The most prestigious college admissions discussion board in the world.
|
 |
 
|
Alumni Giving Used In US News College Rankings
Poast new message in this thread
Date: July 18th, 2007 1:06 PM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: Alumni Giving Used In US News College Rankings A poster in another thread recently voiced some strong opinions to the effect that alumni giving is an inappropriate statistic for US News & World Report to use in compiling its annual ranking of America’s best colleges. That got me thinking about the subject and, after careful rumination over a couple of beers, I arrived at exactly the opposite conclusion. Namely, alumni giving is a particularly honest window into the happiness of the student body and the quality of the undergraduate experience, making it one of the MOST valuable statistics available to assess colleges.
The other poster disparaged alumni giving in favor of data which reflects student selectivity. I agree that student selectivity is extremely important and the logical place to begin. As a potential member of a college community, you want to be surrounded by smart people. But at the very top of the food chain, say the Top 10 colleges in the country, the basic variables of SAT scores and admissions rates start to lose some of their validity.
Since the SAT scale was re-centered upwards roughly 100 points in 1996, scores at the most highly selective universities bunch at the top of the scale. Because so many bright students achieve scores close to the maximum, SAT averages and even 25-75% ranges cluster very closely together. Indeed, small variations in these figures tend to reveal not the number of true geniuses on campus, but rather the number of students who are members of highly recruited categories with lower scores. Let’s commit an act of political incorrectness and call them out by name: varsity athletes, under-represented minority groups, legacies and what are euphemistically called “development admits.”
Stanford needs to field a football team that can line up against Southern Cal or Notre Dame without losing by ten touchdowns. That is going to affect the average SAT score in Palo Alto and, to a lesser extent, the 25-75% percentile range. Given a fixed number of athletes, the overall size of the student body determines how much the averages are moved downward. For example, the impact on SAT ranges of recruiting 120 players for the football team is a bigger handicap at Dartmouth and Princeton, whose undergraduate classes are one-third the size of Cornell and less than half the size of Penn.
It’s an oft-cited assertion that the Ivy League universities could assemble, if they wanted to go in this direction, a freshman class composed entirely of valedictorians or students with perfect board scores. I think we all know that such a student body would be a less stimulating and less interesting environment in which to learn. There is a very good reason why so many applicants with 1600 scores get rejected. By extension, for the handful of institutions where SAT averages are very close to the maximum, their usefulness is quite impacted by the low ceiling. At that point, board scores differentiate less how smart the students are and more how diverse the school has chosen to be.
Similarly, the percentage of applicants admitted is a good shorthand number to differentiate highly selective colleges from less selective colleges. But once the admit rates are 9% or 10% or 11%, that variable starts to lose meaning. Once you are down to such low numbers, fine distinctions begin to reflect not how talented the admitted students are, but rather how aggressively the school recruits applicants that have almost no chance of getting in. The admissions departments are not necessarily improving the quality of the numerator; they are just increasing the size of the denominator.
In any event, my point is that statistics on student selectivity are an extremely useful criteria to distinguish between, say, Harvard and Boston College but less so between Yale and Columbia.
As a supplement to this basic demographic information, I think the percentage of alumni who donate to their alma maters is extremely helpful. Think about it. If you were a prospective college applicant or a second-tier newsweekly trying to sell more magazines, what is the single most valuable primary research that you would try to conduct? I would want to ask each graduating alumnus/a of every college in America, “Do you feel that you got a good education? Are you happy with your overall experience? Would you go to this same college again if you could make your decision again?”
I submit that the percentage of alumni/ae who give money to their university is a reasonable proxy for the percentage of respondents who would answer those three questions in the affirmative. It is certainly the best data available on this dimension. Every year, American colleges ask their alumni for money and, every year, each alumnus votes whether he had a positive experience or a negative/neutral experience. And as every consumer marketer knows, there is no more truthful survey than one which requires the respondent to pay something.
Another poster started a fascinating thread about an academic paper which showed that donating alumni give in part because they think it will increase the chances that their children will be admitted. Wow, that is the most insightful referendum an analyst could design for getting people to reveal their true feelings. Now, instead of the question simply being “Were you happy?” at your alma mater, the question is “Were you sufficiently happy that you would want your children to have the same experience?”
It is illuminating that the numbers are not all that high. Even the very best colleges in the country struggle to get a majority of their alumni to donate. I think this highlights the fact that, as much as every one of the top schools offers the opportunity to get an excellent education, the social and overall experience can vary significantly. The years 18 through 22 of one’s early adulthood are still fraught with growing pains which can be exacerbated or ameliorated by one’s school environment. Not everyone finds college to be “the happiest four years of my life.” An embittered friend of mine had his family call the development office to claim that he had died so his alma mater would stop soliciting.
Tellingly, there are tremendous differences in the answers at highly ranked schools. Just within the Top 10 US News national universities, you see 61% at Princeton and 50% at Dartmouth versus 30% at Cal Tech, 33% at Chicago and 35% at Columbia. That of course is a 100% delta within the top tier -- an enormous disparity, especially in the context of SAT scores and admissions rates which are relatively similar. I would hypothesize that these students are having distinctly different experiences during their four years in college.
Now I recognize that the playing field is not completely level. In particular, I believe that graduates of public universities may be less inclined to donate because their institutions are state-supported. In the interest of fairness, it’s probably best to compare private universities to each other and public schools only to their peers.
In addition, very small colleges may not have a staff in place to solicit donations from their alumni. But of course all of the major private universities are well organized in this function.
With the exception of the caveats for public universities and tiny liberal art colleges, I cannot believe that somebody would say alumni giving percentage is not a useful piece of information to analyze. Indeed, given a set of colleges with uniformly high SAT scores and uniformly low admissions figures, I would say that alumni giving rates offer the most thought-provoking insight into differing qualitative experiences on their campuses.
|
 |
Date: July 25th, 2008 1:31 AM Author: crystalline thriller church I would add the small caveat that aggregate alumni donation percentages are heavily biased upwards by the solicitation of young alumni for paltry amounts ($10-$50). I would wager that given Dartmouth and Princeton send a far lower percentage of students to graduate schools right out the door, their mid-20 something alumni are more likely to part with a little cash rather than put it towards their electric bill. Just by a back of the envelope type approximation of my own friends, I would say at least 50% of UChicago alumni less than 3 years after graduation cannot really afford $50 a year, never mind something more substantive. They are either leveraged up to their necks or living on graduate stipends in fields when loans are a non-consideration (e.g. English literature).
