Earlham's First Year Students

Information from 2000 CIRP Survey and from Earlier Years

Prepared April 2002 by Mary Ann Weaver and Maura McDonald

Click here for links to tables within this report

The Cooperative Institutional Research Program survey is given to entering students at Earlham and many other colleges and universities each fall. In 2000, 193 of Earlham's first-year students completed the survey. As usual, Earlham students are characterized by high academic standards with 45% of the entering first-year students who completed the form reporting an average high school grade of A or A-. They were compared with freshmen in a national sample of 269,413 new students at 434 institutions concerning their personal history, family characteristics, educational goals, values, attitudes on social issues, behavioral patterns, perceptions of their parents, and a variety of other issues.

Women comprise 59% of Earlham's first-year student sample. Eighty eight percent of Earlham first year students intend to pursue a Bachelor's degree. An M.A. degree is the eventual educational goal of 41% of Earlhamites; 35% plan to seek an Ed.D. or Ph.D. (versus 17% nationally); an additional 8% of these entering students expect to earn a doctorate in a medical field.

In religious preference, 16% are Quaker (versus 0.2% nationally), 8% are Catholic, 3% Baptist, 3% Methodist, and 5% Jewish. There were 8% who responded that they are "other Christian" and 15% who said "other religion." The most common religious preference among entering Earlham students was "none," cited by 32% compared to 5% of the national sample. 

The proportion of African-American students in the class is 7%. The proportion at the national level this year for all institutions is 10%. Although 85% identified themselves as White/Caucasian, the minority categories, including African-Americans, totals 23%. This reflects students' indicating more than one racial category.

Parental income below $25,000 was reported by 17% of these new students at Earlham; income of $50,000 or more by 64%. Thirty percent of these students' parents are divorced or separated. Nationally, 23% surveyed come from divorced or separated families. Death has claimed at least one parent of 2% of the entering class at Earlham this year.

About 2% of the class lives within five miles of Earlham; 19% report living 6 to 100 miles away. Thirty-four percent live within 101 and 500 miles of the college, and 44% are more than 500 miles away from home. These figures confirm that Earlham continues to be a "national" institution. Nationwide, a mere 13% of students attend an institution more than 500 miles from their home.

How did students spend their time in the senior year in high school? We see that the biggest block of time was spent socializing with friends. More than three-quarters (77%) of Earlham's entering students spent six or more hours per week socializing, while 32% spent sixteen or more hours per week. Thankfully, only very few (0.5%) of students reported spending no time socializing. More than half of students (61%) spent more than six hours a week studying or doing homework.Seventeen percent of these students spent more than sixteen hours a week studying. These figures are much higher than the national ones. Only 29% of students nationally reported spending more than six hours studying, and a mere 7% spent over sixteen hours a week on homework. Many of the Earlham students held a job during the last year. Eighteen percent of the soon-to-be Earlham students spent sixteen or more hours working for pay each week while 45% spent six or more hours doing the same. Students also spent time in extracurricular activities. Eighty-one percent of the students spent time in one or more student organizations.

Earlham students tend to come from well-educated families. Fifty-one percent of the fathers of entering students hold graduate degrees (compared to 23% nationally).Thirteen percent of the fathers have had a formal education of high school or less (the figure is 28% for the national group). A total of 14% are educators; 6% are college teachers.Seventeen percent have jobs in the helping professions (such as clergy, health care workers, social workers, nurses, doctors and lawyers). For the mothers of entering students, 44% hold graduate degrees (17% nationally) and 9% a formal education of high school or less (29% nationally). Mothers' careers are varied -- 10% are full-time homemakers, whereas 20% work in the field of education as college teachers/administrators, in elementary education, or in secondary schools. Elementary Education was the most common career for the mothers (10%). An additional 23% are employed in the helping professions listed previously.

Table 1

Political Views

As usual, Earlham students tend to be much more liberal than their national counterparts. The number of students reporting "far left" or "liberal" political views is very high comparatively, while the percentage of "middle of the road" responses is approximately less than half the national figure. Not surprisingly, few new Earlham students report being conservative or "far right".

