And, that’s good?
Wealthier institutions do the same or less. Like all schools, Alabama has competing goals. Improve academic quality, but also diversity, FGLI- lots of different factors to consider.
With a small population of 5 million, Alabama has 25 public schools of higher ed. I am not sure that access is the main problem in that state.
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There are four flagship universities worthy of the name in Alabama:
The University of Alabama (UA),
Auburn University (AU),
the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and
the University of Alabama at Huntsville (AUH)
Which one would you say is most comparable to Williams, Barnard, U of Richmond, Harvard, Yale, or MIT?
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I would expect all of the private colleges have endowments larger than U Alabama. The 25 public colleges of course include HBCUs, directional universities, and community college. Not every Pell-eligible student is a fit for a flagship, just like not every student in any income group is not
I see.
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That is changing. And the top private schools in Seattle - Bush, Lakeside, U Prep, Sea Prep, and others, send kids to LACs in droves and NESCAC schools are increasingly more common. These are kids who could have easily attended an RU powerhouse with a beautiful campus and location right in the own backyard.
But you’re right. The number of people in Washington who don’t know that Whitman is a very good school is astounding.
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My kids go/went to one of these schools, I am always surprised that more don’t go to LACs. A good 1/6 of the class of 2023 are going to UW. I think it’s due to the large tech influence in our community. Many kids going for CS and Engineering at R1s (Ivies and others Like U Chicago, Tufts, etc). Only a handful going to LACs, but yes, they are mostly top LACs. Whitman still a sleeper, although those who know, know 
I also think there’s some peer pressure to go further away than eastern WA.
N of 1….My D’s class of 2023 at a NESCAC had 5 students from one of the private schools you mentioned.
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Another N of 1 - this year’s graduating class from one of those high schools is sending ~10 students to NESCAC schools this year, I believe across 8-9 different colleges. (Not a single one is a legacy, AFAIK. At least half are athletes.)
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Called it:
People involved in admissions say that achieving more economic diversity would be difficult without doing something else: ending need-blind admissions, the practice that prevents admissions officers from seeing families’ financial information so their ability to pay is not a factor. Some colleges are already doing what they call “need-affirmative admissions,” for the purpose of selecting more students from the low end of the income spectrum, though they often don’t publicly acknowledge it for fear of blowback.
Study of Elite College Admissions Data Suggests Being Very Rich Is Its Own Qualification - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
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The size of sports teams varies much less than the size of colleges. Small colleges with large sets of sports teams will have a large percentage of athletes among the students, so it is not surprising that the NESCAC admissions you observe have a large percentage who are athletes.
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And few if any would pay to see (outside of the H-Y game)!
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Why is it hypocritical? You make it sound like Wesleyan’s state of financial affairs is a moral failing of some sort. Consider a few things for context. Wes, at one point in time, was the wealthiest LAC in the country. But a series of unfortunate events (thanks Handler, wherever you are), and, notably, doubling enrollment to admit women (as opposed to cutting each gender number in half like most schools did), led to their relative financial status we see today. This doesn’t make them bad people; they just made some mistakes.
They are well on their way back after some successful fundraising and a great CIO hire about 10 years ago. But as a LAC with close to 3,000 UGs, they nonetheless fund full need with no loans while competing with peer institutions that have up to more than double their endowment. And they are need aware for up to about 5% of the class. The overwhelming majority are admitted without regard to need.
How that, the 200th iteration on CC of what constitutes middle class and Alabama football, relates to the legacy decision, I have no idea. Of course it’s PR. There isn’t a school in the country that doesn’t engage mightily in good PR. Does it only open up a few more spots? Well, the Wes president himself said so rather clearly, so nobody’s hiding the ball. But they did it. Sometimes decisions generate value beyond their immediate, direct and observable effects. You know, help set the tone.
Only on CC does a simple and positive administrative gesture by a university degenerate into irrelevant and passive-aggressive rhetorical questions about why more legacies don’t attend the school.
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I’ve been talking about this too, i.e. the somewhat ironic way that need-blind can impede the goal of socioeconomic diversity in admissions. Yes of course there are all sorts of tells. But they’re imperfect. And, at the end of the day there’s no clearer picture than an actual, thorough FA application.
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Bingo.
Before UW’s surge to the top of the heap in CS and Biotech, the lakeside crowd viewed UW as a desperate safety choice. It’s not where the top 20% of the class tended to matriculate. Now it’s a different story.
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Not an irrelevant question. A decision which involves fewer than 25 students ( as at Wesleyan) is far different than if it involved hundreds of applicants ( say, UVA). So not being a big draw for legacy kids anyway made Wesleyan’s decision largely performative. Assuming at least half the legacies were otherwise qualified ( the percent some are using elsewhere), we are talking about the fate of a dozen kids. Not that big a deal in practical terms.
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I just think that eliminating legacy because it privileges the wealthy yet favoring other students because of their wealth is hypocritical. If people have a problem with the former, they should also take issue with the latter.
At the very least they should acknowledge that the elimination legacy preference is not the gateway to increasing access to underprivileged populations people make it out to be. It’s a false talking point.
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As I said, sometimes a gesture is just a gesture and could be helpful on the margin for reasons other than how it measures up in the immediate term.
But my reference was not to a question about the relatively insignificant impact of the decision. We didn’t need this thread for that. Michael Roth, who is closer to Wesleyan’s particulars than are we, told us that explicitly.
My reference, on other other hand, was your question about why Wesleyan’s legacy percentage is what it is. That is the question that seemed to have no relevance.
Borrowing from you, I’ve edited this to better comply with the TOS and keep the tone even keel.
My political leanings are such that I’m not the guy who’s going to tend to argue that anybody owes anybody anything. With that in mind, if Wesleyan favors the wealthy because they need lacrosse players and like to admit kids from high-end prep schools, both of which are strong indicia of wealth, then that’s their right and I have no problem with it myself. Those are expressed institutional priorities for kids who play sports at a (relatively) high level and kids who are well prepared for college.
But you seem to have glossed over the part where I said they are need-aware for only a small % of the class and thus have to contend with the budget. They manage their affairs such that they can fully fund the students they do admit and w/o loans. They don’t have to do that, but they do. They are also fundraising to get themselves back to 100% need-blind.
Adding to it that, what, 7 to 10 percent of the class now will be admitted w/o regard to legacy status seems, to me, to be a good thing. It could be a better thing I guess, but I don’t find it hypocritical.
We can deconstruct society all day long here and naval gaze about the myriad direct and indirect ways wealth advantages applicants. That’s our system, and I’m not in the camp of people who want to change it. Doing well helps your family. When a private institution goes out of its way to help those who don’t have the benefit of that direct and indirect help, they get to do it how they want to do it.
Again, adding any amount of thumb pressure, even marginal, on the scale in favor of those with less privilege seems like a good thing. I’m reminded of Jack Nicholson in a Few Good Men: “I’d rather you just said thank you and then be on your way.”
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If a university foregoes federal and state funding and refuses the large tax subsidy on its endowment earnings, I’d have no issues with any preference it chooses to implement. However, because selective schools are supported by every American through tax benefits, their policies rightly should be reviewed in the context of how they benefit America. There are lots of conversions about how eliminating legacy preference would impact or not impact Wes but I feel the discussion should focus more on whether most Americans would agree with legacy preference. To that end, I want to highlight the fact that very few schools are willing to offer a full throat public defense of legacy preference.
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