@OHMomof2 - I’ll take your word for it. The gist of my post was that, in other countries, there seems to be a set level of minimum academic standard for their elite colleges and universities. If one doesn’t meet that standard, you don’t get in, even if, you are the future king of England - which I hear is the reason why Princes William and Harry didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge. I read it on the Internet so I know it’s true.
Here, entrance to arguably our top university can be purchased for a measly $2.5 million spread out over 10 years. Before anyone says Kushner was qualified, he was, by all accounts. a mediocre student who was the last person his fellow student thought would get into Harvard.
It’s shame that, in our country, “hooks” apparently overrides the academic qualifications when it comes to admission to our elite universities. I don’t think we can achieve a fair admission system without eliminating all non-academic factors (including race) from the process.
Korea has been moving to U.S. direction. It still has an entrance exam, but it’s weight has been drastically reduced as GPA and EC gaining more importance.
Korea has early admission system that used to not consider the entrance exam score, although colleges now require minimum score that is much lower than what is required for regular admission.
Currently colleges admit about 75% of their freshmen through the early admission.
Korea’s admission considers economic and geographic diversity heavily, but it does not consider legacy, development, or athletic admission (except for directly to athletic majors)
Korea also announces exact quota for each type of qualification. Late year 73.7% of freshmen was admitted through the early admission, which had following quota; Note that all of them, including art, athletic and diversity quota, must meet a minimum national exam score set by each college.
54.3% Based on GPA only
32% Based on GPA and EC
5.1% Based on Timed Essay Exam
7.1% Based on Practice (Art & Sports)
1.5% Others (Diversity, etc)
Note that Korean colleges can’t rank high schools for admission purposes and there is no weighted GPA system. Therefore just focusing on GPA has an effect of weighing economic and geographic diversity heavily.
How uniform are the courses and grading at high schools in Korea (presuming you mean RoK)? If they are highly uniform (e.g. the same titled math course is equivalent at different high schools, and the high schools have similar core course offerings), then universities need not be concerned about quality and opportunity differences between high schools, like they are in the US.
^ In Korea (ROK), courses are highly uniform but grading is not. Therefore professors ARE concerned and DO complain about quality between high schools. Some students have moved to remote areas to take an advantage but this has not been common. Colleges still require a minimum score in the national entrance exam which covers basic multi variable calculus for liberal arts, and more for STEM majors.
@Ap0state interesting and so true about Kushner and the fact that some people can “buy” their spots at the elite schools.
The irony, especially as it relates to this thread, is that I think the data suggests that many or even most of the “diverse” students, especially the ones from the lower SES areas, that are getting into Harvard and the like because of their hook of checking a racial box STILL HAVE good stats. They are not slackers. I don’t think they are getting in with 1200’s just because they are checking a box…maybe they are getting in with 1350+'s. The issue seems to be that there are many students (many Asian) with far superior stats (like scores) are NOT getting in and allegedly being discriminated against. But the URM’s getting in with only the race hook I believe still have strong stats (and therefore meet some kind of minimum standard). This sits much better with me than people like Kushner getting in to Harvard because of his family’s financial influence.
@collegemomjam To your point, I think we have pretty much established on this thread that the elite schools are not admitting unqualified or even underqualified URMs. Those who get in are fully qualified to be there. The issue is that they compete in a much smaller pool so that a qualified URM has a far greater chance of getting in than a qualified unhooked candidate. I believe the unhooked white kids going into stem have about the same dismal chance as Asian kids going into stem.
In fact, other than perhaps a few “development” cases, legacies are also highly qualified to attend. But they also compete in a much smaller pool. Personally, I go back and forth about how I feel about these preferances. The one I hate most of all is Legacy because I feel it adds nothing to the campus environment. However, I don’t know the intricacies of University fund raising and perhaps this preferance is what enables these elite schools to raise the money to be “need blind” and “meet full need” places. I think there are some very clear benefits to hollistic admissions in general and would not want to see it dissappear.
Higher Ed Journal opinion on this I came across this week -
[quote]
Harvard employs a “holistic admissions” process, which I describe below, to yield a class that will produce, as it explicitly states, “leaders in many disciplines who make a difference globally.”
Ignoring the history and current state of race/ethnic inequality and focusing instead on implementing snapshot notions of colorblindness – SFFA’s goal – is not the route to fairness.
One problem I have with proponents of holistic admission at Harvard is that they keep mentioning that Asian-Americans are over-represented at Harvard compared to the proportions of the general population. That is a strawman. The Harvard demographics does not and should not reflect the general population but the applicant pool who are the creme de la creme of the high school population.
It’s apparent that Harvard wants the largest portion of its students to be white. Instead of fighting against each other over who gets the largest portion of the piece of the pie set aside by Harvard for them, the minority groups should be fighting get a larger piece of the pie, period - i.e., try to get rid of preferences that mainly benefit the privileged whites.
Harvard probably believes that its prestige* will suffer if its demographics change too rapidly (specifically in terms of falling white population), since many white people are uncomfortable the idea of being obviously in the minority. Since a significant part of its brand value is prestige, it probably feels that it needs to do all it can to protect that – and since the prestige is built on the opinions of others, including usually-unspoken opinions on race and ethnicity, that puts the pressure on Harvard to care about such things, whether or not it would care if others’ opinions did not matter.
