Up-and-coming school tradeoffs?

sacchi · May 31, 2012, 10:04am

Thanks for the discussion. Responding to some questions or points above.

I left it vague on purpose, but yes I do suppose USNWR, because I know that selectivity factors (acceptance rate, avg SAT scores) high influence rankings.

When I say selectivity, my point is more about actual standards. As some schools, as they become more popular, the standards rise - if they get more applicants, they can accept students with higher average stats and still fill their class. Presumably, at an up-and-coming school on the upward slope, the standards will continue to rise, and 5 years later, school A will likely have higher stats than school B, which was standing still.

I think I slightly disagree with this, which is why I made the point I did. I think that a lot of the biggest increases in popularity/selectivity have come from schools that are in desirable locations - with warm weather, in or near an attractive city, etc. So, schools in less desirable locations may fall slightly in rankings, because the up-and-comers edge them out of the higher places on the list.

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This is one I’m really uncertain about, which is why I’m asking the question. I guess my assumption is that alumni who had higher stats coming into college are probably more successful on average than alumni who had lower stats. I don’t know if that is actually true or not.

mythmom · May 31, 2012, 10:12am

annasdad: I wished I’d kept a reference to that study. I would love to post it.

I can over myself as case-in-point as the tiniest bit of anecdotal evidence. In 1989 I received a letter from University Microfiche (microfiches all dissertations for The Library of Congress) that my dissertation had received the award of best dissertation in the country for 1987. It took them that long to get back to me. That included all disciplines. They proposed to publish it as their next in a continuing series of all dissertations that received this distinction. Had that happened I might have ended up at a different institution.

Instead, the men on my dissertation committee tried to convince me my dissertation was worthless. One said it was puerile and didn’t deserve a PhD. Another said it was plagiarized. Now, I don’t know how it could be both.

I had to have my conflict adjudicated by the Dean of Humanities who wrote that the first chapter alone entitled it to a PhD. However, she was very interested in me because she wasn’t a professor in my department. I was alone in the job search and demoralized and ended up at community college. When the great acknowledgment came two years later it was too little too late to really effect my job search, and I had an infant. I had other fish to fry and supporting her was more important than the prestige of my institution.

We have a Pulitzer finalist on our faculty, a very well respected Irish literature scholar, a playwright produced by Joe Papp…you get the idea.

I was accepted to Columbia PhD program but couldn’t attend for personal reasons.

A friend of mine (male) attended Princeton undergrad and Columbia grad school. He edits a major poetry magazine, is a well-reviewed poet and an expert in poetics (boring in my opinion.) He teaches at a much less well regarded community college.

Another friend who I attended grad school with (none of us even noticed her scholarship or ideas – not a leading light) got an interview with a much more prestigious institution. Her name sounded African. Actually it was Latvian. She’s a blue-eyed blonde. They wanted an affirmative action hire, but once they met her, they liked her. She wouldn’t have even gotten the inteview otherwise.

I teach with Columbia grads, Yale grads (on the East Coast) and these are probably the highest ranks English departments.

Now after hiring, paths diverge. We community college teachers publish less academic work because we don’t face a “publish or perish” tenuring process. This can be viewed as good or bad, depending on one’s value system. I have published poetry and creative non-fiction and presented at many conferences. Admittedly, I have lost interest in the kind of academic article that a prestigious institution demands. However, I have had the opportunity to write three novels.

We teach a lot more – four or five courses as opposing to one or two. We have less departmental politics and perhaps less institutional obligations, though we have some.

Less impressive, less splashy careers for sure.

You be the judge of which situation produces better teachers.

I would submit it depends on the student. For students who are interested in an academic career in our discipline, I submit that I would be the worse teacher, not having climbed all the rungs myself. But for students wishing to discover literature and writing for themselves with professional interests elsewhere, I don’t think this would be the case.

Since we hire no MA’s it’s a level playing field.

