Introducing the Tufts Class of 2010</p>
<p>Asking who I am in 500 words is like asking me to summarize the history of Italy in a page, lamented an applicant from Washington, DC. It cannot be done. Happily, summarizing the Tufts Class of 2010 is a less daunting task.</p>
<p>Drawn from 15,294 candidates for admissionthe second-largest applicant pool in the Universitys historythe 1,284 members of the Class of 10 are an exciting collection of academic and personal achievement. New freshmen arrive in Medford from 46 American states, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and 35 nations. The School of Arts & Sciences matriculates 1,101 freshmen while the School of Engineering welcomes 183 new undergraduates, 31 percent of whom are women. Overall, the freshman class includes 651 women and 633 men.</p>
<p>As usual, residents of Massachusetts and New York are the largest state contingents in the entering class but 10 percent originates from the West Coast and another 15 percent have an international background. While South Korea and Singapore produced the most international freshmen (13 apiece), countries as diverse as Argentina, Finland, Jordan, Mauritius, Nepal and Tanzania are also represented. More than 34 languages as diverse as Kiswahili, Polish, Portuguese and Urdu are spoken in the homes of more than 150 freshmen, although Spanish and the Chinese dialects are most common.</p>
<p>Each applicant was asked to describe the environment in which he or she was raised, and these personal narratives illuminated candidacies in vivid, and often poignant, ways. Incoming students described upbringings by a military family stationed in Guam; as the third of five daughters in a strict Italian-American family from New Jersey; as a Zoroastrian religious minority in Pakistan and a Tibetan refugee in India. An African-American from Detroit described the ostracism she experienced for being the smart black girl in the inner city; a student from Chicagos South Side reported being mugged three times as a 9th grader. Some witnessed political discourse at the family dinner table. We come from two ideologically divergent backgrounds, an applicant from Rochester, New York wrote about her family. Half of my family loves guns, farms and Jesus while the other half, to which I belong, is agnostic, Starbucks-sipping liberal elitists. My family provides a perpetual test of character, a sprawling conglomerate of ideas that has pushed and prodded me into standing up for myself even when the odds are seven to one. </p>
<p>Americans of color represent 25 percent of the new class, and the ethnicities and creeds of the Class span the full range of human diversity. Laotians and Vietnamese; Jews and Muslims; Puerto Ricans and Brazilians; a Lakota Sioux and New England Yankees are represented in the first-year class. In fact, 23 percent identified themselves as Jewish on the Accepted Student Survey; 20 percent as Roman Catholic; and 16 percent affiliated with one of the Protestant denominations. Nearly 30 percent indicated no religious preference or denomination, including an avowed atheist from Iowas Bible belt who declared, Because of my love of freedom and self-reliance, I like to do things my way. Not surprisingly, he also described his political affiliation as Libertarian.</p>
<p>As admission officers shaped the class and assessed its voice, a strong sense of self-identity was a defining quality of many candidacies. A Latina from New York City described herself as a conservative Republican in a sea of liberal minds. Some were straightforward. I am the product of technology and my mothers love, announced a proud test tube baby from California. Some were succinct: I am Katherineidealist, albino, reader, and explorer. And others played to type: Im a good ole Southern boy who embraces the notion of Southern hospitality and helping others. And for what its worth, one shaggy fellow with an interest in philosophy reported that his last haircut occurred on April 2, 2004. His unusual hirsuteness symbolizes my easygoing attitude regarding things of minimal importance, he explained.</p>
<p>Forty-five percent of incoming freshmen were raised in a suburban community; a third come to Tufts from urban environments; and 26 percent from rural areas. A cul-de-sac in Orlando; an inn in Hood River, Oregon; a Hong Kong high rise; an Indiana farm owned by one students family for over 150 years; and Section 8 housing in Boston offered defining backdrops for adolescent world views and college aspirations. My goals are simple, wrote a student from rural Texas. I wish to expand my educational horizons by pursuing a degree outside of Texas, where I will be introduced to new perspectives and ideas. I am tired of the rut; I seek a challenge. I want to meet people with whom I have nothing in common and argue about values and beliefs. After being orphaned, a student from Phoenix spent part of her childhood living on the streets, where she slept in a box and begged for assistance. An Iowan wrote about life on his familys farm, where laziness and unreliability are fatal. He noted, Sheep dont know about taking kids to the doctor or a PTA meeting. All they know is when it is time to be fed. As a child, a Rwandan was a witness to genocide. He plans to study engineering at Tufts before returning to Africa to rebuild his nation.</p>
