2007 is only 7-8 years ago. Need to go back 10-12 more.
During the Vietnam War and from prior wars and in some other nations I know of did involve and require lots of infantry officers to command infantry units in combat or in situations when war was very likely. Even so, if one’s graduating rank at the FSA/military academy was too low and/or one wasn’t a military academy graduate, the default MOS for newly commissioned officers was infantry. There were many written accounts of FSA graduates in the mid-late '60s doing their utmost to graduate with the highest ranking possible to be assigned MOSes other than infantry.
In the ROC(Taiwan) of the '50s and '60s from what I understand, unless one attended the military academy and ranked high in one’s academy graduating class, the most likely assignment was as an infantry officer with a high likelihood of being sent into combat in an era when a military invasion was real. This was underscored by the fact that if my father’s 2 year service obligation as a conscripted junior infantry officer had been extended for a few more months, he and the infantry platoon he commanded would have been among the troops in the thick of the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis. And if the crisis had gotten any worse, he’d have been recalled back to the army.
Wanted to add on to @Hanna’s thought:
For a top 1% kid, there are virtually no Ivies/equivalents that are sure bets any more (maybe Reed and some of the female-only LAC’s?), and even among near-Ivies, probably only NCF, UW-Madison, maybe NYU (also possibly Vassar for guys and a bunch of the female-only colleges for girls). Of those, for someone who wants a U of C type environment, there’s really only Reed and NCF (maybe some of the female-only LAC’s I listed; @Hanna would know them better than I).
However, abroad, I consider UToronto & McGill to be akin to UMich & UW-Madison (they’re all giant publics, and like at UMich and Madison, the top half/quarter of the student body would be stellar) and admissions is straightforward (they take the highest test scorers for each major/school who meet their criteria).
In the UK, I only consider Oxbridge, LSE, and maybe Imperial to be Ivy-equivalents, but I’d consider UCL, KCL, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Durham, Warwick, and Manchester to be roughly equivalent to UMich, UNC, UT-Austin, W&M, UCSD, NYU, and UW-Madison.
They are much less flexible there, however (you only read your course at the English unis; at the Scottish ones, there’s an extra year tacked on in the beginning at allows a little more exploration and flexibility). Also not sure how well-known they are in the US besides the first 4, St. Andrews, and maybe Edinburgh.
But other than Oxbridge and LSE, you just need high enough AP scores in the right AP’s to get in. For a kid who knows for sure what subject they want to study and is already well-prepared (and can afford to be full-pay, though the non-S&E majors tend to be considerably cheaper than full-pay private or OOS here), they may be good options. Undergrad at the top English unis is sort of like a Master’s-lite, however. The 3 years at a top uni/program are essentially 2 years in a major+another year at the Master’s level in the same subject. Scottish unis are similar but with an extra year at the beginning to allow for some exploration and electives.
@Cobrat Most officers who want a career and want to be promoted want to have the kind of recognition that will make them more promotable or be in line for more prestigious assignments, such as battalion command when they make O-5. Getting a Combat Infantryman Badge is almost mandatory nowadays, as so many have received them in the past 15 years. Those without the CIB would be at a disadvantage.
@8bagels : On Emory (my alma mater). Keep in mind that it has traditionally lagged behind the other schools in the admissions arms race especially when it comes to scores and now it lags substantially more. Part of the “difficulty” your area may be seeing is yield protection. Given that financial aid at Emory is currently not competitive with what I would consider academic peers (I would say most ranked between 15 and 25 on USNews, but especially the similar sized privates in that range. It also considers these as peers and some ranked a bit higher as they include things such as application overlap), it is essentially too risky for the dean of admissions to admit lots of super high scoring students that may be in areas or come from schools that do not have a tradition of yielding anyone.
Emory is kind of in a compromising position in terms of admissions, so it appears the admissions dean works with the current landscape and reality the best he can. Part of that means that Emory cannot really migrate to an admissions scheme similar to some of its peers where you admit really high (some such schools have SAT admitted ranges of like 1500-1600 on M/V as their IQR) and then bank on enrolling lower (the schools that do this shave off a lot from the bottom end and maybe drop down to something like 1410-1570 for yielded students) but still extremely high scores. I really don’t like this scheme, because it appears to have diminished returns and does not really improve the “output” of those schools, but it has succeeded as a short term fix to boost the ranking and catch the attention of many prospective students. However, no one should make the mistake of thinking that they are mostly the same students at Harvard or even some more elite schools with lower score ranges. It isn’t the same. Some students were admitted to schools of that tier, but most were not.
