<p>The traditional admissions ethos at MIT throughout the majority of its history is that you select the brightest people you can find with a quantitative/scientific/engineering bent. In admissions, EC talent was used as a tiebreaker between people who are at the same intellectual level (and by same intellectual level, I don’t mean everybody who is above a 3.9 GPA and 1400 SAT.) ECs existed because the brightest people often had other EC talent. The ECs at MIT existed to allow these students to utilize other talents, rather than the students being selected to prop up the ECs at MIT.</p>
<p>I don’t know, Q, but sometimes think the problem is this venue where all we have is what we write. </p>
<p>I think you want to make a point about sheer, utter, total quality (as above.) My point is that, in the admissions context, that doesn’t reign as the supreme factor. It doesn’t and several posters have said it over and over. And it gets down to "I think it should be " vs "well it isn’t. " And the sidetracks can be baffling .</p>
<p>I agree with you about quality. But it isn’t entirely what elites are about. You know one slice, I know another . What you value is only one part of what we look for.</p>
<p>I was talking about non-academic ECs, if that wasn’t clear. You can still do a holistic evaluation with grades, scores, academic ECs, and letters of recommendation.</p>
<p>Point is that MIT was looking for people who will be future leaders in science and technology and also will benefit from its unusually tough curriculum. Looking for leadership activities to augment pretty good academics is not the way to do this. What was Michael Jordan doing in high school? Practicing and playing basketball. Common sense. And yet he turned out to be a pretty good leader in the basketball world.</p>
<p>Point I’m making was that before around 65-66, Yale’s admission policies emphasized legacy factors such as being the scion of a wealthy and/or well-connected family…preferably one who’s WASP or could pass for it. Wealth or income wasn’t the sole/main criterion. </p>
<p>There were plenty of folks who could have afforded the tuition before '65-'66, but who were rejected because of discriminatory policies on the basis of one’s race, ethnicity, religion, and socio-economic class. If said uncle was just a couple of years older, his ethnic background, status as immigrant, and “striver middle class” status would have meant a likely rejection on those grounds.</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>But they aren’t the only places educating the future leaders of our generation, and no one is required to pay obeisance to someone just because he or she went to Harvard et al. It’s like you take it as a foregone conclusion that a Harvard et al grad is some creature tapped for greatness. The vast majority of Harvard grads are going to get up in the morning, go off to work, do a good job, come home and eat dinner and watch TV like the rest of us. They aren’t going to “change the world.”</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”</p>
<p>I come back to this because its so bizarre. The elites aren’t “selecting the future leaders of our generation.” Do they appoint senators or something? I no longer have a vote? You’re so overstating the power of these schools. They are nice, prestigious places to get a good education and make good connections, and that’s really all there is. They don’t have the power you ascribe to them.</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>Agree, Pizzagirl with both your posts reacting to this. I thought the ending here was going to be “If we disagree with the mission of the elites, I think it is our duty TO LOOK ELSEWHERE.”</p>
<p>PG: I do not “take it as a foregone conclusion that a Harvard et al grad is some creature tapped for greatness” and indeed know for a fact this is not the case.</p>
<p>Are you disagreeing that they are trying to identify and admit these future leaders? And those destined for greatness? What is your interpretation of the Brewster letter?</p>
<p>Vance Packard’s *The Status Seekers<a href=“published%20in%201959”>/i</a> mentioned that this trend was already slowly starting in the 1950s at HYP, which were taking a portion of the class from the SES elite prep schools that they favored, and another portion of the class to maintain the image of academic eliteness (this portion had a lot of public school students, as the SES elite prep schools then were not necessarily academically elite). There was mention of the conflict between the competing interests of having enough academic eliteness, while retaining favor with the donating SES elite (a conflict that remains today in the form of legacy preferences and developmental admissions).</p>
