"How did HE Get In?"

Parents Forum
781

<p>^^Thank you! You have really helped me out.</p>

<p>“truly outstanding in whatever they undertake”</p>

<p>I tend to think “top of their fields” in fields that these sorts of schools deem important. And I don’t think the mission of the university has really changed all that much in the decades since this letter was written. I think Yale really is trying to pick future international and national leaders; doctors and lawyers who do something that brings their work into the public eye; scholars who do work significant enough (and fitting into the fashions of the times) they become well known either in the academic community or mainstream or both.</p>

<p>While reading the most recent permutations of this thread, I’ve been thinking about leadership vs influence. Upon further reflection, I am not sure Faulkner was any kind of leader. I do think he was influential and not just among the literati. I tend to think there are individuals who change how we look at the world. He may be one such person. I think he fits the above category from the letter. </p>

<p>I doubt Yale has in mind someone truly outstanding in “whatever” regardless how we on this board value the individual who spends a life doing good without possibility of any recognition for that contribution, someone who may even prefer not to be recognized for good works, perhaps finding such recognition unseemly. While we may value the work of a rural doctor or urban minister or SAHM or SAHD - I don’t think Yale is looking to educate for these callings. I think some of these people may end up at Yale, fitting into the category of “variety for its own sake.” The future leaders benefit from being exposed to variety before they fly off into the stratosphere.</p>

<p>So now I am going to be hooked on this thread for days, weeks, months (omg, I just hope not years!) waiting to hear what QM thinks about “leadership” and how it ties in with MIT admissions decisions, especially during the Jones’ reign. I don’t really know if I can bear it. I am not a patient sort of soul.</p>

782

<p>Peri, the original, full Brewster letter is grand and deserves multiple reads. It’s the mid-60’s, but much holds today, for any highly- or most-selective holistic school. And, it’s certainly going to be torn apart by many. Unfortunately.</p>

<p>I think folks should read it to learn from it. Not to pick it apart. Not to offer opinions based on very, very personal “other” ideas. Or lame misrepresentations by the media. Or a study or two that “seem to” dispute some of the goals of today’s great colleges.</p>

<p>I also think inserting our personal views misses the point.</p>

783

<p>I think I get to pick it apart just as much as I please. This is America!</p>

<p>The great private universities and colleges obviously have the right to run admissions as they see fit. They get to decide on their mission. However, when they are selecting and educating the future leaders of the generation, I think it is our responsibility to pay attention to what is going on in these schools. If we disagree with the mission of the elites, I think it is our duty as citizens to be vocal. Our taxes support these institutions to some extent. Their policies definitely have the potential to impact our daily lives…</p>

<p>if they really are identifying and educating the future leaders…</p>

<p>also in how the admissions arms race has changed the High School experience, perhaps in very negative ways, for many students.</p>

784

<p>I suspect Brewster’s letter was utopian in his days that might have become more realistic today with the current day FA practices.</p>

785

<p>Utopian- yeah, I saw some of that- especially considering the times. Hard to perfectly achieve, definitely. But more insight than a string of criticisms about crapshoots. Tpg, do you still have a pre-college kid or are all yours in college? </p>

<p>Alh, the “argument” seems to hinge on how some of us define “leaders.” </p>

<p>I believe armchair criticizing, based on limited info, is not going to have much impact. Sometimes, I can see a difference in opinions from the posters on some threads who have experience with this age group (teachers, mentors, interviewers, etc) versus those who pick up some info, somewhere. If you want to effect some change, get close to the process, even if all you can do is mentor some kids.</p>

786

<p>LF - I have one more, three years out!</p>

<p>I have read the letter in the past and felt that it is what Yale does today due to the amount of money they are able to give out to ensure few of the admitted students have a financial reason to back out that makes the letter appropriate. It essentially says we pick who we want and there is no reason they can’t show up since we are showing them the money. I suspect when they admitted kids back in 1967, mainly the rich showed up (I have no stats to back it up). The one defintely poor alum that I am aware on the supreme court went to the law school.</p>

