This wasn’t a comment, so much as an oddity. On Amherst College’s campus tour, midway, we were forced to spend an addiitional 30 minutes staring at a dinosaur skeleton whether we wanted to or not. They were very pleased with themselves and on the tour, the student told us that we were going to take a 30 minute stop so people had time to sufficiently take photos of their new acquisition. My daughter who likes languages and math, not archeology was speechless. Our jaws were still open as other parents played the game taking photo after photo with their cell phones of the dinosaur skeleton.
You mean they never saw one before? In any museum? Were we crazy or they? Now if the tour guide walked us through and said, “For those of you who are interested in this…” feel free after the tour to come back and spend as much time as you would like…I would understand, but to force everyone to spend time looking at this, just didn’t make sense. My daughter and I decided there were other things on the campus we wanted to see more, and took our own detour. Strange. Happy they got rid of their mascot, and their team name, The Jeffs.
Somebody posted earlier that UChicago was trying to get more applicants to apply for the money from application fees.
I applied and did not have to pay thanks to the No Barriers Program. I was waitlisted, so maybe it was a waste of time to market to me…But they are not just racking in more money, unless you specifically put on your application that you are wealthy and will not be applying for FA
Colleges goals are to get more applications thus more application fees, and lower their acceptance rates, plain and simple. You don’t have to be wealthy to have to pay an application fee.When UChicago is sending out mailer after mailer to people with ACT scores in the 20s, that is marketing for the application fee. Often times schools know exactly where people fall income level wise. There is a lot of data out there on everybody, including various profiles where income levels are checked. Big data is everywhere.
Honor codes vary in spirit and in implementation. At some schools, they mean self-scheduled and/or take-home exams; at others they mean un-proctored exams.
I’m a big believer in take-home (essay) exams and research papers, both requiring research, analysis, critical thinking and writing, as opposed to in-class exams that require that students memorize and spit back information in a supervised or unsupervised time-dependent setting. The former assesses much more meaningfully than the latter.
My husband is a professor; he never gives in-class exams, and more often than not he distributes the (take-home) midterm and final exams to students on the first day of class. His essays require “big-picture” thinking – you either know the material or you don’t. The students are, however, required to submit their answers through turnitin and some students do get dinged for either wittingly or unwittingly plagiarizing.
For all the complaints, we never received anything from WashU and maybe two pieces from U Chicago, one of which I remember because it had a coffee cup stain as part of the graphics (as if you’d set a cup down on top). And I had two kids at once. If they sent anything more, it didn’t register as out of the ordinary. We got lots of brochures but nothing that resembled an “overload.” Into the recycle bin they went, nothing to devote any mental space to.
Obviously, these marketing campaigns change over time. I recall that my son got a lot of postcards from Chicago. They were kind of fun, and we liked them.
I recall back in the dark ages of the 70s I received a bunch of mail–I still remember that the most opulent booklet came from Furman.
Chicago is of course trying to lower its acceptance rate, through mailings and by less well-publicized means (the term “shenanigans” comes to mind).
I’m almost certain this isn’t to chase application fees. With about 30,000 applicants last year, Chicago would’ve brought in (at most) a tad over $2 million in fees. It’s not implausible that the meal plan’s mandatory purchases of “Maroon Dollars” bring in more revenue than application fees.
The university also waives application fees for all financial aid applicants - a group that almost certainly encompasses 1/3 of the pool, and may be larger - indicating admissions cares far more about increasing the denominator to the acceptance rate than they do about the fees.
@Pizzagirl I guess your kids just weren’t as special to WashU as mine was.
I also had 2 but they were very different types of students. One got the daily mailings. She is Asian, math and science smart, had a fairly decent writing score on both SAT and ACT, and was from North Florida. I guess her profile was just different enough to make her special. She wasn’t interested in that type of school at all, wasn’t impressed by the claim that it was THE path to medical school for her (she has zero interest in even putting a band-aid on another person).
My other daughter got nothing from WashU. She was a favorite of Oglethorpe’s marketing department. Not weekly like WashU, but several times a month.