Whew! @snowbunny
We visited Amherst, and I don’t remember the info session at all. If they told us most of the kids wouldn’t get in, it made no impression (nor would it have, as I suggest above). The tour guide was a far-out character that we liked quite a bit.
I am not aiming this only at Amherst but what always bothered me about those sorts of “we’re too good for you” info sessions was the barely contained glee of the adcoms. I started this process way back in 2006 when my eldest was looking at schools and that smug feeling was rampant. Many of these schools had changed in a very short time from selective institutions to highly competitive ones and it was evident that the admissions staff was enjoying the glow.
What’s interesting though is that as the admissions process went from over the top competitive to bat*** crazy, the tone seemed to change, at least at some colleges. While some still seemed to relish their school’s exclusivity, some of the adcoms now seemed concerned about the over the top rate of selectivity and the flood of applications. At one school, the adcom asked students to think carefully about what it was they wanted from a college experience and not to focus on the name of the school. She went on to emphasize that the school was not right for everyone and to highlight the sorts of things to consider apart from prestige. It was very refreshing and I thanked her for her it.
It’s been several years now, but I still remember the Amherst info session as one of my favorites. There were two students who spoke in addition to the admissions officer.
One student described getting terribly sick with mono and being amazed that her professor stopped by her dorm room with soup and the notes from class and offered to email the notes for future classes until she was healthy enough to return.
The other student described choosing Amherst for the open curriculum and being thrilled that she didn’t have to ever take a science class again. She said that her randomly assigned freshman advisor turned out to be a science professor, who heard that and encouraged her to just try one intro class that this professor was teaching. She loved it, and then the professor encouraged her to take a more difficult science class. She was worried that she did not have the science background for the class. The professor said to her that she would set aside a half hour every week for the whole term so that this student could check in and make sure that she understood everything. The truly amazing part was that the student was now a senior…and a science major.
Funny considering comments like that would have been considered the opposite of high confidence in many fields where initial entrants are put through a lot of stress to test their leadership skills, commitment, and ability to stick it out in difficulty situations.
This was also the impression I had of several undergrad/grad classmates who were initially quite confident only to drop the classes we were taking when they found the workload/rigor was much more than they bargained for and used the same/similar statements along the lines of “I don’t need to put up with this crap”. I personally didn’t think the workload in those courses was that big of a deal.
Let’s just say the Prof and the rest of the class weren’t very impressed with such quitters. I was especially surprised by one young former Marine NCO who was taking a summer basic Econ class at an elite U with me and initially talked up a great game about being ready for the course on account of his service as a Marine. He ended up quitting the course a little more than 2 weeks in after receiving abysmal grades back on his weekly quizzes and feeling quite lost in the class. Funny enough, he also said “I don’t need to put up with this crap” right before quitting.
I don’t know…but in my mind, the “I don’t need to put up with this crap” statement seems to be very popular among those who are trying to put a brave face on essentially shying away from moderately or even pedestrian challenges. That IMO signifies the exact opposite of high/higher confidence.
And to play devil’s advocate, assuming the Amherst Adcoms actually have this attitude…they can turn it around and say the following, “True leaders don’t quit when they are given a serious challenge or hear a comment implying such. Good luck on going on your non-Amherst direction.”
That really only applies in situations where there are only a few well-known measures of success. For example, it is silly for a world-class athlete to say “I won’t put up with this crap.” when it comes to training for the Olympics, because the Olympics are the pinnacle measurement of athletic achievement.
But in situations like college admissions where there are many excellent outcomes, including several recognized as equal to or superior to Amherst, “I don’t need to put up with this crap” is not a cop-out, but a vote of confidence. For our high school, the average Amherst early-admit is at the 70th percentile (100=highest). Most of the high achievers are looking beyond Amherst, and getting in.
A personal example: I don’t do drugs and rarely drink, but I refuse to work for any company that requires drug testing. I don’t need to put up with it, and I am confident that my position has not hurt my career.
I audibly laughed when UChicago went way overboard talking about a matriculant with a 21 ACT score. (I’m sure he’s the starting pitcher on the baseball team.) They basically said, “Everyone should apply, not just those with tippy top scores, because we’re different. As you’ll see on the cover of your booklet, last year our ACT range was 21-36.”
Give me a freaking break. What a shameless way to get your applications up by conning unqualified gullible kids into applying.
It was 6 years ago but i remember the vast difference between SUNY Binghamton info session (really trying hard to sell themselves) vs. Princeton which seem to more like you need to sell to US
@hebegebe “For our high school, the average Amherst early-admit is at the 70th percentile (100=highest). Most of the high achievers are looking beyond Amherst, and getting in.”
Wow - where do your kids attend high school - Hogworts? Or are you in an area full of well-to-do Amherst alumni? Or does your school produce a lot of athletes that get recruited at the Nescac level?
The reason I ask is because my kids attend an elite private independent school in the Bay Area, one that regularly gets multiple students into the top colleges across the country, and very few have been accepted to Amherst. No way does anyone in the 70th percentile get in there unless they are a recruited athlete.
At our school, the only colleges statistically more difficult than Amherst to gain admittance are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, CalTech and MIT. Maybe Columbia. (We have a lot of Stanford alums, so there have been a lot of good results there). Amherst is roughly as difficult to get into as Chicago, Columbia, Penn, Duke, Dartmouth Williams, Pomona, and Swarthmore, and everywhere else is easier.
Is your school really getting 30 percent of your class into HYPSM? I guess I knew there were a few boarding schools like that, but I thought it might be exaggerated.
