Instead of your mathematical analogue of an asymptotic function, I prefer the physical analogue of a self-reinforcing spiral, doomed for destruction without external intervention. A band-aid solution may work initially if the wound is very limited and healing. If not, a surgery will be required at some point. An anecdote of a qualified hire of an app reader is just that, an anecdote. What happens if every HS senior in America (or the world) applies to Princeton?
He said the admissions pool size was over running their tools. The point of the original post was so how do they change adjust the tools to handle the apps?
Thx!
You are claiming that having one shared college day, when all the students in all of these poor schools have to travel to one school, is the same as Yale representatives visiting each individual school?
Basically, you are admitting that the poor schools in your area do not actually get visits by Yale representatives, yet when I said exactly that, you claim that it is âtotal hyperboleâ. I do not know what to say.
You also even admit that âfeeder schoolsâ which are, invariably, the wealthiest private schools, get more attention.
So, what you are saying is that wealthy schools get individual visits and extra attention, while poor schools do not, right?
As for an increase in poor students, well, that does not really seem what is going in, if one looks at the actual numbers. Yale has been claiming close to 20% of their students being Pell Grant recipients since 2018.
In 2013, Yale claimed that 52% of their incoming class of 2017 received financial aid, and the average grant was 72.7% of CoA (https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/factsheet_2014-15_0.pdf). According to their CDS, 11.5% of that class of 2017 were Pell grant recipients (https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/cds_2020-2021_yale_vf_030521.pdf).
In 2019, they claim that 53% of class of 2023 received aid, and that their average grant was 73.8% of CoA (https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/factsheet_2021_vf_04062021.pdf).
How can they be providing the same amount of money in grants to the same number of students, while claiming that they accepted 2x as many poor students?
Since the average amount of aid, proportional to the cost, did not change, that means that the new Pell Grant awardees replaced students who had similar levels of aid.
I mean, if you replace 20% of the 53% who receive aid with 20% who receive 40%-62% more aid (thatâs how much more aid a $0 EFC students gets than a student from a family which has an income of $150K-$250K+), then the average amount of financial aid should show a substantial proportional increase. It did not.
https://finaid.yale.edu/costs-affordability/affordability
So those Pell grant students almost certainly were accepted instead of students from families who made less than $65,000 and who were eligible for similar amounts of aid as the Pell grant students.
Also, while Yale is trumpeting those numbers, their official numbers on the College Scoreboard differ (only 16% receive Pell grants): College Scorecard | College Scorecard
Furthermore, according to Yale (Affordability | Financial Aid) those 53% included families in the top 5%. So 53% receiving financial aid does not mean 53% who are low income or even close to that. It does, however, mean that 47% are full pay, and mostly in the top 5%.
Since the NYT article showed that Yale had 45% in the top 5% in 2009, that shows how little things have changed.
As for âlegacyâ, I am skeptical of their numbers, since only Yale has that data, and it is only reported unofficially.
Finally, the composition of the Yale student body which is USA citizens and permeant residents is 49% non-Hispanic White, 20.8% Asian, 13.5% Hispanic, including White Hispanic, 8.4% Black, 0.3 % indigenous American 0.2% Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 6.3% two or more, and 1% unknown.
So Iâm sorry but â55% arenât Whiteâ, is not the same as â55% are underrepresented minoritiesâ. Not even close.
I am sorry, but Yale will never be egalitarian, no matter how much they make this claim, and no matter how much their alumni make this claim. It simply cannot afford to be so.
The financial models of the Ivies is based on mostly serving the wealthy and the powerful. If they changed this model, they would not be able to afford being Ivies.
The very reasons that so many lower and middle income families all want to attend the Ivies is based on this economic model, and if admissions became truly egalitarian, in a decade or so, the popularity of these places would plunge, including among the mid and lower income brackets.
BTW, I have absolutely no problem with how the Ivies maintain themselves as elitist institutions. I just wish that they would admit it, instead of always trying to âproveâ that they are The Very Mostest Fairest And Egalitarianist.
PS. MIT and Caltech can afford to be more egalitarian, since
A. alumni donations make up a lot less of their funding (research contracts FTW!)
B. engineers think differently.
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Devilâs advocate: what you are saying is the ability to fund lower income students is dependent upon the generosity of the wealthy and powerful, through their paying full freight and donating as alums. If it werenât for that generosity few to no lower-income would be attending.
