Not sure where you get that idea. There are only 4.5% of students there who are AA, and fully 25% of their students have ACT scores below 24. Even if ALL the bottom scores are AA students, which seems like what you are stating, the numbers don’t add up.
But feel free to share your reasoning, @barrons .
You could find out which dorms were party dorms if you knew that some dorms were party dorms. But if you were a tough, hardworking girl from a small town where hardly anyone goes to a residential college, how would you know that?
Privilege. We’re swimming in it. We don’t realize what cultural capital we have and other people don’t have.
I’m on my 3rd set of college visits and while the tour guide/admin drones on about how they do such a great job of the roommate questionnaire, I always wonder exactly how we should know which dorm to rank as 1st pick, 2nd, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if colleges were transparent about this?
Maybe google (party dorms at IU) will be the great equalizer? Or cc? 
IU Freshmen: Worried About What Dorm You Are Placed In …
www.weareiu.com/…/iu-freshmen-worried-about-what-dorm-you-are-pl…
Jul 9, 2012 - “Let’s all request it and hope we get McNutt because that’s the party dorm and nobody cool lives anywhere else. Oh, and did you hear it’s coed?
The Freshman Guide: Picking Your Dorm/Neighborhood …
www.weareiu.com/…/the-freshman-guide-picking-your-dormneighborh…
Nov 7, 2012 - Everyone wants to be in McNutt because its the “party” dorm and oh … All parties that happen at IU are held elsewhere( NOT ON CAMPUS ).
Two IU dorms make Top 14 Biggest Party Dorms list - College …
talk.collegeconfidential.com/indiana-university.../10…
College Confidential
Mar 3, 2011 - 6 posts - 5 authors
Two IU dorms made Dormsplash.com’s Top 14 Biggest Party Dorms! First Annual Dormy Awards & the Launch of DormSplash.com!
What dorm to request 16 posts Mar 15, 2011
Best dorms 16 posts Nov 26, 2010
Best Dorm at IU 15 posts Oct 30, 2008
Info on Dorms 16 posts Dec 29, 2005
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Classics does not seem to be a common major, nor does it seem to be one which attracts party animals looking for an easy major. So there may be a significant self-selection effect going on here where it is mostly stronger students with strong interest in the subject matter choosing that major, rather than weaker students taking it as a “default major”.
Go back and read my post. I WAS a girl from a small town and I was able to find out information on colleges almost 40 years ago. Small towns have college students/grads, they even did back then. Not too hard to find someone you knew from high school who is attending college.
H grew up in an even smaller town than I did and went to a small HS (my HS was a consolidated district so it was good size). He had multiple classmates who attended state flagship (UIUC), Notre Dame, etc. And this was mid 1970’s.
We still have family in the small towns including young people. They are all over the internet.
My point is that “small town” does not equal everyone being uninformed or clueless. That is a stereotype.
It does seem surprising that none of the low SES women had any idea this was a party dorm. Even back in the mid-2000s, most colleges had website and many small towns probably had other kids that went to IU and would offer advice. Nowadays I doubt this is much of an issue, as it seems that kids get on social media to find roommates and learn about the various dorms. But if these women entered college in 2004 there was a lot less social media and college websites were not as useful. It is hard to remember that 10 years ago, there was no Facebook.
I think at least some of the girls ended up in the party dorm when their applications to other dorms were not accepted, or there was not enough room in the other dorms. (Feeling lazy - maybe I should take another look at the book.)
Guaranteed honors housing, or other types of special interest housing, is an important perk for many students considering state schools with party tracks. I think that in the past couple of decades, state schools have discovered that themed housing of any sort can be a draw for students. This probably has an unintended consequence of intensifying the atmosphere of party dorms as other students are siphoned off.
I would not underestimate the effect of poor living situations on academic performance and mental health, whether as a result of living in a party dorm, or elsewhere, even though some students are able to overcome the worst effects with support.
None of the low SES women who ended up in the dorm knew it was a party dorm. Low SES women who did know it was a party dorm wouldn’t have ended up there. We could hypothesize that knowledge about party dorms was much more common in higher SES groups. If your school sends ten kids to IU every year, you won’t have to seek out knowledge about IU; it’ll just be available to you. Say you’re at an IU feeder and you announce to your friends that you’re going to IU. Somebody might ask, “Oh, what dorm are you trying for?” because her sister and her cousin are there. If you didn’t know about party dorms, you do now. But that kind of ambient knowledge is less available in areas where not many kids go away to any college, let alone IU.
