Sure. It will just need 5 times the resources.
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Here is another interesting article in the Economist about the effect of private schooling on elite college admission. I find interesting that the country that purports to export democracy around the world has the most wealth-driven education practices. The deck is stacked in several ways
Recent evidence suggests that for most privately schooled children in Britain and those who attend elite private institutions in America, the advantages of an expensive education remain robust. The benefits are probably bigger in America than they are in Britain, at least for pupils sitting in the swankiest private classrooms. That is because their alumni continue to enjoy access to the best universities at rates which would cause a furore in the old country. That might surprise anyone who assumes that American society is less ridden by class than British society.
Americaās universities welcome those from grand schools with open arms. In 2021 James Murphy of Education Reform Now, a think-tank in Washington, dc, collected data from 35 of Americaās highest-ranked universities and liberal-arts colleges. He found that on average about 34% of their new undergraduates were educated in private high schools (see chart). That is astonishing given that the private sector educates just 8.5% of American high-schoolers. Pupils from āindependentā schools do brilliantly. The most recently published data suggest they made up about one-third of new undergraduates at Dartmouth and more than a quarter at Princeton. āLegacyā preference, whereby the relatives of alumni get a leg-up in admissions, may explain some of this. Nothing so brazenly unfair happens at British universities.
I am picking up what you are putting down:
We advise applicants to form their app lists, and then choose a school once their admissions results are final, based on fit: cost, environment, academics, sports/social vibe, etc.
It also makes sense that schools would be looking for kids who exude qualities and interests that fit the culture and goals of the institution. When the kid believes the school is a fit, and the school believes the kid is a fit ā while nobody has a crystal ball, the chances of that becoming a harmonious and fruitful relationship are pretty strong.
Harmonious productivity is a good thing.
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The original paper states 5.7% of students at MIT were from top 1% and 3% of students at Caltech were from top 1%. This does not mean that academics/scores has little influence on admission at Caltech/MIT or reasons why wealthy are overrpresented at Ivy+ colleges. I expect there are many contributing factors to why top 1% kids might favor Ivies over MIT/Caltech besides just test scores.
What is more clear is that wealthy kids are far more likely to have scores in the typical range of Ivy+ admits than less wealthy kids, including top 1% kids being for more likely to be in than typical score range than high income kids. Itās also clear that Caltech/MIT emphasized admission criteria that is well correlated with scores in admission decisions, at the time of the study (before test optional/blind).
Iām not sure which table you are referring to, but I expect it is one of the many that controls for SAT scores. For example, did top 1% kids who scored 1500 SAT have higher academic ratings than high income kids who scored 1500 SAT? This is very different from asking how much test scores contribute to income distribution at Ivy+ colleges.
When non-academic factors (including various preferences) are included in admissions, the new study found that about 16% of Ivy+ students are from the top 1% of the income distribution, representing āabout 2/3 of the āextraā rich kids at Ivy-Plus collegesā, in the words of one of the authors of the paper (and that fraction would be much higher if one uses Caltech, the school that gives the least amount of consideration to non-academic factors, as the baseline).
Itās 16.7% from top 1% (appendix table 3). When controlling for test scores, this 16.7x overrepresentation drops to 2.1x overrepresentation. The overwhelming majority of the wealthy overrepresentation at Ivy+ colleges is correlated with wealthier students being more likely to have high test scores, but that is not what the study focuses on. The study instead focuses on the remaining 2.1x overrpresentation after controlling for scores. For this much smaller remaining 2.1x overrpresentation after controlling for test scores, the author estimates that 58% or 66% (depending on analysis method) is attributed to the following 3 non-academic factors ā legacy, athlete, non-academic rating.
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Yes, these percentages from MIT and Caltech were the overall numbers. The corresponding numbers based on academics alone would have been even lower, which would make the case I was making stronger. I also expect these two schools place greater emphasis on academics so the two sets of numbers would be closer for these two schools than for other schools.
This number (actually 7.2%) is from Table 6. The explanation was in the footnote on page 49. David Leonhardt of The New York Times, who is on the unpaid board of advisers of Opportunity Insights, the research group that published the paper, explained it this way:
The general US theory is that public schools should provide an affordable quality education for every child, and then if some families want to pay more for private schools, they can. Iām not sure why anyone would be surprised at this being the US approach, as pretty much across the board we accept the wealthy being able to buy nicer things.
I note the Economist is citing this 2021 article from James Murphy:
And here is the chart of ā35 of Americaās highest-ranked universities and liberal-arts collegesā they reference:
The top 28 colleges on the chart are all private colleges themselves. UVA was originally a private college that eventually affiliated with the state. The more traditional public colleges are all within the UC system (using only CA resident data, I note), and you can see them converging toward the US average. Iām actually not sure there is anything left to explain at that point, because weād really need the percentage of former private HS students among selective four-year college applicants, not the general HS population, as many HS graduates do not apply to four-year colleges.
