<p>What if 60% of applicants came from private school, but only 44% of the admitted students came from private school? Would that prove bias then?</p>
<p>I’m sorry, sosomenza. I don’t know whether you’re a kid or a parent, but you’re mathematically, statistically, wrong. The 44% is only meaningful when you compare it to the % of the applicant pool that is from private school.</p>
<p>Try this one. If you found that 12% of Harvard’s admitted students were from California and 10% were from Rhode Island, would you conclude that they preferred California students over Rhode Island students since 12% > 10%? Or would you say – hmm, California and Rhode Island are different size states, I need to take that into account - and this could be due to EITHER a) tons of RI kids crowding the applicant pool OR b) they have a systematic preference for RI kids?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if the share of private high school graduates in the admitted class reflected the representation of private high school students in the pool of applicants, for any college. What’s more, certain high schools may send more apps to certain colleges, just because their students think the colleges “like our students.” Success can be self-perpetuating, imo. If Yale or Dartmouth accepts a student in 2014, students in 2015 may be more likely to apply to Yale or Dartmouth than Columbia or Chicago.</p>
<p>There are more competitive public schools in the suburbs. Dartmouth may draw more sporty kids from the suburbs who don’t want to attend college in the city.</p>
<p>The real comparisons should be drawn between selective private schools with high SATs/ACTs, and selective public exam & magnet schools.</p>
In the post you quoted (you left this part out of your quote), I used published real numbers for Bowdoin – 47% of applicants from private and parochial schools and 43% of the freshman class from private and parochial schools. This is not just random numbers to make the math work. Bowdoin really has almost exactly the same percent of freshman class from private schools as Yale, yet the data suggests public school applicants at Bowdoin are more likely to become matriculated students than private school applicants. Are you assuming that a far smaller portion of applicants at Yale come from private schools than at Bowdoin?</p>
<p>@Periwinkle:Well I don’t quite get your argument, but as a side note, I checked out Dartmouth website and found the following info for class 2016:</p>
<p>
Things have changes much since 1997? If it still holds true that the admit rates for public and private school applicants are identical, then the fact that 45% of its students are from private schools can be explained by either: 1) The composition of Dartmouth’s applicant pool has changed drastically from the 75%/25% or 80%/20% split over the years with a lot more private and/or a lot fewer public school students applying (OMG what have they done in these years?); or 2) The yield rate is Significantly lower with public than with private school students.</p>
<p>I’m a professional with an advanced degree that often uses statistics with financial modeling. Not that it matters since either student or professional my logic is sound. Yes more information is always a good thing, which is why I stated that the stats of the rejected populations is also needed to formulate an explanation. (Three times)</p>
<p>Everyone: 44% is a given bias. One cannot argue against it. One can argue that there’s plenty of valid reasons for the existence of the bias, but the bias remains nevertheless. With more information the only thing that changes is a valid explanation. The bias can never be disproven only explained. -GEEZ</p>
<p>So absolutely nothing about your interpretation would change if any of the following scenarios were true?</p>
<ul>
<li>10% of elite school applicants went to private school</li>
<li>40% of elite school applicants went to private school</li>
<li><p>75% of elite school applicants went to private school</p></li>
<li><p>Private school applicants to elite schools have worse SAT’s than public school applicants
-Private school applicants to elite school have the same SAT’s as public school applicants
-Private school applicants to elite schools have higher SAT’s as public school applicants</p></li>
</ul>
<p>You can’t think of any way those different combinations could be mixed and it would change your interpretation?</p>
<p>Brown released application figures for the Class of 2017. 71% of applicants attended public schools. 20% attended private schools. 9% attended parochial high schools.</p>
You previously wrote, “the only thing we know is that Yale (based on the 44%) appears to favor(sp) private schools.” The problem is assuming that Yale favors private school students instead of private school students favor applying to Yale. I’m fine with saying private HS students are more likely to apply to Yale than public HS students (this should be obvious), so that indicates they are biased towards applying to Yale. But that’s quite different from saying Yale favors private schools, implying Yale is biased towards accepting private school applicants over public school applicants.</p>
