For those wondering what might happen to the Yale student who got in as a fake soccer player, the president sent out a message to the Yale community. Here’s an excerpt:
“When applicants sign their applications, they attest that the contents are true and complete. Although I do not comment on specific disciplinary actions taken with respect to an individual student, our longstanding policy is to rescind the admission of students who falsified their Yale College applications.”
@hgtvaddict Ya, I actually agree with you, she may have known all around, not just the ECs, but also that this girl wasn’t elite or any pretty much any other college type material since she was so open about not wanting to go to college, etc. Guess I could have clarified better that whether she knew of the activities, she wasn’t blind to things that go on in her world, as you suggest, and was smart enough to cover her/himself. With some of these people we are talking a level of wealth way above the wealthy, I am sure they “know” lots of things but sit there, and position themselves, like the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil monkey.
@Coloradomama said “MIT now admits a lot of student athletes. Interviewers who mention athletics in an MIT interview write up often see that student get in over others. There are 10X the number of qualified students for the seats at MIT and Yale”
I agree with what you posted, but I would add that Yale and MIT’s student profile is extremely different.
From the NY Times interactive “Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60”
"The median family income of a student from Yale is $192,600. The median family income for a student from MIT is $137,400.
At Yale, 19% of the students are from the top 1% in family income (more than $630K when the study was done).
At MIT, 5.7% of the students are from the top 1% in family income.
At Yale, students whose family incomes are in the bottom 60% are 16.3% of the class, while at MIT those students are 23.4% of the class.
To put that in perspective – if you attend Yale, you are more likely to meet a student from the top 1% than a student from the bottom 60%. If you attend MIT, you are 4 times (!!!) more likely to meet a student from the bottom 60% in family income than from the top 1%.
While I am sure more students from the 1% might prefer Yale, I am also sure that MIT could also fill its seat with students who are quite wealthy who can hit some baseline SAT score that supposedly proves they were chosen on merit. But MIT chooses not to do so.
I am also sure that Yale is well-known and desired by enough very bright students from the bottom 60% of family incomes that they could fill as many seats as MIT does so that those students are 23% of the class instead of 16%.
Colleges admit students based on how much they help fulfill institutional needs, and it seems that at some colleges the institutional need to make sure there are enough sailors, fencers, rowers, golfers, squash players, children of politicians, children of people who can donate buildings, etc. is more important than making sure that students from the bottom 60% in family income are attending. MIT has a disproportionate wealthy student body, but 57% of the students have family incomes that are in the bottom 90%. At Yale, only 43% of the students have family incomes that are not in the top 10%. Imagine that – if your family is not among the top 10% wealthiest families in America, you are in the minority at Yale. Almost half of Yale students – 45% – have family incomes in the top 5%! At Yale, you are nearly 3 times as likely to have a classmate in the top 5% than in the bottom 60%. That is not true at MIT.
Colleges like Yale and MIT have so many highly accomplished students from all incomes to choose from and they make choices to fill “institutional needs”. So when one college has 19% of the students from the 1% and another has only 5.7%, and one college has relatively few students from the bottom 60% in family income, that is generally because fulfilling institutional needs means more very affluent students must be admitted.
Furthermore, regarding my previous post, why was Olivia Jade’s high school counselor in contact with the USC senior assistant director of admissions regarding her being a coxswain? I thought that the consensus on this forum was that the admissions office doesn’t usually question the recruitment “slot” filled by the coaches, as long as the student has a minimum threshold of gpa/scores? And if her coxswain extracurricular was questioned by USC, why did the USC senior assistant director of admissions rely only on the affirmation of the student’s father (via the school counselor) that she was a coxswain? Why would they only get verification from a parent?
@class2022parent I totally agree that the there needs to be transparency. If parents knew extra time would be acknowledged with scores they might think twice about getting special accommodations when they are not needed. At a minimum the school should have to put the percentage of kids testing with extra time on their info sheet. Maybe in public schools you have to have an IEP in place but in private schools I think it is much easier to get. My daughter was getting 34/35s on Reading and English but could not get her Math score above 27 so it brought her composite way down. Now I’m hearing all of this and it seems very unfair. If she had time and half she could have answered those math questions that she did not have time for. I also wonder how the curve used for the tests is affected by some people having extra time and therefore scoring higher and making the curve steeper? I am not talking about people that need the time for legitimate reasons. I had never heard about extra time until this year. My daughter, however, was very aware of it and what her friends in private schools were doing.
It’s always seemed odd how stars, politicians, musicians, and athletes kids always end up in elite universities. I suspect some digging will turn up ADCOM members on the take as well.
@Scipio so you believe that most of the students are feeling that everyone is questioning the legitimacy of there admission. So, if you’re right and the poster who claimed URM and athletes are worrying about this as well, it seems they are no different from the entire student body. So, doesn’t really deserve mentioning. Does it?
@observer12 great post…
@hgtvaddict That school doesn’t have crew, as far as I know. So she would have been rowing club, outside of school. The HS counselor wouldn’t necessarily know that.
Maybe the USC admissions person couldn’t find any online references to wins, so just called to verify and took their word for it that she indeed rows club. The coxswain isn’t like other positions and she doesn’t have to be some huge rowing talent for the coach to want her.
