A new (and larger) Chetty study on elite college admissions is released today

[hebegebe]

@Aimlesscat1

But the bottom line for all of this is applicant numbers. They are highly rejective because of the number of qualified applicants. Eliminate all preferences and double the size of Harvard’s incoming class and it is still single digit admit. “Dear Sally” still isn’t getting in.

Sure. But there are multiple people on this board whose children have already played the existing game successfully. Speaking just for myself, I think the game can be improved.

Getting rid of the URM hook was an improvement, but it should be coupled with relaxing the admissions standards for low-income and getting rid of LDC. While I am not a huge fan of the massive admission benefits given to athletes, I recognize that as its own type of merit.

@DroidsLookingFor

And even within the stack/rank gold star model…how do you compare? How do you determine a choice between the math god and the writing savant?

Hopefully, they admit both of them (as long as they have a decent personality ).

[DroidsLookingFor]

@hebegebe

Hopefully, they admit both of them

Well sure but the point is that when you’re down to your last few spots, judgement calls come into play. And to me, that’s okay!

[TheVulcan]

@Aimlesscat1

@TheVulcan

And what the admissions committees, in effect, are telling them, is that they looked deep into their souls, and found them wanting as human beings.

If have a pool of 60,000 kids and can only take 2,000 you are not telling the other 58,000 kids that you “found them wanting as human beings”. That is wrong on so many levels.

If you tell the applicants their character is what is most important to you, and then proceed to reject academic superstars in favor of the less academically qualified, then this is exactly what you are communicating to the rejected kids.

And yes, it is indeed wrong on many levels.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@TheVulcan

And how has this been working out so far, empirically?

Great, it would appear. Meaning part of this study shows that future “citizen-leaders” within a pretty reasonable definition of that term do in fact disproportionately come from Harvard and its peers.

@TheVulcan

Is there any research showing they have been successful judges of character of the future societal leaders they produce?

So Harvard’s mission as they define it isn’t just to serve as a gold star for characteristics kids already had when applying.

Harvard’s mission as they define it is to put together a select community of potential future leaders that will interact in ways that help them all develop into better people. This is sometimes called a “value-added” mission, and the question would be whether Harvard’s attempts to create a certain type of college community were actually adding any value in that sense.

To test all this empirically, you would somehow have to have a control group of people with otherwise practically identical characteristics as of the time they were admitted to college, but who instead of going to a college like Harvard, went to a place which was not trying to do something similar. You would then have to have some sort of measure of what sort of person they became after college. You could then assess whether Harvard’s “value added” mission in this area was being fulfilled.

This seems like the kind of thing that is not particularly amenable to meaningful empirical study. Indeed, since so many of the “top” colleges in the United States are also holistic, even finding such a control group seems like a big challenge.

Which to some means Harvard shouldn’t even be trying. But Harvard obviously disagrees.

[DroidsLookingFor]

@TheVulcan

character is what is most important to you,

Except that’s not what they’re saying.

[TheVulcan]

@NiceUnparticularMan

@TheVulcan

And how has this been working out so far, empirically?

Great, it would appear. Meaning part of this study shows that future “citizen-leaders” within a pretty reasonable definition of that term do in fact disproportionately come from Harvard and its peers.

But what does it tell us about their character?

[momofboiler1]

And in addition, parents can be doing a much, much better job of making sure that their kids know that a college rejection isn’t any kind of reflection on their self worth, their future potential, or their hard work in high school.

Despite what some on this thread want to advocate, US college admission is about balancing an incoming class and meeting their institutional priorities. I’ll put in another plug for reading GT’s Rick Clark’s admission’s blog. His advice and insights are applicable across most institutions.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@TheVulcan

And what the admissions committees, in effect, are telling them, is that they looked deep into their souls, and found them wanting as human beings.

Do you think that stings less than being told you foolishly wasted too much time making friends, exploring interests, getting exercise, and/or helping others?

[DroidsLookingFor]

@TheVulcan

And if your tests (like ACT/SAT) can’t tell the difference between merely bright and truly exceptional, you just need better tests.

Let’s assume for a moment that this has been achieved. That there are (many) fine gradations of results that sort people into narrow enough bands so as to find differences between all, say, 60,000 applicants.

Using the SAT framework, how do you rank (i.e. whom do you admit) between these two outcomes:

A) 800 Math, 590 Verbal
B) 700 Math, 700 Verbal

I’d like to hear your ranking of these two people.

[TheVulcan]

@DroidsLookingFor

@TheVulcan

character is what is most important to you,

Except that’s not what they’re saying.

This is from Yale’s CDS.

A rejected kid that hits all of the measurable points on this list out of the ballpark would be justified in concluding that it was their character that most needed improvement.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@DroidsLookingFor

And even within the stack/rank gold star model…how do you compare? How do you determine a choice between the math god and the writing savant? You’re just then back to some attempt to define merit. Even within a constraint of academic merit there is no approach that all would find acceptable. So you’re back to, wait for it, a judgement call.

