In the context of the article, the teacher appears to be saying that privileged individuals from historically disenfranchised groups have been persuaded, through the conditions of their elite education, to acknowledge their oppression irrespective of their personal experiences. You might not relate to this impression, but it seems a fair opinion to have expressed.
Not sure why you keep putting words in my mouth. I didn’t accuse anyone of lying, nor do I believe anyone is lying.
Based on my understanding of some of these schools, I believe that the article’s depiction of what is happening at these schools is inaccurate and misleading, and that very few parents at these schools share the views of these “dissident” parents. Further, while they apparently disagree, I don’t believe that these “dissident” families are victims or oppressed any more than I believe that their children’s understanding of the laws of physics hinges on whether or not the “Newton” name is attached the title.
While I agree that is what the teacher was trying to say, the quote better fits the article itself:
It teaches people who have so much to see themselves as victims. They think they are suffering oppression at one of the poshest schools in the country.
This is what the article is selling. These “dissident” families who have so much somehow think they are suffering oppression at the poshest schools in the country. In my experience, this just isn’t so.
Agree about yield protection. UChicago does really care about yield.
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That’s a good point about hooked vs unhooked. There were 26 Harvard matriculants during the reference period from 2018-2020. If Harvard had a 100% yield on all admits, then that would result in 19 admits with with “distinctions” during 2018-20 compared to 7 students without “distinctions”. It’s unclear exactly which hooks qualify as “distinctions.” The table says “legacy, recruited athletes, etc.” I’m not sure if “etc” includes things like being a URM or being the child of a celebrity. However, I expect Harvard does not have a 100% yield, particularly for unhooked kids. So the totals could be something like 23 “distinction” admits vs 7 without “distinction”, and 26/30 of those matriculated. Regardless of the specific numbers, it’s clear that the vast majority of Harvard admits were hooked during 2018-20.
In contrast for Chicago the totals are 35 Harvard matriculants in 2018-20 and 27 admits without “distinction.” If you assume the vast majority of those 27 are ED/ED2, and the vast majority of hooked kids matriculate, the the totals might be something like 13 admits with “distinction”, 27 admits without “distinction”., and 35/40 enrolled. Regardless of specific numbers, it suggests the vast majority of Chicago admits did not have “distinction” hooks.
Having 7 admits without “distinction” does not mean it is impossible to get in to Harvard from that HS. Roughly half of kids who are accepted to Harvard attend a high school where they were the only student from their entire HS who matriculated (example stats at The Making of a Harvard Feeder School | News | The Harvard Crimson ). Given Harvard’s >80% yield, this likely means they were the only student who was accepted to Harvard in their class of what may hundreds. Having 7 unhooked admits over a 3 year period is extremely high compared to typical US HSs. However, HW has a huge number of exceptionally qualified applicants. If you compare to similarly qualified unhooked applicants applicants at other HSs, I expect HWs admit rate was lower than typical during the reference period.
Well, the author quotes the parents who claim that there are many more they know who won’t speak up due to worries about retaliation. So you seem to be saying that the parents are being over-dramatic (one of the choices I offered to better understand your take on the situation). Based on your understanding of some of these schools, can you explain how these parents might have gotten off-track or misinterpreted things?
I think you might be misunderstanding the parents’ point of view. The “dissident” families (presumably you are referring to the ones meeting in secret) aren’t viewing themselves as oppressed. They are complaining that their kids are being taught to think of themselves as racist and to reject a system of goods allocation (ie capitalism) as “evil.” They are the ones making the statement that OTHERS (attending the same privileged school) are being taught to see themselves as victims (of both systems: racism and capitalism) at the hands of the “dissidents” and their children. They view such “indoctrination” (their term) as, among other things, contributing to a climate of fear. Again, based on your understanding, please educate us on how these parents are off base.
