<p>(1) "Standards" are in the eye of the beholder. The majority of accepted students are well below standard in both wealth and "soul".</p>
<p>(2) jenskate: I think they do that, although not on eBay, and not an auction per se. I heard that the "market" rate at an institution equivalent to Harvard was $5 million, but that was for a student who came comfortably within the middle 50% in terms of stats.</p>
<p>Ben, on what specific evidence do you base your reply #18, other than supposition and/or prejudice? (Or strong suspicion of supposedly "substantial" under-qualification by hooked categories?) </p>
<p>Understand that I do not advocate punishing the rich & rewarding the poor on those grounds alone (for college admissions), but based on what I have seen both in my personal experience and on CC over the last several years, I think that at the most selective <em>private</em> universities it will be the exception that admissions are <em>mostly</em> category-based (as opposed to mostly qualifications based). I have no doubt that a few unimpressive legacies, lazy but wealthy students, and slightly underperforming athletes or impoverished students are admitted, but as has been demonstrated so often in the last 3-5 years, the top colleges do not need to do a lot of "pity" or "compensating" admissions.</p>
<p>Between or among truly equally qualified students from the same school, for example, the tip will often go to the hooked category (but not always). Just my observation. I also don't have hard statistics, but can say that of those admitted locally to HYP, whose records & accomplishments I know well, the tip is going to those most accomplished (& who fit best in terms of the college ideals & culture), not to the less accomplished but better-hooked. In the cases where students have both superior qualifications & hooks, I have seen them admitted over their classmates in all cases.</p>
<p>I think allowing Frist's son in to get more donations is ok because Princeton needs to balance academic excelence with paying for stuff. Also, I think colleges do not want to be 50+% asian because it does not mirror diversity in america (diversity all over the world would be close to 40% asian). I think it's wrong when they admt a very rich, very connected URM over a very poor, first generation college student, white person.</p>
<p>My claim about lower standards in some categories is based on years of observation as an applicant, a student, and a member of an admissions commitee. Universities that need to shift demographics or please certain constituencies simply need to scoop deeper into some pools. The differences in average qualifications one sees are not subtle. </p>
<p>I'm not really interested in a protracted debate on the details, but some schools that have a well-known imbalance to fix can't fool anyone. When people see side-by-side examples, it is clear that a certain tip factor must have played a pretty big role.</p>
<p>The very problem with this debate is that universities will never be so silly as to release detailed data about academic ability and statistics by race/gender/alumni status, etc. So it is good when books like this dig deep and have lots of those side-by-sides for everyone to think about.</p>
<p>mini, please elaborate on your last sentence in Post #19.</p>
<p>Glad people are so gleeful to rip on an 18 year old kid, pathetic. I went to school with the Frists and they are very nice and down to earth kids who were not academic slouches.</p>
<p>Who is the market for this book? There is no news here, nothing that has not been debated for decades. Why this book now?</p>
<p>"mini, please elaborate on your last sentence in Post #19."</p>
<p>Simply, limiting the number of places for low-income in-state students so the state university can take in high-paying out-of-state ones, jacking up tuition/room & board so that poor folks can't pay for it, and limiting the number of community college transfers. That's what's happening in my state, and that, to me as a taxpayer, is pretty upsetting. Another forum, though.</p>
<p>Interesting (but not particularly important) that "qualifications" can be set in such a way that half those matriculating at the prestige privates come from the top 3% in income in the U.S. - now that's a heck of a bigger story than that surrounding the developmental admits.</p>
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I went to school with the Frists and they are very nice and down to earth kids
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<p>Whereas all the rejected candidates, with their much higher grades, test scores, and EC achievements, were schmucks, right?</p>
<p>Oh so you saw the Frists' admissions file? Interesting. Also, I didn't know that those three factors were the only criteria in admissions.</p>
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Oh so you saw the Frists' admissions file?
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<p>Nope, I didn't, but apparently the author did and he spilled the beans. The Frist boy got the lowest academic score (1 out of 5). There appears to be no question he was admitted entirely on the strength of dad's wealth and position.</p>
<p>All of which is hardly a surprise and has been going on at the Ivy schools since their inception. I'm not offering a judgment. The great revelation in Golden's book is simply that he names names.</p>
<p>yeah, note ACADEMIC score. There ARE other scores you know, maybe he's a fantastic interview because he has great social skills. Anyways, my point was not that he was the most academically qualified student, my point was that it's pathetic that an 18 year old kid who happened to be born into a life of privilege gets scapegoated in the national press and people love to jump on because they're bitter or jealous or for whatever reason.</p>
<p>Members of the Frist family have been major donors to Princeton University, pledging a reported $25 million in 1997 for the construction of the Frist Campus Center.[8] Frist has said that, a few years after his 1974 graduation from Princeton, "I made a commitment to myself that if I was ever in a position to help pull together the resources to establish a center [on the Princeton campus] where there could be an informal exchange of ideas, and to establish an environment that is conducive to the casual exchange of information, I would do so."[9] Daniel Golden, a Wall Street Journal journalist and author of the book The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges - and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, has suggested that two of Frist's sons (Harrison and Bryan) were admitted to Princeton as recognition of this donation rather than their own academic and extracurricular merit.[10]</p>
<p>if i donated 25 million to a school, my kid BETTER get in regardless of stats.</p>
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f i donated 25 million to a school, my kid BETTER get in regardless of stats.
