James S Murphy Profile picture
Sometimes I write slow, sometimes I write quick. Email me: jstephenmurphy at gmail dot com
Nov 16 6 tweets 2 min read
This is such good reporting from the @harvardcrimeson:

There are about 27,000 high schools in the U.S.

Over the past 15 years, 1 in 11 students at Harvard have come from just 21 high schools.

So 9.1% of Harvard students come from 0.07% of US schools. @nytdavidbrooks Image This is no accident. It's a stated priority of Harvard admissions.

The longtime dean of admissions said they're in the business of creating 100 year relationships with schools. He said this in a trial where Harvard was, believe it or not, trying to show it's fair. Image
Jul 31, 2023 8 tweets 2 min read
Some pointers for people who work with students on college applications:

1. The @usedgov will be releasing resources to colleges and universities addressing lawful admissions practices by Aug 15.

2. Don't listen to anyone's advice on how to advise students too much until then. 3. Yes, the @CommonApp opens tomorrow, but students can get to work on everything but the essay while we wait to see what ED says.

4. Chances are, little changes for students or their applications due to the SFFA decision.
Mar 12, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
2023
College freshmen no longer know how to read literature. 2013
College freshmen no longer know how to read literature
Mar 10, 2023 13 tweets 6 min read
What's extraordinary about the @usnews Best Colleges reputation wurvey is that ANYONE FILLS IT OUT AT ALL.

Let's take a look 🧵 The most heavily weighted single factor in the Best Colleges rankings is Undergraduate Academic Reputation, which USN calls "Expert Opinion." Image
Mar 6, 2023 28 tweets 9 min read
Let's talk about some dumb stuff people say about test optional admissions. 🧵 This might take a sec, so here's the tl;dr:

TO policies, in and of themselves, are neither a cure-all for what's wrong with American higher ed nor the end of what's good about it, but the evidence points to their doing some good and no harm.
Mar 4, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
When your flex shows just how weak you are. Image For decades, colleges, med schools, and law schools have all made the point that standardized tests exist to show readiness to succeed in college or grad school.
Oct 1, 2022 14 tweets 3 min read
While we're waiting for fall IPEDS data, I got curious about how segregated expensive private high schools are relative to public schools. 🧵 I used the 2019–20 Private School Universe Survey to identify schools that belong to the National Association of Independent Schools and go through twelfth grade. I got public school data from the Dept of Ed in each location. nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/pr…
Oct 1, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
nytimes.com/2022/09/30/wor… McKinsey has a landing page and a recruiting team dedicated to a single university that claims to be training "citizens" and "citizen leaders." mckinsey.com/careers/studen…
Jun 11, 2022 18 tweets 7 min read
We (or at least writers for the NYTimes) have never not been anxious about college admissions.

A 🧵on why college admissions anxiety is not "runaway and why you probably should not be especially concerned. 2019
Sep 13, 2021 16 tweets 3 min read
A majority of white people responding to this poll believe it's harder to get into college if you're white.

80% of white Republicans think this, but so do more than 50% of white Democrats. The numbers are slightly less alarming among teenagers surveyed. Teenagers whose parents are Democrats provide some hope.
Sep 6, 2021 17 tweets 7 min read
Almost all the loss in college enrollment due to COVID took place at community colleges.

Community colleges get mentioned once in the piece.

And a high priced college consultant gets 4 paragraphs.
wsj.com/articles/colle… I'd be a lot more interested in a piece that talked about how the decline in enrollment is largely from the for-profit and 2-yr sector and wrestled with why that's occurred. That, of course, would have to be in another newspaper. Image
May 26, 2021 18 tweets 4 min read
Honestly kind of surprised that the @UpshotNYT thought the Stanford paper about features computers can notice in college application essays was worth amplifying (again).

A 🧵 on 3 of the very big problems with the paper.
nytimes.com/2021/05/26/ups… Problem 1. Computers don't admit students to college; people do.

1.1 The paper shows that computers can identify correlations between essay content and income in large data sets.
Dec 22, 2020 9 tweets 4 min read
There's been some coverage of a boom in the number of students applying Early Decision or Restricted Early Action to college this fall. I'm much more interested in the number of students colleges are *admitting* early this year. It's early days yet. Full numbers are not available at many places. Lots of colleges that do ED do 2 rounds of it, so it's too soon to compare this year with last year.
Dec 20, 2020 10 tweets 3 min read
I told myself I would stop reading pieces about admissions lotteries. But I cracked and read that NYT piece. I expected the worst and it was worse than I expected. Beyond all the inherent issues with lotteries that I talked about in that thread, here's what really bugged me about this piece: its condescension toward community college professors and presumption about instruction in the Ivy League.
Dec 1, 2020 19 tweets 14 min read
A college degree can transform individuals, families, and communities. One problem is that we give too little recognition to the institutions that have the largest impact on social mobility. THREAD Image Another problem is not all institutions lead to good outcomes for low-income students. That's why @EdReformNowUSA produced our Social Mobility Elevators brief, which identifies 4-yr institutions that have positive outcomes for students with Pell Grants. edreformnow.org/wp-content/upl…
Oct 15, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read
Here's the 20 worst 4-yr colleges in the country when it comes to enrolling low-income students.

Source: IPEDS data released today Here's the 10 worst 4-year schools when it comes to enrolling low-income students over the past 3 years.
Oct 1, 2020 9 tweets 4 min read
The Washington Post published this shocking chart today.
It's got everything to do with the future of community colleges in the US. Source: washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/… Last week, @NSClearinghouse released some preliminary data on enrollments (It represents about 22% of IHEs.) which looked surprisingly not bad for 4-yr institutions, but terrible for community colleges. Source: nscresearchcenter.org/stay-informed/
Sep 29, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
Some universities are admitting no grad students in the humanities this year. It should probably be all of them. chronicle.com/article/more-d… There are currently 36 assistant professor listings in the US and Canada for jobs teaching literature in English. 5 are in listed as American lit. 3 are listed as British. Image
Sep 28, 2020 12 tweets 5 min read
Everyone hates college rankings, but they're not going away. So why not make them do some actual good instead? roanoke.com/opinion/column… This Atlantic piece provides links to 2 decades of people criticizing college rankings, from Malcolm @Gladwell to @opinion_joe. theatlantic.com/education/arch…
Sep 27, 2020 9 tweets 5 min read
Kudos to @NACAC & @AngelBPerez for sharing data on who belongs to the organization. It left me wondering how well the organization represents the field of admissions and, as in all things, who gets best represented and wields power in the field. #RepresentationMatters Image I'm not surprised, I guess, that 86% of community colleges are not members, EXCEPT transfer is one of the most important issues in college access, equity, and antiracism. #RepresentationMatters Image
Sep 23, 2020 6 tweets 2 min read
The thing that everyone is going to talk about in the UC Audit are the 64 students who got an unfair advantage. But that is not the real scandal. It's the 600 high schools cut out of a system that has been shown to be antiracist and promote equity. One of the reasons we fail again and again to fix things like college admissions and other inequitable systems is that we are obsessed with cheaters and grifters and think they're the problem.