Oh, and we did hire a Harvard PhD, and sadly, he was not tenured, mostly due to the unfortunate envy of some of the faculty. And he had difficulty finding another job. It was a shame really, because he was one of the nicest, most down to earth folks we had on our faculty.

sacchi · May 31, 2012, 10:20am

Regarding faculty, at one up-and-coming school I visited with my D, during the info session the adcom mentioned the percentage of faculty with a PhD or terminal degree. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was lower than other schools of similar selectivity. The adcom specifically mentioned that the percentage was increasing since they only hire PhDs these days. (With the implication that in the school’s less selective past they were also less selective about their faculty hiring.)

emeraldkity4 · May 31, 2012, 10:33am

Sac hi, as you find profs with PhDs at virtually all school, including CCs, I would agree that this school you visited was changing standards, but it was unusual.
Which school was this?

sacchi · May 31, 2012, 10:43am

I don’t have a reference, although I’m sure I can find one, and I’m surprised this is considered to be controversial. By standards, I mean average SAT scores, GPA, class rank, etc. If the number of applications to a school increases significantly and the class size stays the same, it seems logical that the average SAT scores will rise.

There are tons of examples. I have a friend who attended Duke in the 80’s, and it wasn’t particularly hard to get accepted to at that time, compared to how hard it is now. WashU’s average SAT scores have climbed significantly over the last 20 years as it has increased in popularity.

However, I’m actually more interested in schools not quite as selective as WashU and Duke, as these questions are related to the college search for my D’13, who has an ACT of 29 and Top 15% rank.

momofthreeboys · May 31, 2012, 10:55am

It feels to me that it is universally incremental. What I mean is that across the board GPAs and test scores are notching upward. I’ve been watching this at a regional college in my areas over the last decade. Each year the GPAs are slightly better, the SATs are slightly better. I think it would be rare for a particular college or uni to make a huge leap in scores greater than the national average of incremental increase without a very targeted, concerted marketing effort (like Wash U perhaps) or through purchasing GPAs and test scores through merit based tuition discounting. All of which says nothing about the “quality” of the education only the quality of the student body.

MizzBee · May 31, 2012, 11:02am

I still wonder if admission selectivity has anything to do with academic standards. In terms of reading lists, syllabus, etc I found very rigorous standards at less selective schools. Bringing in a pool of applicants that have a highe GPA, etc doesn’t necessarily mean that the course content in the “rising” schools has become more challenging. Instead many of the schools I researched go out of their way to push the accepted students to handle that rigor.

mythmom · May 31, 2012, 11:06am

Harvard and Yale have always been prestigious and at the top of heap, however, they were, at one time, a bit of a gentlemen’s club. There were firewalls in place to keep the “riff-raff” (read Jews, other minorities, sweaty, gifted working class kids) from overrunning their schools. The schools certainly weren’t meritocracies.

Again, it really depends on goals and desired outcomes.

To the OP, I really don’t think the issues raised are significant, especially for the range of schools that match your D’s accomplishments. She has solid states that would qualify her for many excellent institutions, and I think the choice should rest on goals, finances and fit.

If the very top quixotically battle out the kinds of factors you detail, it has very little impact on anything in the real world.

Case in point: S went to Williams which was once one of the “little three” that included William, Amherst, and Wesleyan. They were little “ivies”, probably to the prep crowd.

Williams and Amherst still top the USNWR list, Wesleyan does not. I really doubt a Wesleyan grad meets few differences in grad school or hiring except in a few key fields (I-Banking and Art History for Williams, for example.) However, in Hollywood, Wes has the edge right now. Not sure about Amherst, don’t mean to be leaving it out.

So, unless one wanted these, specific fields I doubt it would make much difference at all.

Middlebury has been climbing, but it was always recognized as a good school, as was Grinnell, for example, which saw the greatest jump in applications this year.

I think in a more crowded playing field (more students applying), there will be more top scorers. I don’t think that necessarily impacts the quality of the school.

