<p>Stanford, no.</p>
<p>The rest, yes.</p>
<p>OK, we’ll differ, but I’d be interested to understand why you feel that way. Do you have some facts to support your perception or is it is a reflection of the historically higher prestige and academic reputation accorded to the Ivy colleges and/or less familiarity with these other colleges?</p>
<p>I will concede that there are few facts available to support my argument other than the statistical comparisons of the various colleges, most importantly the SAT scores. At the institutional level, the statistical differences are minute (depending on which schools you choose to compare) and, in many cases, favor the non-Ivy colleges. Given that, and the impressive non-Ivy student-athlete graduation rates noted above and how they can be impacted in so draconian a fashion by such small transfer movements, I think that the non-Ivy colleges can make a compelling and winning argument.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Right, and I don’t think that’s unusual with talent-based admissions. We do the same thing here.</p>
<p>What I do find unusual is the statement made by gabriellah that programs that admit based in part on talent have the same standards for SAT scores that other admitting units do on campus, and that therefore one shouldn’t speculate that a disproportionate number of “low” SAT scores might be from students that were admitted–under very competitive circumstances–to music, art or similar programs. It was my belief that the audition or portfolio mattered quite a bit, and that the competitiveness of the programs was based as much on talent as on academic profile. </p>
<p>When I read that statement by Peabody (thanks for including it), I think we have very good reason to assume that students admitted to talent-based programs might be among those so-called “weaker” students hawkette is counting at top schools (among schools which have such programs). And it would be wrong for a prospective student to assume that somehow those schools are easier than they thought to get into, or that a school with more “weak” students was a lesser school. If the school (or hawkette) is counting its extraordinarily talented music or art or dance students in the freshman class, then that impression would be wrong indeed.</p>
<p>hoedown,
I am with you all the way on the impact that students in music and other programs can have on the statistical profile. They could be a drag on the numbers that make up the academic profile, but concluding that these students are unqualified for college admissions to America’s top colleges would, IMO, be a mistake. Like the athletes that compete at the highest levels of their sport nationally and internationally, the long years of effort and the talent that these students need to achieve excellence in their fields is truly great.</p>
<p>hawkette:</p>
<p>Its just an impression, but I would begin by observing that numbers for the general student body at the other schools that you mentioned are at least marginally lower than for the student bodies at the low-mid Ivies (with the exception of Cornell).</p>
<p>Hawkette and HD, I’m pretty sure that JHU doesn’t include Peabody stats in the regular stats of students, but someone like Admissions-Daniel would know for certain. You can transfer from Whiting (engineering) to A&S and vice-versa (they aren’t in love with it, but it is possible); I don’t think the same would be true for Peabody to Homewood schools and vice-versa (speaking as an alum, and with a child ready to turn in ED app). You could well accuse JHU of being dishonest in its CDS, but think of it this way: performance music (band, orchestra) isn’t considered an academic HS course; a musician applying to a conservatory oughtn’t be taking the same HS courses as someone going to major in history or chemistry.</p>
<p>EMM1,
Thanks for your reply. </p>
<p>Here are the standardized test scores that support my view that top Division I privates are academic peers, for students and student-athletes alike, with the non-HYP Ivies .</p>
<p>Sorted by Critical Reading
730 Duke
720 Dartmouth
715 Brown
710 Columbia
710 Stanford
705 Rice
695 U Penn
695 Northwestern
680 Vanderbilt
675 Cornell
660 Notre Dame</p>
<p>Sorted by Math
735 Duke
730 Dartmouth
730 Stanford
730 Rice
725 Brown
725 U Penn
715 Northwestern
710 Columbia
710 Cornell
690 Vanderbilt
685 Notre Dame</p>
<p>Sorted by Total SAT
1465 Duke
1450 Dartmouth
1440 Stanford
1440 Brown
1435 Rice
1420 U Penn
1420 Columbia
1410 Northwestern
1385 Cornell
1370 Vanderbilt
1345 Notre Dame</p>
<p>Sorted by ACT
32 Rice
31.5 Duke
31.5 Notre Dame
31 U Penn
31 Dartmouth
31 Northwestern
30.5 Columbia
30.5 Stanford
30 Cornell
30 Brown
30 Vanderbilt</p>
<p>The numbers above are at the full institution level and do not directly address the issue of the weaker students per se, but you indicated that your perceptions are driven by impressions of the overall. IMO, a fair reading of these numbers has Stanford, Duke, Rice and maybe Northwestern as full statistical peers (or perhaps even selectively more) to Dartmouth, Columbia, U Penn, and Brown. I would also consider Vanderbilt and maybe Notre Dame as full statistical peers to Cornell. I think that the graduation numbers also substantiate this. Given the above data, I hope you can understand why I hesitate to accept the frequently stated impression that the Ivies are automatically stronger.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But other schools might (Michigan does). </p>
<p>I tried to write my message in that way, meaning that at schools which DO have those programs, and DO include them as freshmen, this is something to consider: “If the school (or hawkette) is counting its extraordinarily talented music or art or dance students in the freshman class, then that impression would be wrong indeed.” </p>
<p>I was not just speaking about Hopkins–but about any school on hawkette’s list which has programs with talent-based admissions. I am sorry if that was not clear.</p>
<p>hawkette:</p>
<p>hadn’t realized that Northwestern and Duke had moved that far up. I stand corrected on that point.</p>
<p>Still, I wonder if they don’t have to make more allowances since they are looking for better players, and thus might have to go deeper into the pool.</p>
<p>EMM1,
Thank you (and hopefully you would agree with Rice also and to a lesser degree about Vanderbilt and Notre Dame). I also could have extended to schools like Georgetown, USC, and Wake, but I think that the arguments on the athletic side (in the case of Georgetown) or on the academic sidie (for USC and Wake) have more holes in them, but those schools are definitely a lot closer than they used to be.</p>
<p>As for the allowances question that you raise, you might be right, but given the modest football prowess at these schools (Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and now even Notre Dame), they probably need to dig a little deeper if they want to be competitive in their respective conferences. 
