^I agree that applicants of similar profiles (including geography) do compete with one another and their chances of acceptance are affected by that competition. However, colleges should be more transparent about such considerations, not use such subjective rating as “Personal Quality” for that purpose. How is geography and areas of interest taken into account in admissions? Is an applicant measured against fellow applicants from the same geographical area, from the same ethnicity, and/or from the same area of interest? If so, how? Are “Personal Quality” ratings calibrated in such a way? If not, how else are these considerations quantified? In the Harvard case, some applicants who were denied admission seem to have scored higher (than some of those who were admitted) on everything except their “Personal Quality” ratings. How are those decisions rationalized?
The schools have all been very open that they are trying to build a “diverse” class over multiple dimensions, including academic and non academic interests, talents (athletic, musical, artistic, writing), geography, SES, race/ethnicity, first gen, rural/urban/suburban, private/public school. They do not provide explicit numerical weightings or provide the range of numbers per bucket (but some numbers that are publicly shared show a fairly narrow range year to year, although there could be discernible trends when looking over longer periods of time). This is because none of the top holistic schools input various factors/subscores into a program that spits out the top X students who will be the ones gaining admissions.
@Data10 has done yeoman’s work in dissecting the info made available through the Harvard litigation and re-synthesized in the Arcidiacano piece. This info gives valuable insights to the strengths and correlations of various factors, but it is also clear that there is no master algorithm. I suspect further up in the funnel, more objective factors/scoring is used to quickly cut the list to something more manageable. Most schools are pretty open that the apps are divided up geographically for the first read At the end it is a very human process when it is down to the last 5,000-7,000 finalists. Aside from the megadonor kids and athletes, there might be a few hundred that are “no brainers” - these are the kids who are cross admitted to multiple highly selectives, but the rest are subject to the vagaries of debate, the persuasive strength of the AO advocate, the cohort that is being compared that session and even a bit of luck. I imagine the subjectivity becomes more and more pronounced as they get to the final spots. Fact is there are limited spots, multiple institutional needs, and an oversupply of great candidates.
The different models have different geographical controls. Arcidiacono’s includes control for geographical region code and various neighborhood characteristics. Card goes in to more detail with neighborhood characteristics controls and includes things like average number of AP classes for kids in neighborhood, average home value of neighborhood, etc. The models also control for things like parents’ occupation, whether parent attended a different Ivy, percent of kids at HS who are first gen, portion of kids from HS who get accepted to any college, etc.
The reports I’ve seen do not list regression coefficients by region, but they do mention Asian applicants from California (regions A, C, and Z) were slightly less negative than most other regions. Card found a too small to be significant positive benefit for being Asian + California compared to White + California, while Arcidiacono finds little difference between Asian and White. Asian applicants were overrepresented in CA – 29% of Asian applicants from CA vs 14% of White applicants. The improved Asian + CA regression results in spite of this overrpresentation suggests that Harvard is not limiting Asians by regions in which they are overrpresented among applicants, and is instead holding them to similar standards as not-overrpresented White applicants from that region.
"…there might be a few hundred that are ‘no brainers’ "
Out of 25-40k.
Thing is, if you need transparency handed to you, you may not be the sort for those colleges.
I was wondering if Massachusetts was because of so many international students attend boarding school there, and they might fit an over represented profile (CS majors), with the additional ding of being international. But the South - that makes no sense to me why Asians wouldn’t get admitted at the same rates as whites. Or why they would get admitted at higher rates than whites in the midwest. I realize the differences are small, but it is a weird chart.
@OHMomof2 , that is a fantastic article. While I don’t dispute the effect, I disagree with the leap to schools intentionally choosing the sports they play so they can accept more high SES kids. The Ivies have been playing those “elitist” sports for over a hundred years, and I highly doubt they picked them back then as a way to keep the riff-raff out. The riff-raff weren’t applying then. If they were picking sports from scratch today, they might well pick different sports, though I don’t know which they would add or drop.
One of the takeaways of the article for me is that the coaches go to where the critical mass of kids are to recruit simply because it is perceived as easier. Those are club tournaments and showcases that aren’t available to low and middle class families. But every college coach worth his/her salt is going to choose talent over skin color any day. The alums expect nothing less. Now that Amherst is scooping up talented kids no one else is looking at and blowing away the competition as a result, my guess is that other colleges are going to follow suit.
Makes me wonder if down the line we see elite colleges fund youth sports in less advantaged areas, as a way to cultivate a pipeline. But then all of the upper class folks would try to flood those programs. The question then becomes how the elites can keep the privileged out of their youth sports programs. How ironic is that?
