<p>Mr. Golden is about to publish a book - The</a> Price of Admission : How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates. Should make for an interesting read, though I hope he manages to avoid one-on-one comparisons between accepted and rejected students. When an admissions office is putting together a class, they are doing just that, and there is more to it than a tournament-bracket style series of individual comparisons. </p>
<p>Presumably, there is more about Duke than is in the WSJ article above from 2003, since the Publisher's Weekly description includes "Golden tracks shameful admissions policies at Duke..." and I am not sure what is described in the article falls down to the level of "shameful."</p>
<p>Almost forgot - some info from Duke about the article: (link</a>)</p>
<p>I guess Duke needs to get connections to the rich families that its main competition already has connections to, still that irks me that kids who have sub-1300 scores and just aren't that smart can get in to a place like Duke (especially almost a 100 a year, damn, thats worse than AA).</p>
<p>I guess I really don't mind this, mainly for selfish reasons. I think anything to raise the endowment is a good thing, especially if it helps support financial aid which a lot of people need to afford a school like Duke. I also like having up to date facilities and all of the other perks that having a large endowment (and donations from wealthy parents) provide.</p>
<p>I had a lot of issues back in high school when I saw students much less qualified than me get into schools I was rejected from for a variety of reasons (mostly either athletics, AA, or money). I mean -- well first of all, I wound up at the perfect school for me, so things didn't turn out too poorly. But also, I was thinking about it, and I realized - if people get into a school they aren't qualified for for the "wrong reasons," one of two things will happen - they will either sink or swim. Either they will not be able to keep up academically and fail out, or they will be able to handle the workload and also contribute something to the school community (even if that "something" happens to be a lot of money to the endowment -- a contribution that, while not as widely acknowledged as those of a good musician, dancer, or basketball player, benefits a lot more students by providing resources, facilities, etc). I know someone from my HS who got into a very good college based mostly on AA - he had only 1 AP, which he failed, did hardly anything extracurricularly, and had dismal SATs. Did it annoy people who didn't get into that school when he did? Yes. Did he proceed to fail almost all of his classes first semester, get placed on academic probation, and have to switch to an easier major? Yes. If someone's not qualified enough to thrive in a certain school, it's going to come back to haunt him/her. </p>
<p>Now, I'm not trying to provide the Next Big Justification of "shameful" admissions procedures. As a non-athletic, white student from an area that is very widely overrepresented in colleges, there was NOTHING working in my favor other than my grades, my achievements, and my extracurriculars, so it's not like I have any reason to justify them. It's just something to think about.</p>
<p>Geesh, "shameful" is such a vast overstatement. Wealthy donors bankroll school facilities, endow chairs, fund financial aid--it's not like they're lining Guttentag's pockets.</p>
<p>It's also annoying that while Duke is used as an example, there's still the implicit slam that "development cases" are a Duke thing. ALL private schools play this game.</p>