These schools do exceptionally well on the national level in many sports other than football, but football is the most visible college sport and also involves the largest number of recruits. However, the number of football recruits is probably less than 25 per year and likely has a minimal impact on the overall institutional student profile. </p>
<p>hoedown,
I was surprised to read that the Peabody student numbers may not be included in the Johns Hopkins CDS and wonder as well how common this is. I was not aware that the schools had the leeway to exclude certain groups of students. Can you help me and others better understand how schools actually do this and if there are disclosures about this anywhere in the CDS or elsewhere?</p>
<p>Hoedown: If I am not mistaken, Peabody Conservatory, although it is part of Hopkins, is not considered part of the undergraduate school, which is comprised of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and the Whiting School of Engineering. Students from Hopkins, may take courses at Peabody, and Peabody students may take some courses at Hopkins. If you look at the Hopkins’ undergraduate course catalog, you will not see Peabody classes listed, except for a brief description of which limited courses Hopkins’ students can register for, over at Peabody. Those students at Hopkins who wish to minor in music, do so through the School of Arts and Sciences. </p>
<p>If one is applying to the Peabody Conservatory, the overriding criterion for admission is one’s audition. It is a completely separate entity from Krieger and Whiting, which are the undergrad divisions at Hopkins. I suppose that Admissions Daniel would be the best person to clear up any further questions about admission to the Conservatory.</p>
<p>In terms of a talent helping a student with a lower SAT to get into a school in the same way that recruited sports do, that is not what generally happens. The talent makes the applicant more interesting, and perhaps more desirable because he/she is more interesting, which can bolster the application in terms of what that candidate can bring to campus life. But this will not help in terms of lower acceptable stats. These sort of extracurricular talents are those intangibles that separate one great, qualified candidate from another.</p>
<p>Getting into a conservatory is another story. Those, like Peabody, rely largely on audition and on the level of talent.</p>
<p>I have not read this whole thread but S got under 600 in CR and got into Berkeley, not an athlete, not an URM, no hooks. He is doing a double major, made honors list last semester which is the top 4% of all students in Letter & Science. I just never thought of him as a “weaker” student. Luckily he doesnt see himself that way either.</p>
<p>hawkette-going back to your post #62, I believe that you have misunderstood the NCAA data. First of all, the final figure you quoted, that you called the graduation rate for those “exhausting eligibility” is actually the Graduation Success Rate for athletes. According to the notes from the NCAA, that figure excludes athletes who transferred or left or joined the armed services, as long as they would have been academically eligible to compete had they remained at school. Here is the quote from the NCAA–which can be found here <a href=“http://www2.ncaa.org/portal/academics_and_athletes/education_and_research/academic_reform/gsr/index.html[/url]”>http://www2.ncaa.org/portal/academics_and_athletes/education_and_research/academic_reform/gsr/index.html</a></p>
<p>“The GSR also allows institutions to subtract student-athletes who leave their institutions prior to graduation as long as they would have been academically eligible to compete had they remained”. </p>
<p>Thus, the GSR is the 6-year graduation rate for athletes who stay at a school and don’t turn pro or transfer out. It should be an extremely high number because the only athletes who don’t graduate are presumably those who (i) flunk out, (ii) transfer out before they can officially flunk out and (iii) take more than six years to graduate.</p>
<p>It cannot be compared to the freshman cohort graduation rates as you have done, because those figures are based on the total number of freshman who enter, versus the total number of freshman who graduate. </p>
<p>By way of example, if 100 freshman enter and 20 transfer out and 5 flunk out, the freshman cohort graduation rate would be 75%. If 20 athletes enter and 5 transfer out but are still academically eligible and 2 flunk out, the Graduation Success Rate for athletes would be 90%. The two numbers really can’t be compared because they’re measuring a different universe of students. The only reasonable comparison would be to determine the GSR for all students. Continuing my example, if 100 freshman enter and 20 transfer out, but only 1 for academic reasons and 5 flunk out (including the 2 athletes), the GSR for all students would be 94% which would be higher than the GSR for athletes.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m misreading the NCAA data, but I don’t think so.</p>
<p>midatlmom,
I have gone back thru the information that I found on the initial link and the link that you provided and I think you’re right and that my earlier interpretation was inaccurate. I think you are correct that the NCAA reported figures for student-athletes take transfers into account. </p>
<p>There is one additional hitch in making comparisons, and I’m not certain of this, but the NCAA numbers match exactly to the 2007 USNWR graduation rate numbers and those don’t take transfers (in or out) into account. So, there is a little bit of apples and oranges going on, the severity of which is driven by the degree to which institutions take in transfers (quite large in some cases, particularly UC Berkeley-I created a thread on transfers several months ago which I can resurrect if you are interested). </p>
