dragonmom3, the elite colleges are non-profits and if by “they are businesses” you mean they are in the business of higher education, you are correct, but they are not in the business of making money. And we who attend elite colleges are not “customers;” we are students who seek a rigorous education. It seems to me if we were customers, the entire gamut of elite colleges from Harvard to Harvey Mudd would be dealing with endless lawsuits from “customers” unhappy with the product. But that’s hardly the case, is it? Furthermore, all elite colleges have decided that a diverse student population is highly desirable and beneficial, not only to their respective academic communities but to our country, and so no elite college has any desire to admit just red heads, to use your example, and no elite college would do so because they wanted to or because it’s “their right to do so,” when, in fact, it’s not their right to do so. Even private colleges have to abide by the U.S. Constitution and laws such as Title IX, especially if they are receiving federal funds, which most elite colleges do. So if your argument is that elite colleges can admit anyone they want to the exclusion of others because they’re a private “businesses,” you are simply wrong.
Technically speaking, they are private nonprofit businesses; students and parents are their customers. Their business, or mission, is teaching and research, and they choose their admits based on those admits’ ability to help the business grow. The admits fall into many buckets - some will be useful because they’re brilliant students, who may write books or make discoveries that it will benefit the university to be associated with; others will be admitted because they’re anticipated to be future leaders in some area of society, domestically or abroad, or because they have some important talent, or because they are anticipated to bring big financial or other benefits. Their association with the school may improve the school’s reputation, or increase its wealth significantly. The top universities want to maximize their wealth, power and connectivity to important people of all kinds all over the world, because this helps them achieve their mission. Paradoxically, that mission would be hampered if they restricted their admits to the top students. Everyone admitted has been selected for a reason, which is often something other than sheer brilliance.
Yield info from Fordham:
https://fordhamram.com/2017/05/03/more-students-apply-yet-yield-stays-the-same/comment-page-1/
Some more demographic info:
…and improving society as a whole, most would say.
Here’s one:
Here are a couple of mission statements:
Princeton’s is long, so I haven’t reproduced it. Stanford has various ones for each school plus the Founding Grant:
On reflection, I should have phrased my post differently. The business of universities - what they do in support of their missions - is teaching and research. The mission - at least at these schools - is to educate and thereby help produce leaders in all walks of life. I think my central point stands, though: the better the universities are at enrolling, educating and thereby helping to produce alumni who will be leaders, the more they’ll be able to use their alumni leaders to increase the university’s reach and power, and therefore the more future leaders will apply and enroll, in what the universities would regard as a virtuous circle. All of which to say: it’s much, much more than just recruiting the smartest kids.
I agree @DeepBlue86
I agree that even schools like Harvard and Yale have to run somewhat like a “business” (even though you didn’t use that word) to maintain their status and support their missions.
The reality is, however, that most schools are not endowed like the top elite schools which is why so few schools are truly need blind. Sure, they may accept a student with the intention of meeting their full financial need because they truly WANT that student…but they definitely might not accept a less “attractive” student because they cannot afford to pay. This is their right and it is reality. If that’s not running a business, then I don’t know what is. Yes, the goals of the university may be to graduate amazing students that give back to the planet and save humanity, but they need MONEY to educate these students and future students.
Actually, most colleges in this country are need-blind. Certainly the vast majority, which are not very selective (and also public) and not looking to game the USNews rankings (so aren’t playing yield games) are need-blind in admissions. They may not meet full-need, but that is a different issue.
@PurpleTitan, that is not what I have heard or read. There are thousands of schools in this country and most of them are NOT need blind. If you google it, you should be able to see this. Two very well known ones, for example, are Wash U and Tufts. It doesn’t mean that they will not meet the full need of their accepted students, but it does mean that they may take your ability to pay into consideration when reviewing your application.
I had a client a couple of years ago who is currently at NYU with 57K per year need-based grant money that she does NOT have to pay back. She is a first generation URM which we are assuming helped her get in. The fact that her parents barely make enough to get by did NOT impact NYU’s decision to accept her. On the flip side, she was waitlisted at a handful of less competitive schools, Loyola Maryland for example, and we are fairly certain that it is because of her degree of financial need.
I think 99% of public schools are need blind. That’s a ton right there.
^ Indeed. And publics have the majority of students in the US.
https://www.edvisors.com/plan-for-college/college-admissions/need-blind-admissions/
This is one of the many lists. And a few of these are questionable. I’m sure it’s not completely accurate and changes, but it is something to keep in mind.
