the young people's professor

If you pick up a copy of U.S. News and World Report’s 2008 list of “America’s Best Colleges” there is one institution that is noticeably absent from the magazine’s Top 50 rankings in the Liberal Arts division.

Sarah Lawrence College, whose famous alumni include Barbara Walters, Alice Walker, Holly Robinson, Robin Givins and Carly Simon; is no where to be found on this year's rankings list. But just last year, and for decades before that, the college had been a shoe-in for a “Top 40” spot on the list.

So what happened?

Last year Sarah Lawrence made history as the only college in the United States to completely disregard SAT scores a factor in its undergraduate admission process. Other institutions have made the SATs “optional” but no university has out right refused the scores as an admissions factor. In a provocative (and convincing) op-ed article published in the Washington Post last year, former Sarah Lawrence president Michele Tolel Myers wrote that Sarah Lawrence is "a writing-intensive school, and the information produced by SAT scores added little to our ability to predict how a student would do at our college; it did, however, do much to bias admission in favor of those who could afford expensive coaching sessions.” Amen to that.

Now here’s where things get more interesting. As a result of Sarah Lawrence’s decision to disregard SAT scores, U.S. News essentially threatened the institution with a proposal to come up with an abritrary ranking for the school based on what would have been an “estimated” SAT median score that was 200 points lower than college’s peer institutions. In other words, because Sarah Lawrence would no longer report SAT scores to U.S. News, the magazine would just make up a fake number.

Not surprisingly, Sarah Lawrence refused that proposal and as a result is no longer listed in the rankings. U.S. News and World Report lists the college as “Unranked.”

Shame on U.S. News. As someone who chose NYU (which has "dropped" down in the rankings to #35 )over purportedly “fancier” top tier institutions (For instance I got into Berkeley which is ranked #21 and Northwestern U. which is tied with Brown at #14), I can honestly say these rankings are, and have always been, just outright stupid.

For instance, Morehouse College, an institution which I have always had a deep affinity for (I would send my son to Morehouse over NYU in a minute even in spite of the homophobia) has never made it anywhere near U.S. News' "top schools" list in spite of an extraordinary track record of producing graduates that are quite competitive on the job market and in graduate admissions processes.

I really do hope that Sarah Lawrence will not suffer from a decline in national prestige or name recognition among prospective high school students because of this nonsense.

Furthermore, I sincerely applaud Sarah Lawrence for omitting SAT scores as a requirement for admission. This is hopefully the future of American college admission practices.

Posted by the young people's professor on 1/21/2008 at 8:14:00 PM | Permalink