Reply to dont be in the 60th to 99th percentile in income

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[quote=Anonymous]I would encourage those interested to read the paper or at least the non-technical summary. They also make their full data available. The key findings listed in the non-technical summary (https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CollegeAdmissions_Nontech.pdf) are:
1. Ivy-Plus colleges are more than twice as likely to admit a student from a high-income family as compared to low- or middle-income families with comparable SAT/ACT scores.
2. Higher admission rates for students from high-income families can be attributed to three factors: preferences for children of alumni (legacies), higher non-academic ratings, and athletic recruitment.
3. The three factors underlying the high-income admissions advantage are not associated with better post-college outcomes; in contrast, SAT/ACT scores and academic ratings are highly predictive of post-college success.
4. Attending an Ivy-Plus instead of a flagship public college triples students’ chances of obtaining jobs at prestigious firms and substantially increases their chances of earning in the top 1%.
5. By changing their admissions policies, Ivy-Plus colleges could significantly diversify the socioeconomic backgrounds of America’s highest earners and leaders.

The consequences of #2: "This higher admissions rate leads to 103 extra students from the top 1% in a typical Ivy-Plus class (of 1,650 students) relative to a benchmark in which students are admitted at the same rates across the parental income distribution conditional on their test scores." Legacy admission policies account for about 47 of the 103 extra students from the top 1%. Non-academic ratings account for 31 of the 103. Athletic recruitment accounts for another 25.

Based on a quick reading, my take is that the 4th finding may be on the weakest grounds, as it's based on data on admitted vs non-admitted waitlisted students to Ivy-plus univs. A clever approach to causal inference, but one that hinges on the assumption that admissions from the waitlist are largely "exogenous" to the applicant's attributes (economic, academic, non-academic) that they look at. This basically makes the outcome differences between waitlisters who are accepted (to Ivy-Plus) vs non-accepted (who attended leading public univs) a valid measure of the "impact" of Ivy-Plus colleges.

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