@lookingforward I agree that college isn’t for everyone and that includes both rich and poor kids. There are probably a ton of wealthy kids who don’t need to go to college as well as plenty of poor kids. Wealth shouldn’t be what gets you into Harvard or wherever…it’s good grades and high test scores.
Natty, I do not believe wealth is what gets one into Harvard. Nor that test prep advantages or certain expensive ECs do it. There’s a pattern to what top colleges look for and:
It’s a lot more than grades and test scores.
That’s lesson 1 in holistic, for a top college.
Apparently that holistic pattern to which @lookingforward refers is greatly overrepresented in the wealthy, as 40% of Harvard students are from the richest 5% of Americans.
Not what I said.
That’s largely the point – some selective private colleges compose nearly their entire class from upper income students and admit few low income students.
For example, one of the worst offenders is WUSTL. The NYT study found that 57% of kids at WUSTL were from top 5% income, 84% were from top quintile income, and a negligible <1% were from the bottom quintile income. WUSTL’s partially need aware history contributes to this distribution. WUSTL grads as whole obviously aren’t going to have large economic mobility increase over their parents since WUSTL is not admitting significant numbers of lower income students (or at least was not at time of study).
Harvard has been singled out several times in this thread, but they are one of the better highly selective private colleges in this aspect. Harvard is one of the most affordable colleges for typical lower and middle income families. Their NPC suggests no cost to parents for less than $65k income. They apply some degree of preference for lower SES applicants (seems to be applied to applicants with less than ~median US income) over unhooked higher income students. And they have decent brand recognition among lower income applicants, leading to a good number of applications. I expect the distribution has improved since the study, with Harvard’s increased preference for first gen.
Harvard’s internal review at http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-421-112-May-1-2013-Memorandum.pdf found that <$40k income applicants were predicted to have a 6% admit rate without preferences, but instead had a 11% due to low SES preferences. At all stat levels, lower income students with those stats had a higher admit rates than the overall average.
Harvard’s preference for legacies, early applications, special interest list (can include rating of potential for donating), and athletes in preppy unpopular sports is not helping the SES distribution, nor is the lack of additional low SES preference for lower income Black and NA students, or international limitations. But that’s not the primary reason why there are relatively few lower SES students. The primary reason is fewer apply than other income groups, in spite of Harvard having little typical cost to parents from lower income families…
Could you share similar data for the middle class, @data10, to avoid a bi-model pattern?
Because some are so upset about this, imo, it’s important to clarify, as needed.
Not, “some selective private colleges compose nearly their entire class from upper income students and admit few low income students.” I’d use the phrase “matriculate fewer.”
And rather than the loaded word “preference,” I’d go for “awareness.”
Another thing to consider is that the bright, accomplished low SES kids admitted are often on the receiving end of some good hs mentoring. Often, an outside program. It means their apps aren’t the funky patchwork some expect of poor kids. In cases, they’re more articulate, savvy to the process, and with rigor, meaningful ECs and esssys.
That’s not all of them. But nor is a tippy top looking for tokens who struggle. Colleges often compete for these best. You can’t just look at the final mix.
If <1% of matriculating students at a highly selective college are from the lowest quintile income, it seems highly unlikely that they are admitting lots of students from this low income group. However, yes, it is theoretically possibility that they admit many low income students and hardly any of those admitted low income students matriculate.
“Preference” is a direct quote from the linked Harvard internal study that was requested by Dean Fitzsimmons “to see if there is any evidence of a preference for low-income applicants”. They also use the word “tip” interchangeably with “preference.” They do not say “awareness” or “aware” anywhere within the report.
The key point in the article is something that is not spoken of directly very often. Bravo Duke for outing it. While it is laudable of universities to increase their racial and economic diversity, the piece of the pie they are shrinking to grow the diversity is the spot for the smart, hard working white kid who is not a legacy, super rich or highly connected. A more equitable approach in admissions would be for there to be a pro rata reduction in spots for all but URMs. At that point, 100% of the Harvard white admittants would be admitted on merit not less than 60%. I have read the coverage and many of the briefs in the SC cases and while there is no “intentional” quota, there is a desire to increase URM and that requires decreasing some other group. And it is always the spot for the “regular” white kid. My point, albeit rambling, is that when a white kid with great grades and super test scores doesn’t get in to a selective school, but an URM with lower credentials gets in, it would be nice for slective schools to admit that the regular white kids spots were given to Trumps, Dells, Bushes and the like.
You can review the NYT economic distributions for different colleges at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/washington-university-in-st-louis and the Harvard admit rates for middle class in the report linked earlier.
Regular white kids, urms, rich kids, none of them have predetermined spots that get given to anyone.
People are entitled to squat in this world. They certainly aren’t entitled to a spot at an elite college. Schools get to design their own student body (so long as they aren’t actively discriminating). The market will decide whether the design is a good one.
That is the beauty of the CalTechs of the world. You want a school that doesn’t do legacy admits? They are out there. And if the demand is out there for more schools that are stat driven, elite schools will adapt to the demand to get the elite students. That is why there is more diversity now in elite schools, than there used to be. People want their kids to be in diverse schools. So the elites are adapting. Slowly, but undeniably adapting.
