Everything’s better than fine!

“80% Med School Acceptance Rate (National Average 49%).” That’s what they are reminding us at BJU.edu. Eighty Percent! See that, parents? See that, DOE? We’re better than great. We’re better than fine.

We alumni are in the middle of spin. Right now. We can touch their data. We can see what’s happening for ourselves. And I’ve chosen to document this here (instead of the alumni news feed) so that we can reference this in the future. I’m building up toward something here, very slowly.

What does this 80% acceptance rate mean in 2014? Seven BJU graduates from the Class of 2014 were accepted in medical school. You can scroll through their pictures here. BJU has featured them prominently as part of their student retention campaign. One has been accepted to an out-of-state school, one to an out-of-the-country school, and the other five are in Greenville County itself, where we know that Dr. Hugh Clarke still wields his charm for the benefit of BJU’s students.

That’s what those statistics mean. That’s the spin.

In an earlier post, I featured Bob Sr.’s propaganda from 1932. He mentioned a full-page newspaper advertisement BJC had placed in the Montgomery Advertiser and other newspapers. Take a look at it here or an enlarged photo here. Are their words any different in 1932 than their words at their own portal or in the local media in 2014?

In 1932, students awkwardly gushed that Bob Jones College was their Savior:

To me, Bob Jones College has meant the finding of Christ.

The Bob Jones College has meant Jesus Christ to me.

Now, today’s students are more sophisticated. They know better. And evolution is still a major flashpoint:

Since coming to the college I have accepted Christ as my savior. I no longer believe in evolution.

The 1932 story ends with one glorious hero. An Alabama editorialist (think the Deep South, Depression-Era version of Glenn Beck) pen-named “Scotty McKenzie Frazier” gushed about the reason for Bob Jones College’s success:

Dr. Bob . . .  has a school, where there is an old-fashioned religion instead of drinking and gambling. He has in his school a super-class of boys and girls, who rate higher in their tests than the same classes of Yale and Princeton. When a psychologist visits Bob Jones College, he wakes up to the fact that faith and constructive thinking gets the same results, whether you call it old-fashioned religion or philosophy. “By your deeds ye shall be known.’ ‘Dr. Bob,’ we salute you as a great leader, as an unselfish Christian, as one of the most human and lovable of men. Bob, you are greater than we dreamed!

Yes, greater than we dreamed! Everything’s better than fine for Bob Jones, Inc. We’re doing great.

Or are they? The louder they sing about how great things are, the more we anticipate the ominous, doom-filled, minor-key movement.

What is going on at Bob Jones University?