Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Changes in college admissions policies?

It won't change anything. The real issue is that as many as 20 students are fighting for each seat at an elite university. No matter how you change the admissions criteria, people will come up with ways to game the system. The packaging has been and will still be exactly what the AOs look for.

Putting more focus on intangible criteria (essay, letters, volunteering work the nature and quality of which are hard to assess beyond what the students describe), instead of the tangibles (courses taken, test scores, etc), only means that colleges will have a much easier time defending their admissions decisions.

In terms of wellroundedness, I also agree with Thomas Percy. I think plenty of people have said that this is just a way to see which middle-class families have the means to help their kids jump through all hoops (the rich kids don't need to jump, they just walk right around the hoops).

Which is basically the definition of privilege, right?

But what good is being wealthy if you can't buy privilege?

Merit and Industriousness ------> Wealth and Capital ------> Privilege and Superiority

I am interested to hear what people think is "rich" enough to be able to waltz into a top 10 school without the requisite grades. The answers should be interesting--I will get popcorn ready.

I'll bite. "Rich enough" =

Mummy and Daddy donated $5 million for a new building. Yes, this happens. It's been documented.

The process isn't so crass as, "Will you admit my little snowflake if I make a big donation?" But it's still there.


Stanford

Ivies via hacked email at Sony

I could go on, but your popcorn is burning.

I guess "rich kids" are a politically correct group to slander. The fact some super-rich parents have gotten their children in through donations does not mean that most Ivy matriculants from rich families had parents who did so. As I have written before http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....ch_college_and_does_it_m.html#Post195611 :

Since income is positively correlated with IQ, and IQ is highly heritable, a disproportionate number of the smartest high school students come from rich families, who are paying full freight. That's why even though 29% of Harvard students came from families with incomes of $250K+, including 14% from families with incomes of $500K+, the richest kids had the highest SAT scores on average, according to a survey of Harvard freshman:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/9/4/freshman-survey-admissions-aid/
Freshman Survey Part II: An Uncommon App
The Crimson’s Survey of Freshmen Shines Light on Admissions, Financial Aid, and Recruiting
By LAYA ANASU and MICHAEL D. LEDECKY
September 4, 2013

Bostonian, if you read the articles I linked to, you'll see that they admit kids who had been rejected BEFORE the college considered the family's situation. No one is slandering anyone, unless the students they interviewed and the email writers were slandering themselves.

You've contradicted yourself:


Which one is it? Do you favor admitting kids because of academic success or because of donations? You've argued against affirmative action here in the past as a process that admits people who aren't capable. Isn't admitting donor kids doing the exact same thing?

You can't claim that they only take a tiny number of students whose parents bought the kid's way in. In the WSJ story I quoted, Duke admitted 125 wealthy students because of family connections. That's nearly 4% of total admits. All of them had been either rejected or wait-listed. That means that 125 academically more-deserving students were rejected outright or didn't get off the wait list because of donor admits.


A 3.2 high school GPA is not exactly the stuff of valedictorianship. How many valedictorians got rejected in favor of this young woman and her 1190 on the SAT?

I know 2 instances where $10 mil didn't get acceptance into Harvard. And the kids were decent, not stellar, but decent in grades.

But they are getting donations in the hundreds of millions, so it is all relative.

Aren't we on this forum because our kids have great scores and grades? And they can get some great options for college? If some rich kid got in because family donated 400 mil for a new research center, I am glad because there is a new research center for my kid at her school. Isn't that why Duke is taking the money. To be a top college you need whatever money you can generate. If your alumni isn't giving, take it from the front end.

Wren, your kid might get rejected because a donor kid got accepted. In fact, given how widespread the problem is, your kid likely WILL get rejected by at least one college for that very reason, unless you don't apply in the US.

Remember also that these colleges have endowments that run into the billions. How many more millions do they really need?

This is why US college admissions won't be primarily about academic ability anytime soon. It's a money game, and it's about greed. Financial greed at the college and status greed among the parents. I say this as someone who's seen this process. It's gross.

It's also playing a role in the deterioration of standards at US colleges.

That's easy. One, at most.

Is it unfair? Sure it is. But these days $1M only gets you consideration into lowly Brown. Duke might well be higher than that now, and the prices go up exponentially as school selectivity increases. Because the price is now so high, in the grand scheme of things, there aren't that many rich people that can buy their admission that it has a major effect. At most schools, the number of development cases is certainly less than the number of recruited athletes.

I live in a Boston suburb. I know plenty of families not in the top 1% whose kids got into Harvard and MIT on merit. Our high school sends between 5-10 kids to those schools each year (almost all non-legacy), and the activities my kids participate in expose us to many more such families outside of our town. On the flip side, I also know a 0.1% family with a double Harvard/Radcliffe legacy that has donated continuously to Harvard, and yet their kids didn't get in.

We face the college application gauntlet next year. I am confident that my daughter will get into a good school that will prepare her well for her future. But I don't have the foggiest idea which college it will be, and I am really not that stressed about it (yet anyway).