Or, to quote that famous line from “Guys and Dolls” : “What’s in the Daily Nooz? I’ll tellya what’s in the Daily Nooz”:
Get out the world’s smallest violin and play it on a Broadway stage. Tony, Emmy, Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner Lin-Manuel Miranda’s kids will have to get into Wesleyan University on their own. Ditto the children of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, football’s Bill Belichick, “Sopranos” and “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner, and a host of other notables. That’s because their alma mater, Wesleyan, just ditched legacy admissions, canceling the policy that gave the kids of alumni a leg up on other applicants to the highly selective private school. (Wesleyan says in their case it’s a small one.) May every other American higher education institution follow suit. Wesleyan joins the growing club to end favored admissions for children of alumni (nydailynews.com)
A reasonable reply. I’m really not sure how significant federal / state funding is at Wesleyan, but I don’t expect it’s all that much outside of research grants, where they tend to be at or near the top of the list among LACs. But that’s something for something, and in a different category. And as to Pell grants and other federal/state support of kids attending, I see those as merely the expression of a government value to help American children obtain an education, and that value presumably reflects as such for American citizens since the government is but a mere incarnate form of their abstract collective will. And certainly children at Wesleyan are receiving an education, so on that point Americans are getting what they asked for.
If, OTOH, federal/state funds acted in the role of a private endowment or generally subsidized operations, then, yes, the government would have a lot of say in the way a VC firm has board seats.
As to the subsidy, I’ll say just this: until we are willing to examine the role of church in society and the tax breaks they get, I’ll not entertain the subject as / when applied to institutions of higher learning. If churches can be whatever they want to be and still avoid tax on their funds, colleges should as well. Imagine those horrible people at that weird culty church in Kansas, and then imagine they pay no tax on their income.
Agree with your VC assessment and it’s rightly debated frequently in Congress. Also agree with your Church assessment and one sees that secular/religious role-of-government-conflict playing out in real time in Israel. On this topic, emotionally, I’m glad Wes gave me a chance for simply who I was (zero hooks and all). Also, I’m glad that another kid today similar to me then will have a fairer playing field against my child (who enjoys all the economic/intellectual advantages at home that a Wes education provided my family).
My, you are the cynic! Fun Fact: the late Robert Ludlum (Class of 1951) had two sons, so I’m not sure which one it was; but the word on campus was that at least one of them had applied to Wesleyan and was rejected. Another awkward celebrity situation is said to have been the late Citibank chairman, Walter Wriston '41 whose only child, a daughter, missed the switch to coeducation by several years. Besides, I think we’ve already bracketed Big Donors as a separate bucket, which presumably is what you’re getting at.
Not really. Celebrity’s children include the progency of senators, politicians, leaders in the arts-plenty of famous people who won’t be making seven figure donations but who the school would like to associate with. LM Miranda does not need to worry about his childrens’ acceptance.
I would not have described Ludlum as a celebrity in the current sense and the Citi exec whose daughter couldnt apply due to gender is irrelevant.
Somebody should have sent that memo to Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman five years ago before they embarked on a path that led to jail! I just don’t fully get why people who already have wealth, fame, and prestige feel such a need to secure even more of those things for their own children. Their children are going to be absolutely fine no matter where they go to college or if they go to college at all.
Perhaps their B-list status was insufficient to get them on the Admissions Dean’s special interest list, or that their kids were just too underqualified to even be on that list?
Fine. But, Wesleyan has had plenty of non-legacy celeb kids, including a bunch of Kennedys, a Bush, a Soros, the son of Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz (I imagine he fits your definition), a daughter of Martin Scorsese, a son of Julia Dreyfus-Lewis. I could go on. Celebrity would seem to be another “bucket” by your own definition.
I always considered them part of the donor/faculty kid set. Not big numbers of them, but those who are have a huge hook, which Wesleyan is not eliminating.
Yes. I think we’ve established that if a legacy is cross-listed as 1. The child of a big donor, 2. A faculty child or 3. The child of a celebrity, the other bucket will take precedence.
Yes. It was a head scratcher. One of Lori Laughlin’s daughters already had a really lucrative on line business-not sure why she even wanted to go to college.
Ludlum gave us the Bourne series. That’s more value IMO than 99.9% of the people I know will ever give the world.
