<p>Mini, the son of a NYC nurse and a sanitation worker is a top 3% earner by your definition.... as is the daughter of a school teacher and a cop living in Connecticut. You may argue that the nominal value of these families salaries clearly makes them "elite" in some way, but from a lifestyle perspective, these kids are middle class in every definable way. Financial Aid penalizes families who live in high housing cost/high tax areas but it doesn't make the kids any less middle class.... despite the fact that compared to Oklahoma or Arkansas, these families should be living in the lap of luxury based on their gross salary.</p>
<p>Ivy League (Elite colleges) is a country club whose main function is to help it attendees make connections. These schools facilitate to meet other people with whom you can do the business. Another purpose of to go to elite school is alumni connection so that a person can advance their career. Education is a secondary benefit yet a very fruitful side. </p>
<p>This is my assessment which could be flawed.</p>
<p>Another interesting scenario would be if the feds got out of funding upper education by way of loan programs as well as research funding. What a radical difference it would make if the feds were not involved at all.</p>
<p>"Mini, the son of a NYC nurse and a sanitation worker is a top 3% earner by your definition.... as is the daughter of a school teacher and a cop living in Connecticut. You may argue that the nominal value of these families salaries clearly makes them "elite" in some way, but from a lifestyle perspective, these kids are middle class in every definable way."</p>
<p>First of all, it isn't MY definition - it's simply census bureau income statitistics. There were outlyers 40 years, 25 years ago, and today. It still doesn't change the equation. And, statistically, you are not going to find many sons and daughters of NYC nurses and sanitation workers at these colleges in any case (as you note, their house values are too high, and they can't afford it, even if the kid could get in), so it is almost totally a red herring. In other words, the top 3% is even MORE rather than less exclusive than I suggested.</p>
<p>Frist's sons did not gain admission because their dad gave money. They were probably in the ball park score wize and had other strong ECs (comes with dad being senate majority leader) and other aspects of the application were probably good. the 25 million was just annother factor in getting into the college (like a hook). I am not saying that the First boys would have gotten into Princeton if their dad did not go and give big bucks. I am also not saying that they were the most qualified applicants (many kids with 4.0s and 2400s are academically strong, but get denied admission). I am saying that the Frist boys should be allowed to go to Princeton, and if they had 2.0s and 1000SAT and no ECs, etc. they probably would be denied because Princeton and other prestigeous schools can only bend so much to admit target applicants. </p>
<p>Also, how big of a deal is one spot? Sure there are tons of applicants on the weight list, but only one can take the spot. A college would never fill up all of it's spots with kids like this because then the prestige starts to deminish.</p>
<p>Ben:</p>
<p>Well, let's put it this way. I don't look down on anyone, of course, because I'm completely devoid of that sort of snobbery, being perfect and all.</p>
<p>But a colleague of mine (and a strong contender for Nobel status, I'm told) who also happens to be a physicist, calls this particular despised social science "the discipline that attracts the world's best fifth-rate minds."</p>
<p>Personally, being in a different social science, I'm more than sympathetic to the difficulty of conducting research when the variables are so hard to measure, isolate, and control. My hard science friend is wrong on that account, I think. In that respect, he has it easy.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a disturbingly large number of practitioners of this particular social science seem to make disturbingly strong statements of "fact" based on what seems to me to be just slightly removed from philosophy. And when practitioners of this particular social science start to encroach on my turf with a philosophy that doesn't stand up to neurological research, and then insist that their philosophy trumps research they haven't seen, it does tend to get just a wee bit irritating.</p>
<p>Being paid more for getting it wrong does, I admit, add to the irritation ;-).</p>
<p>Some of the so-called numbers here are beginning to remind me of the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" hierarchy.</p>
<p>(1) I promise you that we are not top 3% of income. <em>holds sides laughing</em> However, the classmates that were passed over to admission at the same Ivies D applied to & was admitted to, may well be top 3%.</p>
<p>(2) Receipt of a Pell Grant does not necessarily mean you have a compromised zip code. Some colleges wisely do not consider your residence (& only significant asset) to be something that is liquid, for purposes of financial aid. They don't want to trade your admission for your parents' & siblings' homelessness.</p>
<p>(3) D has met quite a span of economic classes so far.</p>
<p>(4) I did not hear that 25 years ago HYP rejected equivalent freshman classes (or 2 or 3 of them) regularly in April. Thus, one would have to assume there are fewer students getting in despite non-academic qualification than otherwise. (Versus a generation ago.)</p>
<p>"(1) I promise you that we are not top 3% of income. <em>holds sides laughing</em> "</p>
<p>Why should that be surprising? 50% of students attending are not (about the same as 40 years ago.) 30% or so are not even in the top quintile (meaning incomes below $90k.)</p>
<p>Tarhunt -- </p>
<p>It seems that we're not going to have any sort of entertaining squabble today since we agree... it happens to be that one the profs I respect most at Caltech is Colin Camerer, who (from the inside) is trying to deal with the "supreme confidence" of the subject in question. If these disputes seem bad from the outside, let me repeat something you probably already know -- they can be even worse on the inside. Some people push theories as if nothing else mattered and will deploy every ounce of their considerable cleverness to explain why the evidence is irrelevant. There are some reasons to believe the tide is turning -- certainly, certain brands of empirical work (including neuro stuff) are much more mainstream in that discipline than they were even ten years ago.</p>
