Big College Admissions Year at St. Albans

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I would like to see a study that compared the Harvard/Ivies legacy applicant pool to the non-legacy applicant pool using some sort of quantifiable metric -- I guess SATs is what there is, as school GPAs vary so wildly. (Such studies might be out there, would love to see them if somebody has a link.) From observation only (so this is not statistically valid), the legacy kids who get in from our school are also often superlative students (National Merit Scholarship Finalists) who get into non-legacy schools as well (I'm thinking of a student who won a Morehead Scholarship, pretty stunning pool of winners, who attended the Ivy at which the student was a legacy, or a student who is a Presidential Scholar, also a pretty stunning pool, who attended the Ivy at which the student is a legacy). I remember from my own college days some rather dimmer bulbs from august (and robustly donating) legacy families, so maybe the overall numbers of the legacy pool are not that impressive -- but I'd like to see the numbers.

They ALL have SAT>2200. The legacies, the non-legacies and plenty of rejected/waitlisted applicants have SAT>2200. And, of course, comparable extracurriculars, GPAs and other accomplishments like Presidential Scholarships or even NMSSFs with those SATs.

That's why this seems so unfair. It must burn to know that your chance of getting in is 3% but the legacy kid in your class, with the same SAT as yours, has a 30% chance. The word "tip" for describing a 10X increase in admissions odds is an understatement.

I don't know -- if the stats are equal, I'm not sure why I can complain if the college wants to maximize donations by admitting legacies. That is a rational strategy for a private institution dependent upon endowment.

I do get the point of "affirmative action of privilege" but have seen abstracts of Espenshade's work in which I believe he does conclude that the effect of legacy admissions are rather small (it's been a while though, I should re-read). I believe he thinks the preferential admission of athletes has a more significant impact, am I remembering correctly?

I believe it is likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule affirmative action for under-represented minorities is unconstitutional this year (the case out of Texas). (Professor Espenshade has stated, by the way, that even if colleges switch to affirmative action based on socioeconomic status, that will result in a drop in the number of African-Americans and Latinos at highly selective colleges because the pool of low income white applicants is fairly large too.) If, indeed, the Supreme Court ends what we think of as "affirmative action," I do wonder if public pressure/outcry might force the Ivies and other highly selective schools to disclaim the legacy preference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, if you google Harvard Crimson Legacy Admit Rate you will find a May 2011 Crimson article where Dean Fitzsimmons says the admit rate for legacies is around 30%.

Personally, I find the 30% admit rate for legacies a bit shocking. What ever happened to meritocracy? I find Fitzsimmons' claims that "some Harvard parents hesitate to push their legacy kids" and "we don't want to admit kids who would be unhappy" to be a little disingenuous. I know some argue that legacy kids are just as qualified as other admits, but why should they get what Fitzsimmons calls a "tip" that separates them from so many other equally qualified kids? It probably does come down to buying alumni support. Maybe this discussion belongs on the college thread, though.

(And before the inevitable attack comes my way: it's not sour grapes, because my DC got into an ivy without any hooks, despite being a legacy at a different ivy.)

Your last sentence, the disclaimer, argues against you: studies have shown that the very legacies who in admission to Harvard also tend to win admission at a higher-than-normal rate at HYPMS schools where they are not legacies, showing that it is the legacy pool is an extremely qualified pool and that it's not legacy status that wins them admission so much as their qualifications.

This seemed the case at least in our experience. 25th reunion ivy reunion poster again. The people who had kids enrolled in college were either at the ivy where they had a parent attend or at another Ivy or Stanford where the kid did not have legacy status. We met quite a few who had a kid at Harvard and another at Princeton, Stanford, Yale, etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I don't know -- if the stats are equal, I'm not sure why I can complain if the college wants to maximize donations by admitting legacies. That is a rational strategy for a private institution dependent upon endowment.