<p>A Mexican-American from the Rio Valley, the daughter of illegal immigrants, proudly noted that her mother won the Parent of the Year Award for the State of Texas despite having a sixth grade education. Others were raised by an uncle on a Dominican chicken farm; a transsexual in Portland; rabbis in New York City; a barber in upstate New York; and a gas and oil geologist in Texas. A manicurist in New Jersey; two gay men living with AIDS in Colorado; the former prime minister of Morocco; taxi drivers in Honolulu and Boston; the general manager of the San Jose Sharks; a wetland ecologist in Connecticut; the surgeon for the Saudi Armed Forces; a school lunch administrator in Medford; a nurse at Mass General; and 28 Tufts faculty and staff all have children in the Class of 2010. Five percent of incoming students were raised by parents who did not attend college. Conversely, 97 are the sons and daughters of Tufts alumni. </p>
<p>As the US Congress debates American immigration policy, Tufts welcomes recent immigrants from Eritrea, Sudan, Venezuela, Mongolia, Vietnam, Afghanistan and China, to name just a few. Their journeys to higher education in America were often inspiring and poignant. The class includes a Liberian who emigrated from Ghana, where he lived with his grandparents and three siblings while his parents fled the Liberian civil war. An Uzbek-American reported his family left his homeland because of religious persecution; in America, he was elected president of the Amnesty International chapter at his high school. And a Haitian student from Boston explained that English was not spoken in her homeso she often had to translate for her parents at teacher conferences. And, in a different type of immigration, two freshmen are refugees from Hurricane Katrina.</p>
<p>Like its recent predecessors, the new class was chosen through a most selective admissions process in which 27 percent of all applicants were offered a place at the University. Not surprisingly, the Class of 2010 joins Tufts undergraduate community with an impressive record of academic achievement. Forty-four freshmen enroll as National Merit Scholars. When ranked, 82 percent graduated in the top 10% of their high school class, a figure that includes 49 valedictorians and 33 salutatorians. The Class of 10 earned the distinction of being the first class to enroll at Tufts with a combined SAT score greater than 1400 (using the two-part exam). With mean SAT scores of 702 Critical Reasoning (Verbal) and 703 Math, the combined mean of 1405 represents an all-time high for the University.</p>
<p>In addition to such statistical excellence, the intellectual passions of the freshman class are wide and varied. As usual, international relations and biology rank as the most common anticipated majors for students entering the College of Liberal Arts. Among freshmen heading for Anderson Hall, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering top the list, although 31 percent of entering engineers listed the unqualified engineering as the academic interest.</p>
<p>The Class matriculates from 817 high schools; 59 percent attended a public secondary school and 34 percent graduated from an independent school. In a nice bit of symmetry, 10 graduates of Lexington High School in Massachusetts enrolled in the Class of 10, the largest school group in the freshman class. Eight freshmen from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland and seven from Miamis Ransom-Everglades School complete the top three feeder schools for the year. Among overseas schools, the American School of London takes the top spot with five freshmen.</p>
<p>Despite this broad array of secondary schools, many freshmen described a strong sense of intellectual yearning as they completed their high school curricula. I often find myself asking questions that my present curriculum is not designed to cover, lamented a student from Connecticut. A D.C. applicant concurred with his new classmate. Its unfortunate that the things I am most interested in arent taught in high school, he wrote. I love history that was touched on for 15 minutes during an entire academic year. I love music that is ignored by teachers and literature that is passed over in favor of the classics of the Mediterranean world or Victorian England. Teacher recommendations often acknowledged this idea. He has interests that seem to surpass the usual conversations in high school student lounges, wrote one teacher.