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Conspicuously absent from the determination of Susan's fate is any mention of her SATs. That's because, in the parlance of Mount Holyoke's admissions officers, Susan is a "score blocker." Last summer Mount Holyoke announced that for a five-year trial period, it would give applicants the option of withholding their test scores, allowing the college to test the effectiveness of the SAT as a predictor of college success. This fall applications rose 10%, with 1 in 6 scores withheld. Now it's crunch time for the school's admissions officers, who have holed up in an unassuming...
Like many highly selective small colleges, 164-year-old Mount Holyoke has traditionally required rigorous entrance exams. In recent years, however, the college has been relying less and less on tests, assuring applicants that other factors were more important. Still, students continued to obsess over scores. Four years ago, in an effort to ease some of that stress, Mount Holyoke cut back on the number of tests it required, making the more subject-specific SAT II's optional. But the admissions staff continued to hear SAT horror stories--about applicants spending $845 an hour on test prep, for example...
...success of SAT blockers often turns on more subjective measures, such as a student's writing style--Mount Holyoke requires three essays and one graded writing sample--or her poise during an interview. The committee happily devours one student's account of her German ancestry, titled "Ode to Sauerkraut" but spends 20 minutes agonizing over an otherwise stellar applicant who wrote a "young" essay on the inspirational aspects of Charlotte's Web. Despite her banal musings, she is admitted. But the panel is far less forgiving of an applicant whose interview was "enjoyable but not terribly deep." Her faux...
...Mount Holyoke has high hopes that its future applicants will devote the hours they once spent fretting over word analogies to worthier pursuits like community service or starring in school plays. Best of all, says Jane Brown, "we also think we'll see high-scoring students who don't submit scores simply on principle." Lis Bernhardt, a senior at Fairfield High School in Fairfield, Conn., was concerned more with pragmatism than principle. She spent months "consumed" by the SATs, investing countless hours--and more than $1,000--in tutoring to lift her scores. Then she toured Mount Holyoke, loved...
...earthquake was bad enough--but it wasn't the Big One experts say is still to come. While geologists predict a mega-quake still lies in Seattle's future, they are also looking at a different, equally dangerous big one that is literally looming on the city's horizon: MOUNT RAINIER, the snowcapped volcano that lies 50 miles to the southeast. Though slumbering, Rainier is still active, and last week's quake might have loosened deep rocks that hold molten magma and hot gases in check. This could send up the volatile mix and cause an eruption. Several towns...