Angry over the college admissions process

[mokusatsu]

<p>Nobel Physics Prize</p>

<p>2011
Brian Schmidt, BS Univ of Arizona</p>

<p>2012
David Wineland, BS Univ of California</p>

<p>Nobel Chemistry Prize</p>

<p>2009
Thomas Steitz, BS Lawrence Univ</p>

<p>2010
Richard Heck, BS, UCLA</p>

<p>2012
Brian Kobilka, BS, Univ of Minnesota, Duluth</p>

[muckdogs07]

<p>The stakes involved in admissions decisions at top schools </p>

<p>Supreme Court Justices (undergrad/law)</p>

<p>Roberts Harvard/Harvard
Ginsburg – Cornell/Harvard and Columbia
Alito – Princeton/Yale
Scalia – Georgetown/Harvard
Kennedy – Stanford/Harvard
Breyer – Stanford/Harvard
Sotomayor – Princeton/Yale
Thomas – Holy Cross/Yale
Kagan – Princeton/Harvard</p>

[muckdogs07]

<p>Beliavsky
"f a $31 billion dollar endowment earns 8% and avoids paying taxes at a 25% rate (choosing a rate between the long-term capital gains rate and the highest ordinary income tax rate), that amounts to a $620 mil annual benefit. Harvard’s other federal subsidies include tax-deductible donations from alumni, Pell grants, and federally guaranteed student loans.</p>

<p>If Harvard’s admissions policies are largely devoted to furthering Harvard’s power and prestige, rather than the national welfare, Federal subsidies on the order of $1 billion a year ought to be curtailed."</p>

<p>Agree, which is why I want more transparency in the admissions process and a more honest assessment of the criteria actually used. I do not think the processes at most top schools really are “holistic” as claimed by the top colleges – especially as more applicants flow in each year – but much more objective ala the Ivy Academic Index (but applied to separate groups of applicants) with a look at fit coming just at the end.</p>

[giterdone]

<p>@muckdogs07 - what you’ve just highlighted is “the old boys network” You know, there is no requirement to be a degree’d lawyer to be a Supreme Court Justice, right?</p>

<p>@LF - being “analytical” to you means; to self deprive one of potential options by not taking chances?</p>

[mythmom]

<p>I was somewhat joking. But without true ethicists to help determine the ends of our discoveries I do think we have problems. And those ethicists may not score 2400 on their SAT’s. Their sophisticated compasses may not reveal themselves to a testing matrix.</p>

<p>And how influential and powerful are our genius scientists? General Leslie Groves (I think I have the name right) managed to hide the fact that Germany was no longer trying to build a bomb from the Manhattan Project scientists.</p>

<p>I was joking about Einstein ( no tests for sense of humor), but I don’t understand why one kind if intelligence is so privileged over others.</p>

<p>And Einstein was a PITA to have around in many ways. That’s one reason he was a patent clerk and not a professor.</p>

<p>His brilliance relied on metaphor and imagining. There were folks with stronger math skills, though I’m sure he would have scored brilliantly on all standardized tests.</p>

<p>And I am not ashamed of suggesting that a nuclear world might not be a good thing. </p>

<p>Of course, after MarievCurie it was really all over.</p>

[absweetmarie]

<p>Yes, muckdogs07, an elite school pedigree seems to be de rigueur for someone who wants a shot at one of the NINE positions on the highest court in the land. Many people have had satisfying, productive legal careers without scaling this lofty peak.</p>

[skrlvr]

<p>It is a long way from ‘non academic’ factors impacting admissions to having the next Einstein rejected in favor of a coxswain.</p>

[lake42ks]

<p>

Isn’t this also a function of the constantly moving target of “holistic admissions”, which means different things to different schools, with few schools disclosing the current institutional preferences that influence their admissions process. Isn’t transparency the first step toward more informed students/parents etc and, under holistic, if everything May count doesn’t that mean that nothing Must count.

</p>

<p>

ps. recruitable female coxswain has been a boost. In a few years, when kids catch on, something else will replace it.