Table 2

Probable Career Occupation

Earlham students are more likely to want to be foreign service workers or college teachers than those in the national sample. They also are more interested in careers as writers or journalists. Business executive and engineer are popular career goals for the national sample but are not as common among the Earlham sample. Earlham students are more than twice as likely as their national counterparts to be undecided about a career. Gender differences in several career areas - business executive, computer programmer  (typically male), social or welfare worker and physician (typically female) - fit traditional norms. The relatively equal number of males and females opting for careers as journalists or writers, secondary school teachers, or scientific researchers reflect changing sex roles. Another indication of changing sex roles is seen in the fact that more females than males are choosing careers in medicine.

Table 3

Reasons Noted as Very Important in Deciding to Attend College

As we restructure the General Education program at Earlham, we need to take note that 86% of the incoming students came to college to gain a general education compared to 65% nationwide. Earlham students are also much more likely than their national counterparts to be in college to learn more about things and to become a more cultured person. They are much less interested in the benefit of making more money which was quite important to students in the national sample. This trend has varied somewhat over the years as can be seen by the CIRP trends chart at http://www.earlham.edu/~ir/cirp_trends/college_reason.htm but has remained well under the national average.

Table 4

Reasons Noted as Being Very Important in Choosing Earlham

The two things which seem to have inspired most students to come to Earlham are its good academic reputation and the size of the college. The small size of Earlham was very important to 70% of the incoming students in choosing to come here. Only 35% of the national sample felt the size of the college was very important in choosing a college. Sixty-two percent of Earlham students noted Earlham's good academic reputation as a very important reason for choosing Earlham, whereas 55% of the national sample of students considered academic reputation an important reason for choosing their college. Financial assistance was also important to students . The early-action program, religious affiliation, and scholarships were more important for students in choosing Earlham than for students in the national sample. Low tuition, the desire to live close to home and the fact that graduates get good jobs were more important to students in the national sample than to students at Earlham. To compare these responses with previous year responses, see CIRP trends at http://www.earlham.edu/~ir/cirp_trends/earlham_reason.htm

Interestingly, more women were influenced by information on Earlham's web site (women 7%; men 4%) and that percentage was equivalent to the overall national norm (7%).

Table 5

Probable Major Field of Study (Percentage of Students)

In terms of probable majors of this group of entering students, the social sciences continue to make a strong showing here. Humanities remain a less frequent choice. Notable major preferences this year include Biology, Political Science, Math or Computer Science, and Psychology.

Table 6

Objectives Considered to be Essential or Very Important

Helping others in difficulty is the most important life goal for the first year students at Earlham. This goal is also important to the students in the national sample, but somewhat less so. Influencing social values and being involved in programs to clean up the environment are goals of Earlham students which are not nearly as important to students in the national sample. Helping to promote racial understanding has always been considered of greater importance to Earlham students compared to the national average, though recent years show there has been less importance place on this issue than in the early 1990's. Although we were beginning to see a trend towards more importance being placed on financial status, the entering Earlham students this year returned to a very low number percentage (28%) comparable to the lows of the early nineties. Being very well off financially is almost three times more important to the national sample of students than to the Earlham sample this year. Raising a family was somewhat more essential to students on the national level. In an example of what Earlham students consider to be more essential than their national counterparts, averaging the percentage of students in the last two years indicates that 54% of the entering Earlham students felt it was important to integrate spirituality into their lives compared to 44% from the national sample for the last two years. In general, the importance of each goal to the Earlham students was much different than the importance to the national sample, once again confirming the distinctiveness of the Earlham population. Trends for past years can be found at http://www.earlham.edu/~ir/cirp_trends/objectives.htm

Table 7

Views on Social Issues: Government and Institutions

Earlham students' views on the death penalty are quite different from those of the national sample. Fifty-nine percent of Earlham's entering students in 2000 felt that colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus compared to 53% of the students entering Earlham in 1999. Comparing students views on this issue over the last four years, 56% of Earlham students felt racist/sexist speech should be prohibited on campus compared with the average national percentage of 63%. Earlham students in general have very liberal views on issues of government and institutions. Females in the Earlham sample tend to be even more liberal than their male counterparts, but both sexes are more liberal than their national peers.