787

<p>Helping and mentoring kids is great. Lots of wonderful mentors help students understand how to increase their odds of acceptance at these highly competitive schools. I question whether supporting a student in developing such a profile is necessarily desirable. I found the “excellent sheep” argument in the now infamous (at least on cc) Deresiewicz essay pretty compelling.</p>

<p>What Yale (and the others) tell us they want - we do our very best to give them.</p>

<p>okay - more of my opinions on the subject than anyone wanted. No more posts for me today. Just sitting on my fingers and reading.</p>

788

<p>Lookingforward, I’m working my way through The Chosen, by Jerome Karabel. I gather Kingman Brewster’s tenure was controversial, in great part because he and the admissions team moved significantly away from preferences for legacies. Yet today the Admissions department refers to the original letter, and their description of what they look for is akin in spirit to the letter written more than forty years ago.</p>

789

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</p>

<p>They already moved towards emphasizing more academic merit, less legacies, and embraced greater socio-economic diversity a year before that. </p>

<p>Granted, they were starting from a very low point as before 65-66, it was almost all about legacies and whether one was a scion of a wealthy well-connected…preferably WASP/WASP passing family. An uncle('70) recalled that very well not only from the social gulf existing between his/younger classes and prior classes admitted under the old system. Yale’s alumni magazine also made reference to this change some years back.</p>

790

<p>

I thought this was a VERY interesting read … I also thought is was a lot more of a positive story about the evolution of admissions at Yale then the typical comments on CC imply … a highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in how admissions work.</p>

791

<p>"They already moved towards emphasizing more academic merit, less legacies, and embraced greater socio-economic diversity a year before that. "</p>

<p>It is a given that the schools were supporting the poor and the rich. Only since 2007 have they become better at supporting the middle with their FA policies.</p>

792

<p>I agree with alh’s statements in #781 (except for the part about waiting to hear what I have to say–no guarantees that it’s worth waiting for, and certainly not impatiently!)</p>

<p>I like Brewster’s letter very much, actually. It epitomizes what I think Yale is about–more or less. There is one aspect that I hoped would draw a remark or two, and that is the reference to “Yale men,” “the young man,” and “the Yale son.” The letter is dated March 15, 1967. Although Yale admitted women at the graduate level beginning in 1869 (to the School of Fine Arts), the first women undergraduates were not admitted to until 1969, a hundred years later.</p>

<p>Kingman Brewster was President of Yale when women were admitted to Yale as undergraduates, and for a number of years thereafter.</p>

<p>With regard to leadership, given alh’s remarks, I am happy to mover Faulkner back out of the category of leaders.</p>

<p>Everyone has some capacity for leadership, I believe. My spouse used to have a test for levels of leadership, where one level called for the ability to lead a troop of Brownies up the escalator at a local department store. (<em>Much</em> harder than it might sound.)</p>

<p>Sometimes a particular strength, such as leadership, becomes the “strength du jour” and there is a temptation to stretch its definition to fit all sorts of admirable qualities. I think that Yale is not doing this, when they are looking for leaders–not to say that everyone who is admitted is a leader, or has a reasonable prospect of becoming one, but that true leadership capability is one of the qualities that they are searching for.</p>

<p>With regard to Yale’s precision in the use of language (and with the disclaimer that alh may have read this already in one of my other posts, and it’s not original to me): There is a perennial question at Yale, as to whether the person who came up with the motto “For God, for Country, and for Yale” did or did not have a grasp of tricolon crescens.</p>

<p>To return to the point about leadership: My closest friend’s mother was a third-grade teacher for many years. After she had taught for a while, the principals began to notice that she was unusually effective with some of the more trying boys. (And third grade, as I understand it, is a year when a good teacher can be particularly influential in a lasting way.) So more and more of the “difficult” boys were placed in her class. She was a wonderful human being–one of the greatest souls that I have encountered. She was absolutely a Force for Good; yet I would not stretch the definition of leadership even a little by calling her a leader.</p>

<p>There are many kinds of excellence. I think that people do best (in college admission, but also without any regard to that) by discovering and pursuing their own kind of excellence.</p>

