<p>And as he conveniently neglected to point out, in case of anyone of any race/ethnicity who is economically disadvantaged, it provides social mobility.</p>
<p>Now, the people who like to look at Pell Grant statistics will jump in and say, eye dropper in a bucket – the # of Pell Grantees at Elites. That’s because the odds of a disadvantaged student being successful enough – without a hook such as URM, athlete – to be truly competitive on his or her own merits alone for such a university, is very small. The pool in itself is tiny. The truth is that in EA (not ED) rounds, an exceptionally qualified student is treated like a hooked applicant, because there are so few of them. I suspect that’s why Harvard & Princeton are bringing back EA, since both of them have been concerned about attracting more financially disadvantaged students.</p>
<p>But again, the conversation is frivolous. When the qualified pool exceeds the number of spaces by 4 times over, there will be a statistical ‘unfairness’ to it all. But it’s only ‘unfair’, even in this broad sense, if objectively speaking Harvard et al. result in exclusive or disproportionate access to their graduates’ economic success. And that has not been shown. There are unemployed, and underemployed, Harvard grads every year.</p>
<p>Someone posted earlier today that accepting legacies doesn’t benefit the social good of the university or of society. Who cares that legacies don’t benefit some social cause of the school or society? They benefit the college in other ways. It is good for alumni relations which is good for the school. It is good in terms of fundraising which benefits the college (and other students). It is good in building traditions. It is good in building networks for students. I fully understand why a college would want some legacies. At elite schools, they are not relaxing the standards to accept legacies and most legacies I’ve ever met who were accepted were qualified. The overall stats of admitted students to elite colleges remains very high. Same with graduation rates.</p>
<p>More legacies are affluent and therefore full-pay.
Accepting more full-pay legacies frees up money to pay for underprivileged students.
Admitting more underprivileged students helps the social good.
So yeah, having more full-pay legacies helps the social good.</p>
<p>The class that gets squeezed out in this is the middle class, especially the white middle class. And you know what? Disadvantaging this class of students will probably not hurt the social good much- this class will do just fine. And giving preferences to the white middle class will not help the social good. Sucks to be white middle class, but it is true.</p>
<p>I don’t have any sour grapes since my kid could have gone to Yale, and still might for grad school, if she decides she wants grad school. But, she would only decide that if she wanted to teach.</p>
<p>The other one, who is currently an athletic recruit belongs in the Ivies not at all and I would heavily encourage her not to go there. She’s just not that kind of student. I don’t think it’s right for her, in the slightest. Of course, as I said earlier, when they/if they see her test scores, I highly doubt they will continue to want her, anyway. Why would they?</p>
<p>There are plenty of places where she would do quite well. But, for her, she will enter more of the trade school end of the college curriculum anyway, business, most likely.</p>
<p>Do I think this means she will be less successful than somebody who does choose to go to Hahvahd? Nope. She is too well connected, and too hard a worker, even if not an intellectual, to ever suffer from a lack of success. The truth is that both of my kids will do well, in life, as they have all of the advantages the Ivies can confer on the unconnected, which is why I think it is important to continue to admit legacies, for the benefit of the first generation and Urms, and the 6% pell students, who really do reap the biggest rewards from attending a school like this, to begin with.</p>
<p>People exaggerate the importance of these schools, except in the cases of the really disadvantaged, who, according to the research, really do benefit from attendance, over and above attendance at other institutions in ways my kids really just would not.</p>
<p>I didn’t get angry when D2 wasn’t accepted at Stanford. Angry is way too strong of a word. I’d say I was more puzzled. My thoughts were more along the lines of:</p>
<p>“Wow, if a kid can’t get in who is a 4.0 UW, #1 of 600 valedictorian, 2210 SAT, 34 ACT, with EC leadership and EC excellence to the point of winning state-wide awards, AND who is a legacy, well then who CAN get in? What does it take to get into Stanford?”</p>
<p>I guess we didn’t donate enough (and so she went to the Ivy league instead).</p>
<p>Sooz- I’m not sure it is contradictary to enjoy a big-time football game at a legendary field and to lament that fact that our most elite schools admitt so many less than top tier athletes. First, I don’t agree with any school making compromises for athletes. Secondly, I think its a bit difficult to contrast the football programs at ND and Yale but about the only thing they have in common is that both schools make significant academic compromises to fill their rosters. Otherwise, the ND program actually funds the entire sports program at ND taking nothing away from academics-in fact it also funds academic scholarships for non-athletes. The IVY football programs and all their sports are huge money losers. A second point I would make is that there are far more sports at Yale and Harvard than there are at ND and about double what there are at schools like Indiana. So you have more athletic spots and because ND has a student population almost double that of HYP then as a percentage of students the athletic population at ND is much smaller than HYP, and even smaller at places like Indiana and Texas. finally, it is pretty common knowledge that if you have a white unhooked middle class kid your best and pretty much only way of getting into HYP(if thats what you want) is through athletics.</p>
<p>Let me restate my premise and I will move off this discussion-it is simply the same as what vicarious just said-as the target groups and quotas have expanded over the past 30 years I do believe it has squeezed out the white middle class from places like HYP regardless of how accomplished they might be academically. This has served to benefit schools like ND, Georgetown, Emory, Duke, the University of Oklahoma and others where I believe the quality of their student body has significantly improved.</p>
