Admissions at Elite Universities

The undergraduate stratosphere gets further rarer with every passing year.

Take Stanford University's recent announcement about the class of 2014: The university reviewed 32,022 applications from "the largest number of candidates in its history," and sent offers to "just 7.2 percent" of applicants—an admission rate that "sets a university record."

Hmmm .... that means the number of students who received rejection letters from Stanford is .... aaaahhh, who cares!

I recall reading in Nicholas Lehman's article, back some time ago in the Atlantic, that the SAT score remains forever in the student's memory.  It is such a defining number of one's life at a critical fork in the road--where to after high school? I mean, think about the "Stanford rejects" given this piece of data from its class of 2013:

nearly 20 percent of the Class of 2013 posted perfect scores in the SAT Critical Reading and Math exams, and two-thirds of the class earned a GPA of 4.0 and above.

And this was the case when Stanford's admit rate was 7.9%, compared to this year's 7.2%.  Ouch!

Of course, Standford's 7.2% admit rate is bested, ahem, by that old school on the east coast: Harvard

For the first time in Harvard’s history, more than 30,000 students applied to the College, leading to an admission rate of 6.9 percent for the Class of 2014. Letters of admission (and e-mail notifications) were sent on April 1 to 2,110 of the 30,489 applicants....
... more than 3,000 applicants scored a perfect 800 on the SAT Critical Reading Test; 4,100 scored 800 on the SAT Math Test; and nearly 3,600 were ranked first in their high school classes.

93.1 percent of the applicants were rejected .... how many of them knew even beforehand that they didn't stand a chance, but applied anyway?  According to The Daily Beast, Stanford leads the way in being the most stressful environment for students :(

BTW, the average SAT scores at the "flagship" university of the system where I teach ...

A university associated with the Oregon Ducks?

A neighbor says this joke at get togethers almost always.  But, it is not tiresome to listen to it though.  The joke?  "Hey, I just found out the other day that there is an university in town, with a whole lot of buildings too, with the same name as the Oregon Ducks football team" 

Yes, ha ha, indeed.  As much as a sports fan as any average American, this neighbor is unhappy with the huge amount of resources and attention that the university's athletics programs--football and basketball in particular--receive.  Well, he has a number of fellow travellers, including me.

Nathan Tublitz, a biology professor at the university, has a sharp op-ed in the paper.  He writes there:

The University of Oregon recently triggered this reaction by rescheduling the 2010 June Commencement Ceremonies to accommodate the NCAA national track and field championships.

Move graduation for a track meet?

This decision to prioritize athletics over academics, inconveniencing thousands of students and their parents, might have been excusable were it not the latest in a long line of similar decisions. For example, the Athletic Department’s current football plans include moving the Civil War game to the Saturday before exam week, holding more Thursday night games, and establishing an annual Thanksgiving Day rivalry game against the University of Washington Huskies. Never mind that students need to study for finals, attend Friday classes, or spend Thanksgiving with their families. Oregon athletics and the university administration are again reaching for a quick payout at the expense of academic quality and institutional integrity.