Universities Really Are Messed Up (says Yale

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unless Yale plans to dramatically increase in size, the only way to end the “murky admissions practices” is to be open about conducting a lottery for everyone over a certain benchmark. There is no fair way to pick a mere 2% from a pool of highly-qualified 17 year olds.

Or the colleges could start demanding more tail end differentiation between students on the SAT.

There are a thousand perfect SAT scores every year. That number used to be in the dozens.

Tsinghua and Beijing do not have trouble selecting the top 0.05% students among 13 million kids based on the Gaokao, which has never seen a perfect score in its history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless Yale plans to dramatically increase in size, the only way to end the “murky admissions practices” is to be open about conducting a lottery for everyone over a certain benchmark. There is no fair way to pick a mere 2% from a pool of highly-qualified 17 year olds.

I think one of the suggestions in the report would be a small, meaningful improvement: put in testing minimums. Would reduce apps and thus increase admissions rate, but would go a long way to getting rid of the lowest performing, "murky" admits from the Legacy, Athlete, Donor, FGLI buckets

This is likely the only "reform" that we will see. It would remove the "unqualified" noise from the unknowing while allowing them to keep legacy which is critical to their fundraising, keep athletic recruiting because athletics are important parts of how they see themselves, and keep admitting whom they want to admit which is something that they have every right to do and shouldn't give any real ground on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless Yale plans to dramatically increase in size, the only way to end the “murky admissions practices” is to be open about conducting a lottery for everyone over a certain benchmark. There is no fair way to pick a mere 2% from a pool of highly-qualified 17 year olds.

I think one of the suggestions in the report would be a small, meaningful improvement: put in testing minimums. Would reduce apps and thus increase admissions rate, but would go a long way to getting rid of the lowest performing, "murky" admits from the Legacy, Athlete, Donor, FGLI buckets

But do they actually want to get rid of the lowest-performing scions of mega-donors?

It won't be a huge reach. Legacy admits tend to have higher average stats than the rest of the class at6 Harvard and I would expect it to be the same at any Ivy. Plenty of well trained legacies to choose from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most overrepresented student at Yale is the private school graduate. By far. That will NEVER change.

64% of matriculants came from public high schools.
36% of matriculants came from independent day, boarding, and religious schools.

when you say "by far" what does that mean?

Only 10% of American kids go to private high schools. Filling over a third of your incoming class with them is very disproportionate.

Lets be honest, private school kids for the most part are far better trained than the average public school kid. Easy to defend, just blame the k-12 system because that is where the issue lies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most overrepresented student at Yale is the private school graduate. By far. That will NEVER change.

64% of matriculants came from public high schools.
36% of matriculants came from independent day, boarding, and religious schools.

when you say "by far" what does that mean?

DP
I think they are saying that less than 10% of high school seniors attend private school but more than 30% of yale freshmen attended private school. over-represented "by far"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most overrepresented student at Yale is the private school graduate. By far. That will NEVER change.

64% of matriculants came from public high schools.
36% of matriculants came from independent day, boarding, and religious schools.

when you say "by far" what does that mean?

I just looked up Swarthmore they have almost exactly the same breakdown 36 percent independent/religious…

MIT is 14%
Stanford is 27%
Princeton 35%
Harvard 37%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most overrepresented student at Yale is the private school graduate. By far. That will NEVER change.

64% of matriculants came from public high schools.
36% of matriculants came from independent day, boarding, and religious schools.

when you say "by far" what does that mean?

Only 10% of American kids go to private high schools. Filling over a third of your incoming class with them is very disproportionate.

Lets be honest, private school kids for the most part are far better trained than the average public school kid. Easy to defend, just blame the k-12 system because that is where the issue lies.

There are also a lot of very advantaged public school kids. Where they went to high school doesn't tell the whole story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most overrepresented student at Yale is the private school graduate. By far. That will NEVER change.

I would not be so sure.

“When selective admissions seem so inexplicable — or, worse, tilted in ways that benefit the already advantaged — it should come as no surprise that many Americans do not trust the process,” the committee wrote.

I just don’t see how you can ever have an explicable process for undergraduate admissions and an admissions rate under 5%. 17 year olds are just not that fully formed yet. And if they were, college would be pointless.

I can point to half a dozen countries where they do this every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Focusing on the private school % is a red herring. Those kids would just go to a top affluent public school if all privates were ordered to shut down. And I am confident that the international students are almost entirely privately educated in their respective home countries, which further distorts the picture. Because if you look at the other end, at the actual private schools, your typical high performing day school sends fewer kids to Ivies than 25 years ago, even if SATs and other academic metrics remain high. All the privates complain now how much harder it is to get kids into elite colleges.

I wish Yale best of luck. This report is a bit courageous.

I agree the private school thing is a red herring. The question is whether these private school kids are less qualified

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yale committee concludes that colleges and universities have completely lost the plot:

“High costs, murky admissions practices, uneven academic standards and fears about free speech on campuses, the committee said, are among the reasons for widening discontent over higher education’s worthiness.

