Thu 23 Feb 2006
I am drawn to the article on Amherst President Marx like a rugger to beer.
The centerpiece of Marx’s crusade is to change what happens in the converted 19th century farmhouse where Amherst’s 14 admissions officers work. Marx is convinced that the process is stacked against poor kids. But changing that threatens the entire admissions rationale of elite colleges. The key issue: how much to lower academic credentials. Amherst got to No. 2 in the rankings in part because of its incoming students’ stellar grades and test scores. Those factors are just one part of college rankings, so Amherst might slip only a few spots if other selective colleges don’t follow its lead. Still, that could hurt. “If Marx lets in more low-income kids, he’s going to risk his school’s reputation,” cautions Anthony Carnevale, a senior fellow at the National Center on Education & the Economy.
Letting in smart low-income kids does nothing to Amherst’s reputation (except to improve it). Letting in not-so-smart low-income kids has the potential to be devastating to that reputation.
Bringing in more low-income kids would require added compromise. To meet Marx’s 25% goal, Amherst would have to take more threes [on a 1-7 scale], says Parker, meaning those who may have straight As but SATs as low as 1360. Even though Amherst already does so for minorities, legacies, and athletes, faculty members are worried. “This could be a radical departure that fundamentally changes the character of our institution,” warns physics professor David Hall, who heads the Faculty Committee on Admissions & Financial Aid.
Hall is right to be worried. If you think that, on average students with 1360 SATs do as well as though with 1560s, then you don’t know what you are talking about. People like Marx like to tell stories about specific students who come to Amherst with low scores and then thrive, winning academic awards, writing excellent theses, being named to Phi Beta Kappa. And such stories are certainly true. But they do not represent the average result. In fact, the typical academic performance of 3s is certainly worse than that for 1s, even during senior year (by which time any disadvantage in terms of preparation should have been alleviated).
The only way to meaningfully increase the percentage of students from the bottom quarter of the income distribution is to admit a bunch of applicants that you currently reject, applicants that are not as academically talented/focused as your other students.
Marx hopes to ease such concerns by finding more top-notch low-income applicants. Certainly, many students have never even heard of Amherst. So Marx is asking his admissions officers to visit more low-income high schools. And he’s enlisting Amherst students in a tele-mentoring program in which they walk seniors from those schools through the college application process. Marx also started using QuestBridge, a Palo Alto (Calif.) nonprofit that has enlisted 8,000 high school teachers to identify talented low-income students for elite colleges.
More delusions! But, of course, it depends on what you mean by “top-notch.” There are thousands of low income students with, say, 1250 SATs and high school grades to match who would love to come to Amherst, especially for free. Let them all in and Amherst will be a different place.
Although the competition for talented low income students is not as tough as that for URMs or helmet sport athletes, it is getting there. Does Marx really think that more visits to bad high schools are going to help? Amherst (and Williams) might be able to accomplish something on the margin, convincing a smart low income kid that she is better off at an LAC than at an Ivy. But the tyranny of numbers remains. There are just not enough low income applicants to go around, just as there are not enough URMs and hockey players. Amherst might be able to steal a couple from its competitors, but not enough to meaningfully change the overall distribution.
Unless, that is, Marx succeeds in changing the admissions criteria in use. If I were a Amherst faculty member, I would be worried.
13 Responses to “Academic Credentials”
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David: My instincts tell me that a lot of currently unmined (to continue with your gem metaphor) low income, very smart high school kids, who would not compromise Amherst once on campus, exist, but that it will be very, very inefficient (meaning very, very costly) to find them, and more pointedly it will be next to impossible to differentiate them in advance from the currently unmined low income, very smart high school kids, who would compromise (in many cases greatly compromise) Amherst once on campus.
Also, one must note that such “underprivileged” from urban publics often struggle mightily in their first classes upon matriculating to an elite college. Should others, (professors, students, et al) be forced to wait for them to catch up?
