I Don't Understand CC'ers

College Search & Lists
21

<p>phead,
Your post is anti-student. </p>

<p>What’s wrong with a college that wants to recruit you because you’re academically talented and they’re willing to pay for it?? Do you really think that the student is harmed by attending Wash U on a great scholarship rather than going to ABC Historical Elite and paying a hefty price? Of course not. </p>

<p>I just don’t understand why anyone would oppose any student receiving merit aid. The only legitimate argument would be if this somehow crowded out the awarding of financial aid to students with need. But last I checked, Wash U and many other top colleges that award merit aid also meet 100% of a student’s financial need. </p>

<p>If anything, we need more competition for top students. People decry the attempts of colleges to recruit athletes and give them financial incentives to attend. Well, if you think that those priorities of athletic scholarships are improper, then why would you attack incentives to attract students for their academic talents? </p>

<p>The reality is that the merit aid approach brings more top students into play for a wider circle of colleges. The Establishment colleges now have to respond to these tactics (like they did with their enhanced financial aid packages announced in 2008) or else risk losing some of these students who aren’t swayed by the prestige advantage that the historical elites enjoy. </p>

<p>ctyankee,
As a measurement stick, Top 10% students is lousy metric. Grading standards vary enormously as do the strength of schools and school districts. This is a very, very inaccurate way to compare the student bodies at top schools. For example, UC Santa Barbara (96%), UC Irvine (96%), and UC Davis (95%) all surpass Stanford (91%). Does anyone on the planet actually believe that these UCs have a stronger student body than Stanford? </p>

<p>The Top 10% weighting in USNWR is much too high (40% of the selectivity score and 6% of overall score). Heck, even half that level of weight would probably still be too high.</p>

22

<p>I think one of the best features of CC is the opportunity to look beyond rankings.</p>

23

<p>The rankings systems are a dull knife. They are for curiosity seekers and others obsessed with such trivia. Yes, school pride and personal pride all weigh in on that as well.</p>

<p>This thread is a repeat of about 100 others like it. </p>

<p>Merit aid is not intrinsically evil. But I also challenge the notion of needs blind admissions. Many schools pretend to play that game but in reality, they are looking at who needs money and who can stroke a check. There are very sneaky ways to figure that out, some of them by the school and school district you come from. Zip codes tell a lot as well. </p>

<p>I have been a proponent of balance in financial and merit aid. Attracting top students is a valid goal/objective. But not at any cost. Then there are the social issues of whether a school has a mission to admit URM’s, or low income people in their historical MSA or elsewhere, sometimes dipping down pretty low in the class ranks or SAT scores to accomplish that “diversity” goal. Its laudatory on one level, but unfair on another. The middle class kid who is an excellent student but not in the “elite ranks”, and who may need financial aid, particularly if they are white females, often have a harder time with admissions than others. That is just the plain facts, whether acknowledged by schools or not…its fact. </p>

<p>College admissions…and thus selectivity rankings, and thus overall rankings, are fraught with all sorts of problems, agendas, quirks, mistakes, guesses, “projects”, balance of equities, budgetary concerns, on and on. Its not an exact or objective science. And through it all schools have different mission statements: serving a varied community.</p>

<p>Are you magically a different person if you go to WashU or Northwestern or Ohio State? Your experiences may be varied, but in the end, aren’t you really the same person? For some its about being able to get admitted to medical or law school or getting that I Banking job (before the New World Order happened). </p>

<p>I can tell you this much, I am watching the goings on in Washington (and Detroit) a whole lot closer than I am the USNWR rankings.</p>

24

<p>

</p>

<p>I suggest that you consult a dictionary. You evidently have no idea what “hypocritical” means.</p>

<p>There is nothing innately “hypocritical” about disliking religion, or about preferring an educational environment not tied to any religious entity or belief system.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>And what, precisely, is the problem with not having or teaching a “doctrine”?</p>

25

<p>

</p>

<p>Peer assessment can be very useful if it’s done right.
I think the NRC peer assessments of graduate departments are good, because they are done (as I understand it) by experts in each of those fields. For example, you’d ask professional anthropologists to assess USC’s graduate program in anthro. That works because professional scholars read the work of scholars in the same fields at other schools, collaborate together, attend conferences together, etc. They know each others’ work.</p>

<p>However, I don’t understand how one could get a very reliable peer assessment of an entire college by asking people outside that community for opinions about the school as a whole.</p>

26

<p>

</p>

<p>I brought up top 10 percent of class specific to a discussion point nonsense of WashU being top heavy with great students; the balance supposedly filled out with not-so-good students compared to peer schools. In that, class rank is very appropriate. </p>

<p>True, the differences between high school x and y can make the top 10 metric rather worthless. Still the question remains, why is Stanford recruiting kids out of the top 10 percent of the schools from which it is drawing? It’s not that UC Santa Barbara has a stronger student body top to bottom. It is that the bottom of Santa Barbara’s class is stronger than the bottom of Stanford’s class. Stanford can’t care about having a big-time sport programs without suffering the consequences.</p>

