Tufts' Reputation

buzzers · November 6, 2010, 7:26pm

Hilarious. Tufts is a back up school? So you disregard good accepted students scores and still belittle good enrolled students scores? Hilarious. So you are telling me the top 10% of the class from 90-91% to 85% is very significant? You are telling me that a mean SAT score of enrolled students consisting of 705 Critical Reading, 712 Math and 714 Writing is evidence of a back up school?

FYI, Tufts mean SAT score for enrolled students was higher than John Hopkins for the class of 2014:

[Class</a> of 2014 arrives at Johns Hopkins Aug. 25 and 26 News from The Johns Hopkins University](<a href=“For Media | Hub”>For Media | Hub)

Yet if you are going to make an argument that the difference is minute, then I suppose the 90-91% in top 10% of class to the 85% in the top 10% of their class is also minute. Yet we wouldn’t want to call JHU a back up school, right?

The point is that it’s stupid to consider schools like Tufts, Georgetown, or JHU back up schools. They are all amazing schools and if you attend any one of them you will have a great education. At the end of the day it’s all about fit.

infinitetime · November 7, 2010, 5:10am

I wasn’t going to weigh in on this debate, but the misrepresentation of facts compelled me to do so.

According to the NY Times, only 1% of Harvard-Tufts cross-admits chose Tufts. The figures for Yale/Stanford/MIT and Princeton are 2% and 3% respectively. If that’s not the definition of (Ivy) backup, I don’t know what is:

[The</a> New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html]The”>The New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices)

SAT scores have nothing to do with Tufts’ backup status. Just compare Tufts’ thirty-something percent yield to those of the Ivies. It is not a first-choice school by any stretch of the imagination. Also, it’s really not that hard for a school that enrolls primarily upper middle class white students (who aren’t athletes) to have decent SAT scores.

Besides, the SAT is culturally biased against URMs and low income students. So boasting about Tufts’ SAT scores only highlights its relative lack of diversity. It is a regional school that attracts most of its students from the Northeast corridor. The overwhelming majority of Tufts students are kids who couldn’t even get into a lower ivy. It is what it is: a good but not great school. There’s really no need to make Tufts out to be something that it’s clearly not.

infinitetime · November 7, 2010, 5:25am

If Tufts has such a stellar reputation, then why do some Tufts parents feel the need to keep fishing for compliments?

<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-confidential-cafe/959717-would-you-rather-attend.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-confidential-cafe/959717-would-you-rather-attend.html</a>

SlitheyTove · November 7, 2010, 12:27pm

Here’s the original article which the cross-admit chart accompanied. <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17leonhardt.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17leonhardt.html</a> It was written shortly after Harvard announced that they would no longer offer an early admission option. The article dug into the implications for other schools and their yield rates. Bottom line was that Harvard is seen as being on another existential plane than all other schools, so it crushes everyone else in cross-admits. Yes, all schools are back-up schools to Harvard.

The cross-admit data is instructive but it isn’t true cross-admit data. From the original article

That’s an average of 6-7 students per high school. I’ll assume that those are the top students at each school, so each would have a shot at any of the 17 colleges on that list. Not that students of the high school class of 2004, or 2002, or whenever the data were gathered, were applying to 17 schools apiece.

Clearly, some of the data extrapolated on what are very small numbers. I’d believe the Harvard-Yale data, but probably not, for example, the Harvard-Berkeley data.

infinitetime · November 7, 2010, 1:46pm

True. I guess you could call Yale, Princeton, etc. “backups” to Harvard. But it’s one thing to lose to Harvard by a 2-to-1 or a 3-to-1 margin. It’s quite another to lose by a 99-to-1 margin. Note also that Tufts loses the cross admit battles with each of the other 16 schools on the list, which means it is a backup to all of them.

But ultimately this is a discussion about Tufts’ (academic) reputation. One good proxy for academic reputation is the Peer Assessment ¶ score. The other 16 schools all have PA scores of 4.0 or above. Tufts’ PA is 3.6, which puts it on an equal footing with the likes of UC Irvine.

SlitheyTove · November 7, 2010, 2:16pm

inifinitetime, to repeat: that’s not actual cross-admit data. It’s a model, using information from a limited number of students who graduated from high school 6-8 years ago.