Thanks!
Just to add to your observations, I think there is a clue in the sentence before the quote: “Shortly thereafter, on or about April 12, 2018, the high school counselor e-mailed GIANNULLI memorializing an encounter between the two men earlier that day”. Since the high school counselor had already reassured Giannulli verbally that everything was fine, the e-mail wasn’t truly necessary, but it did provide a written trail that protected the counselor and put the burden of proof on Giannulli if anything were amiss.
As it turns out, the school counselor was prescient. Something was indeed amiss, and his email ended up as evidence in an FBI affidavit.
I really like that series on the NYT on average family incomes, outcomes, etc @observer12. I often link to those in posts. If you “google average family income college name” the NYT page often comes up. I would argue that colleges pick their institutional need. When 20% of these schools are from the top 1%, those schools are certainly prioritizing that demographic.
I’d love to see data on the demographics of the applying vs. accepted and acceptance rates by income level at different schools.
The frustrating thing is these rich kids already have the deck stacked in their favor…great private schools, academically enriched environments, connections to elite universities, councilors that know how to “play the game” to get into elite universities, 3 years of ACT/SAT tutors, private counselors to write, (I mean edit) essays, teachers coached on writing great LOC’s, no competition to make the soccer team, obo lessons, great summer jobs, and money to make legal donations to universities. Yet 760 (and likely thousands more) still have to cheat the system.
At the elite colleges, typically about half receive financial aid. This does not mean that half receive full financial aid, or even financial aid up to the amount of tuition (not including room and board, etc.).
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools indicates that bottom-half income (= Pell grant) makes up 22% of less of the students at the private schools in the USNWR top 25 national universities (and only two of the private schools in that list have Pell grant percentages higher than 17%).
Harvard says that 16% are Pell grant and 15% are first generation, which is theoretically up to 31% for “First gen/Low income”, but the actual percentage for the combination is likely much lower due to substantial overlap. Of course, both numbers are still severely underrepresented compared to the general population of new high school graduates (probably around 50% for Pell grant eligibility if they went to college, and probably higher for first generation, though the numbers for actual college students are lower).
If the self-described “upper middle class” that does not get financial aid is going to complain about spaces at elite colleges being disproportionately consumed by those from other SES levels, look upward, not downward (but also in the mirror).
@PetraMC if it was a huge public high school, perhaps I would think a scenario like that would be possible. But Marymount is a small private school and Olivia Jade in particular has led a very public life. Didn’t anyone think it was odd that she didn’t have a single Instagram photo of her sport? I think that any reasonable adult - especially one that specializes in admissions to a selective college - also wouldn’t just take the word of a parent that their child is a recruitable coxswain. If it were that easy to attribute amazing sports/music abilities to our kids, helicopter/lawnmower parents everywhere would be having a field day.
@ShanFerg3 said:
“so you believe that most of the students are feeling that everyone is questioning the legitimacy of there admission”
I didn’t say that “most” of the students feel that others question the legitimacy of their admission. I said that it is very common for them to feel this way. I don’t know whether the percentages add up to “most” or not . And in any case I was talking about Harvard students in general based on what my daughter told me of her many friends and housemates. I wasn’t making any point specifically about athletes or URMs.
@Bud123 - “The frustrating thing is these rich kids already have the deck stacked in their favor…great private schools, academically enriched environments, connections to elite universities, councilors that know how to “play the game” to get into elite universities, 3 years of ACT/SAT tutors, private counselors to write, (I mean edit) essays, teachers coached on writing great LOC’s, no competition to make the soccer team, obo lessons, great summer jobs, and money to make legal donations to universities. Yet 760 (and likely thousands more) still have to cheat the system.”
So it’s only rich entitled kids that get in…
But wait…
@Coloradomam- “students are often admitted for being first generation college students. That can be up to 20% of the Yale freshman class. These students may or may not have the same grades and test scores. Combine first generation college, with URM and you will get into Yale these days. There has always been a lot of unfairness in admissions. MIT now admits a lot of student athletes.”
So it’s only the first gen, URM, poor kids and athletes that get in…
But wait…
Maybe just maybe it’s the most qualified of both groups!! Perhaps rich isn’t stealing from poor, athlete from scholar, scion from first gen. Instead how about the AOs just do their absolute best and are largely successful at picking the best from each and every one of the aforementioned and all the other candidates that don’t fall into a simple definition or overlap several. I feel compelled to quote from the classic movie the Breakfast Club; “You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed.”. People don’t be brain washed.
People are insisting on imposing their own biases and experiences to justify personal disappointments.
“I wasn’t making any point specifically about athletes or URMs.”
@Scipio The person my post was in response to was. That was kind of the subject of my post that you commented on.
No creativity…The frustrating thing is about 75-85%% of the spots at many top U’s are gone before “normal kids” applications are considered. Legacy 20%, athletes (yes, crew, squash, sailing, and fencing),15%, wealthy international students 15%, low income need students 15%, underrepresented students 15%, big donor, well connected, musicians, first generation, etc… 10%.
For most applicants the term “build a class using a holistic approach” means we aren’t looking for you.