<p>For those who are unhappy with how these Ivies practice admissions…as with buying any product or service, if you don’t like the policies, go elsewhere. Don’t apply to these schools if you don’t like how they operate. There are plenty of other fine colleges in the country. Find ones that practice what you believe is fair and just. For some reasons, all these folks are very interested in the Ivies anyway. </p>
<p>The above simply exemplifies why it is so misleading to dissect statistics to establish discrepancies (or discrimination) in college admissions. As an example, the often-cited study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade focused on a singular element of admission and did not account nor control for a large number of KEY elements in successful applications. That did not stop many to simply conflate one racial attribute and one" standardized test score into a smoking gun that “demonstrated” discrimination against Asians. </p>
<p>The same type of erroneous conclusions is easy to reach for each group of applicants, but it fails to tell the entire story. Why would “Mathson” be defined by his legacy status and not by his stellar scores? Would it make a difference if his parents were faculty at Harvard, or even development donors? What if Mathson had been an American Indian or from Kenya via Hawaii (perhaps he is, for all I know?) What if Mathson had been an Olympian? Which ONE element do we pick to drive our point home that certain groups are “hooked” and obtain preferential status?</p>
<p>The reality is that none of us --except if one was an anonymous part of that selection process-- knows why certain candidates are rejected, let alone why they were accepted. None of us does have access to the entire 20,000 or 30,000 files or to all the details of one specific application file. All we can do is speculate about why ONE student is accepted and the next NINETEEN are ultimately rejected. </p>
<p>All we really can do is assume that the adcoms do their very best to balance institutional priorities, stay clear from claims of discrimination, think globally, and still end up with the best class of students for that particular year. </p>
<p>We may not like all of it, but we do have to trust the system.</p>
<p>sm74, but ND offers athletic scholarships, yes? At the Ivies there are no athletic scholarships. I venture to say that most athletes who attend Ivies have the academic qualifications to be admitted. Being an athlete may be a hook, but the applicant must meet the standards of the university at an Ivy school. If you look at the stats of admitted students to Harvard, for example, they are high across the board and you don’t see a bunch of low stats in the freshmen profile. I do not believe “significant compromises” were made to fill the athletic rosters at these Ivies. </p>
<p>Btw, while Ivies don’t have “academic scholarships,” they offer generous need based financial aid and my middle class kid was a fortunate recipient of that.</p>
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<p>I totally do not agree with this and this is factually untrue. First, I’ll start with my own kid and expand this to the whole Ivy League, not just HYP. She is white middle class and was unhooked. She got into Brown and Penn and was waitlisted at Princeton. She had numerous friends and peers at her Ivy who were white and middle class and were not athletes (or legacies). She was hardly alone in that regard. Is it easy to get in? Nope. It is not nearly impossible, however.</p>
<p>At my son’s HS it seems almost all the Ivy acceptances go to white kids who are non athletes. I would say that it is the Asian non athletes that seemed to be at a disadvantage for Ivies but do really well at top LACs.</p>
<p>I totally do not agree with this and this is factually untrue.<<</p>
<p>It is definitely untrue. It wasn’t true for D1 nor for most of friends and roommates at Harvard. Of her eight friends in her blocking group, one was legacy and one was URM. Of the remaining six, NONE of them were athletes. And two of them were Asians, which supposedly makes the odds even worse.</p>
<p>I don’t know the overall figures, but I can personally point to so many exceptions to the white-kids-must-be-athletes theory as to render the statement meaningless.</p>
<p>Squeezed out? Squeezed out from what? Their rightful place? It seems to me there are two big drirvers, much less cynical, driving the change in the make-up of students at schools. First, the number of college students has doubled since I was applying since 1977 (while the number of slots at top schools has stayed essentially the same) … so of course, the quality of students has increased dramatically as one goes deeper in the school pool. Second, the racial make-up of the HS senior cohort group has changed dramatically since 1977 … if the percentage of white students was at all similar to it was in 1977 it would indicative of some serious issues in the admission processes at the top schools. Hmm. I think there is also a third comment that runs counter to the qoted statement above … the legacy affect and break for athletic recruits appears to be much less than it was in the past. So I’m having a hard time understanding how white middle class students are getting squeezed out now … is the percentage of white middle class students lower than it was in the past; I do not doubt it is I also do not doubt that in any system that is at all fair it should be.</p>
<p>Following graduation from college, she entered graduate school in the field of architecture at MIT. She was there for two years but has left to pursue a specialty degree within the field and will be entering graduate school this fall at Berkeley. This year, in between grad school programs, she worked in architecture in Zurich and then France. She then came back to the US and coached her athletic team at her college alma mater for a season.</p>
