Wise words from Eugene S. Wilson, Dean of admission, Amherst C0llege, circa 1960
The more things change, the more they stay the same . Except for the fact that it is not gender inclusive, it could have been written this year.
19 Likes
Interesting piece, but wow- did you notice in the address to counselors that the non-refundable deposit was $100 in 1960?!?
Most of the online calculators say that would be over $1000 today! (From what I can tell, due May 5.) That’s a lot of money upfront-- maybe something that has changed some for the better.
The sentiment in this letter is a fine sentiment and absolutely true.
It does, however, miss the point of the broader argument that disappointed people (who are not all parents, but usually are personal connections of high school graduates) are making.
The process of admissions has moved so far into efforts of attempted social mobility that the overall consideration of whether a student will actually be able to succeed at college is secondary. Having seen this played out in my community, I question the value of automatic admission of one group of students from one high school to one college only, the repeated top-20 admission of two or three top students from a school in my area that teaches to a lower grade level than the local public school, etc., the elimination of APs from local private schools that know that their brand name is more important to AOs than the actual rigor of their academic offerings, the pressure that parents face to spend ten thousand dollars or more for counselors to help your child “gain a competitive edge” (no, I haven’t, but the marketing is relentless and my DS’s friends’ parents have), etc. I wish that the colleges actually considered the influence of their decisions on society more than they do, but it appears they don’t care. They consider themselves above the fray rather than considering how their processes contribute to the fray.
And the deposit at Amherst, a private school, was $100 in 1960. The in-state flagships had far more affordable deposits. I know this because a few of my relatives went there at that time.
1 Like
Actually I recall reading an interview with someone in admissions at Stanford who (to paraphrase) said they were very aware they were picking tomorrows leaders which made choosing between similar applicants for limited slots stressful.
2 Likes
At “elite” colleges, low income students make up 2%-5% of entering class. At WashU, they make up fewer than 1%, at Yale, they make up 2.1%, at Vanderbilt, 1.9%, etc.
On the other hand, more than 20% of entering class of most “elite” colleges are recruited athletes, development, and others. Even if those 2%-5% who are poor have academics in the bottom 25% of the entering class, that means that 20%-23% of entering classes are not poor, but are being accepted with low stats.
If we look at the most popular public colleges, we see: W&M 2% low income, Virginia 2.8%, Michigan 3.6%, UNC 3.8%, GTech 4.6%, UT Austin 6%, Berkeley 7.3%, and UCLA 8.3%.
That does not look like “attempts and social mobility”, not even the slightest bit.
Moreover, according to research done by Anthony Jack, more than half of the low income students at “elite” colleges are students from “elite” private prep schools, who attended those schools on scholarships. I expect that those kids are pretty well prepared.
We should also look at the words of Eugene S. Wilson:
This was in 1960, long before “elite” colleges were even slightly interested in social mobility. Yet many people seem to believe that admissions then was a more “fair and balanced” process…
Yes, we should really talk about that pipeline between Horace Mann and UChicago .
You don’t believe that even two or three students from this school are “worthy” of entry to a T20 college? You don’t believe that even 2-3 students from this colleges are as good, academically, as the dozens of recruited athletes and donor’s kids who are accepted to these elite colleges with similar stats?
In Illinois, IMSA, one of the top public magnet schools, and overall top schools in the country, has never offered APs throughout its history. Phillip Andover is also known for its academic rigor and does not offer AP courses and never has.
Yet no college questions the rigor of the classes from these high schools. So high schools eliminating APs indicates that they are confident in the abilities of their teachers to provide better education that is possible from AP formats and syllabi. A positive development, IMO.
Who exactly is putting pressure on these parents? Parents and high schools put pressure on their kids, parents put pressure on high schools, and peers may put pressure on each other. However. I fail to see how parents are being pressured.
The only scenarios that I can imagine where parents are being “pressured” are beyond ridiculous, so I won’t mention them here.
So as far as I can see, parents are spending that much money because they believe that “elite” colleges are better for whatever reason. That is not being “pressured”, that is a free choice, based on their personal belief set.
That is no different than paying $80,000 a year to send your kid to an “elite” private college, instead of paying $25,000-$40,000 for an in-state flagship, or less for a college which will provide merit funding.
Since these parents are paying $10,000 for the opportunity to spend an extra $160,000 on a degree, I, again, fail to see why they are complaining.
Again, what “choices” are “elite” colleges making that affect society? As far as I can see, the only way to make all of the parents and kids who are obsessed with private college happy is to expand their undergraduate colleges from 6,000 to 60,000, in order to accomodate all of the students whose parents think they are worthy of admissions to a T10. Of course, if they did that, these same parents would no longer apply to these colleges.
Many parents and kids and high schools are obsessed with a small number of colleges largely because these colleges are “selective”. Yet, at the same time, the people are unhappy that the colleges are “selective”, and claim that the selectivity of the colleges is what’s making them or their kids unhappy.
The implications of this are indicative of the hubris of so many of the “elites”. They are implying that “we make leaders, and if we choose the wrong kids, the wrong kids will be leaders”. That isn’t actually what is happening, and isn’t actually what they are stressing about.
They’re trying to accept students who are already set up to become “leaders”, so, whether they admit the kid or not, the kids will become leaders. The AOs are stressed about whether they are, metaphorically, “backing the right horse”. Their worry is that they won’t get those students, some other college will.
15 Likes
@MWolf that was a masterclass of supported points!
@anon87843660 there seems to be a lot of dog whistling in what you write, and a lot of anecdotal stories from neighbors/relatives/friends Do you have evidence that the students you believe are unworthy aren’t succeeding? Are the two to three top 20-bound students from the local high school you have deemed to be academically inferior routinely failing out? Are there studies showing that this has been happening broadly? Top 20 schools all have freshman retention rates over 95%, so schools do an impressive job in admitting students who remain academically eligible.