I agree that it’s important to always note the misrepresentation of facts.

Here’s the original paper. [SSRN-A</a> Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities by Christopher Avery, Mark Glickman, Caroline Hoxby, Andrew Metrick](<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105]SSRN-A”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105) One of the authors is from Boston U, which amusingly enough is not included in the list of colleges. Among other gems, there are actual academic references and descriptions of the phenomenon that we here on CC call Tufts’ Syndrome.

I’ve only started reading through this, but it’s an interesting read–thanks for the pointer to the graph, so I could backtrack from there. Interesting material, but older. I’m reluctant to take a six year old social sciences paper as dogma.

The rankings we construct are based on a survey of 3,240 highly meritorious students that was specifically conducted for this study. Because we do not have a fully representative sample of college applicants, we rank only about a hundred undergraduate programs and our ranking is an example, not definitive. Nevertheless, we can show that our ranking has advantages. In particular, it is less manipulable than crude measures of revealed preference, such as the admissions rate and matriculation rate. A ranking constructed according to our method would be a good substitute for the preference indicators that receive substantial weight in formulas of high publicized college rating systems, like that of U.S. News and World Report. Many colleges currently feel compelled to engage in strategic admissions behavior in order to maximize their published college ratings. Use of our ranking method would relieve this
pressure.

Rankings based on students’ revealed preference measure a college’s desirability in students’ eyes. Such desirability may reflect a college’s quality, but it is unlikely to be identical. to quality. Indeed, the notion of what constitutes quality in a college is likely to differ from person to person. Faculty, parents, policy makers, and students may all assign different weights to colleges’ characteristics.

They’re trying to come up with a way to determine a perceived prestige ranking in such a way that it can’t be manipulated by the schools, a kind of bombproof USNWR ranking. I’d like to see something similar for PA, which can also be manipulated.

infinitetime · November 7, 2010, 2:47pm

Correct. Going forward, I should more clearly state that these cross admit battles are hypothetical (not actual) choices, although that’s neither here nor there. I assumed that this would be obvious from my posted chart, under which it distinctly says that: “[t]he data are estimated, based on a statistical model…”

Exactly. The Revealed Preference ranking is by its nature “less manipulable than crude measures of revealed preference, such as the admissions rate and matriculation rate.” According to the RP ranking, Tufts places 40th, which is well behind its alleged peers:

This ranking is basically immune to any yield protection measures that may obscure a school’s real (i.e. unadulterated) prestige standing. So what we see is what we get.

hebrewhammer · November 7, 2010, 3:51pm

SAT scores have nothing to do with Tufts’ backup status. Just compare Tufts’ thirty-something percent yield to those of the Ivies. It is not a first-choice school by any stretch of the imagination. Also, it’s really not that hard for a school that enrolls primarily upper middle class white students (who aren’t athletes) to have decent SAT scores.

Besides, the SAT is culturally biased against URMs and low income students. So boasting about Tufts’ SAT scores only highlights its relative lack of diversity. It is a regional school that attracts most of its students from the Northeast corridor. The overwhelming majority of Tufts students are kids who couldn’t even get into a lower ivy. It is what it is: a good but not great school. There’s really no need to make Tufts out to be something that it’s clearly not.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here other than just to insult Tufts. Tufts is a fairly diverse school made up of mostly intelligent students who performed well on a variety of criteria for admissions, including the SATs. I agree that Tufts’s enrolled students SAT scores don’t really have much to do with it’s back-up status, but do show that it has a smart (at least by College Board standards) student body who likely could’ve gone elsewhere but instead chose not to.
With regards to diversity and regional status:
“Diversity is a clear hallmark of the University’s 155th class, which matriculates from 886 high schools in 45 American states, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and 35 nations. While Massachusetts sent the most new students to Tufts, a record-setting 138 Californians took their place in Medford-Somerville and eight percent were raised abroad. A third of the class is Roman Catholic or Jewish but another third indicated an agnostic or atheist outlook. Twenty-six percent are Americans of color, 17 percent speak a language other than English at home and nearly 11 percent are first-generation college bound. China, South Korea, India and Turkey are the largest foreign delegations but many freshmen offer a truly “global” heritage that resonates with Tufts’ international aura.”
Obviously the admissions office wants to make the school sound diverse, and I’m not sure where they have the full regional data available, but having >10% of the freshmen class from California seems to indicate that it’s not a “regional school”; I’d guess that you’re probably right that “most” (or more than 50% - probably in the 55-70% range) come from the Northeast - being Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and maybe Pennsylvania. I feel like almost every school draws a comparable proportion of it’s student body from the surrounding region.
I also don’t think you have enough data to make the statement that “The overwhelming majority of Tufts students are kids who couldn’t even get into a lower ivy.” While that survey clearly shows that most students who apply to both Tufts and an Ivy League school are much more inclined to attend the Ivy when admitted to both, it doesn’t take into account the kids who apply to Tufts and not to Ivy League schools, not because they couldn’t have been admitted, but because they had no desire to. These students (like myself) may still be a minority at Tufts, but the existence of this group that you seem to have entirely written off indicates that your assumptions are at least somewhat off-base if not totally false.