<p>When in doubt, follow the money. 2008 changed the world. How does Dartmouth’s financial aid compare to Harvard’s? Harvard and other colleges drastically expanded FA for students in the early 2000s. For many strong applicants from public schools, public universities or colleges which award merit money may be more attractive now than they were 16 years ago. </p>
<p>Or, Dartmouth may be courting development prospects, as <em>The Price of Admission</em> alleged Brown and Duke once did. We really have no way of knowing. It’s all speculation.</p>
<p>Another major factor in why even many Catholic students/classmates I knew didn’t apply/accept admission to Notre Dame was campus/dorm environment. Back in the '90s, Notre Dame had a reputation for having a highly religiously/socially conservative campus/dorm environment.</p>
<p>At my HS, only the highly conservative Catholics who didn’t mind/wanted such an environment applied/went to Notre Dame. </p>
<p>The more liberal Catholics/everyone else tended to opt for Georgetown, Boston College, Fordham, etc.</p>
<p>I don’t know…but I think a desire to not attend a school with restrictive dorm policies like serious limitations on visitors of the opposite sex to one’s dorm area to limited periods would be a detracting factor for many prospective applicants/students. </p>
<p>That and being in an environment where the more conservative forms of Catholicism prevails in the campus culture which may be off-putting to less conservative Catholics, non-Catholics, and those who want a much more secular college experience*. </p>
<p>Things may have changed since the '90s, but all of the above were observations by Notre Dame alums I knew from HS, my old neighborhood, and colleagues who attended during the period I was in undergrad and earlier. They loved ND, but even they admitted it wasn’t for everyone. </p>
<ul>
<li>In contrast to other Catholic colleges like Georgetown, Boston College, Manhattan College, Fordham, etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>Sigh. If 10% of elite school applicants were from private schools, and private school applicants had lower SAT’s on average than public school applicants, then if you found that 44% of elite school acceptees were from private schools - there would be some pretty compelling evidence that private school students were favored disproportionately.</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, 75% of elite school applicants went to private school, and private school applicants had higher SAT’s on average, and only 44% of elite school acceptees were from private schools – that would say if anything, the bias works the other way and if anything, the class should be “thicker” with private school kids than it is.</p>
<p>This is basic math. I don’t believe you do “financial modeling” if you don’t get this very basic concept. </p>
<p>But whatever. The sky’s falling, all elite schools uniformly prefer private over public. Decisions are one-dimensional like that.<br>
Signed, mother of two public schooled kids at elite colleges</p>
<p>not sure if this was already mentioned, but wouldn’t private school grads potentially also be legacies at HYP. My oldest went to a private high school and there were quite a number of legacies who applied to and got into HYP. (quite different at the public high school my other kids have gone to) Of course this is anecdotal, and not representative but it would seem that many HYP grads send their kids to private high schools.</p>
<p>Private school, by the way is a very big category. I woudl say elite colleges ae favoring kids from the top rated school by far. THere are private schools here where a lot of the kids do not end up in college or in non selective auto admit type of colleges, and the same exists all over the country. Actually, in most places, there are few elite opitons, private or public. EVen here in the NYC area which has a lot of elite private high schools as well as public ones, there are far more non selective private options available. Just by definiton this has to be.</p>
<p>I hate this sloppy one-dimensional thinking that they favor X, as if everything is uni-dimensional. They want SOME of this and SOME of that. SOME rich-kids-from-private-schools and some middle-class kids from schools that have never sent anyone there and some poor kids who appear to be diamonds in the rough. They want SOME dancers and SOME newspaper editors and SOME budding politicians and SOME scientists. They want SOME people who are nerds-hidden-in-the-library and SOME people who are hale-fellow-well-met. They want SOME kids from Manhattan, NY and SOME kids from Manhattan, KS.</p>
<p>Explaining the bias does not eliminate the bias. Also Do not confuse statistical conclusion bias with selection discrimination. It could be very different. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The bias certainly could have been higher up to 100%</p>
<p>THIS IS MY LAST POST ON THIS THREAD, HOW OFTEN CAN ONE SAY 44% IS A GIVEN. IT WILL NOT CHANGE</p>