I misunderstood your earlier post. I see now that you are referring to the chart on the 2nd to last page of the Harvard Office of Internal Research report at http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-421-145-Admissions-Part-II-Report.pdf , which compares White & Asian admit rates by region. A brief summary is:
Harvard Non-Legacy, Non-Athlete Admit Rates for Class 2007-16
Massachusetts – 12.0% Asian, 12.8% White
New York – 9.4% Asian, 9.8% White
Midwest + Southwest – 7.4% Asian, 7.2% White
Northeast + Atlantic – 7.4% Asian, 7.0% White
Great Lakes – 7.4% Asian, 6.0% White
Texas – 6.2% Asian, 7.4% White
South – 6.0% Asian, 7.4% White
CA + Northwest – 6.0% Asian, 6.0% White
Massachusetts clearly has the highest admit rate for both Asian applicants and White applicants, but the report doesn’t suggest why. I’d expect this partially relates to a greater frequency of hooks and special connections, with the nearer distance from the college. Legacy was excluded, but there are other relevant hook + special connection categories. The Harvard dean of admissions has also said they Harvard gives a tip to local Boston area kids. MA kids are probably also more likely to apply early, with Harvard being more likely to be their first choice.
I’m not sure why Asian had a slightly higher relative admit rate in Great Lakes and lower in South. SES differences of applicants may contribute. The earlier studies found that general region of applicant added little to the accuracy of the models, suggesting that the differences in admit rate by region are captured by other parts of the application or applicant information/hook status, rather than a large difference in general selectivity by region.
The preceding pages of the report are also interesting. They show that a high personal rating was the most influential of the analyzed variables for estimating chance of admission, increasing estimated chance of admission by 9x with all other controls the same – more influential than a high rating in any other listed category, and more influential than any analyzed hook, including legacy.
Both sides of the lawsuit came to a similar conclusion about the personal qualities being influential, not just a minor secondary consideration, as some assume. While the Harvard OIR believes the personal rating is important, they don’t appear to know any more about how the personal rating is generated than the external sources, nor were the able to explain any more of the variance in ratings (mentions 20% of variance from LOR/GC/alumni support).
“Personal Quality” is probably the most subjective of all the measures used in admissions. It’s also the most prone to stereotyping and personal biases, especially in the absence of well-defined and easily understandable guidelines. AOs are human beings. No human being is totally free from biases and stereotyping at all times, even with his/her best effort to avoid such frailty.
And that’s a reason it helps to see apps. It’s easy to assume biases play, but more enlightening if you can see what adcoms deal with.
It seems to me, people want to say, well, that kid is Asian, she got these ratings, did or didn’t get an admit, something must be rotten in Denmark. After all, he’s Asian or she’s legacy or whatever. It’s more than that.
If you can’t accept that it’smore than that, it’s futile.
It seems people want this to be hierarchical, that all 1/1 kids should get in first.
That’s true. but many schools have added certain sports to increases high SES enrollment. Lacrosse, for example, here in the midwest where it isn’t (wasn’t?) played as much: https://www.ibj.com/articles/48452-small-colleges-using-lacrosse-to-attract-monied-students-from-east-coast
Right. But as the article also says, Amherst can afford to look further/deeper, most colleges can’t.
This is already happening 
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/sports/rowing-toward-hope-in-a-troubled-world.html - crew
https://www.capitolsquash.org/alliance/sea/ - squash
But I think those programs are still a drop in the bucket. Even most “normal kid” have gotten really expensive to compete in at recruitable levels.
Is this your entire argument that only insiders’ viewpoints are valid on the subject, and that all outsiders’ viewpoints are to be disregarded?
Considering that graduates of prep schools with dedicated-to-college-admissions counseling staffs with privileged connections to highly selective private colleges (i.e. where students have more transparency handed to them compared to students at typical high schools) are overrepresented at these colleges, the statement above seems to apply only to the typical high school pipeline, rather than the privileged prep school pipeline that is predominantly populated by scions of wealth (despite a small number of scholarship students).
“Is this your entire argument that only insiders’ viewpoints are valid on the subject, and that all outsiders’ viewpoints are to be disregarded?”
Certainly not. But nor is looking at after-the-fact research results going to show the Whys. I’m advocating for a fuller view. This shouldn’t be diminished.
And no, prep kids don’t have magic apps. Their GCs have insight. Not a magic wand.
Have an open mind. For heaven’s sake, it’s the first principle of good research.