buzzers · November 7, 2010, 4:16pm

Several Problems here:

First, your NYT times article is from 2006 and as already stated, is projected.

Second, I think a lot of schools are “backups to ivies”–specifically, top ivies. I never said ivies. I implied schools like JHU (which has a lower yield than tufts…fyi).

Third, PA scores are stupid because they consist of arbitrary opinions. There has been ample evidence that they are skewed and even given to secretaries:

[News:</a> Reputation Without Rigor - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/19/rankings]News:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/19/rankings)

Fourth, I utilized SAT scores to show that Tufts still attracts top kids. The idea that Tufts kids don’t stake up to even “lower” ivies is silly. My best friend turned down ivies to go to Tufts. Although anecdotal, he did say that the admissions game is changing from talking with the President of Tufts. Apparently for that “cross-over” chart from the 2006 NYT, more than 50% are choosing Tufts over cornell. With Penn, it’s in the 40%. Although, again, this is anecdotal evidence, so I can understand not weighing it much.

I would also argue that if you are going by PA because of “rankings” why not look at the Times Academic ranking of World Universities. A lot of praise has been given to it because it uses objective data (unlike subjective data like PA score).

Here is some proof of the praise (yet i am sure you can find critics):

[Pride</a> before the fall: Rankings show that the UK Academy still punches above its weight, but for how long?](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/analysis-uk-performance.html]Pride”>UK Academies: Pride before the fall? | Times Higher Education (THE))

Tufts is ranked 53rd in the world–surpassing both Dartmouth and Brown.

Additionally, your revealed preference paper is from 2005. Update things! I think you should realize is that Tufts accepts students who are stellar. And those who choose to attend are also very stellar as with any top institution. Yield is low, sure, yet that’s not used in any rankings. You realize that paper puts Barnard ahead of UCLA and Vanderbilt? Or that Georgetown is ahead of Northwestern, Duke, and U of Chicago?

Again, that’s silly because you are muddling the fine line between what you think a paper in 2005 says versus fit. Some people find other schools a better fit. (Perhaps your paper shows that). Yet it also doesn’t do anything to say the kind of students that attend these universities. I think I have seen these papers where BC was in the top 10. Again, it’s arbitrary in its nature.

For example, Cornell’s yield is 49%. The difference between 33% or whatever and 49% is silly:

[The</a> Early Line on Admission Yields (and Wait-List Offers) - NYTimes.com](<a href=“The Early Line on Admission Yields (and Wait-List Offers) - The New York Times”>The Early Line on Admission Yields (and Wait-List Offers) - The New York Times)

(note how my sources are all relatively up to date?)
Whether it’s 1 in 3 kids or 1 in 2 kids choose to attend doesn’t make a difference as to the academic quality of these students.

I think using people like parents on college confidential is also really silly. Perhaps the fact that they are questioning is probably a good sign of the peer institutions. All I am saying is that Tufts is a pretty underrated school. It has students with good stats and who are creative. It’s a generalization to say that Tufts is a back up school (maybe for some, maybe not for others). Yet it’s true that if you call Tufts a back up, you have to call JHU or U of Chicago as back ups. And that’s just silly.

Again, at the end of the day, it’s all about fit. Tufts is one of those schools that’s on the rise and clearly has been attracting more and more intelligent students.

