p>
<p>So Myers wasn’t quite truthful — USNEws met with her to discuss how they would handle the situtation for the upcomming issue in the fall. The “drop a standard deviation solution” was a proposal. Other ideas will be considered. </p>
<p>This poster in the comment section has raised some angry responses from SL supporters:
<p>It seems that all those colleges would ‘love’ to be higher ranked - it attracts more of their base customers (rich kids). They also want to make it easy for them to apply by making SAT optional. Then they complain that their rankings are dropping. They are afraid that their base customers will think less ‘highly’ of them, and may even start going to state Us.</p>
<p>There used to be children’s story in India. One man lost his one eye (There is a slang term for it in India, don’t know the English equivalent). So to make himself important, he went on a crusade to convert any one who would listen to him to put a bandage on one of their eyes and pretend to be a one eyed person. </p>
<p>If SL or other LACs don’t like USNWR ranking system or the metric it uses - fine. If that is their business model good for them, but don’t whine.</p>
<p>simba, you don’t deserve to be flamed. Sarah Lawrence also got a huge amount of free publicity about two years ago when they topped the list of “most expensive colleges.” That has to be a conscious choice. Attempting to draw in rich kids who will not blink an eye at the cost, or perhaps relish the idea at attending the most expensive college.</p>
<p>College administrators like Myers and and the editors of USNews are both selling a product & will fight hard to show that product’s image in the best possible light. MM88 is correct that this is likely to get interesting.</p>
<p>The irony is that while the CollegeBoard makes no claim for the SAT other than that it is a predictor of first-year college succcess (and studies have placed even that modest claim in significant question), others latch on for dear life. With the old SAT, the CollegeBoard’s own studies demonstrated that a 1400 score with simply a 1200 plus $100,000 in family income. USNWR could make that correction if they chose (but they won’t - it wouldn’t please their prime customers, which is the same reason the College Board didn’t. ;))</p>
<p>and she was not truthful either. She misled the readers by implying the ‘proposal’ as fact.</p>
<p>She is just afraid that Sarah Lawrence (sounds like a designer fragrance) would drop amongst its peers and that would make it difficult for her to attract customers.</p>
<p>Few yers ago many small schools raised their prices higher than normal and saw their applicant numbers go up. Even Rice in Houston is doing that. They increased the ‘tuition discounting’, but at the current rate, in the next few years their sticker price would be same as other colleges.</p>
<p>Mini, that statement is WRONG, and I’m going to call you on it. You were kind enough to cite your source the last time I saw you say such a thing, and I’ve looked it up. There is no such deterministic relationship between family income and SAT I scores, and College Board data amply confirms that there is scatter in SAT I scores at all levels of income. It is simply mathematically incorrect, and leads to an incorrect policy conclusion, to say what you said in the sentence I have quoted above. </p>
<p>Since I’ve still got time to edit this post, I’ll point out that I myself took the old SAT I, and I know what my parents’ income was, and I certainly exceeded expectations.</p>
<p>Moreover, although in any one college SAT I scores do little to predict freshman grades, because of “restriction of range” (that is, because most students at the same college have somewhat similar SAT I scores), SAT I scores probably do a great deal to explain the differences among some colleges. If you like California and desire to study engineering, you can study at California Institute of Technology, or at Berkeley, or at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I have every reason to believe that those are all fine schools with good programs. I also have every reason to believe that the rather profound differences in the curriculums of those schools are linked, in part, to the range of preestablished ability in math and science (as suggested by SAT I scores, among other factors) of the students in the freshman class among those schools. </p>
<p>And, let’s get real, there are certainly colleges that are SAT-optional (usually colleges that are in an impossible competitive position as against other colleges in their region), but there isn’t any college that is, shall we say, “SAT-negative,” that is actively preferring low-SAT applicants to high-SAT applicants.</p>
There are a lot of problems with that working. Each college benefits from staying in and filling out the survey while other schools refuse because it will just boost their rank. Each school would benefit from not doing the survey if all the schools don’t cooperate, but I doubt each school would trust all of the others not to participate. Add in the fact that the school benefits from filling out the survey while others refuse, and unless these schools really trust each other and/or have a lot to gain (or nothing to lose), then I can’t see this working out.</p>
<p>Yep, the prisoner’s dilemma problem here is severe. They must not have any good professors of game theory at the colleges that are considering not cooperating with the survey.</p>
<p>“If you are correct then the entire student body at Sarah Lawrence would have more than 1,400.”</p>
<p>Not at all! (well-healed student body.)</p>
<p>“You were kind enough to cite your source the last time I saw you say such a thing, and I’ve looked it up.”</p>
<p>Lemann provides ample footnotes. (and, yes, of course there is a scatter - duh! it’s a test! This would make a difference if a school was interested in admitting individual candidates, but the job is to build a class.)</p>
<p>Great observation, and probably right. Still I’m cautiously optimistic–nearly every college president condemns the rankings, and then heaves a sigh, and says, but everyone else is doing it, so we can’t opt out alone. I think that the costs of staying in the game are themselves high enough that a lot of schools would make the leap on principle if they knew that there would be others headed off the cliff, too.</p>
<p>Still: Did anyone hear the throw-away line from Leon Botstein (prez of Bard) in the recent NPR series on college admissions? He passed around a note at a meeting of college presidents that said something like “I hereby pledge to not cooperate with the USNews rankings.” The note returned to him with only his original signature.</p>
<p>I assume this refers to some linear regression of grades against SAT, income and possibly other factors. Unless the correlation in this model were unbelievably good (as in the Princeton admissions study about affirmative action), mindlessly trading one term in the equation for another is meaningless. If Mini’s statement comes from a more sophisticated analysis I would be interested in seeing the study.</p>
<p>My daughter got turned down there with 1450 in 2004. Add that to your calculation. </p>
<p>And then she transferred-in a year later so I know Simba’s figures are slightly off. It ain’t cheap but actual tuition is $35280 for 2006-7. My daughter is a Presidential Scholar and gets a $1000 stipend for books which she has never exceeded. In short, it’s no more expensive than many other colleges with 6:1 student/faculty ratios.</p>
<p>MM88, since you are discussing the Inside Higher Ed piece, and a concerted action against USNWR rankings, I just can’t help add this part of the story which adds to the broader context of the Sarah Lawrence challenge (I will give you one guess who): </p>