I know my D’s school, Barnard, is now quite selective – they took 21% this year. I don’t think SAT scores are rising, though they could fill the school will higher scorers. The ADCOM is looking for something else, creative thought, sophistication to survive in an urban environment, I’m not sure what. If they did take all high scorers, the character of the student body would change, perhaps for the better, perhaps not. The resources of the school would not, so I don’t think the education would change much.

As for U of Chicago, it was a sort of safety for S with its 40% percent admit rate. He was admitted EA to our jubilant chortles. But now? It would be a major get, and it’s just 5 years later.

That makes me sad because it was great to have this ace in his back pocket.

It’s like the great chef and great restaurant that greats a fantastic review in a major newspaper and his discovered and you can no longer get a table. The quality of the food and the decor remain the same or actually may decline, but the clientele becomes increasingly well-heeled and it becomes the place to see celebrities.

That’s why I think desired outcomes are essential in talking about schools as they are in talking about restaurants. Do you want a quiet table and great food or a hot spot where you may have to reserve weeks in advance? Neither is right, but neither necessary says anything about the quality of the food.

My community college faculty is all PhD’s except for the few folks with MFA’s (terminal degree) or who got hired in the dark ages and are in their late 70’s, but most of them have PhD’s too.

However, friends who have kids who attended lower tier colleges have told me that our faculty and facilities are superior in many cases, so we may well have more PhD’s than some privates or lower tier publics.

***A caveat. What’s going on in higher education is scary, and I’m not sure the quality is going to remain at our school for long, or indeed anyway but elites where the rich go. The public system will be increasingly underfunded in the near future.

MiamiDAP · May 31, 2012, 11:17am

IMO, based on experience with recent college graduate, the only place to go is the one that matches personality and wide range of interest of applicant. Rnaking might not point into this direction at all. Frankly, we had no idea about ranking of any UGs that my kid applied, but she researched very closely, visited the same schools many times, stayed overnight, spent time with sport team, talked to current students, set thru many info sessions and ended up at place that (looking back) was a perfect one for her. She repeats it over and over, it makes her happy to visit again, which she did numerous times. We still have no idea how her UG ranked, I imagine that it is not very high as she went to state public school. We know a bit about selectivity though. D’s Honors college had 200 spots and required to be top 2% with ACT=31+. D’s program accepted 10 kids into freshman class. It is selective by me, but maybe not by somebody else. But selectivity was not important at all, aside from the fact that most in Honors were valedictorians. The most important was that D. choose the right place for herself. But her process required much deeper research than checking rankings.

cobrat · May 31, 2012, 11:24am

UChicago seems to be highly esteemed among most NYC folks I’ve known for the last 5+ decades. Only real issue I kept hearing about UChicago was that it had a reputation of being an academic meatgrinder akin to MIT, Swarthmore, etc. Kids/parents who wanted a better balance between rigorous academics & social life tended to avoid UChicago and other schools like it.

Those Midwest LACs have long been well-known among most NYC folks I’ve known growing up.

Even with my immigrant Chinese parents/family…Oberlin has long had a well-renowned academic reputation among educated Chinese going back to the early 20th century at least. Only issue my dad had was whether I could handle Oberlin’s academics given my HS grades…not whether it was “good enough” or not.

Not all of us East Coasters/immigrants are as unsophisticated as you seem to imply.

Pizzagirl · May 31, 2012, 11:25am

Right. I remember when Duke was a “good Southern school” as well, versus a national one. But that doesn’t mean that you didn’t have top-tier students going to those schools in those days - they were still top tier kids, just drawn from a narrower geographic pool than today and who had to “fight less” for a spot since the applicant pools weren’t as large. That wouldn’t lead me to the conclusion that they were less accomplished as alumni just because the school applicant pool was smaller back then.

cobrat · May 31, 2012, 11:46am

It was already extremely hard to get into Duke by the early-mid '90s…especially when Duke hit the top 5 in USNWR rankings then.