It is somewhat surprising that 16% of first-year students at Earlham agree strongly or somewhat that realistically, an individual can do little to bring about changes in our society considering that 30% of these students indicated that chances are very good that they will participate in student protests or demonstrations (See Table 11). Nationally, 27% agree strongly or somewhat that an individual can do little to bring about changes in our society and only 5% of these students indicated that chances are very good that they will participate in student protests or demonstrations.

Table 8

Views on Social Issues: Lifestyles

Although 89% of Earlham students agree that same sex couples should have the right to legal marital status, just 56% of the national sample agree with this idea. The majority of the new Earlham students also agree that abortion and marijuana should be legalized. These views contrast sharply with the national group. In issues regarding homosexual relationships and sex with a short-term partner, there are little gender differences among the Earlham students, unlike the national sample. The latter findings can result in more opportunity for misunderstandings and confusion about behavior among the Earlham male students. Previous year data on this topic can be seen on a CIRP trends chart at http://www.earlham.edu/~ir/cirp_trends/agree.htm

Table 9

Activities Engaged in by Students in the Past Year

*Percentage reporting frequently only. Other percentages are responses of "frequently" or "occasionally".

The most common activities among Earlham students during the past year were attending a recital or concert, studying with other students, performing volunteer work, and visiting an art gallery or museum. Earlham students were much more likely to have discussed politics than their national counterparts. They were guests in teachers' homes or asked a teacher for advice, performed volunteer work, and played a musical instrument more frequently. Forty-six percent of both men and women drank beer, whereas 51% of the men and 61% of the women consumed wine or liquor. The gender difference in the national sample is much less significant with 53% of men and 54% of women consuming wine or liquor. A larger percentage (89%) of Earlham students attended a religious service compared to the national sample (83%) and 48% of Earlham students discussed religion compared to 30% of the national sample. There were fewer Earlham students (62%) who frequently used the internet for research or homework compared to 67% nationally. Frequent smoking is nearly equal among Earlham men and women.

Table 10

Areas in Which Student Rated Self Above Average or Top 10%

Self-ratings of academic abilities continue to remain high among the Earlham students. They also rated themselves considerably higher than the national sample in their writing ability, artistic ability and creativity. They see themselves as fairly uncompetitive in comparison to the national sample, but similar to the national norm in cooperativeness. Earlham men saw themselves better in mathematics and computer skills. Earlham women reported themselves as less competitive than the men. The women also rated themselves as having a greater drive to achieve than the men and were more in line with the national norm. Data on academic and mathematical self ratings from previous years may be seen on a CIRP trends charts at http://www.earlham.edu/~ir/cirp_trends/academicability.htm

Table 11

Students Estimate chances are Very Good That They Will...

The new Earlham first-year students think they are more likely than the national sample to participate in students protests and volunteer work. Students in the national survey are less likely to change their major or career choice than Earlham students. As usual, gender differences are striking here.

Earlham was the first choice for 65% of these students. Interestingly, some students (3%) already think that there is a "very good chance" that they will drop out temporarily (the survey was given during New Student Week). Only 64% believe that the likelihood is very good that they will be satisfied with Earlham. 

Looking at diversity issues, it was encouraging to find that 89% of the entering Earlham students had frequently socialized with a different ethnic group during the past year. It was troubling to find that only 61% of Earlham first-year students considered helping promote racial understanding an essential or very important objective. However, only 31% of the national sample considered promoting racial understanding an essential objective. Six percent of Earlham students agreed that racial discrimination is no longer a major problem in America compared to 21% nationally. Earlham will need to continue to find ways to promote diversity on campus.

CONCLUSION

These data provide a baseline picture of the 2000 entering group of Earlham students. Once again, this group stands out as very distinctive from the national comparison sample. It will be very important to follow up this group of students to ascertain the ways in which this distinctiveness continues to graduation and beyond.

Created by Mary Ann Weaver
weavema@earlham.edu
April, 2002