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<p>That seems to be the attitude of entitlement that's being debated here. It appears that college admissions officers are somewhat embarrassed by Golden's revelation, particularly in light of the .. ummm ... <em>confidentiality</em> with which they've dealt with this in the past.</p>
<p>"Who is the market for this book?"</p>
<p>Perhaps parents whose oldest child is 15 or 16. Admissions process "virgins" who are approaching it with the mistaken idea that it is a fair process based on some blend of academic qualifications, ECs and personality. This book would be a reality check. Anyone who has been through the process once does not need to read the book.</p>
<p>Why are schools that have always provided education to the nation's elite, and which have for the past 100 years enrolled 50% or more of their students from the top 3% of the population economically speaking suddenly being seen as "unfair"? And, in the larger scheme of things, why does it matter?</p>
<p>Right... I think the CC crew is quite jaded. Virtually everyone here has absorbed a general awareness of the existence of preferences based on schools' specific needs at any moment (including needs having nothing to do with students' abilities, talents, characters, etc.). This is old news here -- we've become numb to how unfair this can seem to someone who hears it for the first time.</p>
<p>Golden seems to be aiming at a wider audience, including those who aren't even thinking about elite schools. This ties into something noted earlier in this thread by mini -- why aren't we focusing on the average Joe at a state school? The answer is that, like it or not, elite schools still stand as gateway to the pinnacles of the corporate world, media, science, and technology. Their standards and their alumni shape the broader culture, not to mention influencing the priorities of other colleges. Everybody recognizes this. </p>
<p>By pointing to the practice of trading money for admission at these elite institutions, Golden is trying to wake up the broader culture and to make it realize that the standard-bearers of education don't seem to have a very high ethical standard. (There are no absolute morals, I think; but most Americans would probably say that letting someone cut in front of more academically and extracurricularly talented applicants because of his daddy's wealth is unethical.)</p>
<p>If you are a veteran, this is old hat. But it may spur the debate and scrutiny that are needed. Surely a little light can't hurt.</p>
<p>If "most Americans" were footing the bill at the elites them maybe they'd deserve a vote about where kids get to be in line. In the meantime the admissions folks get to make decisions based on the best interests of their Private educational institution.</p>
<p>And how do you know that any of the development admits aren't bringing more to a campus than they are taking away by stepping to the head of the line? Maybe P was in need of some Republicans to help balance the politics both in the classroom and on the campus...maybe this "privileged" kid has been raised to believe that to he who is given much, much is expected and will contribute to life on campus in ways most other kids won't...maybe this "privileged" kid brings a wealth of life experiences and a broader view of the world that is rarely found...and maybe, just maybe, the long term benefits of the additional endowments that come from having some of these kids enrolled provides access for many of those other, further back in the line, non financially qualified kids, via scholarships and FA.</p>
<p>Imho, we don't need more light on the subject or more ethics. We need people to understand that the private schools in this country are businesses, they have many different types of balance sheets, and how admits help achieve that balance is at the discretion of the school. Period.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it isn't anywhere near that simple. I, too, understand what the words "private business" mean, but the top universities aren't. They receive a huge chunk of their funding directly or indirectly from the federal government, so Joe Taxpayer is footing the bill for much of what they do. Officially, this money is for research as opposed to undergrad education, but it's a moot distinction; (if a kid gets money from parents to buy textbooks and that lets him go out and see more movies with the money from his summer job, then the parents are indirectly subsidizing the movies, too).</p>
<p>In any case, federal and state legislatures can make rules for private business all they want (see, e.g., the Americans with Disabilities Act). There isn't an amendment that says Congress shall make no law interfering with the whims of private business, though I encourage you to pass one. (Even freedoms that we do have through the amendments, like freedom of association, have been interpreted narrowly when they conflict with antidiscrimination laws.)</p>
<p>Not that anyone is even pushing for a legislative solution. If enough people are outraged over some practice of a private or partially private business, then it can be very expensive for the business to maintain the policy. Social pressure has been one of the most effective ways, in the long run, of dealing with dirt and corruption in industry.</p>
<p>Finally, there is certainly no law that says a private business is entitled to privacy. If Dan Golden thinks some good can be done (and I think it can) by embarrassing those who trade money for spots, more power to him.</p>
<p>No doubt "elite" private universities still think it is worth it to swallow hard and admit the dull children of past/potential big donors, but I'm wondering if it still pays off in the long run. Some years ago I had lunch with a guy who was a full professor at a large State U on the East Coast, actually a colleague of my husband's. I thought he was one of the slowest, dumbest people I had ever had to talk to. Since I was a naive mid-westerner, I was shocked to discover he had both bachelor's and PhD from Harvard! Fifteen years of seeing this guy and many more like him in action convinced me that the Ivy League is way too full of people who bought their way in despite low qualifications. Now I know how the game works, and we have told our 12th grade son, a top student, that we will not pay for him to attend Harvard or any other school where a significant number of meritorious students are excluded in order to build up the endowment. I also think the decision of the Ivy League and some others, such as Stanford and MIT, to eliiminate all merit awards will come back to haunt them. Many comfortable middle class people whose children are shut out of both need-based and merit awards are turning their attention to high quality schools that still want top students who hail from the middle class. </p>
<p>Mini: I too am appalled at what is happening to state universities, but my conclusions differ wildly from yours. The state U that supports my family does accept all cc transfers, to the detriment of the school. It is no secret that the cc classes that we are forced to accept are in no way equivalent to the introductory classes taught here. It is common for students who have failed a class at flagship State U to "retake" the class at a local cc over the summer and then transfer their A or B here. Even one of my own relatives has done this! State U can't fight this or legislators accuse them of being elitist. The result: dumbed down student body, and bad academic reputation. Oh, and good students, even children of faculty, want nothing to do with State U.</p>