Interesting Footnote in Amicus Brief Regarding Selectivity of Ivies and Other Selective Schools

Parent Cafe
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Amicus briefs have been filed in the second round of the Fisher v. UT case. The one filed by Brown, U of Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Univ. of Penn, Princeton, Stanford, Venderbilt and Yale has an interesting footnote regarding selectivity of these schools (referred to as Amicus below.)

"Amici’s focus on factors beyond objective, numerical qualifications reflects both their educational philosophies and the strength of their applicant pools.

For example, in the most recent admissions year for the class of 2019, one Amicus received over 27,000 applications. More than 11,000 of these applicants had a 4.0 grade point average and nearly 12,500 had scores of 2,100 or higher on the three sections of the SAT. Its application pool included students from more than 9,500 high schools and more than 150 countries around the world.

A second Amicus received applications from over 7,000 individuals who were the valedictorians of their graduating classes or had GPAs over 4.0; only seven percent of that group were admitted. That same institution also admitted only ten percent of the approximately 8,000 applicants who scored in the top one percent nationally on the SAT.

Another Amicus recently admitted only four percent of applicants in the top ten percent of their high school class where class rank was reported, and declined to admit more than 81 percent of applicants with perfect SAT scores.

A fourth Amicus could have filled more than half of its class of admitted students with applicants who had perfect SAT scores. It admitted only nineteen percent of these applicants, comprising only ten percent of the admitted class."

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This isn’t remotely news on CC. We’ve been saying this for years. I don’t know what part of single-digit or near-single-digit acceptance rates from extraordinarily strong pools is unclear. Or why so many people feel “cheated” when their special snowflake or their town’s special snowflake doesn’t get accepted.

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It’s all those people who are using their special influence (like having an uncle who works there) to get their kids in. That’s why there aren’t any seats left for the scads of shoo-ins out there.

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Hmm. There were only 583 scores of 2400 on the SAT in 2014, which means that most/all of them would have had to have applied to school #4 and it still would have had to have been one of the relatively small elites. MIT? MIT does have nonbinding EA Unless that school is stretching the truth a bit and is counting 1600’s in M+CR and/or 36’s in the ACT.

School #3 almost certainly has an acceptance rate closer to 5% than 10%. YPSM (or Columbia)? I’d say it’s one that still draws a lot from privates without school rank, so Y or P.

School #2 sounds like one that doesn’t care about test scores much. Brown?

School #1 could be one of several.

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^ That number of 2400s would assume no superscoring.

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@“Erin’s Dad”, good point. That’s a bit of fudging as well. Without superscoring, MIT may be the only school that could claim that, and I’m not certain if even they can.

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I’ve noticed that some people refer to “perfect SAT scores” as an 800 in any subtest.

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The plaintiff is NOT advocating going to a numerical stats only admissions criterion. CA MI WA NH NE AZ OK FL public universities are all barred from considering race in admissions. These states are can still use holistic review. I don’t know about the specifics of all these states, but I know for a fact that selective, prestigious, coveted schools like UMich & the UCs still employ holistic review; they just can’t consider race.

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@GMTplus7 I know that is not what Fisher is arguing. She is arguing that UT could rely on the top ten percent rule to get to critical mass for racial diversity. But this particular amicus brief sort of reads to me like “that might work in less selective schools, but it won’t work for us.” While it is filed in support of UT, it is really more about preserving their processes.

I just saw the footnote and thought it was interesting for those applying to those schools.

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When Fisher was sent back to the trial court, the issue wasn’t whether there could be affirmative action in school admissions or if race could be considered, it was whether the system UT was using, automatically admitting the top 7% of each Texas High School graduating class, was the least discriminatory way to achieve a goal of diversity in the student population. Fisher’s argument is that they should admit the highest scores/best gpa and not care whether kids from everywhere in Texas were admitted, whether the top 30% of one school is admitted and no one from an inner city school is. States can still have admissions standards (as I think they do in Michigan) where they admit by area of the state, or through special programs, and Fisher is arguing that Texas should do that to insure some racial diversity in the schools and not make the whole system dependent on the stats.