2 Likes
I can appreciate that academics use data only to support their points. That is part of why they are so easy to deceive. They don’t notice details or aberrations to the trend line or they intentionally dismiss them as aberrations.
It’s unlikely to be something that, in your career, you will ever notice. That doesn’t make it a dogwhistle. It makes it something that an academic in higher ed or other person who does not work directly with middle and high school students can’t see from their vantage points.
I don’t teach higher ed and have no plans to do so. I taught middle and high school.
I am glad you have moved on from dog whistles.
1 Like
I’m moving beyond suggesting - back and forth and personal attacks are a violation of ToS of this site. Posts deleted.
2 Likes
Thank you for sharing the words of Mr. Wilson, wisdom indeed.
As I’ve said before on this board, we as a family decided to pursue different avenues for our children rather than the competitive rat race to highly selective schools. In large part because of feeling the same way Mr. Wilson describes - there are many schools available to those interested in learning for the sake of learning and the average test scores of an institution don’t necessarily indicate anything other than the value placed on high test scores. Having attended highly selective schools (Top 10 undergrad, Top 10 law school for grad) - we aren’t wearing rose colored glasses when it comes to viewing them.
Also, and this is something I think about quite a lot, when I went to school 30 years ago -many of the schools that parents and students currently swoon over, obsess over and worry about being rejected by are schools that were beyond safe when I was applying.
Yet few people seem to realize that means some of the schools that are beyond safe for their children currently may very well be on to the list of swoon worthy schools 30 years from now.
Furthermore - it also seems like people would like to believe there is some huge difference in the quality of education offered by more selective schools. However, I don’t think most of those schools would say they were offering substandard educations 30 years prior, or that they have massively changed their mission and focus over the last 30 years. The only thing that has really changed is more people applying to those schools, allowing the schools to cherry pick their admitted students.
In many ways, the whole issue of trying to get into highly selective schools is a self inflicted problem which has more to do with social positioning more than educational needs/wants. As Mr. Wilson says, there are lots of places to get an incredible education - if that’s what one really wants. If one wants the social cache of a highly selective name - that’s about something else besides education.
9 Likes
Of course we use data to support our points. How else are points supposed to be supported, if not by facts? I’m genuinely curious.
The “top 10” from the very first list of “top 10 college” is beyond fascinating.
Sorry, I didn’t add why.
On the Universities, the top 10 were:
- Harvard
- Yale
- Berkeley
- U Chicago
- Columbia
- Princeton
- Michigan
- Cornell
- Wisconsin
- Stanford.
At Co-ed College the T10 were
- Oberlin
- Swarthmore
- Carleton
- Reed
- Pomona
- Grinnell
- Lawrence
- Wooster
- Kalamazoo
- Hope.
Mens colleges:
- Haverford
- Amherst
- Kenyon
- Wesleyan
- Hamilton
- Union
- Bowdoin
- Sewanee
- W&L
- Williams
Women’s colleges:
- Bryn Mawr
- Radcliffe
- Barnard
- Vasar
- MHC
- Wellesley
- Smith
- Goucher
- Pembroke
- Randolph-Macon
3 Likes
Experience trumps data for me each and every time. I do hope that most people aren’t exposed to the experiences that I have had in the recent past in regards to this topic. I’m hoping to put that knowledge behind me, but I won’t ever forget what I learned that way, even if I never experience it again.
Data can inform experience, but it does not erase it.
1 Like
Last post on the topic for me but:
Your experience is your experience, but nobody should generalize from their own experience. If you want a generalization, that can only happen when there are the experiences of a very large number of people, and the trends are analyzed.
The converse is true, and no academic would ever deny that the experience of an individual will rarely match the generalization.
It’s like height. Only a tiny minority of the population is the average height. However, you cannot learn whether drinking milk increases height from somebody’s personal experience. You need to see changes in the average (and other characteristics of the distribution - variance is actually NOT ignored).
7 Likes
Amherst had 1900 applications in 1960 and that was pretty much par for the course among the men’s colleges back then. Each one had their own reliable pipeline of prep school contacts; each one could fill an entire class with less than two thousand applicants. Believe me when I tell you that if there was any sort of “pressure” to change admissions practices, it was coming from outside the colleges themselves. It was a great system - if you belonged to a certain demographic.
3 Likes
My dad was at prep school in the late 50s and that was definitely the way it was. In his case the headmaster pretty much determined where kids would go - although Dad was initially recruited by Yale the headmaster nixed it and told him he was more of a XYZ boy (i.e. not wealthy or well connected). XYZ is where he went.
2 Likes
With respect to change, a Life magazine article that included colleges in tiers according to their SAT profiles circa 1960 was the subject of this CC topic: The Historical Selectivity of Colleges, by SAT Score Tiers.
I’m curious how low-income is defined - to then arrive at the 2%-5% range for elite colleges.
Obviously a much higher number receive substantial aid, so needing aid is not the measure.
There is also much higher percentage of Pell-Grant recipients admitted (e.g., Barnard hovering around 16%, and between 10-20% seems to be a typical ballpark for peers), reserved for people with exceptional financial needs.
So, exceptional financial needs cannot have been the measure, either?
I don’t see “income brackets” in the CDS - so maybe the data submitted of FAFSA was tallied up somehow (for those who filed a FAFSA) and then related to total admissions/college?
1 Like
My mom made me drink milk, and I’m definitely taller now 
It’s the Chetty article, and they use the bottom 20% by income.
1 Like
I’m curious to know your source for this list. Thanks.