The colleges could provide that “fuller view” if they wished. If they do not do so, the results will have to suffice to judge the rationality of the process by which they were achieved
Thing is, if you need transparency handed to you, you may not be the sort for those colleges.
“Have an open mind. For heaven’s sake, it’s the first principle of good research.”
That’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black. Your posts (not you personally) have been the most closed minded on this thread.
“Thing is, if you need transparency handed to you, you may not be the sort for those colleges.”
Well there are a lot of kids at these kinds of colleges that don’t exhibit the higher level thinking, stretch that you say are needed to get in. And there are a lot of kids that do but don’t get in because of institutional needs (ALDC, urm, first-gen, geo). We know athletes are spoon fed what they need to get in once they have the coach’s attention, and that’s 15% of the class. And it’s not just Harved, if a Stanford coach loves you, you’re in a different pile altogether.
“But every college coach worth his/her salt is going to choose talent over skin color any day. The alums expect nothing less.”
It’s not as easy as that, alums of many schools definitely care if their school are going to lower standards to admit athletes. Stanford and Northwestern say, are not going to recruit “one and done” in basketball, kids in school for 7 months and majoring in basketball (class optional no enforcement).
Actually, they did incorporate athletics into admissions to keep what they considered the riff-raff at the time out. Harvard’s original foray into holistic admissions was driven by anti-semitism.
Last year, Yale matriculated 9 kids from Alabama and 10 kids from Kentucky, but 118 from Connecticut. Adjusting for the size of the high school population, and a Connecticut kid is 16x more likely than an Alabama or Kentucky kid to matriculate at Yale. Similar to Blossom’s point earlier, there isn’t any reason to believe the Connecticut kids are 16x better than the Alabama or Kentucky kids, except in ways derived from wealth or at least proximity to it.
This type of information is exactly why transparency matters.
You need to also consider the number of applicants from those states (among other things). I’m sure kids from Connecticut are far more likely to apply to Yale than kids from Alabama or Kentucky, so the difference in admit rate would be much smaller.
Lol, I’m not close-minded. I’m asking you to consider more than superficials. More than the mindset you bring to this.
Easy example. One says “Omg!, CT kids at 16x!” As if the only explanation is favoritism. Is it? As Data10 then notes, possibly a much large number applying. And so on.
Do I think more CT kids have stronger apps? No, not from all areas.
“…a lot of kids at these kinds of colleges that don’t exhibit the higher level thinking, stretch that you say are needed”
You know this how? Because some kids who aren’t “Summa” get in? It’s the same as an earlier comment that another thinks some aren’t “good enough.” All that is open minded?
Btw, I may know one elite very well, and several other Ivies. But that isn’t how I came to learn about other elites. No one called me and told me the recipe. There’s a lot I feel is obvious just by looking deeper.
If you act like there’s zero transparency now, of course I wonder how much you’ve looked, on your own. Think about it.
In almost any field of research that has a human component, the results won’t be perfect, with explaining 100% of variance in results. Instead you try to gather as much relevant information as possible, and consider both what is available and missing. You use that information to draw conclusions and estimate the strength of these conclusions, including percent of variance explained. You don’t need perfect information to draw conclusions, and you certainly don’t just read some general comments on a website a take their word for it.
This appears to be the method used by the Harvard Dean of Admissions. Note that in the linked document about Harvard preferences for lower SES kids (relates to evaluating the subject of this thread), he asked the Harvard OIR to do an analysis, and suggests that the Harvard OIR do something consistent with other researchers on the subject. He did not just read a web page or talk to an AO and take their word for it. This same approach is also used by professors at Harvard and other colleges to review whether Harvard has “elitist” admission policies. Nobody ever publishes a paper on this subject saying they read Harvard’s web page or talked to an AO and took their word for it. Instead they do an analysis and draw conclusions. The professors at Harvard and other colleges are able to draw conclusions even though they were unable to explain 100% of variance and did not see the full apps. I wouldn’t automatically dismiss any of these groups as not “the sort for those colleges,” although I might have some reservations about someone who automatically dismisses such research.
Regarding the specific ratings, the admission reader ratings absolutely do correlate well with decisions, as can be seen by the models explaining the majority of variance in decisions. If the ratings given by admissions officers did not correlate well with admissions decisions, Harvard would have bigger problems than “elitist” admission policies. And we do see huge differences in chance of admission for specific combinations of ratings between legacies and non-legacies, but only slight differences for Asian vs White. These large differences in chance of admission for specific ratings combinations between legacy and non-legacy remain after controlling for geographical region, planned choice of concentration, and many other factors.