How corrupt are Ivy League admissions?

Parents Forum
961

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D’oh! Well, now I’m on the verge.</p>

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<p>I think all the stats used on this thread are mistaken. The percentages would look very different if one were to calculate them over the number of spaces which were not reserved for recruited athletes. In the Ivy League, between 10 and 20% of spots support the athletic teams. </p>

<p>I am not surprised that doubling of the asian population hasn’t lead to a doubling of spots in Ivy League universities. The longer immigrants are in the US, the more likely they are to adopt American practices, i.e., second- or third-generation immigrants are more likely to sign their kids up for travel teams. </p>

<p>The argument of “corrupt” admissions assumes colleges build their classes from the (academic) top down, rather than from the bottom up. Let’s assume the lion’s share of Ivy students score between 700 and 800 on the SAT. While more than 17,000 asian american students score in that range, more than 51,000 white students score in that range. <a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-by-Gender-Ethnicity-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-by-Gender-Ethnicity-2012.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I found this article while googling: [The</a> Hard Part Is Getting In | Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics](<a href=“Magazine | Hyphen”>The Hard Part Is Getting In | Hyphen) .</p>

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This is another demographic factor that currently works to the disadvantage of Asian students, and which I would argue is pretty clearly not based on any racially discriminatory intent. Another one is legacy preference (which will gradually become an advantage, not a disadvantage, for Asian applicants).</p>

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<p>I also wonder if the geographic distribution of the Asian American population plays a role. How would the numbers work if one included Stanford, CalTech, Pomona, Berkeley, etc. in the calculations? In other words, how many high scoring Asians are on the East Coast, rather than the West Coast? How may Asian students are willing to travel to the East Coast for college?</p>

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<p>Good point, Peri. Taking athletes out of the equation does change things.</p>

<p>I can see, over time, how important it is to some to get beyond the public info. Maybe we are parents of students, alums or our kids are interested in these schools. But, just based on my own experience, these elite U’s operate as mega-machines with their own drives and momentum. Their layers run deep and have complex relationships with each other. </p>

<p>It’s not like knocking on the doors to Emerald City and eventually finding that one man behind the curtain. You won’t get behind the curtain through Hernandez, Golden or even Espenhade or P&T. It’s all like the Hydra- lop off one arm and 7 grow in its place. Think you figured out one piece of the puzzle and discover 7 more that influence and impact that. </p>

<p>Every school runs a variety of donation campaigns- you can probably learn a lot by looking at the right Ivy alum websites- the big multi-year drives to build a building or fund a program or a finaid goal, the annual class giving, memorials, the pursuit of individual big donors, what the sports folks do, applications for foundation money. Yes, sometimes they define a campaign in terms of something like funding more minority aid. Or a big donor could specify, “I want my money to fund study abroad for a minority French major.” In the end, it’s pooled for investment. If x millions of dollars are handed out, some may have a name attached, some may- on paper- have been accrued for use by one group or another. That still leaves the rest of the pot. And, in the case of the Ivies, it’s one very large pot.</p>

<p>You don’t see this by knocking at the gates, wanting transparency. </p>

<p>33% of the Asians in the US live in CA. I don’t think any private school (at least, outside CA) wants 33% of its students to just be from CA. Sometimes, it’s easier to look at TJ or Stuy. In the past, the sheer volume of kids applying from these two schools alone had repercussions all around. Do you settle for mostly Stuy kids because, after all, they are all bright, motivated, accomplished- and groomed? Or spread the opps around?</p>

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<p>beliavsky:

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<p>But the Ivies aren’t trying to enroll the students who will get the best grades, at least according to:</p>

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<p>The same article points out something interesting about athletes, those admits who typically have the lower scores:</p>

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I think this is an imporant insight. There isn’t a man behind the curtain–the whole process, to a certain extent, is behind the curtain. The Director of Admissions obviously has a major role. But there just doesn’t seem to be a set of secret rules, quotas, and criteria–if there were, at least one of the schools would have leaked it. In the one context where we know there is something like that–the Academic Index for athletes–it has been leaked.</p>

