Reply to Unhooked kids - Why is private HS worth the diminished chances for top college admissions?

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Unhooked kids - Why is private HS worth the diminished chances for top college admissions?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Everyone needs to be aware, if they already aren't, that admissions to the elite colleges is far more political than it was 20 years ago. It's going to be unfair to measure schools by their ability to maintain a pipeline to the elite colleges. For example, it's no secret that the percent of Jewish students at most of the Ivies have fallen noticeably in the last decade. It's not because of declining caliber of applicants, but because the adcomms are seeking out a very specific balance of students in the name of equity and diversity while keeping all their other prioritized demographics like sports or legacy or geographical diversity. That's why when you have two students with identical grades and scores but from different identity backgrounds, the chances of admissions varies hugely solely on the background. Not the grades or accomplishments. The schools cannot control for that.

At this point I doubt if there's a disadvantage to elite college admissions going to a private school because it's the same student facing the same admissions standards coming out of a good public school too. So it's a wash.

The main benefit of a good private over a public, even a good public, when it comes to college admissions is probably the middling students. Getting that extra attention and support from smaller classes and stronger faculty-student relationships and peer support can very well make a difference in fostering the academic skills to get into a better college than they might have had they stayed in the public school. [/quote]

It’s always been political. Let’s not pretend this is something new simply because the winners and losers have changed. Not to mention that some of the winners have never changed. [/quote]

Ehh. It's far more political now for sure. Saying it's "always" been political is sidestepping the issue and avoiding the reality elite college admissions is much more contradictory with ideals that had long been the gold standards - meritocracy. The Ivies moved away from the waspocracy starting in the late 1950s to openly embrace a more meritocratic admissions standards, but ironically they're now regressing to a different, but distinctly non meritocratic approach to admissions and one based heavily on identities (remember the waspocracy was an identity once before it was rejected as illiberal)

I do wonder how long it'll last, however. A key factor in the elite colleges stratospheric growth in the 1960s-2000 era was that they did focus on accepting the best and brightest. Now that is no longer really the case (conversations with long term faculty about changing student quality can be a real eye opener) and the best and brightest are scattered across many more colleges, which, actually, is not too different from what it was like when the Ivies were waspocracies and so many of the best and brightest were going to state universities and lesser known colleges closer to home. [/quote]

No it didn’t. Asians were being discriminated against all throughout your golden age. Poor students were severely disfavored in the 1960s-2000 era. Private school kids had an outsized advantage.  So did legacies. Athletic recruits are a constant. It just looked more meritocratic because what came before was so skewed.  Your actual problem seems to be URM admissions because nothing else has increased. [/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