Any College Will Do - WSJ article

IN THE LEAD
By CAROL HYMOWITZ

'Any College Will Do'
September 18, 2006

Nation's Top Chief Executives
Find Path to the Corner Office
Usually Starts at State University
September 18, 2006; Page B1
The college diplomas of the nation's top executives tell an intriguing story: Getting to the corner office has more to do with leadership talent and a drive for success than it does with having an undergraduate degree from a prestigious university.

Most CEOs of the biggest corporations didn't attend Ivy League or other highly selective colleges. They went to state universities, big and small, or to less-known private colleges.

Wal-Mart Stores CEO H. Lee Scott, for example, went to Pittsburg State University in Kansas, Intel CEO Paul Otellini to University of San Francisco and Costco Wholesale CEO James Sinegal to San Diego City College.

This information should help allay the anxieties of many parents and their college-bound children who believe admission to a top-ranked school with a powerful alumni network is a prerequisite to success in the upper echelons of business management. Today's crop of chief executives are, of course, at least a generation older than current college students, but they are in the position to hire and say they don't favor job candidates with certain degrees.

1 QUESTION OF THE DAY


Is an undergraduate degree2 from an elite private college worth the cost?"I don't care where someone went to school, and that never caused me to hire anyone or buy a business," says Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, who graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

What counts most, CEOs say, is a person's capacity to seize opportunities. As students, they recall immersing themselves in their interests, becoming campus leaders and forging strong relationships with teachers. And at state and lesser-known schools, where many were the first in their families to attend college, they sought challenges and mixed with students from diverse backgrounds -- an experience that helped them later in their corporate climbs.

Bill Green, CEO of Accenture, never planned to go to college. The son of a plumber, he took a construction job when he graduated from high school in western Massachusetts because he didn't think he had the ability to pursue more education. He changed his mind when he visited friends at Dean College, a two-year community school near Boston.

"Walking around campus, listening to my friends talk, I realized they were being exposed to a big world -- and I had a chance to take another shot at learning," he says.

At Dean, he got help from faculty members who devoted themselves to their students, not "doing research and writing books like professors at four-year schools," he says. Rather than post student-meeting times on their office doors, they posted their class schedules. "All the other time, they were available to any student who needed help," says Mr. Green, who worked part-time to pay for part of his tuition.

Inspired by an economics professor who made the subject "fun and relevant," Mr. Green went on to Babson College to earn his bachelor's and M.B.A. degrees. But he credits Dean with teaching him to think analytically, to gain confidence in his abilities and to learn to work with people.

"You can go to a top-end school and end up dramatically underperforming, or you can go to a place that cares and blow away what everyone thinks," says Mr. Green, who still stays in touch with his economics professor, Charlie Kramer. A trustee at Dean, he feels angry when he encounters "parents who are afraid or ashamed to say their son or daughter is attending a community college," he says.

Some 10% of CEOs currently heading the top 500 companies received undergraduate degrees from Ivy League colleges, according to a survey by executive recruiter Spencer Stuart. But more received their undergraduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin than from Harvard, the most represented Ivy school.

Harvard's nine current CEOs include United Technologies' George David and Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. Among Wisconsin's 10 current CEOs are Pitney Bowes's Michael Critelli, Kimberly-Clark's Thomas Falk and Halliburton's David Lesar. Carol Bartz, chairman and former CEO of Autodesk, majored in computer science at Wisconsin and used a scholarship she'd won for women gifted in math to help pay her tuition.

Some non-Ivy League schools have long been training grounds for particular industries. The University of Texas-Austin, the alma mater of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has churned out numerous oil executives. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, is known for its computer-science graduates. But some of today's most successful CEOs got their start on small, isolated campuses.

A.G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble's CEO, chose Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., because he wanted a solid liberal-arts education and to be assured a spot on the intercollegiate basketball team. A history major who graduated in 1969, he was elected president of his sophomore class, became a fraternity officer and spent his junior year studying in France.

"I learned to think, to communicate, to lead, to get things done," he says, adding that those qualities are what he seeks in job candidates at his company. "Any college will do."

Berkshire Hathaway's Mr. Buffett didn't even want to go to college. He enrolled at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School as an undergraduate at his father's behest. He stayed just two years, then returned home to Omaha and graduated from Nebraska within a year.

At his father's urging again, Mr. Buffett applied to Harvard Business School, which rejected him as too young, he says. By then, he was devouring the books of investors David Dodd and Benjamin Graham, who advocated investing in companies that had "intrinsic business value" -- a view that became Mr. Buffett's guiding investment principal.


When he learned the two men were teaching at Columbia University's business school, he wrote to them to ask if he could attend their lectures. He earned a Master's degree in economics at Columbia in 1951. "But I didn't go there for a degree, I went for those two teachers, who were already my heroes,'' he says.

One reason more Ivy League alumni aren't CEOs may be that many have traditionally chosen careers in investment banks and at big law firms, where they could earn big sums quickly and wouldn't have to start in entry-level management jobs.

"A lot of people who earn degrees from tier-one universities and business schools aren't willing to start at the bottom of a huge company" and spend years scaling layers of management and hoping to reach the top, says Richard Tedlow, a business historian at Harvard Business School.

The exception are some founders of high-tech companies who never completed college. They found their classroom studies less compelling than their own ideas. Bill Gates quit Harvard to start Microsoft, Michael Dell quit the University of Texas-Austin to start Dell Computer and Steve Jobs quit Reed College in Portland, Ore., to work at Atari and then found Apple Computer. None ever returned to college to complete a formal degree.

What do they think about this decision today -- and would they advise young people to copy them? In a graduation speech at Stanford last year, Mr. Jobs said college, like any life decision, is up to each individual. "You have to trust your gut," he said.

His decision to quit Reed after one semester was "pretty scary" but ultimately "one of the best decisions I ever made," because instead of taking required courses that didn't interest him he spent the next 18 months auditing classes that did.

A calligraphy course he audited strongly influenced his design of the Macintosh computer ten years later. "If I'd never dropped in on that single course, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts," he said.

Quitting college also eased his guilt about spending his adoptive working-class parents' savings "when I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure that out," he said. But dropping out "wasn't romantic," he warned. "I didn't have a dorm room so I slept on the floor of friends' rooms and returned Coke bottles...to buy food."


Thomas Neff, chairman of recruitment firm Spencer Stuart U.S., warns: "It's the exceptionally inventive person who can do this. If you have a big, big new idea, you can get venture financing -and if you wait to graduate someone else may capitalize on your idea first," he says.

But for everyone else who wants a professional or management job at a big company, a college degree is a necessity -- including for jobs at Apple, Microsoft and Dell. And increasingly, employers also expect graduate degrees for management-track candidates. Close to two-thirds of top CEOs have either an M.B.A., law, or other advanced degree, according to Spencer Stuart's survey -- and some executives who didn't go to Ivy League colleges got Ivy credentials as graduate students. P&G's Mr. Lafley has a Harvard M.B.A.

Robert Iger, CEO at Walt Disney Co., decided in high school that he wanted to work in television and attended Ithaca College in upstate New York because he felt its strong communications program would nurture his career dreams. "I was in a place that supported creativity and individuality with a focus on what I was most interested in," says Mr. Iger, who took liberal-arts and hands-on broadcast courses. After college, he got a job working for ABC-TV, now a unit of Disney.

Anyway, by the time someone has been working for a few years, or held one or two jobs, their employment record counts more than their educational background, recruiters say. And companies seeking to fill CEO and other senior jobs rarely consider candidates' degrees. "It's what you've accomplished that matters," says Mr. Neff, "not what you were doing at 21."

Write to Carol Hymowitz at carol.hymowitz@wsj.com+

Early Admissions - WSJ opinion

Early Admissions

By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
September 14, 2006; Page A20
The Wall Street Journal

If you have a bright, motivated high-school senior in your family, chances are you're already preparing college application materials, in order to meet the early admissions deadlines for elite colleges and universities. Such programs typically take applications in October or November and give an entrance decision before the holidays -- sparing families all kinds of uncertainty about college decisions that otherwise can stretch well into the spring.

Despite the popularity of early admission among aspiring students and their families, Harvard University -- which in the past has admitted nearly four in 10 of its students this way -- has just announced it will eliminate the program. This decision was greeted with applause by many in academia and the press. One higher education official called it "an act of moral leadership." An editorial in the New York Times encouraged other universities to follow Harvard and eliminate this process altogether.

Critics dislike early admissions for three reasons. First, affluent white students are disproportionately likely to avail themselves of the system, while minorities and low-income applicants often don't show up in the early admittance pool. This is usually seen as discriminatory. Second, some argue that the process unduly rushes educational choices for families. Third, people worry that it encourages early-admittees to goof off the entire spring.

