<p>^^^^^^totally agree, which is why this thread has been reduced to about 3 or 4 posters. I keep returning to see if anything new has been added to the discussion. Silly of me, really. </p>
<p>Just for the record:</p>
<p>1) I am happy to read posts of any length. I do not lose interest in long posts.</p>
<p>2) My reference to the dollhouse-builder was an attempt to bring the thread back to the original topic. I thought it fit in with suggestions elsewhere on CC that applicants should go beyond a self-focused interest in an EC, and think about ways to expand the interest to engage with or help others.</p>
<p>3) I have only remarked briefly on blossomâs post (pages back) about the kind of data analysis that [some] universities do, to get a sense of who âfits.â In my opinion, this post gave many extremely useful insights into admissions operations. </p>
<p>Some of the things that blossom mentioned seemed pretty obvious for a university to trackâe.g., how do students from various high schools tend to do at the university? Of course, this requires that there be enough students from a particular school, over time, to have data on that. This is an example of an admissions influence that is largely beyond the control of an applicantâthe applicant may not know how older students from his/her high school have done at any particular college. If there is a problem in terms of the track record of older students from the same school, and if the applicant knows about it, the only âfixâ might be to change high schools. (This is an observation, not a recommendation.) I think that âInstitutional Researchâ at lots of universities tracks the performance of students from different high schools, and that the great majority of universities give those data to the admissions office.</p>
<p>Other things on blossomâs list surprised me. Although I know that donations to universities can influence admissions outcomes, if the donations are very, very large, I did not know that some universities tracked donations when the graduate is 5 years out, as an indicator of âfit.â I donât think that happens at my university, for a combination of reasons: Advancement (i.e. fund-raising) is separate from admissions; the cross-talk involves only major donors; and we are not so selective that itâs really needed.</p>
<p>I think that if a reader who is looking for little-known tips on getting in were to plumb blossomâs post, she/he would find it very illuminating. I will try to find the post # for easier reference.</p>
<p>Added: Found itâitâs #1441. Among other remarks, blossom includes: âUniversities track starting salaries by major and by degree; universities know who has a job 9 months after graduation and who is in grad school; who has begun to contribute to the alumni fund by their 5th reunion (a very important statistic which is tracked and segmented to a fare thee well) and who has not. And most obviously- universities know who gets into Med School (and with what grades, MCAT scores) and who does not; who gets into Law school, etc.â </p>
<p>From this post, I had the impression that these data went into judging the âfitâ of an applicant. There is not much that an applicant can do about the track record of the people who resemble her/him . . . although, if the applicant thinks very far out of the box, it might be influenceableâe.g. an applicant could encourage older grads who are like her/him to be sure to contribute to the university, early on.</p>
<p>Just thinking about it doesnât make assumptions correct.</p>
<p>Sorry, I ran out of editing time before I could read blossomâs post #1441 again in full. In that post, blossom did not explicitly mention tracking how students from particular high schools do at the university. My university does that, though. I am not sure whether the applicantâs particular high school is included in the data analysis that blossom mentioned; I think it is more likely than not.</p>
<p>Could you please expand on your comment in #1542, lookingforward, by identifying a few of the assumptions that are incorrect?</p>
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<p>Got an email recently asking us contribute to Dâs school fund that supports a bunch of programs. Here is a quote.</p>
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<p>My first thought is how did 80% get money to donate before graduating! :)</p>
<p>On a side note, I donât know how alums as a group donate money but I was quite impressed by how Princeton alums donate as groups. Apparently each graduating batch picks a project to donate to some years out in their career (20 or 25 years?). They seem to take pride in stating class of 1985 built so and so building.</p>
<p>I wonder, though, if the kind of process that blossom is describing affects decisions at the macro or micro level. I have a hard time imagining that each individual admissions decision is taking into account things like whether or not students whose main EC is habitat for humanity tend to be donors five years out, or checking to see how the two other students admitted from this applicantâs marginal high school did when they got here. That wouldnât actually make much sense, as applicants will doubtless appear in multiple categories. Like, maybe an applicant is in a group that tends to be less likely to give, but more likely to win a Rhodes. Or, maybe a student comes from a marginal high school, but also has a higher SAT score than other students from similar schools who havenât done well.</p>
<p>What makes more sense is to assume that these considerations have a role in determining the macro priorities of an institution. For instance, if students identified as leaders give more money than students identified as scholars, it may justify, from an institutional perspective, a model of looking for multiply talented people rather than selecting purely on the basis of things like scholarly potential or artistic talent. Similarly, looking at the profile of kids who donât graduate might help to establish the floor beneath which students will find it difficult to succeed. </p>
<p>Of course, macro decisions will affect decisions at the individual level. But I donât think it is as direct as you seem to assume, QM. Rather, it comes back to the idea that there are only a certain number of spots for students of any given type. The university gets something from producing great scholars, and it gets something else from producing great entrepreneurs (donations is a part of it, but not the whole). Thatâs why they arenât going to admit a full class full of potential academics and researchers. But these are all large-scale concerns with a lot of factors behind them, so I donât really think encouraging your academic friends to donate to their alma maters is going to make much of a difference - even if all of them gave, colleges arenât going to stop reserving spots for potential Mark Zuckerbergs, and even if none of them did, they arenât going to stop reserving spots for potential Stephen Hawkings. </p>
<p>Fwiw, one can always expect a romantic viewpoint on the rise of Chicago, or the impact of the leadership of the school in its admissionsâ department. </p>
<p>While we could debate ad nauseam if the essays that made the application either appealing or off putting played a role or if the common application opened the floodgates to hordes of âqualifiedâ and âwhat is there to loseâ applicants, there are a few easy to spot historical facts:</p>
<p>$$$$ In the first five years of this century, Chicago languished in the rankings in a zone shared with Cornell. In 2007, this changed after Chicago discussed with Morse how to present its data in a more relevant manner. With a stroke of a few pencils, Chicago jumped in the top ten. And THAT is important to the serial prestige seekers who build their application list based on USNews and not much else. Chicago and Columbia are tied at the hip in this strategy, with the latter relying on creative reporting. </p>
<p>ÂŁÂŁÂŁÂŁ Chicago maintained its no-risk open EA round and massively marketed it. It routinely accepted more EA students than possible enrollees. A staggering number among highly selective schools. </p>
<p>âŹâŹâŹâŹ A certain junior politician contributed to make Chicago (and Oxy) cool through his rapid climb in national politics. </p>
<p>The rest is blah blah! </p>
<p>^ Keep digging and editing your post! You might find the relevant ⊠facts. </p>
<p>I havenât commented on how I think that the various data that the admissions office gathers (per blossom) all factor into the decision making. The macro-level analysis suggested by apprenticeprof makes sense to me, though as a public university that draws large numbers of students from in-state, we do a high-school-by-high-school analysis (in state), as do other large, public universities that I know about. </p>
<p>However, blossomâs comment that âwho has begun to contribute to the alumni fund by their 5th reunion (a very important statistic which is tracked and segmented to a fare thee well)â suggests a more micro-level analysis. </p>
<p>I see the point of segmenting alumni donors and non-donors to a âfare thee well,â if one is trying to figure out what could cause alumni in the non-donor group to make donations, while not alienating the donors. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I believe that blossom originally raised this issue in connection with assessments of âfit,â which makes it seem that the segmentation somehow affects admissionsâperhaps just at the level of âWe always get large donations from polo players whose families own jets.â </p>
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<p>The tracking of individual applicants from admission to graduation as a basis to judge future applicants from particular high schools or SES backgrounds is understandable considering past history. </p>
<p>5+ decades ago, it was still common for elite collegesâŠespecially Ivies to track individual studentsâŠespecially alums from boarding schools with which they had close relationships so finely to the point they sent a copy of the BS alum grade reports back to the BS headmaster. </p>
<p>More recently, a relative who served as an adcom at an elite NE college and a friend who did work-study at his both admitted they keep special eye and track applications from legacy/developmental admits as they fulfill critical institutional needs on the financial, connection, and loyalty fronts. </p>
<p>Blossom did not say she worked in admissions. She said alum interviewer.</p>
<p>And you know, the fact that alum donations are important says zip about admissions analysis.</p>
<p>So whatâs this about segmentation and how it affects admissions?? Not what she said at all. Itâs Q musing.</p>
<p>All this is being spun into one mighty big web based on, IMO, some misreads. </p>
<p>blossomâs post #1441 reads as if it is partly about admissions. She seems to be in a position to know what kinds of information is available to admissions offices. It seems to me that she was saying that who gives donations within 5 years of graduation is a measure of âfit.â Perhaps blossom will correct the parts of this that are based on my mis-reading.</p>
<p>I may have had a hard time parsing post #1441 because of its opening line.</p>
<p>QM, read it again, just what it does say.
