Diversity. Why is it good? Why is it a goal of Universities?

Applying to College
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Not to argue, but I just want to note in my view his stellar academics mattered a lot, since he is going to UVA!

And while I was obviously not in the room, I am sure he was considered a competitive applicant in all those various admissions committees. That it is not going to be enough for most of those kids who get to that point, because of the math. But I guess I just want to emphasize that even getting to the point of being academically competitive for these colleges is a very rare accomplishment in the greater scheme.

And that explains why even the kids like that who do not get into one of the most selective few private colleges almost always end up at some other great college, a top public like UVA, or a top LAC, or another private university that is just a little less selective. Because they are in fact academic stars.

And in fact, they will be the “diversity” picks at those colleges, meaning that college looked at them and thought their enrolled class would be as strong as possible with them as one of the many different students in that class.

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Most of the most selective colleges are not so much more rigorous in college than a typical college, so that the minimum academic strength to handle college work is not greater than “ordinary excellent” high school academic credentials.

Hence, those colleges can select from those 72% and not worry about graduation rates.

However, that does not prevent those colleges from considering academic strength far beyond that minimum in admissions. Indeed, it is likely that they do for at least some of the class, so that they can retain their “top academic” reputations, even if some of the class is made up of “ordinary excellent” students who have favored characteristics like recruited athlete, relation to big donor, legacy, etc


Note that this is the “diversity” that those colleges are looking for in terms of marketing purposes. They need the top-end academic students to maintain their “top academic” reputations in order to market themselves to the most academically strong potential students (and make everyone else who enrolls feel more elite). They need the donor relatives to help market themselves to donors. They need legacies to bring in more small donations (or at least they believe so). They need athletes to market their sports strength (the Ivy League is an NCAA D1 conference, and Stanford is also an NCAA D1 school).

Of course, there are exceptions. Caltech’s minimum academic rigor in college is significantly higher than other highly selective colleges, and their admissions places a much greater emphasis on academic strength. However, Caltech cannot rack-and-stack by typical US high school and SAT/ACT stats, since these measures’ ceilings are too low.

MIT is somewhere between Caltech and most of the other highly selective colleges, in having higher than typical minimum academic rigor in college, with presumably somewhat greater emphasis on academic strength in admissions (note that it does not consider legacy, which it markets as “if you got into MIT, it’s because you got into MIT”, and de-emphasizes athletics in admissions).

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Even if no applicants submitted both SAT and ACT scores, only 54% of applicants submitted scores.

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To me, the title of this thread seems disingenuous. The OP asked “I’m interested in why diversity is assumed to be a positive,” but much of the thread is a rant on why posters believe diversity is detrimental to admissions and unfairly penalizes some applicants. I question if the posters are actually interested in the positive aspects of diversity on campus or really if many just want to discuss the pros and cons of considering diversity as an admissions factor.

To be honest, I think a good chunk of CC threads are exactly that --an excuse to discuss college applications and admissions strategies with a healthy dose of frustration about who is and isn’t admitted and why. It is a little tiresome with most just arguing why admissions offices should or shouldn’t prioritize various factors when they are evaluating applications. Those of us who care about increasing low income students on campus talk about why income should be prioritized more in admissions. Those who care about SAT scores rehash why that should be considered more in admissions and so on and so forth over and over again across many threads.

That is fine if it is the topic folks wish to discuss, but talking about applications doesn’t really address the benefits and problems associated with a diverse college population once they have matriculated to a campus. Some posters including me have listed some of the advantages of a diverse student body and faculty over a homogeneous one and why having a diverse community is important to universities. I am sure that there are others who can discuss why a homogenous one might be preferable (more harmony? less divisiveness?) or at least discuss why the missions of various colleges can be better met with a homogenous community. But that has not been the majority of the discussion here so if the question is not really “Diversity. Why is it good? Why is it a goal of Universities?” then maybe it should be retitled “Diversity. What role does it play in admissions? Whom does it benefit and whom does it hurt?”