<p>I will return in a minute to one particular aspect of the letter by Kingman Brewster that I find interesting in the context of our discussion (and MIT!).</p>

793

<p>Returning to the Brewster letter, I was interested in the question and remarks in the third paragraph: “[W]ho will make the best use of Yale’s resources? . . . The young man whose total capacities will allow him to get the most out of Yale’s opportunities is the one who has the highest claim on the extraordinary resources assembled here.”</p>

<p>Now, I find this elitist, to be sure. But that having been said, it comes fairly close to what I have been arguing about “optimal” MIT admissions–namely, that there are some students whose combination of raw intellect, willingness to work, and academic preparation make them able to take full advantage of the challenges that the MIT faculty can offer.</p>

<p>(I am out of sorts with the MIT students who goof off during the first semester because it is ungraded, even if they go on to become entrepreneurial baziilionaires.)</p>

<p>In science and math, I think that something like a Laffer curve of learning applies. The Laffer curve–not original to Laffer–is the plot of tax revenues vs. tax rate. If the rate is 0%, the revenues will be $0. If it is 100%, only a fool would earn money, so perhaps there will still be some revenue–but less than if the tax rate were lower. The curve is not symmetric, and I am not sure that it has a single local maximum, but in any event, it is higher somewhere in the middle than at the extremes.</p>

<p>The analogy that I draw to classes in science and math is this: If the class is far too easy, a student will learn practically nothing from it (although the student might learn something on his/her own during class time). If the class is far too hard or requires far too much background knowledge, then again, the student will learn practically nothing from it. Here I am speaking exclusively about classes in mathematics and the physical sciences (and also excepting organic chemistry and descriptive inorganic chemistry). Somewhere in the middle is the level of challenge that optimizes learning.</p>

<p>Based on my observations, I believe that each student has a personal Laffer curve of learning. I have been perplexed by a few students who are able to solve essentially 100% of the problems up to a certain level of difficulty, but whose problem-solving capacity drops close to 0% when the problems are just a little harder. Other students will hang in there at about 90% over the full range of difficulty in a course. I do not think that this is exclusively a matter of persistence, self-confidence, or “growth mind-set,” although all of those may come into play. Different people think differently.</p>

<p>So, I think that some students can simply be overwhelmed by the difficulty of some science/math classes, while others are underwhelmed by the course offerings where they have wound up. To me, this seems like a mismatch of capabilities to admissions outcomes.</p>

<p>I admit, the element of elitism is much easier for me to identify in Brewster’s letter, than in my own position–and I am somewhat troubled by the elitist element in both. Still thinking about that.</p>

794

<p>Yale tuition 1967: $1950.
Median income : $8000
Median 2010: around 51k.
Tuition : 38+
Fwiw. Cobrat, comprehensive oir report breaks down all sorts of historical detail. Can’t link from my cell. Later, if you don’t find it.</p>

795

<p>Calling it elitist depends on how you define “highest claim.” And “resources.”</p>

<p>But it also takes us sideways, again.</p>

796

<p>MIT’s resources include more than "the challenges that the MIT faculty can offer. "</p>

797

<p>I don’t think that you and I will agree on much, lookingforward. I think that Pizzagirl and I are both still trying to shift the other’s position a bit.</p>

798

<p>Lookingforward, just for fun:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Cost of a Ford Mustang, in 1967: ~$2,000
Cost of a Ford Mustang, in 2013: ~21,000</p>

<p>Yale, Net Price 2011 (according to College Navigator): $18,934</p>

<p>QuantMech, I think the extracurricular opportunities offered on campus are part of a university’s resources. There was a Harvard alumni magazine article which pointed out how much time Harvard students devote to ECs.</p>

799

<p>I agree about the EC’s on campus, and Kingman Brewster mentions their importance in his letter. I don’t think that the EC’s should trump the academics, though.</p>

800

<p>“Yale, Net Price 2011 (according to College Navigator): $18,934”</p>

<p>As a full pay parent I find this number to be most useless! :D</p>

<p>Some people might pay a lot less (0) while some may pay 56k.</p>