In general though, I think the fact that Princeton and Dartmouth do so well very much reflects the general tenor of their UG bodies. Quite contented with their experiences, whatever that happens to mean to them. However, it seems to me that it is really an extracurricular matter moreso than something related to academics. At Dartmouth, this is almost tautological given that it's basically an LAC with some weak science programs and two half decent but isolated professional schools slapped on.
|
Date: July 18th, 2007 3:04 PM Author: hideous native fat ankles Subject: Well Though out Post I guess I was the guy to whom you were referring as disparaging annual giving participation rate as an important criteria in the rankings. To the extent that we are looking only at undergraduate participation (as opposed to university wide), it has some relatively minor relevance as a surrogate marker of alumni satisfaction. I had understood that the usnwr figures were university wide, though someone - Scottie?- said otherwise and I believe provided a supporting reference. On the other hand one could equally plausibly argue that a better surrogate marker would be the amount donated, rather than the participation rate, the former reflecting the raw economic power of the alumni, which presumably is related to the prestige of his/her degree. Keep in mind also that the alumni base can span 75 years and those who participate, disproportionately, can be many years removed from their college experience.
In addition, instead of looking for surrogates for student satisfaction one could also look at studies that have been done in recent years. For example one study reported in the boston globe noted that Harvard was chronically near the bottom of the list of its peer institutions in terms of student satisfaction. A series from NOvember 2002 or 2003 in the Harvard CRimsom entitled "Should We all Just Have Gone To Yale" (and seemingly answering the question in the affirmative) also is very direct evidence of the relative levels of satisfaction of the two student bodies. If student satisfaction is to be a criteria at all it should be measured directly.
I do take issue with your assertion that small differences in selectivity are not crucial. One can not seriously compare Columbia to Yale eventhough their admit rates are similar, given the 50-60 point in SAT scores (on a 1600 scale). When the competition is the fiercest, ie among HYPMS, things like cross admit data are important, as are 20-30 points differences in SAT scores. These things all seem to knit together, with the pecking order pretty much as reflected in the Revealed Preference study.
In any case, overall your post was quite worthwhile. |
|
Date: July 18th, 2007 6:22 PM Author: Brass pisswyrm hairy legs LACs have MUCH higher giving rates than most universities. This could indicate a higher sense of satisfaction, a higher sense of belonging, or something else. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8403270) |
|
Date: July 18th, 2007 6:59 PM Author: Fuchsia Zippy Parlor Idea He Suggested LACS may have higher percentage of alumni donors because they have small classes--so it is easier to solicit and contact alumni. With classes of 600 to 1000, it is less effort to tap donors than at on on school with larger classes -- 1500 or 2000. Development offices at colleges need to maintain huge data bases with updated contact information on alumni--a complicated and time-consuming task. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8403465) |
|
Date: September 9th, 2007 4:31 PM Author: mentally impaired fluffy twinkling uncleanness national security agency Yes - plus all you have to do is get $1.00 in order to count it towards the "alumni giving percentage figure." Pretty lame if you ask me. All it measures is how much time the schools spend trying to contact their alumni.
A better measure is per-capita alumni giving. Here are the Chronicle of Higher Education's figures, published August 31, 2007:
1. Wells $29K 2. Stanford $26K 3. Yale $24K 4. Princeton $20K 5. Coe $16K 6. Tufts $16K 7. Williams $15K 8. Bowdoin $14K 9. Dartmouth $14K 10. Swarthmore $13K 11. Wellesley $12K 12. Knox $12K 13. Cornell $11K 14. Harvard $10K 15. Vassar $10K
|
|
Date: September 9th, 2007 11:19 PM Author: Carnelian stead sandwich There is a problem with using alumni giving in either form, just like using yield rate and that is the dog wagging the tail in order to try to manipulate the rankings. If you use % of alumni giving, then a $1 donation really helps the school. If you use $ per capita then a few huge donations completely skew the avg, which will not be representative of grads' experience. Maybe, the compromise is % of grads who donate at least $100/year (or some other suitable number and one that USNWR doesn't tell the schools that they were using as a threshold).
I think USNWR rankings would be better if they didn't say what made up the criteria or what the weightings were; then no one would be looking to be manipulative and try to game the system. I think that yield and alumni giving both should be part of the formula and this black box approach would allow for the natural effect of these factors to come through in contributing to the total score and relative rankings. |
|
Date: July 18th, 2007 7:10 PM Author: hideous native fat ankles Subject: Check out Fans Thread re increasing Irrelevance of Rankings http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660328&mc=1&forum_id=1
High school senior says I really dont care whaa percent of alumni give to a school. I care what the students think |
|
Date: July 18th, 2007 7:24 PM Author: Aqua dragon I'm not sure I agree that there is a meaningful trend running against the USNews rankings.
Indeed, I suspect that the rankings will become even MORE significant as the demographics of the college-age pool change in the years ahead.
It is the fear about how they will survive in an increasingly competitive world (where the full-payers are concerned) that has the second-tier LACs frantic to avoid the negative effects of a low ranking. |
|
Date: July 18th, 2007 7:25 PM Author: canary base (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8403562) |
|
Date: July 18th, 2007 11:25 PM Author: fishy chapel prole that's how u.s. news calculates it:
"The alumni giving rate is calculated by dividing the number of appropriate donors during a given academic year by the number of appropriate alumni of record for that year."
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/about/weight_brief.php |
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 1:17 AM Author: Aqua dragon Subject: "...of record" The tricks played were chronicled in a WSJ article by Dan Golden not long ago, many of which he documents. I corresponded with him to report situations I've heard about, which may or may not be mere legends, such as the following:
1. School “A” where alumni who have not responded to mail contacts in 5 years are declared “legally dead” and stricken from the rolls; 2. School “B” where purchasers of paraphernalia, buyers of athletic tickets, or subscribers to the alumni magazine are counted as “contributors”; 3. Enthusiastic alumni fundraisers for college “P” who make scores of $5 contributions “in the name of” deadbeat classmates; 4. People on the waitlist for football season’s tickets at college “ND” who must make a contribution to the alumni fund in order to qualify to purchase the same on a preferred basis. 5. Encouraging current students to donate $1.00 each to the fund as part of a raffle, etc.
|
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 1:41 AM Author: Aqua dragon Subject: The text of the WSJ article on this topic: Sinking Alumni Stats, Zeal for Rankings Spur Rate Inflation
By DANIEL GOLDEN March 2, 2007
ALBION, Mich. -- Adrian Jean Kammerer hasn't given Albion College a dime since she graduated in 2004. "I don't have money to be giving to Albion," says the law-school student. "I'm living off student loans."
