Talk:Georgetown University/Archive 4

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Alumni paragraph in Intro

I think we might have too much information on alumni in the introduction. It's an entire paragraph at the moment, which has been expanded by three (or maybe just one) anonymous IP users recently, so I'm not sure who to contact about the edits. MOS:INTRO suggests that editors should avoid being overly specific about the articles sections, and should also avoid peacock terms, which is also a problem I have with sentences like "Georgetown is also a top feeder school for careers in finance." In my opinion, we can get away with two sentences: One specific sentence with two or three names, i.e. Bill Clinton and Antonin Scalia, and one general sentence to note foreign service and government professionals. Thoughts?-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 15:13, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

I see some back and forth editing going on about including "2 U.S. presidents" as alumni, namely whether Lyndon Baines Johnson should be included. It's a bit semantic to argue how long an individual should attend to be an alumnus or alumna, but regardless, I just don't think his semester is important enough to be included in the intro section. Bill Clinton meanwhile, attended full time, graduated, and has made repeated visits back to campus, to basketball games, etc, making it part of his biography and so should be named in the lead. Again, I still feel there's overall too much on alumni in the lead section so any paring down is great.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 16:13, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

@Patrickneil and Patrick: So I'm new to this, but yes the issue is on whether LBJ counts as an alum or not, because he attended for just over a semester before dropping out. I believe he does, and someone else believes he doesn't. First, as I said in my edit notes, there is an established distinction between a graduate and an alum. Someone is a graduate if they attend a university and graduate, and someone is an alum if they attend at all- no one is claiming that LBJ is a graduate. This is why dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk (Musk completed his degree at wharton but dropped out of stanford- so an alumnus of both but just a graduate of Wharton) are always counted amongst a school's notable alumni. If you go to the notable alumni pages themselves, they will include these people- as ours includes LBJ- and put an asterisk or something saying that they are alums but not graduates. This is why universities do notable *alumni* pages and not notable *graduates* pages. LBJ is literally the definition of a non-graduate alum. It's the definition, and this is verified by Google, and additionally it's the widely accepted practice among universities to count dropouts and the like as alums- the only exception to this rule, and even this varies by university, is if they were expelled. Just look at their pages- stanford would literally have under half the billionaires that it currently has in it's notable alumni if graduating were a requirement to be an alumni, because so many dropped out to start tech companies and whatnot. I really don't know what additional evidence I can possibly give. And in LBJ's case in particular, he loved Georgetown- gave money, spoke here on several occasions, and even sent his younger daughter here. There would be a debate to be had if he'd been expelled, but even then that would depend on the school. There isn't really a debate here, and I hate to be difficult but I have to stand by this. ~Jack, 30 July 2019

Hi Jack, welcome. Feel free to check out our FAQ for new users. I'll just say that if your edit on Wikipedia is reverted, its usually best to come here, to an article's talk page to hash it out, rather than edit warring by putting the text back. I definitley understand that argument for a broad definitin of alum, and I think there's room for a debate about that. My own contention is that, even if you consider him an alum, his brief law school attendence isn't notable enough to be included in the paragraphs at the top where article's topic is summarized and broadly definied. I have gone ahead and added a sentence about LBJ to the article's Alumni section, which I think is a more apropriate place to note it. Does that work as a compromise?-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 01:09, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Awesome, I love how logical and thought out your opinions, and the opinions of many others on here are- it's refreshing. This is going to be long because I want to say what I'm thinking now rather than go back and forth. So my perspective is that we have two presidents as alumni, and so the number in the intro should be two. I believe the intro paragraph for notable alumni should be a broad sweep of things. I agree with you- everyone knows Clinton is way more notable than LBJ as it pertains to being a Hoya- he actually graduated and made a much bigger deal out of coming here and all that. But then do we go to Stanford and tell them to cut their billionaire count in half because you now have to graduate to be counted as an alum on their page? Several of the billionaire they count in their intro didn't even last that first semester- including Elon Musk, who is basically their poster child, who dropped out literally under two days after arriving on campus to found Paypal. Or do we tell Princeton they can no longer count JFK as one of their presidents- which they do, and in their intro- because he transferred to Harvard after freshman year? I think if we have two presidents who were alumni, we count them both, and that's what this intro paragraph is for- it's a broad summary. If people want to read about individual presidents or billionaires or whatnot, they can do that by going to the sources or whatever else for particular research- that's what our alumni section is for, the specifics! I think putting a sentence or two about LBJ in the alumni section is a fantastic idea, those curious about our 2 presidents can go down and learn that LBJ dropped out in his first year of GU law school to join a political campaign- a job which he actually got through a prof at Georgetown- and that Bill graduated as an undergrad right before becoming a Rhodes Scholar. Also, not that it really matters, but this is what every other school does- they count everyone in their intro, as I gave two examples of further up in this paragraph.