27

<p>ct,
Despite their similarly high numbers of Top 10% students, I highly doubt that the bottom of UC Santa Barbara’s class is remotely competitive with the bottom of Stanford’s class. </p>

<p>Consider how they compare on a metric that is probably far more illuminating as to the relative strength of their student bodies: their standardized test scores:</p>

<p>UC SANTA BARBARA</p>

<p>23 ACT 25th percentile
82% of students scoring below 30
26% of students scoring below 24</p>

<p>530 SAT CR 25th percentile
49% of students scoring below 600
14% of students scoring below 500</p>

<p>540 SAT Math 25th percentile
44% of students scoring below 600
13% of students scoring below 500 </p>

<p>STANFORD</p>

<p>29 ACT 25th percentile
30% of students scoring below 30
2% of students scoring below 24</p>

<p>660 SAT CR 25th percentile
8% of students scoring below 600
1% of students scoring below 500</p>

<p>680 SAT Math 25th percentile
5% of students scoring below 600
0% of students scoring below 500</p>

28

<p>to whomever started this thread, I completely agree. Ok… so besides maybe Harvard Yale Princeton and Stanford, the difference between all of the “most difficult” schools is miniscule. At any of them, you’ll receive an excellent education, regardless of if it’s ranked 12th or 39th. People on this site see numbers as everything. Rankings are completely subjective and worthless. The only reason why they’re so appealing is that they are simple… If you get into multiple “most difficult” schools, don’t pick the one with the highest rank. go visit each, and decide for yourself where you fit best.</p>

29

<p>I agree with what bdl has to say. Rankings are kind of irrelevant because what matters to you won’t always be USNWR’s criteria. Hopefully it isn’t at least…hopefully you have your own criteria! When I see a thread where someone is needing help to make a tough choice, I don’t just consult the rankings or automatically presume which is more prestigious. I’ll either not comment or actually give my opinions on a school if it happens to be a school I have developed opinions on. I wish more CC’ers were like me, and acted less like rankings robots.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Consolation, you’ll have to cope with the fact that most people in this country, let alone the world, are religious, and in your life you’ll have to work with many of them. All of the men who started the scientific revolution were religious. Galileo wasn’t exactly Atheist, he just got spurned by the establishment of the time. Newton was a devout Christian Humanist, and Charles Darwin was also a very Christian person. Did that keep them from advancing science? Hardly. </p>

<p>It is really bigoted and hypocritical when so many people today scoff at religious affiliations and have this massive prejudice against anything affiliated to a religious establishment, in the same way that it is bigoted and hypocritical when people automatically form an impenetrable fortress around themselves and become critical when the subject of evolution and global warming are brought up. </p>

<p>For what it’s worth the “Georgetown Circuit” is hated by a lot of Christian Conservatives that liken it to some liberal elitist cocktail scene that would rather be a part of Europe. Someone criticizing Georgetown for being affiliated with religion is one of those things that discredits anything and everything that follows. </p>

<p>My big Catholic family chides me for my liberal views on politics, and whenever Georgetown and Notre Dame get brought up someone surely says, yeah they’re “Catholic”. So which is it? Are we supposed to bow down to the anti-religious tyranny from the aggressive Atheists or should we bow down to the even more aggressive religious right that comes to power occasionally?</p>

30

<p>In an interview the USNWR editor in charge of the rankings said that the metrics used were not all that precise and that the difference in the top 10 schools was so small as to be meaningless. I’m sure one could say that about the next ten and so on. If one has to rank, therefore, it might be better to think of the rankings this way:</p>

<p>1 - 10 = tied for 1
11 - 20 = tied for 2
21 - 30 = tied for 3
etc.
Look how many are now in the top 10 and how silly ranking arguments really are.</p>

31

<p>

</p>

<p>Sheesh. 40,000 + applications and 26 percent score 23 or lower on the ACT? On the point about UC-SB bottom being stronger than Stanford’s bottom - when I’m wrong, I’m really wrong. I’m wrong.</p>

32

<h2>bd108 wrote: “At any of them, you’ll receive an excellent education, regardless of if it’s ranked 12th or 39th. People on this site see numbers as everything.”</h2>

<p>Actually, many of us think syntax (grammar) is important as well and a marker of intelligence (assuming english is your first language). And you lost me completely with that fractured syntax in “…,regardless of if…” It didn’t help that you started by using ‘whomever’ incorrectly.</p>

33

<p>I think WUSTL is overrated for the fact that they routinely waitlist thousands of students, not just for not being as qualified as those for being accepted, but also those who were BETTER. A few weeks ago it felt as if 1/3 of the posters on here had been waitlisted at WUSTL. When the day comes that they stop sucking up to the USNWR and stop waitlisting 2,000+ kids because they want to increase their yield, THEN I’ll start commenting on their actual academic quality.</p>

<p>Notre Dame, on the other hand, deserves the surge in recognition that it’s gotten over the years.</p>

34

<p>I don’t understand why CCers think that posting the nth thread on how CC is crazy is going to make CC any less crazy.</p>