Yet Albion counted Ms. Kammerer as an alumni donor to the school in 2004, 2005, and 2006. School officials keep her on the donor roll by treating the $30 she gave as a college senior as a $6 annual gift for five years. Ms. Kammerer isn't scheduled to drop off Albion's donor list until 2009. QUESTION OF THE DAY
[ ] Vote: How much did you give last year to your college? ALUMNI ACCOUNTING DATA
See charts explaining how colleges count their alumni donors differently.
Such fiddling -- which helped boost the percentage of donating Albion alums to 47% in 2006 from 36% in 1998 -- paid off handsomely. U.S. News & World Report's annual higher-education survey puts Albion's alumni-giving rate at 14th among liberal-arts colleges, contributing to an overall ranking of 91st among 215 such schools. In 2003, Albion boasted of its alumni-giving rate, among other credentials, in a cover letter for a grant application to the Kresge Foundation, which ultimately awarded the school $4.7 million.
Forget grades. At a growing number of schools, the greatest inflation is occurring with their alumni-giving rate, an obscure data point measuring the percentage of alumni who donate in a given fiscal year. The chase has gotten so extreme that officials at some schools worry more about the alumni-giving rate than the amounts being given.
Some colleges beg alumni for a dollar, since the size of the gift doesn't matter in figuring the rate. Others, taking advantage of the fact that the calculation excludes alumni for whom the school lacks valid contact information, don't try to track down lost alums. The rationale: Graduates who didn't update the school with their whereabouts are less likely to donate, dragging down the school's percentage.
Once used primarily by lesser-known colleges and universities, such legerdemain is going mainstream as schools try to buck a nationwide decline in the percentage of graduates who donate. Although the average alumni donation is up, the percentage of alumni giving to their colleges dropped to 12.4% in 2005 from 16.7% in 1996, according to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE, which sets standards for calculating giving rates. [Chartbook]
Some of that decline is due to demographics -- a greater number of living alumni reduces giving rates. But experts also attribute the shrinking alumni-giving rate to more competition from other charities as well as the failure of wealthy colleges to make a compelling case for small donations. Harvard University, with a $29 billion endowment, saw its alumni-giving rate fall to 39% in 2006 from 48% in 2001.
At many colleges, trustees set annual targets for alumni-giving rates, placing pressure on their fund-raising staff to make their numbers. Colleges also worry that any downturn in the alumni-giving rate might reduce their chances to get some corporate and foundation grants.
But perhaps the most powerful motivating force is U.S. News's annual report. Although college officials publicly scoff at the magazine's rankings, many manipulate every possible factor to their advantage. The giving rates, which are supposed to measure alumni satisfaction with their school, account for 5% of U.S. News's total score.
The result is a lot of funny math. While Albion counts the seniors' donations for tax purposes in the year they are made, it tallies them over five years for the alumni-giving rate. Multiple counting of one-time donors "is a shameful practice," says Bruce Hopkins, a Kansas City, Mo., attorney who represents colleges and other non-profits.
Some schools refuse to game the system. "I tell my board, 'If you want the participation rate to go up, there are a lot of quick ways to do it,'" says Kimberly Hokanson, director of alumni and parent programs at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. "You can ask alumni for a dollar. But that doesn't teach them to engage in a meaningful philanthropic relationship with the college. I'm not into quick fixes." Bates alumni-giving slid to 41% in 2006 from 46% in 2001.
Albion's foray into creative alumni accounting started in the early 1990s, when it began dividing one-time gifts from seniors over three years. In return, it promised not to pitch them again until the three-year term expired. In 2004, Albion decided it wanted to spread donations over five years rather than three to boost its giving rate. Compounding that hike, it counted seniors in the classes of 2002 and 2003, who had been slated to spend three years on the donor list, as five-year givers. Last fall, Albion decided to switch back to the three-year term for 2007 graduates. • The Issue: More colleges are manipulating their alumni-giving rates. • The Background: High giving rates boost a school's status in U.S. News & World Report's annual college survey and with potential donors. • What It Means: The statistic may not accurately reflect what it is intended to measure.
Young graduates saddled with student loans drag down giving rates at most schools. But by counting college seniors who give once as multiyear donors, Albion generated astonishing results. By Albion's figuring, 83% of Ms. Kammerer's class of 2004 donated in 2006. The class of 2005 supposedly did even better in their first year out of school -- a 97% giving rate in 2006.
U.S. News and the Kresge Foundation say they weren't aware the school was divvying up donations over multiple years. Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News, says the practice "is obviously bending something." "If I knew that, I would have asked them to recalibrate" the alumni-giving number, adds David Fukuzawa, program officer for Kresge.
The Kresge money, which was used to renovate and expand Albion's science complex, included a $1.5 million challenge grant designed to help the school attract more donations. Last year Kresge started asking for an alumni-giving rate and a three-year projection to help assess how successful grant-seeking colleges will be in securing additional funding.
Albion officials acknowledge that the five-year program inflated its giving rate. After being asked about its policies by this newspaper, Albion's President Peter Mitchell said he will discontinue the practice of multiyear donations starting with the class of 2007 and "replace it with solicitation of every class every year."
Mr. Mitchell says he already was planning to cease another practice: In recent years, Albion has counted donating seniors in its tally of alumni givers while excluding all seniors from the total alumni pool, a move that hiked the giving rate a percent point or two a year. Mr. Mitchell says that, starting in 2007, all seniors will be included in the total pool. He vows "clarity and transparency" in future fund-raising reports. [Smaller Returns]
An Albion official says other colleges also exaggerate giving rates. Albion's approach, says Marcia Starkey, associate vice president of alumni and parent relations, is "industry standard."
At Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind., 81 of 188 seniors, or 43%, donated last year, says annual fund director Joe Klen. Yet Wabash's Web site says the class's participation rate was 100%, which Mr. Klen acknowledges is inaccurate. The college only includes the 81 donors -- not the nondonors -- in figuring its overall giving rate. Mr. Klen says the overall alumni-giving rate of 37% is accurate because deceased alums who remain in the pool offset the omitted seniors.
A growing number of nationally recognized schools like Haverford College and Wesleyan University count seniors as alumni donors. In 2006, when Haverford adopted this method, 70% of seniors gave, helping lift its reported alumni-giving rate to 53% from 50% in 2005. At Wesleyan, 94% of seniors contributed last year, boosting its overall 54% giving rate. Both schools also include nondonating seniors in their calculations.
Representatives at both schools say the practice is legitimate. Although seniors usually donate to class gifts before commencement, they become alumni by June 30, when colleges finalize giving rates.
Starting in 2006, Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., began counting some college seniors as multiyear donors. Ronald Joyce, vice president for advancement, says 35 student volunteers went door to door soliciting donations and urging seniors to make their donations count in two separate years.