This is part of where there is a big culture clash usually between US and non-US people.

I don’t know if all the US people know this, but there is actually a system like this in the UK. Their version of Common App is UCAS, and UCAS actually has something called a tariff point system that tells you exactly what different things are worth. Likely, you can literally look it up in a spreadsheet.

Calculate your UCAS Tariff points

Now, as they say there, not EVERYthing is included, and universities are not bound to strictly follow that system.

Still, the fact it even exists is, I think, amazing to many US people.

But as I noted before, this is reflecting not just a difference in admissions approach, it is reflecting a difference in educational systems that stretches all the way back to the beginning. There is just so much more standardization in their system, which makes this sort of tariff point system conceivable.

So yes, in the US, the lack of standardization of “gold stars” would make a UCAS-style system nonsensical. US colleges have no choice but to try to sort this all out on an ad hoc basis.

And I am not sure all the non-US people accustomed to a standardized system fully grasp how impossible it would be to apply a UCAS-style system in the US in any sort of acceptable way.

[TheVulcan]

@DroidsLookingFor

Using the SAT framework, how do you rank (i.e. whom do you admit) between these two outcomes:

A) 800 Math, 590 Verbal
B) 700 Math, 700 Verbal

Suffice it to say I would make sure I get all the 800, 800 ones in first.

[momofboiler1]

@TheVulcan

A rejected kid that hits all of the measurable points on this list out of the ballpark would be justified in concluding that it was their character that most needed improvement.

No. Read this: https://sites.gatech.edu/admission-blog/2023/03/06/the-two-most-important-letters-in-college-admission/

Here’s the most important take away (and IP = Institutional Priorities):

"If you are denied from a selective college, my hope is you won’t question your academic ability or lose sleep trying to figure out what was “wrong” with you or what you “could or should have done differently.” IPs mean admission decisions do not translate to “We don’t think you are smart” or “You could not be successful here.”

I didn’t ask 100 admission deans what words they would use to describe students they were forced to deny based on supply and demand and IPs, but here are my top three answers:

Smart

Talented

Impressive"

[Alqbamine32]

But, this kid is an absolute jerk. Known widely as such. Selfish, and mean spirited. And I’d be stunned if this didn’t come through in their LORs, veiled though the language must have been. Said kid did not get into Yale (nor any other Ivy+).

As someone who has both written and read letters of recommendation, I agree that it can sometimes be very easy to tell when the letter writer wants to signal that a an academically strong student is able to master the material well but contributes nothing (or worse yet takes away) from the experience of the other students in the course or is such a pain to teach in those cases, you cannot in good conscience actually recommend they be admitted to any college where they are likely to be in small or collaborative classes. However, I think the appropriate thing to do in those cases is to refuse the request to be a recommender. I feel bad for the kids whose letters of rec essentially torpedo the rest of their application. It seems unfair to me when maybe the same kid could have gotten a better letter from a different professor or teacher. On the other hand, the same traits might come through in the guidance counselor/school letter.

But there is another reason I think it is unfortunate when the letter makes it obvious that a kid is a jerk. Who a kid is at 17 or 18 is not necessarily who they will become with more maturity and wider life experiences. I don’t think students should be wholly defined by their personalities as teenagers (between the hormones and I guess the frontal lobe development, some adolescents can be pretty self-centered and it is obvious no matter how many hours of community service they have done to prove their selflessness). On the other hand, you can say that about academics as well. And admissions officers have no problem not admitting kid who may have future academic potential but is not academically prepared for a rigorous college experience YET. So I guess it makes sense to turn down the jerky kid who may still grow as classmates and colleagues but are not ready for certain classroom cultures yet. and there are kids who you don’t want to inflict on future classrooms no matter how talented they are in other areas.

[TheVulcan]

@NiceUnparticularMan

@TheVulcan

And what the admissions committees, in effect, are telling them, is that they looked deep into their souls, and found them wanting as human beings.

Do you think that stings less than being told you foolishly wasted too much time making friends, exploring interests, getting exercise, and/or helping others?

I think it stings more (which is what you obviously meant).

Because your character is who you are. It’s a separate line item on CDS. Separate from volunteer work. Separate from extracurricular activities. Separate even from recommendation letters.

No. They peer into your soul, and they judge you as a human being. In 15 minutes or less.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@TheVulcan

But what does it tell us about their character?

Again, I agree to test Harvard’s character-value-added theories, you would need both an entrance measure of character, and an exit measure of character, and you would need a non-holistic control group.

Since I was just on the subject, this is yet another thing which is possible in the UK, say, as applied to the aforementioned tariff points. The UK remains very standardized in terms of evaluating recipients of undergraduate degrees (which, again, are specific to course). So, you can compare the UCAS tariff points of students entering a certain course at a certain university to how they did on their exit evaluations and assess value added.