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Sure - they are probably mostly larger public district schools. Don’t know the % matriculating at Harvard but Yale’s percentage from public is 2/3rds. Only 5% from BS and 19% from independent day (9% from religious). https://admissions.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2024classprofileweb.pdf
While 7 unhooked admits to Harvard might be high, most are at HW in order to attend a top university. The same can’t be said about why most are in public school.
It’s similar for Harvard. Some stats are in the freshman survey at The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2024 By the Numbers. ~72% of non-legacies attended public HSs, and ~39% of legacies attended public HS.
Many parents may believe that attending HW is a safe pipeline to an Ivy, and HW tries to present this image, with publishing the matriculation stats and such. However, whether attending increases a the chance of a particular student attending an Ivy depends on the student. For the majority of students, I expect there is no benefit, and for many students I expect there is a negative effect. However, I won’t go further on a tangent.
What is more relevant to this thread is Chicago shows a different pattern. Attending HW may increase chance of admission to Chicago for typical unhooked students from the HS (may be restricted to just ED/ED2 or similar). I expect a similar statement could be made for several other highly selective private HSs. There was a thread awhile back in this forum at UChicago is Tops at Top Prep Schools in which a poster notes that Chicago has a large number of matriculating students at highly selective private HSs, including HW among others. It may be a pattern among this type of HS, rather than something unique about HW that does not occur elsewhere.
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Agree. I think UChicago might be picking up prep kids that not too long ago would have had a better chance of getting into an HYP before those institutions’ pivot to more hooked in terms of low SES. My sense has been that these prep admits are coming in via RD; however, a good case has been made for ED2 and YMMV by school. If you guys wish to play with admission numbers, it’s probably a decent guesstimate that UChicago admits maybe 50% of their class via ED (I and II); the remainder are EA and RD. And they probably have something like a 2:1 ratio ED1/EA and RD/ED2 (admissions, not matrics). How that’s divided up among preps vs. other is beyond my pay grade.
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I think it is safe to say GCs at prep schools have taken note of the shift to first gen urm as a priority and the low likelihood of unhooked admissions at HYPSM, and advise unhooked, high performing students accordingly. They have had a few years of seeing which kids get in where, and through which round.
The advice probably goes: pick an ED1 school, but when you don’t get in, find an ED2 school you love. If that doesn’t work, do RD, but make sure you have lots of safeties and matches.
Fwiw, my sense is that UofC has done a great job of marketing itself to the unhooked prep school kid. It is a win win. UofC gets kids with great stats and protects yield (bolstering it’s rep) and the students get into a school with great stats and ranking (bolstering their rep). It is a masterful feedback loop. They have cornered one part of the applicant marketplace that is rich with supply and with little competition or risk or cost. How very econometric of UofC (shocker!).
Eta: an interesting comparison is MIT, which doesn’t do legacies, etc and doesn’t do any ED. Unhooked HW kids do well there, too. Which you would expect if legacy didn’t matter.
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I didn’t accuse anyone of being “over-dramatic," but you seem intent on accusing me of insulting these people. In reality, I just disagree with them. They are mistaken when it comes to what is happening at these schools, or at least at the schools with which I am familiar. It’s as simple as that.
If not, then why does the author repeatedly indicate otherwise:
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The author characterizes these parents as “dissidents” and “rebels” who “use pseudonyms and turn off their videos when they meet for clandestine Zoom calls” or, because of "the situation as of late” meet in person because it their actions are “too egregious for emails or complaining on conference calls.”
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According to the author, these parents believe “they could face profound repercussions if anyone knew they were talking.”
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They believe many others are “too afraid to speak up.”
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They "worry about losing their jobs and/or hurting their children if their opposition to this ideology were known.”
This is a description of oppression, and it goes on and on . . . parents living in fear for their jobs, their reputations, their friendships, their children’s futures . . . their "moral capital is at risk” . . . lives will be ruined if their names become public . . . and, of course, "that fear is shared, deeply, by the children.”