Lastly, as I said before, Tufts doesn’t practice yield protection. One, a Tufts admin. on CC said so. Two, it isn’t even considered in rankings, and three it’s very contradicting to back up school.

If a school is both a back up school and practices yield protection, that seems weird. You are saying that really qualified students use it as a back up school and pick a “better” school once they get accepted to both while at the same time saying that Tufts doesn’t accept good students (which their stats prove they do). Their acceptance rate is 18th in the country–tied with U of Chicago and Northwestern.

To put it simply, yield is stupid:

[College</a> Explorations: College ‘Yield’ Puts New Admits in the Driver’s Seat](<a href=“http://collegeexplorations.blogspot.com/2010/04/college-yield-puts-new-admits-in.html]College”>College Explorations: College 'Yield' Puts New Admits in the Driver's Seat)

BYU has a 78% yield—clearly, it’s there with Harvard’s 76% yield.

JHU has a 30% yield

Georgetown has a 45% yield

The problem is that this is all meaningless.

You took what I said out of context by making it exclusive to ivies, and then went further by trying to argue yield when the methodology is…well, silly.

infinitetime · November 7, 2010, 4:20pm

This argument doesn’t help your cause for at least two reasons:

(1) A much higher percentage of Ivy students had no desire to apply to Tufts than vice versa;

(2) Ivy students are much more likely to be admitted to Tufts than vice versa (unless, of course, you want to make a case for “Tufts Syndrome”). Pick your poison.

infinitetime · November 7, 2010, 5:11pm

Do you have more current information?

The posted link shows that Tufts is a backup to all other 16 listed schools, half of which (obviously) are not Ivies.

They are neither stupid nor arbitrary. It’s no accident that HYPSM have the highest PAs. Just because there exist some rogue assessments doesn’t mean that the entire PA enterprise is not meaningful.

SAT scores are only part of admissions. Among other things, Ivy students tend to have stronger extra-curricular activities and (especially athletic) talents.

You’re right. It doesn’t weigh much. Do you have any independent sources?

The THE World University Ranking measures higher institutions as a whole. I wouldn’t be surprised that overall, Tufts has stronger graduate and professional programs than Dartmouth and Brown, which are basically glorified LACs. But do you seriously believe that Tufts successfully competes against Brown and Dartmouth for undergraduate students?

Again, do you have more recent data?

Something that is counter-intuitive may not necessarily be untrue. Do you have any a priori reasons why these colleges cannot be ranked accordingly?

The (real or hypothetical) cross admit battles between Tufts and the Ivies strongly suggest that prestige overrides “fit” (which in itself is a rather nebulous notion). “Fit” also seems to be the universal appeal of supporters of lower ranked schools.

What do you expect him to say?

It affects perceived prestige which attracts higher caliber applicants which in turn tangibly affects quantitative measures in the other parts of the rankings such as SAT, class rank, etc.

Where’s the contradiction? Why wouldn’t backup schools (which by definition have lower yields) want to improve their yields?

BYU and Harvard are not peer (or even comparable) institutions. Religiously affiliated schools with low tuition will obviously generate high yields. But by other measures of selectivity, BYU is literally out of Harvard’s league.

For your sake, I hope that this isn’t your closing argument.

buzzers · November 7, 2010, 5:11pm

Oh yes, relishing in a 2006 article based on projections. How about the fact that you earlier argued that tufts syndrome exists as does tufts exist as a backup school. Now you buy my argument that they are contradictory?

I dare you to find a credible source(e.g. Google Scholars, etc.) that talks about the existence of tufts syndrome.

The problem is that Tufts Syndrome is non-falsifiable. No matter what people say, there is no way to deny it. Which is funny, because it means you are wrong since you have the burden of affirmation. (e.g. I can’t just say Dragons exist. I have to prove it.)

Non-falsifiablity also falls into line with tufts as a back up school. Even your NYT article which is from 2006 and is based on projections doesn’t prove much. The problem is that if you consider Tufts a backup school, then you have to consider JHU, U of Chicago, etc. as back up schools. With an acceptance rate of 24.5% for the class of 2014, Tufts isn’t an easy school to get into. With students who enroll having stellar stats, it also contains an intelligent student body. While you probably will find students that got rejected from ivies (which isn’t unique to Tufts, but also U of Chicago, U of Michigan, JHU, etc.) the reverse is also true. I know plenty of people at Tufts who turned down ivies. And not just Brown, Cornell, or Dartmouth, but Harvard, Penn, and Princeton as well. While this is anecdotal evidence it also does make the point that a lot of college selection is about fit.

