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<p>I agree with you. But a big part of the article’s argument is that indicators of academic performance in itself significantly favor the rich. And that’s obviously not true if you look at Caltech’s socioeconomic breakdown.</p>
<p>Jahaba makes a valid point;) Sure the article didn’t have a link to their investigation notes and surveys/means of gathering statistics, but what article does? They sourced professors w/ colleges, and other facts. If you want to dismiss article as bogus, go ahead, but first ask yourself why. You have no facts to disprove this. They have a great deal more time invested into this problem. Are you speaking out against this b/c you are rich and haven’t faced the same struggles of low-income students with high scores and goals?</p>
<p>My school is full of URM’s that come from 100k+ families, and these same URM’s end up going to the best schools in the country. Something about being from an elite school and being a minority makes you instantly desirable anwhere. And these minority students still had all the advantages of wealth: highly educated (M.D./PhD/J.D.) parents, a supportive learning environment, a quality parochial education, and an infinite number of opportunities. </p>
<p>I wonder…out of 100 minorities at Yale/Harvard/Princeton, how many of them actually are working class kids?</p>
<p>“I wonder…out of 100 minorities at Yale/Harvard/Princeton, how many of them actually are working class kids?”</p>
<p>Agree with Pandapals.</p>
<p>At my child’s HS, almost all the URMs are from college educated middle (+) class families.
Those URM students tend to do a lot better in college admission to top schools than Asians or Whites.</p>
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<p>… and more intelligent parents, perhaps. There are reasons why some people are richer than us. Intelligence, hardworking, and discipline might be a few of them.</p>
<p>pwoods,</p>
<p>Are you sure you read Karabel’s book “The Chosen”? If you had, you would not find anything in the Globe article surprising except for the fact that he did not reference Karabel’s books.</p>
<p>FWIW, there is a long, well documented history of elite school adcoms saying one thing while they do another. Take a look at “The Early Admissions Game” for another look at such misleading practices. </p>
<p>The only surprise to me is that these same elite colleges allowed so much information to get out that these books could be published and sourced.</p>
<p>Agreed, newsmassdad. I actually just finished “The Price of Admission,” which was extremely interesting; for those who chided the author for not citing evidence, I agree, but I think he was basing his opinions on the wealth of statistics and evidence he cited.</p>
<p>I agree with a few posters - where I live, middle-class students seem to do alright (better, anyway, than Golden would have lead me to believe). HOWEVER, I do NOT agree with a post somebody else made about financial aid. I definitely understand that schools can offer great financial aid ED, and that you can get out of an ED contract if the money is not enough. But I still don’t think this “neutralizes” the entire process, especially since most students don’t know you can get out of ED for FA (as a matter of fact, my GC didn’t tell me this). I am also more under the impression that many parents probably don’t know about this either. Generally - at least from my experience - students seeking significant aid are more likely to want to compare offers. I know it’s the way the system works, so there’s really nothing we can do to change it; however, I feel like it’s semi-obvious that less wealthy candidates are at a disadvantage if only because applying ED is less of a realistic option for them.</p>
<p>Collegealum314, you said that “the ED/EA candidates tend to be stronger candidates. It’s common knowledge that people don’t expect to get in EA unless they are somewhat stronger than the general pool.” Really? This is news to me. Generally, our GCs encourage students with slightly weaker stats to apply early to a first-choice college, because ED/EA have higher admit rates. Your logic of why a better applicant would do so makes sense, but I don’t think it’s actually how people think…I think the majority of students seize on the higher admit rates and apply early if they are unsure whether or not they can get in.</p>
<p>I am not one to trust informaion too readily but some of the points made in this article are valid. </p>
<p>I noticed that when people mentioned minorities attending Ivies, they only mentioned EXCEPTIONS. How many black or latino kids do you see getting in Ivies? The article might have a point because if we were to go to any Ivy, Harvard e.g., right now and checked the finacial statuses of the MAJORITY of the students they would be white and from the upper middle to upper class. </p>
<p>Plus, its a recession right now and these colleges need people who can pay for their education.</p>
<p>I’m not pro or con this article but even if it is op-ed, these are some pretty good points.</p>
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<p>The author makes reference to Golden, but butchers some of the arguments and pulls other stuff out of thin air. Neither Golden nor Karabel think that basing admission on academic performance is unfair, a premise which seems to be the main message of the article. Both of them have spent a lot more time thinking about and researching admissions than the author of that article.</p>
<p>ib612, how many counter-examples will you need to admit that your premise is incorrect? My family came from Africa. Once in the US, my father supported us on less than $24,000 a year working two jobs. Our family now includes two doctors and I intend to become a lawyer. We are not poor any longer. Speaking from the perspective of an immigrant, please believe me when I tell you America is a magnet for much of the world’s populace. The “American Dream” is alive and well.</p>
<p>To make a slight correction to another poster’s comment about William Fitzsimmons, Harvard admissions director–he played hockey and graduated from parochial high school in Braintree, MA, not the Bronx.</p>
<p>Reading about the historical discrimination of these institutions in “The Chosen” helped convinced me that the current system, while not perfect, is actually quite fair. I felt like “The Price of Admission” was a tad sensationalist (though obviously nowhere near as bad as the garbage in the Globe), though full of great statistics.</p>
<p>Re ED admit rates:</p>