The point the prior posters make is that the colleges are discriminating, albeit perhaps legally. A deliberate decision to increase enrollment of some ethnic groups requires a corresponding decrease of others. How that decrease is accomplished is the subject of much debate.
No, that’s the entire iceberg. There are not all that many rich selective private colleges. Of course I lean on hard data, otherwise I’m left with “feelings” and “opinions” which are often just so much hot air. Anybody can manufacture a convincing story to support the most cockamamie idea out there. Theory is cheap.
What you’re saying is, essentially, “It’s not that the rich have more than the poor, it’s that the poor have less than the rich”. Not having one’s background limit one’s vision is one more of the privileges of wealth.
When I said that mobility was low, I wasn’t talking about poor kids becoming millionaires, i was talking about poor kids entering the middle class, including jobs like teachers.
I absolutely agree.
Let’s see: wealthy people in congress voting to cut taxes for the rich, and get rid of the estate tax with laws put together by think tanks made up from wealthy families. Alumni of “elite” colleges fighting against ending legacy preferences. Pipelines from elite expensive high schools to elite expensive colleges. “Research” articles funded by the same rich think tanks mentioned above to “prove” that the rich deserve their money, and that any laws to create a more equitable society are naive at best, and evil plots by socialists, at worst
What can I say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
It’s not to say that it’s universal. It’s not “the wealthy”, as though we’re talking about a monolithic group. It is a specific set of wealthy people, many who are “old money”. There is a very large segment of very wealthy people, including some of the richest people out there, who are at the forefront of making our society more equitable.
Except that mobility has almost stopped for all.
Supply side economics have been proven not to work decades ago. besides, if this were so, there would be a lot more upward mobility in the USA, but, as I wrote above, there isn’t. In fact, there is a lot of downward mobility. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/07/25/fewer-americans-are-making-more-than-their-parents-did-especially-if-they-grew-up-in-the-middle-class/
I am being gentle. I’m only saying that I do not accept the claims of the rich and powerful that they are innately superior and that their inherited wealth is deserved because of this. As long as they start paying more equitable taxes, and accept that most of them are simply lucky, I’m good. I don’t really begrudge them their luck - I’m relatively lucky too.
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I suppose how you view the Harvard lawsuit is directly correlated with how you view this thread.
Me, I don’t think Harvard’s numbers reflect discrimination. There is more to building a class than ethnicity and scores. Call it holistic or whatever. Harvard can admit the class it wants. By doing so they aren’t “taking a spot” from one person of any ethnic or economic group and giving it to another. No one owns the spot.
It is the sense of entitlement that ruffles my feathers. You are qualified. You didn’t get accepted like thousands of other qualified students. We can’t always get what we deserve. Don’t blame the students who got in, even if they are among the handful did it with their daddy’s money. It isn’t a reflection on you or the result of a vast conspiracy among the uber wealthy.
It is good the Asian American applicants of today, and the African American and Jewish applicants of the past, did not share your philosophy, @CateCAparent.
Woah, partner. Don’t over dramatize what I am stating.
There are all kinds of flavors of qualified applicants. The more diversity the better.
All I am saying is that no one has a right to a spot at Harvard just because of SES (high or low) or ethnicity (urm or orm or white). Harvard can decide for itself what makes the best diversity for it. That is different than saying it can discriminate.
And we’re locked in the same old argument.
Just don’t take a slice of a view and pretend it’s the whole. Or that you think it, so it must be true.
I’m out.
Actually, the federal judge essentially admitted that it was discrimination or at least discriminatory, but that such was permissable as there were no race-neutral alternatives.
Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford – are rich schools.
They got rich by admitting rich children of rich parents. And then persuading them to endow their school.
So OF COURSE they admit a lot of rich students. Theirs is a pretty successful business plan. This is how it’s always been.
More recently these elite male schools also started to admit a lot of brilliant students who don’t come from wealthy families. Gasp: some were even Jews, Black and even female!
Along the way, these schools have gone on to hire/endow/educate a staggering number of Nobel Prize winners, something we all benefit from, even those of us who live far away, never attended these schools and don’t have children who did either.
Why so many people are up in arms over the admissions policies of these schools is beyond me.
I believe Stanford has always allowed and admitted the groups you listed. Some of Stanford’s early classes had more women than men, which led to Jane Stanford limiting maximum enrollment to 500 women, out of fear of becoming a school for women. This made Stanford admission much more challenging for women than men during the early decades, when this quota existed.
That’s also not an accurate characterization of how Stanford became wealthy, as measured by the endowment. For example, the most well known graduate of Stanford’s first class and the one of the key reasons why Stanford was able to stabilize their struggling financial situation in early decades was Herbert Hoover. He was the child of a blacksmith and has had numerous blue color jobs, including pushing mine carts. He did not become wealthy until long after graduating. Stanford’s history with Terman’s students and Silicon Valley is also important.
In more recent years, gifts from alumni families that have a long history of wealth make up only a small portion of finances. Instead one of the largest sources of revenue is simply investment gains on the endowment. Once you have a near $30 billion endowment, investment gains average billions per year. This relates to why the “elite” colleges remain similar decade after decade, rather than following the colleges that admit the wealthiest students or largest portion wealthy students. It’s difficult to suddenly catch up with a college that has gradually acquired tens of billions endowment over centuries, with billions in endowment investment gains most years. Sponsored research is another key source of operating income.