The once-annual declarations that the "best class ever has just been admitted to Tufts" may be dwindling in the coming years.
According to Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin, after big jumps in the academic statistics of admitted classes, numbers have begun to level out. This does not mean, however, that Admissions will necessarily be coasting from here on out.
With the help of consultant Mark Neustadt, Tufts is in the midst of an image revamp that is changing the way that Admissions presents the University to prospective students.
"If you look at the last four or five classes, every class has been gaining academically," Coffin said. "What I think is happening, in terms of the profile, is that we had a lot of rapid growths and shifts, and now we're solidifying."
The class of 2009's average SAT score of 1399 was a thirty-one point jump from the average 1368 of the class of 2008, which was in turn a big jump from the 1332 of the class of 2007.
The rise in scores from the class of 2009 to the newly accepted class of 2010 was not so dramatic. The average combined SAT (excluding the new writing portion) has only gone up seven points, from 1399 to 1406.
Statistics for the class of 2010 are based on the number of students who have so far accepted the offer of enrollment. As of May 13, 25 percent of accepted students had neither declined nor accepted the University's offer. May 13 was the postmark deadline.
"What seems to be happening this year - nationally - is that kids are taking their sweet time to decide," he said. He added that high school guidance counselors have told him that this is a year when kids are really struggling to make college decisions.
Coffin said that when he looks at other schools similar to Tufts - universities of about the same size, with the same number of applicants - "our admissions profile looks like Northwestern, like Georgetown - and it's getting closer to Dartmouth."
Coffin attributes this rapid improvement during the past five years to the presidency of Lawrence Bacow.
"It really parallels the Bacow presidency," he said. "The [applicant] pool had been growing, and as President Bacow has led us toward a greater definition of our strengths, as the faculty grows in strength, Admissions is able to talk about it more clearly, and students respond."
Bacow has also proved an asset in fundraising, Coffin said. "He has raised quite a lot of money, and it continues to come. As you increase resources, it allows different kinds of research and different kinds of programming."
Coffin cited the Omidyar fund as an example of a new initiative that has allowed him to talk about entrepreneurialism, microfinance, global outreach and citizen involvement.
Faculty achievements have also flourished this year, as chemistry professor David Walt received a $1 million grant as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, and Professor Martin Sherwin was a co-recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for a biography of Robert Oppenheimer.
"I think this place has become much more confident in the way it presents itself," Coffin said. "We present ourselves in a way that more and more high-achieving students can say, 'I can see myself there.'"
One high school student who sees himself at Tufts is Jeffrey Finkelstein, a senior at Irvington High School, a small public school in Westchester country, New York. Finkelstein chose to attend Tufts over Boston University and will be matriculating in the fall.
"I definitely knew that Tufts was big on having kids go abroad in their third year," Finkelstein said when asked about Tufts' reputation for internationalism. "And I knew that there was a community service program."
"Tufts was always a place that people liked," but now they can articulate why, Coffin said. "Having Newsweek put the spotlight on our international studies program has helped.
"What I'm not saying is that we're going to be complacent," Coffin said. "But I don't think you're going to see steep increases; I think there will be forward movement, but less dramatically so.
"The goal will always be to keep rising," he said. But right now, he said, with 82 percent of students ranking in the top 10 percent of their class, there is a limit to how high these numbers can go.
There will always be good students who are not in the top 10 percent who should be admitted, Coffin said, or students at schools of such a high caliber that being in the top 20 percent is an achievement.
Coffin said that in the coming years, the admissions department will "focus more on things like the essays that people write - although there's no way to quantify that."
The University hired Neustadt, of Neustadt Creative Marketing, to complete a University-wide communications project, and his work is greatly changing Admissions' selling points.
According to Coffin, Neustadt did a great deal of marketing research last year, ranging from surveys to focus groups. He found that participants in focus groups really responded to the idea of a school that "uses its intellectual resources to make a difference," but could not really name a school that did so.
This theme, Neustadt advised, appeared "highly appealing, organic to the University, and differentiating," Coffin said.
Coffin said that he personally enjoys using this new message, "because you can talk about political science, community health, chemistry, everything with it ... it doesn't alienate any discipline."
According to Coffin, "the intent is to look ahead five to 10 years and guarantee that," at the point in time when the number of 18-year-olds starts to decline, "Tufts is in a position of strength, that we've got the right infrastructure in Admissions to recruit and enroll the type of students we like to have here."
In addition, Neustadt found that participants liked the idea of the international focus of the University, but that the concept is more powerful "if it's across the curriculum." Students who are biology majors, for instance, liked the idea of a general international focus, but wouldn't be helped by an excellent IR major.
"It's a subtle but insightful change," Coffin said. "I'm much more aware of the need to talk about globalism."
Finally, Admissions is also working with Neustadt to produce a new viewbook, which will go out to the prospective class of 2011.
"It's similar to the New York Times Magazine," Coffin said. The new book has bigger pictures, more photojournalism and less words. "It's more provocative," Coffin said. It is also over a hundred pages long.
"The intent is to mail it out and have a different kind of kid take a look at it," he said. "We don't want to lose the old one, though."
Still, while the new Tufts campaign to focus its reputation may be having a large impact, for students like Finkelstein, the ultimate reasons that high school students choose Tufts may be more humble than the school's global nature or community activism.
"The main reason I chose Tufts is that I liked the kids who go there," Finkelstein said. "They just seemed like really nice, normal and helpful people."
- David Pomerantz contributed to this article
