When did I say Harvard doesn’t take unqualified students? I was responding to @hebegebe’s contention that UChicago has a “different model” when it comes to admissions. It doesn’t.
No.
I currently have a child at each one. The vastly different workloads among required classes have been a frequent dinnertime conversation (for a while everyone at home due to covid). UChicago will often cover more material in a quarter than Harvard does in a semester.
If UChicago admits a weak student, the student has nowhere to hide given the Core. There are many students who made the mistake of attending UChicago because it was the highest ranked college they were accepted into, and they were totally unprepared for the Core. The “where fun goes to die” mantra is largely due to those students.
Elite colleges vary considerably, which is why fit matters.
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How could you possibly know where weak students do or don’t hide at U. Chicago based on your own child’s experience? Check the U.Chicago subreddit and you’ll find plenty of discussion about the easy classes to take in Core subjects that are not your forte. BTW, this thread isn’t about how elite colleges vary, it’s about whether they should enroll more students.
Part of creating elite is scarcity.
The more you “include” the less elite it is.
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Perceived scarcity. Nearly all of the top privates have programs that aren’t terribly difficult to get in to. Princeton, Caltech, and (maybe) MIT (and maybe Dartmouth) the only exceptions.
It’s scarcity - because even if you said - Northwestern Medill or Syracuse Newhouse…the enrollments are capped - so you have elite, not just universities but elite programs within universities.
But yes, there are ways in - such as Cornell Hotel or ILR - but if Cornell had 50K kids instead of 15K, it’d be seen as less elite - is all i’m saying.
It’s all brain washing and branding.
There are some that think, for example, Miami of Ohio is a top notch public school because as they market, they’re a public Ivy.
And you know what- who’s to say it isn’t top notch. I mean, who made US News the arbiter in all this.
But this is no different than a high end car - when they say, we’re only going to make 200 and charge $300K.
If they made 20,000 - few people may want them - and certainly not at the premium.
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Yes! Excellence without exclusivity! I’m all for it!
If you’re using that standard, then HYPS and well as the YHS law schools have taken in plenty of unqualified students, because I read and heard their grads be not only embarrassing and ill-informed but downright moronic.
Or you can surmise that they may be mendacious, cynical, and amoral, but probably not stupid (well, in at least one case, definitely stupid, but we all know how he ended up there).
No. I asked whether you were referring to the D&K study was the research you referred to with your comment, “disadvantaged ones who research shows get the biggest boost post-graduation with a degree from one of these institutions.” I still haven’t seen what research this is.
I don’t think D&K specify what colleges they group as “elite”. In any case, this is a thread on CC. If one poster in the thread says “elite” as a reference to Villanova or Boston U, and a different poster in the thread says “elite” as a reference to HYPSM, it can cause confusion. Perhaps it’s best to specify college names or more clear groupings like Ivies, rather than saying “elite.”
Apparently those reddits aren’t effective enough, as a lot of students still struggle. She knew a lot of Horace Mann kids and a surprising fraction of them struggled. In contrast, students from well known rigorous schools like Exeter, Stuy and TJ did pretty well.
Yes, but you are the person who introduced the concept that being able to pass an introductory class at an elite college makes someone qualified to attend. I tried to explain why Harvard explicitly chose to make its classes easy and why that approach works for them with a select few students, but doesn’t work for other colleges. I am not sure I succeeded with you but will drop that topic now.
So you just want an expanded version of Harvard Extension School?
That is so interesting about Horace Mann given its academic reputation. They sent a lot of students to Chicago last year, around 10 IIRC.
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I think a bigger part of it is having a high endowment per student. If you have a high enough endowment per student, you can spend hundreds of thousands per student while only getting a small fraction of that in tuition. If you double the student body without doubling the endowment, then endowment per student suffers, and this huge spending per student isn’t possible to the same extent.
Using some specific examples, a list of highest endowment per student colleges is below. Among “Ivy Plus” type colleges, the lowest is probably Cornell, with its ~$8 billion endowment. It’s difficult to be “elite” unless you have that endowment allowing large spending beyond tuition and related influences on USNWR ranking and such.
- Princeton – $3 milliion per student
- Yale – $2 million per student
- Stanford
- Harvard
- MIT
- Pomona
- Swarthmore
- Caltech
- Amherst
- Williams
I’m trying to think of reasons why an elite school would want to expand above any organic growth currently in their plans. I can’t think of any.
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I know several of them. The elite or bust idea that is pushed on students led them to make a bad choice in applying to and choosing UC.
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Again, I never said otherwise. That would be @hebegebe
We call them state schools 
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I never said that UChicago doesn’t admit weak students. I said weak students have no place to hide, which is quite different.
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Not all state schools are excellent.