The College Admission Scam

Applying to College
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<p>Schools don’t recruit widely for obscure sports? Check this out:</p>

<p>[Chess</a> - University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Wins Pan American - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/crosswords/chess/10chess.html?scp=3&sq=chess&st=cse]Chess”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/crosswords/chess/10chess.html?scp=3&sq=chess&st=cse)</p>

<p>“Baltimore County and Dallas have invested in recruiting top players, often from abroad, for their teams…blah, blah, blah…All of them are on scholarship and are full-time students”</p>

<p>In the details, are the facts that the UMBC team members listed are all foreign recruits. As a tax paying resident of Maryland, I’m not sure how I feel about these school slots, and tax dollars, going to foreign students just because they’re great at chess. Sure, it’s more diverse but from the point of view of the school, I think what they’re really after is bragging rights, not true diversity. </p>

<p>They want to excel in something, however obscure, they want to have numbers in some category that will make them look good, so they go for WHATEVER way they can fill that category or make that percentage that they can brag/glow about in their publications.</p>

<p>Did anyone read “The Price of Admission”? I found the most devastating chapter to be the one about athletic admits at UVA. John Grisham’s son was very badly treated because they wanted his family’s money, not for the son to be coached in baseball. We see the “face” of college athletics as African American because the only sports shown on TV are football and basketball and they have a lot of African American players. </p>

<p>What about the many, many other college sports? </p>

<p>From “The Price of Admission”: “Although big state universities dominate high-profile sports such as football and basketball, recruited athletes make up a higher proportion of students at elite private institutions. That’s because the typical Ivy League school fields teams in at least thirty sports – double the collegiate average. Also, because they don’t offer athletic scholarships, Ivy League schools often recruit more players than they need to fill rosters, anticipating that, without a financial incentive to play, some will quit their sport.”</p>

<p>So, excel at an obscure sport, and you will have an admissions edge. Doubly so, because in order to excel at an obscure sport, your family must have the money to have you coached in it.</p>

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<p>Actually, yes. Most extremely famous scientists and mathematicians and successful people came from families with wealthy backgrounds. Gates, Lagrange, Newton, Einstein, Leibniz, Bernoulli, Poincar</p>

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<p>Not only have the upper 1% in this country gotten all of the economic gains in the last decade or more but they are assured that their children will inherit their spots. It seems like many people who are not “anywhere close to a high income family” are afraid of seeming bitter? Or what exactly? If you don’t want equal opportunity for yourself why not be in favor of it because that’s what our country was built on? They are not frauds. It’s not their fault, necessarily, we are all allowing our country to become a much less fair place.</p>

<p>Getting into a college because someone in your family donated money, or seems like they might donate money, etc. is not about “having a good upbringing”.</p>

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<p>Please cite a reliable source which affirms your assertion, or prove that I in any way correlated the statement of “having a good upbringing” with “Getting into a college because someone in your family donated money” and I will consider providing a serious response. </p>

<p>Your tone of “we are all allowing our country” seems to be another instance of bandwagon-based preaching. I did not state that I supported plutocratic admissions. I stated that the meritocratic admissions system only seems to favor the rich because their children were able to become educated much more readily. Don’t misinterpret my points please :P</p>

85

<p>Are you actually suggesting that wealthy people raise their children with better values and instill more ambition and passion into their children, than the typical middle class family? That’s the biggest pile of rubbish that I’ve ever heard in my life. </p>

<p>Ambition, intelligence, and passion; aren’t subject to wealth. There are numerous Nobel laureates that came from modest upbringings.</p>

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<p>I am not suggesting that at all (I never mentioned ambition or passion anywhere); personal ambition, potential, etc. are all dependent entirely on the person him/herself. The point I’m trying to make is that given two people identical in potential, the one born into a wealthier family would be far more likely to become well-developed intellectually than someone born into a family that can’t afford books, computers, library subscriptions, tutors, etc.</p>

<p>EDIT> Oh, I see; my unfortunate choice of username seems to get me flamed.</p>

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<p>^ I would have to agree with your claim. It seems almost like common sense. It is not, however, true in all cases. There are some who do not take advantage of opportunities given to them, and there are also those who do everything they can to break from poverty, etc.</p>

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<p>^Which is why I have been careful not to make “absolute” claims ;). Being wealthy is certainly not a pass card into a settled future, and a lot of wealthy parents take the indulgent parenting style that end up destroying their children, which is why we have the successful-unsuccessful flip-flop pattern for successive generations.</p>

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<p>No, but they tend to lead to wealth. And then those values and traits - and the benefits of the wealth - are passed on to their kids.</p>

<p>My D has a good friend who has better grades than D. This girl is a league All-Star in her sport, holds down TWO part-time jobs, takes AP classes and does well in them. Her mother has a very disabling illness and her father has a blue-collar job, so her 2 jobs are a necessity and she is also largely responsible for raising her younger brother. She didn’t get into NHS, while my D did. Why? Because our NHS only gives you a week to get recommendations and get your papers signed by coaches, employers, etc, and the girl didn’t have time to run around and get the signatures that week, with all her other obligations. Her parents have no clue about colleges, applications, etc - this girl has had to figure it all out herself, with help from her overloaded GC and her friends. She has been accepted to a good locally-known school with a nice merit aid package, and I assume she’ll get plenty of FA. But she never even considered a top tier college, although she is just as bright and is in a similar class rank to kids in our hs who have been accepted to top LACs and in one case, Harvard. BTW she is a white female from the Northeast, in a large public hs. The worst possible demographic. </p>

