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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]18:49 Yes on the takeaway but:

Student athletes make what percentage of an entering class?

As for Goldin's $1 million figure, I cannot believe that the high legacy numbers at the Ivies are all applicants whose families donated $1 million. Some perhaps but I wonder what percentage of that percentage.[/quote]

18:49 here - just a couple of percent, if I recall correctly. Legacies are far more numerous, as are development cases. In this world where income inequality increases every year (in part due to this system of keeping the plushest diplomas and then jobs among the already well-connected), I am not surprised that a lot of people can afford to donate a million for the Ivies - note that some of it is money raised from others, it does not have to be personal money. At Harvard, members of the executive council of the donations board (has a fancy name I can't remember) are chosen when they have raised or donated more than 5 million. Some have given 25M.
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I read Price of Admission too, and while I absolutely agree with 95% of what you said, my sense was that you could count the number of development cases on one hand. Also, some colleges are apparently worse than others wrt brown-nosing development cases and celebrities' kids. Certain colleges (hello, Harvard!) hold special events featuring celebrity speakers to woo their rich alums, and Harvard also created the "Z list" for alum and celebrity kids who aren't quite up to par and maybe need another year to "mature" before starting as Harvard freshmen.  Brown and Duke were singled out for brown nosing development cases and celebrities' kids, but then again it was only a few names (kid of a famous author, kid of a Beatle). If your name is George Harrison, then the Brown development officer might show up at your estate in Britain. But it wasn't clear to me you'd get the kid gove treatment if you were a plain old Joe Schmoe with a very successful car dealership, or at colleges besides Harvard, Brown and Duke. I'm sure some of this goes on everywhere, but it seemed like some colleges were particularly egregious in the brown-nosing department.

Like yours, my impression from Price of Admission was that legacy and athletic recruits played a much bigger role in admissions preferences, and that legacy and athletic recruitment are essentially affirmative action for rich white kids who can afford extensive coaching and even to participate in some of the really expensive sports like eqestrian sports, crew, sailing and squash, where membership in a sports/country club is useful. Therefore, affirmative action basically offsets this. (I'm white, FWIW.) I also noted the snarky comment from one Ivy admissions officer, that if you used their education to go into some profession like teaching where you were unable to make respectable annual donations to the alumnae fund, then your bad judgment was a poor reflection on you and might actually hurt your kid's admissions chances. Ouch![/quote]

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