You make the point about yield, yet BYU has a higher yield than Harvard. Is Harvard a safety school for BYU? No. This is why it’s not used as a ranking criteria anymore. Yet schools like JHU have a 30% yield. Is it a backup school? No. The problem is that you are making a straw man argument–first you distort the original claim that was back up in general, yet you morphed it into meaning ivies (while excluding schools that many consider up to par with ivies). Second, you then try to utilize yields and provide evidence which isn’t up to date.

Because in the end all of these schools are excellent and what you choose is primarily on what fits the best.

infinitetime · November 7, 2010, 5:42pm

No, I asked you to tell me where the contradiction lies. You still haven’t told me.

Did you read the Revealed Preference paper that SlitheyTove posted?

NO. It isn’t (theoretically) unfalsifiable, provided that you have the admissions data. The authors of the RP paper demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that it can be proven (one way or another). All you need is sufficient data. If we could collect enough Naviance data re: Tufts, we could definitively prove that it either does or does not practice yield protection.

They probably are Ivy backups too. But they are more prestigious backups according to the RP and the PA.

Okay, I am calling your bluff. Who do you know at Tufts that turned down Harvard? How many?

All you seem to have on your side is “anecdotal” evidence. Also, you need to define “fit.”

What didn’t you understand about their not being comparable?

buzzers · November 7, 2010, 5:46pm

First, answering my argument with a question is not an answer. I don’t have recent data because it’s stupid. 5 years ago, really? You realize how much things change in that span of time? Like how Tufts has improved as an institution in that time?

Again, you are using an article from 2005. You know what happened in 2005? That was the age in which Kanye said Bush hates black people. ALL my evidence was up to date and you didn’t respond to ANY of it (remember Tulane? Yeah…that’s when it kind of went underwater…omg too soon?..yet look how it is now). To be truly accurate, the revealed preferences is from 2004. Trust me, a lot has changed since then. I wouldn’t use an article from 2000 much less 2004. If there was a revealed preference article or a cross-admin. from 2000, I would in no way use it. Much less in 2004. Seriously, the fact that you are using something that is very outdated as the crux of your evidence is sad. At least my evidence is up to date, dude.

You TOTALLY missed my article. It says specifically that for the PA score, people still pass it along and just copy from last year, or that they try to cheat their competitors. Is it any wonder that Tufts does extremely well in every other aspect of the ranking except the PA score which is 25% weighted?

You also make the argument about a priori yet you are using that same thing by using it as a way to justify PA scores (well, harvard and yale should be first!). My point is perceived scores are stupid when it’s secretaries making the decisions (read my article please?). Also, a Tufts admin. has more credibility then you or me. Again, you fail to respond to non-falisfiability. No matter WHAT I say, you just disregard it (kind of against your a priori thing).

You didn’t answer my point of how it’s a contradiction (accepting kids who treat tufts as a backup and at the same time those kids go to a different school. What?). The problem with yield protection is that there is no incentive to practice it. Give me credible evidence, please.

I agree with BYU, but the point is that it’s all about fit. Berkley and Tufts, for example, are two completely different schools. This is where fit comes into play.

As for the Times article, you can’t seriously tell me then that PA doesn’t proliferate to Graduate schools? (Cough, look at U of Michigan). The fact is that it still weighs the undergraduate evenly.

On a personal basis, I think Tufts is better than Dartmouth and I think it’s on the same level as Brown.

I say this because Tufts has really good student teacher relations and the classes are small. People are happy, food is good, people learn a lot and have great opportunities. You are also close to the city and have a really good alumni network with great job opportunities. I also think Tufts has an intelligent student population that keeps improving. People who got here are exceptionally nice (also true at Brown) and aren’t cut throat. Their graduate schools are good in the sense that it trickles down yet doesn’t take away from the undergraduate experience.

You also don’t have teachers that are pompous and utilize their tenure status to have classes taught by TA’s. I don’t know anyone at Tufts who has had a class taught by a TA.

