Emory intentionally reported false SAT, GPA, class rank data, Prez admits

<p>Emory University’s President says an internal investigation revealed Emory officials intentionally submitted false SAT/ACT scores, GPAs, and class ranks to US News and other rankings, according to reports in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. </p>

<p>Misreporting includes:

  • Submitting SAT/ACT scores and GPAs for admitted students, not enrolled freshmen
  • Officials “may have” omitted test scores and GPAs for the bottom 10% of the class
  • Class ranks were also manipulated, but the methodology isn’t clear</p>

<p>[Emory</a> University misrepresented student data | ajc.com](<a href=“http://www.ajc.com/news/dekalb/emory-university-misrepresented-student-1501300.html]Emory”>http://www.ajc.com/news/dekalb/emory-university-misrepresented-student-1501300.html)</p>

<p>Roger beat you to it, bc.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/emory-university/1380079-emory-finds-intentional-misreporting-sat-rank-data-revamps-procedures.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/emory-university/1380079-emory-finds-intentional-misreporting-sat-rank-data-revamps-procedures.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>What exactly does the term “admitted students” mean?</p>

<p>Schools admit a larger number of students than what actually enrolls.</p>

<p>So, the school may have accepted a whole bunch of ACT 36/SAT 2400 kids who decided to go to some other school. </p>

<p>For instance…A school may admit (give acceptances to) 7000 freshmen with the hopes that 4000 will actuall enroll.</p>

<p>stemit, I assume student who were admitted but had not matriculated. In other words, these may have been accomplished students with high scores who were accepted by Emory but who enrolled elsewhere (perhaps higher ranked schools.)</p>

<p>Objective data… :)</p>

<p>What a joke.</p>

<p>This Emory episode just reflects society.</p>

<p>The United States is becoming a very amoral place. Maybe, it always was.</p>

<p>With those reported SAT scores, I thought Emory students discussed, Sartre, Kant and Locke. </p>

<p>I was wrong. With these lower SAT scores, Emory students discuss Kristen Stewart, Kate Upton, and Robert Pattinson.</p>

<p>Oh, come on, dstark. The world is not coming to an end.</p>

<p>But I will never buy Emory boards ever again.</p>

<p>:)…</p>

<p>I do think this is yet another small example of the new standards by which most companies seem to have adopted.</p>

<p>Lie.</p>

<p>I think Emory is not alone in figuring out how to get a good USNWR ranking. I think many colleges have figured out that attracting good students depends on how they show up in the rankings, how nice the dorms are, how good the food is or how exciting the orientation program. Quality of education? They probably did studies and realized 17 year olds either assume it’s there or they don’t select a college based on professor’s CVs or student/professor ratios. Or students do care about these things, but they care about the other things more.</p>

<p>Today’s article [Will</a> data deception damage Emory? | ajc.com](<a href=“http://www.ajc.com/news/will-data-deception-damage-1502140.html]Will”>http://www.ajc.com/news/will-data-deception-damage-1502140.html)</p>

<p>Perhaps a reason why some colleges have decided not to participate in USNWR?</p>

<p>From the first article:
“Two former deans of admission and the leadership of the Office of Institutional Research were aware of the misreporting, the investigation found. They no longer work at Emory.”</p>

<p>It would be interesting to check the stats of the schools they went to from Emory.</p>

<p>

rofl.</p>

<p>The temptation to exaggerate, or flat out lie, in advertising seems irresistible in this country. Corporations play games with the truth about the products all the time, and misrepresentations about corporate bottom lines abound. How the misrepresentations of the financial industry leading up to the 2008 collapse have not resulted in more criminal prosecutions boggles the mind. In many areas, overreaching corporations are overseen by government agencies corrupted by special interests. </p>

<p>Even the most venerated institutions are run by people. While occasionally, people working for such institutions may believe that their excrement reeks not, the wafting aroma of corruption generally proves them wrong to those in a position to get a snout full. Institutions that want to avoid scandals should encourage whistle blowers to stop forward by providing rewards for their courage and real protections against retaliation. People should be prompted to go against group think when they can see that something is clearly wrong - like cooking the books, changing the numbers, etc. The goal should be protecting the integrity of the entity and the people running it, not moving up a couple of spots in the rankings, or moving the stock higher the next quarter. </p>

<p>Instead, the typical view is that whistleblowers are “rats.” They are reviled and punished for disloyalty to their bosses or colleagues. Had some of the underlings at Emory felt more connection to the institution, and more support from the administration for protecting Emory from unscrupulous practices, those practices may have been halted earlier. Unfortunately, this type of gilding the lilly could happen at any college or university pressured to compete with rivals where there is far more downside than upside for an employee who contemplates reporting questionable competitive practices.</p>

<p>One prominent historian, Walter McDougall of Penn, has theorized that the U.S. is a nation of "hustlers’ in both the positive and negative senses of that word. The people at Emory responsible for the lies were “hustling” the public as part of a long tradition is less than scrupulous efforts to nose ahead of the pack. Competition (and therefore capitalism) always present the temptation of cheating to win. When society starts losing any since of shame for the manner of winning, and where “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing,” cheating becomes inevitable and valuable in spurring innovation.</p>

<p>The labyrinthian contest between drug testers and dirty athletes at the Olympics is illustrative. The gold medal means so much to the competitors, that many will violate the rules to obtain it. The concern is getting caught, not competing fairly because “everyone else is doing it.” The good news is that such cheating employs chemists in a cottage industry of finding ways to beat the test.</p>

<p>John Adams told his son that he would rather his son “be an honest shoemaker than a dishonest senator.” Of course, we don’t know whether he really meant it, but I hope so. What part of the top achievers in society, those competing for the top jobs as measured by money and prestige, would agree with that, or with Al Davis, “Just win, baby!” The Emory scandal is an unfortunate symptom of a persistent and widespread social disease. At their best, such universities and colleges can be part of the cure by exposing the best and brightest to considerations of larger values. To see Emory, Claremont, and whichever school is next, abasing themselves in the pursuit of students to be molded into the next generation of leaders is both unsurprising, and sadly ironic.</p>

<p>Bogney, nice post.</p>

<p>dstark beat me to it but yes, bogney, well said. Just a sliver of the many thoughts that run through my head on the economic and moral decay of America.</p>

<p>Crooks, swindlers, narcissists rising to the top and then moving on to the next company where they do it again.</p>

<p>If any of these people stayed in one place long enough they would see the company fall apart from the policies they put in place years earlier to make a quick kiling in the market.</p>

<p>But they know better. Long gone and out of range of blame…</p>

<p>many schools drop diversity admits from their stats,and have for a very long time.</p>

<p>One more area that US News needs to take a hard look at is how Universities report their endowments which plays a big role in ranking financial resources. My guess is they use the nacubo figures that are compiled each year. Problem is some Universities report to nacubo their net investments and some report their endowment-problem being that net investments are larger and contain dollars that should not be included in the endowment. </p>

<p>For example Emory in the nacubo shows a $5.4B endowment, however this reflects their net investments. In their financial report they show a $4.0B endowment. Compare that with Notre Dame that has net investments of $7.2B and an endowment of $6.3B with the lower figure reported to nacubo.</p>

<p>Then there is debt outstanding which is a whole other issue that many colleges are dealing with since the 2008 economic bust. </p>

<p>Bottom-line there are all sorts of issues with the US News data. Seems that they are relying on self-reporting and self policing for their figures and with such a high stakes “game” as college rankings my guess is that if you did a tough audit on the numbers reported by these schools you would find the problems were out of control. Time to scrap us news and start over from scratch IMHO.</p>

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<p>Source(s)?</p>