@Zoom10 - through what lens do you deem Reed and St. John’s terrible in terms of metrics? If you compare them to Amherst and Williams, sure.
But from what I can tell, Reed has a $600M endowment, about a 30% accept rate, and a fairly loyal (and successful) alumni base. St. John’s has a $200M endowment supporting about 800 students. Reed also, btw, intentionally does not provide data to US News.
Are Reed and St. Johns striving to play the elite college game, in the way Lexus strove to compete with Mercedes?
If every LAC strives to look like Williams, students lose out on the ability to go to a place like Reed. From a market perspective, the advice to any competitive LAC would be: be more like Williams or Amherst (akin to McKinsey telling Chicago to be more like Harvard).
How do you explain what colleges like Reed or St. Johns are trying to do? Have their Board’s given up on their fiduciary duties, and are simply trying to run these schools into the ground? I think they simply don’t have Amherst or Williams in their crosshairs, in the same way other LACs do, or R1 U.s view Harvard.
@JBStillFlying - what are your thoughts on elite colleges and admissions today? I think it’s great for the select few U.s seeking to enhance their eminence, but it seems like chaos and anxiety at the top - in ways that go beyond the 90s scene.
I also think top schools compete with one another on metrics like accept rate and yield, and play games with applicants (e.g., get them to apply, with the purpose of rejecting them later). I don’t think this is healthy or helpful for our young people. I think big numbers admissions is a grind anywhere, and the turnover and burnout in Chicago’s admissions office is no different than the rest.
Between you, and Marlowe, and Zoom10, though, I tire of this dialogue. All hail Chicago, all hail the state of elite college admissions, and all hail market forces naturally compelling Chicago to be concerned with its own eminence, above all else. We shouldn’t critique and lament this - rather, we should embrace and commend it.
Oh, and of course Nondorf is just a natural continuation of Behnke/O’Neill - and in no way a version of the prior regime on steroids.