</p>

<p>What David Brooks, one of my favorite columnists/writers, says in his book, “The Social Animal”, page 4, might be of relevance.</p>

<p>“Like most upper- and upper-middle-class children, these kids are really good at obscure sports. Centuries ago, members of the educated class discovered that they could no longer compete in football, baseball, and basketball, so they stole lacrosse from the American Indians to give them something to dominate.”</p>

[mythmom]

<p>I’m pretty sure that a scientist of Einstein’s caliber would have started research in high school and would have a particular mentor in mind to work with. The Val and sal of my son’s class went to Stony Brook to continue work in physics they’d already begun. Both have fathers who are physicists at Brookhaven National Labs who save no reason to send their kids( one daughter, one son) anywhere else. The honors college was a free ride.</p>

<p>Lower down the pecking order were kids who went to Princeton, Cornell, Haverford, Williams, Chapel Hill. And many other kids went there too. Oh yeah, two went to Princeton. One lived it; one hated it.</p>

[Periwinkle]

<p>Fun fact: James Bryant Conant, Harvard University President from 1933 - 1953. Involved in founding the Educational Testing Service, the United Nations, AND the Manhattan Project:</p>

<p>

Through issues surrounding the selection of National Scholarship recipients, Conant became deeply involved in the expanded use of the Scholastic Aptitude Test developed by Princeton’s Carl Campbell Brigham. Conant eventually headed the commission whose recommendations led to the formation of the Educational Testing Service in 1947.</p>

<p>Immersion in such major public questions typified the man. Conant testified before U.S. Senate committees (e.g., on federal aid to education, creation of the National Science Foundation, and the Lend-Lease Bill). He conferred with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as a defense-research emissary to England. In July 1944, Conant offered the facilities of Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Washington, D.C.) for a U.S. State Department conference on postwar security. The resulting Dumbarton Oaks Proposals laid the foundations of the United Nations Charter.</p>

<p>Conant’s most remarkable governmental role began in 1941 with an appointment to chair the National Defense Research Committee and, later, to serve as special deputy to Vannevar Bush, head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. As a result, Conant was among the first to receive word of Enrico Fermi’s success in generating the world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction - a critical step toward the atomic bomb. In July 1945 at Alamogordo, N.M., Conant witnessed the first atomic-bomb test. Shortly after World War II, he traveled to Moscow for talks (involving Great Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union) on international control of the bomb.

<a href=“http://www.harvard.edu/history/presidents/conant[/url]”>http://www.harvard.edu/history/presidents/conant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[lookingforward]

<p>Hold on! I think Quant should interview for new workers in his field. Adcoms revew for college admissions, not job hires. College.</p>

<p>Are you seriously saying that we would be better off if Einstein had not lived?
No, the comment was annoying student, PITA. </p>

<p>Git- what chances? You planning to try out for the Olympics because…if you don’t, you won’t know? You applying for Microsoft job or a CEO position because, maaaybe… Or, you do your homework, assess your shot? </p>

<p>It’s worse. Bright kids defeating themselves because they can’t pull together a good app. Not rocket science. If they can’t interpret what is out there- and can’t seek advice from savvy adults- what does that say about them? That they are entitled to an interpreter to…go to one of the top schools? It doesn’t make sense.</p>

[Bay]

<p>

If a $31 billion dollar endowment earns 8% and avoids paying taxes at a 25% rate (choosing a rate between the long-term capital gains rate and the highest ordinary income tax rate), that amounts to a $620 mil annual benefit. Harvard’s other federal subsidies include tax-deductible donations from alumni

</p>

<p>These are not subsidies, they are tax breaks.</p>

<p>

If Harvard’s admissions policies are largely devoted to furthering Harvard’s power and prestige, rather than the national welfare, Federal subsidies on the order of $1 billion a year ought to be curtailed.