Trinity achieved a 97% giving rate among seniors, helping boost its overall rate to 55% in 2006 from 45% in 2005, qualifying the college for a $1 million gift from an alumni group. And 250 seniors authorized Trinity to subdivide their one-time gifts into two annual contributions, giving Trinity a head start on its projected 2007 alumni-giving rate of 57%.
Mr. Joyce says Trinity is complying with CASE standards by holding the gift portion for the second year in escrow and providing the donor with a receipt in each year.
Because CASE and U.S. News guidelines allow schools to exclude alumni for whom they lack valid contact information, one popular method for raising the alumni-giving rate is by not keeping track of graduates deemed unlikely to donate.
Finding people has certainly gotten easier, thanks to the growth of the Web. According to John Taylor, a consultant who helped develop the CASE standards, an acceptable lost-alumni rate is "5% or less." Brandeis University slashed its lost-alumni rate to its current 6% from 23% in 1991 in part by posting names of lost alumni on an online directory.
Finding lost alumni sounds worthwhile -- some may become re-engaged with the school and eventually donate. But if a college seeks a higher giving rate, making an aggressive effort to find alumni is "shooting yourself in the foot," says Ben Hancock, Albion's vice president for institutional advancement from 1989 to 2006.
Two years ago, Dominican University in River Forest, Ill., used Internet databases to reduce its percentage of lost alums to 11% from 21%. But its giving rate fell to 26% in 2006 from 39% in 2002, says Stephen Kuhn, Dominican's vice president for advancement. Around that time, Dominican dropped a notch in the U.S. News rankings.
Looking for alumni is "a curse and a blessing," Mr. Kuhn says.
The University of Southern California doesn't have contact information for 26% of its alumni, who therefore don't count in its reported alumni-giving rate. Diana Keim, director of annual giving at USC until 2005, says she was evaluated on her ability to boost the giving rate, not the total amount that was donated. "Finding lost alumni wasn't that important to us," Ms. Keim says. In 1991, USC's annual giving rate was 11%; now it is 34%.
Sam Martinuzzi, associate senior vice president for university advancement, says alumni participation is the "driving focus" of its annual fund program. Finding alumni "is always a good thing for USC," he adds.
Transylvania University's 50% giving rate omits 1,400 alumni, or 17%. The school could look for alumni "on a more regular basis and increase our numbers," says Bobbi Burns, director of annual giving at the Lexington, Ky., school. But she says the "drawback" would be a reduced giving rate.
Albion isn't worried about the 18% of its alumni it has lost track of. "We're not aggressive at all" in pursuing them, President Mitchell says, adding such efforts waste resources.
Founded by Methodists in 1835, Albion is thriving despite being located in a hard-pressed town where the iron-ore foundries that once drove the economy have closed. The college has boosted enrollment to 1,950 from 1,500 in the fall of 2000, constructed a new dormitory and administration building, and opened an equestrian program. It recently completed a $140 million fund-raising campaign and has a $190 million endowment.
When Mr. Mitchell became president in 1997, he identified the alumni-giving rate as a priority. In 1998, trustee William Stoffer offered a challenge: If Albion achieved a 50% giving rate, he would donate $1.5 million for a lecture series. Aided by the multiyear pledge program, Albion reached the goal in 2003, and Mr. Stoffer fulfilled his promise.
Mr. Stoffer, chief executive of Albion Machine & Tool Co., says Albion officials kept him informed about their tactics and that he was supportive. He adds he would have donated even if the college had fallen just short of a 50% giving rate.
At Albion, alumni must donate to have access to the college's online alumni directory. Undergraduates who staff Albion's fund-raising phone-a-thon are paid a bonus for every pledge they elicit.
For its winter phone-a-thon, held in the admissions building's basement festooned with balloons in Albion's purple-and-gold colors, scripts posted on cubicle walls advised student callers to ask prospects, "Would you even consider a small gift of $5 or $10 to help us reach our 50% giving rate?"
With one balky alumnus, freshman Yume Nakamura quickly adjusted her pitch. "Even $1 would help this statistic. Would you mind donating that much?" she asked. He agreed, and she mailed him a pledge card.
Albion also makes it easy for graduating seniors to donate. Instead of paying by check or credit card, most seniors allow the college to keep part or all of a refundable $150 matriculation deposit they paid as freshmen to cover such things as library fees and parking fines. "Let's see if we can be the only class in the history of any college to give 100% as we go out the door," President Mitchell exhorted seniors in February.
Jonathan Leazenby, a 2005 graduate, let Albion keep $30 of his matriculation deposit because, he says, President Mitchell "challenged everybody to do something. We take pride in our giving percentage." Informed that Albion also listed him as a donor in 2006, Mr. Leazenby says it was "misleading. I don't believe in trying to deceive people." |
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 1:47 AM Author: Aqua dragon (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8405531) |
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 9:00 AM Author: fishy chapel prole college "P" is extraordinarily transparent with its alumni giving numbers, making them publicly available online on a class by class basis (including the class roll and number of donors).
http://giving.princeton.edu/agstats/2006-07_results_by_class.pdf
if only college "H" were so transparent! with giving rates falling into the 30's, though, perhaps there's no real incentive to open the books there. in the meantime, i would encourage you, as you have encouraged repapa and others here, to stop spreading innuendo sans citation.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=514298 |
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 10:08 AM Author: hideous native fat ankles Subject: USNWR SAT formula obscures differences at very top This is how its calculated: "SAT/ACT scores. Average test scores on the SAT or ACT of all enrolled first-time, first-year students entering in 2005. Before being used as a ranking indicator, the scores are converted to the percentile of the national distribution corresponding to that school's scores".
Top one percent corresponds to 1470 (2200) or above. Thus the 5 - 20 point difference H and Y typically enjoy on Princeton gets masked. More important, the 25-75 formula is not sensitive enough to detect the true median, as opposed to the midpoint of the 25-75 range, which is completely different. The latter does not tell you if the middle 50% is skewed toward the 25% or the 75%. Rapeleye, in defending Princeton's slide in yield under her watch, recently reported a 30 point increase in Princeton's "average" SAT score, from 1430 to 1460. Yet its 25-75 range traditionally has had a midpoint in the area of 1465-1480. Yale by contrast, the only one of HYP to post its median numbers, has recently had medians of 1490 or so, with 25-75 midpoints of 1485-1490. (http://www.yale.edu/opa/newsr/06-08-31-02.all.html). What this shows, but what is not picked up by the USNWR frmula is that Princeton's class is skewed more toward the 25%, whereas Yale's is evenly distributed.