<p>Speaking of sports, it can come in handy. She no longer competes in her sport after doing it her whole life through college (though does the sport for pleasure…though rarely had time for it at MIT!!). For this coming fall, she was accepted to Stanford for grad school, though has turned that school down. But when she was at the national championships in her college sport recently (while coaching the varsity team at her alma mater), the Stanford team (which is only club level) asked her to coach their team next year if she came there. Even though she decided not to go to Stanford, but will be close by at Berkeley, the Stanford team still wants her to coach them, but I am not sure if she will due to time but I don’t think she has decided yet. So, her sport has even resulted in paying jobs, even though her resume otherwise is full in her career field (architecture).</p>
the athletes accross Harvard’s 30 teams are split across 4 years … the number of recruits getting recruiting slots is probably more like 200 a year (if the school uses all their spots) … and some of those 200 are african-american, asian, latino, internationals, or legacy … so it’s even less than 200 slots without double counting.</p>
<p>Well, Harvard’s stats are not SO high across the board. Even at mighty Harvard, 25% of the freshman class have SAT CR scores below 690, and 25% have SAT M scores below 690. Now in the broader scheme of things a 690 is a very good SAT score–as is a 680, 670, or whatever these sub-690 scores are—but it’s probably safe to assume that if it so chose, Harvard could easily fill its entering class with applicants who scored 700+, probably even 750+, on every section of the SAT; in any event, it turns down hundreds or thousands of applicants with scores in that range. So who are all these sub-690s who end up in the freshman class? Well, I suspect not many of them are unhooked. My guess is a fair number of them are recruited athletes, or otherwise hooked. Are these sub-690 scorers “qualified” to be at Harvard? Well, yes, in the sense that probably 80+% of those who apply are qualified: they’re able to do the work. But I assume the people filling those spots in the bottom quartile of the entering class are not people who were selected because they were the most academically gifted candidates Harvard could find; they were selected on the strength of a hook or some other special talent or quality that elevated them above those with stronger purely academic stats. That’s not to say all the sub-690s are athletes, or that all the athletes are sub-690s; no doubt there’s a wide distribution of academic stats among recruited athletes. But I also think it likely that an unhooked applicant with sub-690 SAT scores has only an extremely remote probability of being admitted to Harvard.</p>
<p>Now to go back to my earlier point about social mobility. In some sports, like football and men’s and women’s basketball, a little leniency in academic standards for recruited athletes probably does function to create more opportunities for applicants from less-advantaged backgrounds. The football coach isn’t going to much care where the star QB went to HS, so long as he can hit the open man on third-and-long and meets the minimum academic index to gain admission; in fact, in some ways it’s better if the QB recruit has a lot of financial need because that will make Harvard’s need-based FA offer competitive with the athletic scholarships he’s being offered elsewhere. On the other hand, if you look at the broader range of sports for which schools like Harvard recruit, the admissions preference for recruited athletes begins to look a lot like like affirmative action for prep-school jocks. I don’t think you’ll find a lot of kids from inner-city Detroit being recruited to Harvard for their prowess in crew, or fencing, or golf, or lacrosse, or skiing, or squash, or water polo. At least that’s my D1’s experience at her highly selective LAC, where she reports the varsity athletes as a whole are the preppiest group on campus, recruited almost exclusively out of top northeastern private schools. And while they’re all capable of doing the work, they are not, as a group, academic standouts. It’s a fair bet that many of them are in the bottom quartile of the class.</p>
<p>The problem for the unhooked, I think, it that these various categories of hooks are cumulative. It may seem like no big deal if only 13% of Harvard’s freshman class are legacies. But if another 13-15% are recruited athletes, and a similar number are URMs, you quickly get to the point where 40% of the seats are being set aside for specially privileged groups. Yes, some in those groups might have been admitted anyway, even without the special preference. But for those who are not legacies, not recruited athletes, and not URMs, that means effectively they’re competing for 60% of the seats, not 100%; and even if the school views it as one big applicant pool and not separate pools for the hooked groups, you know and they know they’re going to “make quota” on those categories, i.e., that 40% of the seats are simply off the table for the unhooked. Now I’m fully supportive of affirmative action for URMs. Admissions preferences for recruited athletes may be harder to justify, especially at a smallish school with many varsity sports, resulting in a large fraction of the available seats going to this group. Admissions preferences for legacies I see no legitimate justification for. I can understand schools wanting to have a certain number of legacies in their student body, for the connections and whatnot (though to be clear, many other applicants have connections, too). But if it’s true, as Hunt and others have argued, that many of the legacy admits would have been admitted anyway, then I see no reason to put an additional thumb on the scale in their favor. </p>
<p>(By the way, this isn’t sour grapes on my part. My D1 decided she didn’t even like any of the Ivies, save one, and she never got around to applying to that one because she was admitted ED to her first choice, a highly selective LAC, without benefit of any preferred status save her academic chops. D1 was, however, strongly disinclined to apply to any of the schools where she would have had a legacy preference because she thought such preferences unfair, and she preferred to go somewhere that she felt wanted her strictly because of what she brought to the table as an individual, and not in any measure because her parents had preceded her down that path).</p>
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