Several HS classmates who were admitted to HYPSMC schools were flatly rejected by Duke…including a friend who ended up going to Cornell on scholarship.

He’s still uses his soreness at the rejection as a self-deprecating joke within our social circle of friends.

MiamiDAP · May 31, 2012, 12:43pm

"Not all of us East Coasters/immigrants are as unsophisticated as you seem to imply. "
-But I am, although I am not in East Coasters/immigrants group as I do not see any point in chasing the rankings…well, my Medical Student does not either, I guess my whole family is just unsophisticated bums and very proud of all state public schools that we have graduated from and the fact that 3 out of 4 went there for free. The last one is definitely the biggest achievement of them all. We just do not care about “highly esteemed” or not, bad for us…but we have left more spots for others though, who are more sophisticated and choosy. Why not more follow our example? Think of others before you think of yourself, right? Just kidding…lighten up, almost end of the week and the weather is nice!

emeraldkity4 · May 31, 2012, 1:25pm

My older daughters college, had a much, much higher admit rate the year she was admitted than it does now. Yet, at the same time , it also had a very high % of students who recieved their Phd, it was ranked #1 in some fields. Of course that only matters if you think preparation and completion of a PHD is indication of academic rigor, I know some would quibble with that, especially those who have gone through the process!;)

Now it has a much lower admit rate, but that it is because it has wider recognition with general public. Those in academia have always been aware of it, however.

Look at where Harvey Mudd sits for example, I bet many have never heard of it either.
[PHD</a> HISTORICAL RANK](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phdrank.html]PHD”>Historical Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)

rodney · May 31, 2012, 1:28pm

OP means a place like Elon or UMiami??, not tippy top ones…, I surmise…and interestin questions…

sacchi · May 31, 2012, 1:49pm

While virtually all schools will have some PhDs, the question is how many non-PhDs do they have? I don’t think CCs exclusively hire PhDs, even though they will certainly have some PhDs.

Elon was the school I mentioned before with the adcom saying that the percentage was increasing. I just looked it up, and saw that 87% of the faculty have PhDs or terminal degrees. For comparison, I looked up Rutgers, and it had 99%. Of course Rutgers and Elon are very different types of schools, but have roughly similar average SAT scores.

mythmom · May 31, 2012, 3:48pm

My CC hires PhD’s exclusively in my discipline.

LBowie · June 1, 2012, 6:07am

On the question of teaching quality, in my experience as a perputual student and teacher, you will find gifted instructors at all types of colleges and universities, perhaps in comparable quantities. But the faculty get to teach to the students they get. So if the whole class is filled with really bright kids, the professor may be able to move faster and cover more material or teach at a slightly higher level.

MiamiDAP · June 1, 2012, 8:49am

Teaching quality sometime is not there at top places as priority #1 for top profs is Research = Grant money = Ranking. They are not so concern with students in their classes and some are taught by TA’s or any others than prof. himself. That was not the case at D’s State Public with all classes are being taught by profs and the biggest advantage was to be in Honors classes with very few students. This conditions enable closer relationship with profs who were very accessible and willing to spend time with each student. D. has talked to her friends in private colleges who did not have that. 
Class taught by renown prof. means a lot only if prof. is actually in giving lectures and available for questions outside of classroom. If it is not the case, than the quality that shown on paper is just not there.

momofthreeboys · June 1, 2012, 8:53am

Yes but high standardized test scores and high GPA don’t equal inquisitive minds. Shaping that class falls to admissions and can be influenced by the professors - inquisitive minds seeking stimulating profs. This is an entirely different sort of college search (which Chicago, Reed and the ilk made their mark cultivating) and does not necessarily correlate to the pre-professional student who simply wants to parlay their undergrad into a great grad school placement or a job that pays near the top of the average salary band for newly minted grads. All depends on what the soon to be college student is searching for.

Up-and-coming school tradeoffs?

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