As an aside, I would guess BC and ND are so high on this list because they are Catholic schools.
Anyway, this is reflecting a sort of truism of the US education system. US public secondary schools feed into US public universities at about expected rates (at least the ones which are not ānationalā public universities like Berkeley, UCLA, and UVA). But US private secondary schools, particularly āeliteā US private secondary schools, disproportionately feed into āeliteā US private colleges.
To me, this is roughly like observing that US luxury car buyers are more likely to have had a luxury car as their last car. I am not sure why anyone would have expected the US to be different from that. The US does not purport to guarantee the wealthy cannot buy luxury cars, nor that they cannot buy luxury schools.
By the way, as I suggested in an earlier post, I think the much bigger problem these days is that quality public colleges are not always available on an affordable basis to otherwise qualified kids in some states or parts of states. That to me is a much bigger failure to live up to our nominal ideals.
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The table says the percentage drops from a 15.7% overrpresentation to a to 7.2% ā1If one were to eliminate income disparities (conditional on SAT scores) in all parts of the college attendance pipeline (application, admissions, and matriculation)ā 15.7%/7.2% = 2.2x. My post said 2.1x, the table says 2.2x overrpresentation. The much bigger factor is the 7.2x overrpresentation that remains from the test score correlation.
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I agree with all that as long as people understand that an IVY+ education is a luxury product and not a basic human right 
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Just as no one should deny that legacy students, on average, are more academically qualified than the overall pool, no one is denying that the wealthy students, on average, are more academically qualified (however measured). According to this study, they would represent about 7% of the student body based on academics alone, but not the actual 16%!
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Said a different way, if test scores were not controlled from, the study expects that the top 1% kids would drop from 16% to 2%. If the other non-test score factors were eliminated the top 1% would drop from 16% to 7%. Which component is the larger influence?
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Test scores are just one component of academic factors. Just as legacies enjoy an academic advantage (due to nature or nurture, or both), the wealthy also enjoys this advantage (due to nature or nurture, or both). How do you eliminate that advantage? What you donāt want to do is to add to that advantage, through preferences and other factors.
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But it canāt really hurt to have a paper or two in the field of professed academic interest published in a peer-reviewed journal, and programs like MIŠ¢ PRIMES & RSI boast ~80% HYPSMC placement.
https://math.mit.edu/research/highschool/primes/alumni.html
There will always be those that pursue interests they are truly passionate about in the spirit of Applying Sideways, and those who simply try to check the boxes. Itās not like all the high school athletic pursuits are undertaken with no heed paid to college admissions.
MIT PRIMES and RSI are awesome programs. Because of their quality, I consider them āvalidatedā research programs that admission officers give high credence to. The major science awards are given similar credence.
But the proliferation of the āpay to playā research programs affects the next level down. For example, I just started guiding a rising senior who is doing research with a professor in the midwest. This is a very bright student who had the research idea on his own, and hustled to find a professor to work with. He is unlikely to get published in a paper or get into PRIMES. But go back 10 years or so, and his initiative would have still been notable. Now it gets lost in the noise of āpay to playā research.
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The Evergreen State College is one of the Colleges That Change Lives, but it does not seem to do much selection relating to fit or ethos or whatever (to apply as a frosh, transcripts are required, plus either SAT/ACT scores or an essay). Frosh admission rate appears to be around 74%. Test score submission was low recently (13% SAT, 4% ACT), but was much higher pre-COVID-19 (69% SAT, 27% ACT in 2019-2020). Transfer admission rate appears to be around 98%, and is essay-optional.
But The Evergreen State Collegeās admission practices which seem to admit many students based on stats only have not made it into a āgenericā college lacking in distinctiveness from other colleges.
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Iāll admit I am no expert on Evergreen, but here is their admissions criteria page:
https://www.evergreen.edu/admissions/admissions-criteria
Among other things they say:
Evergreen uses test-optional admission. If you would like your SAT or ACT scores considered in your admission decision please submit official scores from the testing agency or make sure they are included on your official high school transcript. At Evergreen, there is no minimum score to qualify for admission, your test scores will be considered along with all the information you provide in your application to make a decision.
And here is their Common Data Set:
https://www.evergreen.edu/sites/default/files/2023-04/CDS%2022-23_Final.pdf
It lists several āNonacademicā factors as Important or Considered, including ECs, volunteer work, and work experience.
That sounds like holistic review to me, and as I understand it, some people here are basically proposing outlawing colleges which use holistic review. To be sure, Evergreen also lists various Nonacademic factors as Not Considered. But as I understand what the academic purists are saying, any consideration of any Nonacademic factor by any college should be strictly verboten.
