@blossom with regards to recruiting I recently read an article about the increasing use of pymetrics (i.e. neuroscience + AI) in the hiring process. One law firm that was discussing their use said that it allowed them to recruit from a far larger pool than was possible with an in-person on campus approach. The makers of this specific software claimed that it could be used to identify the unique characteristics a specific company was looking for and eliminate bias in identifying potential candidates. I just wondered if you are seeing more of this. I also wonder if selective colleges might start using a similar approach to reduce the number of applications the AO’s need to review. I’m not saying I think that this is a good idea, I’m just wondering if it’s likely to happen.
On what basis do you assume most people would have no problem with it? It’d be more than elitist. It’d be plutocratic.
This can be found at any number of schools in the US, not just HYPSM. My D’s honors program at a state flagship checks all of these boxes.
“What do you mean by that? One acceptance to a legacy means 19 rejections to a whole lot of non-legacies.”
All I mean is that it is impossible to know which one of those 19 would have, in theory, gotten that legacy slot.
How can any one of those 19 say it was the legacy did them in if there are 18 (or more accurately 18,000) other students who could be in line in front of them, too?
It is easy to blame the legacy student who (I am not arguing) shouldn’t get the nod, but the bigger obstacle is the sheer number of applicants competing for so few spots.
@momofsenior1, yeah honours colleges aren’t really a thing here. A few schools offer limited “Scholar’s” programs but they aren’t really the same thing.
Hundreds of thousands of middle class families spending $20000 on sports clubs? This is really laughable. I don’t think you really understand what income range represents the middle class.
That game belongs to the 1%ers. The truth is that low and middle class youth are leaving youth sports because the cost is too high.
All private colleges in US have to fund for themselves and lobby for their own interest to survive. We may not like the system but that’s what we have in the US, and it seems to be the envy of the world. So, what is the problem with a small private college giving some consideration of parents’ contributions from a small minority of its admitted students? being money or connection?
I’m highly confident that this is correct, and it’s a point too often missed.
To give a real-life example, if you’re a Yale alumnus and your kid applies, you get a polite form letter saying, essentially, “we noticed your kid’s applied, be assured that we’ll read the app very carefully, but we admit about 20% of our legacy applicants these days, and there’s no appeal”. I’ve seen such a letter.
The percentage of legacies among Yale first-years seems to fluctuate in a narrow band (the last three years were 12% for the class of '23, 11% for '22 and 11.9% for '21). It seems likely to me that this is by design, and reflects a desire to keep the number of legacies big enough for all the reasons discussed above (including a need for alumni to feel that their engagement has an impact on their child’s chances of admission), but not so large as to reduce unacceptably the number of spots available for other institutional priorities. Parenthetically, I’d note that the corresponding percentages of first-gens in these years was 17%, 18% and 16.6%, which suggests to me that there is “bucketing” going on in this category as well.
If you take Yale at its word that they admit 20% of legacy applicants, assume that 80% of legacy applicants offered spots will accept them (somewhat higher than the overall yield of around 70%), and take into account that typical class size is around 1,560 (Yale College has built new dorms and expanded class size by 15% beginning with the class of 2021), it implies that every year Yale has around 1,170 legacy applicants, admits around 234 and about 187 enroll, comprising 12% of the class.
Against that backdrop, over the last three years total applications have risen from 32,900 to 36,844 (around 12%). It seems very unlikely to me that legacy applicants have risen by a commensurate amount - why would they? I would guess the number of legacy applicants is relatively constant, given that until recently the number of students at Yale rose very slowly over many years, and it’s unclear why a greater or lesser percentage of their children would apply. It follows, then, that the odds for non-legacy applicants have worsened relative to legacies as applications have increased.
See class profiles below:
https://admissions.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2023classprofileweb.pdf
https://news.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Class_Profile_2022%5B1%5D.pdf
https://admissions.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/class_profile_2021_final.pdf
Several points:
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It may surprise some people that majority of college donations don’t come from alumni (only about a quarter or so come from alumni giving).
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Some of these elite colleges are well endowed, and they can continue to raise funds by selling naming rights, etc.
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Many rich people want to be associated with these elite colleges, even if they aren’t alums. Even Jeffery Epstein donated to multiple universities, including MIT and Harvard.
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If a college needs alumni donations to survive or prosper, it should be transparent about it. It should tell the public how many seats need to be reserved for alumni and other donors. What’s worse than a plutocracy is a plutocracy disguised as a meritocracy.