It is easy to deride the âwealthy and powerfulâ (and I sure wish I was one), but they arenât all evil. And I never got the impression Ivies are claiming they are egalitarian meritocracies. The wealth and power is the point.
First, it isnât generosity, itâs PR. They do get all sorts of tax exemptions, which they are bound to lose unless they at least accept some low income, especially since their endowments keep on growing.
My issues with the âwealthy and powerfulâ are first, what they do with the wealth and power, second, that they do not delude themselves that the wealth and power means that they are inherently superior people, third, that they stop believing that they deserve their wealth and power by virtue of some inborn traits, and that fourth, they recognize that their wealth is also dependent on masses of people who contributed to it (since the only way that people make money is if the people working for them produce more wealth for their boss than they earn). This is especially true for those who inherited their wealth and power and/or who gained it because of inherent privilege.
I donât mind that Bezos has that much money. I mind that he neither acknowledges, nor fairly compensates, the people who produce that wealth for him.
That is why taxes on the wealthy should be higher, and that there should be minimum wage requirements. The wealthy are not going to give up any of their wealth voluntarily, no matter how ethical that would be (otherwise, they likely would never have become so wealthy).
The wealth and power are the point, but the Ivies continuously make the claim of being egalitarian meritocracies. Unfortunately, pretending to be a meritocracy is a large part of why the wealthy and powerful send their kids there. I mean, there are kids of wealthy celebrities who would likely be dropping out of an open enrollment college if not for their parentâs money, but they claim to be one of The Best Of The Best Of The Best, because their inherited wealth bought them a place an an Ivy.
I mean, have you ever read or seen a press release from an Ivy which admitted that some of their students really are not the top of the country, academically?
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More accurately, they (especially Caltech) need to emphasize academic strength more in admission, since top end ordinary high school stats are much less of an assurance of being able to handle the academic rigor there than at most other universities (including highly selective ones).
However, egalitarianism can only go so far when the opportunities to develop and display academic strength while in K-12 are not distributed in an egalitarian way.
Again, the Ivies are excellent colleges, and most of their students are absolutely great. However, they are not the Pinnacles Of Academic Excellence that they claim to be, nor are their students The Best Of The Best Of The Best, nor are the majority of the students accepted because they are the Very Best Of American (or World) Youth. Most are highly privileged, and for the very large majority, their acceptance is the result of that privilege.
The fact that they likely beat out three or four other privileged kids for their place should be enough for them, instead of pretending that they beat out 25 kids, all who were playing on the same even playing field.
For the non-privileged students at the Ivies - I am pretty impressed with them, and Iâm not easily impressed.
PS. Iâm also not telling the privileged kids that they should turn down their acceptances. A person never knows when their luck may run out, so they should take advantage of it while they can. In any case, their place will not be given to a non-privileged person.
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Very good points
You have either misread or purposefully misinterpreted what I wrote. This is what you wrote
The implications being that Yale pretty much ignores an entire group of schools but solicits âevery affluentâŠâ I simply pointed out that my son as a Yale rep is directed to meet and pitch Yale to schools in the low income communities that you claim are mostly ignored. A big part of his spiel is the affordability of Yale to low income families. As to the college days, those include every public and private school in our region. There is not a special one-on-one day at the more affluent publics and privates. You make it seem like Yale does a âpoor schoolâ day for the masses and then has special targeted days for the affluents. You then misattribute this to me:
No, not at all. Read what I wrote in its entirety and in context.
I donât doubt that Yale and other highly selective schools target certain feeder schools, but that is where there is also greater demand and a larger pool of qualified students who will likely be applicants. I am not making a bold broad claim that Inner City PS 287 is getting the same attention as Exeter. I am saying that Yale is also making a concerted outreach to prior underserved communities.
This is not difficult math. The distribution of FA is just different. Say there are 100 students and 52 got aid in 2013, 11 being Pell and 100 students with 53 getting aid in 2019, 20 being Pell. Letâs even say that the avg grant in both years were an even 75%. For easy math, letâs say CoA is $100/student and Pell students receive the full $100. For 2013, the 52 students got on average $75 each or $3,900 in the aggregate. Because the 11 Pell students receive $1,100 in the aggregate, the remaining 41 FA students split the remaining $2,800 ($68.29 on avg). In 2019, the 53 FA students split $3,975. The 20 Pells get $2,000, leaving the remaining 33 splitting $1,975 or $59.85. The non Pell FA recipients in 2019 on average received 12.4% less than those in 2013.