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An applicant who does not submit an optional essay describing ECs, volunteer work, and/or work experience would have only stats (transcripts and SAT/ACT scores) to show to The Evergreen State College.
Note that consideration of subjectively evaluated criteria is does not necessarily mean that the admission review is holistic (where applications are considered as a whole in comparison to admission standards or in competition with each other). It is likely that some colleges do subjective evaluation of some criteria resulting in a point score to be added to other point scores for other criteria like GPA, test scores, etcā¦
Of course, The Evergreen State College is even less picky with transfer applicants, of whom it admits 98% of (transcripts required, essay optional).
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The study found that among Ivy+ college graduates, non-academic admission ratings had little correlation with chance of having top 1% income at age 33, chance of attending a āeliteā grad school, or chance of working at a āeliteā firm at age 25. āEliteā grad school is defined as either Ivy+ or 5 publics. āElite firmā is defined as a firm that employs a large portion of Ivy+ grads.
While this is an interesting statistic, itās not the same as saying that non-academic factors have little bearing on future success. Earning under $650k income at age 33 and working for an employer that has a large portion non-Ivy+ alumni does not mean the student was unsuccessful. There are many other possible paths to success.
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So you can apply to Evergreen using the Common App, in which case they would know about your activities without a supplemental essay.
I donāt know what is on their direct app.
I was referring to lines like, āyour test scores will be considered along with all the information you provide in your application to make a decision.ā They are test optional, but to me it seems unlikely if you donāt submit a test score they will then not consider all the information you provide in your application when making a decision. Which seems to fit your definition of holistic review. But to be sure, I donāt know the details so the most I can say is this sounds like holistic review to me.
As I understand the academic uber alles people, that would still violate their proposed system as that would mean Applicant A could have less academic points but more points overall than Applicant B.
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Iām not sure Iām one of your āacademic puristsā or not. Other than those preferences, I wouldnāt forbid anything. On the contrary, I want these schools to consider everything in their applicantsā personal history. If I were running a college admissions office, I would consider things such as:
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Why are they doing what theyāre doing, both academically and extracurricularly? Are they doing those things because of their passions, their career objectives, or something else?
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How do they challenge themselves? What are their schedules like year after year, taking into account of their extracurricular activities? Can they handle multiple challenging courses and/or time-consuming activities together? Have they done it consistently?
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How did they progress from year to year in high school (ideally even in middle school), both academically and extracurricularly? Is there a pattern?
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For courses with standardized exams, how do they do on the exams? If they didnāt take the exams, why didnāt they? These exams are valuable because students typically only get one shot at them.
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Iād ask applicants to submit all scores on standardized tests. Again, I want to see a pattern. Iād consider the first test the student took to be more representative and Iād even penalize those who are clearly trying to game the system. I wouldnāt consider a 20-point difference on the current SAT to be meaningful, however.
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Iād also interview as many of the applicants on the final list as possible (via video). Itās worthwhile to spend extra 30 minutes or so with each potential admit.
This list surely isnāt everyoneās idea of āholisticā admissions, but it also surely isnāt rack-and-stack. I think it is āholisticā if āholisticā means looking at something (or someone) in its entirety, with a focus on academics. These colleges are academic institutions after all.
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Doesnāt sound like it!
I think this is an important practical point. Currently, colleges are not forbidden from ranking the relative importance of the Common Data Set factors however they like, including Not Considering things. And different colleges rank them differently.
So if a given person has a strong set of preferences for how this would work, they can go about identifying the colleges that mostly closely match their preferences using the Common Data Set.
The āproblemā appears to be that certain families are starting with a list of colleges they find more desirable for different reasons, and then finding out the way those colleges weight the factors in the Common Data Set (or equivalent information). And they donāt like it, up to and including those colleges often considering factors that those families think should not be considered at all.
And in a massive coincidence, it turns out that at least most of the time, how they think it should be done would tend to be better for their own kid. And so they argue that these colleges are doing something generally bad in admissions, which as it happens will potentially hurt their own kid specifically, in the sense they might not get admitted to a college where the family thinks they ādeserveā to be admitted.
This āproblemā could be resolved in one of two ways, one fantastical, and one practical.
The fantastical resolution would be that every college that this family saw as desirable for other reasons could be forced to change its admissions policies to better suit that familyās preferences and maximize their kidās chances of admission. That is fantastical both because they have no means to make that happen, and also on a deeper level because there is no guarantee such a radical change would not also change why they found it desirable in the first place (what I noted above is sometimes called the ājust one moreā problem).
The practical resolution is this family could start over and rather than think in terms of a generic list of desirable colleges, think in terms of what colleges are the best fit for their kid. This is practical because it is something the family could actually do.
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