For the universities who offer it, early admission is an option driven largely by applicant demand. It obviously would not exist if students and their families were not interested in it. To get rid of the program for the reasons typically given by critics -- suboptimal personal behaviors and imperfect information about the program -- seeks to correct private problems by eliminating consumer choices. This is silly. We don't ban items because people don't know about them, nor do we put an end to most goods and services (even truly dangerous ones like guns and booze) simply because some people might fail to use them in beneficial ways. The public interest is best served in a market economy not by eliminating choices, but by increasing the information about products and how to use them properly.

Still, it is true that Harvard's decision is a welcome one -- though not for the reasons cited by critics. Harvard simply does not need early admissions to build a stable, high-quality student body. It could require that kids submit their applications in person with shaved heads, and still it would get a disproportionate share of America's most talented students. When Harvard abandons early admissions it incurs little cost, but enhances a useful tool for second-tier universities competing for good students -- those sufficiently ambitious and on-the-ball to write applications in October.

By aggressively marketing early admissions, schools below the very top ranks can cater to what a lot of students and their families want. If these universities are really worried that early admissions disadvantage people who don't know about them, the solution is to market them more seriously to these populations -- not to eliminate the choice for everybody.

Mr. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs, is the author of "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism," forthcoming from Basic Books.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115820001304962688.html

Princeton's 2006 Salutatorian Heads To Oxford, Still an Illegal Immigrant - WSJ article

Princeton's 2006 Salutatorian Heads To Oxford, Still an Illegal Immigrant

By MIRIAM JORDAN
September 14, 2006; Page B1
The Wall Street Journal

Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an illegal immigrant studying at Princeton University, last spring risked his future by turning himself into U.S. authorities. The star student wanted to accept a prestigious scholarship to attend Oxford University in Britain, but he faced being barred from re-entering the U.S. for a decade if the U.S. government didn't change his immigration status.

Tomorrow, Mr. Padilla will leave the country to begin his studies at Oxford's Worcester College. But his future remains in limbo, and he has no guarantee he can come back to the U.S.


Dan-el Padilla Peralta at Princeton after he had turned himself in to authorities.
Mr. Padilla, the subject of a front-page profile in The Wall Street Journal in April, was brought to the U.S. by his parents at the age of four from the Dominican Republic and overcame a childhood in homeless shelters and slums to become an award-winning classics student at Princeton. After he got the Oxford scholarship, Mr. Padilla asked the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to adjust his immigration status, citing the extraordinary circumstances in his life -- including moving 13 times and being abandoned by his father -- that had prevented him from addressing his situation sooner.

When his case became public, Mr. Padilla benefited from a high-profile campaign on his behalf. Senators and congressmen wrote letters, and the case was featured on prime-time television newscasts.

But immigration officials weren't swayed. Yesterday, a USCIS spokesman said that "a decision has not been made in his case." But officials familiar with the situation said the immigration agency wouldn't grant Mr. Padilla's request out of concern that would send a signal to thousands of other illegal immigrant students that they deserved similar treatment.

Mr. Padilla's attorney, Steve Yale-Loehr, said that because the agency didn't act before Mr. Padilla's graduation, the application "has been effectively mooted." The filing had asked that Mr. Padilla's original tourist visa -- which he overstayed illegally -- be changed to that of an international student. A favorable response would have effectively cleaned the slate for Mr. Padilla. He could have re-entered the U.S. legally after his time in Britain and eventually applied for a green card or legal residency.

The situation has frustrated Mr. Padilla's supporters. In an interview yesterday, New York Rep. Charles Rangel said that "it makes no sense to deny an opportunity to someone raised in the U.S. to anchor what he does in life here," especially someone as "committed and talented" as Mr. Padilla.

In a phone interview, Mr. Padilla said he was sad that his dilemma couldn't be resolved. "A change of status would have put me on a more secure footing legally and provided me with fair and helpful relief," he said.

Mr. Padilla, who maintained a 3.9 grade-point average in college, said he had nonetheless decided to take the coveted two-year Sachs scholarship, which is awarded each year to one Princeton graduate. "Going to Oxford has been a dream of mine for a long time, and the opportunity to study there has me practically in raptures," he said. He'll also be able to visit the Roman and Greek sites he has only read about in books. Before he even starts his studies, he said, "I'm thinking of spending a weekend at Hadrian's Wall," a Roman monument in the north of England.

Once at Oxford, Mr. Padilla plans to apply to the U.S. for a discretionary waiver. If granted, the waiver would enable him to gain admission to the U.S. as a tourist on a temporary basis despite his previous unlawful presence. He would apply for such a waiver at the U.S. Embassy in London, which would then recommend action on his behalf by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

It's possible the publicity generated by Mr. Padilla's case will help him secure waivers when he needs them. Mr. Yale-Loehr said he is "cautiously optimistic" about the prospect of winning such reprieves.

But if Mr. Padilla is denied a waiver, he will be stuck outside the U.S. for 10 years. "I am hopeful that the waiver will allow me to visit my family and friends," he said. In particular, Mr. Padilla, who was raised in New York City, hopes to attend his U.S.-born brother's high-school graduation in May.

The lack of resolution in Mr. Padilla's high-profile case also has ramifications for about 65,000 undocumented immigrant students like him who are believed to graduate from U.S. high schools each year. Only a fraction of those students make it to college. They can't work legally or qualify for federal programs to help finance higher education. Bipartisan legislation, known as the Dream Act, would grant permanent residency to young people in good standing who grew up in the U.S., graduated from high school and entered college. The legislation, which was first introduced in 2001, is attached to the immigration reform bill that has stalled in the Senate.

Mr. Padilla's long-term goal is to earn a Ph.D. in classics and build a career in academia. But after completing his studies on ancient Greece at Oxford, Mr. Padilla hopes to return to the U.S. to teach social studies, history and literature to seventh-graders in disadvantaged communities. "I would really like to teach kids," he said. "That would be the logical culmination of what I have worked for up to this point."

At graduation in June, Princeton University assigned Mr. Padilla a private security guard to fend off dozens of television cameramen and newspaper reporters who swarmed around him. As the salutatorian of his class, he made a speech in Latin at the commencement exercises. Among those in the audience were Mr. Padilla's mother, brother, parish priest, and two close friends from his years at Collegiate, an exclusive New York school. In from Paris was Jeff Cowen, a photographer who taught art at a homeless shelter and discovered Mr. Padilla there at the age of nine, curled up with a book about Napoleon.

"It's nothing short of amazing to see a kid I met in a shelter deliver a speech to all these people," said Mr. Cowen, who steered Mr. Padilla to Collegiate but hadn't seen him since 1999.

At one graduation event, Mr. Padilla chatted with former President Bill Clinton, who was there to make an address. According to Mr. Padilla, Mr. Clinton said he had first heard about the case from his wife, Hillary Clinton. The former president subsequently wrote a letter to a senior U.S. immigration official and called President Bush on Mr. Padilla's behalf.

After reading The Wall Street Journal article, New York Sens. Charles Schumer and Clinton and Reps. Rangel and Jane Harman sent a joint letter to Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff and USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez urging them to personally review Mr. Padilla's case and legalize his status. "We believe that Dan-el's contributions and lawful record attest to his loyalty to our country," they wrote.

Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com1

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115819403186062558.html

Opting Out of Private School - WSJ article

Opting Out of Private School

By NANCY KEATES
September 15, 2006; Page W1

It's the lurking fear of every private-school parent: The kid next door is getting just as good an education at the public school -- free of charge.

Ben and Courtney Nields of Norwalk, Conn., agonized over the issue last year when they moved their daughter Annie from the New Canaan Country School, set on a 72-acre campus, to a public school for first grade. The move was primarily economic -- they have twins entering kindergarten this year and faced tuition bills of $22,500 per child.

"It was like taking your child out of the Garden of Eden," says Mrs. Nields. But Annie thrived at the school. Her confidence grew and the teacher, say the Nieldses, was phenomenal.

Across the country, some schools and education professionals report a growing movement from private to public. Among the possible reasons: Private-school tuition has grown sharply, while some colleges are boosting the number of students they take from public schools. New studies have suggested that public-school students often tested as well or better than their private school peers. And increasingly, public schools are enriching their programs by holding the same kinds of fund-raisers often associated with private schools, such as auctions and capital campaigns.

A select group of public schools say they're seeing a growing share of new students coming from private schools. At Highland Park High School in Dallas, 74% of the new students came from private schools this fall, compared with 61% a year ago. Over the past three years, the proportion has doubled at Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Md. At Homestead Elementary School in Centennial, Colo., the number of kids coming from private school tripled in the past year.

"It's a significant shift here," says Laurie Conlon, guidance chairman at Cold Spring Harbor Junior/Senior High School in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. This fall, all 17 of the new entrants for grades eight through 12 are from private schools, compared with five students last year. The school scheduled its first-ever information sessions to help the newcomers adjust.

Not all public schools are seeing these transfers: Top-scoring schools in affluent areas tend to get the highest influxes from private schools. In fact, the shift serves to highlight the gap between well-funded schools and their underfunded counterparts, often inner-city schools.

