Anonymous wrote:This strikes me as not at all surprising. I don’t get what the “a ha” is here.

I think the assumption that more money = more privilege and opportunities is well understood. I think the A ha! moment is the dip in the low-mid 90s because thats were a lot of DCUM posters fall. I am guessing most my DCUM middle class (AKA rich in the heartland/bible belt) peers assumed, as I did until just now, that the graph was a gradual increase as income rose, with a hockey stick shape once it got to the 95-98% range. We knew we weren’t super advantaged, but even if we don’t say it out loud, maybe we hoped that our cisgender white male offspring from NoVa had at least some benefit from being full-pay applicants.

Cue the DCUM whining about a new kind of donut hole! Boo boo! My kid is disadvantaged by being rich! I guess it’s time to get my 4th grader into fencing or rowing crew while we work on starting a non-profit he can run after school.

Anonymous wrote:This strikes me as not at all surprising. I don’t get what the “a ha” is here.

It is interesting to see it quantified.

Also it is interesting to see how much of a boost being in the 0-60 income percentile gets you. But would be more interesting to see it broken out by race, as one suspects "poor + URM" gets much more of an admissions boost than "poor + white/Asian".

I was just coming to post this. THIS is why DCUM and the DMV area are so stressed all the time about “high stats” and “hooks” with our most contiguous counties where the household income is over $100k. Median? Average? I forget but there are a lot of dang rich people between Baltimore and Winchester.

All the DCUM posters who cry poor with their $250-500k HHI are in that dip!

If you were a gen x, boomer or elder millenial who attended a t10 school, how did you not get into top 1%

Like the well trodden path coupled with the greatest equity boom in the history of the market means that schools are right to give side eyes to alums who aren’t top 1% but also didn’t go into something like teaching at a school

Like if you are a gen x, and attended Penn (to use an example) - you have to really have been clueless or messed up not to be in the top .5%

You had access to top firms, then the bull market for 30 years would supercharged your financial position further

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things.”

this is about the 0.1%. But to me that is not the interesting story. the interesting story, which the author of the article mostly ignores (she has one sentence) is that the 60-99% percentile is the loser.

Really? That's what you've taken from this. It's admission rates. The majority of applicants are going to be in the 60-99th percentile income range. Of course they are going to be accepted at a lower rate...there are more of them. If you look up the composition of college campuses, though, I'm sure you'll find that they make up the majority of students.

+1

Exactly! the majority of kids in the 5-50% range do not have T25 schools on their radar. They grow up with a plan to attend CC then transfer to a state school (for affordability), and if really lucky attend all 4 years at a state school if they can afford it. They are not obsessed with attending Elite schools, so they don't apply.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“The new data shows that among students with the same test scores, the colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings. The result is the clearest picture yet of how America’s elite colleges perpetuate the intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity.”

cool.But what are the "elite" colleges? Are we talking about the Ivies only, or those in the top 25 USNWR? or what?

The article mentions the 8 Ivies + MIT, Stanford, Duke and UChicago.

But all this is much ado about nothing. This myopic focus on so-called “elite” universities is senseless. The boundaries are arbitrary and the fact is there are literally hundreds of really good universities.

Yes, but a much smaller group of elite colleges & universities offer a significant boost in career/job opportunities for those with degrees (majors) in non-technical / non-STEM areas of study.

Not really....that boost does not really exist if the terminal degree is a bachelors.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This strikes me as not at all surprising. I don’t get what the “a ha” is here.

Perhaps it is that these colleges say one thing but do another?

This

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“The new data shows that among students with the same test scores, the colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings. The result is the clearest picture yet of how America’s elite colleges perpetuate the intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity.”

cool.But what are the "elite" colleges? Are we talking about the Ivies only, or those in the top 25 USNWR? or what?

The article mentions the 8 Ivies + MIT, Stanford, Duke and UChicago.

But all this is much ado about nothing. This myopic focus on so-called “elite” universities is senseless. The boundaries are arbitrary and the fact is there are literally hundreds of really good universities.

+1000

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just read this article. Super interesting. It said athletic preferences tend to pull in rich kids because many sports are only played by rich kids.

Nah. The vast majority of athletes are certainly in the un-preferred 60th to 99th income percentile.

Coaches have a limited number of athletes they can ask for admissions preference. They hate using a roster slot to make an offer and then the kid doesn't attend. If athletes tend to be "richer" it is because coaches are more willing to extend offers to kids who are sure to be able to afford attending. A college making an ED admission offer and then the parents say "oops we actually can't afford this" is a thing that can happen even for non-athletes.

I think I’m going to go on what the researchers say rather than your random and misinformed opinion

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“The new data shows that among students with the same test scores, the colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings. The result is the clearest picture yet of how America’s elite colleges perpetuate the intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity.”

cool.But what are the "elite" colleges? Are we talking about the Ivies only, or those in the top 25 USNWR? or what?

The article mentions the 8 Ivies + MIT, Stanford, Duke and UChicago.

But all this is much ado about nothing. This myopic focus on so-called “elite” universities is senseless. The boundaries are arbitrary and the fact is there are literally hundreds of really good universities.

Yes, but a much smaller group of elite colleges & universities offer a significant boost in career/job opportunities for those with degrees (majors) in non-technical / non-STEM areas of study.

The article also said that graduating from these elite colleges gives you a much higher chance of getting into top rated graduate programs.

Anonymous wrote:This strikes me as not at all surprising. I don’t get what the “a ha” is here.

Perhaps it is that these colleges say one thing but do another?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things.”

this is about the 0.1%. But to me that is not the interesting story. the interesting story, which the author of the article mostly ignores (she has one sentence) is that the 60-99% percentile is the loser.

Really? That's what you've taken from this. It's admission rates. The majority of applicants are going to be in the 60-99th percentile income range. Of course they are going to be accepted at a lower rate...there are more of them. If you look up the composition of college campuses, though, I'm sure you'll find that they make up the majority of students.

The top 1% is overrepresented on elite campuses to an absurd degree.

Anonymous wrote:This strikes me as not at all surprising. I don’t get what the “a ha” is here.

Same .

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things.”

this is about the 0.1%. But to me that is not the interesting story. the interesting story, which the author of the article mostly ignores (she has one sentence) is that the 60-99% percentile is the loser.

Really? That's what you've taken from this. It's admission rates. The majority of applicants are going to be in the 60-99th percentile income range. Of course they are going to be accepted at a lower rate...there are more of them. If you look up the composition of college campuses, though, I'm sure you'll find that they make up the majority of students.

Anonymous wrote:And here's the real depressing detail from the paper:

"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%."

So many friends' smart children are headed to flagship this fall due to cost...

Make sure your kid joins frats/sororities at big flagship; minors in business or Econ….and figured out the right lane to get banking/consulting jobs.
Greek life helps with the networking far better than anything else at public flagships