Reply to Big 3 College Placement 2018-19 Cycle

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Big 3 College Placement 2018-19 Cycle"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t think anyone is in denial.  Most of the posters say it helps.   It’s a question of whether you can draw any general conclusions about the legacy pool or claim that you must be hooked to be admitted.   [/quote]
Exactly.  It's the folks dismissing certain admit as merely "legacies" who are, without any evidence, implying that these students were somehow less qualified or deserving on the merits.  When in fact the opposite is generally true.[/quote]

There are certain similarities and dissimilarities between a track race and vying for admission to highly selective schools.  In both cases many worthy candidates are competing with one another.  There are a limited number of prizes in track and seats in Freshman class.  On an oval track it appears as though, as you go from the outermost to the innermost lane, each runner has longer distance to run than the runners in the inner lanes.  But we know all runners have exactly the same distance to run.  Whereas, in the case of admissions, all candidates compete on a straight-line path not oval.  But certain considerations such as politically connected, large donations, recruited athlete, affirmative action, legacy, under-represented geographic locations/ethnicity/whether LGBTQ or straight etc. will place such applicants at various distances closer to the finish line (admission offer) than applicants having no such qualifiers.  If we are to go by the plaintiff's arguments in Harvard University admissions case, Asian American applicants are placed behind the start line (similar to a track runner having to carry extra weights for the race).

Of course, not all legacies get admitted.  That doesn't mean legacy status doesn't get bonus points.  Just because a legacy student didn't get admitted to the legacy school but admitted to a similarly selective school in the area doesn't mean the legacy school didn't give bonus points to the student.  One can try to convince oneself by saying that legacy has no role in their or their children's admission but they can not fool their conscience.         [/quote]

Consider this change to your analogy:  The race begins with a lot of lanes and you have to meet a minimum to get into the race at all. Each lane is labeled with a need the school might have and applicants can run in every lane for which they qualify (you clone yourself). There is a lane for Z listers, one for development cases, one for one-of-a-kind superstar pointy kids, general legacies, first in family to college, each sport, each instrument, theater, a lane for each gender, race, ethnicity, and an international lane, lanes for hard to find academic credentials for specialized majors, the general academic lane and the also rans. In some lanes, you have to line up according to ability, such as the sports lane, gender lane, race lanes, or the general academic lane.

Some lanes will be much more crowed than others making it difficult to be the one who makes it to the finish line in that lane. If your lane has very few kids and much University need, you are pretty much guaranteed to get in. If you are the front of your lane, or near the front of several lanes, again, excellent odds. Along the way, they also cut people from the back of various lanes as they can see there are just too many people ahead of them in the same lane or same combination of lanes for them to have any hope of making it to the end of the race (i.e., being one of 3000 white, male, non-recruited soccer players with great academics isn't really helpful).

Also, for starters they have to take x number from the sport, instrument, theater, and specialty academic lanes to run those programs, so those lanes start the race and cross the finish line first. After that, the lanes start to merge, and those who were in multiple lanes have a better chance of being further ahead in at least one of their lanes which will put them further ahead at the merge, plus they will take up more room as their personal clones from the other lanes join them (i.e., the well-rounded kid start to gain traction at this stage after the pointy kids are already in). As the race moves on, the number of lanes narrows until finally the remaining lane is really crowded, and giant well-rounded kids are taking up a lot of room and elbowing out others at the front of the academic pack.

There isn't room at the finish line for everyone.  And if there is really nothing to distinguish you from a whole bunch of other similar people, you will get lost in the back of the pack.[/quote]

Your description is an interesting development to my analogy and reflects the reality (preparation prior to entering the race - each applicant's life history).  I want to add a modification to your description, specifically near the finish line.  Those various lanes you describe have turnstiles with counters at two distances.  Those applicants who successfully pass through the two turnstiles in their lanes will reach a staging area.  Beyond this staging area each applicant needs to be escorted by a committee to the finish line.  The turnstiles in different lanes are tightened to different degree (to a predetermined degree of difficulty to turn, decided by the committee, with a minor but greater than zero flexibility given to the first level referee (first reader of the application portfolio of each candidate in that particular lane).  The first level of turnstiles is where the university starts to manipulate how many applicants of each lane it wants to advance.  The second level of turnstiles is where a subgroup of readers will decide who and how many applicants in their lane they are willing to advance.  This subgroup of readers have a greater flexibility to tighten or loosen the turnstile within the allowable range for that particular lane.  The counters on the turnstiles help the readers monitor when the predetermined number of applicants for that lane advanced past the turnstiles.  All successful applicants reach the staging area.  Here the committee will meet with the readers, approve or disapprove the readers' recommendations.  The committee makes the final decision, all along being fully aware of the tag each applicant is wearing (all the specific characteristics by which the university wants to identify the individual applicant by) and escort (offer admission) to the lucky applicants so that the university maintains the specific percentages of each category of applicants (Asians, Hispanic, Black or African Americans, White etc. that they publish in common data set and many other nuanced categories that they internally maintain but never publish - legacy, Z-list, etc).  The committee determines the floor and ceiling levels for each published category of applicants but never admits as having a priory set those limits.

This is exactly why Harvard University was taken to court.  We will await what the court's ruling will be.      [/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