Another Comparison of Schools' Upper Margins: Presence of Former TASPers
Gary Glen Price
<http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=536457288&fmt=text>, he invoked what I
called "crème de la crème criteria" to compare the quality of students
attending different schools. I referred to this as "comparing schools
in terms of their upper margins" in my reply of 29 Oct 1999
<http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=542185099&fmt=text>. Standout
performance in national (or international) competitions places a student
among the "crème de la crème." Here are a few examples: Intel Science
Talent Search <http://www.sciserv.org/sts/>, Presidential Scholars
<http://www.ed.gov/offices/OIIA/Recognition/scholars.html>, the National
Forensic League National Debate Tournament
<http://debate.uvm.edu/NFL/natman.html>, National Merit Scholarship
Corporation merit scholars
<http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=471773975&fmt=text>, NCTE Achievement
Awards in Writing <http://www.ncte.org/grants/achieve.shtml>, Scholastic
Art & Writing Awards
<http://www.scholastic.com/artandwriting/index.htm>, the Mathematical
Olympiad <http://www.unl.edu/amc/usamo.htm>, and selection to
participate in the Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP)
<http://www.telluride.cornell.edu/brochure.htm>.
As I noted in subequent postings of October 1999, comparisons based on
schools' upper margins are not the only way to compare the schools'
students. I defined and illustrated comparisons based on school's lower
margins. On 20 October 1999, I posted "Comparing Schools in Terms of
their 'Lowest Common Lexicon'"
<http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=538549533&fmt=text>. On 31 Oct 1999,
I posted "Comparing Colleges' Weakest Links"
<http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=542979809&fmt=text>. Those postings
were intended to give a rationale for lower-margin comparisons and to
demonstrate that such comparisons can be made. They were not intended,
however, to dismiss upper-margin comparisons. Indeed, this posting
provides one type of upper-margin comparison--schools' success in
enrolling TASPers (former participants in the Telluride Association
Summer Program).
The Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP) is an unsurpassed
intellectual opportunity lasting six weeks during the summer between the
junior and senior years in high school. Descriptions of last summer's
TASPs can be found at
<http://www.telluride.cornell.edu/summer/tasp98.htm>. This is an
established, well-endowed program that has been running since 1954
<http://www.telluride.cornell.edu/summer/tasptit.html>. For young men
and women fortunate enough to be selected, it is free, being sponsored
by the Telluride Association
<http://www.telluride.cornell.edu/brochure.htm>. Appealing especially
to students with interests in the humanities, social sciences, and
public policy, participants experience social and intellectual immersion
in a diverse community of brilliant peers. TASPers are mentored
throughout the six weeks by a noted professor, who is assisted by a
former TASPer serving as a factotum.
TASP's application and applicant-review process are more thoroughgoing
than those of any college--with the possible exception of its
consanguineous but all-male counterpart, Deep Springs College
<http://www.mixedmedia.com/ds/index.htm>. Most invitations to apply to
TASP are apparently triggered by students' scores on the PSAT/NMSQT
<http://www.collegeboard.org/psat/student/html/nmsc.html>, but other
pathways to nomination exist
<http://www.telluride.cornell.edu/contact.htm>. The TASP application is
so extensive, perhaps half of those invited to apply elect not to do
so. Of the hundreds who do submit applications, approximately 120 are
selected for interview. From those interviewed, approximately 50 are
chosen to participate.
Most past TASP participants are enthusiastic about it and grateful for
it. Tight bonds of friendship, collegiality, and intellectual community
extend into the college years and beyond. As one former participant
remarked, "I admit that The Telluride Association is [a] cult, but it's
a good cult" <http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~gelfant/links.html>.
Middle-aged academics still list their participation in it as an
important achievement
<http://jsis.artsci.washington.edu/a-e/deyoung.html &
http://www.gwu.edu/~activism/robbins.html>. One former TASPer named his
company after it <http://www.tellgroup.com/index.nsf/pages/FAQ>.
Personal experience with the deeply engaged intellectual community
achieved in TASP probably contributed to the ideal which Adam Arenson, a
TASP factotum in 1999
<http://www.telluride.cornell.edu/summer/tasp98.htm>, applied to Harvard
in his "No Intellectuals Need Apply" piece in the Harvard Crimson
<http://www.thecrimson.harvard.edu/opinion/printerfriendly.asp?ref=4945>.
I have continued my project of tracking down former TASPers to see what
places of undergraduate study they chose. When I previously reported on
this project (16 Jan 2000), I had tracked down 70 former TASPers and
their collegiate destinations. This continues to be a slow, indirect,
and serendipitous process. Presently, my sample includes 104 former
TASPers for whom place of undergraduate study is also known. This is
yet a small fraction of past TASPers, but readers of this newsgroup may
nevertheless find interest in a progress report. Indeed, there is scant
chance that I would ever achieve an exhaustive sample, so I aspire to no
more than occasional progress reports.