Okay. The kids at the schools with which I am familiar (including schools discussed in this article) are not being indoctrinated “to think of themselves as racist” or to reject capitalism as evil. Underrepresented minorities are not being taught that to see themselves as “victims at the hands of" their classmates and their classmates parents. The “climate of fear” may seem real to these parents, but not so much to anyone else. The schools don’t "hold forth constantly about social justice” and kids aren’t being taught “‘fragile whiteness’ . . . at the expense of Shakespeare.” Likewise, kids are not taught that “America is bad” (unless you believe that teaching history or requiring and discussing books like “To Kill a Mockingbird” is an indictment of America.) In short, the curriculum doesn’t focus on “radical-chic politics ” (whatever that means) nor is it focused solely on race. And I am unaware of any parent who has lost his or her job for being a capitalist or speaking in favor of capitalism. Likewise, I am I unaware of any student who has been denied access to a quality college simply because he or she spoke up in class.
I hope this helps.
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Um, “To Kill a Mockingbird” is probably not the best way to make your point as it has been banned at middle schools across the country over concerns of racism. The article points to at least two concrete examples, but there are many others as well (including my own kids’ schools).
According to the article: “Harvard-Westlake, in its extensive antiracist plan announced this summer, included ‘redesigning the 11th grade US History course from a critical race theory perspective,’ among many similar goals.” So are you saying that HW is NOT doing this and that the author has been misinformed?
The article offers many specific counter-examples from several schools, but it’s possible that your own personal experience at certain schools has avoided such. Would agree that it’s hard to know whether someone has been denied admission to a top college for “speaking up.” That seems to be a fear more than a documented occurrence (unless I missed something in the article).
We know that overall, beginning with the entering class in 2013, the first year UChicago really saw application numbers jump, that four and six year grad rates improved notably. So did retention, test scores, etc. (nb: Class of '22 was the last year of Test Mandatory; however, now that pretty much everyone is TO comparisons can be made among the schools again for Class of '24 onwards). We don’t know how the preppies specifically have fared, but if UChicago is continuing to target those schools then they are probably doing at least as well as the overall numbers. So yes - the data would suggest they are attracting Chicago Types from these elite prep schools.
The class size has only grown over time so there’s more room for a wider diversity of scholar. The significantly larger application pool allows them to be choosy and target who they want.
My guess is that UChicago wouldn’t admit them if they thought they’d struggle. 3.6-3.799 is an arbitrary range, as HW points out, and there are a LOT of GPA combinations in there, including those in the 3.67+. That’s an A- minimum. That means that you are getting two A’s for every B. If your A’s are all in advanced core courses and your B’s are in health, gym, and whatever else the school makes you take in order to pass the state ed requirements, I doubt that you will be hurt that much for admissions consideration at a place like UChicago (which dropped the physical activity requirement a few years ago! 
) Another possibility is that you are a B student in year one of high school but nailing A’s in sophomore and junior year with harder courses. That’s still a 3.67 by the time you apply to UChicago but it means something different from someone who is taking easy A’s but still goofing off and getting a bunch of B’s as well. In short, there is a LOT of hidden information in any GPA less than 4.0 and even then it comes down to what you took. Schools are more interested in your academic record than your GPA.
Also, regarding GPA, a lot of the academically strong students start taking high school courses in 6th grade. Some of the lower grades could have been from 6th, 7th or 8th grade. Both my daughter and son had two advanced high school courses in both 7th and 8th grade. My son, who is more immature got a B in Geometry honors as an 8th grader, not because he couldn’t handle the material, but because he was not responsible enough to follow through with strict deadlines. He learned a valuable lesson, however, it will be on his permanent record.
This is an excellent point, and further evidence that it’s the academic record and not merely GPA that matters.