This is precisely what, say, the Guardian does as part of its league tables:

The Guardian University Guide 2023 – the rankings

You can look up the table for, say, Economics, and learn that in this edition, the Cambridge Economics course had the highest average entry tariff (214), followed by Oxford (206), St Andrews (204), Strathclyde (203), and LSE (196). Seems plausible.

But, then you can look at the value added score (which is normed to a 10 point scale). St Andrews, consistent with its reputation for good teaching, is a solid 8. LSE was only 6–not bad, but also consistent with their meh reputation for teaching.

Oxford was a 5, and Cambridge a 4. Those people did well when exiting, of course, but apparently no more well than you would expect based on their high entering tariffs.

And Strathclyde was only 3. Ouch.

OK, so if we had a standardized average entry tariff for character, and a standardized measure of character at exit, we could see if Harvard and its peers were actually adding value or not. I actually have no idea what would happen if that was possible.

But it isn’t possible. But that doesn’t mean they are wrong. It means we can’t study it in this way.

[TheVulcan]

@NiceUnparticularMan

And I am not sure all the non-US people accustomed to a standardized system fully grasp how impossible it would be to apply a UCAS-style system in the US in any sort of acceptable way.

Oh, trust me, we do!

Education standards and single-payer healthcare: two things we will not see in our lifetime.

People who actually try to change things don’t hang out on online forums. We are just here to chitchat with smart folks like youself.

[Aimlesscat1]

@hebegebe

But there are multiple people on this board whose children have already played the existing game successfully. Speaking just for myself, I think the game can be improved.

Agreed, many of us have and are rightly grateful that our children managed to navigate this very opaque system.

I don’t think that there is anyone in this thread who doesn’t think that the process could be improved. Personally I probably have a more benign attitude towards some of the LDC preferences than others. Not because I agree with them but rather because the sheer number of applicants reduces their effect to noise for any individuals chances of getting in.

My thoughts on each:

L: I think Legacy is a bit overboard and a relic of bygone days but I understand the fondness of multi-generation ties. They are a bit familial in nature and I expect that they will fade away as an anachronism. I actually believe that the recent noise will give school administrators an opening to eliminate them and use “outside pressure” to deflect the incoming anger from their alumni community.

D: I don’t really have an issue with giving the child of someone who contributes very significantly to a school admission as long as the prospective student can succeed. They may not be the best student but if they can be successful it is a small reward for something that will drive benefit to the greater whole. It may be a bit distasteful from a merit perspective but how does it balance out?

C: This one is interesting to me. These schools are still organizations/businesses and I see it as an employment matter and just one more benefit to be negotiated. The wider public probably shouldn’t be involved.

The system is never going to be “perfect” in the eyes of anyone and absolutely can be improved. One thing that I am sure of though is that there is not a single test than can “properly rank” applicants for admissions to these schools nor could we define a test that would take into account everything that people see as valuable and having merit for admissions.

[TheVulcan]

@Alqbamine32

and there are kids who you don’t want to inflict on future classrooms no matter how talented they are in other areas.

I’ve been reading up on Oppenheimer following the recent Nolan’s blockbuster. Apparently, he was such an obnoxious type during his graduate studies in Europe that his fellow students signed a petition demanding that the professor silence him.

But he had no problem getting into Harvard for undergrad. Go figure.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@TheVulcan

A rejected kid that hits all of the measurable points on this list out of the ballpark would be justified in concluding that it was their character that most needed improvement.

I agree with you on this. I think if you think carefully about the Harvard data, then if you were unhooked and had obviously good enough academics and activities to get Harvard 2s on those, but didn’t get admitted, you were very likely within the approximately 75% of such people who got Harvard 3s on personal, and didn’t get a Harvard 2.

By the way, almost no one got a Harvard 4 (“Bland or somewhat negative or immature”)–only 0.4% of applicants in that period. Even fewer got a 5 (“Questionable personal qualities”)–only 24 TOTAL, which rounds to 0.0%. For that matter, almost no one got a personal 1–37 total, still 0.0%.

Instead, the “fateful” score was almost always a 3 (“Generally Positive”), which was short of a 2 (“Very Good”).

So strictly speaking–I agree your hypothetical candidate to such a school can reasonably assume the college admissions officers determined they were a generally positive sort of person, but not the very strong sort of person they were looking for.

And you apparently think that is worse than being told, “Ooh, maybe if you hadn’t wasted all that time helping out in your family restaurant and had done more competitions . . . but sorry, you’re out.”

But I really don’t see it that way.

Instead, the thing I think is really awful about this is so many kids are being encouraged by their families, friends, and families of friends to view personal development as irrelevant, that only individual achievement matters. And then they are told they are failures because they didn’t get admitted, despite having been given terrible guidance by the same people now calling them failures.