|
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 10:22 AM Author: fishy chapel prole mumbo-jumbo. median SAT numbers will always be higher than their counterpart averages, because individual scores can only be 130 points above 1470, but can be several hundred points below (for top athletes, development admits, and URM's). the spread is especially large at princeton, which, because of its smaller student body, has a disproportionately large share of lower-scoring athletes. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8406102) |
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 10:41 AM Author: Aqua dragon Subject: The number and percentage of varsity athletes - HYPS Princeton: 646 male (26%); 423 female (19%) Harvard: 719 male (21%); 563 female (18%) Yale: 514 male (19%); 363 female (14%) Stanford: 441 Male 13%; 375 female (12%)
|
|
Date: November 6th, 2007 1:56 PM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: Wow! Who Would Have Guessed? HYPS Data Fascinating I find this data on the percentage of varsity athletes at HYPS to be fascinating. Here we have four universities which are very similar in so many respects. But they differ sharply in terms of the presence of athletes on campus. I posted earlier this year about the extraordinary achievement of Stanford’s football team defeating then-number-two-ranked USC. Moreover, Stanford has won the Sears CoSIDA Directors’ Cup for overall NCAA Division I athletic performance every year since its inception. Who would have guessed that there are almost twice as many athletes on a percentage basis at Princeton?
These dramatically different percentages affect so many of the other facts and figures which are discussed and debated on this board. As just one example, I smile to myself when I read the comments above from a Yale supporter about the 5-point differential between the average SAT score at Yale versus that at Princeton. This poster is trying to make the case that the 5 points is perhaps understated because one admissions office might be reporting a median score whereas the other might be reporting a mean figure. That to me is missing the forest for the trees.
Using a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation, one can see it is highly likely that, once the lower SAT scores of athletes are excluded, the average score at Princeton is actually higher than that at Yale. I make one admittedly simplifying assumption based upon the Ivy League’s Academic Index policy, which requires conference members to admit and enroll varsity athletes whose average SAT scores and high school GPAs fall within one standard deviation from the mean for the entire student body. Given this fact, I believe it is reasonable to conclude that the SAT scores for athletes on any Ivy campus will be a near-normal distribution with a mean very close to the 25th percentile score for the entire student body. (The Ivy requirements mandate that each school’s average score for athletes be above the 16th percentile for all students on campus. I think that using the 25th percentile is likely to be a very good approximation of the actual average.)
Therefore, the average SAT scores for non-athletes can be calculated as follows. (This data is from 2008 US News rankings.)
School. . . 25% SAT All Students. . . 75% SAT All Students. . . Percent Athletes. . . Average SAT Score For Non-Athletes
Princeton . . . 1370. . . 1590. . . 22.7%. . . 1512 Harvard . . . 1390. . . 1590. . . 19.6%. . . 1514 Yale . . . 1390. . . 1580. . . 16.6%. . . 1504 Stanford . . . 1340. . . 1540. . . 12.5%. . . 1454
Now, I do not assert that the 8-point advantage which Princeton appears to hold over Yale is particularly meaningful. As I said in my original post, given the high degree of selectivity at all four universities and the inherent limitations of a 1600-maximum SAT scale, the averages at each school do little to distinguish between the capabilities of their respective student bodies. When the mean and median scores are this close to the maximum, small distinctions mostly reflect how diverse the admissions departments have chosen to be in terms of varsity athletes and under-represented minority groups. I have no doubt that Yale could assemble a student body whose average SAT score is 1600, although I doubt the Bulldog football team would be very good in that instance.
These differing percentages of athletes on campus also affect another common topic on this message board: Harvard professor Caroline Hoxby’s Revealed Preference study on college admissions. In this paper, she drew some firm conclusions from the admissions results at Princeton, Harvard and MIT, controlling only for applicant SAT scores. But I assert that it is a materially different exercise to admit a class composed of 22.7% recruited athletes at Princeton versus 19.6% at Harvard versus presumably near 0% at MIT (which, as a Division III school, is ostensibly precluded from giving admissions preferences to prospective varsity athletes). When nearly one-quarter of your student body is composed of athletes with an “admissions tip” from their coaches, it will necessarily affect the various curves that Professor Hoxby draws in her paper without controlling for this exogenous variable. I view many of her conclusions in a new light after seeing this athletic data.
I thank the readers who responded to my original post and I believe this new information on athletes supports my broader point that, perhaps paradoxically, as one evaluates the few most selective institutions on the collegiate landscape, standard statistics on student selectivity begin to lose their validity.
|
|
Date: November 20th, 2007 3:48 PM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: More On Hoxby's Revealed Preferences Analysis I did some surfing around the internet and found additional information which, in my opinion, further casts a shadow over Professor Hoxby’s Revealed Preference study of admissions practices at Harvard, MIT and Princeton. As described in the posting immediately above, recruited varsity athletes constitute a significant proportion of the student bodies at Harvard and especially at Princeton, while MIT nominally does not give preferential treatment to prospective athletes.
Harvard and Princeton run the two largest sports programs in Division I. Princeton’s undergraduate size is about 72% of Harvard’s, so I think it is safe to conclude that the percentage of students who are varsity athletes is higher at Princeton than at any other college in the country.
Here are two eye-opening statistics I found which speak to the fact that, not only are there MORE athletes at Princeton, they are also quantifiably BETTER athletes, at least compared to the other Ivies.
First, Princeton has won the Ivy League’s “all-sports championship” for 21 consecutive years. (This all-sports designation is calculated by awarding 8 points for a title in any sport, 7 points to the runner-up, etc.) Second, for the past 14 years, in a conference which names champions in 33 sports, Princeton has averaged 11 championships per year.
Those are staggering numbers. Think about the dominance suggested when, in a conference with eight members, a single program wins a full one-third of all the titles over the course of 14 years. I think even a serious college sports fan would be hard pressed to name another program at any level which dominates its conference in similar fashion. (Interestingly, two which at least come close are Stanford and Williams, both also highly respected for their academics.)
I am not a proponent of the “Soviet Union-East Germany School of Sports Marketing,” which implies that success in athletics reflects some institutional virtue. This posting is not to say that Princeton is a better university because its teams win so consistently. However, I am saying that Professor Hoxby made a glaring oversight by not considering the impact of recruiting for athletes when analyzing admissions practices. I would have expected her research to control for this obvious externality.
Professor Hoxby is currently in the process of trying to get her Revealed Preferences working paper accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. It will be interesting to see if she succeeds. I would demand more rigorous analysis from an Ivy League undergraduate writing his senior thesis, to say nothing of a tenured economics professor.
|
|
Date: November 20th, 2007 7:28 PM Author: dark excitant idiot center Subject: You've said something the harvard & yale trolls don't like The truth! The RP study of the '90s has been long critisized. It was a failure both academically and commercially (when the 2 harvard authors tried to make a buck off of it). Higher ed experts saw right through its shallowness and academics exposed its flaws. But for harvard and yale trolls, especially yale trolls who have been treated harshly in the rankings, it gives them something, when there is virtually little else, to hang their hat on!