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You’re 100% right. That is, in fact, what this thread’s focus has been. Not an examination of the benefits (or lack thereof) of diversity itself.

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It pretty much is a guaranteed admit at MIT, as about 85% of the IMO gold medalists over the past 10 years not only were admitted to MIT, but attend[ed] MIT.

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Setting to slow mode until tomorrow morning while mods review.

Please stick to a general discussion of diversity in all forms. Some deleted posts included examples and comments that did not follow the CC policy related to discussing race in admissions.

Per long-standing policy, this is the only thread on which the impact of race on admissions can be discussed. Users not members of the Politics Forum will need to join before posting.

Thanks for your understanding.

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I’m going to stick my neck out and just assume that this is the gist of your argument.

My answer is: Yes. I think most of us have been responding positively to the question in the subject line with that as our framework. Am I completely off-base?

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100%. If anybody thinks that Williams is admitting people below the bar to fill out their women’s crew team, they simply don’t know what they’re talking about. And I can vouch for your comment about no academic relief. There is none.

The “athlete” flex was oversimplified by the OP.

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The former deputy undersecretary of the Department of Education wrote a piece for the NYT Times with many of the issues as described here identified and discussed. The parents and kids are the victims in a system where Colleges (especially highly selective colleges), are allowed to arbitrarily control all aspects of admission including timing, financial aid and criteria for admission with the last category being almost entirely secretive under the cloud of “constructing a diverse class”. That’s the “diversity” cloak of secrecy.

“Colleges want certainty” and that leads to a system where athletic recruits, legacies and all manner of privileged are given a leg up over other more academically accomplished students. It’s about “yield” and not about smarts. Something is broken when at every admitted students’ gathering for a HYPMS+ school, the admitted students’ next option would have been Northeastern. Just look at the financial aid lawsuit and settlement. These schools don’t want to compete for the top students, and they create a secretive system cloaked in the word “diversity” so they don’t have to. Meanwhile, students get no certainty, or only certainty that comes from legacy or carefully curated athletic sports that assort enormously with wealth.

By example, this article explicitly directly points to the scenario where students who perform at the absolute top of the testing and academic pyramid and with top notch extracurricular research and activities are passed over at top schools to suit other institutional goals.

And the result? Students are “terrified” by a system where no school is a “safety” and no school is a “stretch”. Every school is a strategy. What other country thinks this is fair? Is each College at Oxford and Cambridge not a good “community”? How presumptuous to think so. And no examination of extracurriculars or times in the erg tank are needed to make a good community at King’s College. And I think Oxford and Cambridge have a pretty long tradition of Crew and Squash. Come on.

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Unfortunately, the NYT article neither states that nor even comes close to implying that.

What it does say is:

The quality of the applicants has risen also. In 2002, the nation produced 134 perfect ACT scores; in 2023 there were 2,542. Over the same period, the United States — and beyond it, the world — welcomed a great many more families into the ranks of the wealthy, who are by far the most likely to attend an elite college. Something had to give.
Opinion | 2024 Was the Year That Broke College Admissions - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

People are free to read the article and form their own conclusions. And there is more than enough grist for the mill in a continuing conversation about the role of “holistic admissions” in the sausage making that goes into constructing a first-year class. But putting words in the mouth of the author is not the way to do it.

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As usual, I will just note that is definitely not how it works with the HYPMS kids at our feederish HS.

Like, my S24’s friend who I understand has chosen Yale also got into several other Ivies and Ivy+, was offered the Morehead Cain at UNC, and so on. In fact once I started spending enough time with SCOIR, I started recognizing a lot of the dots as repeat admits on different scattergrams, and I could see the same kids getting admitted to multiple Ivy+, other “T20s”, various highly selective LACs, publics, and so on.

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No words were placed anywhere. Please keep it civil. The article itself was provided for absolute transparency.

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Having seen 15+ years of admissions (including this years’), at a HYPMS school, that is exactly how it works.

