Boston Globe:At the elite colleges - dim white kids

Parents Forum
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<p>
[quote]
AUTUMN AND a new academic year are upon us, which means that selective colleges are engaged in the annual ritual of singing the praises of their new freshman classes.</p>

<p>Surf the websites of such institutions and you will find press releases boasting that they have increased their black and Hispanic enrollments, admitted bumper crops of National Merit scholars or became the destination of choice for hordes of high school valedictorians. Many are bragging about the large share of applicants they rejected, as a way of conveying to the world just how popular and selective they are.</p>

<p>What they almost never say is that many of the applicants who were rejected were far more qualified than those accepted. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, it was not the black and Hispanic beneficiaries of affirmative action, but the rich white kids with cash and connections who elbowed most of the worthier applicants aside.</p>

<p>Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.</p>

<p>Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.

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<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/28/at_the_elite_colleges___dim_white_kids/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/28/at_the_elite_colleges___dim_white_kids/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Let us not forget that those "dim white kids" who pay full freight often subsidize the smarter kids who need scholarships and loans to attend. Not all schools have Harvard's huge endowment.</p>

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<p>dmd77,</p>

<p>This article is talking about the elite colleges which indeed have huge endowments. We are not talking about all schools.</p>

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<p>To call this article hyperbolic is an understatement. He's selling a new book.

[quote]
...on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.

[/quote]
How does he know what those admissions standards are? The elite schools do not post them; in fact they all give a vague statement about the holistic process used which would make any stat benchmark irrelevant.</p>

<p>I'm also amused when people automatically refer to Pell Grant qualifiers. This is just an arbitrary number. Add, say, $5K in income to any family currently eligible for a Pell Grant. Guess what. They're still poor. But they wouldn't be captured in Pell Grant data. Are those kids being shut out of elite schools? We don't know, actually. Because the Pell Grant standard is applied so frequently that anyone doing a tiny bit better is not included in the numbers.</p>

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<p>Just anecdotal from looking at those in my D's blocking group, even at Harvard, it looks to be a 50/50 split between full-freight or near full-freight payers and those who need a lot of financial aid.</p>

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<p>uml1958: the top 146 colleges do NOT have huge endowments. Only a very few schools have the kind of endowments that enable full scholarships for every student that applies.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes...A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.

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<p>Dmd77, the article also states:

[quote]
many of the colleges granting such preferences are already well-financed, with huge endowments. And, in many cases, little of the money they take in goes toward serving the less-advantaged.</p>

<p>A few years ago, The Chronicle of Higher Education looked at colleges with more than $500 million in their endowments and found that most served disproportionately few students from families with incomes low enough to qualify for federal Pell Grants.

[/quote]
how does this stack up with your assertion?</p>

<p>Yes, we can dismiss this as "He's selling a new book". Or we can listen to the message and add it to the long list of studies that have been published the past ten years that all point to the fact that these same colleges are all too often less than honest with us outsiders about how they choose their students and what happens once they get in. </p>

<p>The only thing I find surprising here is that colleges again let researchers access some of their actual data. The same thing happened with "the early admissions game" where the authors accessed real admissions data and found that what the colleges SAID they did was not consistent with what they actually DID do. </p>

<p>It puzzles me why these institutions allow themselves to be "found out". But they do. </p>

<p>So let's not be so quick to dismiss the message. After all, why should it even be surprising?</p>

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<p>Let's also note that white students in general are probably 8-10 times "as prevalent on such campuses" as black or Hispanic students, and that many of such schools don't come anywhere near 25% URM enrollment. So it's not much of a surprise if the bottom statistical layer of their students is mostly white. Every layer of their students is mostly white.</p>

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<p>Who receives financial aid at Harvard?</p>

<p>Two thirds of all undergraduates receive some form of scholarship, loans and/or jobs. </p>

<p>**Half **receive need-based Harvard Scholarship aid, totaling over $95 million.</p>

