Calculating Reaction

Among Dartmouth's cruelest academic policies are the distributive requirements. Engineering students squirm at the very mention of mandatory Dante, and English majors stare vacuously at graphing calculators. Definitely part of the latter group, I somehow found myself in a basic statistics course my freshman year.

While I don't remember too much past standard deviation and the root mean square, I very distinctly recall one lecture. Statistics, the professor told us, are the most malleable form of proof ever invented. While numerals may stand for something concrete, the real power lies in the wording and the context.

By the end of the hour, he had taught us all how to say pretty much anything with statistics. And, although my high school calculus teacher may have laughed out loud when I said I was going to Dartmouth, even I didn't find it all that tough.

Last winter, The Daily Dartmouth published a panicked article about the early admissions of minority students after only three black students received early admission for the Class of 2003. The following day, another headline read “College hurt by image problem: Students acknowledge Dartmouth has ultra-conservative reputation.”

Many students felt that there must be a culprit — after all, the number three does seem wincingly low. The diminutive digit was blamed on everything from the “Ghetto Party” held at Chi Gam the previous fall to media stereotypes of Dartmouth to some sort of ethereal, racial pall looming over Hanover.

Most students read through the article and quickly returned to their lunches, worst fears confirmed. However, if you really sit down and look at the context, three was not the abominable statistic that most students thought it was.

Much like other minority students, students from rural areas, and inner-city residents, black applicants tend to weigh financial aid packages and scholarships more heavily than the rest of the general applicant pool — especially after the rest of the Ivy League upped the ante on aid packages this year to keep up with Princeton. Many of these students wait for general admissions so they can compare several offers come May.

And as Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote in his editorial at the time, this was not an unheard of statistic, especially considering that the Class of 2000 had three black students admitted early as well.

Then, last month, Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg announced that a record number of black students had been admitted to the class of 2003. I actually heard Dean Furstenberg speak to a group of students last week and was rather impressed.

When asked about acceptances this year, he said that although not all of the matriculation notices were in yet, things were looking pretty good. Then he flashed the grin of a football coach with a three-touchdown lead counting down the final seconds of the fourth quarter. Judging from his expression, I think we can all pretty safely expect a substantial matriculation rate.

Happily, it seems the kids in the Class of 2003 were smart enough to take a reasoned look at Dartmouth and see past the myth that some people on campus desperately want to believe.

What does all of this go to prove? I'm not quite sure, but I'll trust my copy of The Inferno over a TI-85 calculator any day.

— Benjamin Patch
Editor-in-Chief