Wesleyan University drops Legacy Preferences in Admissions Decisions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I get that legacy admissions mostly helps white kids, this also prevents URM kids whose parents went to these schools get in on the system.

URMs legacy advantage at top schools is negligible. Whites had hundreds of years of a head start. The pipeline is already baked in.

Let’s change that to Christian Whites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will American colleges drop the preferential treatment they tend to give US applicants?
Will state schools, especially now that less funding comes from state sources, stop giving preference to in-state applicants?
There are a lot of distinctions that could be dropped if schools just want the "best" academic profiles. With more international and out-of-state students, it would also increase overall diversity (though probably not particular types of racial diversity).

Stupid questions. These institutions ARE taxpayer funded (in the case of Publics) and heavily taxpayer subsidized (in the case of Privates). Why the F would you want them to NOT take care of taxpayers first? At this point, we don't really need foreigners for diversity. You need a Chinese kid, admit a US born Chinese. They are lining up, begging you to take their $$. Not Chinese enough for your taste? Go do a 6-month study abroad in China. All this BS needs to stop.

Private non-profit universities count federal funds as an average 14% of total revenue, most of which comes from research grants for the benefit of the government that have their own contractual obligations unrelated to undergraduate education. That is far from "heavily taxpayer subsidized."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I get that legacy admissions mostly helps white kids, this also prevents URM kids whose parents went to these schools get in on the system.

URMs legacy advantage at top schools is negligible. Whites had hundreds of years of a head start. The pipeline is already baked in.

Let’s change that to Christian Whites.

Protestant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great news! Hopefully more schools will follow suit.

I think my alma mater (Penn) will move in this direction soon based on how they've been rewording things on their website. And I think that's a good thing even though my child will lose that hook - it feels more fair.

I think a lot of elite schools have been quietly and gradually narrowing the legacy preference for awhile to the biggest donors, without advertising that explicitly. That keeps donations flowing and their biggest donors happy, is a rationale the middling and small donors can get even they don't like it (e.g., a legacy preference only for the "most committed" alums, which is a vague standard), and helps explain why a lot of schools not on the "no legacy preference" list nevertheless have been turning down many legacies lately.

That’s disgusting.

It always comes down to $$, every single time. Of course that’s what athletics is about, too. These elite schools price gouge families then cravenly seek out kids from high-value families. How much money do they need, so unethical!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More schools will be doing this because it is a relatively cosmetic change and good PR; it barely moves the needle. Athletes have a far greater impact: what about admission preferences for Wesleyan’s 900 or so athletes, the vast majority of whom are white? Reserve plaudits until Wesleyan, Amherst and their brethren do something about the real issue. This is a mere distraction from more fundamental change, so don’t fall for it.

What the heck? Where are you getting 900 recruited athletes at Wes? That’s nearly a third of the student body. I went to Wes and hardly knew any serious athletes. I serious doubt thirty percent of the student body is recruited athletes with admissions preference.

I do agree with doing away with athletic recruitment however.

You are right. It is closer to 25%. So almost 800. It is irrelevant whether you thought they were serious athletes: they have a huge fist pressed down on the admissions scale — and legacy was but a pinky.

Where are you getting these stats from? Just because a kid is an athlete doesn’t mean he was recruited and given admissions preference.

Apparently, you don't know the hook a recruited athlete has in college admissions regardless of division, and especially for the selective Division 3 colleges like Wesleyan.

We're not merely talking about Johnny or Sally playing a high school sport as an extracurricular activity.

[Anonymous]

Wes is a big TO school, and majority of athletes go that route. Although my DC has encountered some truly bright athletes, very few rocket scientists in that cohort - and a few legitimate dopes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wes is a big TO school, and majority of athletes go that route. Although my DC has encountered some truly bright athletes, very few rocket scientists in that cohort - and a few legitimate dopes

This was the case at Harvard, too. The one guy I knew who dropped out freshman year was so over his head, it was genuinely sad to see. Great athlete though. With few exceptions, the super smart athletes were not the stars. Aren’t elite schools required to balance admission stats in a given cohort? Hence the other back door of “walk ons”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More schools will be doing this because it is a relatively cosmetic change and good PR; it barely moves the needle. Athletes have a far greater impact: what about admission preferences for Wesleyan’s 900 or so athletes, the vast majority of whom are white? Reserve plaudits until Wesleyan, Amherst and their brethren do something about the real issue. This is a mere distraction from more fundamental change, so don’t fall for it.

What the heck? Where are you getting 900 recruited athletes at Wes? That’s nearly a third of the student body. I went to Wes and hardly knew any serious athletes. I serious doubt thirty percent of the student body is recruited athletes with admissions preference.

I do agree with doing away with athletic recruitment however.

You are right. It is closer to 25%. So almost 800. It is irrelevant whether you thought they were serious athletes: they have a huge fist pressed down on the admissions scale — and legacy was but a pinky.

Where are you getting these stats from? Just because a kid is an athlete doesn’t mean he was recruited and given admissions preference.

This is NESCAC we are talking about, where the vast majority of athletes are recruited/given some sort of pre-read — regardless if it is officially a “slot.”

First, I have been through this recently. Kids are NOT given an athletic preference. That is made very clear by the coaches during the recruiting process. Google AI index. That is what schools use and the index for athletes needs to be = or higher than the general student population. This is for high academic NESCAC and similar schools not for large state schools.

As far a legacy admission, I think the virtue signal is rich. They could change this any time they wished if they felt it was wrong. It will most likley change without any press coverage when donations slip.