Nice research! Solid conclusion! |
|
Date: July 20th, 2008 1:57 PM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: Sports Illustrated Ranking of College Athletic Programs / Hoxby Sports Illustrated has inaugurated an annual ranking of college athletic programs apparently intended to compete with the CoSIDA Directors’ Cup ranking. (The latter was recently renamed the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Directors’ Cup. Just rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?) The Directors’ Cup ranking is based exclusively on a university’s performance in NCAA tournaments. The Sports Illustrated ranking considers a broader array of data, namely, the number of national championships won, the number of Top 30 finishes and the number of conference titles claimed.
There is rarely much suspense when the Division I Directors’ Cup results are announced. Stanford has been slotted at number one for the last 14 years and seems ensconced at the apex of the pyramid in perpetuity. Princeton is invariably the top finisher among Ivy League universities and all non-scholarship schools in general, usually coming in somewhere in the range of 20 to 40.
In contrast, the Sports Illustrated methodology yields the following Top 20 ranking for the inaugural 2007-08 season.
1. Arizona State 2. Stanford 3. UCLA 4. Georgia (tie) 4. North Carolina (tie) 6. Penn State 7. Florida (tie) 7. USC (tie) 9. LSU 10. Tennessee 11. Texas A&M 12. Michigan 13. Princeton (tie) 13. Virginia (tie) 15. Texas 16. Notre Dame 17. Florida State 18. Fresno State 19. BYU (tie) 19. Cal (tie)
Source: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/sioncampus/07/01/2008-top-25-ncaa-rankings/index.html
At number 13, Princeton is the only Ivy League school ranked among the 46 programs named. Indeed, the Tigers are the only non-scholarship program on the list at all. Consistent with this observation, Princeton also won the Ivy League all-sports championship this year for the 22nd consecutive time.
As I stated in my immediately preceding post, I do not extrapolate from Princeton’s success on the athletic field to any assertion about its appropriate ranking in the classroom. But I do view this data as further evidence that Professor Caroline Hoxby’s Revealed Preference Study is seriously flawed by ignoring the impact of athletic recruiting on how high school applicants are admitted to colleges and how the admitted students then select where to attend.
Princeton has a greater percentage of athletes on its campus than any other college in America and, qualitatively, they are superior to the student-athletes elsewhere in the Ivy League. It is analytical malpractice for Professor Hoxby to overlook this aspect of college admissions among top universities before drawing boldly stated conclusions. Indeed, she also neglects the impact of admissions preferences for under-represented minorities and legacies, the former of which receives an even greater preference than athletes
Professor Hoxby has been trying to get her Revealed Preference Study published in a peer-reviewed journal for the past four years, thus far without success. Perhaps her editors have recognized that while her paper includes plenty of detailed multivariate regressions, her logic and the underlying data being considered are seriously lacking.
|
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 10:48 AM Author: hideous native fat ankles Subject: Scottie, first, rapaleye did not say "mean" - she said "average," which could mean either median or mean. Secondly, even if it were the mean (and I doubt it was), and even if the recruited jocks (a smaller number than varsity athletes btw) urms etc have a mean of 1330 and represent 15% of the total, thats only going to chop about 20 points off the mean (which would make for a mean for the remaining 85% of 1450 in the Hargadon era, a figure that is fairly close to Penn's. This pattern was captured in the Revealed Preference Study. Again, to Rapeleye's credit, she has gone after the very best, willing to take her yield lumps for the sake of improving the quality of the class. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8406159) |
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 11:02 AM Author: fishy chapel prole she meant the mean, dude. that's why the number, even after the recent increase, is still lower than princeton's usual 25-75 midpoint of 1470 or so, which is more in the nature of a median than a mean. also, you're now comparing princeton's hargadon-era mean to penn's current 25-75 midpoint, an inapt comparison for obvious reasons, including the above. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8406205) |
|
Date: July 19th, 2007 11:57 AM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: Alumni Giving Is The Best Available PROXY Repapa, Thanks very much for your kind words and positive feedback. I’ll return the love later in this post but first I’ll respond to your suggestions. I agree with you that it would be interesting to know the dollar amount donated per alumnus as that would reflect their “raw economic power,” as you put it. Part of the value of attending any college is the influence of the network that you are joining.
But my primary concern is with how satisfied the ENTIRE student body is with their undergraduate experience. At almost every institution, the dollar amount donated per capita is likely to be skewed by a small number of big donors. Nevertheless, dollar amount data would certainly be intriguing to know as an adjunct to the percentage of alumni who give.
I further agree with you that, by definition, most alumni are many years out of their college experience. Your implication is that it would be more relevant to canvass those classes just a few years removed from graduation and once more I concur. F. Scottie posted that information above for Princeton (the last five classes gave at 75.9%, 70.3%, 73.7%, 61.3% and 66.3%). To the extent that information is available for other universities, it would be more timely data than giving rates from the entire alumni base.
Overall alumni giving is useful to me not because it is precisely what I want to know, but because it is the best available proxy. The article you posted quoted a high school senior saying, “I don’t care what percent of alumni give, I care what the students think.” To me, that is an example of a lack of critical thinking. The former is a direct reflection of the latter and, more to the point, it is the only comprehensive data easily accessible. If the student satisfaction survey you mentioned involving Harvard were available for every college, I agree that it would be a better, more direct way of measuring the undergraduate experience.
Finally, I think you and I actually agree regarding comparing Yale and Columbia on the basis of student selectivity. Here is my train of thought. First, by announcing its results excluding the engineering school, Columbia has tipped its hand regarding managing admissions data with an eye toward its US News ranking. Second, arguably HYP are best positioned to theoretically fill their classes completely with valedictorians and 1600 board scores. To the extent that their SAT averages are close (but as you point out, not identical), my working hypothesis would be that Columbia MIGHT admit students placing greater weight on board scores than Yale does. And what data would I examine to test that theory? Alumni giving rates!
Yale’s listed donor participation is 45%. To me, that is a material and meaningful difference compared to Columbia’s 35%. I infer that Yale is doing a better job selecting its incoming freshmen because they appear to be more satisfied with their undergraduate experience.
You cite Yale’s advantage in SAT scores relative to Columbia. My conclusion is that the difference in actual student experience in New Haven compared to Morningside Heights EXCEEDS what would be suggested by the 40-60 point delta in board scores, as reflected by a 29% difference in alumni giving rates (45%/35%). Not to worry, I’m not claiming that there’s no difference between Columbia and Yale.
|
|
Date: November 20th, 2007 8:29 PM Author: Swashbuckling mint area Subject: Some ideas on Columbia and Yale First, I want to say there is a whole lot of autocorrelation going on in these analyses.
