“For most super-selective colleges, any applicant with plausibly “typical excellent” high school academic credentials should be able to do the work and graduate.”
Or even just “a little better than average” high school academic credentials if it is someone (recruited athlete, big donor, famous person etc) the school really wants. I have seen this up close a couple of times at Ivy/Stanford schools, and the students did fine academically. Definitely steered toward easier majors and professors.
This was common enough it was basically a cliche at my college. Some poor kid would just be trying to blend in, would get a ways into first year, then someone would find out, “Oh, Smith as in SENATOR Smith!,” or “Your middle name is on my Chemistry building!,” or so on. And then it would get around, and oh well.
True, but it can totally pay off. Take John F. Kennedy Jr.'s attendance at Brown when everybody expected him to choose Harvard. As described in the WSJ article above, this was a huge publicity boost for Brown and brought in a lot of famous and ultra-rich attendees in the aftermath. Even I learned JFK Jr. was attending Brown and I was in 7th grade and until that moment didn’t even know Brown was part of the Ivy League. How could you miss hearing it? You read all about it on the cover of magazines waiting in line at the grocery store. Was he academically qualified? Well, qualified enough to graduate and later become a lawyer (after failing the bar a couple of times…that detail made the tabloids too.)
There are also less photogenic/wealthy children of presidents… and the costs of protecting them, preventing the kooks and lunatics who prey on the children of politicians from disrupting the lives of OTHER students who are there to go to chem lab and quietly study in the library- are not trivial. JFK Jr-- ok, a celebrity. But would you recognize Amy Carter, Barbara Bush if you saw them crossing the street? And the costs of protecting them while at college- not trivial.
Well, I agree that Brown made a bad investment when they accepted Amy Carter seeing as she flunked out. But Yale got a lot of positive publicity out of Barbara Bush.
Yes, because there were a few people in America who had never heard of Yale and now they have.
An over represented amount of kids of famous/connected kids is a way for some of these universities to differentiate themselves by the experience. It doesn’t even have to be the A+ listers. My DS has a roommate whose dad is a rockstar. You likely wouldn’t know the name, but many would know the group. They are on tour and my DS was able to go backstage. Sure these types do exist at your normal flagship, but not in the density for a large percentage of students to know at least one.
I mean, these schools kinda got where they are by never taking a generation off . . . .
Yes, everyone has heard of Yale, but that doesn’t mean they can let up too much on the branding. Having an elite label doesn’t mean you can stop advertising.
If Presidents’ kids are nothing but costly pains for colleges, why do they keep letting them in do you suppose? Are their academic chops so undeniable that these schools have no choice?
At Wesleyan, it’s pretty easy for them to blend into the woodwork, as it were, since the campus is surrounded by pretty ordinary looking, single family houses 99% of which are owned by the college. A celebrity or celebrity’s kid could be living in any one of them.
Of course being the child of someone prominent/famous is a hook. Foremost, because those types of families are capable of making major gifts - and colleges like that (a lot). I’d guess the cachet (such as it is) is probably secondary.
Also, some schools look for kids that will make an impact on the world. Kids with the drive and stats to be competitive for admission, with well connected and influential parents? WAY better odds those kids will go on to do something high profile and/or impactful.
They also are a nice addition to the alumni/“good old boy(girl)” network.
Any kid from a middle class background who has the same achievements as the children of movie stars are already far more impressive. For the kids of celebrities at that level, most of life’s standard obstacles have been smoothed if not eliminated.
Some kid from a suburb of Cleveland, OH, whose parents make a solid living, is going to have to work three times as hard for everything on their resume as the kids of these mega-movie stars that you mention. The kids of celebrities have all of the privileges of wealth and then some.
It is EXTREMELY unlikely that 90% of the kids of the biggest celebrities are in the top 1% academically, unless somebody is going to make the ludicrous claim that A, all famous actors are academic and intellectual superstars AND that this is 100% heritable.
You have been around here a long time, and know, just as well as anybody else, that a student doesn’t need to be in the top 1% academically in order to succeed at any of the Ivies. They just need to be in the top 1% academically or athletically to be accepted, unless their parents are wealthy.