</p>

<p>In other words, you are saying that H ought to be taxed at a higher rate (your “subsidy” argument works only if you start with the premise that all of H’s money belongs to the govt, who gets to decide how much of it H can keep), and H should not be allowed to accept Pell grants or govt loans. The latter would leave the poor kids at the mercy of H’s generosity even more than they are now.</p>

[Beliavsky]

<p>

@Pizzagirl

Well, what are they going to say? We really want kids who spend their free time doing Activity X? So then they’ll get inundated with kids who all do Activity X. Yawn. They want INTERESTING people to select from, not kids who all dutifully did what they thought would get them in. Why is this so hard to get?

</p>

<p>Interesting to whom? How do we know that what is interesting to one or two admissions officers reading an application will be interesting to college classmates or professors looking for research assistants? I understand that college students can contribute in ways not measured by grades. I participated in memorable events in college that would not have existed without a talented student fundraiser and organizer. But have colleges ever tried to identify which students have contributed the most to campus life and correlate those contributions to their personal ratings on college applications?</p>

[Bay]

<p>I read a book years ago, that argued that all of our important discoveries/inventions would have been discovered/invented anyway, if the credited person had never existed. (Like most things, I can’t remember what the book was called anymore. ;)) The argument being that mankind was on the verge of finding/inventing all those things at the time, and we recognize the one person who happened to be the first to do it. That makes sense to me.</p>

[notrichenough]

<p>

These are not subsidies, they are tax breaks.

Two sides of the same coin.</p>

<p>

The latter would leave the poor kids at the mercy of H’s generosity even more than they are now.

For one percent of Harvard’s endowment per year or less, Harvard could be free for all undergraduates.</p>

<p>Is it unreasonable for a non-profit the benefits from hundred of millions if not billions in tax breaks and direct subsidies (how much gov’t money does Harvard get for research every year?) to spend at least 1% of their endowment every year on the purpose for which they receive non-profit status?</p>

[lookingforward]

<p>Omg, Bel, why not interesting to adcoms instead of interesting to you? Adcoms are far more savvy than you give them credit for. Yes, adcoms constantly evaluate what sorts of kids fit and thrive, are engaged beyond the classroom, tend to have vision, etc. They are engaged in near-constant dialogue. I wish people could get past the notion they are merely gatekeepers.</p>

<p>Btw, is the 8% growth figre for H based on some source? Where I am, it is far more than 8%. At the values of their total endowments, these guys get primo advisors.</p>

<p>add: Crimson 9/2012: Last year, Harvard’s endowment grew by 21.4 percent to $32 billion. Over the past 20 years, the Harvard’s average annual endowment return has averaged 12.3 percent.</p>

[Bay]

<p>

Two sides of the same coin.

</p>

<p>How so? A tax break is getting to keep money you earned. A subsidy is receiving money you didn’t earn.</p>

<p>

For one percent of Harvard’s endowment per year or less, Harvard could be free for all undergraduates.

</p>

<p>Sure, but why should H be required to do this, and not every other private u that receives research money and Pell grants?</p>

[lookingforward]

<p>it just seems, from wanting all bright kids to get in, we’ve moved to “and it should be explained how they can get in” and now, “and go fo free.”</p>

[sally305]

<p>

But have colleges ever tried to identify which students have contributed the most to campus life and correlate those contributions to their personal ratings on college applications?

</p>

<p>For the love of God. There is no quantifiable measure of what constitutes the greatest contribution to campus life. LIFE IS SUBJECTIVE. Get over it.</p>

[notrichenough]

<p>What is the actual difference between being given a tax break that lowers your taxes by $500 million, and paying the tax but getting $500 million back as a payment from the gov’t? Zero as for as I can see.

Definition of ‘Subsidy’
A benefit given by the government to groups or individuals usually in the form of a cash payment or tax reduction. The subsidy is usually given to remove some type of burden and is often considered to be in the interest of the public.

</p>

<p>[Subsidy</a> Definition | Investopedia](<a href=“http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/subsidy.asp]Subsidy”>Subsidies: Definition, How They Work, Pros and Cons)</p>

<p>

Sure, but why should H be required to do this, and not every other private u that receives research money and Pell grants?

I think that every non-profit should be required to show that they are spending some percentage of their income and endowment on the recipients of the services of the non-profit.</p>