On 7 Dec 2001 14:24:17 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dennis Roberts) wrote: > At 08:08 PM 12/7/01 +0000, J. Williams wrote: > >On 6 Dec 2001 11:34:20 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dennis Roberts) wrote: > > > > >if anything, selectivity has decreased at some of these top schools due to > > >the fact that given their extremely high tuition ... > > > i was just saying that IF anything had happened ... that it might have gone > down ... i was certainly not saying that it had ... > > but i do think that it could probably not get too much more selective ... > so it probably has sort of stayed where it has over the decades ... so if > grade inflation has occurred there it would not likely be due to an > increased smarter incoming class > (In the NY Times) At Harvard in particular, the interviewees claimed that the present freshmen had notably better SATs than those of a generation ago -- There are not nearly so many people with so-so scores (alumni offspring?), and a quarter of the class now has SATs that are perfect 1600, or nearly that (?no explanation of what 'nearly' means).
I go along with the notion that, in the long run, if there is to be special meaning to being an "honors graduate" from Harvard, it can't mean "top 75% of the class". (I think that is what someone reported, somewhere.) I remember reading, years ago, that the Japanese school trajectory differed from ours -- they learnt a lot before college, and college was a long party before starting a career. (This was a few years ago.) Their life-long success was pre-determined largely by which-university accepted them; it sounded like the old-school-tie was a huge social asset. Reportedly, that was why their high school students worked so hard on cram courses and extra studying; college was 4 years of party. - Since they are sliding away from lifetime employment, etc., I wonder if the educational system is becoming more flexible and technocratic, too. Are our systems converging? -- Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