<p>While the absolute numbers of student-athletes are too small to be the dominant source of “weaker” students at these top colleges, they are very likely more so than I previously thought. I still believe that the academic quality of the student-athletes at these top schools is better than generally acknowledged and I would like to see some Ivy stats to make a full comparison, but there is little doubt that this transfer clarification undermines the arguments that I have made supporting the quality of the Division I scholarship colleges and their-student-athletes. I think you have made an important contribution and I think I owe an acknowledgement of my error, which I offer now, to you and other posters who have taken a more skeptical view of the quality of the Division I scholarship athletes. </p>
<p>Here are the numbers again for student-athletes and the schools that we have been discussing:</p>
<p>Stanford
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 94%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 89%</p>
<p>Duke
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 93%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 91%</p>
<p>Northwestern
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 93%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 90%</p>
<p>Rice
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 90%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 69%</p>
<p>Vanderbilt
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 88%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 80%</p>
<p>Notre Dame
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 95%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 86%</p>
<p>USC
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 83%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 60%</p>
<p>Wake Forest
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 88%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 74%</p>
<p>PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES</p>
<p>UC Berkeley
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 87%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 69%</p>
<p>U Virginia
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 93%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 74%</p>
<p>UCLA
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 87%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 74%</p>
<p>U Michigan
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 86%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 78%</p>
<p>U North Carolina
USNWR (2007) & NCAA 6-year Graduation Rate for school = 84%
NCAA Student-Athlete Grad Rate for all student-athletes = 73%</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>??</p>
<p>I asked you about Peabody because it’s the one you know, but I was not talking specifically and solely about Hopkins music students.</p>
<p>I’m not talking about extracurricular interest in music. I am talking about schools which have specific undergraduate programs which admit students specifically based on their talent. The term is “talent-based admissions.” Not extracurriculars. </p>
<p>Some of these schools–maybe not all, and apparently Peabody is an exception as well–DO consider these students “freshmen” and WILL count them as part of their class. Their stats WILL be included just as every other freshman’s stats will be. Michigan, for example, counts every single Art freshman and every single Music freshman and every single Dance freshman as part of its enrolled freshman class. Even though their application process is a little different, they are still included AND their stats ARE reported to USNews, the College Board, Peterson’s, etc, and included in the Common Data Set. I find it difficult to believe that Michigan is the only example in the country. What about Northwestern? It admits students to its Music school as freshmen, and may be another example. Their Music students are still quite well-qualified academically, but it looks like their SATs may be a smidgen lower than NW’s “average.” </p>
<p>So my point stands–among that group of so-called “weaker” students reported by hawkette, there may very well be students who were admitted on other merits (not just athletics, or the wealth of their family, or whatever). Some units within the institution may have very different standards for their students, some which may even be extraordinarily selective in their own way, and these students may account for some of those “weaker” ones. </p>
<p>And I’ll repeat that it’s therefore erroneous to conclude that the presence of those “weaker” students means its that “easier” to gain admissions there. That is, if some school admits a brilliant piano virtuoso on the basis of his stellar audition, overlooking his respectable but lower-than-average 580 on his Verbal SAT, it would be very foolhardy for any other yahoo with a 580 to harbor huge volumes of hope. I’d keep that in mind for any schools on that list that have programs with talent-based admissions.</p>
<p>Hoedown…I understand what you are saying. I think that Oberlin might one of those schools that you speak of. And I agree completely with your point that to assume that since a spectacular talent had been admitted with lower scores that any ordinary applicant should be overly hopeful for admission with the same scores. But this is only for schools with talent-based admissions. For other schools that are looking to build an interesting community, talent is an important ingredient for an applicant to have, as it is something that often distinguishes one great candidate from another (as do other outstanding attributes, such as leadership, for example).</p>
<p>It was NJ_mother who specifically asked the question about Hopkins/Peabody, a few posts back (#77).</p>
<p>Sorry for any misunderstanding, I asked about Peabody too, further back than that.</p>
<p>I wonder about Oberlin because its conservatory is sometimes regarded a separate institution – some institutional coding gives it a separate code. Same with Eastman as well.</p>
<p>
This is probably true for any university with a sizeable Music, Theatre & Dance School or Fine Art Department. Take for example, the University of Michigan:</p>
<p>School of Music, Theatre and Dance (size: approx 1,050)
“We expect freshman applicants to achieve the following:
…
Minimum score requirements are: ACT of 24 or better or SAT of 1100 or better in the Critical Reading and Math, or SAT of 1650 or better including Writing.”</p>