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Amherst Data Highlights Differences between Seniors and Entering First-Years

Intelligence

Amherst Data Highlights Differences between Seniors and Entering First-Years

Sep 29, 2008By Michael Stoner

For example, Amherst had 4,037 applicants for administrative and staff positions use its web-based application system in the first ten months after launch.

Schilling says that 7,354 alumni have logged into the college’s website. Though here’s my question: does this mean that 7,354 different individuals have logged into the the site, or that’s the number of times all alumni have logged into the site. And what period of time are we talking about? A year, six months, a week?]. By the way, Amherst’s site says that the college has “more than 20,300” alumni.

Here’s some interesting data:

Estimated number of hours it would have taken to update the graphics, navigation, and organization of the 2005–2006 College web site (static HTML): 50,000.
Hours it took to roll out the new web site in August 2008 (database-driven): 3.5.

But I keep coming back to the students, those members of the Class of 2012. My, how they differ from the Class of 2009! Amherst’s entering class consists of 438 students. Keep that number in mind as you read on….

For example, in 2003, 33% of applicants applied online; this year, 89% did.

Here’s more: The first entering class at Amherst to create a Facebook group prior to arriving on campus did so in 2006 [Facebook launched in February, 2004, and expanded from colleges into high schools in September, 2005]; this year, the Class of 2012’s Facebook group had 432 members and 3,225 posts.

The students love toys: 370 students registered 443 devices (computers, iPhones, game consoles) on the campus network on the day they moved into their rooms. Of these, 14 brought desktop computers and 93 brought iPhones/iTouches to campus. And students in the Class of 2012 and 2011 are more likely to own Macintoshes than students in the classes of 2009 and 2010.


  • Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?