So in my opinion, yes, Tufts is a good school. Yet that doesn’t carry much weight, does it? (funny, I sense a little of your a-priori here)

I also think you should realize schools like JHU. Your article from 2005 or whatever doesn’t respond to several personal account I heard from the Tufts president himself saying over 50% cross-admits to Cornell go to Tufts and with Penn it’s rising and is in the 40’s. Yet you would disregard this as made up. Yet while anecdotal evidence does have some credibility issues, I would argue the same is true from a paper written 5 years ago. Tufts has moved up. Some people like yourself just don’t realize it.

buzzers · November 7, 2010, 6:05pm

The contradiction lies in this:

If something is a backup school, that means the student knows they will get into that school because they are so amazing, or whatever. Yet if a school practices yield protection, then it rejects those students. Thus, for your data, it doesn’t prove anything about yield protection nor does it show any evidence for it. You also don’t answer the fact that there is no incentive for yield protection. This means if those students were “oh-so amazing” and Tufts syndrome existed, then they wouldn’t have gotten in and been able to pick an “oh-so-amazing” school over Tufts because Tufts would have rejected them due to “tufts syndrome.” Make sense?

Also, your response to nonfalsifiable is literally like you saying “Dragons and fairies exist.” And I say, “no they don’t. You can’t prove it.” And you respond “well, prove that they DON’T exist.” That’s a really bad argument and is a reason why non-falsifiablity exists–it means that you can’t just make claims and assert them as fact without any proof.

Also, the revealed preferences is outdated. How many times do I have to say this?

Here is proof: Princeton Review does their dream schools. In your revealed preferences, NYU is rated behind Tufts (or two above, don’t remember). Yet according to Princeton Review, NYU is 5th!

[Princeton</a> Review’s 2010 ‘College Hopes & Worries Survey’ – NEW YORK, March 24 /PRNewswire/ --](<a href=“http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/princeton-reviews-2010-college-hopes--worries-survey-88983487.html]Princeton”>http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/princeton-reviews-2010-college-hopes--worries-survey-88983487.html)

Seriouslyyyyy.

Also, you keep mixing my original argument that i wasn’t talking about ivies yet you grouped it all at once. JHU is not an ivy but an excellent school. I was responding to the fact that Tufts is a back up school in general. It was pretty CC to just assume I meant ONLY ivies.

And yes, you can call my bluff. To be exact, I know 3 kids for Harvard. My best friend, his friend, and another kid they know but I don’t know at all (so I guess you could say 2).

When I say fit, i mean a school that just feels the best for you and you are comfortable with. Schools like Tufts, georgetown, JHU, Brown, etc. are great schools–you will get a stellar education at all of them. What matters is what you like the best (close to the city, the kinds of people, etc.).

I also had a lot of evidence disregarding PA score, the Times and saying that the Times was credible. I also dared you to find me credible evidence that Tufts sydnrome exists. IT WAS A DARE!!! (kidding, of course).

Seriously, respond to my argument about that article of PA scores. Seriously, did you read who fills those out? At least the Times excludes these subjectivities.

And for cross-admin. I can’t find a recent article. Yet if the revealed preference argument is any indication that things change overtime, I would argue that the same is true for cross-admins (they work together!..if one has a dream school then they are more inclined to pick it over something else).

Yet the problem with the NYT article is that it’s based on projections and not raw data.

buzzers · November 7, 2010, 6:09pm

Also, how does PA translate to more prestigious backups? How does my high school counselor or Grunndell Community College’s (made up) secretary relate to prestigious backups? JHU has a lower yield than Tufts, fyi. And U of Chicago and Tufts had the same acceptance rate this past year.

buzzers · November 7, 2010, 6:15pm

Lastly, this is what Tufts PA scores for this year compare to:

3.7 College of William and Mary
3.7 Indiana University-Bloomington
3.7 Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus
3.7 Purdue University-Main Campus
3.6 Ohio State University-Main Campus
3.6 Tufts University
3.6 University of Florida
3.6 University of Maryland-College Park
3.6 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Again, PA fails at life.

phuriku · November 7, 2010, 6:44pm

Let me butt in here for a second to provide an objective analysis from an outside source.