Personally I believe the best thing to do is to get the number correctly in the intro- which is supposed to be a broad general sweep of our notable alumni, and then do what you're talking about and, in the alumni section- where it's supposed to be more specific- devote a sentence or two to LBJ in which you say that he attended but did not graduate. Also, if the link to our notable alumni works, which is does, they can also use that to check out the two Hoya presidents are. Does this make sense to you?

I also think that apart from this whole debate, having two presidents as alums is very different than having one. From an optics perspective, I personally think it looks bad to put specific names in the intro section- it implies that we have few enough important people that we have to mention the ones we do have. When we put specific names there, it almost sends the message that they're all we have- and this is far from the truth. Additionally from an optics perspective, saying "2 US Presidents" looks a heck of a lot better than 1, especially if you call that one by name. Having one president could be a fluke, having two is no fluke. Obviously these points are apart from my main argument, but worthy of consideration. Look, it's up to you in the end, because you're more established than I and have much more authority here, but I strongly believe we should count both in the intro. I think it is both truer and it looks better. This paragraph, and the two preceding it, were both me. ~Jack, 30 July 2019

"From an optics perspective"? "It looks better"? " "it almost sends the message that they're all we have"? "2 US Presidents" looks a heck of a lot better than 1"? Do you think you're on a marketing team writing promotional material for Georgetown? This is an encyclopedia, so please take a few minutes to read the essay on neutral point of view, which describes one of the five fundamental principles of Wikipedia. Also, please sign your comments on Talk pages with 4 tildes (i.e. ~ 4 times) at the end, which automatically inserts a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is necessary to allow other editors to easily see who wrote what and when. Thanks. Contributor321 (talk) 22:57, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

You know, I was unsure about whether to put that last part and almost refrained from doing so, because even though I expressly stated that it was, and I quote, "apart from the whole debate" and "apart from my main argument" and made so painfully clear that it was not my point, I knew someone might intentionally fixate on that and ignore what I'm actually saying- and that's exactly what you did. I mean seriously- you addressed nothing in my actual argument which is literally based on the dictionary definition of the word "alum" and the facts of how any other wikipedia page on a college is written. You just tried to be insulting and accuse me of using this as an opportunity to "market" Georgetown when my entire actual argument is based on logic, reason, and the facts. As you said- this is an encyclopedia, so we have to be neutral, unbiased, and objective. Google the definition of "alum". LBJ is an alum. I have heard no compelling reason whatsoever to refrain from including him as such, because that's what he is. 2601:806:4300:16F1:75FE:4EF8:1BC6:C75F (talk) 15:18, 1 August 2019 (UTC)Jack

