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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have heard these types of stories at several schools that my DD and her friends attend (including but not limited to Northwestern, Michigan,  Northeastern, Harvard, U Chicago, University of Illinois-CI).  Her friends that do not seem to have these experiences (i.e., the clubs are more inclusive) are the ones at SLACs, including top tier ones (Swarthmore, Haverford, Bates).  Note, I'm not talking about club sports or "business" fraternities, but regular old student-run clubs (think newspapers/magazines, affinity groups). [/quote]

SIGH. People hate to look at themselves in the mirror. LC and MC people especially, as well as first-generation UMCs do not understand that having your kid get into a college means ZERO if your kid can't figure out how to flourish. So you need to know your kid's place.

Yale has to admit some high-achieving kids who are minorities or lower/middle income. Those kids are the "exception that proves the rule" of how difficult it is to get into Yale. Those kids are there to sink or swim in their classes, all while providing the dining hall labor.

But there is ZERO reason for the generally UC kids running a club to accept these lower or middle-class kids unless they REALLY benefit PERSONALLY from including them. These are the kids that have no connections, nothing interesting in their experiences and background, and nothing but their brains to push them forward. They can't function in an executive room where people give lip service to diversity, but laugh about the diversity hire's latest fumble during cocktails after a round. Oh, was your kid not invited to play that round of golf? Exactly.

So look at your kid. Is she gorgeous? Then maybe she can get hint to the club President that she'll date him, or maybe she can look good on stage with the members of the a cappella group.

Does your kid have a hookup for really good drugs? Then maybe he can trade on that to get into an investment club.

But if your kid is the average "successful" entrant to Yale, their already WAY ahead of the game. They got admitted, and surely are getting all sorts of "need"-based financial aid. So they really don't need to be given any more perks that would let them rise ahead of the kids who actually FUND the university. it's just the way it is.

[/quote]

This may have been true at one point, but it is true no longer.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/yale-skull-and-bones-secret-societies-diversity/677030/

Picture a member of Skull and Bones, or any of the other Ancient Eight secret societies, and you’ll probably conjure a preppy white guy who summers on the Cape. In fact, in recent years, the demographics of Yale’s most elite organizations have been utterly transformed. In 2020, Skull and Bones had its first entirely nonwhite class. (Every year, the society admits around 15 rising seniors; selections must be unanimous, and members have final say.) Many of the societies now have only one or two students each year who aren’t from historically marginalized groups.

Today, the idea of Skull and Bones selecting someone whose dad was a Republican president seems inconceivable. The so-called tap lines—the tradition guaranteeing that the football captain and the student-body president would end up in Bones—are long gone, and few descendants of alumni members get in. Instead, the secret societies affirmatively select for students who are the first in their family to attend college, who come from a low-income background, or who are part of a minority group. This has created something of a diversity arms race. “People are, intentionally or not, thinking, ‘Does this cohort have too many white people?’” said Ale Canales, a member of the Berzelius class of 2020. “It’s definitely an undercurrent.”[/quote]

More from the article:

I graduated from Yale last spring, and I didn’t belong to a secret society, but when it came time for members in my year to select the next class, a friend in an Ancient Eight society worried that the person she wanted to tap wouldn’t get in: He was a person of color but came from a wealthy family and was not the first in his family to attend college. (She was right to worry: The society rejected my friend’s pick, although a different one accepted him.)[/quote]

There are currently something like 55 senior/secret societies at Yale. the “Ancient 8” Are the ones everybody knows about but over half the senior class ends up in a society and mostly not in the famous ones. It can still be a stressful going through the tap process but the society system has also been modified so basically if you want to be in a society there are avenues in[/quote]

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