<ol>
<li>Yield is relevant for measuring desirability. Obviously not relevant for academic strength.</li>
</ol>

The BYU vs. Harvard yield here is irrelevant because BYU isn’t fighting Harvard for students. We can roughly separate schools that fight for the same students into 3 groups: a) top privates, b) top LACs, and c) top publics. These 3 areas are, of course, not entirely disjoint, but it’s a fallacy to compare schools from a) with schools from c) with respect to yield.

So Tufts clearly does lose out to the Ivies in this respect. As does Chicago, JHU, Northwestern, Georgetown, and Duke, for that matter. But Tufts is grouped in with the lesser desirable top privates, with a yield in the low 30s, along with Northwestern and JHU, whereas Chicago, Georgetown, and Duke have higher yields (high 30s, low 40s), while still being less desirable.

Is Tufts an Ivy backup school? Of course it is, and to the same extent that NU and JHU are. Of course, Tufts gets a lot less credit as a top private and has more of a reputation as an Ivy backup, which is unfair. So even though Tufts/NU/JHU are about equally desirable, its prestige gets hit unfairly by its reputation as an Ivy backup. Tufts marketing needs to get better if it wants to retain its reputation as a top private.

We can see that Tufts isn’t measuring up in the marketing department if we observe the changes in acceptance rate for the last few years. Tufts has traditionally had an acceptance rate in the high 20s. JHU, NU, and Chicago have traditionally had acceptance rates in the lower/higher 30s. And in the last few years, JHU, NU, and Chicago’s acceptance rates have gone lower than Tufts. Chicago now has an acceptance rate of 18%. JHU 20%. NU 23%. Tufts 24%. The year previous, each one of these schools was tied at 27%. So Tufts has started to lose out to the top privates even in terms of acceptance rate, with respect to which it has always had an edge.

So there is no question that Tufts is lagging. Like most LACs with higher acceptance rates though, it seems to have somewhat of an inferiority complex and doesn’t wish to confront this issue that challenges its hegemony. And this apathy was what allowed Chicago to decline in the 90s, so best to just confront the issue and start the marketing.

Also, I might note that I mean no offense with these statements. Acceptance rates and perceptions of selectivity are a very shallow issue, but they mean something to high schoolers (who are naturally shallow). So to retain hegemony and to keep winning the best students, Tufts needs to start realizing that it’s got to step up its efforts and lower its admissions rate while gaining in yield points.

buzzers · November 7, 2010, 7:55pm

Fair points. I would argue though that when people speak of ivies, I assume they mean the HYP. I say this because those are the schools that people argue ever other school is a backup. This is because no one knows with full confidence if they are going to be accepted to these schools.

Yet I do disagree with you on acceptance rate. Here is why:

The problem with acceptance rates is that they take the number of students accepted divided by those who applied. Tufts gets about 15000 applicants whereas Harvard or something gets 30000. This, again, you make the point is rightly because of marketing (yet also some schools are better known than Tufts in places like the midwest or west coast).

The funny thing is that Tufts undergraduates are actually fewer in number than Harvard’s undergraduates. It’s simple math:

number of accepted/number of applicants X 100.

If the denominator is larger (eg. 30K versus 15K) the result is a lower acceptance rate.

The thing is that these top schools all have roughly the around the same amount of undergrad students (this is why many are in a consistent range of student/teacher ratio), so accepted students stays relatively constant in terms of a given range. Yet the applicants vary greatly. Thus, you get different ranges of acceptance rates.

I would also argue that more people apply to Harvard/ivies, etc. to “see if they can get in” even though they know it’s a very very big long shot (not that it isn’t in general, but that these students realize they don’t have the high criteria).

Compare that with Tufts which has you write a lot of essays and isn’t the generic college application. Some kids don’t want to spend so much time on that, and thus, look elsewhere. The advantage though is they can see a student in an intellectual creativity light (U of Chicago does this with their whacky essays).

Though some may argue this is poor marketing, others say it fosters a better community. So there are for sure different ways to look at it.

buzzers · November 7, 2010, 7:58pm

Wow, but you are right about U of Chicago’s applications! They have skyrocketed in 1 year from about 13K to 18K! That explains their drop in acceptance rate:

[Applications</a> to Selective Colleges Rise as Admission Rates Fall - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/applications/]Applications”>Applications to Selective Colleges Rise as Admission Rates Fall - The New York Times)

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