While the shift isn't reflected in recent national aggregate statistics, a number of educational consultants and academics interviewed say they're beginning to see more parents opting in to public schools. "Most people agree there's always been some movement between private and public school," says Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University. "But lately there's strong anecdotal evidence of frequent movement from private schools to public schools. There are more choices for parents now."

Interest in private schools shows signs of waning. The number of private-school enrollments in kindergarten through grade 12 increased at a slower rate than the number of enrollments in public schools between 1989 and 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. Last year, the approximately 1,200 schools that belong to the National Association for Independent Schools received 8.5 inquiries for each student who enrolled, down from 9.7 inquiries in the 1998-99 school year. (The group has added more member schools in that period.) While competition for admission in many areas of the country remains intense, the percentage of students accepted at member schools rose to 53.4% last year, from 49.7% in 1998.

Higher costs are a big factor in the switch. The median tuition for private schools nationally was $16,970 in 2005-06, up 16% from five years earlier. In some parts of the country, tuition is now as high as $30,000 a year. Even as the number of families able to easily shoulder full tuition continues to rise -- in 2005, the number of households in the U.S. with a net worth of $1 million or more rose 11%, to 8.3 million, over the previous year, according to the Spectrem Group, a wealth-research firm in Chicago -- the NAIS is warning member schools that rising tuitions may cause some families to look for alternatives. "The schools are getting some pushback they haven't seen before," says NAIS President Pat Bassett.

The 9% rise in annual tuition, to $10,890 a student, at St. Mary's Academy in Englewood, Colo., prompted Elizabeth Maloney to start researching the local elementary school. The mother of five enrolled her kids at St. Mary's -- alma mater of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- after moving to the area last year. She didn't know much about the public schools, and going private felt safer. "My kids had always gone to private school," she says.


But when Mrs. Maloney spoke with the principal at the public school, she learned that it offered a similar curriculum to St. Mary's, including identical vocabulary and math programs. "I was blown away," she says. Plus, her kids could walk or ride their bikes to school. Now, four of her kids are there. Mrs. Maloney doesn't rule out a return; she misses perks like the foreign language program and the extra arts activities. Deirdre V. Cryor, the head of St. Mary's, says what makes the school different is its strong values.

Beyond tuition, educational advisers say more parents are worrying that the competition at private schools might hurt their kids' chances of getting into a selective college. As the number of applications reached record levels at some colleges this year (at Harvard University, applications were up 15% over 2005, with nearly 23,000 students competing for about 1,650 slots in the freshman class) they fear the colleges are placing quotas on how many kids they take from each elite private school. Some also believe their child will have a better chance of standing out at public school.

The College Connection

In our own sampling of 20 selective colleges, 11 had slightly higher percentages of enrolled freshmen from public schools in the class of 2010 compared with 2005. Five were down, and four were roughly flat. At Dartmouth College, the percentage of first-year students from public school grew to 66% this year, from 62% five years ago. Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg says that though the change is subtle, it reflects a growing applicant pool, as well as the school's efforts to reach more students who might not have thought of applying.


"There's no point in spending all that money if your kid is going to be in the middle of the class," says Robert Shaw, a partner at IvySuccess, an educational consulting firm in Garden City, N.Y. He counsels students to consider switching if they aren't in the top 10%. However, advisers note that some elite public schools -- such as Edgemont High School in Scarsdale, N.Y., or New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill. -- can be just as competitive.

Claire Straty, a 16-year-old in Dallas, hoped to leave some of the pressure behind when she switched from the Hockaday School, an independent college-preparatory school for girls, to the public Highland Park High School. "If you weren't brilliant you'd fall to the middle of the pack," she says of Hockaday. "At Highland Park I felt I'd have a better chance to stand out." She also thought she would have more time for extracurriculars.

Her mother, Laurie-Jo Straty, had a hard time letting her daughter leave Hockaday, which she believes is an extraordinary school. Mrs. Straty also struggled with leaving the community she'd developed with other parents there. But so far, she's pleased. She recently received an email from Claire's English teacher complimenting her daughter's performance on a test, and Claire's Spanish teacher has been coming to school early to help her catch up on language requirements.

Two studies that came out in the past year showed that public-school students often tested the same or better than private-school students, after accounting for certain socio-economic variables and background characteristics. One, from the National Center for Education Statistics, compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools. The results: Public-school fourth-graders did as well in reading as the kids in private school and somewhat better in math. In eighth grade, public-school children did the same in math but somewhat worse in reading. A study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that looked at the same data found similar results in the math scores. "It's quite eye-opening for a lot of people," says Christopher Lubienski, a professor of education who co-authored the report.

Still, the studies are contentious: Harvard University researchers came to the opposite conclusion after evaluating the data with different methodology.

Kathy Allcock had other reasons for moving her daughter Christy from an 830-student independent school in Portland, Ore., to a 1,500-student public school for ninth grade last year. Though Mrs. Allcock loved the smaller school -- she still has her two younger children there -- she worried her daughter would be academically but not socially prepared for college.

At first, Christy objected. But she quickly grew to like the greater number of people, clubs and activities. "I realized how sheltered I was and how much I was missing," she says. Initially scared that the teachers wouldn't help, Christy has been surprised at the one-on-one time she's received. She's now aiming for Stanford University, and figures her experience in big classes is good preparation.

Some public schools are actively recruiting private-school students. At Torrey Pines Elementary in La Jolla, Calif., Principal Jim Solo began holding monthly tours and meetings for private-school families four years ago. Many students had left for private or charter schools. While he says it was not a main motivator, having students return to the school increased state funding, as the district is paid on a per-pupil basis.

Mr. Solo has since led a charge to raise more private funding -- $100,000 a year, mostly from parents -- to pay for more teachers, and students' average test scores have grown. The school gets 75% of its students from the neighborhood now, compared with 50% four years ago. The rest come from out of district.

Palm Desert High School in Palm Desert, Calif., started inviting parents and students from private schools to information sessions three years ago. "I had a ton of friends confiding in me their trepidation about moving from private to public," says Jan Hawkins, a parent who arranged the events; they said they had heard stories about impersonal teachers and pranks like "trash canning" new freshmen. The percentage of new students coming from private schools was 9% this year, up from 6% three years ago.

Schools are also offering more Advanced Placement classes to prove academic rigor. The number of all U.S. schools with those classes has jumped 36% over the past decade, to over 15,000, according to the College Board, the nonprofit association that administers the program. Nearly a quarter of public-school seniors now take at least one Advanced Placement exam in high school, up from 16% in 2000.

A range of Advanced Placement classes and other college-level courses was one draw for Frank Thielman, a divinity professor in Birmingham, Ala., when he investigated the local high schools for his son Jonathan. Mr. Thielman had been hesitant at first, fearing inadequate funding and safety issues. But after more research, he enrolled his son, who had spent nine years at Briarwood Christian School, where tuition this year would have run about $5,000. "It turns out we have a very good academic option right here," says Mr. Thielman. Kids coming from private school to Jefferson County IB have jumped to 15% of new students from 7% three years ago, the school says.

The image of public schools has been slowly evolving. In the latest Phi Delta Kappa/ Gallup annual poll called the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, 49% of respondents gave their local schools a grade of A or B. The number has steadily increased every year from the 36% recorded in 1978.

Growing Options

Some attribute the shifting sentiment to students having more choice in deciding which public school to attend -- whether it's charter, magnet or out of district. The percentage of public-school students enrolled in a chosen school was 15% in 1999, up from 11% in 1993, according to the Department of Education.

Any movement toward public schools could be short-lived. With the "baby bust" generation now following the baby boomers, there will be fewer school-age children overall, and public schools are forecast to have sharper declines in enrollment growth nationwide than private schools through 2013.

Going from private to public isn't right for everyone, says Steven Roy Goodman, an admissions strategist in Washington who has had three clients switch to public schools in the past two years. Transferring can be difficult emotionally and some kids do better in smaller schools. Public schools have advantages, he says, but usually can't offer classes that are as small. The average student-teacher ratio in most public schools is about 16 to 1, according to the Department of Education. At NAIS schools, the average is about 9 to 1.

Parents should evaluate their children to see whether they would thrive in a place with small classes or with more extracurricular activities, consultants say. Learning approaches can vary greatly from school to school and what may work for one student may not for another.

After a tough eighth-grade year at the all-girl's Winsor School in Boston, Maddie Pannell decided to try Weston High School. The public school was renowned for its academics and Maddie thought she might like a change. Her father, Saul Pannell, an investment adviser, was opposed but agreed to let her give it a try.

The experiment lasted three weeks. Maddie missed the teachers and students at Winsor and found she preferred the private school's discussion-based method of learning. "I didn't realize how important that was to me," she says. The moral, says Mr. Pannell: "No situation is ideal."