Back to this question about why 7%:
It wasn’t technically on point, but it piqued my interest in part because it seems the information is not something a lot of schools disclose or make easy to find. Going back a few years, Wes discloses 7, 8, 8, 7, and 8 percent legacy. Princeton hovers around 10% (who enjoy a 30% admission rate), @circuitrider cited 5.something% for Bowdoin, Amherst around 11% and, from the US News article, JHU around 8.5%. First, is, then, 7% or 8% terribly low, especially when you don’t know the % of a lot of schools, or even by comparison to those you do know? Honest question. Second, and more importantly, what’s your take behind the question? Is it good or bad to have a relatively high or low legacy pop? Given that Princeton’s legacy cohort zooms from 3.X% admission rate to 30%, do you want to see Princeton’s class at, say, 20+% legacy? I’m asking outside the context of whether a given % signifies a mere token “no big deal” gesture in eliminating legacy. I got that point the first time you made it.
Last question. You posted that it’s “harder” for HYP to do away with legacy because of the alumni power, money and influence. But since they’re all super rich, I would assume they’re not nearly as dependent on alumni largesse as other schools. And MIT managed to do it. Why can’t the Ivies?
Yes, all this blather about “What difference does it make what Wesleyan does?” misses the point: it’s all about getting HYP to “clear the table.” Isn’t it?
Since we need to bring this discussion back to Wesleyan, I note only that at 4% legacy this year, the decision affects few students to begin with. It is not that hard to make decisions which affect almost no one, regardless of whether 4% is high or low.
But that isn’t their preference in admissions rate. There are always going to be legacies who attend just because they like the school. They may have been raised in the area because a parent or two went to the college and liked the area and settled there.
Many schools don’t give legacies admissions preference but the children of alum still attend. Way back when I got a letter from the U of Maryland saying that there was no legacy preference, that it was a public school and they set their policies accordingly to serve all residents fairly. Did I think that meant that if the governor’s child applied the application would get no preference? I did not, but it did make me feel like the average Joe had more of a chance than before I got the letter. And many children of alums go into the various schools at U of Maryland - law, medicine, nursing. Why? They were qualified.
I don’t think this policy will change much at Wes or at HYP (when they drop it, and I think they will). If Penn was giving 3% of ED/EA (or whatever version a school has) spots to legacies, and they decide not to do that, I think they will still give those spots to another early applicant. Many students are limited from applying early or restrictive because they need to compare the FA packages or may not even realize how early is early, don’t have the help from their high school to figure it all out. The early pool will still look the same. I do not think there is suddenly going to be a huge group of students from NE prep schools closed out of the LACs and Ivies to make room for kids from Kansas and New Mexico, or that that students accepted with the legacy hook will not fine a very similar school to attend. The schools are sorting students who are very similar and those legacy admits may have been admitted to 3-5 other schools that are similar to Wes even if they weren’t legacies. Look at the kids who are confused they got into Harvard Brown and Bates but not Yale, Wesleyan and Colby and can’t figure it out. No one can.
Even Wesleyan says it is a very small number. Some legacies will still get in.
But as I posted, it’s run between 7 and 8% for the last several years. One year is an outlier. Maybe Wesleyan started directing admissions to lay off the boost in the last cycle. Nobody knows.
Do you feel the same about Hopkins and its 8.5% as a nothing sandwich? Would it be that much bigger a deal at Princeton if they were to give up their 10%? Focusing on the absolute number is not helpful. The percentage of the class is.
For the record, I am not against legacy admission myself. I’m also not for it. I barely care, but I also assume it’s generally better for public facing purposes that the number be low.
I don’t know what you mean by this. I cited those numbers because another poster is making a point that relies on the cited % of the legacy class being small and insignificant. I’m just clearing up the facts for the those who are interested in them.
Then it sounds like you think Wesleyan made a good decision.
Yes. I was among the first to emphasize that point for those who seemed to take issue with the announcement.
I don’t really disagree with anything else you wrote. I think your point about other kids getting in because of different, but related, privilege is a fair one, and I tried to address that up thread. But, isn’t this still a good thing on the margin? It’s not a panacea for all that is unfair in society, but it’s a step in that direction.
Fun Fact: the late Robert Ludlum (Class of 1951) had two sons, so I’m not sure which one it was; but the word on campus was that at least one of them had applied to Wesleyan and was rejected. Another awkward celebrity situation is said to have been the late Citibank chairman, Walter Wriston '41 whose only child, a daughter, missed the switch to coeducation by several years. Besides, I think we’ve already bracketed Big Donors as a separate bucket, which presumably is what you’re getting at.
I just don’t fully get why people who already have wealth, fame, and prestige feel such a need to secure even more of those things for their own children. Their children are going to be absolutely fine no matter where they go to college or if they go to college at all.