<p>I think the right way to look at the mathematical theories produced by this field is a set of consequences that necessarily follow from certain assumptions about individual behavior. I completely agree that it would be a better world if people were more open to empirical input about the soundness of those assumptions.</p>
<p>In any case, cheer up. [snarky remark about the humanities redacted]</p>
<p>"Ivy League (Elite colleges) is a country club whose main function is to help it attendees make connections. These schools facilitate to meet other people with whom you can do the business. Another purpose of to go to elite school is alumni connection so that a person can advance their career. Education is a secondary benefit yet a very fruitful side."</p>
<p>I never even considered this when I applied to Ivies and other "elite" schools 30 years ago. I can assure you that my husband and most of my college friends didn't either (none of us were in the top social or economic sphere back then). Things have changed. I was looking for a good education and student diversity. And my daughter would give me one of her "huh" looks if I asked her if this was one of things she was considering.</p>
<p>sly<em>vt, admirable I'm sure, but ignoring the value of networking at top colleges would be rare I think. Take a look at USNWR's #4 statement of what they have to offer: <a href="http://www.wellesley.edu/admission/about/wo">http://www.wellesley.edu/admission/about/wo</a></em>network.html as just one example. Most of us need jobs after college.</p>
<p>Ben:</p>
<p>No dust up? No exchange of increasingly pointed remarks driving increasingly dangerous hypertension?</p>
<p>Is life still worth living?</p>
<p>Actually, thank you. Somehow, I suppose I had assumed that this particular discipline never had internal brawls like my own. I suppose I imagined conventions as love fests. Certainly, the field appears monolithic to the outsider. </p>
<p>Thanks for the conversation. I greatly enjoyed it.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p>Do colleges actually release "by name" what "rating" an admitted student received? If the Frist kid's rating was released without his permission, he should sue! I'm not saying the system is right; I'm just saying that I wouldn't want my kid's rating released to outsiders! <<<<</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>I posted the above in an earlier post but no one responded or commented. Does anyone know how the writer found out what the Frist kid's "rating" was? Isn't this confidential info? </p>
<p>I am not viewing this from a political perspective... I don't care what Chelsea Clinton's rating was when she was admitted into Stanford, or what Barbara Bush's rating was when she was admitted to Yale.</p>
<p>(BTW, can a person even find out what his/her own rating was??? )</p>
<p>BG, </p>
<p>I note with some satisfaction that Colin Camerer trained at U. Chicago....</p>
<p><em>laughs</em> yes, that is an example of some kind of ironic justice.</p>
<p>jlauer95 -- no, colleges don't release this data. Golden presumably found out through someone in the admissions office who has willing to talk under the radar.</p>
<p>Ben and newmassdad:</p>
<p>My personal flippancy aside, Colin Camerer is doing important work, but I believe that behavioral economics is still missing the mark. What's needed is a sort of unified field theory of human behavior. Behavioral economics is simply an extension of expectancy/valence theory. To at least some degree, it builds on the theoretical work of Ed Lawler from the 70s. It tends to ignore consistency theory (to its peril) or, at best (or worst, depending on how you look at it), tries to incorporate consistency theory into expectancy/valence theory, and does so rather awkwardly. There is also little or no attention to drive/habit research.</p>
<p>I believe that the mathematical extension of expectancy/valence theory is important work but, in the end, behavioral economics reminds me of physicists who tried to explain the entire universe using only gravity. It's not that the work on gravity and relativity was wrong. Just incomplete.</p>
<p>As for Camerer being from the U. of Chicago ... well ... that's just delicious.</p>
<p>Ben Golub: " jlauer95 -- no, colleges don't release this data. Golden presumably found out through someone in the admissions office who has willing to talk under the radar."</p>
<p>That's what I thought. I don't think it's good journalism to print such confidential info about a private citizen who has done nothing wrong. Children of polititicians should not be "fair game". It would be outrageous if this same journalist had gotten some Stanford nurse to disclose embarrassing health info about Chelsea Clinton and then published it.</p>
<p>I have to agree with post 117. It doesn't matter where you stand on the issue of special admission, this seems like an invasion of privacy. There are all sorts of rules governing who can see test scores, who can see counselors' and teachers' letters, etc. It doesn't give me a good feeling about the professionalism of admit staff.</p>
<p>Just back from Barnes & Noble. Was it silly of me to expect the book to be prominently displayed, front and center in the New Fiction display? After getting a desk person to look up the book and following her to the children's section, I got the sole copy in the store.</p>
<p>Of course, the first thing I did was look up what Golden had to say about UVa. It wasn't anything new. He wrote briefly about how legacies are treated, which isn't really news to anyone. He also mentioned recent efforts to provide more aid for low income students at UVa and a few other schools. It'll be interesting to see why he might have a problem with that.</p>
<p>Anyway, at the very start of the book, there's a statement about the use of SAT scores, GPAs and other personal info. </p>
<p>A little bit of that statement:
[QUotE]
The purpose of revealing students' test scores (as well as high school grades and class ranks) is not to embarrass individuals who fall below the norm of the colleges they attend but to document the extent of admissions preferences for alumni children and other favored groups.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
It doesn't give me a good feeling about the professionalism of admit staff.
[/QUOTE]
I'm going to read the book to back this up, but I doubt Golden found many admission officers willing to share things like SAT scores and ratings. </p>
<p>Thus far (and I'm only a dozen pages in), the most quotes are coming from the classmates of students. The quotes from Deans are coming from articles Golden wrote for the WSJ.</p>
<p>Do students already in college discuss their SATs, GPAs and class rank? I doubt my S really ever knew his GPA and he has probably forgotten his SAT scores by now. And how would students know what kind of ranking the adcoms gave them? It boggles the mind.</p>