Do you remember where you were when you heard the big news? Jessica Bethke does.
“I was at work, and my mom told my manager, who is also my girlfriend, to tell me that there was an envelope from Oberlin,” she said. “I had had a pretty stressful day. And yeah, I started to cry.”
Bethke, a high school senior from DeForest, Wisconsin, is one of 336 students who applied to the Class of 2007 under Oberlin’s early decision program, and one of about 250 who will be here in the fall.
This year’s crop of ED students bears several similarities to last year’s, according to Dean of Admissions Debra Chermonte.
“We have 336 early decision applications, compared with 341 last year, so it’s virtually even,” she said. “I’m expecting that like last year, about a third of the entering class would be early decision candidates.”
The class’s SAT scores are also basically unchanged.
“It’s pretty much the way it was last year — an average for the group is going to be about 1300,” Chermonte said. “We expect, as in past years, that the overall average SAT score for the entire class is going to be closer to the 1350 range or better,” she added.
There’s more to admissions than SAT scores, however. Lately, critics have called Oberlin to task for its declining enrollment of African Americans. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Black students make up only 4.8 percent of the Class of 2006, compared to 8 percent for the school as a whole.
Chermonte defended Oberlin from charges that it is losing its place as a leader in racial diversity, noting that the College has recently had more success in attracting Latino students. She said that about 20 percent of the applications that her office has looked at have been from students of color, and predicted that students of color would make up a similar percentage of the final class.
The early decision system itself has become controversial in recent years, with critics accusing it of benefiting higher-income applicants, and making the college application process too stressful.
Responding to this criticism, Yale and Stanford Universities announced last November that they would abandon their early decision programs, replacing them with “early action” programs, under which applicants are not bound to enroll if accepted.
“I think early decision is an admissions tool that needs some serious discussion,” College President Nancy Dye said. “It has the potential for being abused.”
Nevertheless, she said that she hasn’t heard any discussion of moving the College to an early action program, or of scrapping the early decision program altogether.
“I’m not exactly sure how early action would work, and that’s an issue,” she said.
She added, however, that Oberlin strives to fill no more than a third of each class with early decision students, and will continue to do so.
Another criticism frequently leveled at Oberlin is that its students are getting more “mainstream” from year to year, and that in the process, the College is losing much of what makes it unique. Both Chermonte and Dye denied that this is the case.
Dye added, however, that she would like to see the College build a more politically diverse class.
“It does seem to me that that’s a kind of diversity that is less well represented at Oberlin and that it is very important in developing one’s own politics to interact with people who disagree with you,” she said. “You become a bit eclectic in your political thinking if you are exposed to different points of view, even if it isn’t an idea.”
She does not believe that more political diversity will erode Oberlin’s essential character.
“I think Oberlin’s character is a character that is inclusive and a character that values difference,” Dye said. “There is absolutely nothing in Oberlin’s character that would be harmed or changed by having a broader or more robust discussion across a wider political spectrum.”
Even if one disagrees with that statement, it may be premature to panic. Judging from incoming students who were interviewed for this article, the Obies of tomorrow don’t seem drastically different from the Obies of today.
“Well, not in a ‘normal’ sense, no,” Bethke said, when asked if she considered herself normal. “But I’ve heard that everyone at Oberlin is so liberal that it’s normal, and I guess I pretty much fall into that category.”
“I’m definitely not mainstream,” Hannah Fenley, an incoming student from Skokie, Illinois, said. “I tend to dress differently than most ‘normal’ people, I listen to different music, I dye my hair a lot and I have a couple piercings.”
“I would say that at my school, which is small and there are a lot of Oberlin-like kids, I’m probably normal to them,” Zach Steinman, an incoming student from San Francisco, said. “Yet if I was to go to the quintessential American public high school, I would definitely be off-center.”
“I’m looking forward to new surroundings, college classes, maybe starting a radio show, and having existentialist conversations over a 40 and blunt with my homedogs,” he added.