Reply to Universities Really Are Messed Up (says Yale

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Universities Really Are Messed Up (says Yale"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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[/quote]

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

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.[/quote]

Legacies have higher than average stats compared to other [b]APPLICANTS[/B], not students.  The average legacy student has lower stats.  At least at Harvard.[/quote]

So they're prospects would improve then with 'merit' oriented changes, correct?[/quote]

The data from SFFA indicates that legacy status gives a 40% boost.  IOW, given two identical applicants, if the non-legacy has a 10% chance of admission, the legacy has a 14% chance.[/quote]

So it's a thumb on the scale for otherwise equal applicants, it's not given one with lower stats an advantage.[/quote]

At some schools, legacy preferences have an effect on admissions comparable to other programs such as athletic recruiting or affirmative action. One study of three selective private research universities in the United States showed the following effects (admissions disadvantage and advantage in terms of SAT points on the 1600-point scale):

African Americans: +230
Hispanics: +185
Asians: -50
Recruited athletes: +200
Legacies (children of alumni): +160[41]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics