Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Ivy League Admissions.

This is relevant to this discussion:

forbes article here

Please keep the politics out of this discussion, or we will be forced to lock it.

How Harvard makes admissions decisions
by Tyler Cowen
September 19, 2019
Marginal Revolution blog

Here are some new and very thorough results from Peter Arcidiacono, Josh Kinsler, and the excellent Tyler Ransom:


Am I allowed to observe that this seems wrong to me? And that our “liberal elite” (not my preferred term, but what you see in the discourse and I don’t know which other referent to use) has failed us?

And from Garett Jones:


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The paper is

Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard
by Peter Arcidiacono, Josh Kinsler, and Tyler Ransom
Duke University University of Georgia University of Oklahoma
NBER & IZA & IZA
September 11, 2019
Abstract
The lawsuit Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard University provided an unprecedented look at how an elite school makes admissions decisions. Using publicly released reports, we examine the preferences Harvard gives for recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean’s interest list, and children of faculty and staff (ALDCs). Among white admits, over 43% are ALDC. Among admits who are African American, Asian American, and Hispanic, the share is less than 16% each. Our model of admissions shows that roughly three quarters of white ALDC admits would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs. Removing preferences for athletes and legacies would significantly alter the racial distribution of admitted students, with the share of white admits falling and all other groups rising or remaining unchanged.

I think that was the point of the lawsuit. You get less whites, but more Asians. You have a greater population of Asians, taking into all the ones applying from Asia. So you should get a higher population of Asian applying with high scores. But if you apply the policy to whites, you would get less African Americans. Just using scores. Hence, do you just apply the policy to whites? Do you have less extracurriculars because of this? I have gone through college confidential and there are a large number of African American first time college with low scores compared to the rest of admittance. So you if you just go by scores. African Americans would suffer the most on admittance. Not whites. Even if my kid got in because of legacy or sailing, her scores have to be in the top tier. I know legacy kids in the last few years that did not get in because scores were not good. Even when the parents donated a few million. Now if the donation was 150 mil, maybe, but very few can do that.

Another paper by the same authors:

Divergent: The Time Path of Legacy and Athlete Admissions at Harvard
Peter Arcidiacono, Josh Kinsler, Tyler Ransom
NBER Working Paper No. 26315
Issued in September 2019
NBER Program(s):The Education Program, The Law and Economics Program
Applications to elite US colleges have more than doubled over the past 20 years, with little change in the number of available seats. We examine how this increased competition has affected the admissions advantage that legacies and athletes (LA) receive. Using data on Harvard applications over 18 years, we show that non-legacy, non-athlete (NLNA) applications grew considerably and that LA applications remained flat. Yet, the share of LA admits remained stable, implying substantial increases in admissions advantages for legacies and athletes. We develop a simple theoretical model of university admissions to frame our empirical analysis. Viewed through the lens of the model, stability in the share of LA admits implies that elite colleges treat the number of LA admits and overall admit quality as complements. Our empirical analysis reveals that, if the admissions advantages for LA applicants had been constant throughout this period, there would have been a large increase in the number of minority admits.

I am surprised that the number of athletic applications did not increase over 18 years. I question that. If total applications have incresed multi fold over 18 years, how could athletic applications not have increased?

from the crimson
By Ivy League Conference rules, recruited athletes are placed on a 240-point Academic Index, which is calculated based on GPA and standardized test scores. While the minimum score required for Ivy League admissions is 176, the average Academic Index for recruited athletes cannot be more than one standard deviation below the index of the previous four freshmen classes.

At Harvard, the student body index is roughly 220—approximately equivalent to a SAT score of 2200 and near 4.0 GPA, according to a 2014 Crimson report. Students who walk-on to teams are not included in the Athletic Department’s estimate.

Coaches cannot guarantee admissions spots to prospective student-athletes, whose applications must be vetted by the full 40-member admissions committee. Recruited athletes who pass this process will receive a ‘likely letter,’ indicating the applicant is likely to be admitted by the University.

Arcidiacono noted that athletes with an academic rating of 1 or 2 on Harvard’s scale of 1 to 6—with 1 being the highest and 6 the lowest—had a markedly higher admit rate than non-athletes with the same academic scores. For example, Arcidiacono noted that recruited athletes with an academic rating of 4 had an acceptance rate of 70.46 percent, nearly a thousand times greater than the 0.076 percent admit rate for non-athletes with the same academic rating.