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<li><p>Coaches push hard for recruits to apply ED; they distort the stats.</p></li>
<li><p>Legacies and other hooked kids also disproportionately apply ED, to see if the hook works or if they need to go through the normal process; they, too distort the stats.</p></li>
<li><p>At many schools, being a URM is a major plus and they, too, are encouraged to apply ED, so the school is sure they are coming.</p></li>
<li><p>Many schools publish stats of ED and RD admits–it is not always true that ED kids have stronger stats; I have never seen a study of the percentages.</p></li>
<li><p>Schools which are often used as safeties for higher tier schools (Some call this “Tufts syndrome”)–Franklin & Marhsall; Muhlenberg; others–admit a huge percentage of their class ED to avoid the low yield potential of admitting kids using the schools as safeties. Their ED stats are lower than their RD stats.</p></li>
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<p>pwoods,</p>
<p>Do you really mean to say that an admissions system that gives systemic priority to folks of privilege, merely because they bring a certain “social background” to the table, should be given priority, and that’s a fair system? Okaaay.</p>
<p>How many folks have had their public elementary school visited by the head of admissions at Harvard? Last decade, the head of Harvard admissions visited the Park School in Brookline Massachusetts to discuss college admissions. Park happens to be a top feeder school to Harvard through its feeding into top prep schools like Milton Academy. I can guarantee you he did not visit any of the public elementary schools in the same town, much less the HS. </p>
<p>On many elite college campuses, prep school kids get separate tours and interviews by admissions reps, not alumni. Preference is given to kids that play obscure sports commonly found at prep schools but rarely at public schools. Field Hockey or Crew, anyone? These kids a wooed from early on. Yes, many get rejected, but at rates far below their public school peers. </p>
<p>Please go back and re-read your sources…</p>
<p>^@newmassdad: those advantages only apply to wealthy in the northeast</p>
<p>For example, I doubt the kid of two doctors in Michigan is being wooed from the cradle by Harvard or gets to participate in weird sports like rowing (not everyone even has access to water), field hockey, or th like.</p>
<p>collegealum,</p>
<p>you might want to check your facts a bit. Prep school kids live all over the country. Granted schools in the heartland may not have crew, but they have field hockey, lacrosse, fencing (Blake School Mpls) and such. </p>
<p>Kids at prep schools are also much more likely to have played on a varsity team, because the schools are smaller and they often have more teams. </p>
<p>Know too, that the prep school advantage is not necessarily that their grads are recruited to PLAY on college teams, although that happens for obscure sports. They also get an advantage when adcoms give weight to having been on a team. Read the sources and you see that this is in part what “holistic” admissions is about. Hard for a kid at a public HS of 1800 (like my D’s) to meet a “holistic” athletics criterion when compared to a kid who went to a prep school of 400 that offers 20-30 sports (or more, depending on how you count.)</p>
<p>Just one question here… since when were field hockey and lacrosse considered obscure prep-school sports? Nearly every public school on Long Island has numerous lacrosse and field hockey teams, even in the poorer areas. =/</p>
<p>Lacrosse is basically only popular on the east coast, so to the rest of us it does look like an obscure prep-school sport.</p>
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<p>Um, I never went to a prep school, but you are mistaken if you think the prep schools in the midwest are the same animal as in the northeast. Certainly, they don’t have Harvard officials milling about the campus giving advice and aren’t feeder schools to HYP. I went to a couple of different schools, a big one like your daughters (2400) and a small public magnet (~600). A school with 400 students likely wouldn’t have been able to sustain 20-30 teams. Think about the numbers here. If most people play one varsity sport, that means there is 1-2 people per team. It would be tough to field a football team in particular. I know in the big school I was in, yeah, it was tougher to make varsity, but I don’t think lettering confers a significant advantage if you are not recruitable. If you just want some well-rounded points, big schools have junior varsity too. I do see your point, but I think you are exagerrating the sports angle. A small public would also be easier to make varsity, though you’re right that a private school might have more funding to support more teams with a smaller student body.</p>
<p>Besides, if you accept that there is a greater concentration of academic talent on these schools, it is harder to make the academic teams there. Someone that could be captain of the math team at a regular school might not even make the team at Exeter. For the record, I do think Exeter has more academic talent than your average public though not enough to justify the 30-40 acceptances per year they get to Harvard (which I read on cc.) </p>
<p>I did have one friend who went to a prep school in the Midwest, one that did have some name recognition, and I think he was the only one in his class to get into HYP (and he was a legacy.)</p>
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<p>I’m sure it is more popular on the East Coast, but the big public school I went to had a lacrosse team. As for stuff like fencing, field hockey, and the like, if you think that sports like that unfairly favors wealthy people, then target those specific avenues of advantage. Don’t make a blanket statement that wealth is an advantage, because there is a large subset of people that it didn’t go to school with fencing teams. This, of course, assumes that you don’t expect kids to move to attend private schools just because their families have money. Even this wouldn’t make a lot of sense, because I’m not convinced that prep schools are really any better than high-end public schools (especially in the midwest, where I think the publics are better.) So you’d have to be uprooting to be able to join a fencing team, because the education is often not worth it. </p>
<p>Again, it’s more effective to just eliminate recruiting to these weird sports if you think they unfairly hurt the middle class.</p>