I would guess legacy applicants have increased as chances at one’s non legacy schools diminish. A Harvard legacy may prefer Yale or Columbia, but is unlikely to give up a 36% chance of admission to Harvard for a sub 5% chance at Yale, for example.
Sometime back, CateCAParent wrote in post #445:
“Btw, I totally agree that we are all hurt by discrimination. I just don’t think legacy admissions is the biggest fish to fry on that front. It is a sardine and there are ginormous tunas out there to be [sustainably and ethically] caught.”
I don’t think that legacy admissions are per se evidence of discrimination. They seem to me to fall into the category of actions that have discriminatory impact without discriminatory intent. I am not sure how this works out under the “strict scrutiny” standard.
The aspect of the Harvard case that looks most dubious to me, in terms of discrimination: Except for the Asian-Americans in the top academic group (rating of 1, probable summa), the Asian-American applicants had discordantly low personal ratings–lower than the ratings of applicants in other racial groups, and not consistent with the interview reports. There may be nothing wrong here, but it looks a bit suspicious.
If there is discrimination in admissions, it could be eliminated very simply, at the stroke of a pen. Everyone should be working to reduce the larger, more serious elements of discrimination in society, absolutely. But their existence should not serve as a screen for discrimination that would be very simple to end.
Only if you believe that the student in your example would otherwise not have applied to Harvard at all, and I don’t know how you could assess the likelihood of that, or how many of such people there are. What’s at least as likely, imo, is that the pool of legacies has become more self-selected without increasing - nowadays, some of the dimmer bulbs might not even consider it worth applying. There’s definitely more pressure now to apply early to your legacy school, though, given the odds.
Btw, again anecdotally, my impression in observing legacy admissions at the tippy-tops over many years is that it’s becoming barbelled; the legacies who get in nowadays tend to be either super-smart, have some “recruitable” skill (whether it’s a sport, plaing the right instrument or something else) or are loaded. To be flippant about it, my sense is that everyone’s getting squeezed, in that getting in takes more brains, skills or bucks than it used to. I don’t have the data to back up that assertion, though.
The top private universities are some of the biggest recipients of government funding -NSF, NIH, etc. I realize that they’re involved in cutting edge research, but being such voracious consumers of taxpayer dollars should at least mean they should be transparent about their admissions practices.
Their narrative has always been “Look at our efforts - we’re free to those who meet need - we’re lifting up so many from poverty …”. It does a pretty good job of covering up the hooks for the wealthy and powerful. And with publications like the NY Times pushing this narrative, it gets a lot of traction.
Ummmmm. My original point was that lower SES folks don’t have access to these kinds of opportunities, but adcoms say they know that and don’t hold it against them. No argument that most don’t have access to “that game” from me. Chill.
As I said in my initial post on this, It is middle and UPPER middle class who get hosed by “that game” because they spend money on opportunities that don’t improve their chances of admission. I totally believe the data that applications are disproportionately made up of the top 2 quintiles. I tossed out the example of club sports to illustrate how easy it is to spend as much on these activities as COA. Which is a point someone else raised.
But of course not everyone can afford club sports. The point is still valid, that people of middle and upper middle class spend a ton on enrichment opportunities to get into elite colleges, that don’t have the results they expect. The impact is worse as the parental income goes down. I know plenty of people who went into debt to give their kids those opportunities.
Thelonious, my full comment was, “What you want to figure out is how that affects actual decisions. Not raw numbers or percentages in the class.”
Just highlighting one sentence misreads.
Most kids don’t ace their apps. Whether or not you have legacy. Don’t assume once you have stats, all the rest should fall into place- or does. In many respects, the fight is each kid’s to win or lose and the more blindly you apply, the greater risk you miss the picture they want.
So fretting that one legacy displaces 19 other extraordinary shoo-in kids is off. First cut takes out totally unsuitables. The number remaining after that is considerably smaller and re-reviewed.
Btw, personality (or non-academic) ratings are not simply “likeability” or “courage,” etc, as we use them in real life. The vast number of applicants are likeable, in the ordinary sense, “Billy, I like your friends.” Fewer are likeable for this class at this college. That’s not as simple as race, SES, etc.
So, I note that you’d need to see apps, to begin to understand ratings, overall. And some want to restate figures related to how many admits from different categories. Figures don’t begin to tell you more of the “whys.”
Many students do not ace their applications, and not all applicants are qualified. But the elite universities regularly state they could fill their classes 2 or 3 times over with qualified applicants they would like to have on campus. So thousands do meet that threshold, but perhaps not at your institution, @lookingforward.