That said, with the exception of students that crave attending school in New York and New Yorkers that cannot leave the city, Yale probably wins all the cross admit battles with Columbia. So it fills its classes with in general "better" students. Unfortunately for Yale, the metrics used for picking better students out of high school are not entirely predictive of success. So Yale has a slightly better placement in top law/med schools, etc. Columbia meanwhile gets a student who would rather have the excitement and challenge of New York at the expense of the security of the Yale name and New Haven. So Columbia students might be more aggressive and open minded and this would explain how "lesser" Columbia alumni do their amazing things.
About alumni giving rates. If one goes to school in New Haven, the enormity of the Yale name and the fact that there is nothing else amplifies the perceived importance of the Yale experience. The gothic buildings help too. Back in New York City, the rah rah of the college experience seems a little shallow and meaningless. The accomplishment of being at an Ivy drowns in the challenge that the city represents. If we accept these statements, I am surprised Columbia stays within 10% giving of Yale. |
|
Date: August 11th, 2007 2:05 PM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: LAC Advantage In Alumni Giving Rates Is Meaningful Bbbrown, You make a very interesting and, in my opinion, important observation. The national liberal arts colleges do achieve statistically significant higher alumni giving rates than the national universities. What is particularly fascinating to me is that the top national universities outpace the LACs on virtually every dimension which US News values (SAT scores, admissions rates, etc. —- even, somewhat unexpectedly, student/faculty ratios) and yet the LAC alumni STILL express higher satisfaction with their college experience than the graduates of their larger brethren.
I agree with you that this fact probably indicates, among other emotional states, a higher sense of belonging. The three top-rated national universities (HYP) all seem to recognize the value of narrowed social settings. All three feature residential colleges which are meant to create smaller and presumably more intimate communities for their students than the broader university at large.
I also do not think it is a coincidence that the two national universities with the best alumni giving rates, Princeton and Dartmouth, have the smallest undergraduate enrollments within the Ivies as well as, by a wide margin, the most limited graduate school and professional programs. To me, this data is all very internally consistent: college students seem to be happier in smaller social environments.
I acknowledge that this is of course only true on average. Indeed, many high school students may actively seek the anonymity which comes with attending a larger university. But to me the data is compelling. LACs post higher satisfaction numbers despite starting with students who have passed through a slightly less selective screen. The national universities with the highest alumni giving rates are the ones which most closely resemble a LAC in size and undergraduate focus. Most conclusively, these facts comport with a common sense explanation for their existence.
|
|
Date: August 11th, 2007 3:41 PM Author: saffron trust fund mood fucktard, LAC grads are more likely to give simply because they feel more obligated. if you go to an LAC and graduate, if you don't give back you'll be pestered to no end and made to feel out of place. if you don't give back to a university, nobody really gives a shit after you hang up the phone. it's not that college students are happier the smaller the school, it's that they feel more connected (which is not always a good thing) and a "part" of it whether they enjoyed the experience or not (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8502431) |
|
Date: November 6th, 2007 3:52 PM Author: Vigorous Codepig Office Why if you get a 1450 SAT instead of a 1530 SAT should you be destined to get less satisfaction out of your college experience as you imply? If there is any correlation, I would think the opposite. If you're really, really smart then it's going to take a lot more to make you satisfied and your expectations will be very high, i.e NYCFan's implicit argument that even Harvard can't live up to Harvard students. It almost seems like ignorance is bliss where the 23 yr old Harvard grad is disappointed that he hasn't found the cure for cancer yet, but the 23 yr old Dartmouth grad is mindlessly happy to just be chugging away in IB at Merrill Lynch. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8860926) |
|
Date: November 6th, 2007 7:06 PM Author: Aqua dragon Subject: Right on. Nice imagery mind if I borrow it? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8861734) |
|
Date: August 11th, 2007 2:27 PM Author: rambunctious bawdyhouse notre dame notre dame (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8502089) |
|
Date: August 11th, 2007 2:36 PM Author: Aqua dragon Only alumni fund contributors can get football tix at Notre Dame (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8502127) |
|
Date: September 9th, 2007 3:54 PM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: Dishonest Reporting Of Alumni Giving Rates NYCFan,
You shine a spotlight on what I consider a despicable practice, colleges which engage in fraudulent accounting to “game” their standing in college rankings. One of the most pernicious effects of the popularity of the US News list is that these institutions which at one time purported to stand for “truth” have now been revealed to be just more lying rats in their own little rat race. And as Lily Tomlin told us, “The trouble with the rat race is that, even if you win, you’re still a rat.”
Whether it is reporting admissions rates without including a university’s engineering school, reporting SAT scores without including foreign applicants, reporting yield rates without admittees who deferred this year but including those who deferred last year, reporting hospital expenditures as educational expenditures or reporting alumni giving rates using the dishonest practices which you cite in your post, it’s a sad window into the depths to which some colleges are willing to stoop. And, to all of them, I say the following. Over time, as more attention is paid to these practices and as more statistics are included in legally binding documents submitted to bond rating agencies, you will be found out.
My sole consolation is that by inflating alumni giving rates, in contrast to dishonestly reporting admissions rates and yield rates, colleges actually do harm to themselves. When Albion College tells seniors that, if they give at graduation they will not be solicited for five years, Albion misses the opportunity to get more donations for four years. Even more damaging, Albion neglects the chance to get new alumni into the habit of giving every year, which will hurt the college in the long run.
When Southern Cal makes a point of “losing” addresses from alumni who have not given in years, sooner or later, they will miss the occasional donor who becomes very wealthy late in life. I wonder if Sidney Frank, who gave more than $100 million to Brown University at age 84 after selling his liquor company, is the type of alumnus whom USC would have stopped contacting long ago.
These colleges that engage in gamesmanship to boost their alumni giving rates are directly harming themselves financially in an attempt to increase a number which, in all likelihood, will not even improve their US News ranking. It serves them right.
While it is sad that institutions of teaching and research resort to such dishonest accounting, this unfortunate circumstance does not take away from the fact that alumni giving rates remain a very revealing reflection of the quality of the college experience. Alumni satisfaction is a lagging indicator of student satisfaction which is a current indicator of the quality of the undergraduate experience, academic and otherwise.
We need to ferret out and criticize in strong language the accounting legerdemain, but when all the top universities have low admission rates and high SAT scores, alumni giving rates are still exceptionally useful. They do much to reveal the reality that the experience at these highly ranked schools can still be very different from college to college.
