For those that think that more transparency will end up with less applications to top schools, please. They could give out exact numbers, but their applications aren’t going to fall one bit.
Hear hear. The most critical point of this 2000+ post thread!
Totally agreed. Haggen Dazs could warn me all day long about the number of calories in their ice cream but I will still consume a ton.
Yale President’s latest statement on actions to be taken is available here https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Read-the-Yale-University-president-s-statement-13692751.php
Wow. So one girl was admitted to Yale, one wasn’t. He’s essentially saying the one that was admitted is getting expelled.
I feel this excerpt regarding athletics is germane to some of the discussions we’ve had here:
“Athletics is part of the educational mission of Yale College. Under the Ivy League model, those who play on our varsity teams are student-athletes, and “student” comes first. Our sports teams engender pride among our whole community, and I have often said that we bask in their reflected glory, bringing the Yale College community closer together. The athletics program, including the varsity teams, is also an important part of the Yale College educational experience; students better themselves by playing their sport. They learn self-discipline, how to work as part of a team, how to subordinate individual ambition to a group accomplishment, and how to be resilient in the face of failure. These skills are important in every area of life, including academics.”
The athletes are self selecting too. An elite school may only give a coach 5 slots for admission, and they will only admit students with XXX stats. The rest of the students have to apply without the coach’s help. Amherst may have 50% of its students participating in athletics, but 50% aren’t admitted as recruits. They apply, they are admitted, and they walk onto the athletic teams.
Those who do get slots are competing against all the others in their sport who want to play on that team before applications are sent it. If the Yale lacrosse coach has 5 slots to give, he’s weeded through 50 real contenders for those 5 and another 500 who sent in a recruiting questionnaire asking to be considered (they never were). They aren’t just looking for the best athletes, but for the best athletes who can be admitted to Yale. In the athletic pool, the coach takes it from 500 to 50 very quickly, and then has to pick the best 5. If a player doesn’t get one of the 5 slots, he’s likely to go to another elite school where he has a better chance.
Many athletes also fit the other categories of being a legacy, a URM, a low income student, so it isn’t like 200 seat are just for athletes, and another 200 go to legacies, and another 200 go to URM. There are about 2000 seats for the freshman class, and someone who is a black athlete who is a legacy takes just one spot but checks 3 boxes. He might also be low income and from Nebraska to check a few more admit office boxes.
UCB has joined the party with a 200k payoff of test score altering to get in there, and Stanford has another questionable 500K for current student. The way it seems, thousands won’t get in because of these two bad apples. There needs to be a math lesson here.
Since it has come back around, will say again that I actually don’t see it as anyone taking a spot. With sending a lot of kids to college and in the window of all this, I cannot see myself thinking for one second that they didn’t get into any of the schools that rejected them because this handful of people took their spot. Statistically speaking, the cheaters are teeny tiny compared to all the giant pool of honest student/families out there. I think of admissions numbers as fluid rather set in stone, for the most part I figured the schools made space for these few rather than they took a spot. It’s often not like kindergarten where there are literally 20 chairs. Not a fan of being a victim, ever.
In life, I just think the good outweighs the evil by huge margins. But it’s the negative that gets the press. Everyday. For one of these rich families that broke the rules, there are thousands and thousands that donate giant dollars to fund the improvements to the schools and provide aid so students may attend them. I find it funny that Loughlin is the only one discussed on here or anywhere - how many can name the other CEOs and executives - one who gave a million dollars - and who did what to Stanford, to Georgetown, to Wake Forest, to USD, to UCB? It’s the infatuation with Hollywood syndrome. Personally, I don’t care about any of them because this whole thing is statistically insignificant to all the good students and families out there. I choose to focus on the positive and let this fade like other headlines.
I am excited to move on and for kids to get their results next week. And if I had one learning their fate this year, I sure wouldn’t be blaming someone else for them not getting in.
@blueskies2day’s math lesson is worth emphasizing. Imagine an endless line of cars looking for a parking spot in a full lot where one car is carelessly or purposefully double parked across two spots. If a driver sees the car and thinks, “What a jerk! That car is blocking my spot!” the driver would only half-correct.
Found this point from the Yale link above interesting:
“We will retain external advisors to assist us. They will be asked to recommend changes that will help us detect and prevent efforts to defraud our admissions process. As part of this review, we will specifically examine the practices of commercial admissions consultants, whose work is conducted out of the view of admissions officers.”
Maybe applicants will start having to disclose if they used consultants, and who, on applications…?
@privatebanker: Re post #1301.
“Of course they didn’t “have to” in a sense of being compelled to do so in a cosmic sense. It means they “had to” in these specific cases for the desired result.”