Note also that it may have similar motivations with respect to its SES demographics, in that some elitist employers may prefer to hire “well bred” graduates (i.e. those from high SES backgrounds) or those from non-high SES backgrounds who have been immersed in a predominantly high SES environment for four years to acquire high SES mannerisms, etc…
Also in the news today: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ex-analyst-in-insider-trading-case-faced-sexual-misconduct-allegations-at-harvard-1537867801?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2
Harvard didn’t grant the kid the degree, and rightly so, but the AOs certainly gave him a high enough personal rating to gain acceptance. And his profile is typical among AA admits at Harvard—a recent immigrant (or children of immigrants) and a graduate of elite private HS. Obviously, Damilare Sonoiki had taken a Harvard spot that should have gone to someone else.
With regards to rich kids like Kushner who had bought their way in— if the price tag was $2.5m in 1999 it has gone up to $12.5m now because the few cases I know seem to suggest that. My question is that if everyone agrees that low SES kids should be able to afford Harvard why admitting a kid with $12.5m donation that pays for 250 kids’ tuition is a bad idea?
Yes. This is my question about legacy. Does the preferance for legacy and the “gratitude” it engenders allow the school to be so generous with aid for those who need it? If that is the case, it might be something we should all just accept.
What I’m curious about is, all those brilliant Asian kids and unhooked white kids who are denied at Harvard — where do they end up? Are they denied the opportunity for an excellent education? Does it truly impact their futures? Harvard can take so few kids out of the thousands who qualify. Is it really worth worrying about?
Because that kid didn’t earn it and it smacks of corruption that’s found in some backward undeveloped country. This is America, damn it. Besides, Harvard doesn’t need it. Their endowment is so large that it can pay for the undergraduate tuition cost in entirety for the next 120 years - that is, Harvard can be tuition free for the next 100 years+.
I’d say yes. Harvard name will open doors that a state school name won’t. Prestigious financial and consultant firms will only recruit at a handful of elite universities. Can a Penn State graduate get a job at Goldman Sachs? Of course. But that person would have an easier time if s/he came from Harvard.
@gallentjill this is the exact point I have been trying to make down thread a number of times. It’s not like these kids are ending up on skid row. I have said all along if a kid ends up at Tufts instead of Harvard, is the world really going to come to an end for them? And if they are truly Harvard material (which I have no doubt they probably are) they will certainly be able to make a name for themselves in the next “rung” down, if you can even call it that. And there are many people that turn down admissions offers at elite schools for honors programs at “lesser” schools because they know they can still have wonderful opportunities elsewhere.
Another point @gallentjill that i tried to make along the same theme is, as you said, these rejected brilliant kids are ending up somewhere…so these schools that are getting the Harvard rejects now have incredibly gifted students and those schools and their students will really benefit from that…in a way, perhaps the “gap” between the elite and sub-elite-but-really-close schools will begin to narrow. If there is truly a gap at all from an academic standpoint.
And if parents stop making a big deal over it, so will the kids. And eventually the recruiters and grad schools. All of the complaints about admissions not being fair to our most elite schools is making the perception of them more and more elite which In my opinion makes matters worse.
I was on a Harvard thread a few years ago and a girl posted that had been accepted to the last class and was a current student. She posted that while she was happy there, she really didn’t think it was the be all and end all that everyone said it would be and that she was certain she would have been just as well off at a different school. She was trying to help the kids that were not getting in deal with the rejection and explain that there were plenty of other great schools out there. Of course there are!!!
@gallentjill Harvard was sued because its Harvard, who typically garners the greatest publicity and also sets the trend in higher education. From what I can see there are two groups of Harvard rejects: one would be admitted to other great colleges anyway and really Harvard’s loss IMO, and the other would also be rejects by other private schools because of the trickle down effect. In this year’s Harvard rejects for example, you have Nathan Chen who was twice the national champion and James Lin who is the only one with two Int Math Olympic Gold medals and a perfect IMO score. People like SFFA are convinced that had they been another race they would have gained admissions. Now both of them ended up in great places; Chen is a freshman at Yale and Lin is at MIT, so none of them is any worse off; in fact I think its Harvard’s loss not having them in the class.
It is the second group of Harvard’s rejects that this lawsuit is all about IMO. Those are the kids who would have made to Yale, MIT, Cornell and other top privates now have to content with state flagships or lower tiers because of the trickle down effect, and we have seen those on CC from time to time too.
The situation with endowments is more nuanced than you state. Colleges use endowments to help fund their ongoing operations, and the larger the endowment, the greater the dependency. For example, Harvard depends upon the returns from its endowment to fund 36% of its operations, and does so by spending an average of 5.0% to 5.5% each year:
In order for the endowment to maintain its purchasing power, it needs to increase in nominal terms at an average rate equal to Spending Rate + Inflation Rate, which over the last 20 years has averaged about 2.3%. So this requires a nominal return of about somewhere around 7.5%. Actual returns have averaged about 10%, so it has grown in real terms by only about 2.5% per year.
None of this should be taken to defend either developmental candidates or legacy admissions. Just pointing out that situations are more complex than first appear.
