johns hopkins vs. smith

Momwaitingfornew
Sun, 23 Apr 2006 11:35:16 +0000

I agree with you about Smith’s high acceptance rate and the self-selecting applicant pool. I overheard one woman at Smith’s Open Campus commenting glumly to her parents that it wasn’t like it was hard to get into Smith. She thought her acceptance to another LAC meant more because it was more selective. If she hadn’t been with her parents, I probably would have set her straight. Then again, maybe she was just searching for an excuse not to attend Smith and needed that statistic to justify her discomfort with the school.

The percentage of my daughter’s graduating class that will be attending all women’s colleges is astounding, especially since they attend a co-ed private school. Smith and Wellesley were equally selective; they each took only two applicants, although the two who got into Smith did not apply to Wellesley, and vice versa. Bryn Mawr accepted six and Mount Holyoke, four; these were cross-acceptances. So . . . on the surface it appears that these colleges aren’t all that selective. And then you look at the women who applied to them. All of them got SATs in the 700s and high 600s; all of them take a heavy load of AP classes. (My daughter has even taken two classes, with As, at a top university in addition to her high school classes.) At least two of them (the ones that got into Smith) are varsity athletes. The mix includes class officers, proficiency in two foreign languages, community leadership positions, governor school participants, strong interest and participation in theater, music, and creative writing . . . I could go on. These are not mediocre young women. It may not be difficult to get into Smith if you are an achiever, but you can’t get there if you are not.

Back to your comment about the educational problems in secondary and below education: I’ve had experience with both public school and private education, although both systems were strong and relatively affluent. (Surprisingly, the public school was more affluent than the private, although the private provided better education.) Inner city schools are a whole other problem, both for boys and girls.

You’re also right about gender differences in learning and how the schools often fail to understand this. The best example I have is my daughter’s public school experience (through ninth grade, in another state) with math. Her old school system used the University of Chicago math method called, at the lower levels, Everyday Mathematics. The math system was equitable until about fourth or fifth grade when the gender differences started kicking in. You see, the Chicago math method requires children to be in mixed gender study groups that help each other through the problems. If the group can’t answer a question, then, and only then, are they allowed to ask the teacher. The girls were reluctant to ask the boys for help, although they were generous with giving it when the boys asked. The result was that the girls’ questions never made it into the group and therefore to the teacher. The school was baffled why the girls, who had always been achieving to a level equal to the boys, suddenly tanked. Fortunately, it was a school system with parents who understood exactly what was going on, so they modified the program. Otherwise, no one, not even the teachers, would have known because they weren’t privvy to the workings of the group.