21 Harvard
15 Yale
8 Cornell, Stanford, Swarthmore
6 Columbia
4 Princeton
2 Brown, Caltech, Chicago, Deep Springs,
Duke, Kenyon, Williams
1 Agnes Scott, Boston College, Brandeis,
George Washington U, MIT, Northwestern,
NYU, Oberlin, Ohio State, Reed,
St. John's-Oxford, U of Hawaii, U of Iowa,
U of Miami, U of Michigan, U of Utah,
U.S. Air Force Academy, USC, Vanderbilt,
Washington U
As noted in my posting of 16 Jan 2000, head counts like those above make
no compensation for differences school size. The pseudo-percentages
below do compensate for school size, albeit imperfectly. They
recalculate the head counts above as if they were percentages of each
school's number of graduates during the ten-year period of 1981-1990.
I've left out St. John's-Oxford for lack of comparable data on number of
graduates. The units of these numbers are essentially meaningless, and
so are their magnitudes; but their relative sizes provide an indication
of the relative "TASPer density" at the schools. The accuracy of these
comparisons will improve as my sample of TASPers grows.
Deep Springs 1.667 *
Swarthmore 0.235
Harvard 0.121
Yale 0.117
Caltech 0.103
Agnes Scott 0.091
Kenyon 0.056
Stanford 0.048
Columbia 0.046
Reed 0.045
Williams 0.040
Princeton 0.037
Chicago 0.030
Cornell 0.025
Oberlin 0.015
Brandeis 0.015
Brown 0.014
Duke 0.013
U.S. Air Force Academy 0.010
MIT 0.009
Vanderbilt 0.008
Washington U 0.008
George Washington U 0.007
U of Miami 0.005
Northwestern 0.005
Boston College 0.005
Hawaii-Manoa 0.004
Utah 0.004
NYU 0.004
USC 0.004
Iowa 0.003
Michigan 0.002
Ohio State 0.001
* Past TASpers known to have spent their first two years at Deep Springs
College were counted as having gone to that college and not as having
gone to the college which they entered after completing the two-year
program of Deep Springs College.
Gary Glen Price
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
http://www.education.wisc.edu/ci/
University of Wisconsin-Madison
http://www.wisc.edu
M. Fuss
<matriculation analysis of Telluride scholars snipped>
Well, that's interesting about inputs. But the proof of the pudding is
in the outcomes. I am connected with a major cultural institution in
Los Angeles that numbers some of the city's most prominent business
and cultural leaders on its rather large Board of Directors.
Especially since Southern California has only a few major colleges, a
list of the Board member's alma maters (undergrad only) might be
instructive:
U. of Akron
Baldwin-Wallace
Berkeley 6
Boston U.
CCNY
Cornell 2
Dartmouth
Duke
Fordham
Georgetown
Harvard 3
Illinois
MIT
McGill
Michigan
Minnesota
Northeastern
Occidental 2
Penn 3
Princeton 2
St. Mary's College
San Francisco State
San Jose State
Santa Clara
Smith
USC 2
Stanford 5
Texas
U.S. Military Academy
Utah 2
Whittier
None or declined to state 7
Since we're on the West Coast, the weight toward Berkeley and Stanford
was predictible. Since we're in L.A., the total absence of UCLA alums
is quite surprising.
Marshall Fuss
Ou
is RSI (Research Science Institute)
http://rsi.cee.org/rsi/index.shtml
Are you tracking or will you plan to track the alumni of this program?
Larry Homer
Gary Glen Price
Thank you. I will start tracking RSI alumni.
Gary Glen Price
Mark
Gary Glen Price wrote:
You can start with two RSI alums ("Rickoids") in the Yale class of 2002.
Since the program is based at MIT and the Boston area, the majority of RSI
alumni end up at Harvard or MIT, with Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and
Caltech each attracting a couple "Rickoids" per year.
Dan Mielcarz
wrote:
> Another very vigorous, free, prestigious and highly competitive
> summer program is RSI (Research Science Institute)
> http://rsi.cee.org/rsi/index.shtml
While we're at it, the Advanced Studies Program at St. Paul's School in
Concord, NH sends its students to a very impressive list of colleges.
The program is limited to residents of New Hampshire enrolled in public
or parochial schools, however.
<http://www.sps.edu/asp/index.shtml>
The ASP is a five week program during the summer between Junior and
Senior year in which one lives on the St. Paul's campus and takes one
elective course and one writing course. It was closer to the college
experience for me than anything I had encountered at my public high
school. I recommend it without reservation to any New Hampshire
resident.
-Dan
The college destinations for the class of 97 are listed below, sorry
there aren't any numbers per college. As an example, however, my class
at Dartmouth included about 30 people who attended the ASP - in fact,
nearly every person from NH at Dartmouth had gone to the ASP.