Case-in-point: the student in the article from Chicago, Michael Simmons, was even asked to take a year off because he lagged so far behind in terms of academic performance. More often than not, this “type” (quotation marks included for fear of unfair characterization) of student will need time to catch up. Marx does propose a resolution to this: he would set up some sort pre-frosh summer school for the students admitted under the new plane, but this endeavor will only suck up more endowment money. Amherst would probably have to pick up the tab for travel fees incurred by these students as well for housing them and feeding them for free; not to mention reimbursing their faculty/staff for their extra work. The logistics involved with Marx’s plan as a whole are mind-boggling, but he seems to be a man on a mission.
If Marx wants to transform Amherst from an elite institution into one more dedicated to a mission of educating the underprivileged, he can be my guest. There is no understating the tremendous risk that he is undertaking should he be allowed to carry out his plan.
I had been told that Amherst is far more conservative in their policies than Williams; show me a college head more radical/liberal than Marx.
‘10 Applicant — throw a dart at a map of California. ;-)
Lee Bollinger (now at Columbia) was the named defendent in the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative action cases in which Michigan was sued under the 14th Amendment.
Also, I think part of the reason that Amherst may be perceived as more conservative is because it’s in the same neighborhood as some pretty vociferously liberal schools.
As for Williams, I didn’t feel that the campus as a whole was far left by any means, and was certainly less activist and with fewer (i.e., zero) Stalinist, Maoist, Trotskyite, and Leninist groups that Columbia, which has so many different communist organizations that there’s actually an umbrella group just to deal with them all. It really depends on your major and your classes. At any event, it’s really not something that will affect your day-to-day life, but you really won’t find any top school that isn’t on the left to some-extent.
Good luck with the application process — I’m rooting for you!
Actually Williams has the
Summer Humanities and Social Sciences for exactly this “type” of student. It’s an excellent program and helped me and my “type” tremendously. Good luck ‘10 Applicant.
“I had been told that Amherst is far more conservative in their policies than Williams;”
Amherst conservative? those two words don’t belong in the same sentence! As an Amherst alum, I am amused since I thought the place was always pretty comfortably left of center in most regards. My impression was that Williams was slightly more to the right than Amherst based on reports from friends that went there, but those reflections are many years old. Lee Bollinger was also once president of UMASS-Amherst, btw.
The Marx plan intrigues me, and it appeals to me on one level, but I can appreciate the logistical difficulties to implementing such a program successfully. It will be interesting to see how things unfold. If legacy admissions are cut back to accomodate this, I think support will dry up quickly. And bringing in students that do not have the preparation to handle the work serves nobody. A summer program for underprepared pre-frosh doesn’t strike me as an appropriate remedy to that concern.
Maybe Williams and Amherst and like schools could accomplish the same goals by ramping up financial aid and aggressively marketing themselves to a broader audience of high schools. I am currently a grad student with many amazingly talented classmates who did their undergrad at various public institutions. I wonder how many of them never envisioned attending top private schools because of the cost.
The latest version of The Amherst Student has hit the web and the BusinessWeek article has top billing. Here’s an excerpt you guys might find interesting:
“Most students, however, are unaware that the plan outlined in BusinessWeek is what Marx called a “sensationalized” version of reality. “The story exaggerates tensions among students and certainly exaggerates the price that would be paid by the institution for further efforts for diversifying our student body,” said Marx.
“The article offered several embellished statistics and figures unknown to the president. For example, the increase in overall admissions desired by the administration is closer to 80 students than the 120 suggested by Symonds. Furthermore, the increased numbers are not to be earmarked for low-income students. “The article implies a mechanical admission process, implies quotas, implies different standards for different folks–none of which is happening here,” assured Marx.”
The full article is here: http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~astudent/2005-2006/issue17/news/01.html
There are also several student pieces on the topic on the opinion page
Nota bene: “in their policies” means, well, in their policies. I did not mean it in a purely political “GOP vs. democrats” sense. I cannot think of any elite institution (or just among the ones I visited) that is not primarily left of center on the political spectrum. Every school has its staunch conservatives but it appears as if the hordes of liberals overwhelm them in the end.