<p>**One quarter **of the families receiving need-based scholarship assistance from Harvard have incomes greater than $130,000. </p>

<p>**One fifth **of families qualify for the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, where parents with total incomes less than $60,000 are expected to pay nothing.</p>

<p>Foreign students have the same access to financial aid funding as U.S. citizens, including the Initiative outlined above. </p>

<p>One quarter of students take out a loan and two-thirds work during the academic year.</p>

<p>The median educational debt for members of the graduating Class of 2007 was $6,750. </p>

<p>There is a nice graph showing the income distribution of H students available at
<a href="http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/fact_sheet.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/fact_sheet.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>
[quote]
It puzzles me why these institutions allow themselves to be "found out". But they do.

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</p>

<p>A fine line between academic integrity, transparency, and ethos.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Every layer of their students is mostly white.

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Very good point.</p>

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<p>Is this news? I'm not at all surprised to hear that the elite schools admit kids from elite families even if those kids don't measure up academically. George W. Bush, anyone? John Kerry? JFK? Fact is, those kids come from families (and themselves may end up doing it too) that donate millions of dollars to those same elite schools. It's how Harvard got to be Harvard.</p>

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<p>Xiggi, I'm amazed that one fifth of the students at Harvard come from families earning under $60K! I'd also be amazed if Mr. Schmidt mentions that fact anywhere in his book.</p>

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<p>Thanks for posting, marite, this is food for thought. I recall from an earlier thread that you don't necessarily take everything published in the Boston Globe at face value, but I appreciate the opportunity to think about these issues.</p>

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<p>And this is news?</p>

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<p>I don't see much news here either. Only a few handfuls of colleges claim to be need-blind to begin with, and the data mentioned in the article that would apply to them is selectively chosen, to put it mildly.</p>

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<p>There is a very similar thrust in this article to "The Price of Admission", which I respect quite a bit. I've got a different version of who gets hurt in this admissions game than I've seen in print.
I see the elite universities as having predetermined targets for the portion of the class who will be international students, African-Americans, Hispanics, recruited athletes, legacies, those with institutional connections, etc. As the domestic white portion of the class is overwhelmingly where the legacies, athletes, the institutionally connected etc. land, the students most hurt in the admissions process are talented white kids up and down the economic spectrum.
It would be interesting to see data comparing Asian-Americans (not typically recruited athletes or legacies) within "unboosted" whites at individual universities by SAT scores, etc. They may be very similar.</p>

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<p>
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And this is news?

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</p>

<p>It should not be, should it? I actually support the admission of weaker applicants (not "functional illiterates") if their donor parents can make it possible for qualified low-income students to attend selective schools. But it is interesting to juxtapose this thread with the one in the Parent's Cafe
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=397538%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=397538&lt;/a>

[quote]
"If you were giving the scholarship to an intellectually brilliant kid who happens to play a sport, that's fine,'' Dowling told the New York Times. "But they give it to a functional illiterate who can't read a cereal box, and then make him spend 50 hours a week on physical skills. That's not opportunity. If you want to give financial help to minorities, go find the ones who are at the library after school.''

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One can see the association of athlete, minority and "functional illiterate."</p>

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<p>The people that pay the full freight..plus donations are what allows alot of kids to attend a school that otherwise would be a fantasy. I have no issues about this because we've benefitted from the wealth and low performance of others. That's how the world turns baby. You can dislike it all you want, it's not going to change.</p>

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<p>Marite, Dowling was referring to an athlete who was admitted to Rutgers after being academically unqualified at other state schools. It's a HUGE issue here in NJ. Our state schools (of which H & I are alums) have long suffered from a brain drain. Many alums & profs feel the new found football success has been achieved by lowering standards far below what is reasonable. Most would agree that applications should be considered in light of both achievements & potential, with considerations made for those from humble circumstances. But the Dean actually is said to have prepared a list of courses that could be passed by a student with a 5th grade literacy level!!! That's where the "functional illiterate" label comes from.</p>