I do get the point of "affirmative action of privilege" but have seen abstracts of Espenshade's work in which I believe he does conclude that the effect of legacy admissions are rather small (it's been a while though, I should re-read). I believe he thinks the preferential admission of athletes has a more significant impact, am I remembering correctly?

I believe it is likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule affirmative action for under-represented minorities is unconstitutional this year (the case out of Texas). (Professor Espenshade has stated, by the way, that even if colleges switch to affirmative action based on socioeconomic status, that will result in a drop in the number of African-Americans and Latinos at highly selective colleges because the pool of low income white applicants is fairly large too.) If, indeed, the Supreme Court ends what we think of as "affirmative action," I do wonder if public pressure/outcry might force the Ivies and other highly selective schools to disclaim the legacy preference.

If the Supreme Court rules against affirmative action, it will apply to public/state universities, but not to private universities. Private universities, like private K-12 schools in this area, will continue to be able to make admissions decisions on whatever criteria they want. I would think that, if they want to retail legacy preferences, they would tout their affirmative action policies even more strongly.

As for the impact of legacy preferences, I think "small" may be in the eye of the beholder. The Crimson article said it was something like 10% of the class. So out of a class of 2000 that would be 200 kids, which is fairly significant, and could affect the "atmosphere" (for lack of a better word) of the class if there is a higher percentage of old money legacies compared to high-achieving kids who are 1st or 2nd generation in their families to go to college. But it's also true that these 200 kids with preferences aren't going to change the admissions chances of a kid who is the pool of 30,000 applicants very much. So it depends what you're looking at.

(Just to be clear, I'm against legacy preference, but not against affirmative action when it helps low SES kids. Yes, I do think affirmative action is a bit broken when it helps kids with 1 minority grandparent our of 4 grandparents, and high SES kids, but I wholeheartedly support it when it's helping a minority from a disadvantaged background. And you could describe my family as old money and my DCs do have potential legacy preferences at two ivies. So I'm not really knee-jerk anything, I'm just reacting to what I think is fair vs. unfair.)

[Anonymous]

^^ retain, not retail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Search for Thomas Espenshade's paper. He did the analysis your describing and talked about how much a legacy adds to admissions value. He also argued IIRC that although legacy applicants have an admissions advantage in a one-on-one comparison to another hypothetical applicant, there are relatively few legacy applicants compared to the massive pool of non-legacies, so their actual impact is relatively small.

Read Goldin's book, Price of Admission. He talks about legacies and how they reduce the chances for all the other equally qualified applicants.

Also how legacies tend to come from privileged families, so this is just perpetuating privilege. It's been called "affirmative action for the rich."

It's a good moniker, but it is tongue-in-cheek. Affirmative actions are actions needed for implicitly or explicitly underserved classes of people. Nothing about the rich and privileged children of legacy donors that suggests they need "affirmative action". So even if SCOTUS comes down on "affirmative action", colleges giving preferential treatment to legacy children can continue their behavior. They would probably become less vocal about saying they were give admission purely on legacy and this will not be so hard given that in many cases legacy children are in fact good candidates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't know -- if the stats are equal, I'm not sure why I can complain if the college wants to maximize donations by admitting legacies. That is a rational strategy for a private institution dependent upon endowment.

I do get the point of "affirmative action of privilege" but have seen abstracts of Espenshade's work in which I believe he does conclude that the effect of legacy admissions are rather small (it's been a while though, I should re-read). I believe he thinks the preferential admission of athletes has a more significant impact, am I remembering correctly?

I believe it is likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule affirmative action for under-represented minorities is unconstitutional this year (the case out of Texas). (Professor Espenshade has stated, by the way, that even if colleges switch to affirmative action based on socioeconomic status, that will result in a drop in the number of African-Americans and Latinos at highly selective colleges because the pool of low income white applicants is fairly large too.) If, indeed, the Supreme Court ends what we think of as "affirmative action," I do wonder if public pressure/outcry might force the Ivies and other highly selective schools to disclaim the legacy preference.