Just so you know, the first result from Googling the definition of "alum", as you suggested, returns "a colorless astringent compound that is a hydrated double sulfate of aluminum and potassium, used in solution medicinally and in dyeing and tanning." The 2nd is: "either of two colorless or white crystalline double sulfates of aluminum used in medicine internally as emetics and locally as astringents and styptics". It is not correct to call LBJ an alum "because that's what he is"; in fact, it's downright demeaning to smear a former U.S. President with that label. Shame on you. 207.62.246.172 (talk) 00:47, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Hahahaha touche, I actually laughed there. That is fair- please do not google "alum". I used alum as short for alumnus/alumnae but did not realize it was in fact it's own word- that's actually funny. But back to settling this- Google "what counts as alumni". Even better, you can look up Wikipedia's very own article on what it means to be an alumnus/alumnae- it's one of the first things to pop up upon searching this and actually solves this dispute pretty soundly. In fact save yourself the trouble, I can quote it for you: "An alumnus or an alumna of a college, university, or other school is a former student who has either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The word is Latin and simply means "student". The plural is alumni for men and alumnae for women. The term is not synonymous with "graduate"; one can be an alumnus without graduating. (Burt Reynolds, alumnus but not graduate of Florida State, is an example.) An alumnus can also be and is more recently expanded to include a former employee of an organization and it may also apply to a former member, contributor, or inmate." That's the intro paragraph, straight quoted from Wikipedia. It was almost written for this very dispute- one may as well swap LBJ with Burt Reynolds, and Georgetown with Florida State. I don't mean to be rude here and I don't want to revert anyone's edits, but this has gone on too long. Can we put this ridiculous argument to rest now? It's getting tiresome. I don't think any of us want to be doing this. 2601:806:4300:16F1:75FE:4EF8:1BC6:C75F (talk) 02:24, 2 August 2019 (UTC)Jack

I brought this up at the start of this discussion I really have problems with the sentence "Georgetown's notable alumni include 2 U.S. Presidents, 15 living billionaires, dozens of cabinet members in the US and abroad, and more current international royalty and heads of state than any university in the world" because every claim has some issue, and several simply aren't true. Wikipedia is built on true, verifiable sources. Georgetown does not have the most sitting U.S. Senators because Harvard has 15, and 15 is more than 7, and therefore we can't include a sentence that says "Georgetown has more graduates serving in the United States Senate than any other university." Find a source that says otherwise and we can consider it.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 23:25, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

FYI, my request for page protection can be found here. Ergo Sum 01:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

White supremacist whitewashing

I would question the racist removal of content related to the Indigenous history and present of Georgetown University and the erasure of the Native history of the land and current struggles that Indigenous students and faculty are engaged in. Adding information about Native people is apparently "POV". It is apparently not "POV" to have a settler-colonial white-supremacist lense, however. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 04:04, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi there, welcome. I think we can and should assume good faith in each others edits here. Can we agree on that? I think there is room in the article to mention Native American history as far as it pertains specifically to the article's topic, and not just to the city or country the subject exists in. Notable clubs at the school can also be mentioned, provided there is reliable sourcing. Are there specific sentences you'd like to raise as point-of-view?-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 04:22, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

I object to the racist notion that a Native American perspective is a "point of view", but Eurocentric settler-colonial erasure is objectivity. The other editor removed ALL references to Native American history and claims that the Piscataway are irrelevant to the institution that sits upon their homeland. The indigenous people who say directly otherwise have been deemed irrelevant and all reference to them removed. And this isn't a POV? Of course it is. I further object to the racist erasing phrasing of "the Native American tribes that once inhabited the area", even though the Piscataway still exist and live in the area and are students of the institution. And I would also object to the racist notion that a critique of racism is an attack in bad faith, but the actual racism itself is nothing but neutral and not to be noticed or subject to scrutiny. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 11:56, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

POV in recent addition of Native American activism

(Note: I was edit conflicted and did not see the above section). Bohemian Baltimore recently added text about a (new?) Native American student group's activism. I modified the wording of that text to be less POV, as it tracked much too closely to the puffery that political/activist organizations use, and quite clearly was pushing a POV. My edits were then reverted and a POV tag added to this Featured Article, with an edit summary that my edits were racist and white supremacist. (Pretty sure that's the opposite of AGF). Fearing that an edit war will ensue without talk page elaboration, I am opening up the discussion. I propose the following:

• The student group and its activities are not nearly sufficiently notable to be included in the article. An organization/event/cause does not become worthy of inclusion in an article simply because it has been written about in one article of a minor newspaper. This is an overview article of a 200-year-old university that has dozens, probably hundreds, of students groups that petition the university for all sorts of things. Therefore, mention of it should be removed unless some future events cause it to become worthy of inclusion.
• The POV tag should be removed because a quibble about the phrasing of two newly added sentences in a lengthy Featured Article does not rise to the level of a POV in the article, warranting a tag.
• Because it has been added in relation to the above edits, Bohemian Baltimore's addition of text regarding Native tribes' inhabtance of the DC/Maryland area should also be removed until consensus regarding their phrasing/content can be reached here.