To use those tactics assumes it would even be able to yield the students outside of the IQR (bottom quartile). Given that Emory isn’t in a position to go this route and game the ranks like some have, it appears he has settled on a more holistic sort of admissions that enrolls students at about the same SAT range every year but focuses on other attributes that are associated with better performance, more campus vibrance, and future achievements.
It seems to work quite well as Emory performs about the same (and in some years a little better) as the peers I allude to who employ the other scheme. I speak of things like Goldwater, Fulbright, Rhodes, Beineike (sp?), etc (the schools I speak of, 1 started to boost its stats really quickly in about 2010 and another was already known for such tactics for quite a while so always had higher scores and lower admit rates than some schools ranked above it or ranked near/below but viewed similar academically. Then there is Chicago which always had success with the lower, but very strong score range, but decided it wanted much higher app. numbers and scores as well). These things aren’t measured by USNWR, but are important for the progress of the school nonetheless. I suspect that they may go toward the “high scores” model if they find a solution for the financial aid issue (they recognize it as a primary culprit in terms of why Emory has lost ground with scores and rank. The current financial aid scheme was good until others came out with more aggressive schemes). Emory did in fact employ this for a while in the late 90s and early 2000s which is how it at one point did catch up to a couple of the other elite privates, however it was also so desperate as to report even higher numbers (it reported admitted student numbers) to USNews. However, even the admitted student numbers were lower than the enrolled numbers at peer schools (maybe other than Georgetown and Berkeley back then).
On the service academies, is there something misleading about those numbers? I remember reading something about them having some aggressive or unusual method of counting who are “applicants” which leads to a misleading admit rate.
Good point, @bernie12. That’s why I prefer outputs-based tiering/ranking (link to one I came up with is above in this thread).
" I remember reading something about them having some aggressive or unusual method of counting who are “applicants” which leads to a misleading admit rate."
Honestly, I don’t think conventional admissions stats are very useful in understanding the service academies. Their criteria are so different from other selective schools, and the competitive pool varies so much from one Congressional district to another…knowing whether the admit rate is 15% or 30% is just not helpful.
@8bagels – The Ivy admissions stats I posted go back to the Class of 2007, i,e., the admissions cycle of 2003, 13 years ago. It is long enough to show that the primary factor in the sharp decline in acceptance rates at the Ivy schools is the sharp increase in the number of applications, fueled largely by the popularity of the online Common Application. The other big factor is the significance attached to the USNews rankings, which began in 1983 and have been annual since 1987. Combined, these phenomena have caused more and more kids to apply to more and more schools, in a vicious cycle of desperation as the odds of admission seem to diminish heat after year.
It is true that the acceptance rates at Penn and probably also at Dartmouth and Brown and Cornell were between 30 and 45 percent in the early 1980s, but then again the acceptance rates at Harvard and Yale and Princeton in those years hovered around 20 percent, give or take a couple of percentage points. Freshmen class sizes have changed very little if at all at the Ivy schools over the last 30 years, and then as now the acceptance rate at HYP was about half the acceptance rate at Penn. What has changed is the number of applications, which have doubled or tripled. Still, the student bodies at all of the Ivy schools were very strong back in the 1980s, although the demographics have changed somewhat over the years.
Check out these admissions statistics from Yale going back to 1976:
http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/w033_fresh_admissions_0.pdf
The other factor that has driven acceptance rates down in recent years at some schools is manipulation of Early Decision to improve yield, which allows much more selectivity in Regular Decision, which in turn drives up the number of Early Decision applications. Penn fills half its class through ED.
@DadUndaunted : That appears the norm now at most selective privates. 45-50% through ED and then of course they report the RD admit stats to internal and external media to impress different constituencies with the lowest numbers possible. I love looking at school news publications each year when each selective (and even many non) school brags about its often slightly lower admit rate and slightly higher admit stats and the silly people in the comment columns at “some” schools riding these waves of faux and superficial success (yes because adding 10 points to an already insane score range is just something to be excited about) are all sheepishly like: “Wow, look at how much smarter our school has gotten in just 3 years!” or when things don’t go as well “oh no! We’re losing ground.”.