If the Supreme Court rules against affirmative action, it will apply to public/state universities, but not to private universities. Private universities, like private K-12 schools in this area, will continue to be able to make admissions decisions on whatever criteria they want. I would think that, if they want to retail legacy preferences, they would tout their affirmative action policies even more strongly.

As for the impact of legacy preferences, I think "small" may be in the eye of the beholder. The Crimson article said it was something like 10% of the class. So out of a class of 2000 that would be 200 kids, which is fairly significant, and could affect the "atmosphere" (for lack of a better word) of the class if there is a higher percentage of old money legacies compared to high-achieving kids who are 1st or 2nd generation in their families to go to college. But it's also true that these 200 kids with preferences aren't going to change the admissions chances of a kid who is the pool of 30,000 applicants very much. So it depends what you're looking at.

(Just to be clear, I'm against legacy preference, but not against affirmative action when it helps low SES kids. Yes, I do think affirmative action is a bit broken when it helps kids with 1 minority grandparent our of 4 grandparents, and high SES kids, but I wholeheartedly support it when it's helping a minority from a disadvantaged background. And you could describe my family as old money and my DCs do have potential legacy preferences at two ivies. So I'm not really knee-jerk anything, I'm just reacting to what I think is fair vs. unfair.)

I believe I've read that experts say that any private university that receives money, so that would include most of them and certainly the highly selective ones such as the Ivies, will have to abide by this Supreme Court ruling (just as Title IX, for example, applies to private universities). The recent op-ed article in the New York Times by Professor Thomas Espenshade seems to take it as a given that we are not just talking about college admissions at state schools: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/opinion/moving-beyond-affirmative-action.html?_r=0

This New York Times article also refers to an amicus brief filed by private colleges defending affirmative action in which the private colleges oppose being made to end affirmative action: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/opinion/sunday/colleges-value-diversity-but-will-the-court.html

So I do think it will apply to the Ivies, etc. But I don't disagree with your points generally. As Professor Espenshade and others have opined, this doesn't mean selective colleges will abandon efforts to promote diversity. They will probably move towards a system of considering Socio-Economic Status/class, but as he also notes (in the first linked article), his study predicts this will lower the number of AA and Latino students at the most highly selective colleges significantly. The "silver lining" he sees is that it may force even more focus on equalizing educational opportunities at the younger grades. I have also heard African-American and Latino friends and colleagues say they won't miss assuming they are "products of Affirmative Action" and see that as a good outcome if affirmative action in college admission were to end.

Your point on "small" being in the eye of the beholder when it comes to legacy admissions is a good one, and to me, increases the chances that there will be enough public outcry about legacies that the Ivies and other highly selective schools may have to give up legacy admissions. (Of course, could there be a loophole for students whose parents are big donors, on the grounds that is not "just" legacy status? Maybe! )

I've also wondered if the Fisher v. Texas effect (assuming they strike down affirmative action) may trickle down to private schools. Clearly, legally private schools will not be covered (no acceptance of federal funds as is the case with private colleges). But if the Supreme Court sets a new societal norm that, as Chief Justice Roberts likes to say, you can't fight discrimination with more discrimination (which is how he sees preferences based on race), will there be more pressure for independent schools to go to a Socio-economic/class based form of diversity in admissions? That's easier for the wealthier schools with the bigger endowments, of course, than a system which gives some diversity consideration for race/ethnicity absent any consideration of parental wealth/occupation.

There will be a LOT of debate about affirmative action in education in 2013 and immediately beyond, I predict -- most at the college level but some perhaps trickling down to the private schools.

[Anonymous]

Any updates on 2013 admits?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any updates on 2013 admits?

April is still when most colleges communicate admissions decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, every year when I get the matriculation list for GDS, I look at the bottom rather than the top. And, consistently, I think everything on the list looks choice-worthy.

I think this is the $30k a year question. What does the bottom of that matriculation list look like? Far more important than the number of presidential or Jefferson scholars or HYP admits. Those students were destined for good schools, but what does the school do for students who might otherwise be lost in the shuffle? What is the lowest common denominator?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, every year when I get the matriculation list for GDS, I look at the bottom rather than the top. And, consistently, I think everything on the list looks choice-worthy.

