Centre College visit

Friday morning Vincent and I left for what he billed as his last college visit, to historically Presbyterian Centre College (old administrative building pictured above), KY’s most selective four-year liberal arts college (which I must confess I hadn’t heard of until moving to KY), in historic Danville, KY. A guy I knew from Swarthmore teaches sociology there, and at General Assembly I met one of his students. Neither was in Danville Friday, but I polled both of them by e-mail and both of them suggested the same place for lunch: adjoining with the college bookstore (in town), a café called the Hub (pictured below). After zipping there in an hour and a quarter (partly down the KY Bourbon Trail – past the Wild Turkey and Four Roses distillers – see “Kentucky and Bourbon”), Vincent and I both had sandwiches and enjoyed the ambience. I later noticed that the picture of my friend and his students sitting on sofas during a Swarthmore-looking seminar in one of the college admissions brochures is actually set in the Hub – Vincent and I sat at a table and chairs instead of on the sofas.

Vincent and I then went to the 1-4 p.m. prospective students event, with a social sciences and international studies theme. Initially, other parents and their kids were quiet (I later met the Corbin, KY lawyer and his daughter who had been having lunch in the Hub the same time as us). With three whole hours, I was expecting some food and some more elaborate (and more general – not just about Centre) program, along the lines of what Vincent and I got at Centre rival Transylvania, in Lexington, where a college admissions officer talked about different strategies for writing college admissions essays and read a couple of ones through the years that she’s loved – and I was not disappointed. This time they split us into groups and a couple of dozen of us (students and their parents from: Dayton, OH; Maysville, KY (where cousin Lyndsey and her family lived briefly); Oak Ridge, TN; Carmel, IN; Lexington, KY; Frankfort, KY; Corbin, KY; and Elkin, NC) went to a classroom and engaged in a selective admissions activity. Most of the kids (Vincent didn’t volunteer) and a couple of parents stood in front of the classroom and were given sheets of paper with grade point averages printed on them, which they held up. The GPAs ranged from 4.1 (must be weighted) to 2.0 (closer to Vincent’s actual GPA). Then each sheet of paper had details about the high school student and Centre applicant printed on the back. The participants stood in order of GPA and then – while the admissions officer read off (and after each one discussed) a series of details about them, instructed them to move up or down usually 1 to 3 people over – depending on the details. People moved up for any range of reasons: they directed a gospel choir, they had standardized test scores above the mean average for Centre students, they would be the first in their family to go to college, or they were the child of a Centre alumnus or alumna. They moved down for things like they didn’t know their high school teachers well enough to ask for letters of recommendations, they were suspended from high school for plagiarizing a history paper, they skipped going to the optional college interview, or they had avoided taking any Advanced Placement classes in high school even though their high school offered them – and many more. We were told the middle 50% of incoming Centre students – from the 25th to the 75th percentile – was 26 to 30 on the ACT and 1170 to 1330 on the SAT. (I believe Vincent’s most recent scores were 27 and 1180, respectively.) We were also told that some 2,400 folks apply for admission to Centre each year, about 1,200 are accepted and 300 to 400 show up. (Vincent did pipe in to ask whether having a criminal record - !? – would disqualify someone for admission.) We think it’s worth it for Vincent to apply to a couple of these private schools just in case he gets in and get some kind of scholarship. (On the whole, he’s probably unlikely to get in and we’re unlikely to be able to afford it).

Next on tap was a college tour with one of the three tour guides. Josh (pictured below on the tour) showed us around campus and told us various tidbits, for example about drinking (they apparently tolerate unless it gets out of control, even though they’re in a dry county), drug use (zero tolerance – last year four students got kicked out of school for drugs – one user and three other students who had simply failed to turn the user in), and streaking (they’ve still maintained these 1970s practice, but in the spring late at night). Josh also told us which dining halls and better food etc. and showed us a beautiful 2,000-seat performing arts auditorium that hosted the 2000 vice presidential debate (Senator Lieberman vs. Secretary Cheney – I remember the debate well).

As we talked more with Josh and other parents and their kids, I realized that not only were two Brown students going to Centre as 1st-year students this fall (including Chris, who went to Vincent’s 16th birthday party and I mentioned in “Math walk”- remember: Vincent’s English teacher had recommended Centre even more than Transy) but so is a kid from Vincent’s martial arts school (who a parent and daughter from Indy on the tour with us had met). Josh said somewhat inaccurately that Centre is no longer Presbyterian (no legal affiliation – but it is part of an association of (historically) Presbyterian colleges and universities). But the fact that he said this (and the absence of any mention of being Presbyterian as a plus in the college admissions activity/game) suggests that there’s no affirmative action for nominal Presbyterians like Vincent. (There are national scholarships for Presbyterians going to college, but they have minimum GPAs which Vincent is unlikely to be able to meet.)

The last hour of the event was in a chemistry lecture hall (big but much smaller than the Florida State University chemistry lecture hall where I once took the SAT). The student-to-faculty ratio at Centre is an absurdly low 111 and classes are capped in size at something low like 28. Here we listened to a prof and recent grad talk about study abroad opportunities, which is something Vincent is interested in (formerly Japan; now Denmark) and a topic about which we heard a presentation at Western Kentucky also. The prof, who teaches history and helps Centre plan, has been to Vietnam several times and the student had participated in one the college’s chief organized study abroad semesters (in Mexico – they also had them in Ireland and Japan, where Vincent used to want to go). The student lived with a Mexican family and took classes some in English and some in Spanish. (She said she studied Spanish but disliked it until she started taking it in college.) She also traveled around with other students quite a bit (and – from the pictures it appeared that she partied/touristed some). (Before students go on the program at Japan’s Yamaguchi University, they have to take a year of Japanese – which means Centre offers Japanese.) The student had also been on a shorter-term study abroad experience in India.

The two of them showed PowerPoint slides from the three trips, but – even with all of the fancy equipment – the pictures were very dark. When they got to the very last picture, they figured out something about how to brighten the pictures and the last picture looked great – apparently they had some backlighting or something like that. This all made me nervous because Friday I started working on a PowerPoint presentation I might make at the American Sociological Association meeting (with pictures embedded in the slides), something I don’t have that much experience with. This made me wonder more about what could go wrong with that.

We wrapped things up with some brownies and lemonade and a couple of good-byes – I’m afraid we don’t schmooze with admissions staff as we had some elsewhere – although at Transy the admissions staffperson came to us. These private schools encourage prospective students to come back for an overnight visit and probably for an on-campus interview. Vincent still says he wants to go to Western Kentucky, but we hope to persuade him to apply to one of these private schools – just in case he happens to get into and get a scholarship from one of them. (His friend Sam’s sister has gone to Transy.) I had his SAT scores sent to six schools – including one where they came to Louisville but we haven’t visited (Ohio’s Wittenberg) and there’s one more nearby private school that I’d like him to visit that had an event on the same day (Indiana’s Hanover College). But it’s going to be tough to get him to do any more college visits, I think. We’ll hope he does even better on late fall’s ACT than he did this past spring and better than he did on the SAT. Stephanie and I have with Vincent to several of these visits (Western Kentucky, Murray State), Vincent and I have been to two by ourselves (Transy and Centre), and Stephanie and Vincent have been to two by themselves (Morehead State, Indiana University Southeast). And wherever he goes perhaps we can come back at some point to visit if not the distilleries other Danville area sites.

-- Perry