Write to Nancy Keates at nancy.keates@wsj.com1

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115828002076463790.html


Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:nancy.keates@wsj.com

Debate Grows as Colleges Slip in Graduations - NYT article

September 15, 2006
Debate Grows as Colleges Slip in Graduations
By ALAN FINDER
New York TImes

CHICAGO — When a research group started tracking what happens to Chicago’s public school graduates after they enter college, it came upon a startling and dispiriting finding: the graduation rates at two of the city’s four-year public universities were among the worst in the country.

At Northeastern Illinois University, a tidy commuter campus on the North Side of Chicago, only 17 percent of students who enroll as full-time freshmen graduate within six years, according to data collected by the federal Department of Education. At Chicago State University on the South Side, the overall graduation rate is 16 percent.

As dismal as those rates seem, the universities are not unique. About 50 colleges across the country have a six-year graduation rate below 20 percent, according to the Education Trust, a nonprofit research group. Many of the institutions serve low-income and minority students.

Such numbers have prompted a fierce debate here — and in national education circles — about who is to blame for the results, whether they are acceptable for nontraditional students, and how universities should be held accountable if the vast majority of students do not graduate.

“If you’re accepting a child into your institution, don’t you have the responsibility to make sure they graduate?” asked Melissa Roderick, the co-director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, which produced the study.

“I think people had absolutely no idea that our local colleges were running graduation rates like that,” Dr. Roderick said. “I don’t think we have any high school in the city that has graduation rates like these colleges.”

Northeastern’s results were particularly low among African-Americans, with only 8 percent of entering full-time freshmen earning degrees within six years.

The report, which was released last spring, examined students who graduated from Chicago public schools in 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2003. It also cited federal statistics showing that only 4 percent of all African-American students at Northeastern Illinois graduated within six years. The most recent federal data, released in August, shows the figure to be 8 percent for freshmen who entered in 1999 and would have graduated by 2005.

A federal commission that examined the future of American higher education recommended in August that colleges and universities take more responsibility for ensuring that students complete their education. Charles Miller, the commission chairman, said that if graduation rates were more readily available, universities would be forced to pay more attention to them.

“Universities in America rank themselves on many factors, but graduation rates aren’t even in the mix,” Mr. Miller said. “They don’t talk about it.”

Others say policy makers are to blame for failing to take action against public universities or administrators if most of their students fail to earn a degree.

“Most colleges aren’t held accountable in any way for their graduation rate,” said Gary Orfield, a Harvard professor of education and social policy at the Graduate School of Education. “We treat college as if the right to enroll is enough, and just ignore everything else.”

Kevin Carey, the research and policy manager at the Education Sector, a nonprofit research organization, said governors and legislatures could make it clear that the presidents’ continued employment hinged on improving graduation rates. “That’s what businesses do,” he said.

“When you have a system where virtually everyone fails, how is that different from designing a system in which the point is for people to fail?” Mr. Carey added. “No one can look at that and say this is the best we can do.”

Officials in Illinois are considering whether to provide financial incentives to universities that show progress on improving graduation rates, said Judy Erwin, executive director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

The presidents of Northeastern Illinois and Chicago State, both part of the state university system, robustly defend their institutions. They say the universities serve a valuable mission, educating untraditional students who often take a long time to complete course work.

Many of their students are the first in their families to go to college, they said. Many come ill prepared. Often the students are older, have children and work full time.

“I think the work of this institution should be lauded rather than criticized,” said Elnora D. Daniel, the president of Chicago State, where 86 percent of the 7,300 students are African-American. “And I say that for all public institutions nationally that attract and have as part of their mission the education of low-income, disadvantaged minorities.”

Dr. Daniel also said that conventional methods for calculating graduation rates significantly understate how many students actually earn degrees. Universities calculate how many freshmen who enrolled as full-time students six years earlier have graduated. Students who transfer to other universities do not count as graduates, even if they graduate from another institution. Nor do students who transfer into the university and eventually graduate.

About half of the undergraduates at both universities have transferred in from other institutions, primarily community colleges, officials said.

The presidents also said that six years is not always a fair standard.

“That it takes another year or two years longer should be a mark of distinction,” said Salme Harju Steinberg, the president of Northeastern Illinois. “That person should be commended for the remarkable effort that he is making.”

Nearly half of the 12,200 students at Northeastern Illinois attend part time, Dr. Steinberg said. “They have families to support,” she said. “So of course it’s going to take longer.” About 43 percent are white, according to federal data, 29 percent are Hispanic, and 12 percent are African-American.

The graduation rate at Chicago State after seven years is nearly 35 percent, compared with the six-year rate of 16 percent, Dr. Daniel said. At Northeastern Illinois, where the six-year rate is 17 percent, the 10-year rate is 23 percent, university officials said.

Programs to mentor and tutor untraditional students are essential for their success, many educators said. But such programs are expensive, and in the past four years in Illinois, the state’s contribution to public universities declined 16 percent, Dr. Steinberg said.

“It is important to make sure that institutions of this type do indeed have the financial wherewithal to meet the needs of these special students,” Dr. Daniel said, “and so often that is not the case.”

The nature of their student bodies does not completely explain the rates at Northeastern Illinois and Chicago State. Some comparable universities with similar students have significantly higher graduation rates, academic experts said, and there are lessons to be learned from them.

The six-year rate at York College in Queens, a branch of the City University of New York, is 30 percent, for example, and it is 34 percent at Lehman College, a CUNY unit in the Bronx.

“There are certain things that stand out about institutions that do better than you would expect,” said Vincent Tinto, a professor of education at Syracuse University. “One is that they are willing to commit resources and to align their resources in a systematic way. Two, they understand the importance of support for student academic success.”

At Elizabeth City State University, a historically black institution in North Carolina, the graduation rate is 49 percent. Class attendance is mandatory, and everyone on campus helps enforce the rules and support the students, said Carolyn R. Mahoney, a former provost and vice chancellor at Elizabeth City who is now president of Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo.

At Murray State University in Murray, Ky., the graduation rate increased to 57 percent from 43 percent during the first half of the decade. F. King Alexander, who was president at the time, made graduation a central theme. Among other things, he encouraged commuting students to spend more time on campus, because students involved in extra-curricular activities are more likely to finish college.

“They have to think about graduation from the day they walk on campus,” said Dr. Alexander, now the president of California State University, Long Beach.

That is not always the prime focus for students at Northeastern Illinois. Afifa Amin, 24, began college in 2000. She transferred to Northeastern Illinois two years ago, switched her major several times and took a year off from school.

Now a part-time student majoring in computer science, Ms. Amin hopes to graduate in 2009. “I know it’s a long time, nine years,” she said, “but it’s better than not graduating.”

Harvard Ends Early Admission, Citing Barrier to Disadvantaged - NYT article

September 12, 2006
Harvard Ends Early Admission, Citing Barrier to Disadvantaged
By ALAN FINDER and KAREN W. ARENSON
NEW YORK TIMES
Harvard University, breaking with a major trend in college admissions, says it will eliminate its early admissions program next year, with university officials arguing that such programs put low-income and minority applicants at a distinct disadvantage in the competition to get into selective universities.

Harvard will be the first of the nation’s prestigious universities to do away completely with early admissions, in which high school seniors try to bolster their chances at competitive schools by applying in the fall and learning whether they have been admitted in December, months before other students.

Some universities now admit as much as half of their freshman class this way, and many, though not Harvard, require an ironclad commitment from students that they will attend in return for the early acceptance.

Harvard’s decision — to be announced today — is likely to put pressure on other colleges, which acknowledge the same concerns but have been reluctant to take any step that could put them at a disadvantage in the heated competition for the top students.

“We think this will produce a fairer process, because the existing process has been shown to advantage those who are already advantaged,’’ Derek Bok, the interim president of Harvard, said yesterday in an interview.

Mr. Bok said students who were more affluent and sophisticated were the ones most likely to apply for early admission. More than a third of Harvard’s students are accepted through early admission. In addition, he said many early admissions programs require students to lock in without being able to compare financial aid offerings from various colleges.

Mr. Bok also spoke about reducing the frenzy surrounding admissions. “I think it will improve the climate in high schools,” he said, “so that students don’t start getting preoccupied in their junior year about which college to go to.’’

Many admissions deans and high school guidance counselors greeted Harvard’s decision — which is to go into effect for applicants in the fall of 2007 — with astonishment and delight.

“Wow, it’s incredible,’’ said Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has a nonbinding early admissions program.

Ms. Jones has spoken widely about reducing the pressure and stress of admissions. “It has the capacity to change a lot of things in this business,’’ she said. “It’s bold enough for other schools to really reconsider what they’re doing. I wish them so much luck in this.’’

Lloyd Thacker, the executive director of the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit group created to lobby for an overhaul in admissions procedures, said his eyes had teared up when he heard the news. “I’m so glad,” Mr.Thacker said. “I can’t believe it.’’