I disagree. This assumes that just because someone is working class they are clueless and as others have noted it’s just not the case. These girls are not hopping off a tractor and being dropped off at the big U. Generally, a working class kid is doing plenty of research before going anywhere that costs money and going off to school anywhere does usually cost a working class family quite a bit of money. I do agree that girls are more likely to pick fashion merchandising majors than most young men but so what? People do have careers in this industry, too.
But these particular working class kids came from areas where no one had gone to IU, or at least they didn’t know anyone who had. Working class kids in general might have more info but the specific ones in this book didn’t.
Okay, so we have a very unusual situation where a bunch of dummies are paired up with a bunch of meanies and they let it ruin their educational opportunities (along with picking useless majors) and we blame the school for not having a better orientation presentation which no-one pays attention to anyway and inadequate housing choices. I find it a real reach. Sorry. That the kid with connections has an easier time getting jobs is not news, exactly. Or. surprising to anyone. The author dislikes Greek life. It’s her thing.
That seems a bit of leap to make, particularly if you haven’t read the book?
Well, I looked her up. That and a bunch of sex stuff seems to be about it as far as areas of interest. The agenda is clear. I considered reading the book but after reading this thread I figured it could be too annoying and I think I get it now. She doesn’t like sorority girls and that’s fine by me. But, blaming them or the U for the rejects failures is in my opinion the leap. Plenty of people succeed somehow despite a few mean girls.
Marie, what do you think her agenda is?
I’m sorry you have decided against reading the book. It would be interesting to read your perspective on the book, not just on various posts here about the book. There are different ways to read the book. It doesn’t have to be read as us vs. them. This doesn’t have to be about choosing sides. I hope you change your mind. Sometimes annoying books can turn out to be thought provoking. imho. ymmv.
I think the author is describing systems that don’t work more than individual women, though some of us have focused on the individual women. The system may have built in faults that disadvantage more women than it advantages. CF’s posts made me think about systems as I read.
“Nowadays I doubt this is much of an issue, as it seems that kids get on social media to find roommates and learn about the various dorms.”
At least one pair of working-class girls in the dorms knew they were rooming with each other, so they wouldn’t have reached out to find roommates.
I don’t think it makes you a dummy if you don’t realize that there’s relevant information that the school knows, but doesn’t tell you. It’s reasonable to me that 17-year-olds think a highly detailed freshman housing page with instructions about how to choose your dorm would include all the information you need.
Oh Mom, there are very few AA’s at IU with above a 23 ACT so if that becomes a cutoff there will be very very few of them at all. That’s my logic and it’s pretty fact-based. Only about 5% of AAs score above a 23 on the ACT comp. They are in high demand at better schools.
http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2013/pdf/profile/AfricanAmerican.pdf
On what do you base them? Am I missing stats for AA ACT scores that are published somewhere?
See my link above.
That’s not students at IU.
I did not get the impression that the students coming in from OOS to live in the party dorm were students with high SAT/ACT scores. These students were not being brought in from OOS to raise SAT/ACT scores or improve the academic reputation of the university ; they were being brought in because they were full-pay, and the Greek system was an attraction. This is consistent with what I see at our high school. Students from that demographic (can easily afford to be full pay) would either head to the honors college/business school at IU or a similar school, or go to a more selective OOS public/private university. Nor was there a suggestion that the other students had low SAT/ACT scores.
One contrasted pair of pre-health students had similar high school credentials, and the difference in outcome was attributed to the greater involvement on the part of the successful student’s parents. Even after graduation, the parents of the less successful student did not intervene to find a way to get her back on a track of upward mobility. (I wonder if parents are told to “let go” when they arrive at orientation?) But, this was not a book that examined pre-health pathways specifically as avenues for mobility.
I took a look at the webpage for the tourism major. What popped out at me almost immediately was the number of credits required (around 70), the lack of credits that could be transferred to another program or used to satisfy gen eds or pre-requisites for a major in Arts and Sciences, and the low GPA for “passing.” No mention that recruiters were not interested in graduates with this major, and it certainly did not seem to provide a foundation for any kind of professional school on the one hand, or any kind of licensing on the other.
This major apparently worked out for students who entered with lots of social and cultural capital; not so much for others. I have no idea of whether this was always the case with this and similar majors. If there was any hope that OOS students were bringing their networks as well as their tuition money to this major, it seems not to have been fulfilled.