Pinging Patrickneil, who has also been involved. Ergo Sum 04:48, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Hey, yes, very much agree about assume good faith. And playing the Nazi card is also an argument to avoid. I agree the the POV tag is impropper, those sorts of banners are for highly controversial subjects where lots of editors see issues. And I agree that this is not a geography article, and that the mentions about the Piscataway would be better on a geography article, say the history section of the Georgetown neighborhood article. I already added it to the subarticle Campuses of Georgetown University the History section there. I can also see the aguement that the NASC's existance is already covered by the sentence "Georgetown has many additional groups representing national, ethnic, and linguistic interests." But we have a pretty low bar with regards to the activism section. There's a permanent flag at the top of this talk page to remind editors to watch the section for POV content, but otherwise I lean towards inclusionism and waiting to see what happens. I will say it would be much more notable if the school responded to the group's demands, so the sentence could go "the group demanded [this], and the school said [that]."-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 05:32, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in, Patrick. I agree that there should be a low bar, but I think that bar has to be higher than merely existing; otherwise, every single transient student group could be included. If this organization provoked a university response that was covered by the media or something similar, then I would say include. But, absent that, I can't see a reason to mention it. Ergo Sum 14:43, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

As for the geography bit, I agree that it's not appropriate in this article. We don't talk about US history or British history or Maryland history unless it actually pertains specifically to the university. The fact that these tribes lived there prior to European arrival doesn't specifically pertain to the university. Ergo Sum 14:46, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Since there has been no objection to it, and a sufficient period of time has lapsed, I have gone ahead and removed the aforementioned content. Ergo Sum 17:53, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

"College" is not a proper noun

Ergo Sum has begun an edit war to insist that "college" be capitalized in this article as a proper noun. First, Ergo Sum is an administrator and knows not to edit war. Second, "college" is common noun when it's used by itself and not part of a title.

@Ergo Sum: Please revert your edit while we discuss this. ElKevbo (talk) 23:06, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Agree with ElKevbo - not a proper noun in those instances, just a description, therefore no capital letter. If a proper noun were in use, there would be no need for the definite article: "All majors in [the college / Georgetown] are open as minors to students in [the college / Georgetown]..." -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 23:29, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

It is (as Ergo Sum says in their edit) half the proper name but proper name is a quantum thing. We don't have half-capital letters. It is only a proper name if the name in full is used. This is quite similar to military units. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 23:49, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

As I responded on my talkpage, two reverts of two different editors is not an edit war; hyperbolic language isn't really helpful. That being said, if consensus forms that "college" be regarded as an ordinary noun, I've noted my disagreement, and will continue happily on my way. Ergo Sum 01:04, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

