Perhaps, by quoting them, you did too?
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No, thatās not the word Iād use. But Iām sure The Economist has its reasons.
Then Iām confused by your inclusion of the quote, especially given that much of it discusses (inaccurately) race based admissions, which isnāt supposed to be allowed in this thread.
Why not? Iām not an editor at The Economist.
Perhaps they did, but itās certainly not true on average, nor is offending others appropriate here on CC.
I know legacy isnāt much of an issue in the UK, but they arenāt without their own problems in higher edā¦maybe the Economist can focus on those issues, where more than a quarter of the total spots at the Russell Group Unis (the top unis in the UK, including Cambridge and Oxford) went to full pay internationals. I guess money is more important there than making sure all the UK students with top grades/scores attend a top uni.
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To be clear, that Princeton paper piece was an informal survey done by the school newspaper asking students what they thought their plans would be, and less than half the class even bothered to respond. Their reported rates of IB and consulting were substantially lower than rates found using reliable study methods.
This is an oldie but a goodie:
Iām sure they arenāt perfect, but UK, and Oxbridge, have made much more progress than US in that regard, especially considering where they were not too long ago.
Iām not sure in what regard you mean. Regardless, all this legacy talk at the highly rejectives involves such an insignificant number of students in the big pictureā¦and doing away with legacy (which I support) is not going to change the makeup of the classes at these schools. Wesleyan said as much.
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In the socioeconomic context, I think? Legacy preference isnāt the whole problem, of course. Other preferences and distortions contribute too.
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Oxbridge and other UK schools rely much more on standardized test results after following a national curriculum. Fine with me but most citizens seem to object to that standard.
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I that is the crux of the problem. People canāt accept the subjectivity of holistic admissions but also complain about testing. It hard to have it both ways.
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I know youāre not in that camp, but more generally speaking, itās a bit ironic that many who want to preserve various preferences also happen to be those who want to dilute the effects of more objective measures in the name of equity. Those preferences would have much greater impact in the absence of more objective measures.
Not sure that generalized and inaccurate swipes at unidentified antagonists do much to advance the conversation. Who are the āmany,ā and to which preferences are you referring?Legacy? Or something else? If race, then this is the wrong thread.
And speaking of irony, it is a bit ironic that you suggest that heavier reliance on the supposedly āmore objectiveā measures would benefit lower SES students, given that the bias against such students is cooked into these measures through unequal educational opportunity.
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When I think about who suffers as a result of legacy, I imagine itās students who are in the same buckets they are. Which i assume are white, generally more local, more affluent, good high schools, etc. Is that not the case?
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That is likely correct. The Harvard legacy kids are more likely to apply to and get accepted to Harvard, rather than Yale. So they lose out to the Yale legacy kids there but likely end up just fine.
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This is only the case if a college deems it so. āThe bucketsā are not determined by a deity or by natural law. The buckets are determined by each college, and each can change the sizes or contents of any bucket they wish.
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Is there any evidence any college wants to dramatically change the size of its existing buckets? I expect the buckets are rightly sized for every collegeās priorities and institutional need.
I may wish the Alabama football bucket were smaller but clearly the stateās residents disagree. The faculty at every school want the faculty bucket to remain the same size. A collegeās CFO needs the donor bucket maintained. And most schools want the racial diversity currently in the class to be maintained by any lawful means. Dumping the legacy bucket just means other kids demographically similar to legacies will be admitted-mostly full pay white kids with strong academic qualifications. The school wonāt be suddenly increasing its FGLI student percentage instead of the legacies-schools set finaid budgets and stick to them. They need X% of full pay kids.
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Colleges can and do change their buckets. Sometimes willingly, sometimes under duress.
For example the Ivys used to keep buckets of certain (very small) sizes for certain religions. This is no longer the case.
A more recent example is Amherst which increased the size of the āPell-eligible bucketā and eliminated the āLegacy bucketā completely. Amherst did this willingly, and although some alums protested, many supported the changes.
How are they doing this, as they say they are need blind?
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I didnāt look at the numbers but possibly by increasing the number of Questbridge? They could also prioritize certain zipcodesā¦