The admissions director at Horace Mann also states in the article as provided. Each school is different. It’s in the passage where he is quoted talking about how each school is different and there are no safety schools any more.

Even on CC, there is just not a narrative that students routinely get into multiple ivies. Literally thousands of posts discussing precisely that observation.

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A more correct statement would be that the students encountered by the maker of the claim that “there are no safety schools any more” are only interested in non-safety schools.

Students who have academic credentials to be possible admits to the most selective schools are likely to find many safety schools (including automatic full rides for high stats if they need such a thing).

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Really? Obviously only a subset of kids get into any Ivy+ (many do not even apply). But among those kids who do, I seem to recall plenty of kids choosing between multiple Ivy+ admits, and again considering offers (sometimes merit offers) from other traditional T20s, highly selective LAC offers, and so on.

Again I can’t answer for what other people might be claiming, but our high numbers kids, with the help of our college counselors, typically identify at least two of what we call Likelies, and definitely almost always get into both.

To me what seems more apparent is that certain colleges that once were considered Likelies for high numbers coastal kids are no longer Likelies for high numbers coastal kids, and so if they want to get a true Likely they may need to consider colleges they would not have had to consider before. (Edit: I see another poster made the same point.)

Like, Pitt is a super popular Likely among our high numbers kids, for a variety of reasons–no sign of yield protection, good all around university in a fun city, rolling admissions so if you apply early enough you might get an offer before you are even applying elsewhere, possible merit, possible honors, and so on. And I have not heard of any kid for whom we classified Pitt as a Likely, and who applied reasonably early, not getting accepted.

And again, I feel like this is true of many kids on CC. Like, IF they cast a wide net, and apply to some colleges that the knowledgeable people here suggest will be very Likely admits for them, they in fact tend to get admitted to those colleges!

Edit: Actually, I just remembered we did some polling about Ivy admits:

Just quickly scanning the admits, I can see several of the kids I personally know about who got multiple Ivy admits. I am not sure who all the letters might be, but I am sure there are more.

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There are also the results of our survey where we also break down the Ivy League results:

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I don’t believe that is the case. Seems hyberpbolic.

On what planet do these students live?

Why do we need to do things like Oxford and Cambridge? Is the US not flush with world-class universities? How did that happen? Posters throw that point out on CC like it’s an axiom. People are complex beings and often bring more to the table than the their standardized test scores. Don’t misunderstand - I am a supporter of standardized testing, but I try to keep it in some kind of perspective. There are many reasons why a university might want to admit the kid with a 3.69 and 32 ACT over the kid with a 3.78 and 33 ACT. Whether the kid is an uber talented violinist or athlete, it is not on its face, to me, inappropriate for an adcom to take take that into account of the mix of qualities an applicant has in assessing their desirability for admission. For the privates at least, it’s their school and last I checked we weren’t nationalizing them any time soon.

I’m not saying that you don’t raise some good points. You do, and I don’t fundamentally disagree with your entire line of inquiry here. But you’re making a lot of sweeping generalizations and exaggerated statements, which always serves as a distraction to the underlying point.

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Anecdotally, I have had the same observations. Almost all the kids that I have interviewed and gotten into Yale also had a few other T20’s to choose from. Might not necessarily be HYPSM, but often it will be one of those or another Ivy, Duke, SLAC, UChic (S for selective in this case). This was also true of the kids my S met at Bulldog Days and his group of friends who matriculated. Makes sense to me because in addition to great GPA, rigor and test scores, they must have written a standout Common App essay and had great LoR’s that would resonate with most AO’s. In hindsight, we say of course, but unfortunately no one knows going in.

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FWIW, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Yale were this way. Their legacy preference is demonstrably lighter and their preferences appear quite a bit more “meritocratic” than
 say other HPMS schools, where say an anecdotal group of prospective freshman may be >50% hooked in some way. Based on my own observations. Maybe they’re just less worried about the “yield” number that the article talks about - even though a Yale rep did say they do calculate this using some algo.

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