User:ElKevbo is one of the most reliable editors on this site, and one of the best authorities the collective university articles have here. That said, in the sentence "All majors in the College are open as minors..." College there does refer to Georgetown College, as in the College of Arts and Sciences at the university (though its dropped "Arts and Sciences" from its name). It is tricky though, and if say the previous sentence was "Georgetown College has 30 academic majors." Then the next sentence could have a lowercase "college" that referred back to the subject of the previous sentence in the general sense of it. But as it is right now, the previous sentence is about the university in general, and so by capitalizing College, it makes it clear that its referring to the College of Arts and Sciences, since the other itinerant parts of the university are named as "School of [blank]". We do have guidance on just this issue from MOS:INSTITUTIONS, but I actually think this falls into the final example, as an exception to the rule. An analogy might be a sentence like "The New York City metropolitan area has 12 million people, while the City has 8 million." But if there's consensus for what Cinderella157 proposes, which would be writing out "Georgetown College" in this sentence, that's fine with me too.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 02:50, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Patrickneil, the example of "the City" for the City of London is a very particular case, since it is quite widely recognised as an alternative name for the City of London and not just a shortening. In "the college" specificity of the referent is achieved by the definite article ("the"). Capitalising shortened forms of a proper name is a convention that has (is) fallen from use. It is not "necessary" capitalisation and is contrary to MOS:CAPS. By analogy, we would write: "The 9th Battalion occupied the position on ... The battalion attacked the following day." As you point out, what is "the college" is not clearly established by the context of the passage. This does not change by virtue of a capital "C". That the college is a school withing the university is certainly not clear in my reading the passage as an outsider (free from preconceptions). Addressing the issue of clarity might resolve the issue of capitalisation. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 03:38, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Right, "the college" is not a proper noun per MOS:INSTITUTIONS. That there is an exception for one exact case of City is irrelevant; if there needs to be an exception for College, consensus to include it at would need to be formed at the MOS. Using a proper noun instead of "college" is always an option. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:51, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Right, in most cases "the college" should not be capitalized. At the university this article is about, they have four undergraduate schools, the School of Foreign Service, the School of Business, the School of Nursing and Health Services, and Georgetown College. Capitalizing college was to make clear that the college in question wasn't one of the other three schools, which could be called "colleges" in a general sense, but the specific Georgetown College branch. If you want a military example, it is like saying "The 9th Battalion and 10th Company were stationed at Camp Foobar. Lieutenant Charlie Foxtrot was the commander of the unit." It's unclear which unit that refers to, but if we said he was "commander of the Battalion" it would be. Regardless, I've changed the sentence here to say "Georgetown College" in full, so hopefully that settles it. Thanks!-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 12:56, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

No issue with the article change, but if we said he was "commander of the battalion", it would be clear; "battalion" isn't a proper noun there either. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:04, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I know, but its an example to illustrate the issue of clarity. If you are curious, here is the website for the College, which uses "the College" in a similar way, as does the source the sentence uses. Again, hopefully this is already settled.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 13:30, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, primary sources (and non-general sources, uh, generally) tend to use capital letters for drawing attention to Things They Specialize In. IMO, that's a style choice, and one Wikipedia overrides with normal English style. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:37, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

If the current wording seems redundant in a bad way, "All majors in Georgetown College are open as minors to students in that school, the School of Nursing and Health Studies, and the School of Business." -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:17, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Also fine!-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 13:30, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Ergo Sum 15:03, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Both problems solved. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 23:14, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Student demographics charts

Median family income of undergraduate students   Top 20% (72.7%)   Second quintile (11.4%)   Third quintile (8.0%)   Fourth quintile (4.8%)   Bottom 20% (3.2%)

Racial and ethnic composition of undergraduate student body† (fall 2019)   White (48.8%)   Hispanic (9.5%)   Asian (10.4%)   Black (6.3%)   Native American (0.1%)   Pacific Islander (0.1%)   Multiracial (4.6%)   International (15.5%)   Unknown (4.7%) † "Hispanic" includes Hispanics of any race. All other categories refer to non-Hispanics.

Most university pages have a table in the student body section with the ethnic/racial demographics (see e.g. FA University of Michigan#Enrollment). I think that a pie chart would be a better way to present this information, so I added one for racial demographics to this page near where the statistics are listed, but I was reverted by Drevolt (edit summary: Thanks, but I don’t think that a chart is necessary here). I think that the chart is appropriate, since the demographics are important encyclopedic information that can be better understood with the chart. Additionally, I think it would also be appropriate to add a chart for the socioeconomic demographics of the student body, as shown at right. What do you all think? (Note: it could be updated if someone wants to fetch more recent data^{done myself}; also, if the colors are too jarring, consider joining this convo.) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:24, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Sdkb: I’m obviously in favor of including demographics in some form, since these statistics are relevant to the university. My concern is that the racial and economic composition of a student body are not so significant that a graphical representation is necessary, since it’s not a fundamental part of the page’s topic in the way that demographics are to, say, the article for a country. Note that I would feel similarly about most statistics relevant to a university page: Relevant enough to include, but not relevant enough to warrant including a chart or graph. Of course, inclusion criteria might be different in the case of a separate article that is specifically about the student body of a university. —Drevolt (talk) 22:57, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying your views. I think we disagree about appropriate WP:WEIGHT here, so I'm curious what others think. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:19, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent about these charts. If other schools start using them, and there's an expectation for seeing them, maybe even a "Template:Student body" that we'd fill out, then sure. My slight concern is that they're just baubles, colorful wikitrinkets that don't add much to the page that's not in the prose. And prose is king, there's always circumstances when those charts might not be visible to readers. I also wish the data was more up to date. Seven years is a while, and no one counted in that survey is presumably still at the school.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 19:32, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Patrickneil, I don't know about any other schools using pie charts, but it's what the best country demographics pages use (e.g. 1), and the strong majority of other FA college pages have a table, which takes up about the same amount of space. Regarding updating the data, I just updated it with the 2019–20 numbers from here. I could see us making it into a template, but since we'd still have to enter the data individually and there are a lot of things that'd need tweaking from school to school, I'm not sure it'd be worth it. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:55, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