“The most powerful institution in the country is saying, singularly, yes, something is wrong with this and we’re going to try to act in the public interest,’’ he added.

The University of Delaware announced a similar move last May.

For three decades Harvard has offered a particular form of early admissions, in which students who are accepted early still have the freedom to go elsewhere. Various forms of early admissions are offered by hundreds of colleges and universities, with many requiring applicants to commit upfront to attending the university if offered early admission.

The popularity of the procedure grew significantly in the 1990’s, as colleges tried to increase their competitive advantage by locking in strong candidates early. It also gave an edge to students willing to commit early to an institution. In some cases admissions rates are two or three times higher for students who apply early.

But at Harvard and many other universities officials have grown concerned that early admissions present a major obstacle to low-income and working-class students. Such students have also been hurt by steep tuition increases and competition with students from wealthy families who pour thousands of dollars into college consultants and tutoring.

“I think there are lots of very talented students out there from poor and moderate-income backgrounds who have been discouraged by this whole hocus-pocus of early admissions by many of the nation’s top colleges,’’ said William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard College’s dean of admissions and financial aid.

Mr. Thacker and other critics said that under binding early admission programs, students have to commit to a college long before they know how much aid they will be offered. Students who apply for admission in the regular cycle are able to compare financial-aid offerings from various colleges before making up their minds in April.

Under Harvard’s early admissions program, which is known as early action, students do not have to decide until May 1 whether to accept an admission offer. Even so, many potential applicants did not understand the distinction between Harvard’s program and those that require an upfront commitment and were discouraged from applying, Mr. Bok said.

“We think the more schools abandon this process, the healthier the admissions process will be,’’ he said.

Of the 2,124 students admitted by Harvard last year, 813 were granted early admission, or 38 percent, Mr. Fitzsimmons said.

Under Lawrence H. Summers, the Harvard president who left office in June, the university took a number of steps to make itself more accessible to poor and working-class students. Among other things, families with incomes below $60,000 a year are no longer required to pay for a students’ education.

The idea of abandoning early admission was developed after Mr. Bok became interim president in July, said John Longbrake, a Harvard spokesman. Early admission will remain in effect in the current academic year, which is already under way.

Several educators said only a university with Harvard’s reputation could take the risk involved with eliminating early admission because it will continue to be the first choice for so many top students.

“The one thing that always seemed commonly agreed was that no college could give up its early application program if the others didn’t, too,” said Christopher Avery, a Harvard professor and a co-author of “The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite” (Harvard University Press, 2003). “This seems to move to do just that.’’

Bruce Hunter, director of college counseling at the Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s School, a private school in Salt Lake City, said he hoped other universities would follow Harvard’s lead, but he was not confident they would.

“I think that Harvard has calculated that they will not suffer any competitive disadvantage in the process,’’ Mr. Hunter said. “I’m not sure that there are more than a handful of other places that could make the same claim.’’

Janet Lavin Rapelye, dean of admission at Princeton University, applauded Harvard’s decision, but said she could not predict how Princeton might respond. Princeton has binding early admission, and Ms. Rapelye said there had been questions about whether early admissions limited diversity.

“All of us who sit in these seats have always worried about that,’’ she said. “Yet we have worked very hard to broaden and deepen our applicant pool at every step in the process.’’

Family gets lesson in admissions - USA Today article

Family gets lesson in admissions
Posted 8/23/2006 10:54 PM ET
By Tracey Wong Briggs, USA TODAY
From his first step on the Princeton campus, Jonathan Cross just knew it was the school for him.
"I loved it and thought it was the perfect place," says Jonathan, 18, who was smitten by the environment, the endless opportunities and the Ivy League allure.

A year and a half, 12 applications, one deferral and two rejections later, Jonathan is starting college — happily and gratefully, with a full-tuition scholarship — at Duke.

Getting deferred and then rejected by Princeton was a big blow, but the college admission process packed many lessons for Jonathan, a member of USA TODAY's 2006 All-USA High School Academic Team. Aside from learning to pick himself up from disappointment, he also had to let go of nine of the 10 places he did get into. "I put a lot of stress on myself," he says. "I learned to fail; I learned to fall and get up and end up at a place I'm thrilled to be attending."

Jonathan and his parents, Jim and Karen Cross of Springfield, Va., look back at the process with the clarity afforded by 20/20 hindsight. As the high school class of 2007 starts sweating over SAT and ACT scores and early-decision deadlines, the Crosses agreed to share some of their hard-won insights with USA TODAY readers.

Jonathan graduated from Robinson High School in Fairfax, Va., as a valedictorian with an International Baccalaureate diploma. Though his SAT scores weren't the highest — just under 1,400 — he had a staggering record of activities and accomplishments, ranging from fuel cell research, which led to a patent application and a trip to Japan to meet the royal family, to starting a fencing team and also serving as president of the school orchestra and National Honor Society. An Eagle Scout, he was a mentor to special-needs children for six years. He served on the student advisory board to the State Board of Education and later was a student advisory member of the Fairfax County School Board.

A very competitive year

He emerged from what some experts consider the most competitive year ever — Yale accepted just 8.6% of its applicants, and its rejection letter to Jonathan said the vast majority of applicants were fully qualified to go there.

But things could be even worse for current high school students. The U.S. Department of Education projects the number of high school graduates to rise from 3.15 million last spring to 3.23 million in 2007 and 3.31 million in 2008 before peaking at 3.39 million in 2009.

"The last time we had this many was in 1975" as baby boomers peaked in numbers, says David Hawkins, director for public policy for the National Association for College Admission Counseling. "Then, less than 50% were moving directly to college after high school. Now, that's more than 60%. The second complicating factor, adding exponentially to the equation, is the number of applications submitted per student."

Electronic applications have made it easy to apply to a dozen colleges, but schools are paying more attention to how much a student wants to attend, Hawkins says. "If you apply to 12 institutions, it's hard to express a genuine level of interest that you really want to go there."

Indeed, the Crosses say the 12 colleges Jonathan applied to were about six too many, adding hundreds of dollars in fees and immeasurably to family anxiety.

"It was obscene, overkill," Jonathan says.

If they had to do it again, Jim Cross would encourage his son to apply, early in the fall, to a school with "rolling admission," where the staff processes applications and announces decisions as they come in. Getting an early, non-binding acceptance would have reduced the stress during the January-to-March waiting period and may have helped them cut down the overall number of applications.

Controlling the stress

But the family did take some key steps to keep it manageable. Jim did much of the research on colleges and scholarships and kept on Jonathan to meet deadlines. Early in the fall, Jim started a master spreadsheet tracking all the colleges with their requirements and deadlines, 15 or 16 columns long.

"I probably went a little overboard," Jim concedes, his wife and son chuckling, "but I'm a nuclear chemist, so give me a break."

Jonathan, meanwhile, opened a special e-mail account dedicated to all his college and scholarship correspondence. Very early in the fall, he developed a complete résumé, with his awards and activities, descriptions, dates and amount of time spent. Working off Jonathan's master, Jim often stayed up late into the night, cutting and pasting the elements into the required formats.

Although some counselors say students should do everything without any help, the Cross family did not find that realistic with Jonathan's IB schoolwork, sports, music and other extracurricular activities. "It would have served no purpose to have him cut and paste," Jim says.

Jonathan did focus on the application essays and short-answer questions. After looking at the requirements for different schools, he figured out how he could fulfill all of them with a total of three essays, plus some short answers. Reusing the same essays allowed him to spend more time writing and rewriting so that they really reflected who he is. That's more important than even he realized.

"You come across as who you are, and you will end up where you should go," he says. "Essays are you on a piece of paper. When I went to scholarship interviews, they'd have my file there. People would pull up the essays with lines highlighted."

His mother and father, meanwhile, discovered that the thought and care they'd put into the "brag sheet" that the high school counseling staff had asked them to fill out paid off well. Their insights added context to some of Jonathan's accomplishments and found their way into some of his letters of recommendation, which interviewers also asked about.

Though he truly enjoyed his senior year, Jonathan did find the waiting stressful. It was tough on everybody: Students with B averages sweated about getting into some local state universities as much as he worried about Princeton or Duke, he notes. "Everyone is applying at their own level."

Information overload

Adding to the stress was all the talking and obsessing. Knowing all his classmates were going through it together made things easier, but the test score comparisons and the buzz — about where people were applying and how so-and-so got into that school while so-and-so didn't — just made things worse. The online forums, too, made it seem like a life-or-death situation.

Jonathan tried not to talk about it too much.

Upon hearing he was applying to several in-state schools, well-meaning friends might say, "Oh, you can do better than that."

"I felt like I was being judged (by where I was applying)," he says. "Sometimes, I wanted to say, 'I don't want to go to college' to avoid that conversation."

"People are well-intentioned, but it adds to the stress of kids," Jim adds. "Everyone's in the same boat, and everyone is exasperated some days."

