Ivies and big 3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the OP was trying to make the point that a student that does not have a special hook would do better coming from a public school in a random place, (or if local perhaps DCPS), than a local prep school. The prep school kids without hooks go to a range of good non-Ivies, like a PP noted "Williams and Michigan" and the like.

I don't think she said anything about doing better coming from somewhere else - just that the Ivies she was observing were more the result of a hook than a result of the school.

You are right - I meant this was how I interpreted her premise.

[Anonymous]

What's URM? Is that one of those question....if you have to ask you must be one

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What does "social capital to transition well" mean. Does it mean the kid is likely a person of privilege who was born into every conceivable monetary advantage (becasue her parents were born into upper middle class privilege) and who has gone to school with others like her?

I meant that the graduates of the expensive privates learn how to be adept college students through their high school experience. They've already experienced college-like freedoms and managed those risks. The ones that couldn't didn't graduate from StA/NCS, Sidwell, GDS, etc. with B+ transcripts. It doesn't necessary mean that they come from families with lots of money (most of them do) since one-third of the students are on financial aid. It just means they've been trained to be successful in the college experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's URM? Is that one of those question....if you have to ask you must be one

"under-represented minority"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's URM? Is that one of those question....if you have to ask you must be one

"under-represented minority"

At DCPS and even in Wilson, that would be Caucasians.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's URM? Is that one of those question....if you have to ask you must be one

LOL - I had to look that one up on google

I guess I am in that wedge between applying for college long long ago and having kids still not old enough to worry about it yet. I "think" that might be a "good thing" - well - at least the "not worrying yet" part....the "long long ago" part might be better if it were just "a while ago".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am observing that the majority of students that my son is friends with at his big 3 school that got into ivies are urm or recruited athletes or in one case a Caucasian legacy. The smart qualified Caucasian kid with no connections does not even have a shot.

So, all the Ivy student bodies are URM and athletes?

Last I checked, white students were still the majority at all Ivys except at Stanford.

Stanford is in the Ivy League now? Wow. Sports travel must be murder

You know what the PP meant and that is that Stanford is a big league player. Enough nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am observing that the majority of students that my son is friends with at his big 3 school that got into ivies are urm or recruited athletes or in one case a Caucasian legacy. The smart qualified Caucasian kid with no connections does not even have a shot.

So, all the Ivy student bodies are URM and athletes?

Last I checked, white students were still the majority at all Ivys except at Stanford.

Stanford is in the Ivy League now? Wow. Sports travel must be murder

You know what the PP meant and that is that Stanford is a big league player. Enough nonsense.

Its not an Ivy. I didn't go to an Ivy, but you cant just add schools to the list which is what was done. It's not nonsense, it is a fact. There are other 'big league players' as well, but they aren't Ivys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am observing that the majority of students that my son is friends with at his big 3 school that got into ivies are urm or recruited athletes or in one case a Caucasian legacy. The smart qualified Caucasian kid with no connections does not even have a shot.

So, all the Ivy student bodies are URM and athletes?

Last I checked, white students were still the majority at all Ivys except at Stanford.

Stanford is in the Ivy League now? Wow. Sports travel must be murder

You know what the PP meant and that is that Stanford is a big league player. Enough nonsense.

Its not an Ivy. I didn't go to an Ivy, but you cant just add schools to the list which is what was done. It's not nonsense, it is a fact. There are other 'big league players' as well, but they aren't Ivys.

Stanford is NOT an Ivy but is a major university. Repeat....it is NOT AN IVY. Feel better?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am observing that the majority of students that my son is friends with at his big 3 school that got into ivies are urm or recruited athletes or in one case a Caucasian legacy. The smart qualified Caucasian kid with no connections does not even have a shot.

So, all the Ivy student bodies are URM and athletes?

Last I checked, white students were still the majority at all Ivys except at Stanford.

Stanford is in the Ivy League now? Wow. Sports travel must be murder

You know what the PP meant and that is that Stanford is a big league player. Enough nonsense.

Its not an Ivy. I didn't go to an Ivy, but you cant just add schools to the list which is what was done. It's not nonsense, it is a fact. There are other 'big league players' as well, but they aren't Ivys.

Stanford is NOT an Ivy but is a major university. Repeat....it is NOT AN IVY. Feel better?

Not really. I knew that when we started, hence my correction to the statement which was incorrect.