Any kid from a good high school, who is in the top 15% of their graduating class, would be able to succeed in any of the Ivies.
Many of the kids of celebrities are reasonably smart and hard working. That is enough to succeed at Brown, however, that is not enough for admission to Brown, unless you are also massively hooked.
No, it’s a bad look for CC to claim that privilege and the advantages of wealth and power do not exist. It’s a bad look for CC if we tell kids that the children of the top 0.1% by income are intellectually superior to all other kids in the USA, and THAT is why 10% of the kids of the top 0.1% attend an Ivy+ while fewer than 0.1% of kids whose parents are in the bottom 90% do so.
As for “success potential”? When you come from a family in the top 0.1% by income or wealth, you have to work pretty hard to avoid succeeding.
It was roughly $70 million in 2019. Compared to us zhlubs, that’s wealthy. However, there are tens of thousands of families with that much money, far too many for colleges to focus on them. If they’re going to actually court a family, the family has to be wealthier or more powerful. They’re looking for the top 0.1% or even wealthier. Similarly, there are a very large number of TV stars as well known as Lori Laughlin. Colleges will only be courting the “top” few hundred, and she doesn’t make the cut.
As for judging them? I guess that I should feel bad for judging super wealthy parents who lied and cheated in order to get their kid into a college for which their kid was in no way or manner qualified. Also, they were NOT conned. They hired a con man to con USC, and succeeded for a while.
The colleges are not accepting DeVito’s kid in order to attract the kids “of that caliber”. These kids are already clamoring to attend Brown and similar colleges. They are looking for colleges with other kids like them. As I wrote above - DeVito’s kid is being accepted to draw in the much smaller number of billionaire’s kids, including the kids of the international wealthy.
Ironically, that caliber of kid are actually more numerous than kids of the truly wealthy, connected, and powerful.
There are 3,000,000 or so high school graduates every year. The “top” 1% are 30,000, and if we start looking across all nationals awards, athletic awards, activism, etc, it’s possibly 100,000 of the 2,000,000 college-bound kids. If we consider how many kids of billionaires, super stars, very powerful politicians, etc, are starting college each year, that is unlikely to be more than 1000, likely closer to 500. Even the number of the “top 0.1%” for academic and other achievements far exceeds that of children of wealth and power.
PS. There is “your parent’s name is helpful” level fame, wealth, or power, there is “we’ll accept you if you apply and you are nominally qualified” level wealth/fame/power, and there is “we’ll call you up and ask you to attend, and we don’t need to see your transcripts” level wealth/fame/power.
You make some thought provoking points!
I don’t see posters writing that there are not advantages to wealth and power.
Nor is anyone is saying those from the top 0.1% are intellectually or academically superior…we all know that the highly rejectives aren’t building classes of the strongest students from an academic perspective (except MIT and CalTech).
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And there are lots of the children of the famous, rich and powerful attending Denison, Trinity, SMU, Villanova, Emerson, Fairfield, Etc. where they maintain their lifestyle (swooping in and out during breaks to meet mom and dad in the Seychelle’s; summer on the Adriatic) while more or less “fitting in” during the school year. Not every rich person wants or needs their kid to sweat it out in Directed Studies at Yale; not every kid of a famous person wants or needs to work that hard.
And the answer to OP’s question is…?
As always, the answer is it depends. Some posters did share that some kids of connected/famous parents weren’t accepted to their schools. I heard Ben Stiller say he wasn’t accepted to USC film school back in the day when USC had a much higher admit rate. (I do think top film school acceptances can be tough, even for kids of those successful in that industry)
Flip side we do know being connected/famous offspring can be a hook sometimes…like anything it’s variable by school and student. I agree with blossom’s point that there are plenty of kids of the connected/famous at non-highly rejective schools.
Agreed that it depends. I personally do think it’s a hook at the private elites. As I said in my previous comment, that does not necessarily mean these kids are not qualified or less qualified - but (as with other hooks), given equally qualified candidates, they get a bump. And also as with other hooks it’s not a guarantee, so celebrity kids not being accepted does not mean they were not hooked.
Yes, just as there are recruitable athletes, URMs, legacy and faculty kids at non-highly rejective schools.