I stand by saying there was nothing which moved the parents at the center of this scandal to act as they did but self- entitlement, selfishness and greed.
There was no cosmic-level compulsion or mandate on them, true. There also is no reason to assign to them - inadvertently, colloquially or merely to expeditiously express that they chose to behave badly - a term which easily ‘could’ be meant to convey that they were acted upon to do so. ( I did not construe it that way. I fully know why you used the term.)
@privatebanker:
“And not sure if your second highlighted section was facetious or not.”
As for whether I further responded to your next comment facetiously, no, I had not. I thought it well founded, and my comment was intended to convey the turnaround in my position, from disagreement with the prior statement to being in concert with the next.
“Most of these elite schools won’t establish sports like cricket, judo or tae kwon do, badminton, boxing, mma bc they know that white kids don’t do well in these sports”
I have noticed that the NCAA-sponsored sports are (with few exceptions, like soccer), pretty much the list of sports that upper-class (white) Americans participated in 100 years ago.
Thus no badminton or table tennis or cricket even though by popularity (global or even in the US these days), they are bigger sports than crew and fencing, say.
^ white kids do plenty well in cricket in the countries it’s played. I suspect the problem with cricket is more the complexity of the rules and the length of the games, though the rise of T20 as a spectator-friendly short game could help change that.
Don’t colleges want sports that people like watching, adding to school spirit etc? No offense to various athletes, but you’re probably never going to get the same kind of excited large spectatorship watching table tennis or judo as basketball or football. And it makes no sense for elite colleges to promote boxing.
Once again, use of selective quotes is not very nice. And I am not sure what the issue is and the point you are making?
I said they “had to” and you took that as meaning something that is not accurate. Of course no one pointed a gun at them and made them do anything. Read the whole post and place context into the equation.
I agree with you by the way.
@CU123 & @USCWolverine, I actually don’t have any intrinsic beef/hatred/dislike for USC. For instance, I recognize that USC CS is among the top schools by alumni success.
I simply point out the schools that game the rankings heavily (the U of C does the same these days. NEU as well, etc.; different other people disliked me pointing that out too).
Only those who are partisan towards USC would remain willfully blind to how blatantly USC games the rankings (and attack those who highlight that).
Oh, and I’m also not that guy who originally uncovered the USC engineering gaming a decade ago. LOL.
“I’ll take a guess . . . the students who would get the highest scores would be bright students who are best prepared by their schools, who have the means to supplement this education, and who have the family support/pressure to excel on these tests.”
Or simply bright students (from families that value education) period. The only way to get in to Stuyvesant is via scoring high enough on a test. 40% of the Stuy student body qualifies for a free school lunch. Virtually the entire student body is poor, lower middle-class, or middle-class.
@SJ2727:
I said upper-class (white) AMERICANS (of 100 years ago).
“Don’t colleges want sports that people like watching, adding to school spirit etc.”
Dude, how many people are going to watch fencing tournaments? Or rowing meets?
I hear that the hordes that descend on the Ivy League golf championship are so numerous that people climb in trees and other people’s shoulders in order to see anything.
@PurpleTitan - I won’t disagree that most schools keep an eye on the various rankings and also bring attention to favorable movement.
One of the easiest ways to generate a two to three year spike in applications and generate a significant movement in yield is EA, ED1, ED2, SCEA, etc. Most, if not all, of the other schools in the top 30 have these options. Which, by the way, overwhelmingly favors the wealthy.
If USC “games” the rankings so much, why haven’t they taken advantage of this easy path to more applications and driving yield well past 50%?
@jcwjnw99, you’ll have to ask USC.
“Our sports teams engender pride among our whole community, and I have often said that we bask in their reflected glory, bringing the Yale College community closer together.”
What a bucket of hooey. The Whiffenpoofs do ten times more to bring the Yale College community together than the golf team. But there are no Yale employees empowered to hand out spots in the class to the nation’s leading basses – even though they are born, not made, and no one without the natural gift can ever be trained to sing a low B.
The Ivy League schools retain their athletic teams (even when zero students show up at sailing meets to bask in their supposed glory) because alumni from those sports would go berserk if the teams were cut. That’s it. That’s the whole reason. Maybe I should have gone to Reed.
“we will specifically examine the practices of commercial admissions consultants, whose work is conducted out of the view of admissions officers.”
Look in the mirror, Salovey. YOUR employee took a bribe. YOU empowered that person to hand out seats in the class on the basis of Achilles tendon strength or whatever criteria he chose to set. Examine my practices all you want…I’m a lot more transparent about my methods than you are.