I find this amusing: this is the first I’ve heard that NESCAC gives no admissions preference to recruited athletes. Um, maybe because you have no idea what you are talking about?

[Anonymous]

Rumor was that Mike Bloomberg leaned hard into getting Hopkins to abolishing legacy.

From my own experience over a decade ago, there were lots of kids of means and boarding school brats in Krieger A&S who didn't belong there. But their family had gone to Hopkins for multiple generations and the kid was the heir to some dynasty that invented the zipper. Nonsense like that.

And, frankly, with the rise of mega-donors in the billionaire class and 10-figure endowments, these big name universities are no longer as reliant on the blue bloods or inherited wealth trading on their family name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More schools will be doing this because it is a relatively cosmetic change and good PR; it barely moves the needle. Athletes have a far greater impact: what about admission preferences for Wesleyan’s 900 or so athletes, the vast majority of whom are white? Reserve plaudits until Wesleyan, Amherst and their brethren do something about the real issue. This is a mere distraction from more fundamental change, so don’t fall for it.

Agree. But schools will never do this.

Not suggesting they will get rid of sports, but baby steps: reform NESCAC, for instance, so there are fewer teams (Amherst and Williams at 35-40% athletes is ridiculous), less recruiting spots for teams that they have, and designated walk on spots. Change the fist on the scale to 3 fingers, then 2, then 1. There’s lots that can be done, and any of these 1/2 steps will do more to increase class and race diversity than the recent legacy measures.

Of course, nothing will change unless it is demanded by those seeking to enhance diversity by other than feel good, cosmetic measures…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wes is a big TO school, and majority of athletes go that route. Although my DC has encountered some truly bright athletes, very few rocket scientists in that cohort - and a few legitimate dopes

I went to Wes so this thread caught my eye. I don’t know what TO means, but I knew some recruited athletes when I was there. As background, I got a lot of As and went into medicine, but I am no athlete.

While some of the athletes I knew were challenged by the work, essentially all of them have gone on to be very, very successful - usually in business.

In fact, DCUM would categorize the “athletes who struggled” as far, far more successful than me because those guys make a lot more money than any doctor ever could.

Success is complicated, and some of the skills honed by team sports are critically important for success in the business world and life. So I’m not sure that it’s s bad idea to get some diversity in that way. I also think there are benefits to interacting with peers who have varied interests and passions, be it sports, art, or computer science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard has such a crazy huge endowment that you wonder why they insist on legacy preferences. And legacy + faculty/staff advantage is huge at Harvard. I recently saw an article that 40% of students at Harvard are either legacy, faculty kids and/or recruited athletes. Pretty shocking

Helps balance out all the URM kids. Harvard is full of crap

Wow, you're ignorant. There are not a lot of urm kids to balance! Have you been on campus? Look around. It's heavily white/Asian. People need to let go of this notion that urm kids are "taking spots."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More schools will be doing this because it is a relatively cosmetic change and good PR; it barely moves the needle. Athletes have a far greater impact: what about admission preferences for Wesleyan’s 900 or so athletes, the vast majority of whom are white? Reserve plaudits until Wesleyan, Amherst and their brethren do something about the real issue. This is a mere distraction from more fundamental change, so don’t fall for it.

What the heck? Where are you getting 900 recruited athletes at Wes? That’s nearly a third of the student body. I went to Wes and hardly knew any serious athletes. I serious doubt thirty percent of the student body is recruited athletes with admissions preference.

I do agree with doing away with athletic recruitment however.

You are right. It is closer to 25%. So almost 800. It is irrelevant whether you thought they were serious athletes: they have a huge fist pressed down on the admissions scale — and legacy was but a pinky.

Where are you getting these stats from? Just because a kid is an athlete doesn’t mean he was recruited and given admissions preference.

Apparently, you don't know the hook a recruited athlete has in college admissions regardless of division, and especially for the selective Division 3 colleges like Wesleyan.

We're not merely talking about Johnny or Sally playing a high school sport as an extracurricular activity.

Yes, I do understand that recruited athletes have a huge leg up I college admissions. What I’m challenging is your assertion that 800 Wes students are RECRUITED athletes. I seriously doubt that. You haven’t provided any evidence for that.

It’s possible that 800 of the students might say they play a sport, but that doesn’t mean that they were all recruited in the admissions sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[b]Wes is a big TO school, and majority of athletes go that route.[/b] Although my DC has encountered some truly bright athletes, very few rocket scientists in that cohort - and a few legitimate dopes

My DC is a recruited athlete attending a TO (test-optional) NESCAC. Went through pre-reads at a couple of NESCACs and other SLACs. For the pre-reads DC needed to submit test scores at all schools (even those that are TO).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But now that everyone sees what schools like Harvard have been doing - it's been a big sham all along - hopefully enough universities will sense that their reputations are at stake and will move accordingly to end legacy and other backdoor preferential treatment for the wealthy and preferred groups. Ultimately, a university's only currency is its reputation.

But they will resist this as long as they can.

And a friendly reminder that all that stupid Edward Blum case was about was "owning the libs". Who in the world didn't understand that Harvard cultivates a club-like environment and takes whoever they please?

And what's wrong with colleges having robust athletic programs? I don't give a damn about any of it really. I think these private colleges should take whoever they want, however they want - affirmative action, legacy, athletes - and I don't care if they are subsidized by taxpayer money. The numbers that these schools admit is not enough to create societal change at a macro level. Maybe it will change a few individual lives, but it will not change our society.

The real problem we have in this country is massive wealth/income inequality and changing college admissions won't do anything to change that. It's a huge distraction.