And of course most faculty will report no differences in performance (or the desire to challenge students more in their courses) within that time period or within the last decade for that matter. It is often a big show to put on and has gotten kind of embarrassing if you ask me how folks have bought into the hype. I actually am pleasantly surprised when I look at the comment sections of schools like Chicago and the readers (I suspect some are students) are much more nuanced, cynical, and even critical because they know it really isn’t improving the academic environment much (the students at Chicago were arguably just as talented when the score average was not around 1500/1600 M/V and applications were 1/2 the volume (maybe as recently as 2006-2008 this was the case). And I am certain the intellectual and academic environment has not changed though some are concerned about the former which is strange since one would typically think higher scores = more intellectualism). It is allowing them to keep up appearances and some students are mature enough to know this and acknowledge it instead of being unrealistic in thinking that in a year or two, upon switching admissions deans, the school is suddenly much more awesome to more people than it was before . The admissions office couldn’t be doing anything. The prospective students in America just suddenly woke up lol.
This whole situation saddens me. Again, luckily Chicago was already unusually strong academically before it left the concept of having niche applicants, but for schools that did the same before or after, I cannot really say the same. Again, if those places want to truly be noticed (also as R-1 universities, building a more extensive and successful research infrastructure is important for prestige among academics and ability to recruit very top talent to programs), they should put more money into making UG academic programs and intellectual environment more serious and less into “show business” (the pageant contest that is elite college recruitment and admissions strategy). You can fool and distract many HS seniors and their parents, but not everyone is as impressed with those tactics.
Bernie, it costs tens of millions of dollars to establish a credible program in nanotechnology. Labs, professors, the intellectual underpinnings of a scientific initiative. It costs half a million dollars to attract a star admissions director (salary, benefits, relocation) who can push the buttons of modern marketing and CRM technology and make the numbers go up.
Which one is your typical second tier university going to try- the tens of millions approach which takes years and involves the painstaking recruitment of the right kind of faculty, getting research grants, etc, or the easy/cheap route? Substitute any discipline you want for nanotechnology- even creating a stellar department in the humanities costs big time and money.
I won’t name names- I get enough flack for being an elitist and thinking that a kid who has never heard of Stalin is going to have less to contribute to a class discussion on the Gulag than a kid who has. But there is a long list of colleges whose efforts to “catapult” into the major leagues has been done with admissions and “merit aid” (aka discounting) rather than an increase in academic rigor.
You don’t need to be a genius to realize that giving a bunch of upper middle class kids a 5 or 10K “merit award” is much cheaper than funding needy kids who need something close to full freight. You don’t need to be a genius to do the math and look at yield and realize that once your private college costs- all in and fully loaded- are either close to or just beneath the state flagship you are going to end up with a much more affluent student body over the course of a decade than if you just held your costs down and didn’t play the rebate game.
Look at the proliferation of Master’s degree programs which are cheap to teach and profitable to run. Easier to play in that pond than to expand your med school or add an aerospace engineering program. Who was the person who figured out that someone would pay for a Master’s in Human Resources Management? A degree which costs the same as an MBA but is worth significantly less in the job market??? That WAS genius. Find the kids who don’t have the quant skills to get into a solid MBA program- and charge them the same as they’d have paid for the ACTUAL degree they should be getting.
The show business doesn’t end with yield.
Great posts by @bernie12 and @blossom. Those of us who have observed Higher Ed in this country have seen all sorts of neat tricks. That’s why I’m a big proponent of measuring by alumni (and faculty) achievements rather than focusing on gameable stats.
@blossom What scares me partially is that the schools don’t think anything is wrong when you boost SATs by 100+ points and then output doesn’t improve. In addition, exactly what does it say if the distribution of majors at your school is still completely different from schools you are trying compete. In some ways, this can be good, but I know of some schools, who despite having a super high scoring student body have a HUGE chunk of students in majors that literally every student is knows is not rigorous, which somewhat tells me that a large portion of whoever is typically being recruited, near perfect stats or not (but in the cases I mention, near perfect stats), is hardly interested in the academic opportunity or a challenge so much as the degree and is intentionally choosing such a major not necessarily because it is stimulating and interesting, but because it affords lots of time for socialization and non-academic things.