The two researchers that analyzed the data, commented that athletics could be considered a factor -- like good team player, just as they gave a score break for first time college kids in low income zones. The 4 level scores mentioned were very similar for some minority admits that were first time college.

this is a good article.
https://www.insidehighered.com/view...s-intertwine-ivy-league-colleges-opinion

Coaches are limited by how many athletes they can recruit. NCAA rules. If the tennis coach recruits an extra, it has to come from lacross or football. And in an example of Norwestern, Harvard and Stanford trying to recruit a star soccer player, only Norwestern can offer a scholarship. So although the 70% acceptance for a only a 4 level applicant. That can be from a group of 5 athletes. Probably for football or hockey. Since they need so many players for those 2 sports.

Why Are Ivy League Colleges So Sports-Crazed?
STEVE SAILER • OCTOBER 17, 2019

discusses this article:

Ivy League athletics are the new "Moneyball"
Daily Princetonian
By Liam O'Connor
October 10, 2019

Athletes from rich towns are siphoned into elite colleges

The fraudulent college admissions scheme that the FBI uncovered this past spring shocked the nation. Parents who were bankers, celebrities, and lawyers got their children into top colleges — including Yale — by buying slots on coaches’ recruitment lists.

But the scandal raised larger questions about the role of athletics in higher education and who benefits from them. “Sports recruiting is the real college admissions scam,” Slate declared.

I dug into the online 2019 team rosters for all eight Ivy League universities to see who’s playing for them and where they came from.

The vast majority were likely recruited. The Daily Princetonian previously reported, “recruits dominate the rosters of the other 33 varsity Princeton teams [besides rowing], which typically include one to two walk-ons.”

My results show that sports pump hundreds of students from America’s richest towns and private “feeder schools” into elite colleges.

Cities

The homes of the Ivy League’s more than 7,000 athletes were clustered around the suburbs of major cities. They mostly lived in the Interstate 95 Corridor, which extends from Washington, D.C. to Boston. Other hotspots included Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. One in 10 American players lived in a hometown featured on Bloomberg’s 2018 list of “100 Richest Places.”

...

Well, I disagree. I wanted to see DD's chances of getting recruited for sailing. I checked the rosters and backgrounds. 7 out of 10 were walk ons and no where, absolutely no where, does it say they got a likely letter. Who would post that? That is priveleged information and means nothing until you get the actual admittance. A girl from DD's school got recruited for track last year with Dartmouth. She made a list of schools she was interested in, and cold called the coaches and did visits, trained with the current team. She had really good times, not Olympic times, but really good times. Which works for top schools. She also had to have top scores and a strong academic record. This is BS. I dare anyone to find a roster that states that the person got a likely letter. Nonsense.

Higher Education’s Enemy Within
An army of nonfaculty staff push for action and social justice at the expense of free inquiry.
By José A. Cabranes
Wall Street Journal
Nov. 8, 2019 5:25 pm ET

[T]he faculty plays almost no role in the admissions process at most universities. Instead, that process has been handed to specialized “admissions departments.” Faculty members who want to be involved in admissions are relegated to toothless advisory committees, where they are lucky to be invited to glimpse the making of the sausage. Admissions “professionals” are less interested in traditional academic criteria, such as scholastic talent and intellectual openness, than they are in flashier virtues such as “activism,” “leadership” or “overcoming adversity.” Students now arrive on campus having been instructed to promote themselves as “social entrepreneurs” or “change makers.” It has become common for applicants to claim to have “founded,” at 17, some shiny-sounding nonprofit devoted to beneficent acts.

The contemporary admissions process thus reflects and advances a transformation of the university from a place of thought to an instrument of social action. Is it any wonder that students go searching for windmills at which to tilt?

As the new species of bureaucrats and student activists have come to dominate the university, they have reshaped it in their image. Wherever possible, they have sought to muddle the distinction between intellectual deliberation and political action—thus making certain thoughts, like certain deeds, into crimes.

...

Judge Cabranes serves on the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He was Yale’s first general counsel, and later served as a trustee of Yale, Columbia and Colgate universities.