No school claims personal wealth accumulation is part of their mission; their $86k price tag however suggests that needs to be a priority for students.
Whatâs next? Reading corporate mission statements? Gimme a break! 
I am definitely not going to squabble with someone with expertise in that area, but I will say the data I have seen, while crude, suggests again that that many LACs do very well in terms of feeding into Math PhD programs. Of course that isnât quite the same question.
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Agreed. Donât know why.
Varsity sports are supported by nearly all of the highly rejective US universities.
Even the paragons of academic rigor, MIT and Cal Tech, support varsity teams on a similar per capita basis as the Ivy League schools.
U Chicago, a founding member of the Big 10 conference with 2 national championships & 7 football conference titles, disbanded its football team in 1939 and withdrew from the Big 10 because the school president believed that sports interferes with its academic mission. The school restarted its football program in 1969. The university currently supports 18 teams.
Despite the fact that for almost all schools, supporting athletics is a money losing venture; they all seem to think it is a worthwhile endeavor.
I think one should try to better understand the reasons why before criticizing universities for their fascination with sports.
Since itâs almost unanimous, my guess is that the reasons must be pretty good.
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Itâs what the people want, apparently. ÂŻ\ _ (ă) _/ÂŻ
You would expect, given the prevailing fascination with college sports, America to be one of the healthiest nations in the world.
Spoiler alert!
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Actually, their version of a What We Look For page.
But, letâs take Harvard:
If you have a realistic understanding of what âour societyâ is like, then that should have tipped you off about what âcitizen-leaders for our societyâ means.
They then further explain
Our mission to educate future leaders is woven throughout the Harvard College experience, inspiring every member of our community to strive toward a more just, fair, and promising world.
Thatâs nice, but would, say, Harvard agree that leaders in finance or business can do nothing to help society, as one source linked above argued? Or would they actually argue those members of society have a lot of power to help our world be more just, fair, and promising, and that inspiring them to do that is a worthy mission?
I could belabor this, but I think this is a basic problem with people not asking what all this means to Harvard, versus what it means to them. They may think striving for justice and fairness means tearing down the irredeemably corrupt capitalist system. But Harvard doesnât.
But it is true Harvard doesnât explicitly answer those questions. It doesnât say, âAnd we know many of our graduates will become high-level managers in the capitalist system, and quite wealthy, sometimes through the help of family and family friends. But we believe if those people have experienced the transformative power of a liberal arts and sciences education at Harvard, they will have a stronger sense of noblesse oblige. This will make them better citizen-leaders, and also hopefully help them see why giving a gift to Harvard is a good investment in a future better society.â
And if you consider not saying all that hiding the ball, OK, I guess. But I would view it as a cautionary tale. And my point in the admissions context has always been the opposite of just glancing at the buzz words that Harvard uses and impose your own sense of what Harvard should be valuing on the buzz words. My point is you should really study them carefully, and try to understand what they really are communicating, not what you think they should be communicating.
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Priceless!
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Actually, for the most part, no one watches these college athletic competitions except the athletes and their families.
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Ah, the transformative power of the hedge fund. Nothing says social good like making millionaires wealthier . . .
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I understand that you think mission statements are ridiculous. I actually agree with that sentiment a bit so I donât think you are wrong. However, I will also say that I have a lot of experience with looking for K-12 day schools and boarding schools for my children, and in my experience, their mission statements actually do a pretty good job at reflecting their values. And if applicants compare the statements of various schools, they can get a reasonable sense of fit for different types of students, the school culture, the faculty, and the type of students different types are trying to attract. Thus, I donât think it is a huge leap to think that college statements can also be indicators of an admissions officeâs priorities in how they create their class from too many qualified applicants. However, as I said in my post, I take it all with a grain of salt because I think a lot of the language is really about marketing or at least signaling to outsiders as opposed to the reality of what goes on inside the school.
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I mean, substitute âIvy Leagueâ for âhedge fundâ, and arenât we done here?
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Just to be clear, this is the actual Harvard page I would recommend for this purpose:
https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/apply/what-we-look
It isnât inconsistent with the mission statement, but it gives a LOT more details about how Harvard College envisions its ideal students.
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Sure but I never made the claim that these colleges are trying to tear down a âcorrupt capitalist system.â Not at all. I think that statement is hyperbole. One can work towards social justice without being anti-capitalist. The point that I was making about my daughter is how she has changed in just one year. If as Data10 says the % of freshmen who enter a college wanting finance/consulting is quite low, but that number doubles or triples (or more) by senior year, it may be that the culture of the institution (and its secret societies or fraternities and old boys network) influences the students who enter.
Should they have known what they were signing up for? Were they naive in their reading of the mission. To some extent yes they should understand the institution and go in with their eyes wide open, but my guess is that any elite institutionâs culture or even how to read its value statement is more obvious to families who are familiar with other elite institutions and are savvy about how they work. Attending elite schools can be quite a culture shock to people unfamiliar with that world at least in my observation.
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Oh, heck, not in our neck of the woods!
The point that I was making about my daughter is how she has changed in just one year.
Sure, Iâm just saying Harvard is suggesting whatever she decides to do, they hope she will be a leader, and a better citizen-leader for going to Harvard.
I do understand that you see that as a culture issue, and that is fine, but I also think of it as a value issue. Because I donât think Harvard ever represented itself as anything but agnostic with respect to what career path your daughter chooses. And if you would value certain paths over others, you donât necessarily have the same values as Harvard. Or, I guess more properly, you have values over something on which Harvard is just neutral.
but my guess is that any elite institutionâs culture or even how to read its value statement is more obvious to families who are familiar with other elite institutions and are savvy about how they work. Attending elite schools can be quite a culture shock to people unfamiliar with that world at least in my observation.
That is an extremely fair statement. Having seen these institutions up close, to me this does all come very naturally. I agree that people farther away might have what I would call romanticized notions of these elite private colleges, but it isnât fair of me to demand they simply know better.
So, I donât want to make it sound like everyone should actually immediately understand this from Harvardâs mission statement. Indeed, I think the study we are discussing is great, the discussion itself is great, because hopefully it is helping more people get a more realistic, less romantic, conception of these elite private colleges. Whatever that may mean for them in the end.
Yes, Iâm sure LACs are a great fit for some, and can offer many unique advantages, but because their explicit focus is on undergraduate teaching, they are not necessarily the top choice for elite-level students looking to take graduate-level courses and get involved in cutting-edge research in the undergrad (and as a corollary it is not where the most stimulating peer group will be found).
As a separate point, the whole âfeeding into the PhD programsâ metric does not seem to be a terribly meaningful one to me, personally. The reasons an elite-level math or CS kid that had graduate school aspirations upon entering college might end up preferring to wrap it up after undergrad may have more to do with other opportunities that become available to them than with their potential competitiveness for grad schools. I have just observed it first-hand.
That, btw, is another reason I do not buy into the whole oft-made âit doesnât matter where you do your undergrad, there is always grad schoolâ argument (not that itâs made here). There is not always grad school.
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We are discussing admissions to elite American colleges and universities. How the rest of the world does it may be relevant to how some would like it done but it isnât relevant to how it is done in the US.
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Like, why?
Why arenât some allowed to question something others like just the way it is?
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Sounds like a great topic for a different thread.
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Isnât this thread specifically about admissions practices?