Not what you think it could mean- or maybe if âthisâ holds then it might mean âthat.â<br>
In many posts, she has talked about how Uâs tick. No more, no less.<br>
She did not say, did NOT say, that donations w/i 5 years are a measure of fit and something calculated, figured or analyzed by adcoms. Go back over it, if you need to, rather than suppose.<br>
Because the sequence of your questions based on what you suppose can confuse others. </p>
<p>Texaspg: âhow did 80% get money to donate before graduatingâ<br>
You realize this can be small amounts, right? To get them started.</p>
<p>Also, the usual warning to watch out for some postersâ anecdotes from past times. </p>
<p>LF - Define small amounts. I know many are not making money but there are a bunch at that school who already have boatloads of stock options who could theoretically be very generous. So I am not certain how I would read an 80% participation rate without knowing the total given (not published in the story) for the senior gift.</p>
<p>I suspect they are touting the 80% participation number more than the actual amount raised by the seniors.</p>
<p>oh jeez. Iâm in a time warp.</p>
<p>QM- i never said that admissions officers evaluate applications on the basis of who might give what five years out. That is both false and a ridiculous presumption. False because the link between the universityâs development office and admissions is very well known- if you are parent who has given a seven figure gift to a particular college, the Adcomâs will be aware of that fact when reading the application (via the development people). Itâs a pretty simple link. That doesnât mean little Joey is getting in. But it means that information on major donors is shared between the offices. You seem to believe that because Admissions occupies a cute space in a Victorian house in the center of campus and Institutional Research, Assessment, Alumni Affairs, Development, Sponsored Research, Career Services, Fellowship and Grad school counseling, etc. all are housed elsewhere, that that donât share. They do. Maybe not at your university, but certainly at the places we are talking about. And some of the links are transparent and obvious (when Reed is recruiting star professors, the fact that they rate so highly in PhD production is surely not kept a secret; when Swarthmore is cultivating a donor for an endowed chair in economics, the employment statistics on the number of grads who end up at the Federal Reserve, banks, or the OCC, etc. is part and parcel of the âaskâ.)</p>
<p>My comments about the kind of data universities track was in response to YOUR repeated comments which both state and suggest that universities donât have data (your university tracks the minimum, apparently- the drop out rate, who finishes in 4 years and how many finish in 6 years, that kind of thing) and I was pointing out that the majority of universities have TONS of data- and I tried to be illustrative in showing just how much data they have (you are the scientist after all). Your implication seems to be that the Adcomâs go on hunches, whim, whimsy, or whatever you want to call it, and I was pointing out that although a single admissions decision MIGHT appear to be whimsical (or possibly discriminate against the true intellectuals in favor of a lightweight with an offbeat EC) in the aggregate, universities run on lots and lots of information, and many of the decisions are QUITE well informed and not at all random or whatever your choice of word might be.</p>
<p>Got it? They have lots of information and the sophisticated universities use it. </p>
<p>You have suggested that some top universities have abandoned their missions as intellectual havens for great minds. I have pointed out that this is not true, and that the Harvards, MITâs, Dartmouths of the world know going into the process that a certain number of their admits will be pure academic admits. Not a water polo player, not a âsave the worldâ with a carbon free stove invention for China or Africa.</p>
<p>But none of the top universities in the US want a class comprised entirely of âlive in the labâ types. So other institutional priorities come into play. Again- adcomâs donât need to guess what these are (you were the person I believe who stated that MIT admissions is not MIT). Institutional priorities are quite transparent to admissions officers. It isnât random that the year after a college hires its first full time Muslim Chaplain, the number of kids with strong Islamic affiliations will be admitted. It wasnât random when Vanderbilt started admitting (and recruiting) kids who were active in synagogue youth programs or had attended Jewish day schools- the president of the university was quite open about his interest in increasing the numbers of Jewish kids on campus. And of course- there is overlap. The Jewish kid from Maine who also plays the cello can tick a number of boxes at Vanderbilt- and might even be a strong academic admit, imagine that.</p>
<p>The use of alumni and employment data is part of a continuing feedback loop. No employer wants to recruit on a campus where their yield will be zero- waste of time and money. So if the kids coming out of XYZ program do not meet some de minimus requirement- the employers donât come. Thatâs where institutional assessment comes into play. You have a nursing school? Make sure your grads can pass their boards, make sure your program covers off the curriculum it needs to. Passing rates start to slip? Tighten up the requirements- higher math SAT scores for incoming students? Eliminating the loophole that allows students to get credit for courses taken at other institutions which are not accredited? Thatâs what the assessment folks do all day (and if you work at a big university, trust me, you have this function).</p>