<p>Wealth doesn’t make you smart or ambitious. But lack of wealth can make it a lot harder for you to “showcase” your talents to top schools.</p>

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<p>I don’t think this is true.</p>

<p>My SAT scores are 700+ per section and my family (single parent) makes around 50K a year.
Plus, the article incorrectly connects the idea that students who have lower income have lower chances. It only appears to be that way because the lower income student pool is far smaller. In reality, these low income applicants are actively accepted, and same are URMs.</p>

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<p>“having a good upbringing” can be easily misunderstood. “They have more opportunities,” would be absolutely true. I now understand what you mean. Be careful of your choice of words; condescending statements won’t resonate with most people, considering most of us are middle class.</p>

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<p>Can I add something?</p>

<p>Malcolm Gladwell suggests (as do Daubner and Levitt, profs of economics) that it doesn’t matter what wealthy people DO, but what they ARE</p>

<p>they argue the achievement gap is due to genetics. Since IQ is highly inherited, children of wealthy parents(who tend to have high IQs) suceed because they inherited a great deal of intelligence. Now, they don’t completely discount upbringing and such, but studies have shown that alot of what parents do really doesn’t matter. For example, kids who are read to alot do no better in school than kids who aren’t…What does matter? That the parents own alot of books(showing wealth)</p>

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<p>Again, I believe it was claimed that this is not true for all cases; however, the general pattern shows that those who have a higher family income have more resources to have educated children, compared to poorer families.
And, since you believe that the lower income student pool is far smaller, then doesn’t that mean you also agree that those with lower income do not apply to Ivy-caliber/Top 30 schools because they aren’t as qualified as wealthier applicants?</p>

<p>However, rocket6louise makes an interesting claim, I’d like to see the subject studied more.</p>

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<p>So? If you’re better due to some hereditary or economic advantage, then you are better. Are we arguing that we should accept people with unpromising credentials out of consideration for their background? (Hint: That would be Affirmative Action)</p>

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<p>Um. Who are these people? Why should they be notable, and why should we take them more seriously because they hold a teaching position at an unmentioned institution?</p>

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<p>wow Aristocrat, I wasn’t aware that Op-Eds and posts on discussion forums were required to come with footnotes and citations. Thanks for the heads up.</p>

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<p>Aristocrat…I was never speaking against you or for you…simply adding another view point…get off your high horse</p>

<p>Levitt is currently the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, director of the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy published by the University of Chicago Press…I think he’s qualifed</p>

<p>Dubner writes for the New York times…</p>

<p>Malcolm Gladwell is a social psychologist…he wrote Blink, The Tipping Point, Outliers. In 2007, he received the American Sociological Association’s first Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues</p>

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<p>The politically incorrect arguments that you are really referring to stem not from the research of Levitt, Dublin, or Gladwell (who is a populist git, in my honest opinion), but from the research of Herrnstein and Murray in their book, the Bell Curve. They believe an intellectual upper-class has been formed and separated itself from the intellectual-deficient underclass. </p>

<p>And we shouldn’t accept the opinion of “experts” just because they are “experts”. We need to look at empirical data and let the numbers do the talking. </p>

<p>Honestly, we will NEVER have an equal representation of SES/racial backgrounds at elite universities, because the pool is so small. You’re going to have more rich whites and rich Asians. There aren’t many smart poor parents with smart kids. There are even fewer dumb poor parents who happen to have smart kids. Genetics play’s a part. Environment play’s a part as well, but it CANNOT account for everything. We are not all born “equal”, we are equal under the law. </p>

<p>Going into the racial divide, there just aren’t many poor smart black parents with smart kids. There are even fewer poor dumb black parents with smart kids. To sum it up, there just ain’t many smart black people. So what? </p>

<p>This article was a fun read but full of laughable bias. Ha Ha. Ha Ha.</p>

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<p>Are there too many rich people at elite Universities? Probably. </p>

<p>A lot of my friends in HS were recruited for obscure (rich) sports such as lacrosse, swimming, field hockey, etc at Ivy League and other elite schools. All of them were accepted at their first choice. However, I will note, the majority of them were excellent students, who made top grades and had SAT scores well above the median of the school’s they applied to. They just had an extra edge over the rest of us who weren’t being recruited to play a sport. That’s just my experience…</p>

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<p>The books in the house study I believe is flawed. It doesn’t show wealth but is a proxy for parental IQ.</p>

<p>I think that in the past, intelligence was starting to pool at the top but now, with all the corporate downsizing, etc., you’re going to find things going the other way again. What I mean is, a lot of wealth now is the product of “dumb” luck. 2 executives equal in every way, one’s company goes out of business when he’s 50, his kids don’t get to go to the elite college. The other one got a job with a brokerage house 20 years ago and now gets a 7-figure bonus. His kids, no matter how smart, will do just fine.</p>

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<p>… if they are equal in achievement and intellect.
Being poor doesn’t justify performing poorly.</p>

<p>It can explain the difference. Of two students born with the same intellect, the wealthy one can achieve more and perform better than the poor one because of greater opportunities and better schools and teachers. While the poor student had to work, the rich one went to enrichment (NPI). Same intellects, different outcomes. Some schools don’t want to continue the disparity of opportunity, so both students are admitted.</p>