More detail showing the admit rate by rank in class is below. This summary uses earlier samples from the classes of 2014-19, during which the publication was weighted. During the older sample, the admit rate doesn’t look like it has a sharp cutoff at a particular GPA threshold. Instead it looks more like the admit rate has little correlation with weighted GPA, so long as the student is not in bottom quarter of class. However, the sample size for lower GPA applicants was quite small and likely biased. For example GCs may have recommended that particular students who have lower GPA + something unique that Chicago likes apply, and recommend that students who have lower GPA without that something unique do not apply.
Chicago Unhooked (no “distinction”) Admit Rate by Weighted GPA + Rank in Class
4.3+ (top 25% of class): 2014-16 = 10/28=36%, 2017-19 = 15/38=39%
4.1-4.3 (upper 56th to 75th): 2014-16 = 8/32=25%, 2017-19 = 14/30=47%
3.9-4.1 (middle 40th to 56th) : 2014-16 = 11/39=28%, 2017-19 = 4/19=21%
3.7-3.9 (lower 24th to 40th): 2014-16 = 4/12=33%, 2017-19 = 5/11=44%
Below 3.7 (bottom 24% of class): 2014-16 = 1/6=17%*, 2017-19 = 0/5=0%
*There was one 3.3-3.5 weighted GPA (bottom 10-17% of class) admit in the class of 2014-2016 report that was removed from the later year stats for unclear reasons. It may have been a typo or decision change.
Where did I deny that HW is currently redesigning its 11th grade US History curriculum? It is, and hopefully the redesigned curriculum will focus more on critical race theory, and particularly on how power dynamics have shaped our institutions and history. I only wish the change had come sooner. Unlike the author, I don’t dismiss critical race theory as “radical-chic politics,” nor do I view it as oppressive to the “dissident” families. To my mind, a much better example of how “radical-chic politics” unduly shapes curriculum can be found in the current attempts to demonize critical race theory, including the legislative efforts to ban it.
And just so we are on the same page, you seem to have dropped your claim that the “dissident” families "aren’t viewing themselves as oppressed.” And if these dissident families are being oppressed, then what specifically are the schools doing to oppress them? For example, where in HW’s curriculum has teaching “fragile whiteness” replaced teaching Shakespeare, and how is his oppressive? (I checked, and it looks like Shakespeare is still being taught to all 8th graders, as is To Kill a Mockingbird.) And what about the claim that these schools are teaching underrepresented minorities to see themselves as victims “at the hands” of the dissident families? And what tangible consequences have the dissident families faced for expressing their views on their child’s curriculum? Have parents really lost their jobs?
From my perspective, the voices of the “dissidents” are being heard, even in the tony private schools. But there is a difference between being heard and getting your way. This particular group of “dissidents” just happens to live in place where their views may not be widely accepted, and that seems more than they can bear. But if the school and community generally disagree with them, then why should they have veto power over curriculum changes?
Ah - you’ve explained your position, which explains much of your prior comments. Thank you for clarifying.
Nope. I was correcting your confusion about who in the article actually claimed to be oppressed according to the “dissident” families. I wasn’t the only one to do so.
The “dissident” families are claiming there is a culture of fear and that many are afraid to speak up against it. I don’t believe they claimed they were “oppressed” although maybe you saw it that way.
Good!
Well, that’s where you were saying that the article was in error. Do you have any specific evidence to the contrary? Would be helpful to the discussion.
I agree with you here. These parents certainly have the means to put their kids elsewhere if they don’t like the direction that the schools are taking.
My confusion? LOL. As I have repeatedly expressed, the “dissidents" claim that the schools are teaching others to be victims while at the same time portraying themselves as victims. Does that help clear up “my” confusion?
The “dissident” families claim that they have to use pseudonyms because if their identities are discovered they will lose their jobs, they will be blackballed, and their children’s lives will ruined. Yet they aren’t claiming to be oppressed? Fascinating.
So it is my burden to disprove the unsupported claims made by this author? That’s rich.
Perhaps you can both move on from your debate.
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