35

<p>Yield is not a factor in the USNWR rankings. If you’re referring to acceptance rate, then that makes up 10% of the “Student selectivity” portion, which constitutes 15% of the overall score – a very small percentage. </p>

<p>WUSTL does NOT waitlist in an effort to drive the acceptance rate down. Their predictions for yield are generally very good. In past years, waitlist activity has been relatively quiet when compared to other schools (even Harvard); in some years, there have been no students taken off of the waitlist.</p>

<p>Where did the 2,000+ number come from? Cornell waitlists over 3,000, UVA waitlists over 3,000, and so on.</p>

36

<p>They are also larger schools. And where did 2k come from? I would be interested in seeing what is it.</p>

37

<p>WUSTL drives it’s acceptance rate down by wait listing thousands. WUSTL has a bit of a reputation for waitlisting that stretches back years now.</p>

<p>Wait. You KNOW that WUSTL doesn’t report USNews waitlist numbers right? It is the only school in the top 100 that doesn’t report waitlist numbers outside of Rice university. WUSTL doesn’t release a common data set, and I doubt they will release one for a long time. Wash U…one of the relatively few that has it Common data set well hidden from public view.</p>

<p>The only thing I know is that 144 were accepted off the WL last year according to USNWR.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/washington-university-st-louis/473819-count-waitlisted.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/washington-university-st-louis/473819-count-waitlisted.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/washington-university-st-louis/676301-dont-worry-about-waitlist-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/washington-university-st-louis/676301-dont-worry-about-waitlist-2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

38

<p>You know what I don’t understand about CCers? How they make pointless posts that look like this:
lol (10 chars)
yes (10 chars)
no (10 chars)
In short, people saying (10 chars) to get past the 10 character limit bug me. It’s there for a reason.</p>

39

<p>DunninLA wrote: "Actually, many of us think syntax (grammar) is important as well and a marker of intelligence (assuming english is your first language). And you lost me completely with that fractured syntax in “…,regardless of if…” It didn’t help that you started by using ‘whomever’ incorrectly. "</p>

<p>Wait… so are you serious here? Ok… I made one mistake with who/whom. Many people do, whether or not they are college educated. Aside from this, I can’t possibly see how or why my response would be seen as incomprehensible. If I wErE wr1tInG LyK DiS Thr00aWt mI rispon53, I might see your point, but thankfully, I am not, and therefore should not be accused of being less intelligent than you ranking robots who dominate this site.</p>

<p>Fractured syntax in “regardless of if”? If I lost you here, maybe you should look into reading comprehension help because what I was saying isn’t exactly like reading Kierkegaard. Maybe I could have been less crude with how I put my sentences together, but you know what? This is the Internet. Who the hell cares dude? If you’re going to waste your time on this site, I suggest you criticize what people have to say rather than the most infinitesmal errors in syntax.</p>

40

<p>Regarding Phead’s argument about schools pursuing their own interests, such as increasing rank, spending a lot of money, etc, and sacrificing financial need for students who NEED it, instead of giving merit aid to top students…</p>

<p>Phead, I know you’re a smart guy since you come from Hopkins (btw, I declined hopkins for washu), and i’m hoping you’ve taken a course in economics. Adam Smith, perhaps the most renowned economist of all time, came up with the idea of the invisible hand: the idea that pursuing one’s own interest benefits society. Almost the entire world’s economy is based on this idea, that’s why we advocate for free trade, etc, so i doubt this idea is completely bogus. </p>

<p>Honestly, it is sad that some students who need a lot of financial aid cannot receive what they need and end up going to their state schools. But let’s face it…college today is all about money. Aside from the very top schools, every other school’s endowment is only in the single digit millions. I personally know a lot of people who got great financial aid from washu and some who didn’t, but i’m sure that’s true for all schools.</p>

<p>To respond to your remarks about WashU’s waitlist and how it isn’t need-blind, first of all, WashU IS need blind for about 90% of their accepted students. The last 10% they aren’t need-blind mainly because they need to make sure they don’t run out of money. Usually, however, that rarely happens. </p>

<p>secondly, there is absolutely no solid proof that WashU waitlists kids who are overqualified. If you’re the best student, top of your class, write a great essay, great test scores, of course WashU, or any college for that matter, will want you! Remember that WashU doesn’t have a supplement so a lot of what they based their admissions policies off of comes from 1) the common app essay, or 2) teacher recs. They don’t have additional essays to gauge how mature, kind, etc. a student is. Just because someone with a 2400 gets waitlisted, doesn’t mean it’s cause he’s overqualified, maybe his essay didn’t appeal to WashU as much as he would have liked. A lot of students end up making their common app essay weaker because they have supplements to rely on, but not in this case. Find a statement from the admissions office saying that they waitlist overqualified students and i’ll admit i’m wrong about everything. But saying “hey, these 100 kids who are extremely good at everything got waitlisted, that means they MUST waitlist overqualified students,” is making an argument without real evidence.</p>