<p>Since my special snowflakes are all through with their undergraduate degrees and all but one already finished with PhDs, I have the luxury of agreeing with you (with a shout out to Canuckguy as I prove his point) that it is our duty to look elsewhere if we disagree with the mission of the elites. I think this is an excellent idea. If we all boycott the elites our state schools will get much better- right?</p>
<p>At many state schools, especially in the south, state governments are cutting support and probably going to eliminate some departments. In NC, the Governor recently suggested that certain courses of study, like gender studies, should only be available at private colleges… that they don’t belong at the state flagship. It is possible the gap between what is available at some state schools and most elite private schools is going to get a whole lot wider. </p>
<p>If you happen to live in NC, and have a young scholar who wants to do gender studies, and you disagree with the mission of the elite private schools - what are you going to do? Hope a good flagship not in NC still offers it?</p>
<p>For my own special snowflakes <em>elsewhere</em> didn’t have the resources they needed to successfully pursue the fields in which they were interested. And yes, they really are that special. ;)</p>
<p>^ Many publics and privates have been rearranging for some time. Not replacing retirees, merging programs, after looking at demand and alternate ways of meeting the need, etc. My D1 faced this when looking at colleges/lacs for her subset of history. DH’s PhD dept at a well known public is being whittled. Some language majors are being revisited, etc.</p>
<p>^so - as resources become limited, who deserves access most?</p>
<p>If your daughter can only study her subset of history at a small number of schools, should she be admitted instead of a student interested in a course of study widely available?</p>
<p>If one student has the realistic potential to take greater advantage of the university’s resources than other students, does that student deserve to be admitted instead of other students?</p>
<p>Are you a member of an affinity group (ethnic/SES/religious etc.) that wins big in the admissions derby? I think you are, or you would not have written over 13 thousand posts defending the status quo. I think you have done an excellent job of putting those who challenge it in their place, btw. </p>
<p>As far as your affinity group goes, would you not be in a better position to know what it is than I?</p>
<p>Telling applicants who are not happy with the present system to look elsewhere is another self-serving way of reducing competition for the offspring as far as I am concerned.</p>
<p>Gender studies, African-American studies, Chicano studies etc. are as much left-wing political movements as they are academic disciplines, so Republicans such as the governor of NC will not want to fund them. Serious research and teaching in those subjects could be done in departments such as history or English. At UNC, the African-American studies department engaged in rampant fraud, giving credit for courses that never met:</p>
<p>Hmm. One of my favorite bumper stickers (Jesus Saves. Moses invests.) hints he at least had that potential. I mean, if he hadn’t been preoccupied with other business.</p>
<p>Whatever Kingman Brewster meant when he referred to “1000 male leaders”, in fact the so-called elite universities have little or no control over what business will preoccupy the lives of their alumni. They don’t really “place” graduates even in entry level positions. There exist only so many “national” leadership positions to absorb alumni, who by that time usually have had many formative experiences outside academia. I suspect that for most elite college alumni, their sphere of “leadership” never goes too far beyond that of a university department chair, bank VP, or corporate CTO and such.</p>
<p>Liberal arts and engineering programs deliberately avoid job-specific training. Except as an extracurricular after-thought, students won’t get so much as a “dress for success” tutorial or “How to Write a Resume” guideline. They don’t get lessons in “How to Handle the Troubled Employee”. That comes later, as OJT.</p>
<p>At their best, universities train students to be “thought leaders”. They can select students they think have the drive and inclination to put thought into action, but they really don’t train or pull strings to make that happen. “Connections” may get formed at Thanksgiving Dinner with the girlfriend’s/boyfriend’s CEO Dad. Selecting a rich, well-connected student body may increase the likelihood that will happen. However, it’s not really in their mission statements or Latin mottos to expedite it. It’s a collateral effect. If a few so-called elite schools seem to be cornering the market for leadership, power, and influence, don’t blame the schools. Blame their alumni for being too successful … or blame the people who elect and appoint them.</p>