Jim and Karen admit to giving Jonathan more advice than he wanted to hear, but they also tried not to pressure him. "Success is not a measure of the school you attended. It's not the end of life if you're not getting into a school," Jim says. He encouraged Jonathan to apply to a couple of less-well-known schools where he thought Jonathan would be very happy, such as Bucknell. "Bucknell is much better than its name recognition."

Once the acceptances were in, it was all Jonathan's decision. "From a selfish standpoint, I don't want him walking in here saying, 'You made me go to Duke,' " Jim says.

Jonathan got caught up in the rankings and prestige, but finally realized ultimately they didn't really matter. It was his life. "At some point, you have to turn off the voices and do what you want to do," he says.

He knows it was a luxury to choose among schools he loved. "You go where your heart leads you. The environment, the opportunity, my faith and my heart were pointing to Duke."

How Lowering the Bar Helps Colleges Prosper - WSJ Artilce

How Lowering the Bar Helps Colleges Prosper

Duke and Brown Universities Rise in Prestige
In Part by Wooing Kids of Hollywood, Business Elite
A Debate Over Michael Ovitz's Son
By DANIEL GOLDEN
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 9, 2006; Page A1

Twice a year, after reviewing applicants to Duke University, Jean Scott lugged a cardboard box to the office of President Terry Sanford. Together, Ms. Scott, director of undergraduate admissions from 1980 to 1986, and Mr. Sanford pored over its contents: applications from candidates she wanted to reject but who were on his list for consideration because their parents might bolster the university's endowment. Ms. Scott won some battles, lost others and occasionally they compromised; an applicant might be required to go elsewhere before being taken as a transfer.

"There was more of this input at Duke than at any other institution I ever worked for," says Ms. Scott, now president of Marietta College in Ohio. "I would have been very pleased to have the best class as determined by the admissions office, but the world isn't like that."

Over more than 20 years, Duke transformed itself from a Southern school to a premier national institution with the help of a winning strategy: targeting rich students whose families could help build up its endowment. At the same time, and in a similar way, Brown University, eager to shed its label as one of the weakest schools in the Ivy League, bolstered its reputation by recruiting kids with famous parents. While celebrities don't often contribute financially, they generate invaluable publicity.

Admissions policies are just one ingredient affecting a school's resources and reputation. Having a championship basketball team, a standout academic department or an innovative curriculum, for example, may also boost applications and donations. Moreover, the influence of parental wealth and renown on university admissions is not a new phenomenon. Traditionally, universities have relied on gifts from alumni, who are rewarded with "legacy" preferences for their children.

What makes Duke and Brown, among other institutions, stand out, is the way in which they ramped up and systematized their pursuit: rejecting stronger candidates to admit children of the rich or famous, regardless of their ties to the university.

Both schools had a behind-the-scenes power broker, a go-to man for prominent parents seeking to fast-track their children's applications. Duke had Joel Fleishman, 72 years old, a wine connoisseur who sits on boards of companies run by Duke donors and the parents of Duke students. At Brown, the contact was the late David Zucconi, a barrel-chested ex-football player with a bone-crushing handshake, a booming Bronx accent and a resemblance to actor Jason Robards.

In the world of higher education, children of the rich and famous are known as "development cases," pursued by presidents and fund-raisers often to the dismay of admissions staffs. Duke landed the children of fashion mogul Ralph Lauren and other corporate titans. Some of them became major donors, helping boost Duke's endowment from 25th in 1980 ($135 million) to 16th in 2005 ($3.8 billion).


Brown raised its profile by enrolling children or stepchildren of politicians and celebrities, including two presidents, three Democratic presidential nominees, two Beatles and seven Academy Award winners. A particularly controversial case was the son of Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz, whose application sparked a debate within Brown.

Celebrity students generally lag behind their classmates in academic honors. But their prominence -- and that of their parents -- helped transform Brown into a top destination for students with a creative or artistic bent. Brown accepted just 13.8% of applicants for this year's freshman class, the lowest percentage in its history, as the number of applications rose sharply. Its endowment has risen from 29th nationwide in 1980 ($123 million) to 26th in 2005 ($1.6 billion), although it remains the lowest in the Ivy League.

This success, however, carries a cost. As the number of applicants has soared in recent years, premier schools admit as few as one in 10 students, a far more selective rate compared with a generation ago. To make room for an academically borderline development case, a top college typically rejects nine other applicants, many of whom might have greater intellectual potential.

Some colleges have been known to accept all applicants from a given high school to conceal the development admit, and thereby avert criticism from rejected students. Known in the trade as "considering context," the practice shortchanges worthy applicants from other high schools who might otherwise have made the grade.

Duke has acknowledged the existence of development admits. University spokesman John Burness says the ensuing donations help the university fund facilities improvements and financial aid, among other areas. He says the donations "frequently do not fund" Duke's endowment, whose rise is "principally related" to a successful investment strategy.

Brown's dean of admissions, Jim Miller, says the school wouldn't comment on the credentials of any particular student, citing confidentiality rules. In general, he says, "all students at Brown are admitted because the university believes they are qualified, can meet the rigorous demands of our academic program, and will be active and contributing members of our community."

When Mr. Sanford (1917-98), a former North Carolina governor, assumed Duke's presidency in 1970, he found a university with a budget deficit and alumni too young to make bequests any time soon.

"Terry said: 'What we need is some first-class funerals,' " recalls his biographer, Howard Covington.

To increase donations and help make Duke a top-tier school, Mr. Sanford turned to an old friend, Croom Beatty, a teacher and fund-raiser at a North Carolina boarding school. Now retired, Mr. Beatty recalls Duke's student body in the early 1970s being dominated by middle-class public-school students from Northern and mid-Atlantic states. They were admitted largely on the basis of high SAT scores. After graduating, they "didn't connect with Duke," and their giving was insufficient, he says.


At Mr. Sanford's urging, Mr. Beatty scoured the nation's prep schools for applicants whose families could enrich Duke. "I handled the private schools," he recalls. "I basically kept a list of people whom it would be in Duke's best interest to have them come." For these applicants, Mr. Beatty says, a subpar SAT score was not necessarily a barrier if they showed what he called "other areas of leadership."

Duke's recruiting also involved raiding wealthy families traditionally associated with other top universities, especially Yale. The Mars candy-bar clan, the Kohlers (Wisconsin makers of plumbing fixtures) and the Wrigleys of chewing-gum fame started sending their kids to Duke.

Texas oil magnate Robert Bass, a Yale graduate, and his wife Anne, a Smith College alumna, donated $10 million to Duke in 1996, three years after their son enrolled, and another $10 million in 2001. Anne Bass joined Duke's board in 2003. Through a spokesman, the Basses decline to comment.

Word spread in private-school circles that Duke was hunting for development cases. "I would say to the parents, 'Duke is a long shot. I would recommend a less competitive school in the South,' " says Mary Anne Schwalbe, college counselor at Manhattan's Dalton School from 1979 to 1985. "The parents would say, 'I've been in touch with somebody there and it's looking good.' "

Texas entrepreneur Milledge "Mitch" Hart III, co-founder of Electronic Data Systems Corp., didn't know anyone at Duke in 1981. But after his daughter told him it was one of her top two choices, Mr. Hart called a former Duke dean he knew who promised to introduce him to the right person: Joel Fleishman.

Mr. Fleishman has held numerous titles at Duke, from senior vice president to professor of law. His power at the university stemmed in part from a long association with Mr. Sanford, which dated to the president's days as governor. Mr. Fleishman's résumé also includes a variety of affiliations with nonprofit foundations and companies.

What it omits is his role at the vortex of development and admissions. Mr. Fleishman, who served as chairman of a 1983-92 fund-raising campaign that raised $221 million, courted potential donors and pushed to admit their children.

Ms. Scott, the former admissions director, recalls having conversations with Mr. Fleishman about candidates. Harold Wingood, a senior associate director of admissions from 1986 to 1992, says Mr. Fleishman would "call either me or the president's office" to advocate for development cases.

Mr. Fleishman wrote a wine column for eight years for Vanity Fair magazine and cultivated Duke donors with vintage selections. "Joel used to give very expensive bottles of wine and put them on his university expense account," recalls former president Keith Brodie, who succeeded Mr. Sanford in 1986 and sought to restrict the practice of development admits. "Because they were millionaires, you had to buy an expensive bottle." Mr. Fleishman, now a professor of law and public policy at Duke, declines to comment.

Mr. Fleishman met the Hart family at the airport and escorted them to the house of the Duke president, where the family stayed for three nights, Mr. Hart recalls. His daughter enrolled at Duke -- followed by three more of his children. In 1986, after Mr. Hart pledged $1 million to a fund-raising campaign led by Mr. Fleishman, Duke established the Hart Leadership Program, which teaches students leadership skills.

Mr. Hart says all four children were "competitive academically" and that no one at the university, including Mr. Fleishman, solicited a donation. "I had to offer him," Mr. Hart says.

