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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 2,640 Likes: 2
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 2,640 Likes: 2 |
I'm trying to understand how and why "elite" colleges (not necessarily just Ivies) select students to admit using not just academics, but also "Extra-Curriculars" (ECs). I came across this book "The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton" by Jerome Karabel http://www.amazon.com/The-Chosen-Admission-Exclusion-Princeton/dp/061877355XI won't read this 738 page book, but the reviews give a good idea of the history. Can anyone suggest anything more succinct to read about this baffling topic? Harvard and UNC Chapel Hill have been sued for discriminating against Asian applicants http://www.businessweek.com/article...nd-unc-for-discriminating-against-asians . The legal brief against Harvard has a critical history of its admissions policies. I think the discussion of the lawsuit by Stephen Hsu is interesting.
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 1,432
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Glad to see that someone finally filed a lawsuit! As far as I am aware, different standards have applied to Asian American admissions since the 1980's if not before. Of course, if you mention these stats, then you can be labeled racist, even if you support consideration of socioeconomic factors in admissions.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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Some students in some states, including California, are finding it more difficult to get into the state flagships than the Ivies. Colleges’ Wider Search for Applicants Crowds Out Local Students By ERICA E. PHILLIPS and DOUGLAS BELKIN Wall Street Journal October 8, 2014 Last spring, Nicholas Anthony graduated as co-valedictorian of Malibu High School with a résumé that included straight A’s, top marks on nine advanced placement exams, varsity quarterback and baritone horn in the wind ensemble.
But Mr. Anthony didn’t get into the top two public schools in his home state: the University of California, Berkeley or the University of California, Los Angeles. Instead, he is going to Brown University, an Ivy League school which will cost over $100,000 more during four years.
Mr. Anthony’s experience is an example of an aftershock still reverberating across higher education in the wake of the recession: Qualified residents are getting crowded out of their state universities by students paying higher tuition from out-of-state and foreign countries.
“If I had been born five years earlier, I would have gotten in,” said Mr. Anthony.
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A Wall Street Journal analysis of 559 public four-year colleges and universities showed that between the fall of 2008—the last year before school budgets were affected by the recession—and the fall of 2012, 54 schools decreased enrollment of freshman in-state students by 10% or more, while increasing enrollment of nonresident freshmen by 10% or more. An additional 35 showed swings of at least 5%.
The phenomenon was most prevalent at flagship universities. Nearly 600 fewer Californians enrolled as freshmen at Berkeley last year than in 2008. At the same time, the number of out-of-state and foreign students each climbed by about 500. Honestly, this problem is one that disproportionately impacts West Coast students. Why? Well, think about it-- the preponderance of elite LAC's and private colleges are not on the West Coast. Scripps-Pomona-HM, Stanford, Reed, etc. are the exceptions here. So not only are out-of-state students crowding out highly qualified applicants from IN-state, they are forcing those kids to go very far from home in order to attend a more suitable institution elsewhere. Many kids from more modest means simply will not do that-- particularly first generation college students, or those who have disabilities or age (e.g. accelerated students) as a factor. The other thing that I've mentioned before which is even MORE lucrative for West Coast institutions than out-of-STATE students? International ones. Basically, this is a huge cash cow for the entire UC system and also for the flagships in Oregon and Washington. Of course, it crowds out the in-state students, sure... but WOW, does it ever work to replace state funding which has been gutted by the respective state legislatures over the past two decades. University presidents and governing boards, when queried on this point, have largely shrugged and said "Well, what did you expect us to do? We have to make the money work somehow." Frankly, I find this a touch disingenuous when I see new buildings sprouting like toadstools, and fundraising campaigns as often as not include the plural "BILLION S" these days, but perhaps I'm just cynical. 
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,299 Likes: 2
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Let us also not forget that "they're cutting our funding" isn't the sole reason for tuition increases. Between 1975 and 2005, total spending by American higher educational institutions, stated in constant dollars, tripled, to more than $325 billion per year. Over the same period, the faculty-to-student ratio has remained fairly constant, at ~15-16 students per instructor.
One thing that has changed, dramatically, is the administrator-per-student ratio. In 1975, colleges employed one administrator for every 84 students and one professional staffer—admissions officers, information technology specialists, and the like—for every 50 students. By 2005, the administrator-to-student ratio had dropped to one administrator for every 68 students while the ratio of professional staffers had dropped to one for every 21 students.
Apparently, as colleges and universities have had more money to spend, they have not chosen to spend it on expanding their instructional resources—that is, on paying faculty. They have chosen, instead, to enhance their administrative and staff resources. A comprehensive study published by the Delta Cost Project in 2010 reported that between 1998 and 2008, America’s private colleges increased spending on instruction by 22% while increasing spending on administration and staff support by 36%. Parents who wonder why college tuition is so high and why it increases so much each year may be less than pleased to learn that their sons and daughters will have an opportunity to interact with more administrators and staffers— but not more professors. We need a Vice-Chancellor for Data Acquisition in Binary Systems! We need an Office for Tracking Outcomes of the Campus Sustainable Grounds Campaign! We can compensate by cutting three tenure-track positions/adding adjuncts, and by cutting the spring section of ENG 356 (senior course required for majors); the ones who don't get into the fall section can wait a year. :-P
Last edited by Val; 11/20/14 10:38 AM.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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Exactly. Which begs the question, doesn't it-- why on earth do you need five new classroom buildings for classes that students cannot, apparently, get INTO in the first place?
