Word: mounting
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Over the past few years, however, the test's defenders have started to lose ground. About 280 of the nation's 2,083 four-year colleges and universities make the SAT optional for some or all applicants; a handful of prestigious colleges, including Franklin and Marshall and Mount Holyoke, have joined their ranks since the early '90s and say they aren't admitting idiots as a result. Hamilton College is considering making the SAT optional. Countless other schools have de-emphasized the SAT in more subtle ways--continuing to ask for scores but weighing other factors more heavily...
Should we give a spot to Susan? That's the question before a roomful of admissions officers at Mount Holyoke College. Susan, who has top grades and gushing recommendations, could surely prosper here. But what more, they wonder, would she bring to this cozy all-women's college in South Hadley, Mass.? Giulietta Aquino, Susan's advocate on the six-member committee, ticks off a few of her accomplishments. She is a decorated horseback rider aiming for the Olympics who commutes three hours a day between her home, school and horse barn but still finds time to tutor immigrant children...
...Faculty members are very scrupulous about covering their own areas," said Pedersen, "but we also try to mount a general education curriculum, with the Core and freshman seminars. That's hard to sustain with the size of the faculty we have...
...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...