There are a lot of reasons besides being a good student that put you in those top schools. Legacy, donations, and connections. In my daughter’s school 5 kids were admitted to Harvard, for example. Only two are in the 20% of the class. One have a family member working there, and the other two have a legacy. They are far from the top student’s group.
Dartmouth yield info http://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2017/05/college-sees-increase-in-yield-rate-to-61-percent
@Maximilias I agree with you, there is something a bit over the top and a bit odd about ND, legacy/sibling policy. For a school that gets criticized for its lack of diversity and support for lower-income students, it just seems strange for a school to be accepting 4 or 5 kids from the same family.
londondad, here’s a statement from Notre Dame’s website:
Notre Dame is committed to diversity in our University community because it is a moral and intellectual necessity. As a Catholic university, we at Notre Dame believe every human being possesses the dignity of being made in God’s image, and every culture reflects God’s grandeur. Diversity enriches our social interactions and intellectual lives by exposing all of us to approaches and frames of reference that challenge our unexamined assumptions.
I couldn’t agree more with their statement. In fact, it’s a powerful statement, but in spite of all of Notre Dame’s rhetoric about diversity, it’s just not that diverse. Having students from all fifty states does not particularly make for a diverse group. As I’m Roman Catholic, I visited Notre Dame three years ago when I was thinking about colleges, but it was preppier (and more jockish) than the preppy prep school I attended. It’s a great school with a beautiful campus and nice, smart people but quite white. Also, except for the spectacular Basilica of the Sacred Heart and occasional statutes of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, Notre Dame just didn’t seem all that Catholic to me, but rather secular and as I mentioned quite preppy and jockish, very conservative and for the most part white. A great place, but I wanted something different.
Cariño, thanks for reminding us about all the legacies accepted to elite colleges and all the wealth and connections behind those legacies. Seven people from my prep school got accepted to Harvard, five were legacies. Of the seven, only one, who was not a legacy, graduated in the top five of our class. One guy was a fourth generation legacy, which, in addition to all the male members of his family who had attended Harvard, included two of his grandmothers and a great grandmother who had gone to Radcliffe. Several years ago, his family had given a large sum of money for the renovation of Harvard’s Fogg Museum, a truly wonderful museum, and apparently gifted the museum with artwork as well. He was around twenty or twenty-one in our class and not in any way a stellar athlete, but he is from a very wealthy family.
I suppose this site is not for this type of discussion and so I’m sorry for taking away from spayurpets’ very valuable and interesting stream of information, but every now and then there are digressions, and so I just added my two cents.
@Maximilias Thanks. I agree, ND did not seem very racially diverse to us.
The thing that struck me, however, was the explicit Catholicism of ND, particularly compared to the Jesuit schools that we visited previously. I think that anyone who was not a conservative-leaning Catholic would have a hard time adjusting to ND.
My wife and I are both Catholic with 30 years Catholic school between us (and the scars to prove it!) but even we found the overt Catholicism at ND off-putting. ND was the only college tour that we had where we were given the opportunity to stop and pray en route. By comparison, the East Coast Jesuit schools that we visited just seemed more welcoming to non-Catholics. I think the latter schools do a great job of highlighting that you don’t need to be Catholic to be religious and spiritual. As an example, of the 4 dorms that we visited at Georgetown, one had a Muslim Imam as a chaplain while another had a Hindu priest.
With all due respect, moderators, I would love to have this thread stay on track with admissions statistics. Thank you!
londondad, I had a different experience at ND from yours. I visited ND with a small group of other students. We didn’t take the campus tour, all of us deciding that we didn’t want to listen to the spiel of another mawkish student tour guide, as is often the case at so many colleges, but we did talk to students, and not once did any of them talk to us about the Catholic mission of the school or any service organizations they were involved in or the commonweal in general. They talked about the social scene, the residence halls, the food, the intramural games, the parties, the beer, and so that’s why I thought the school had a rather secular, though conservative, feel to it. Interestingly, the adult who accompanied us on the trip said that Notre Dame made him feel that he had gone back in time; he said the place had a “Norman Rockwellish feel to it.” It really was a beautiful campus, and, I might add, the students were nice looking and well-groomed (and quite white). Also, we really didn’t stay that long as we all actually made the trip to visit University of Chicago, and Notre Dame was on the way. Nonetheless, I think you make a good point: of the Catholic religious orders, the Jesuits, while providing a rigorous education, are perhaps the most welcoming when it comes to openness to ideas and the dialectic. But I confess, I know little about the Congregation of the Holy Cross, other than the fact that Notre Dame was their first educational institution in the “New World.”
Why isn’t babson college on this list?
Is there a similar thread with average SAT scores per college for class 2021?