<p>I wonât bore everyone else by playing this out across all the data gathering and analysis functions Iâve listed-- but clearly, universities track lots of information, SOME of which will be used to help make informed decisions around admissions. Every year you can predict like clockwork that kids who start in January and not September will have higher drop out rates by junior year⊠so you eliminate January admissions. </p>
<p>OK??? Apologies for the long and boring threads. Just trying to clear up what QM has attributed to me.</p>
<p>Texaspg, Iâve heard of $10-15-25, getting them used to even a small effort, early. </p>
<p>"Some of the things that blossom mentioned seemed pretty obvious for a university to trackâe.g., how do students from various high schools tend to do at the university? Of course, this requires that there be enough students from a particular school, over time, to have data on that. "</p>
<p>It neednât be a particular high school, though. There are tons of ways to classify zips by SES. Thereâs no reason you couldnât combine, for example, New Trier HS and New Canaan HS. </p>
<p>In post #1554, blossom states: âand I was pointing out that the majority of universities have TONS of data- and I tried to be illustrative in showing just how much data they have (you are the scientist after all). Your implication seems to be that the Adcomâs go on hunches, whim, whimsy, or whatever you want to call it, and I was pointing out that although a single admissions decision MIGHT appear to be whimsical (or possibly discriminate against the true intellectuals in favor of a lightweight with an offbeat EC) in the aggregate, universities run on lots and lots of information, and many of the decisions are QUITE well informed and not at all random or whatever your choice of word might be.â</p>
<p>As I read #1554, it seems to me that blossom is saying that the Adcomâs have and use the tons of data that the universities generate (in multiple offices). It also seems to me that when the comment is made that âmany of the decisions are QUITE well informed and not at all random,â admissions decisions are included in that set.</p>
<p>So was #1441 not about admissions? I thought that #1441 was about admissions and data relevant to âfit.â I have looked at it again. It still seems to me to be about data relevant to âfitâ (see the opening sentence of the second paragraph in #1441).</p>
<p>I didnât think that the odds that someone would give within 5 years of graduation went into an admissions decision in a direct way, but blossom did say that the number of alums who do give within 5 years is analyzed in detail (âsegmented to a fare thee wellâ), and I had the impression that this was viewed as one measure of fit. I formed this impression because it was mentioned in the paragraph that started out, âYes, there is no question that universities (not yours, apparently, but some) understand what âfitâ is in their own context.â </p>
<p>Donations 5 years out might factor into admissions at one remove, by being one datum that goes into a plus to students from Groton, for example. I kind of believe that. Is that way off? But perhaps the data on giving 5 years out actually have nothing to do with fit?</p>
<p>What I was specifically questioning was the availability of âdata and observationsâ related to âfit.â Aside from the issue of religious affiliations, it seems to me that most of the data you have mentioned, blossom, is not much related to the idea of âfit.â As I understood the term, I thought âfitâ had more to do with personality and the way that a student integrates into groups on campus. Perhaps not. A requirement for academic âfitâ seems more or less essential, to me. When people say, âItâs all about fit!â I donât think they are saying âItâs all about meeting the academic requirementsââor even the requirements to do quite well at the university in question.</p>
<p>The % of nursing students who pass their board exams, the % of students who get into med school, the MCAT scores, the % of students who get into law school, the LSAT scores, the % of students in grad school and where, and the GRE scores (combining elements of #1441 and #1554 and adding some) address academic accomplishment. They donât address âfitâ as I have understood the term, unless students are so discombobulated by lack of fit that their academics drop off.</p>
<p>Apologies for the back-to-back posts, but I didnât want these comments to get lost in the longer post above:</p>
<p>Just as Yogi Berra once said, âI really didnât say everything I said!â, I really didnât attribute to blossom everything that blossom has been clearing up. </p>
<p>Actually, I have never said that admissions decisions are randomâclearly they are not. I do believe that there is a ârandom element,â in them, though. </p>
<p>By that, I mean that there are elements that go into the decision, over which the applicant has no control, and which are not likely to be perfectly replicable from year to year. I would believe that there were <em>zero</em> random elements if the admissions committees in two different years, without conferring, and in the absence of shifts in institutional priorities, would pick exactly the same students to admit, from each yearâs application cohort. </p>
<p>I realize that this is an experiment that cannot be run. Also, I realize that there might be shifts in institutional preferences from year to year (as at Princeton and Vanderbilt). Those are not random at all, but they are not under the applicantâs control, either.</p>
<p>OMG, QM.<br>
Give it up. This is ridiculous. Youâre kidding. </p>