A Shocking Number Of The World's Rich And Powerful Attended Elite Colleges

Parents Forum
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This (i.e., defining merit differently) is likely true.</p>

<p>It is also likely true that, about slightly less than a century ago, they also defined merit even more differently - they preferred not to accept too many “brainy” students (did they use another word, like neuronic or something to describe such students, and many of them might be graduated from one of the magnet public high schools in NYC back then?) because doing so might alienate the elite group of the society at that time and dilute the “value” of the brand (the elite group here refers to the elite families or parents of the students here, not necessarily the elite students.) ironically such students are likely the faculty members or even the presidents of most of these elite universities now. BTW, back then, they did not want to take female students also, who are 50% of the population.</p>

<p>Overall speaking, I think we have made a lot of progress since then. So no need to “complain.”</p>

<p>I think I know who Karabel is.</p>

<p>I admit that I have made some mistake in my reasoning in my previous post. But I think it is hard to believe that, at the application time, fewer such students will apply to H than to CalTech. It is true that the class size of CalTech is smaller. But I somehow still believe that the admission rate for such students (especially Asian American students) to H is still smaller than that to CalTech. (BTW, the percentages of such students at Cal and CalTech are comparable - the former is likely due to some law in California; both are much larger than that of any Ivy.) But I do not have hard data to support this “theory.”</p>

<p>You may argue that such students are particularly lopsided toward math and science, but a lot of such students may just use their prowess in this area to help them get into a school - maybe a few years later they use it as a step stone to go to the Wall Street (e.g., in some years, roughly 40% of graduates from P would head to that direction.) </p>

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<p>Applicant pools are also different based on geography. It doesn’t occur to anyone that CalTech is in a state with a demonstrably different ethnic makeup than the northeast? All schools - and yes the Ivies too - over index strongly to their home region. Even if students were just picked from a hat, it could very well result in different demo characteristics. </p>

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<p>"But I think it is hard to believe that, at the application time, fewer such students will apply to H than to CalTech. It is true that the class size of CalTech is smaller. But I somehow still believe that the admission rate for such students (especially Asian American students) to H is still smaller than that to CalTech. "</p>

<p>No! It’s not about the raw number!
It is about the PERCENT of the applicant pool that is made up of a certain group, compared to the percent of the accepted pool. The actual size is irrelevant. We get that Harvard is bigger than Caltech. </p>

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<p>@sorghum Perhaps we are both right.</p>

<p>The academic requirement of AAA is destroyed by grade inflation, but at least they held THAT requirement firm. Where bias comes in is who, among those with AAAs, they choose to interview and admit.</p>

<p>Look at the story of Euan Blair. Here is someone who is a double legacy with the father being the sitting Prime Minister, rejected by Oxford because he could not get the grades. This could not have happened in the US, could it?</p>

<p>He did get into Yale grad school under very strange circumstances. I must confess for years I was thinking along the line of Galloway: Did his dad bring Britain into the war because he owed President Bush a favour?</p>

<p><a href=“University confirms Blair's admission - Yale Daily News”>http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2006/06/01/university-confirms-blairs-admission/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>mcat, Where did you find the statistics for entering class at Caltech? I went to their website, and found geographic diversity, but nothing else. </p>

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<p>bookworm, I do not have the statistics. I just read somewhere (maybe even on CC?! Can not remember.) that CalTech is a school whose admission is more based on the student’s academic merit and also the percentage of Asian Americans in their incoming class is much higher than other larger elite schools like HYPS. Also, it was mentioned that their % in the incoming class was closer to that of Cal than Ivies. (Although the % is not as extreme as that of the magnet public high school in NYC, whose admission is solely based on some</p>

<p>I also heard of two cases (granted, it is only two data points) where two students (in different years) got accepted to both CalTech and other “larger” elite schools on the coast and both of them chose the “larger” elite schools, even though their strengths were on STEM.</p>

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<p>So maybe the composition of applicants to CalTech and UC schools are different. However, also note that the percentage of Asian-Americans in HS has increased quite a bit over the past 30 years, yet the percentage of Asian-Americans in elite Ivies has barely moved up during that time (while it has dramatically at CalTech). It’s hard not to suspect that the admissions criteria for Asian-Americans has changed over that time.</p>

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<p>^ Agreed. It is also hard not to suspect that their admission rate is lower because the % of their PARENTS, while having a higher household income on average, is smaller in the class of the elite group in the society, especially fewer of their children have the advantage of being legacies. (When DS was at an interview at one of these colleges, the interviewer asked him about his parent’s job after he had asked what his SAT score is. Maybe he was trying to give him some “extra credit” if he found out his parents did not belong to the elite class. LOL.)</p>

<p>Since bookworm asked for the hard numbers, I try to find some numbers even though what I can locate is only about med school admission test rather than college admission test. In case any of you do not know about it: MCAT test is a standardized test for med school admission taken by all applicants. I heard it is more like a reading comprehension test than an achievement test, even though two third of the sections are seemingly like science-related tests - very little advanced math (beyond high school math) contents in this kind of tests.</p>

<p>I hope I could cut-and-paste well below (especially the URL links):</p>

<p>Not about the college admission here as this is more about the professional school admission:</p>

<p>For this standardized test for “premed students”, between 2010 and 2012, there are 784 white students with the stats 3.8+/39+, and there are 432 asian students with the same stats.</p>

<p>BTW, in case some of you may not know this, it is much harder to achieve 39+ on this standardized test than 3.8+ on GPA.</p>

<p>The total applicants (for this standardized test) for whites and asians are 80375 and 29346, respectively.</p>