The race and ethnicity data are in IPEDS so they can be systematically dealt with e.g., pulled from Wikidata (after ensuring that is up-to-date, maintained, and accurate), populated using a bot.

That the family income data are not readily available in a systematic format reinforces my concern that it may be undue for us to try to add this information to articles. ElKevbo (talk) 20:22, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

ElKevbo, a bot updating the data would be fantastic—it's not an efficient use of editor time to be manually updating widely used data that's available in a machine-readable format. We might have to kick Wikidata to get them ready to host it, though, since they don't have a good property for it currently. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:33, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

There is already some IPEDS data in Wikidata so this might already be there. I haven't checked and I have no idea how frequently the IPEDS data in Wikidata are updated nor do I know anything about their data stewardship practices and standards. ElKevbo (talk) 20:40, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

ElKevbo, if we had universal good data, we could get fancy, such as wrapping the charts using {{switcher}} so that it would display probably ethnicity by default but could display gender, income, geography, or others if the reader clicks. That, combined with a few needed upgrades to {{Pie chart}} (e.g. getting the hover effects demonstrated here, plus tooltips) would be the sort of thing that would get us out of the 2000s technologically. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:45, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

References

Dispute over "top feeder school for careers in finance and investment banking on Wall Street" in lede

Two editors are in a dispute about the addition of this sentence to the lede of this article:

Georgetown is also a top feeder school for careers in finance and investment banking on Wall Street.

I agree that this material does not belong in the lede of this article. The simplest reason why this doesn't belong in the lede is that the lede is intended to be a summary of what's in the body of the article and this is not in the body of the article. Beyond that, we should not include material in the lede that is only reported once in one source. If it's information that is so important that it needs to be among the very first bits of information that readers see in this article then surely you can find multiple sources that support it. ElKevbo (talk) 23:38, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with your first point that this is not something talked about in the body of the article. I didn't know that was a rule so I think you're right that it shouldn't be in the lede. Perhaps it should be somewhere else? I feel it's definitely relevant enough to be mentioned somewhere. There are other sources you can find on the internet that would say Georgetown is a feeder to banking/finance- here is another one putting them in the top 10 for Wall Street placement https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-banking. I could find more if you think they'd be helpful? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:806:4301:DB40:D2F:63D8:246B:A249 (talk) 01:53, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Definitely don't edit war, but no, I don't think "top feeder school for careers in finance" is something we need to specifically mention. Its vague and is the sort of WP:PUFF that university articles are trying to eliminate. Specific numbers or percents might be better, but the ones that CNN source uses, that 62 alumni started as financial analysts in 2014, don't seem very significant to me. But a sentence in the Alumni section saying "As of June 2020, 136 alumni worked in Wall Street finance firms" using that other link wouldn't be the worst. It's certainly better than just the listing of famous alums that the section is mostly.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 02:26, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah I agree something like that could be good. Important to note though that the numbers in that survey- 136 for Georgetown, 149 for Yale, etc- aren't the total numbers that each school has on Wall Street they're just the number of people from each of those schools that responded out of the ~8k people on Wall Street that were reached out to for the survey. Wall Street would be absurdly small if those were the total numbers for each school. So I think that saying as of 2020 it places heavily onto/is a top feeder to Wall Street and citing this survey would be fine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:806:4301:DB40:9D68:9870:D4A4:7CD1 (talk) 02:12, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