The findings reflect misgivings that Americans have described across years of polling and interviews. But the report, from a 10-professor panel at one of the nation’s most renowned universities, amounts to a damning depiction of academia’s role in cultivating the political and cultural forces that are reshaping higher education’s place in American life.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/us/yale-report-colleges-unversities-trust.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bVA._ebw.-PVgolGZ4r5r&smid=url-share

Your landscaper could have told you this.

Any FOX viewer could have told you this.

Hopefully they’re not patting themselves on the back about these conclusions.

You don't have to be either one of those things to see the issues.

What are the solutions? Seems like the fox viewers decided that destroying funding for scientific research was the solution and instead spending it on bombing a country to result in sky high energy prices that suck lots and lots and lots of money out of all of our wallets . Great job Fox viewers.

Sometimes you have to cause a ruckus
if you want to fight injustice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting.

"The committee offered dozens of recommendations, like expanding financial aid, reducing admissions preferences, zealously protecting free speech and adjusting grading policies."

So, they have identified the things that make it messed up and the want to recommend doing more of those? Ok.

you have issues with these things?

Aren’t they already doing those things? How’s that been working out?

What admission preferences have been eliminated? Legacy, faculty, kids, Athletics, VIP donors, feeder schools? I think there's plenty of room for improvement.

None of these things will change, the floor for each will just go up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the Yale report: Universities were “expected to be all things to all people: selective but inclusive, affordable but luxurious, meritocratic but equitable.”

I think this is exactly the problem. Individual schools need to pick a lane on each choice, and stop trying to split the baby. Even more so for private schools that don't have an obligation to the public. Applicants will sort themselves if you are clear about your mandate.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting.

"The committee offered dozens of recommendations, like expanding financial aid, reducing admissions preferences, zealously protecting free speech and adjusting grading policies."

Which admissions preferences will go? Legacy? Athletics?

FGLI and geography.

None of these will go, they'll lean in even more but just raise the floor. They will not and shouldn't adjust their priorities. They should just be more transparent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting.

"The committee offered dozens of recommendations, like expanding financial aid, reducing admissions preferences, zealously protecting free speech and adjusting grading policies."

So, they have identified the things that make it messed up and the want to recommend doing more of those? Ok.

Expanding financial aid is going to make it more messed up? Reducing admissions preferences is going to make it more messed up?

Preferences for who or why? More international? More unqualified? If it was working why are universities “really messed up?” Seems like they’d be saying it’s never been better.

Preferences for advantaged people which probably mostly translates to financially advantaged.

How can they have been doing that at the same time as having a preference for FGLI? Clearly that preference comes at the expense of the other preferences. 50-60% are already on financial aid. Do you think it should be 100%?

Wake up. Places like yale are hardly infested with fgli students. There are some not a lot. And do you even know the sticker price? Yes, most families would need financial assistance to be able to send students to a place that expensive. The fact that 40% don't need aid is exactly part of the problem.

I can't keep DCUM straight. Either Yale is all private school kids or all FGLI

It's not really difficult. Assuming a quick Google search is more or less correct, It's 37% private school kids and 19% fgli. That is from a population where 10% of high school seniors are from private schools and over 50% are from fgli homes. If those stats are correct, you can see why people think things are fancy private universities are tilted towards advantaged kids.

You are missing a foundational point which is that the percentage of kids attending colleges from privates is far higher than the percentage that attned from publics. The actual gap is far narrower than you make it out to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting.

"The committee offered dozens of recommendations, like expanding financial aid, reducing admissions preferences, zealously protecting free speech and adjusting grading policies."

So, they have identified the things that make it messed up and the want to recommend doing more of those? Ok.

Expanding financial aid is going to make it more messed up? Reducing admissions preferences is going to make it more messed up?

Preferences for who or why? More international? More unqualified? If it was working why are universities “really messed up?” Seems like they’d be saying it’s never been better.

Preferences for advantaged people which probably mostly translates to financially advantaged.

How can they have been doing that at the same time as having a preference for FGLI? Clearly that preference comes at the expense of the other preferences. 50-60% are already on financial aid. Do you think it should be 100%?

+100

Wake up. Places like yale are hardly infested with fgli students. There are some not a lot. And do you even know the sticker price? Yes, most families would need financial assistance to be able to send students to a place that expensive. The fact that 40% don't need aid is exactly part of the problem.

I can't keep DCUM straight. Either Yale is all private school kids or all FGLI

It's not really difficult. Assuming a quick Google search is more or less correct, It's 37% private school kids and 19% fgli. That is from a population where 10% of high school seniors are from private schools and over 50% are from fgli homes. If those stats are correct, you can see why people think things are fancy private universities are tilted towards advantaged kids.

what else that costs 400k *isn't* tilted towards the advantaged.

fancy private schools are not a right. who cares. we'd be better off putting them in the category of country clubs and stop wringing our hands over this. it reeks of envy. and I send my kids to state schools.