At the same time, Mr. Hart acknowledges the role wealth can play in admissions. "Do I think money can make a difference... . Yeah, sure," he says. "Human nature is going to be human nature."

Mr. Fleishman's friendships with Duke donors gave him a valuable entrée into businesses far afield from academia. Take, for example, Ralph Lauren. Two of the famed designer's children, David and Dylan, graduated from Dalton School in Manhattan in 1989 and 1992 respectively and enrolled at Duke while Mr. Fleishman ran the fund-raising campaign.

A person familiar with their Dalton records describes David as a "B-plus" student with SAT scores in the 1100s. Dylan had better grades and SATs in the 1200s. In that era, Duke's average SAT score was close to 1350.

Sondra Feig, then Dalton's college counselor, says the Laurens had earlier "learned an important lesson" when Brown turned down their older son. Andrew had a B average in high school with an SAT score lower than that of his siblings, according to a person familiar with the records. He enrolled at Skidmore College and later transferred to Brown.


For David and Dylan, Ms. Feig says, the Laurens hired an experienced, independent college counselor. "They learned who to go to and how to do it. That's what did it for Duke."

Phyllis Steinbrecher, the Laurens' independent counselor, says she has dealt with Mr. Fleishman on development cases, although she declines to identify the students. Mr. Fleishman and Ralph Lauren were certainly familiar with each other: According to Dr. Brodie, the designer was a regular guest at dinners Mr. Fleishman hosted for parents of students he'd helped.

Mr. Lauren has pledged a six-figure gift to Duke. In 1999, Mr. Fleishman became a director of Polo Ralph Lauren Inc. As of the company's most-recent filing, he was earning $35,000 a year as a director plus $7,500 as chairman of its compensation committee and $2,000 per meeting. He also owned or held options to buy 37,500 shares of Ralph Lauren stock, worth at least half a million dollars, public filings show.

A Polo Ralph Lauren spokeswoman says Mr. Lauren, the company and David Lauren decline to comment. Andrew and Dylan also wouldn't comment. There's no evidence that Mr. Fleishman's directorship or Mr. Lauren's donation to Duke was tied to admitting the Lauren children.

Mr. Fleishman also sits on the board of Boston Scientific Corp., whose chairman, Duke alumnus Peter Nicholas, is one of Duke's biggest donors. His three children graduated from the university.

Mr. Fleishman sits on more corporate boards "than a lot of people, especially nonpresidents," says J. David Ross, a former vice president at Duke. Mr. Ross says he believes the directorships weren't payback for admissions. Duke spokesman Mr. Burness says Mr. Fleishman "is a person of considerable distinction and accomplishment, and it's no surprise that a number of leading nonprofit and corporate organizations have invited him to share his wisdom as a member of their boards of directors." Boston Scientific declines to comment.

In 1969, Brown eliminated requirements compelling students to take classes across the academic spectrum, part of a broad revision of its undergraduate education. The "New Curriculum" had an unintended side effect: expanding Brown's appeal to Hollywood celebrities whose children hoped never to open another math or science text.

Brown's lack of requirements was "a huge part of what made me want to go there," says Tess Curtin Lynch, 23, daughter of comedian Jane Curtin. As a student at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, her grades were "brought down by math," she says. The first time she took the math SAT, she says she scored 550 out of 800. Her college counselor at Harvard-Westlake told her she would need at least 600 to be competitive at Brown. Her family hired a tutor, who helped lift her score to 660 (along with a 700 verbal mark).

Not only is Ms. Lynch's mother well-known, but her father is a Brown alumnus, giving her "legacy" preference. Brown alumna Nancy Josephson, an influential Hollywood agent, wrote her a letter of recommendation.

"I'm willing to admit I had the best possible set of circumstances," says Ms. Lynch, who graduated from Brown in 2005 with a degree in art history. "I was very lucky. I don't know what my situation would have been without these steps up."

In 1979, Brown cemented its rising stature by enrolling the late John F. Kennedy Jr., who was widely expected to follow his father, grandfather and sister Caroline to Harvard. But Mr. Kennedy wanted to escape his family's shadow. After graduating from Brown in 1983, he enrolled at New York University law school.

"The greatest advantage to Brown I was able to achieve was the admission and matriculation of JFK Jr.," says James Rogers, admissions director from 1969 to 1988. "People began to talk about Brown. If somebody who had as many admissions options as he had would choose Brown, there had to be some reason."

In 1989, Brown installed a president known for his fund-raising prowess and celebrity friends: Vartan Gregorian. As president of the New York Public Library, Mr. Gregorian remade a stodgy institution into a chic place for charitable donations.

Keenly aware that Brown's endowment was only one-tenth of Harvard's, Mr. Gregorian corralled the son of billionaire Gordon P. Getty. William Paul Getty graduated in 1989 from the Groton School. Mr. Gregorian was a trustee of the J. Paul Getty Trust and a friend of William's mother, Ann Getty. She joined the board of the New York Public Library in 1985 and donated $1 million to the institution.

"I wanted Gordon Getty's children to come to Brown," Mr. Gregorian recalls. "I told admissions, 'The Gettys' son is applying and I know them very well.' "

Mr. Gregorian says he didn't expect a financial quid pro quo and that he recommended five other colleges for William Getty to consider. The former Brown president says he would not "compromise his integrity for wealthy individuals."

William Paul Getty "dropped out in six months," Mr. Gregorian says. He described William as a "good student but not serious." The Gettys didn't make a significant gift to Brown. Reached at his California home, William Getty declined to comment.

Mr. Gregorian, now president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic organization founded by Andrew Carnegie, acknowledges facilitating admissions -- including of another student who left after a short period -- but says intercessions on his part were rare. He says the children of the famous flocked to Brown not because they got an admissions edge, but because of their anonymity on campus, the flexible curriculum and the student body's "esprit de corps."

Parents looking for a contact at Brown invariably came across the name David Zucconi. Mr. Zucconi held various titles in 44 years as a Brown employee, but one job remained the same: behind-the-scenes liaison to the rich and famous, a role he took on with unusual gusto. The 1955 Brown graduate drove a large white Cadillac convertible and invariably dressed in a blazer and university tie.

Mario Zucconi says his brother's name was passed between Brown alumni in the know. "He was out with Walter Matthau. He had drinks with Walter Cronkite. They wanted to get their sons or daughters in."

Mr. Cronkite says he doesn't recall meeting Mr. Zucconi. He says his son enrolled at Brown but dropped out.

"I spoke to Zucconi several times about some of my development cases," says Bruce Breimer, director of college guidance at Manhattan's Collegiate School. "He would interview the kids, write a report, pave the way, let the admissions office know the prominence of the family. The buzz was, 'He's the guy to go to.' "

Mr. Zucconi helped Vanessa Vadim, the daughter of actress Jane Fonda, navigate the application process, according to William Nicholson, a former Brown admissions officer. He recalls that Mr. Zucconi and Ms. Fonda had lunch at Brown's faculty club, he recalls. Mr. Nicholson says Ms. Vadim "did not need a lot of push" and would have been a strong candidate anyway.

Stephen Rivers, a longtime friend and publicist for Ms. Fonda at the time, confirms Ms. Fonda knew Mr. Zucconi. "He dealt mostly with Debi, Jane's assistant at the time, and I met him and spoke with him several times as well."

Although he embodied Brown to alumni and celebrities, Mr. Zucconi had detractors within the administration who felt that the onetime Brown halfback specialized in end runs around their authority. Besides the usual list of candidates, Brown admissions officers often had to swallow a separate "Zucconi list."

"He got some kids into Brown, pushing, one way or another, who should never have been there," recalls Mr. Nicholson, the former Brown admissions officer. "Usually they were children of great wealth or alumni. I would try to accommodate him. Sometimes the kids whom he referred were God awful. I'd call him and say, 'Dave, you've got to do some screening.' "

Mr. Gregorian says trustees, alumni and other notables used Mr. Zucconi as an unauthorized back channel, something he says shouldn't have happened. "I established a process that no case can go directly from Zucconi to admissions," he says. "Zucconi didn't think anybody that applied to Brown should be turned down."

In January 2003, at the age of 69, Mr. Zucconi died of cancer. At the funeral, Mario Zucconi recalls, "at least a dozen people said to me: 'If it wasn't for your brother, my son or daughter wouldn't have gotten into Brown.'"

In the late 1990s, the son of the man often called the most powerful in Hollywood applied to Brown, prompting an intense internal debate over how far the school should bend its rules for a development case.

Brown president E. Gordon Gee was enthused when Christopher Ovitz, son of superagent Mr. Ovitz, sought to enroll. Mr. Gee, who had recently arrived at Brown after presiding over three public universities, felt hamstrung by its endowment. Mr. Ovitz had a track record of educational philanthropy, and Mr. Gee believed he might also open doors to a vast array of Hollywood entertainers and executives.