I think this is the $30k a year question. What does the bottom of that matriculation list look like? Far more important than the number of presidential or Jefferson scholars or HYP admits. Those students were destined for good schools, but what does the school do for students who might otherwise be lost in the shuffle? What is the lowest common denominator?

Agree completely. Certain students are destined to add a HYP “notch” to a school’s belt the moment they enroll regardless of which top school they enroll in. No different than an elite athlete achieving success at the school they pick. The real question is whether a school makes a difference for someone that may or may not succeed. It’s very difficult to know, but the bottom of the matriculation list if more interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, every year when I get the matriculation list for GDS, I look at the bottom rather than the top. And, consistently, I think everything on the list looks choice-worthy.

I think this is the $30k a year question. What does the bottom of that matriculation list look like? Far more important than the number of presidential or Jefferson scholars or HYP admits. Those students were destined for good schools, but what does the school do for students who might otherwise be lost in the shuffle? What is the lowest common denominator?

Agree completely. Certain students are destined to add a HYP “notch” to a school’s belt the moment they enroll regardless of which top school they enroll in. No different than an elite athlete achieving success at the school they pick. The real question is whether a school makes a difference for someone that may or may not succeed. It’s very difficult to know, but the bottom of the matriculation list if more interesting.

I imagine it is very small consolation to know that a classmate is admitted to HYP when DC doesn't get into their school of choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, every year when I get the matriculation list for GDS, I look at the bottom rather than the top. And, consistently, I think everything on the list looks choice-worthy.

I think this is the $30k a year question. What does the bottom of that matriculation list look like? Far more important than the number of presidential or Jefferson scholars or HYP admits. Those students were destined for good schools, but what does the school do for students who might otherwise be lost in the shuffle? What is the lowest common denominator?

Somebody posted the full 2012 list on this thread last year. If you want to see the full list and you don't mind scrolling through 20+ pages, it's in there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here are the final numbers for STA this year: (These are matriculation numbers, graduating class size of 77)

Harvard 6
Yale 5
Dartmouth 4
U Penn 4
Michigan 3
Georgetown 3
Colorado 3
Wake Forest 3
Columbia 2
BU 2
William and Mary 2
Franklin and Marshall 2
Middlebury 2
Northwestern 2
Sewanee 2
GW 2
U of Cal santa barbara 2
UVA 2
1 at Bowdoin,Charleston, Cornell, Princeton, Elon, Hartwick, Kenyon, Macalaster, Purdue, Rhodes, SMU, Stanford, St Olaf, Trinity, Tufts, Tulane, Navy, U of Chicago, Maryland, Ole Miss, St Andrews, Wisconsin, Wash U, Wesleyan

Even the lowest end of this list is strong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here are the final numbers for STA this year: (These are matriculation numbers, graduating class size of 77)

Harvard 6
Yale 5
Dartmouth 4
U Penn 4
Michigan 3
Georgetown 3
Colorado 3
Wake Forest 3
Columbia 2
BU 2
William and Mary 2
Franklin and Marshall 2
Middlebury 2
Northwestern 2
Sewanee 2
GW 2
U of Cal santa barbara 2
UVA 2
1 at Bowdoin,Charleston, Cornell, Princeton, Elon, Hartwick, Kenyon, Macalaster, Purdue, Rhodes, SMU, Stanford, St Olaf, Trinity, Tufts, Tulane, Navy, U of Chicago, Maryland, Ole Miss, St Andrews, Wisconsin, Wash U, Wesleyan

Even the lowest end of this list is strong.

I count 23 ivies - very impressive. Ole Miss is the only one that jumps out at the other end.

[Anonymous]

This is 2012. As a 2013 parent, it sounds like this year will be similar, but kids have another week to choose from many great offers, although many IVY were early accepted.