"In ASU's case, the party-school ranking is 'a gross simplification that doesn't have anything to do with who we are and what we are,' Crow says.
"Crow has made an enormous effort to ratchet up the academics. He hired Ed Prescott, who then won the 2004 Nobel Prize in economic sciences. He helped recruit 162 National Merit Scholars to attend ASU last fall. He envisions a 'New American University' that will offer quality education to many and foster economic growth.
"Now comes Playboy's list.
"'How do they really know?' Crow asks. 'How do they really assess that? ASU is a very serious school with very serious students. It's also a place where people have a great time and is a great place to be.'
"The party-school image stems partly from some of ASU's inherent qualities. It's huge, with about 52,000 students on the Tempe campus alone. It's sunny and warm throughout the school year.
"In the Princeton Review, some ASU students describe the school like this:
"It's a place where 'almost everyone is beautiful: tall, blond, skinny, and bronzed. . . . Everyone works out and takes care of their bodies, but at the same time (they know) how to have a good time.' As one student puts it: 'It is rare to find an academically oriented soul on campus.'"
Thus sayeth the Greek freshman from out-of-state who's discovering how to "party" by getting drunk and stoned from his or her similarly-intoxicated Greek brothers/sisters. What a goof!
"Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey says the 2006 list is different from Playboy's last one in 2002, when ASU was No. 1, or the previous one in 1987, when the Sun Devils were 13th.
"'Others were pollings of students and readers,' she said. 'This time, it was just some editors who thought of some great party schools.'"
In other words, why waste all that money on asking people what they think? We'll just make it up as we go along. A small comfort to Dr. Crow, I imagine.
Of course, party rankings really don't mean all that much:
"'When students are hunting for a university, it's not a significant issue to students if it's on a party list,' Mark Nickel, spokesman for Brown University (33rd on Playboy's 1987 listing of party schools), said.
"But there's another concern about such ratings. John Lucas, a spokesman for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, blames the publications and Web sites for glorifying the party culture.
"'It causes a problem on campus,' Lucas says of Wisconsin's being ranked in the top 10 on some lists. 'It becomes self-fulfilling. Students say, "We need to follow those rankings. We have to drink more, not just three or four, but seven or eight, instead."
University of Wisconsin police have taken 44 students to the emergency room this fall because they were so drunk, Lucas says. That compares with 25 last fall."
On the other hand, the other article in the Arizona Republic backed up some of Dr. Crow's assertion about how Arizona State is becoming a top-notch university:
"Arizona State University is the country's fourth-highest producer of Fulbright scholars among public universities for the current school year.
"And while ASU ranks 13th nationally with 14 students participating in the country's largest international exchange program, the school's acceptance rate - nearly 40 percent - was higher than all Ivy League institutions.
"'It really does send a signal to the country that we are a very serious research university. It shows we have a wonderful faculty and students that are doing interesting things and I think that's important,' said Janet Burke, associate dean for national scholarship advisement and internships at the ASU Barrett Honors College."
Returning to the original article, Labels frustrate ASU, UA: Tempe fights party reputation; Tucson says it's not Dullsville, the Republic concluded by writing:
"For all the ballyhoo about which school is more about partying than academics, a closer examination of ASU and UA [the University of Arizona] finds they look a lot alike.
"For the 2004-05 freshman class, UA accepted 83 percent of applicants, while ASU accepted 86 percent. The average UA freshman's high school GPA was 3.4; ASU's was 3.3. The average SAT scores of the schools differed by only 10 points.
"Guess they'll have to sort out their real differences later tonight on the football field."
Which, of course, ASU won, 23-20. :)
2 comments:
Wa 'alaikum salaam.
Cool. A fellow alumnus. When I worked on my Bachelor's, I lived in Irish "C" (F'85 - F'87), that is, until I got the roommate from H#LL in the early part of the semester. I then moved over to Mariposa(?), the converted hotel turned coed dorm, for the last three months or so. Irish was a pretty cool dorm for the most part. I have some good memories.
For my Master's, I lived off-campus, up in Scottsdale.
When did you go there, and what was your major?
Wa 'alaikum salaam.
Well, you've met your first fellow ASU alumnus online, then. :) I never lived in Manzy, but I went into some dorm rooms there on occasion; they were incredibly tiny compared to those over at Irish. Actually, that was what I loved about old dorms like Irish: they had dirt-cheap rents, but the rooms were large, haveing been built in an era before administrators thought to pack in as many students as a building (like Manzy) could hold.
I never would have thought to have a major like Photography, but that's turned into a serious hobby of mine over the past few years. I broke down and bought a 35mm SLR while I was up in Korea (I was forever taking pictures up there because the culture is so different), and the guy who ran the film developing business that I visited taught me a lot about how to take good photographs. Visit my Ang Moh in SG blog; it's turned into a quasi-photo blog. I've got a bunch of photos that I need to edit and upload onto there, insha'allah.
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