We actually donât know the final distribution. Could be that the extra 9 Pells replaced 9 other 0 EFC students and the rest got about the same or they replaced higher EFC students and the remainder got proportionately less. Assuming in 2019 we added 9 Pells to get to 20 and still had 9 0 EFC students, they would account for $2,900 in grants, leaving $1,075 for the remaining 24 FA students to split (on avg $44.79). The numbers still work. We cannot draw a definitive conclusion on these limited facts.
Never said that minorities were URMs, youâre twisting my words. If I go back to the 1999-2000 school year, the total percentage of Blacks, Native Americans and Hispanics at Yale College was 14.3% vs 29% for the class of 2024. You can see a steady increase in the percentage of URMâs beginning in the '90âs. https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pierson_update_1976-2000.pdf
Yale has been reporting legacy numbers for years. I find it hard to believe that they would just make stuff up. If you go to the link that provides historical numbers, we can see that legacies were in the low 20% in the late '70âs through '80âs and started to drop in the 90âs at the same time that URM enrollment started to go up.
Agree that Yale and most of the selectives are not egalitarian. That is not their mission or purpose. However, there is a concerted effort to provide opportunity to the best students who can make a difference for themselves, Yale and our communities at large, without regard to financial resources. Since I have been involved in admissions for the past 25 years+, there is a clear recognition that applicants donât start the race from the same starting line. Yale is far from perfect, but I object when people throw out generalities and hyperbole that are misplaced.
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Since Pell is about the bottom half of the household income distribution, and no financial aid is about the top 4% of the household income distribution, the above would mean that the college in question gets 47% from the top 4%, 20% from the bottom 50%, and 33% from the top 50% excluding the top 4%.
Some of this was self-inflicted with TO. They didnât have to go TO. Florida wasnât TO and FSU had a record number of applicants.
Letâs be honestâŠadmissions is big business. If they wanted to shrink the apps they couldâŠbut they donât want toâŠthereâs no incentive on the schools.
Maybe something like 3 free apps. The next 5 are a small fee like $20. After that itâs $100.
You could also limit the apps to 10 with a ranking. Have a default option if you donât get into any of the 10.
These schools surely do everything in their power to make a lot of people in the society (perhaps not on CC) think they are meritocratic and increasingly egalitarian. Subliminal messaging is more powerful, more effective and more persistent.
I meant the generosity of the alums.
This is a repeated debate I am not interested in having again. I am not an Ivy apologist or a defender of the oligarchs. But I do think there are individuals in the elite ecosystem that are kind and generous and and believe in the mission of making elite education available to those who have been historically shut out. Sweeping broad brush pronouncements about the schools and those within them only doing it for p.r. Is just a smidge too cynical for me.
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While FSU did have a record 63k applications, the small 1.7% increase in applications (see https://admissions.fsu.edu/publications/profile/FSU-Class-of-2025.pdf ) pales in comparison to recent previous years, in which theyâve consistently had far larger increases. Not going test optional no doubt contributes.
I agree that colleges have little incentive to decrease applications. Instead colleges almost universally would prefer to increase applications. Assuming the applications are similar quality/yield to typical, then increased applications allows the college to be more selective and choose a student body who better targets the universityâs goals. Even if the applying students are not academically competitive, the increased applications at least makes the college look more competitive to both students and the general public.
While I donât think colleges as a whole are going to benefit from reduced applications, some groups of students could benefit in theory from fewer applications, such as not high income students for whom the application fee is a significant burden. However, charging increased fees for more applications negates that benefit â rich kids can apply to many colleges without issue, some groups of middle/lower income kids may need to think more carefully about applying to more than 3 or 8. Itâs also not that much more than HYPSM⊠type privates already charge. For example, Stanford charges $90 to apply (assuming no fee waiver). I doubt that increasing from $90 to $100 is going change much. Having an application fee structure that is not proportional to the cost to review applications also could result in new challenges in funding the cost of application review.
I meant the colleges themselves. Yes, there are many, many alums who are pretty generous, especially those who donate anonymously. One of the reasons that these colleges need PR is not only pressure from governmental agencies but from alumni.
I think that, when talking about any institution with an oversized reputation, cynicism is a helpful tool. IN any case, if I actually thought that anything I said would have the slightest impact on the Ivies, I would curb my comments. Perhaps. However, Iâm pretty sure that what I write here has no noticeable effect on applications and yield to any Ivy or other âeliteâ college. Theyâre safe, I think.
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