As I said in my original post, they are all Top 10 universities but you could infer many insights from the difference in alumni giving rates at Cal Tech, Chicago and Columbia versus those at Princeton and Dartmouth. I submit that those insights go far beyond a few SAT points.
|
|
Date: September 10th, 2007 2:10 PM Author: Lemon Genital Piercing Hunting Ground Subject: A Faulty Metric The Harvard Yale boys have been duking it out on the donation front for years, trying to get the highest donation numbers. They assign class reps to call everyone, and badger them into giving a donation. Part of the spiel is that they have to beat the other school. This is not supposition, I've heard these calls.
I assume other schools are doing this as well, but the schools who aren't equally moved by petty competitive considerations, and don't do things for the sole purpose of pleasing USNWR, don't devote nearly the time and resources to making people contribute. Or otherwise contort the numbers in the manner described above.
I've apparently been "dropped" from one of my alma maters, and never get calls anymore. I'm sure I am not listed as an "elgible alum" for their % headcount.
People tend to make donations more readily when they have more money. Wall Street feeder schools are thus advantaged on the donation front,whether or not their alums liked their college experience more than others who chose less lucrative (though possibly no less rewarding, to them personally) careers. |
|
Date: September 10th, 2007 3:02 PM Author: Carnelian stead sandwich Still, if alums are contributing to their schools, the experience at least put them in the position to be able to donate, which says something, although probably disproportionately hurts Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Oberlin, Reed type of schools. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8623768) |
|
Date: October 7th, 2007 10:57 PM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: Stanford Football Shocks USC, Will Not Be Playing HYP Yesterday, Stanford’s football team beat the number two-ranked Southern Cal Trojans 24-23. As unrelated as that might seem to the topic at hand, I believe it supports my earlier supposition: Among the very very top universities in the country, small differences in average SAT scores and other common metrics do not reflect how capable the average student on campus is, but rather how diverse the college has chosen to be.
The Ivy League football teams play each other and, for the most part, members of the Division I-AA Patriot League. Meanwhile, Stanford just played and defeated the second-best team in the entire country. USC won two national championships in the past four years and came within a madcap Vince Young touchdown scramble of winning a third.
Football is not like basketball where one or two exceptional players can carry a team to great heights. If Stanford wants to step on the field against teams from the Pac-10 or other BCS conferences without being blown out, the Cardinal needs to admit at least 100 football players whose academic profiles are not reflective of the student body at large.
By necessity, the average SAT score and even the 25-75 percentile range at Stanford will be negatively affected by its football program more than is the case in the less ambitious Ivy League. If Stanford’s average SAT is marginally lower than at HYP, does that mean that the typical non-athlete student at Stanford is less capable than his or her Ivy counterpart? Not necessarily.
It would be very interesting to know what the various SAT ranges would be if the Top 10 universities would disclose their statistics ex-athlete, ex-minority and ex-legacy. But of course they don’t, which is why we should refrain from drawing too many conclusions from modest discrepancies in the reported data.
|
|
Date: October 8th, 2007 9:50 AM Author: Carnelian stead sandwich I've seen a something in the past where someone posted that while Colgate's avg SAT was 1349 that the avg SAT of non-athletes was 1384. They even had a male/female breakdown. While this doesn't separate out legacies (whose differences are less likely to be extreme anyway) and URMs, this is a step in the direction of what you are saying and other schools probably make these comparisons as well. How forthcoming they are with them is a different matter. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=660126&forum_id=1#8742480) |
|
Date: January 8th, 2008 12:13 PM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: BCS Denouement Of Stanford 24, USC 23 Last night, LSU’s football team easily defeated Ohio State to win its second national championship since the BCS era began in 1998. In the final, post-season AP poll, Georgia was ranked number two and USC finished third, after easy victories over Hawaii and Illinois, respectively.
But had Stanford not beaten USC back on October 6, it’s a virtual certainty that the BCS National Championship game would have matched up Ohio State and USC, who would have been the only major conference one-loss teams in the nation (no disrespect to a great season by Hawaii). Given how USC and Ohio State performed in their respective bowl games, I don’t think that it’s too much a stretch to say that USC, its injury-plagued roster finally healthy, would have been very likely to defeat Ohio State.
So there you have it: Stanford and its 1340-SAT football team cost Pete Carroll and his blue-chip NFL prospects a third national title in five years. (Just guessing about Stanford’s team SAT scores, of course. It’s probably lower.) Now that we know how good Appalachian State really is, I would surmise Stanford 24, USC 23 (in the LA Coliseum, no less) might be the greatest college football upset of all time.
The teams from Harvard, Yale and Princeton have been having fine seasons recently. This year, Harvard claimed the Ivy title. Last year, Princeton and Yale were co-champions. But while HYP play in their little Ivy League sandbox, Stanford is eating Thanksgiving dinner at "the grown-up table." Just something to think about when comparing average SAT scores at the top of the US News rankings.
|
|
Date: January 8th, 2008 2:56 PM Author: Aqua dragon Stanford, of course utilizes paid athletes to represent the school in most sports, whereas the Ivy League uses amateurs - regular students.
Clearly, if the Ivy schools wanted to rely on salaried athletes, and to compromise academic standards to the extent Stanford does, they too could challenge the factory schools. As it happens, they do not view this as an appropriate goal for academic institutions. |
|
Date: November 19th, 2008 3:39 PM Author: heady irate stage main people Subject: David Almost Beats Goliath Again (Well,That Is, Before Halftime) One year after pulling off arguably the greatest upset in the history of college football (over a 41-point favorite), last Saturday Stanford hung with USC for a half before the Trojans pulled away to win by open water, 45-23.
Stanford actually led 7-0 and 14-10 and, for a while there, Cardinal dreamers could be forgiven if they thought that it might be deja vu all over again. But eventually USC's athletic advantage was insurmountable. Just watching the Trojans' C.J. Gable run through and then away from the Stanford kickoff coverage team on a 93-yard runback made that clear.
Stanford may not beat USC again for another century but it's undeniable that the Cardinal fields a football team that can at least be marginally competitive with the top echelons of the BCS world. One can only imagine what the score would be if USC traveled east to play Harvard or Princeton.
Admitting 120 to 150 football players lowers the reported SAT scores for schools like Stanford and Northwestern, something to keep in mind when comparing small differences in statistics between highly selective colleges. |
|
Date: November 19th, 2008 4:25 PM Author: Lemon Genital Piercing Hunting Ground I know of a kid who was recruited for Stanford's football team. He had really high SATs. His scores would not have lowered Stanford's aggregate reported SAT scores at all.
He was, however, an academic goof-off, with performance nowhere near the top of his class. Absent athletics he would never have been considered a candidate for Stanford, SAT scores notwithstanding. |