CLASS OF 1997
AFS
Alfred University
American University
Barnard College
Bates College
Boston College
Boston University
Bowdoin College
Brown University
Bucknell University
Carleton College
Carnegie Mellon University
Clark College
Clemson University
Colby College
Colgate University
College of the Holy Cross
College of William & Mary
Colorado College
Connecticut College
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Denison University
Depaul University
Dickinson College
Duke University
Emerson College
Emory University
Fordham University
George Washington University
Georgetown University
Hamilton College
Hartwick College
Harvard University
Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Houghton College
Johns Hopkins University
LaFayette College
Lehigh University
Lyndon State College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Middlebury College
Mount Holyoke College
New York University
Northeastern University
Northwestern University
Oberlin College
Pennsylvania State
Princeton University
Providence College
Purdue University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rutgers University
Sacred Heart University
Saint Anselm College
Skidmore College
Smith College
St. Michael's College
Stonehill College
Swarthmore College
Syracuse University
Tufts University
Union College
University of Chicago
University of Dayton
University of Maine
University of Massachusetts
University of Miami
University of New Hampshire
University of New Haven
University of North Carolina
University of Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania
University of Rhode Island
University of Rochester
University of Vermont
Ursinus College
US Military Academy
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Washington University
Webb Institute
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Wheaton College
Williams College
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Yale University
--
Daniel.W...@alum.dartmouth.org
miel...@netspace.org
<http://www.netspace.org/~mielcarz/>
"Praise Lord, if you cant have fun turn to religion." -Jack Kerouac
Dan Mielcarz
KSG
<Dan.Mielcarz-4F36...@news.supernews.com>, Dan
Mielcarz <Dan.Mi...@alum.dartmouth.org> wrote:
<list snipped>
It is interesting that not a single student from that year
attended a UC school or Stanford.
KSG
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
Dennis Hong
by Shad International. There have been eleven Rhodes Scholars from the
program. Check out the profiles of some of these students:
http://www.shad.com/library2.html
"KSG" <kgatlin...@cs.ucsd.edu.invalid> wrote in message
news:1f546832...@usw-ex0102-084.remarq.com...
Dan Mielcarz
<kgatlin...@cs.ucsd.edu.invalid> wrote:
> It is interesting that not a single student from that year
> attended a UC school or Stanford.
>
> KSG
Yes - it just goes to show that California colleges are really not on
the radar screen for many people in New England, even the best and
brightest. It is pretty rare that anyone will go West of the
Mississippi, let alone West of the rockies.
There were two people from my class at the ASP who went to Stanford, so
it's not impossible.
-Dan
Gary Glen Price
> Well, that's interesting about inputs. But the proof of the pudding is
> in the outcomes.
I share your interest in outcomes. Newcomers to the newsgroup can
retrieve some of my earlier postings about postbaccalaureate outcomes
through the links shown below.
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: CORRECTED PERCENTAGES on Undergraduate Origins of Harvard Law
School Students
Date: 19 Dec 1996 00:00:00 GMT
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=205041703&fmt=text
[The "corrected percentages" in the forergoing posting still had
problems. They were still not correct as percentages, but the relative
standings of schools were still correct.]
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: PhD Rates for Bachelor Degree Recipients, All Fields, 1986-1995
Date: 22 Nov 1997 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.college.admissions
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=291701131&fmt=text
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: PhD Rates in Engineering
Date: 23 Nov 1997 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.college.admissions
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=291997624&fmt=text
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: PhD Rates in Physical Sciences
Date: 23 Nov 1997 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.college.admissions
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=291726943&fmt=text
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: PhD Rates in Psychological & Social Sciences
Date: 23 Nov 1997 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.college.admissions
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=291727188&fmt=text
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: PhD Rates in Life Sciences
Date: 28 Nov 1997 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.college.admissions
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=293488718&fmt=text
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: PhD Rates in the Humanities
Date: 28 Nov 1997 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.college.admissions
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=293472833&fmt=text
Gary Glen Price
> Well, that's interesting about inputs. But the proof of the pudding is
> in the outcomes.
I just posted a reply that pursues the topic of "outcomes." That reply
is titled, "Achievements after Graduation: Postbaccalaureate Outcomes."
Here, I give links to previous postings which dealt with "inputs."
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: Comparing Schools in Terms of their Upper Margins
Date: 29 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.college.admissions
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=542185099&fmt=text
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: Comparing Schools in Terms of their "Lowest Common Lexicon"
Date: 20 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.college.admissions
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=538549533&fmt=text
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
Subject: Comparing Colleges' Weakest Links
Date: 31 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.college.admissions
http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=542979809&fmt=text
From: Gary Glen Price <ggp...@facstaff.wisc.edu>
M. Fuss
>"M. Fuss" wrote:
>> Well, that's interesting about inputs. But the proof of the pudding is
>> in the outcomes.
>I share your interest in outcomes. Newcomers to the newsgroup can
>retrieve some of my earlier postings about postbaccalaureate outcomes
>through the links shown below.
Well, if life ends in graduate school, those are outcomes. I was
unscientifically poking around for some indicia of outstanding career
achievement beyond the income averages used in most studies.
Marshall Fuss
Gary Glen Price
> Well, if life ends in graduate school, those are outcomes.
Sadly, for some it does. ;-)
> I was
> unscientifically poking around for some indicia of outstanding career
> achievement beyond the income averages used in most studies.
As you're probably finding as you poke around, undergraduate
institutions are irregularly tracked in most indices of outstanding
career achievement. I've been chipping away at some of them, but it's
slow going.
Gary Glen Price