This college is currently ranked 9 on the USN&WR Rankings. I can see why they falsified their scores. Being a top ten college sounds better at dinner tables in San Jose and Seoul. If you remember correctly, this was also the school where the Professor gave a talk about hate speech and then walked out to her car and magically their was anti-race, anti-women, and anti-jewish hate speech spray painted on her car. Although these types of race hoaxes have become more common place since the Tawana Brawley case, this one was still a shocker. The administration cancelled classes and over-reacted. The professor went on to actually blame her own students, because how else would anyone know she was Jewish, except those people attending her classes. CMC sounds like a real open and tolerant school what with the race-baiting profs and cheating administators and all. Claremont McKenna College, a small, prestigious California school, said Monday that for the past six years, it has submitted false SAT scores to publications like U.S. News & World Report that use the data in widely followed college rankings. In a message e-mailed to college staff members and students, Claremont McKenna’s president since 1999, Pamela B. Gann, wrote that “a senior administrator” had taken sole responsibility for falsifying the scores, admitted doing so since 2005, and resigned his post. People briefed on the matter said that the administrator was Richard C. Vos, vice president and dean of admissions, whose name was removed in the last few days from the college’s online list of top officials. Mr. Vos, reached at his home Monday night, said: “No comment. It’s an internal personnel matter.” The critical reading and math scores reported to U.S. News and others “were generally inflated by an average of 10-20 points each,” Ms. Gann wrote. For the class that entered the school in September 2010 — the most recent set of figures made public —the combined median score of 1,400 was reported as 1,410, she said, while the 75th percentile score of 1,480 was reported as 1,510. Such small differences might influence the rankings, and the deception underscores the importance those rankings have taken on, as colleges fret over the loss of even a notch or two against their competitors. Robert Franek, the senior vice president of publishing for The Princeton Review, which provides preparation for the SAT and also ranks colleges, said that he had never heard of a college intentionally reporting incorrect data. “We want to put out very clear information so that students can make an informed decision about their school,” Mr. Franek said. “I feel like so many schools have a very clear obligation to college-bound students to report this information honestly.” The Princeton Review bases its college rankings on student opinion rather than test data, Mr. Franek said, so he was uncertain whether a change as small as that reported would make a difference. “It’s hard for me to say, but that is a small percentage,” Mr. Franek said. “That is a pretty mild difference in a point score. That said, 10 points, 30 points to a student that isn’t getting that score on the SAT could be an important distinction.” Claremont McKenna, a liberal arts school with about 1,200 students and a strong focus on political science and economics, is part of the Claremont colleges cluster east of Los Angeles. Long considered a good school, in the last generation it has moved into the elite ranks — at least as measured by the most-popular ratings. The current U.S. News rankings list Claremont McKenna as the ninth-best liberal arts college in the country, a fact noted on Ms. Gann’s biography on the college’s Web site. The Princeton Review gives the college an academic rating of 97 out of 99 and an admissions selectivity rating of 96 out of 99, comparable to some Ivy League schools. It remains to be seen whether the revelation of falsified test scores changes that status. Ms. Gann wrote in her message that she was first warned of inaccurate reporting this month and asked other administrators to investigate, leading to an administrator’s admission of guilt and Monday’s announcement. “At this time, we have no reason to believe that other individuals were involved,” she wrote. “As an institution of higher education with a deep and consistent commitment to the integrity of all our academic activities, and particularly our reporting of institutional data, we take this situation very seriously.” She added that the college has alerted the publishers of college rankings and has hired the law firm O’Melveny & Myers to investigate further http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/education/claremont-mckenna-college-says-it-exaggerated-sat-figures.html?_r=1&hp
I'm betting someone was either told to submit the incorrect data, or was pressured to do so. Pressure is increasing on B&Ms-- not only to provide a degree that will beat competition in the job market, but also from DL competition. Expect to see more of these sorts of shenanigans revealed over time.
The school is ranked 9 on the list of top Liberal Arts Colleges. To be quite honest, I consider myself fairly informed and there were some schools on the top 10 list that I had never heard of. I wouldn't know if Pomona College (ranked 4) and Carleton College (ranked 6) were any good or if they were just another of the hundreds of small no-name private colleges that dot the US landscape. And that it the problem. The schools I mentioned, plus Claremont McKenna all cost more than Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, without any of the name recognition. Who in the world is paying that kind of money to go to a no name school, when they can go to a solid state school for half as much or less? Even if we exclude the Ivies, there are still several well known regional powerhouse schools that cost about the same or less and provide a better return on investment, in terms of job opportunities and alumni network. As a result, schools like Claremont have to hold on to ANY edge they have over other private colleges. At least they can say "We are top 10". Without that, the argument to attend a school like these and pay through the nose makes less sense. I suspect that they will not be in the top 10 next year. It will be interesting to see what effect that has on the quality of students that enroll there.
College rankings are all but useless...I have no idea why such emphasis are placed upon them. Would Harvard be a lesser school were they not ranked? Would Bellevue University be rocking serious prestige if U.S. News put them in the Top 10 for something? Likely "no" in both cases.