[Anonymous]

Look into "that" and "which" and when each should be used. Maybe that will make you feel better.

[Anonymous]

Please stop feeding the zoo animals. They don't know when enough is enough.

[Anonymous]

The OP's comment is very misleading. Numbers just don't support their impressions or their inferences. Taking Yale as one specific example from which to extrapolate - of the approximately 1,350 in any incoming class, roughly 110 are AA (8%) and a similar number are Hispanic (8%). Add the recruited athletes (say 200 total, but significant overlap with two previous categories so net 130). Throw in 200 more for international and other URM (11% and 4%, respectively). Legacies are probably 1/5 of the class, so 270 more less those already counted previously (net 200 for arguments sake). Add all of these up:

110
110
130
200
200

and you come to 750 "preference" slots. I might be slightly off, but this leaves us with 600 acceptances from non-hooked Caucasian and non-URM Asian students (corroborated by published 62% white and 17% Asian representation in Yale College) . The overall yield (ratio of offers to acceptances) is roughly 70%. Slightly lower for non-hooked students, but we can use overall number for approximation. So, 600 acceptances grosses up to 850 offers of admission.

So, if your un-hooked kid did not get in it is mostly because they didn't quite get one of the 850 "other" offers. Moreover, scapegoating 110 successful AA students with strong credentials or 200 recruited athletes has nothing to do with a single student's success or failure. One would have to be quite confident that they were next in line for acceptance to have been effected. In other words, they would need to believe with confidence that they were one of the next 300 in that pile out of a total queue of 27,000 who were not accepted (the next 1%).

I am highly sympathetic to unsuccessful candidates. I just think that it is important to place the blame squarely where it belongs - a highly competitive and idiosyncratic admissions process.

[Anonymous]

Further from the Chronicle of Higher Education. I overstated the legacy factor in my previous analysis. It is more like 120 students rather than the 200 I suggested. Order of magnitude the overall math is the same.


The Decline of Legacy Admissions at Yale


Yesterday morning, I participated in a panel discussion at New York University on admission preferences for legacy candidates with Jeffrey Brenzel, dean of admissions at Yale, and Dan Golden of Bloomberg News. Ann Marcus from the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy at NYU moderated. (Jenny Anderson has a write up in The New York Times‘ “Choice” blog here).

Brenzel, to his credit, gave only a qualified defense of legacy preferences and provided some interesting data about the substantial decline in legacy admissions at Yale over time. In 1939, he said, legacies (defined as children of Yale college graduates) made up 31.4 percent the enrolled class at Yale. Today, they make up 8.7 percent. (Including the children of Yale alumni of professional and graduate schools adds a few percentage points to these totals.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The OP's comment is very misleading. Numbers just don't support their impressions or their inferences. Taking Yale as one specific example from which to extrapolate - of the approximately 1,350 in any incoming class, roughly 110 are AA (8%) and a similar number are Hispanic (8%). Add the recruited athletes (say 200 total, but significant overlap with two previous categories so net 130). Throw in 200 more for international and other URM (11% and 4%, respectively). Legacies are probably 1/5 of the class, so 270 more less those already counted previously (net 200 for arguments sake). Add all of these up:

110
110
130
200
200

and you come to 750 "preference" slots. I might be slightly off, but this leaves us with 600 acceptances from non-hooked Caucasian and non-URM Asian students (corroborated by published 62% white and 17% Asian representation in Yale College) . The overall yield (ratio of offers to acceptances) is roughly 70%. Slightly lower for non-hooked students, but we can use overall number for approximation. So, 600 acceptances grosses up to 850 offers of admission.

So, if your un-hooked kid did not get in it is mostly because they didn't quite get one of the 850 "other" offers. Moreover, scapegoating 110 successful AA students with strong credentials or 200 recruited athletes has nothing to do with a single student's success or failure. One would have to be quite confident that they were next in line for acceptance to have been effected. In other words, they would need to believe with confidence that they were one of the next 300 in that pile out of a total queue of 27,000 who were not accepted (the next 1%).

I am highly sympathetic to unsuccessful candidates. I just think that it is important to place the blame squarely where it belongs - a highly competitive and idiosyncratic admissions process.

Standing ovation.

You and your "logic" and your "facts" getting in the way of some perfectly good self-pity. Tsk.