That is a strange trend to develop as schools known to have EC centric students such as Harvard also still have more typical major distributions with most concentrated in disciplines generally considered quite challenging at the institution. Someone wrote an article (and perhaps a book) on the “party pathway” and weirdly enough, there are perhaps a few (or couple) of elite institutions that have great stats and are “hot” but have that element going on (and that is a part of why they are attractive). Only the current landscape could facilitate that sort of thing developing. I’ve heard of balanced schools before (and most elites are balanced to a certain degree), just not that sort of thing.
Also, I don’t want to talk about the proliferation of such masters programs.
I kind of credit my alma mater for starting to move in the direction of “doing the right thing” when it comes to focusing more on improving academics and stuff, but it is or was just as guilty as some of the places I mentioned who are playing games now, so it is kind of hard to turn the tide when you’ve for a decade or more attempted to compete with peers (mainly trying to pump up stats) by marketing things like campus amenities and quality of life. It traditionally had some academic strengths so always and still draws that crowd, but after a while it clearly drew those that merely wanted a more “fluffy” and generic elite college experience (make some friends, some grades, get shiny degree. Definitely don’t welcome potential academic challenges). And once that becomes the norm, it is hard to reverse by going back to marketing things such as academic strengths and quirky traditions (like Chicago used to do a lot more aggressively). Also, it is more difficult to deal with a new type of student on campus so things such as major curriculum changes become a pain when they wouldn’t have been in the past. Emory actually used to “kind of” be more like a pre-professional version of Chicago (actually a Hopkins type of school may be more appropriate) as it had very stringent GERs (very specific and known to be rather challenging), honors courses, special programs, etc up until about 2007 I believe.
Before then, the students were more niche as you had to think about whether or not you wanted to go (I am pretty sure Emory was actually known for having quite challenging, especially pre-health, courses back then and incoming students kind of just expected and accepted it. That doesn’t seem to be the case now and certain STEM enrollment patterns kind of demonstrate it). But now it is more “meh, generic elite! I expect the same level of academics and fun as X school” so probably doesn’t attract as many of those looking for a more intense academic experience anymore. Like, over in its CC forum, I had to calm down a student that was overly concerned about pending changes to the chemistry curriculum that would introduce some version of a physical organic course that all chemistry students (including pre-healths) must take. I personally think adding more modern topics is a good thing and I’m sure students of “old Emory” could care less, but that person expressing the concern that it would make chemistry coursework more challenging is the norm of today.
Point being, the school has put itself in a position where it recruits students not particularly interested in academic rigor or being at a school that came up with a different way of teaching something so now you get more resistance when you do try to make changes that add more intensity to the school (I for one, think Duke played its cards right. It improved academics and watched the students improve, even if they don’t have “perfect” SATs, they are clearly academically excellent in ways that allow them to tackle more challenging coursework. Stanford as well…but then there is all that grade inflation being even worse than its peers). I fear that some of these schools, even with the extremely high scores will face this challenge if they do try to seriously upgrade their academics (in fact a happy-go-lucky high scoring student body may respond less well to more challenging academics because it induces the level of stress at other elites they avoided for that reason). I know reading the story from the WUSTL instructor who couldn’t teach his differential equations course differently gave me a good laugh, especially when he highlighted the tutor who complained that it was unfair that students were being asked to do MIT level problems (mind you, WUSTL admissions stats appear nearly identical to MIT’s), Something isn’t right and my look at various STEM course materials at some of these places tells me so. Some of these places look like HYPSMChCt on the surface, but below that…definitely not close.
Instead of wondering about which schools are selective that we were surprised about, we should be wondering what exactly are they doing with those student bodies as @PurpleTitan suggests.