By this, I intended to imply that traditionally Williams vies to grow and change and adapt (thus being more liberal in their policies) whereas Amherst is traditionally content with their status/position. I am merely basing this on what I have been told, as I do not have first hand experience within the two schools (yet?). The recently constructed and extravagant center for the arts at Williams is a great supporting example; apparently Williams is always looking for a good cause to spend their superfluous endowment on.
Loweeel- I threw a dart at California for you but unfortunately I missed. I hit Utah instead but we won’t go there…
While it will certainly benefit the students, the motivation for the new Arts Center was driven in large part by the needs of the Williamstown Summer Theater Festival, which had long ago outgrown Adams Memorial Theater.
The original plan was to not even build the new theater complex on the campus proper , but rather at the foot of Spring Street. The town nixed that idea.
Actually, the motivation for the new Arts Center was driven by the $20 million donation funding it. This guy said, “I’ll give you $20 million to build a new theatre.” Williams’ president (the one before Morty) said, “well, all right, thanks, I guess we’ll do that.”
Williams had to add about $30 million of its own, and the controversy surrounding the whole affair eventually led to the trustees asking that president to leave. So no, ‘10 Applicant, Williams is not “always looking for a good cause to spend their superfluous endowment on”; it just had trouble declining a donation of $20 million.
“Nota bene: “in their policies” means, well, in their policies.”
I hear you loud and clear now, but even still I’d argue that what you’ve been told is inapt as applied to Amherst.
Amherst tried, when I was there in the 90s, to make curricular changes. For example, they tried to respond to the horrible qualifications of MA public school teachers (something like 80% were from the bottom half of their college class in the 90s) by making it possible for AMherst students to get certified as part of the curriclum. The plan never really got off the ground since the requirements of the state were ridiculous.
I’m not sure if this news got out to the broader NESCAC community but Tom Gerety, pres of Amherst from 1994-2003, responded to criticism of athletic recruiting in 1996 or 1997 by actually publically proposing the idea of turning NESCAC football into some version of arena football, with a smaller field, 8 on 8 play, and two-way players. the idea was that if the football team only needed 25 kids instead of 100 then that would make recruiting less of an issue.
the Campus is also in the key stages of a facelift that started six or seven years ago. Brand new dorms, a new geology building(that’s right: geology) which will also hold its natural history collection.
Maybe whoever told you about Amherst vis a vis Williams on thies was referring to when Amherst actually started to admit Women or abolish frats, which I think postdated the same moves by Williams, although I could be wrong.
Actually, Hank Payne was not the president before Morty. After Payne came Carl Voigt who was originally named “interim president.” Carl did an amazing job healing the rifts that had formed during the Payne presidency and the success of Morty’s tenure in some part must be credited to Carl’s leadership during that time.
The difficult decision to stop the development at the end of Spring Street was made by Carl and allowed Morty to begin his tenure with a clean state. It is really one of the more admirable things that any leader of Williams has done in the recent past. It certainly has influenced the amazing success Morty has enjoyed as a fundraiser for the college.
Carl’s efforts were recognized by removing the interim label and offically including him in the list of Williams presidents. It was only fitting to do so, and while few students had an opportunity to interact with him (I was lucky enough to meet him through Morty), his great leadership should not be forgotten or go unrecognized.
Diane is correct, however. Harry Payne was run out of town 7 months after accepting Herb Allen’s $20 million gift earmarked for the new Performing Arts Center — a project that hadn’t been on any priority planning radar screen at the College.
I feel Amherst is taking a gamble, but a smart one. You’d be surprised what many young adults can become given the chance. Studies have shown time and time again that people rise to expectations. Those 1300’s might just surprise you.
And yes I’ll always be proud to be one of those 1300’s, one of those tipped athletes, one of those finnancial aid students, who is thankful he had the pleasure that was Williams.
As a matter of fact right now I’m working to bring more of those students to Williams because in my humble opinion we need them.