Haha. I wish we got 30% of our students into HYPSM!
No, I was being rather specific. We have a 50% early admit rate to Amherst, and for those students, the average admitted student is at the 70th percentile. But the overall admit rate to Amherst is only in the high teens, and those that are accepted in regular decision have much better stats.
We are in Massachusetts and I believe we get a bump at the in-state privates. Our admission rate into Harvard is much higher than that of Stanford, and higher than every other Ivy except Cornell. Our admission rate into MIT is 3x the national average.
,
Believe it or not, Amherst is not a school that anyone I know ever wanted to even tour much less apply to. In my vast group that I’ve known over several decades in extremely high-level academia, Amherst is considered too rigid. It is considered to attract those who do not know to ask impertinent questions and who prefer to tow whatever line is thrown to them. They learn what is set before them dutifully. And go along their narrow path. The set of comments in support of Amherst by @cobrat seem to reinforce that opinion. These comments amount to “If you don’t want to compete to get into Amherst with its attitude and its self-satisfied air, and narrow perspective of what constitutes achievement, then there’s something wrong with you.”
Please.
I’m bowing out of this discussion now.
Yes, I had the same feeling after the info sessions from UChicago as well as Washington U in St. Louis.
@hebegebe "Haha. I wish we got 30% of our students into HYPSM!
No, I was being rather specific. We have a 50% early admit rate to Amherst, and for those students, the average admitted student is at the 70th percentile. But the overall admit rate to Amherst is only in the high teens, and those that are accepted in regular decision have much better stats.
We are in Massachusetts and I believe we get a bump at the in-state privates. Our admission rate into Harvard is much higher than that of Stanford, and higher than every other Ivy except Cornell. Our admission rate into MIT is 3x the national average."
Ok, now that makes sense. Our admission rate into Stanford is at least 4 times as high as our admission rate into Harvard. I suspect the schools are choosing people who they really think are coming there, and in San Francisco, everyone chooses Stanford if it is an option unless they want an LAC. Our admit rate to Pomona and Mudd is a bit higher than to Amherst or Williams, probably for the same reasons.
@Dustyfeathers "Believe it or not, Amherst is not a school that anyone I know ever wanted to even tour much less apply to. In my vast group that I’ve known over several decades in extremely high-level academia, Amherst is considered too rigid. It is considered to attract those who do not know to ask impertinent questions and who prefer to tow whatever line is thrown to them. They learn what is set before them dutifully. And go along their narrow path. The set of comments in support of Amherst by @cobrat seem to reinforce that opinion. These comments amount to “If you don’t want to compete to get into Amherst with its attitude and its self-satisfied air, and narrow perspective of what constitutes achievement, then there’s something wrong with you.”
Please.
I’m bowing out of this discussion now."
It’s just as well that you bow out, since all you are doing is throwing shade now. And your shade appears to be several decades out of date as well (assuming it ever was accurate). Amherst now is the most economically and racially diverse elite college in the country.
I particularly like your knowledge of the “vast” group of people in “high level academia” all of whom uniformly agree that Amherst is lousy. Did the Harvard Board of Overseers know these people when they looked into revamping their undergraduate teaching?
"It’s well known that there are many other colleges where students are much more satisfied with their academic experience,” said Paul Buttenwieser, a psychiatrist and author who is a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, and who favors the report. “Amherst is always pointed to. Harvard should be as great at teaching as Amherst.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/education/10harvard.html?_r=0
Whatever. You can think what you want. Doesn’t make it true.
@concernedmom17 wrote
Bravo for you. I would hope that I’d have enough verve at the moment to challenge that naked application culling. I’ve only heard Chicago admissions officers in panel discussions with other selective schools. Tossing that out in a mixed crowd would surely look ludicrous.
Funny, Amherst’s info session was a turn-off for us too. However, it should be noted we visited back in 2005. Basically, I asked the adcom what, in his opinion, was distinctive about Amherst. (I asked since the school seemed really bland and we hadn’t gotten any sense of the place’s personality after the tour or up to that point in the info session.) The guy was flabbergasted and acted quite offended and proceeded to harrumph “Amherst is the best liberal arts college in the country!” (Back then it was indeed #1 on USNWR’s list.) He then mumbled something about the consortium. I was surprised the gentleman didn’t have a better answer than that.
Hmm, not sure about that:
The rankings have been extremely consistent. A few relevant deets:
- Williams has been #1 every year since 2004 (tied with Amherst in 2009)
- Amherst has been #2 every year since 2004 (except tied for #1 with Williams in 2009)
- Swarthmore has been #3 every year since 2004 (except tied for #2 with Amherst in 2005)
- Wellesley has been #4 every year since 1993 (!) except 1998 (tied with Williams for #3) and 2012-14 (#8, 6, 7)
Located at the bottom of this webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/andyreiter/data
^^Haha. Yet another illustration of Sayre’s Law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
(zuh? There’s no “intensity of feeling” above. If Sayre’s Law applied, there would have to be great gnashing of teeth, as USNWR rankings are of no real significance to any thinking people).
About 6 years ago (before that single engineering major was created) UChicago rep said, “If you are here to find out about our engineering majors you may leave now since we have none” and a family actually got up and left.
The rep goes, it was supposed to be a joke and I have never had that happen to me!
She went on to discuss how many study Physics and other sciences but many still go on to do masters in engineering at other schools without any issues because they get solid foundation in Math, Physics etc.