A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to some McGill residents over pizza. She mentioned how she was transferring out and when she asked a professor to write a recommendation letter, the professor made a remark on how sad the situation was as her recommendation letter wasn't the first he had to write this semester. One of my residents transferred to Ohio State over winter break. He hated it here because the type of person he is did not fit in with the type of campus Carnegie Mellon is.

The administration has been doing their job recruiting more diverse students. Since 1999 when I first set foot on campus, I've noticed differences in each incoming class. The problem right now is keeping these students happy and retaining them. The students are becoming less of the traditional CMU bookworm and more of the multi-talented, multi-interest people the school has been longing for. However our facilities do not cater to these students and these new students don't really mix well with the upperclassmen.

After speaking with President Cohen today, I found that the current sophomore class' attrition rate spiked a bit to 6% compared to a steady decline for the last several years. I think it was the class after mine when the admissions council changed their policies. Prior to that class, President Cohen stated that SAT scores and GPA played out to 95% of the decision process. Currently that only makes up of about 66% while Leadership and extracurriculars fill out the rest.