• I'm sorta borderline on this. I do think it's important to characterize the types of careers alumni are most likely to pursue in the lead. The extremely strong ties Georgetown has to government certainly qualifies; the more U.S. diplomats than any other university and many members of the United States Congress we currently have is warranted. As for finance, I'm not quite so sure; I'd need to be a little more familiar with Georgetown's precise reputation to judge how important that part of it is. But the CNN source looks perfectly reliable to me; it's going off of LinkedIn data, which we'd expect to be fairly comprehensive given the platform's ubiquity (the only qualm I have is whether they properly weighted by student body size). Looking at other articles, for some we use the number of billionaire graduates as a way to highlight an institution's alumni success in business; maybe we could add that to the list here if we can find the number? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:29, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Alumni section ballooning

The alumni section here has grown way too large for this summary article. We have a fantastic List of Georgetown University alumni article that features all of these names, and there is no need to itemize the names in the prose or with an image gallery, which is specifically discouraged on Wikipedia articles. As of today, I count 70 individual names listed. I feel strongly that is simply too many, that many of the individuals are just trivial, and featuring them is a form of puffery. Individuals should ideally be included as part of a larger statement about alumni, and not because they attended the school and later became famous, i.e. "Georgetown's alumni include more U.S. diplomats than any other university,^[source] such as...".^[source] The first paragraph here is the sort we want, sourced data about the alumni as a large group, rather than one individual out of hundreds of thousands. Please leave the listing to the actual list article. Sound good?-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 18:10, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I went through and tried to put my suggestion into action, by rewriting sentences to put the school programs or a statement about broader alumni first, followed by individual examples. I've culled the names down to 40, which still seems like a lot to me. And I replaced the image gallery with a photo of graduation. I've never felt that government portraits were the best option to illustrate this university's article. If there are to be photos of individual alumni, I think it should be of them speaking on campus, meeting with other alumni, or doing something related to the school. We previously used this image of Bill Clinton, John Podesta, and Jack DeGioia, but its kind of a weird angle and it kind of looks like Jack is saying "please don't touch me." Alternatively, there is a 37 minute public domain video of Clinton speaking at his Georgetown class reunion in 1993. Its spot on the topic, but I'm not sure the thumbnail reads well, so I'm happy to entertain alternative suggestions or better photos from graduations if editors have them.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 16:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this trimming. I agree it was warranted and think it could probably go further. Except for the most important positions, listing individual people is less preferable than listing counts of e.g. X ambassadors. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:01, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

New schools

The university announced it would create two new schools by 2022 out of the School of Nursing and Health Studies: the School of Nursing and the School of Health. When the time comes that they are actually created, they will have to be added to the constituent schools table under #Academics. It is unclear to me from the announcement whether one or both will be considered continuations of the current NHS, for purposes of ascertaining their dates of founding. Ergo Sum 03:11, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Source about undergraduate admissions being used to support a claim about all admissions

Jmswllms0 is insisting that the lede of this article must say that "Admissions to the university are highly selective." However, the cited source explicitly focuses only on undergraduate admissions. So it's puzzling that Jmswllms0 has repeatedly removed "Undergraduate" from that claim. ElKevbo (talk) 03:15, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I don’t even think this sentence belongs here. I would move it into the admissions section. To me it makes no sense to assert that just the undergraduate admissions at GU is highly selective, there are several graduate programs at SFS as well as the School of Medicine that are competitive. Jmswllms0 (talk) 03:42, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Moving it would be fine with me but we have to stick with what the source says. If you can provide other sources about the graduate admissions, that would be very helpful. ElKevbo (talk) 04:21, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I added additional sources to support the assertion. Jmswllms0 (talk) 04:50, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

A sentence about admission in general is more useful for the lede than a sentence about undergraduate admission, specifically. As long as there is a good ref to support it, I support keeping it. Ergo Sum 16:12, 27 February 2021 (UTC)