Oh, right. That's because they are sooooooo impoverished that they can't afford to TEACH those classes. The new buildings are for the administrators. To solve the problem, see, and figure out how to staff more classes. Now that they have the space for them, of course. (The administrators, I mean.) AHEM.
It has been a bit of a rude awakening for me to see how very LITTLE in the way of day-to-day work faculty seem to be doing these days. Not to trash my daughter's professors, but, um-- they don't actually assign and grade much of anything themselves. Other than one or two midterms and the TA's who grade the lab reports, I mean. Everything else now is automated and run through Pearson webportals. Y'all can guess how lovely THAT is:
It isn't; there are errors galore, and this means that formatting inputs takes up a lot more bandwidth than learning the material at hand, and in some cases, even the faculty teaching the courses can't get the "right" answer for the system to accept it. Oh yes, this is much more "efficient" for students. Immediate feedback! New! Shiny! Always-on, and other buzzwords... except that instead of learning physics, they are learning that sometimes the speed of light should have 2 significant figures, and sometimes four, and you just have to guess to know which one to use for which problems. So if you get it wrong, check everything over and try different values for the constants, or try rounding differently and keep plugging in answers until something sticks. Good luck with that. It should be obvious to everyone on this board why this is TOXIC for a top-down gifted student, who learns best in a conceptual flow-state.
This is the basis of a course "homework" grade in the contemporary incarnation of higher education at a flagship institution. In honors coursework, no less-- that is, this IS the 'personal touch' that is lacking in the larger population of students. (WOW-- if that is true, I quail to consider what the general freshman coursework is truly like. Holy Toledo.)
So this is what astronomical college tuition is paying for these days, apparently. I'm underwhelmed, to be blunt. There are an awful lot of spa-like amenities on college campuses, and they have NOTHING to do with educating students. It irritates the hell out of me.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Jun 2013
Posts: 49
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Posts: 49 |
I have been following this thread with interest, having launched two kids into college, and am very aware of the pitfalls and minefields in college admissions. Very aware of how gifted high school students and their parents are often unprepared for the admissions game (and I'm not referring to pricey volunteer trips overseas), and wrote a blog post about this, if any are interested: http://giftedchallenges.blogspot.com/2014/11/ten-essential-tips-to-help-your-gifted.html
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Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 100
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Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 2,640 Likes: 2
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Interesting article, which I will excerpt: For Accomplished Students, Reaching a Good College Isn’t as Hard as It Seemsby Kevin Carey New York Times November 29, 2014 Parchment began by identifying a subset of students with combined SAT scores (or an ACT equivalent) of at least 1300. Then it identified high-scoring students who had applied to at least one of the 113 schools identified by Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges as the most selective. The average overall admission rate among those schools was about 32 percent. Yet 51 percent of the applications submitted by top Parchment students to the same colleges were accepted. Why? Because top schools receive a substantial number of applications from underqualified students who are almost always summarily rejected. Once the wheat and chaff are separated, the success rate for the wheat looks much better.
And the real odds of success were even higher than 51 percent. The top students in the Parchment database applied to 2.6 elite colleges, on average. Flip a coin twice and, according to probability theory, you’ll get heads at least once 75 percent of the time. Sure enough, 80 percent of top students were accepted to at least one elite school. OTOH, it is difficult to read the threads on College Confidential where students post their stats and their admissions decisions from elite schools and not conclude that getting into certain schools has become very difficult and not predictable solely from academic achievement. So it may be better to stay away from CC  .
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Joined: Jun 2013
Posts: 49
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Really interesting article, Bostonian. The author makes some valid points, and I would certainly agree that the ivies and ivy-caliber schools attract a lot of applicants who are throwing out their money since they don't stand a chance. This clearly affects the admissions stats.
Yet, the fact remains that many of these selective schools expect much more than just stellar grades and SATs, and many gifted children and their families are unprepared for the hoops they have to jump through to be accepted.
And I also agree that CC can certainly contribute to a lot of anxiety!
Last edited by GailP; 12/01/14 07:58 PM. Reason: typo
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Joined: Jul 2014
Posts: 602
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Someone mentioned up thread that one of the problems is that for the very top students in the US, there might be 10 or 20 institutions to choose between and apply or not as the Case may be, and the need to finds compelling reason just why you and Yale rather than you and Princeton are a perfect fit, whereas in a country like the UK, you'd mostly choose between oxford and Cambridge (and you can't apply to both), maybe wonder a bit about UCL or LSE. Without even going into the nitty gritty of holistic admission versus exam driven admission, it makes the whole process so much more arcane and stressful. You might be accepted by all ivies by a fluke, but just as well rejected By all ivies by a fluke.
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