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<p>Ime, grad rates are very important, but college grades? That’s circular, back to quantitative only. Hierarchical thinking. It assumes you can judge life impact by how one focuses on measurable performance. Life’s bigger than that.</p>

<p>Sure, I want my doctors and etc to be focused. But the world runs on more than that. The old joke was that your Harvard B gpa kid was probably smarter than the H 4.0. Times have changed, but it’s worth thinking about.</p>

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<p>It’s also notorious at Ivy League schools that the grades of kids in certain high-pressure ECs suffer–but those ECs are often the real gateway to future careers.</p>

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<p>^ like Lacrosse and Wall St.?</p>

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<p>If a bar lets in females for half off the cover charge, is that a surcharge on males?</p>

<p>What if a beauty salon gives a discount to new customers, is that a surcharge on their existing customers?</p>

972

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I was thinking more about things like newspapers.</p>

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Well, maybe. I remember there was a complaint–for example–that dry cleaners were charging more for women’s blouses than for men’s shirts, even though the work was essentially the same. I did think that was unfair.</p>

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<p>This might be true in practical terms currently, but in theory it does not need to be true. HYP athletes must hit academic hurdles and other than the helmet sports, most are probably competitive with the general pool of admitted students. Coaches have the discretion to recruit whomever they want within the academic guidelines, and institutional goals such as diversity certainly must factor into their decisions where possible. While competitive, the mission of Ivy League athletics is a bit different that most Div. 1 leagues. I cannot speak to US participation rates by race, but my impression is that there is no dearth of Asians, Blacks and Hispanics in most sports here in CA (we don’t do squash, fencing, ice hockey, skiing or rugby in high school, but all other sports are generally offered). There will be a SES factor involved in access to sports, but this is no different from the SES factor affecting access to academics.</p>

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<p>Good example, I agree.</p>

<p>Of course bars do that so more women come and then more men come because that’s where the women are.</p>

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<p>Re: college athletes</p>

<p>There was a study about athletes’ academic performance at Division III colleges (where highly selective small non-Ivy-League colleges mostly are):</p>

<p>[At</a> Selective Division III Colleges, a Gap Between Athletes and Nonathletes - Players - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/players/at-selective-division-iii-colleges-a-gap-between-athletes-and-nonathletes/27587]At”>Players: At Selective Division III Colleges, a Gap Between Athletes and Nonathletes)
[College</a> Sports Project updates findings about Athletics and academics in NCAA Division III | Middlebury](<a href=“College Sports Project updates findings about Athletics and academics in NCAA Division III | Middlebury News and Announcements”>College Sports Project updates findings about Athletics and academics in NCAA Division III | Middlebury News and Announcements)</p>

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<p>This isn’t in response to ucb’s post, just an awareness of how easily people rely on studies or media reports. Just because it needs to be shared, make of it what you will. [The</a> Data Vigilante - Christopher Shea - The Atlantic](<a href=“The Data Vigilante - The Atlantic”>The Data Vigilante - The Atlantic) There are other studies over the past few years that speak to how perspective can slant results. What one hopes to find vs more open interpretations.</p>

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<p>There are scholarships encouraging girls in engineering at most state schools. I think it says guys need not apply.</p>

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But isn’t the whole point of a scholarship like that to address the issue that guys DO apply for engineering, and girls don’t?</p>

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<p>hunt - right. the schools give scholarships to prioritize institutional needs and attracting URMs with scholarships is no different from attracting girls to engineering with scholarships.</p>

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<p>I don’t know what happened when formerly single sex colleges such as Vassar went co-ed, but if a women’s college decided to go co-ed and decided to " go easy" on male applicants and / or offer merit aid to male applicants, wouldn’t they have that right? I could easily envision a situation in which the quality of the male applicant pool wasn’t as high as the quality of female applicant pool, but they “dipped down” a little further so they could achieve a significant male representation. How is that different?</p>

<p>It occurs to me also that “not wanting too many Asians” also means “not wanting too many whites.” Few elite colleges wish to be as “white” as, say, BYU.</p>