<p>784 divided by 80375 is slightly less than 1/100. (Whites)</p>

<p>432 divided by 29346 is slightly greater than 1/70. (Asians)</p>

<p>I also can not but notice that, with the overall percentage of Asian Americans in US not so large as compared to many other ethnic groups, the absolute number of them as MCAT test takers is quite high. Supposedly, the higher percentage of students from a group take this kind of challenging test, their average score should be lower (an example is that the biology majors tend to have a lower MCAT score on average just because a higher percentage of them take such a test - unlike, say, music or classic major.)</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/mcat-gpa-grid-by-selected-race-ethnicity.html”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/mcat-gpa-grid-by-selected-race-ethnicity.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Fine, but medical school admission has almost nothing to do with populating the ranks of the rich or the powerful.</p>

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<p>@Pizzagirl You don’t like my quick and dirty technique? That’s because you have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. I have no dog in this fight, so I can be really objective about it, not that I ever have such a problem to start with.</p>

<p>Why don’t you check out a long time poster (mini)’s research in this area? You will see that the numbers of low income students admitted are carefully controlled.</p>

<p>The elites have an excellent business plan in place. Year after year they admit about 15% academic superstars, 40 to 60 percent hooked applicants, and the rest are lucky sperms. In the words of another poster, they make sure the school is mostly white, not too Asian, and just enough black and Hispanic. Is that not the beauty of “merit in motion”? Of course they can be different things to different people. Why not?</p>

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<p>Wait, wait. Doesn’t the kind of car you drive correlate better with SES than the SAT? </p>

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<p>Well, it hardly correlates with “anything you want it to”. If it did, the last sentence wouldn’t be necessary. But there are forces trying to make it the way you’re suggesting. </p>

<p>But it does inversely correlate to ignorance, as well as stupidity, or lack of logic ability. And it probably has zero correlation with judgment, if that could be measured after adjusting for ignorance and stupidity. </p>

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<p>Asians are underrepresented among athletes and legacies, both groups that the Ivies discriminate for (which CalTech doesn’t do).</p>

<p>I agree with @Canuckguy that the elites have a nice business plan. </p>

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<p>^^Very very good. I enjoyed it immensely.</p>

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<p>Their business plan works because so many prestige-obsessed folks are lined up and begging to attend these schools, essentially assuring their low admission rates and high rankings.</p>

<p>What do you think would happen if every unhooked applicant refused to apply to the Ivies for a year or two? The subsequent (and likely significant) “brain drain” might actually force the “elites” to do away with legacy and athletic admits. </p>

<p>Not that such a boycott would ever happen!</p>

<p>And I wonder how much the SAT predicts IQ when the student is taking it for the third or fourth time and/or spent months cribbing for it? </p>

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<p>“Year after year they admit about 15% academic superstars, 40 to 60 percent hooked applicants, and the rest are lucky sperms. In the words of another poster, they make sure the school is mostly white, not too Asian, and just enough black and Hispanic. Is that not the beauty of “merit in motion”? Of course they can be different things to different people. Why not?”</p>

<p>If their application processes aren’t to your liking, and they are just admitting all these unqualified jocks/legacies/rich kids, tell me again why you want your kid to go there sooooo badly?</p>

<p>Wouldn’t you then want to know where the “smart” kids who are getting rejected from Ivies etc are going, and want to send your kid there too? Or do you think those smart-but-rejected kids just disappear into thin air?</p>

<p>The only reason the Ivies etc have this “racket” is because some of you are just sooooo dying to “brand” your kids that way. Look, I’m really sorry that some people are unsophisticated enough that they think the sun rises and sets on HYPSM/the Ivies/etc. but that doesn’t make them a “racket.” </p>

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<p>“Asians are underrepresented among athletes and legacies, both groups that the Ivies discriminate for (which CalTech doesn’t do).”</p>

<p>And yet note that Caltech doesn’t have the social cachet that the Ivies do. Perhaps some of you aren’t aware enough that “prestige” is not perfectly correlated with “very smartest of the smart.” </p>

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Also, these numbers are nonsense. Also, the idea that athletic recruits are the privileged is pretty funny–I guess a few of them are, but many are the exact opposite.</p>

<p>Plus, don’t forget that the people who generally complain about “not too Asian” don’t like all those blacks and Hispanics that get special treatment. The idea that the most selective schools are limiting blacks and Hispanics to “just enough” is untrue. They’d like to get more.</p>

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<p>Cal Tech is an outstanding school. I lived on the west coast for a while so when my son expressed an interest in Stem we investigated all the top schools out there. Harvey Mudd, uCB, Stanford etc… The research of Cal tech was alarming to us however due to their lack of black students on their campus. Obviously you can’t assume that due to bring admitted to one school you would in all likelihood be admitted to another but he was admitted to every school he applied to except one. Yet is it a concern for a place like Cal Tech (Harvey Mudd has the same issues) that many qualified black kids and families may not consider such an outstanding school due to comfort zone. Is it a loss for the school that the capable and qualified student of color may give more weight to a place like MIT, Stanford, or Cornell due to a cultural comfort zone. Or is this an unavoidable consequence of location and enrollment size. </p>

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<p>@Pizzagirl:</p>

<p>Maybe in the conceited pretentious circles you run in, CalTech doesn’t have that social cachet (I personally would rather not be around such insufferable people myself), but by alumni accomplishments, CalTech is every bit as good as HYPSM (and is better in some respects). Meaning they’re better than most Ivies.</p>

<p>Perhaps you’re not aware enough to realize that most of us don’t give a rat’s ass about what your idea of prestige is.</p>

<p>BTW, why do you always have to act so insecure?</p>