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

Parents Forum
791

Fair enough. Both of those explanations make sense although I still think there is a hint of wanting to “have your cake and eat it too” in some donut hole posts.

Anyway, I am pretty sure that you get what I’m saying. I’m not trying to claim that the choices are easy. From my point of view, unless you are at risk of becoming homeless, I think it is fine to decide to spend your money on tuition instead of housing. I know of a few families that downsized their only home to pay tuition. I know even more who sold a second home to pay tuition. Good for them if they believe the pricey education is worth it. I also think it is fine to refuse to pay for an expensive college in order to have enough money for an expensive lifestyle. But you are correct in noticing that I am pushing back against the notion that something unfair is being done to donut hole families rather than difficult choices that they are making. You can dislike the available choices without claiming victimization. The great thing is when someone is fortunate enough to have a real choice. And one of the many reasons why I want my kids to go to college is because I think education buys the chance to make your own choices rather than have choices made for you.

Getting back to the Chetty study, I wish there was a way to measure different outcomes. I know alumni salaries are very important to most students in choosing a college. It makes sense to me. However, personally, I am not that interested in whether education from a particular ivy+ college leads to multimillion dollar incomes for most of its graduates. I am somewhat more interested in if an ivy+ college prepares its students well for graduate program. Mostly, I am interested in whether my kids’ educations will lead to them having meaningful choices in their adult lives and their ability to pursue activities that they love while still being self-sufficient.

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792

That’s about as perfect a statement as could be made on this subject, alqbamine. Someone ought to give you a kiss for it.

793

:grin: :kissing_heart: :wink:

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For people living in a HCOL area, the donut hole can be pretty large. In my neck of the wood, $104k is considered low income.

795

Oxford and Cambridge accept by major. It’s impossible to fill them with CS or econ majors

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796

And in fact, just to horrify some people:

According to The Guardian, Cambridge’s Average Entry Tariff (see explanation somewhere above) for CS is 235. Trust me when I say that is quite high.

If, say, you want to go to Cambridge for Theology and Religious Studies, their Average Entry Tariff is 184.

As it happens, roughly splitting the difference is Politics–205 at Cambridge.

Those poor CS kids cannot catch a break anywhere . . . .

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797

I don’t have a strong opinion on merit scholarships. But the money has to come from somewhere. Who are ultimately paying for them?

798

I think the relevancy of merit scholarships to the Ivy League was WAY overstated from the moment the question was posed. Why don’t they have them? Answer: Because they don’t need them. There is no shortage of the “best”, “most desirable”, “highest-scoring” - however you want to put it - middle-class students whose families are willing to do whatever it takes to finance their child’s education, so long as they are convinced it represents a golden ticket out of whatever rat’s Hades they imagine awaits them inside urban America.

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799

Understanding money is fungible on some level, I believe these colleges typically solicit gifts to fund regular merit scholarship programs.

800

Also, they are not “entirely test based.”

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801

They are almost entirely test-based. The interview is really an oral examination whereby the faculty try to determine who has extraordinary academic potential versus who is simply well-prepared.

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802

I know you’re not doubling down by claiming “entirely test-based” and “almost entirely test-based” are synonymous.

Regardless, let’s move on, shall we?

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803

This was more or less my supposition. I was using Harvard as shorthand (in the initial comment wherein I made the two proposals I pointed to the most highly rejective schools as a category). The specific prices are more or less arbitrary. But we already see that the total cost (i.e. full pay MSRP) to attend most of these schools are more similar than not and mostly have been over time. I do think that would continue, yes.

And then, I am of the belief that a not insignificant # of full pay families could and would pay more. And in some cases significantly more.

Now, would this lead to the next tier of schools also raising MSRP? Probably, if not to the same levels.

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804

I think a better phrase for Oxbridge is an academics-only admissions process.

But I suspect an academics-only admissions process in the US for elite schools would produce a completely sort of intake (Caltech student body) that would probably make them eventually less desirable.

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805

And yet it hasn’t hurt the reputation or desirability of Oxbridge. Why do you think that is?

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806

Because we’re veering into a forbidden area here, we can take it to PM with my speculation if you want.

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807

Or put it another way. Has the focus on academics kept other students away? For example, students (at least in STEM) may have other more financially rewarding options than going to grad schools, but the demographics themselves in US grad schools haven’t kept students away.

808

As we touched on before, one thing to keep in mind is that admitting by course, with different objective academic standards by course, is very different from the Ivy League system where at least most undergraduates admissions (in many cases all) are general admissions run out of a central college office.

As I pointed out before, this has observably led to far higher academic requirements for some courses versus others.

To add a new piece of information, there are also different socioeconomic and educational disadvantage patterns by course. In the UK, this is tracked by the ACORN and POLAR systems, described more here by Oxford:

Oxford then tracks the percentages of students in the most disadvantaged ACORN and POLAR groups by course, as reported here:

https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/AnnualAdmissionsStatisticalReport2023b.pdf#page=12

There are some really notable differences. Like, CS, everyone’s favorite “upward mobility” subject these days, has 18.5% disadvantaged by ACORN and 26.2% POLAR. Law, which is an undergraduate subject in the UK system, is 23.7% ACORN and 23.2% POLAR. You can compare those with, say, Music, NOT a favorite “upward mobility” subject, which is 10.8% ACORN and 12.3% POLAR.

OK, then per The Guardian, Oxford’s CS course has an Average Entry Tariff of 207, Law is 198, Music is 183.

So . . . at least often, the more popular courses with those looking for upward mobility from Oxford appear to have higher academic requirements than the less popular courses with those looking for upward mobility.

Now, how intentional all this might be is a different question. Still, higher socioeconomic class students at the UK’s most prestigious secondary schools (what they call public schools, and we would call independent private schools), know the game (as you can see on their forums, in fact). Meaning they know they can get easier admissions to Oxbridge if they choose the right sort of course, typically in the Arts or Humanities, but maybe some others. But these are typically not the sorts of courses that are great ideas for people who are not already higher socioeconomic class.

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809

I don’t think we know that it hasn’t hurt them. We know that they are very reputable and desirable, but I’ve never seen any data about whether it would help or harm them to have a different sort of admission process. Much younger US universities with holistic admissions dominate the top of the global rankings. I don’t think that holistic admission is the reason for their dominance, but at a minimum, it shows that holistic admission doesn’t have to be a barrier to global prestige.

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810

I note too a lot of “global rankings” are of research universities generally, and do not distinguish undergraduate from graduate/professional programs. And even the ones by subject often still do not make such a distinction.

So it is pretty unclear how the “top” undergraduate programs in the United States are faring against the “top” undergraduate programs in other countries, or vice-versa. But I don’t think that undermines your point, indeed I would say we don’t really know that even Oxbridge are holding up particularly well at the undergraduate level.

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