Sorry to admit some of that’s adcom-speak. Qualified as in who has the basics. Not who truly has an exceptional shot. As I mentioned, MIT has said, pre New SAT, that anyone with 7s in front of their scores is qualified to do the work there. But there’s much more to getting an admit. Not just stats.
Fitzsimmons has said 3x the size of the class are finalists (or some equivalent word.) 6k out of 40k+ for 2000 slots. At that final point, institutional needs play a larger role. More about geo diversity, gender balance, majors, variety in perspectives, interests, etc. They can’t take every great stem wannabe from the Bay Area, eg. In some areas, the nature of the similarities among applicants is a hurdle. Or the fact that the pace is different in many NYC hs, puts upstate kids in a tough position. Or kids near TJ, in NVa, have a tough time.
It’s more than legacy that makes the challenges. Ime. Just looking at superficials is just not it.
That is the basic idea. You can find some specific numbers in the previously linked Divergent: The Time Path of Legacy and Athlete Admissions at Harvard paper. An example stat from the paper is below. Over the 17 year period, the application rate of non-ALDCs more the doubled, yet the application rate for legacy + athletes was largely unchanged. The admit rate for legacy+athlete was also largely unchanged, so the portion of the class legacy+athlete remains largely unchanged.
Class of 2001 – 1039 Legacy+Athlete applicants, 13,242 Non-LA applicants
Class of 2018 – 1094 Legacy+Athlete applicants, 27,512 Non-LA applicants
Other internal Harvard OIR studies come to similar conclusions. For example, the one at http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-421-134-February-2013-Report.pdf shows the portion of class that are legacies remains approximately the same over a 10 year period (slight dip during period when EA was removed), which is approximately the same as the legacy percentage in the most recent entering Harvard class.
This leads to an increasingly large gap between admitted legacies and non-legacies from one decade to the next. You can see the difference when you compare how the subratings from the old 1990 lawsuit to the current lawsuit. It appears that back in the 80s, admitted legacies and non-legacies received largely similar ratings from admissions officers. If anything admitted legacies received better ratings than non-legacies. The only ones with a difference in average rating of >= 0.05 were:
In 1980s: Comparing Ratings for White Legacies Admits with Non-LA
Athletic – Admitted legacies average 0.05 better than non-LA
Academic – Admitted legacies average 0.08 better than non-LA
Personal – Admitted legacies average 0.06 better than non-LA
Interview – Admitted legacies average 0.09 better than non-LA
Class Rank – Admitted legacies average 2% worse than non-LA
In 2010s: Comparing Ratings for White LDC Admits with Non-ALDC
Admitted LDCs average significantly worse ratings non-ALDC in all sub-categories except athletic, including external reviews such as worse LORs, GCs, and interview. The gap in ratings between LDCs and non-ALDCs in 2010s has become larger than the gap between recruited athletes and unhooked in the 1980s.
This thread has focused a lot on Harvard but the article also mentions many other colleges including public colleges:
“Public colleges are subject to the same trend. In 2017, University of Georgia students had a median family income of $129,800. Two-thirds of the students at the University of Michigan came from the richest fifth of the income distribution; just 1 in 30 came from the poorest fifth.”
I guess we all feel that the University of Georgia is also elitist, and really ANY college that has a disproportionate amount of wealthy families kids attending vs. the poorest?
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, many colleges have worse SES distributions that Harvard… particularly selective LACs. However, University of Georgia is better than any other college that has been the focus of this thread. They’ve improved the SES distribution since the time of the study, yet the SES distribution is still relatively poor. For UGA, I think one of the key barriers is affordability among not higher income students. A comparison of average costs for federal FA recipients at Harvard and UGA is below. A $10k cost might not sound like much, but that is a large portion of income for a family making <$30k or a kid trying to pay himself.
Harvard
0-$30k – Costs $-0.2k (negative average cost, not misprint)
$30-$48k – Costs $0.6k
$48-$75k — Costs $3k
UGA
0-$30k – Costs $10k
$30-$48k – Costs $11k
$48-$75k — Costs $15k
Self selection between UGA and Georgia State is likely also influential, considering how much better the income distribution is at the Georgia State (<1% from top 1%, 5.6% from top 5%, 26% from top 20%, 12% from bottom 20%). College location probably plays a big role in this choice between UGA in Athens and Georgia State in Atlanta. I imagine not higher income kids are more likely to favor Atlanta. Otherwise I’m not familiar enough with the Georgia area to make more specific guesses about why not higher income students in Georgia seem to choose Georgia State over UGA. Both UGA and Georgia State admit the majority of applicants, so selection by the college of which students are admitted becomes less relevant than at “elites.”