Here is that article BTW:http://www.inside-higher-ed.com/how-competition-leads-to-content-deflation-in-one-anecdote/
I wanted to believe he was lying, but I do not think he was unfortunately. It is one thing for students to complain about perhaps the “laziness” of just using MIT Opencourseware, but to complain about the level is bizarre. I found this disappointing as I generally regard most of WUSTL’s as significantly better than other schools in the “interesting admissions tactics” category. However, when I looked at things like RMP ratings for those courses it revealed a) that the profs. were either regarded as not good for those challenging courses or that the students were much less tolerant of the intensity than I would have thought. At my school, there are still enough students left expecting or able to tolerate more challenging than normal content (which should be expected at a school where something like sports don’t influence the social scene/distract people) that many of the most difficult STEM (and even non-STEM) instructors have VERY high ratings, but at some schools that isn’t the case. Students are either too cocky or comfy for their own good. At another school (similar to WUSTL in stats) for similar courses that appeared to be significantly lower than the level of WUSTL’s counterparts, the same level of complaints and sensitivity(quality rating strongly correlated with level of challenge, kind of like normal course evals) to the intensity can be seen. Students clearly don’t know what a proper challenge in STEM is and don’t want to know it
Several factors. With computers and the Common App it is so much easier to research schools and apply. Plus there is so much more information about them out there. So- students are applying to many more schools than in the past (too many I believe). Plus- far more students applying to colleges- consider population (Baby Boomers’ kids) and those who in the past would not have considered college.
re Beloit. Never on the radar of people in Wisconsin- especially since UW-Madison has the academics and campus that are so much better for top students (most do not need small school coddling). Guess I have the UW elite attitude/academic snobbery…
Wash U has improved its reputation in recent times. But- when I look at majors son liked it still doesn’t compare to his STEM options at the flagship. Was good for H’s premed relatives from IN, though. I looked at some STEM offerings at Wash U- what, only one general freshman chemistry and calculus course??? One size does not fit all science majors.
Have discovered that Ohio State (thank you OH parent for refusing that pretentious THE) is more than the football team at the top of the original Big Ten with Michigan (still upset with changes- old rivalries upset- but I guess the academics money received for being in the Big (formerly) Ten makes schools want to be in it- much more to it than just the sports) of my era. Looks like they have paid attention to academic quality and not just the football team.
Older parent here. Back in my day UW (the WI one) admitted many who wouldn’t finish- freshmen year was a “shake up cruise”, sink or swim. I still would have gotten in but I can see how many wouldn’t have. I also never knew the percentages of women- much higher now than early '70’s.
@wis75 “re Beloit. Never on the radar of people in Wisconsin- especially since UW-Madison has the academics and campus that are so much better for top students (most do not need small school coddling). Guess I have the UW elite attitude/academic snobbery…”
I have nothing against UW (both of my parents are alumni) but not all states have a great, affordable flagship. And some students do need “small school coddling” so I’m glad that the small schools exist.
But I was surprised at Beloit’s mention in a discussion of selective schools since their admit percentage is pretty high (69%). Perhaps it’s self selection, as in many of the students who apply there tend to be a good fit for the school, I don’t know. As a comparison, my son’s safety (large state directional U) had an admit rate of 50%, but it was an absolute safety (with automatic merit) for his stats, whereas Beloit appeared more of a reach. I guess admission rate can’t tell the entire story.
“Older parent here. Back in my day UW (the WI one) admitted many who wouldn’t finish- freshmen year was a “shake up cruise”, sink or swim. I still would have gotten in but I can see how many wouldn’t have. I also never knew the percentages of women- much higher now than early '70’s.”
My mom attended in the mid-50s, she was the first in her family to go to college. I wonder what the percentage of women was back then? I never thought to ask.
@ bernie
“In some ways, this can be good, but I know of some schools, who despite having a super high scoring student body have a HUGE chunk of students in majors that literally every student is knows is not rigorous, which somewhat tells me that a large portion of whoever is typically being recruited, near perfect stats or not (but in the cases I mention, near perfect stats), is hardly interested in the academic opportunity or a challenge so much as the degree and is intentionally choosing such a major not necessarily because it is stimulating and interesting, but because it affords lots of time for socialization and non-academic things.”
Very interesting post - thanks. I am just curious, which otherwise very good schools in your opinion have significant numbers of kids who are on this less rigorous socialisation track? Thanks, Londondad
It seems like LACs are simply more popular with East Coasters. As I mentioned, there might be some social prestige aspect with LACs there that doesn’t exist in the Midwest.
Beloit has SAT scores close to Trinity’s, but Trinity has roughly half Beloit’s admit rate.
Does/did Beloit require SAT scores? For many years the U of Wisconsin system did not require test scores, so very few Wisconsin h.s. students took the exams and if they did, it was the ACT.