Talk:Grinnell College

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[edit] Gates Tower

The picture of the dorms labeled "Gates Hall" is erroneous. Through a miracle of remodeling, Gates tower switches floor by floor from being part of Gates Hall and Rawson Hall. Hence, I've renamed the picture "Gates Tower and Hall," which is far more accurate, since, though the tower contains parts of both Rawson and Gates hall, it is universally known as Gates Tower.

[edit] Prominent Alumni

Other institutions that are similar to Grinnell list alumni that are much less prominent than the one's on the "Notable Alumni" section of the Grinnell page, so I don't see a problem with the list of alumni.

Also, the wikipedia page of almost every other prestigious liberal arts college mentions the college's overall academic reputation in the opening paragraph of the article. It is important to comment on Grinnell's academic reputation in the introductory paragraph because it gives brousers a better idea about Grinnell and the type of school that it is.

[edit] figures on faculty and students good?

Does anyone have exact figures for faculty and students? This information is usually printed in college literature.

The figures the college puts in the literature are sometimes incorrect, actually. At the start of the fall semester, there were 1412 students at Grinnell. 1396 in the spring. (Of course, some students take leaves in the middle of the semester.) I could dig out faculty stats from a budget, if it was wanted. - Matt Cleinman

The images look pretty bad. Can someone put better pictures of Gates Hall and the Honor G?

[edit] Highly selective

The words "highly selective" have been inserted and removed several times now, and I'm tired of the edit war. The term is being used here as a term of the art, not simply as a bit of marketing fluff. If you want to include it, then please find a source. If you want to remove it, then please post a source on this page that says it's not highly selective.

If you're curious, Collegedata.com says that Grinnell admits 45% and enrolls 13% of applicants, which could be considered "highly selective" or just plain regular "selective," depending entirely on your personal definition. They rate the school's entrance difficulty as one of 165 colleges and universities that are "very difficult" to get into. This makes Grinnell easier to get into than CalTech's "most difficult" rating (54 schools in that list), and harder than Cornell College or Coe. (All together now: "If you can't go to college, go to Coe!") WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:05, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

According to another article on CollegeData, the cutoff for "highly selective" is <=33% admission rate. Based entirely on CollegeData's information, Grinnell is not "highly selective" given its admission rate of 45%.
Also, I'd love to have the person who continues to insert "highly selective" as an anonymous IP edit post their justification here. Jacobko (talk) 14:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
That's good enough for me! Blade (talk) 03:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
The phrase is meaningless anyway, I say keep it off the page. Pdbailey (talk) 01:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The Collegedata selectivity labels are meaningless. Several of the schools listed as "Most Difficult," while they are arguably some of the most selective institutions in the country, do not fit their criteria for the category. The criteria is the following: "Most Difficult: More than 75% of freshmen were in the top 10% of their high school class and scored over 1310 on the SAT I or over 29 on the ACT; about 30% or fewer of all applicants accepted." This is not the case for Bates, Wesleyan, or NYU, all of which received the "Most Selective" designation. Obviously there is some arbitrariness in their methodology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joshuadrosenberg (talk • contribs) 18:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, it sounds like 'Most Difficult' and 'Most Selective' are different criteria. Anyway, with a descriptor like 'most selective' is bound to be arbitrary. The issue is whether CollegeData is considered notable enough to be a good source. If so, then simply saying that "Collegedata.com lists Grinnell as one of its 'most selective' colleges" with a link would be just fine. It'd be a report from a notable source and nothing more. Blade (talk) 03:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks like we're back to adding and removing selective. Per the preceding discussion, I'm removing the recent addition of selective to the first line, at least in part because it's unsourced. Avram (talk) 18:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] round 2

US News and World Report lists Grinnell College and Harvard both as "Most Selective." April 20, 2008.

Actually, USNWR lists the college as "most selective" on a five-part scale. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, I don't understand your critique of the other poster's source. Pdbailey (talk) 15:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I can't say I want to fight this war, but I'd rather include selectivity figures (admission and yield percentages) than words like "highly selective" and "most selective". Words like that don't mean a thing, even if we can back them up with references. Avram (talk) 16:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Pdbailey, the source doesn't actually use the words highly selective and that phrase is used (or can be used) as a term of the art, so precision might matter to some readers. Turning USNWR's "most selective" into "highly selective" is like saying that BSD is UNIX: it's technically inaccurate, even if there are strong similarities.
Avram, I think your suggestion is a good one. It obviates the need to use disputable terms. (I am amused to see that the anon above is posting from campus.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
The Princeton Review piece referenced in some recent edits provides the data we need: 45% admittance, 29% yield. As I mentioned previously, I'd like to work this in in place of the "selective" terminology we've been using. Any thoughts on how to do so? ("Grinnell College Admissions Profile", free registration required) Avram (talk) 18:17, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
What do you think about a new section called ==Admissions==, to go just above ==Tuition and financial aid==? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me.Avram (talk) 05:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I've started a new section for admissions information. Please feel free to change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Looks good. I think that you might be misusing the term "yield" -- according to the disambiguation page the term means "the percentage of prospective students offered admission to an educational institution that actually enroll at that school"; it's seen as students' assessment of the school's attractiveness. Thus, a low admission rate and a high yield would be characteristic of a selective and strong school. As far as I can tell, the "total yield" you refer to is not usually employed in talking about admissions, and it is easily conflated with "yield". I'm removing that part for now. Avram (talk) 15:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] round 3

I'm removing "highly-selective" and and adding a comment directing people to the discussion here before re-adding it. As far as I can tell, the consensus was that the Admissions section made that phrase unnecessary and we were going to leave it out. Avram (talk) 11:12, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image Requests for this and other pages

The following subjects need photos from the Grinnell campus or area:

[edit] list of presidents

[next comment copied by pdbailey from my talk page]

RE: List of presidents Grinnell College,
You're probably right to bring up WP:NOT and remove the list, but until we integrate at least some aspects of the information provided by the list into article prose, I feel that removing it entirely causes net harm to the article. How about reverting the list as a temporary measure, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the list and incorporating parts of it into the article prose? Avram (talk) 05:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm fine with discussing this, but the first problem is that I don't see any encyclopedic information in the list. Maybe you can help me out with that and then we can figure out how to put it in prose. Pdbailey (talk) 02:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
First of all, I expect that the majority of the past presidents are sufficiently notable to justify their own articles in Wikipedia (After all, I whipped up a quick Magoun article pretty easily). Additionally, the post of college president and often the circumstances of presidential succession definitely amount to a significant part of the college's identity and history. What struck me was that the history manages to mention _one_ president of the college. That seems like excessively little.
Thinking some more about this, I'd like to move the list to a separate article, link to it from the history section, and add some more presidents to the history prose. Avram (talk) 11:54, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
That sounds like a great idea. go for it. Pdbailey (talk) 13:19, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Copy and paste from Grinnell website

Much of the history section appears to have been taken wholesale from the college's website. If so, it needs to be rewritten pronto. One useful resource might be the Short History of Grinnell in the 1998 accreditation review. Avram (talk) 14:08, 17 May 2008 (UTC)