I do agree that the same system won’t work for a giant public university and a small/medium private school, especially as they have different educational missions.

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I think that while the fact that this happens isn’t news on CC, the actual statistics are a rare glimpse of hard data.

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Really? Show me where the plaintiff argues this.

The complaint in Fisher v UT is that UT is not using a narrowly tailored use of race (as per Grutter) in the holistic round.

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School #1 looks to be Princeton

https://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S42/78/21K68/index.xml?section=topstories

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I could not agree more. A good-natured friend of mine in graduate school used to say that some of our classmates had a high confidence-to-facts ratio. That condition pervades CC.

15

There is a very good example of what the top schools would look like if they were forced to just admit based on scores. Its the NYC elite public schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. To gain admission to these schools all you need to do is score in the top 1,000 of applicants (30,000 take the test on average), there is no interview. Middle school grades are not considered, no teacher recommendation, no ‘connected uncle’ to get you in… nada. Its just the test. So whats the result? Certainly from an academic standpoint the kids in those schools are high achievers, no doubt… but consider the racial makeup – 73% Asian… 1% African American and 3% Hispanic. Bronx Science is 63% Asian 3% Black and 6% Hispanic. There are 1 million kids in NYC public schools, 41% Hispanic, 33% African American, 15% White, and 14% Asian

So the Whites at these two elite schools are sort of fairly represented in the school makeup, the Asians are ~5x over represented and the Blacks and Hispanics are ~16x and ~11x under represented. Ironically, this situation is not so much due to income disparity, as there is not as large an income gap between Asians and Hispanics or African Americans. No, its really all about culture and family. Having had kids in NYC go through the system we are extremely impressed with the dedication that these Asian kids possess and the drive their parents instill in them. Still, is it fair?

16

Between super scoring and a math test that maxes out at Algebra 2, SAT doesn’t provide data that’s useful for distinguishing among kids at the upper end of the spectrum, assuming that what you want to base those distinctions on is academic preparation or aptitude. That’s before we get to issues like test prep and the nature of the questions.

Of course the flip side of this is that the quality of pre-collegiate education in the US is so variable and so rooted in economics and racial politics that the higher you raise the academic prep bar, the less diverse your student body becomes.

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“Fair” isn’t really the right construct for a private university. The Amish are underrepresented at Harvard. Is that “fair”?

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“…it was whether the system UT was using, automatically admitting the top 7% of each Texas High School graduating class, was the least discriminatory way to achieve a goal of diversity in the student population. Fisher’s argument is that they should admit the highest scores/best gpa and not care whether kids from everywhere in Texas were admitted, whether the top 30% of one school is admitted and no one from an inner city school is.”

This is not what Fisher is arguing. Fisher is arguing that the top 7 percent law is adequate to get critical mass for racial diversity and that race does not need to be a factor in the holistic admission decision. She is arguing that UT cannot show that their use of race is narrowly tailored enough.

She hasn’t even argued that the holistic portion of the process should be abandoned. She has not said that UT should not consider socioeconomic factors or leadership etc. She wants the racial factor as it is used at UT removed.

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“A second Amicus received applications from over 7,000 individuals who were the valedictorians of their graduating classes or had GPAs over 4.0; only seven percent of that group were admitted. That same institution also admitted only ten percent of the approximately 8,000 applicants who scored in the top one percent nationally on the SAT.”

A more interesting question to look at race in admissions : what percentage of URMs in those categories were admitted?

20

I don’t see that the footnote is relevant at all to the argument. So, they can’t admit all the ‘qualified’ applicants? That’s not the issue. The issue is whether race is being used as a factor in admissions and whether preferences based on race are constitutional. The footnote does not address this at all. I’d be much more interested in the average ‘scores’ given both on GPA, SAT and essays, ECs, between the racial and ethnic groups.