Chris Ovitz's academic credentials, however, were below Brown's standards. Thomas Hudnut, headmaster at Harvard-Westlake private secondary school, says Chris "was very socially mature and got along well with adults. He was physically and academically immature. That's a very tough combination for a boy to have."

Mr. Hudnut says he encouraged the Ovitzes to send Chris to boarding school, where he would be under less of a microscope, but "they weren't ready to do that." Instead, Chris transferred to Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, an arts-oriented school that caters to Hollywood children.

Of five Crossroads classmates who enrolled at Brown, four were inducted into the Cum Laude Society, signifying that they ranked in the top 20% of their high-school class. According to a copy of the class yearbook, Chris was not in the honor society. Says Erin Durlesser, one of the four: "He definitely was not academic in my opinion. ...The ones who also applied to Brown felt it was inappropriate competition."

Michael Goldberger, then Brown's admission director, balked at Chris's lack of credentials. According to people familiar with the situation, he cautioned Mr. Gee that accepting Chris would damage Brown's credibility with high schools in southern California.

The president pressed the issue and they compromised, according to former Brown officials. Chris was admitted as a non-matriculating "special student" allowed to take classes at Brown. If he proved his mettle, he would be granted status as a regular student. The school hoped that would jolt him into performing better, according to a person familiar with Brown admissions. Mr. Goldberger declines to comment.

James Ellis, a lawyer for the Ovitz family, defends Brown's admission of Chris. "If diversity in terms of background and experience that kids bring to a college campus has any meaning at all, having spent time with Chris and [his sister] Kimberly...these kids have perspectives and experiences and backgrounds that I just think are tremendously valuable and unique and would be a benefit to any campus," Mr. Ellis says.

Chris Ovitz left Brown within a year and later obtained a bachelor's degree in history from UCLA, his father's alma mater. According to Mr. Ellis, Chris is now director of business development for an Internet startup. President Gee left Brown for Vanderbilt University in 2000.

Chris's admission fostered a relationship between his family and Brown. In 2002, his sister transferred there from New York University. Michael Ovitz has hosted a reception for Brown President Ruth Simmons at his Brentwood mansion as well as speeches on campus by director Martin Scorsese and actor Dustin Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman himself is the father of two Brown undergraduates.

• Have a question about college admissions preferences? Email Daniel Golden at dan.golden@wsj.com6. He'll answer questions online later.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115774251817757837.html

Who Got Into College? WSJ article

Who Got Into College?
In an Unusually Competitive Year,
Some Schools Sought Passion;
Others Went for Tuba Players
By ANNE MARIE CHAKER
April 13, 2006; Page D1
Wall Street Journal
Who did get in this year?

The question is haunting thousands of high-school seniors who are reeling from rejections in recent weeks. In one of the most competitive admissions seasons ever, Stanford, Brown and other top schools faced record numbers of applicants and accepted a smaller share of students than ever before.

Facing an applicant pool of unprecedented strength as well as size, admissions officers sorted through the applications with a more critical eye than ever. Recognizing that a growing number of students are paying for outside help with their applications, they stepped up efforts to identify the overly coached. They even spent more time trying to gauge applicants' sincerity to determine, say, when a high school student pursued volunteer activities just to build a résumé.
In addition, admissions officers sought to fill particular gaps in the student body. Swarthmore in Pennsylvania has been particularly interested in applicants who are potential majors in classics, as well as modern languages such as German and Russian. Brown continued its efforts to lure science and engineering students. And the University of Pennsylvania this year was looking for a few more tuba players for its marching band.

Adam Hoffman, a student at Parkway North High School in St. Louis, was admitted to all eight of the schools to which he applied. Among them were Stanford and Brown.
On Mr. Hoffman's application: A flawless score of 800 on the critical-reading portion of his SAT (and a near-perfect 780 on the math section) and a first-place award in the Greater St. Louis Area Science Fair, on top of awards from myriad math competitions.
But his application showed more than just a math expert. It also made clear his deep interest in animal rights. He wrote a essay about the intolerance he faced as a vegetarian at a New Mexico ranch with his Boy Scout troop. He co-founded a "vegetarian club" at his school and has volunteered with the St. Louis Animal Rights Team.

That extra something -- a passion or commitment communicated in a clear voice -- is what many admissions counselors at top schools say they are looking for. "I think we're all looking for kids who are committed to something, extracurricularly, intellectually, and hopefully both," says Jim Miller, the new admissions dean at Brown.
Swarthmore admissions dean Jim Bock recalls a recently admitted applicant who took a year off after high school to work with AIDS-infected drug addicts. "How many high-school seniors would take a year off to do that?" he says. As an admissions dean, he says, "you don't forget it."

"Sometimes you do question, 'Is this for real?' " says Mr. Bock. He believes the AIDS worker is; he said she is a middle-class youth who attended a Southwestern public school and showed a sense of service.

Questions of credibility arise because in the current pressure-filled environment, some parents pay thousands of dollars for extra attention from private advisers. A growing industry surrounds the college frenzy -- including test-prep tutors and independent college counselors whose advice comes for a fee. For admissions officers, it can be more difficult than ever to distinguish students who are genuinely committed from those who are merely groomed. These officials warn that the voices of many of the groomed applicants sound similar: The essays all start to sound like tear-jerkers. And hours spent in community service can appear disingenuous.
"Some more than others are artificially packaged, and you can see that. If they are well-coached ... it's hard to find the nature of that individual and what their passions are," says Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania.

Private schools continue to play an important role in college admissions. In a speech at the National Association of Independent Schools' annual meeting this winter, Yale President Richard C. Levin said that independent schools provide between one-fourth to one-third of the matriculants at highly selective universities.
But that doesn't mean public-school students are necessarily at a disadvantage. Indeed, many guidance counselors from public schools work extra hard to develop relationships with college admissions officers, who may not have heard of their school. The admissions officer relies on getting good information on students from counselors he feels he can trust. Breaching that trust by offering exaggerated claims or descriptions could cost the high-school counselor an important relationship.
This year, "the level of advocacy for students and the relationship developed with admissions counselors played a much larger role than I anticipated," says David Ford, counselor at Queensbury High School in upstate New York.
Mr. Ford made an effort to get to know one of the admissions officers at Columbia, a top choice for one of his students. In July, he made the initial phone call. He was told that while his student ranked among the top 10 students in the graduating class of about 300 kids, the student would benefit from demonstrating "a high level of intellectual curiosity that doesn't necessarily come out in the numbers."
Over the course of several months, Mr. Ford stayed in touch with his Columbia contact. He called or sent an email about a half-dozen times to ask questions and offer updates. Perhaps the most important call he made was to let Columbia (and other colleges) know his student had won a national award in an Oprah Winfrey-sponsored essay contest -- which came at the end of February, as applications were being reviewed. What followed was "almost a quasi-interview" in which the Columbia admissions officer asked Mr. Ford about the student's personality and ambitions.
While the student was wait-listed at Williams College in Massachusetts and rejected from Yale, he was admitted to Columbia. After that experience, Mr. Ford believes he will make contact with more college admissions officers earlier on in the admissions season.
There are other strategies that are now widely accepted as giving students an edge. One of them is applying "early decision" -- generally in the fall. The pool of early-decision applicants is generally smaller than the pool of students who apply later. Top colleges sometimes fill as much as half of their incoming class with early-decision students. "Our data showed that applying early decision is the equivalent of adding about 100 points to your SAT score," says Andrew Fairbanks, a former associate dean of admission at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and co-author of a book called The Early Admissions Game.

The catch is that the applicant is committed to attend if accepted. Early decision has been criticized for benefiting privileged students who don't need to compare financial-aid offers that would come later in the spring.
Other factors that can help include being the child of an alum, donor, or employee of the school. Offering racial, ethnic or geographic diversity or being a first-generation American may also be a plus. "A student from Montana is more attractive than a student from New York City," says Mr. Fairbanks, because "schools like to boast they have all 50 states."
Amy Seymour is near the top of her class at the Pennington School, a private school in New Jersey. Besides her straight A's, her interests in video and film production took her to Brown University for a three-week program last summer. She also co-founded a mock-ESPN video program featuring her school's sports teams.
Her applications to both Stanford and Cornell were turned away. But she was admitted to Princeton, and both she and her mother believe that her father's job as a math professor there may have played some role. Princeton this year took only 17% of the 1,886 valedictorians who applied.

Some valedictorians weren't so fortunate. Brooke Epstein, who ranked No. 1 in her class at Brimmer and May School, a private day school in Chestnut Hill, Mass., didn't get into her top choice, the University of Pennsylvania. Cornell and Northwestern are among the schools where she has been placed on the "wait list" -- neither admitted nor rejected. "You work so hard for four years and you spend a lot of your life preparing for this, and it's hard when someone doesn't think that's good enough," she says.

Write to Anne Marie Chaker at anne-marie.chaker@wsj.com3