@tonymom – “Over half of incoming frosh at HY were from public HS schools”
Exactly. Which means the OTHER half attend privates. When nationwide about 4% kids attend privates. See my point?
And lest you misunderstand: I don’t have a problem with that. Never have. Never will. It’s the state U that matters to me – and, IMO – to this nation as a whole.
@Meddy I have no idea what post you are referring to ! I got lost in this thread lol
(Someone completely misconstrued something I said but by the time I saw it it was pages back and it just seemed too much trouble to try correct it.)
Yes, for people who just want bragging rights at the expense of their kids, which makes me sick. For the working poor and middle class to whom I think you’re referring, I think it’s our ever-widening gap between the uber-wealthy and people in unreliable full-time jobs or two, who can’t afford to get sick. They think of this as a life raft for their kids.
@privatebanker Perhaps we are talking past each other. i agree that one motivation at work here is personal financial gain. That is obvious in the situations where the money was being paid to phony consulting firms. However, in situations where the money was going to the universities, there had to be another level to the scheme.
For me simplicity entails following the money. We have hundreds of thousands of dollars going into the various universities. From their two things can happen.
If it is the latter, then there is more to the money chain than we yet know (perhaps your friend at a tee shirt shop theory). And this raises a serious issue about university oversight.
By the way, I disagree with your premise that schools like stanford don’t need the money. They sure function like the need donor money.
“Today, according to Harvard, legacy students make up around 14 percent of the undergraduate population.”
Legacies are 10-15% at the various Ivies.
That one third number for Harvard is from a self-reported student survey, not from the school. Totally wrong.
The school that self-identifies very transparently as the king of legacies is Notre Dame at 20-25%. And ND acknowledges they have about double the legacies of the other top 20 schools.
The Catholic green kool aid is very intoxicating.
I understand what you are saying.
However, the reporting has been the funds were deposited to an account/ pool designated for the team. Not the Stanford endowment.
He did this so he could “personally” buy equipment the team needed.
That’s what was reported here in Boston.
If he or a co-conspirator controlled the fund, it’s not a difficult next step.
But clumsier and easier to get caught than these masterminds imagine.
He made it sound like the team was lacking basic equipment.
Like mentioned before they have used private jets to fly teams to events. Not regional charters. gulf streams.
But I am going to pick up the putt now and say its good.
Has the psychologist in this scam, been identified? Maybe I missed it.
@katliamom I do see your point about private vs public high schools. But the vast majority of private school kids are college ready at graduation. Due to inequalities in public education, a portion of kids graduating from public high schools aren’t college ready. The issue is not that colleges accept too many private school kids, but that some of our public schools do not do an adequate job of preparing kids to apply or attend college.
@Lindagaf Maybe not as directly as other schools, but definitely mentioned. https://huntnewsnu.com/58341/front-1/former-nu-corporation-member-accused-of-peddling-influence-to-get-student-admitted/
“It’s time to get my 7th-grade daughter started on sailing now.”
Rowing. I’m telling you womens rowing is the golden ticket.
Much better numbers/odds than sailing or squash.
Row row row your boat…right into a fancy college!!
Your point is well taken. But the numbers don’t add up, even with your well reasoned and accurate explanation.
There are 3.2 million graduates each year. 130 to 150k are private school grads.
That leaves another 3mm public school grads from roughly 35000 pubic high schools.
Harvard and Yale admit 4500 students. It’s not plausible to me, if an institution has a geographic, economic and ethnic diversity schema that only 2500 of the 4500 or so, come from that wide national public high school pool.
There are nearly 70000 public school Val’s and sals alone! That’s more than half the total private grad totals in total
It’s preposterous that this can be a random occurrence, statistically. Can’t be.
Even with all the bad schools out there. The numbers are too large and too dispersed.
They can do as they will of course. And good luck to all the students. But it is a bit of myth about ivy social goals of diversity, inclusion and merit.
The other thing about legacies.
It is about money, but not donation money. More about tuition money.
Legacies are a great way for top schools to find/admit/enroll strong students whose parents (being top college grads themselves) are very likely to be able to pay the $70k full freight at a fancy private. Doctor/lawyer/banker mommies can do that. You don’t need to be a plutocrat big donor. The legacy kids aren’t dummies – more than 50% of the legacy kids get rejected. But the 34-35 ACT legacy kids get in, while the non-legacy 34-35 ACT kids get rejected. That’s how it works.
Development admits are a much smaller number. And the dollars are much higher. And the donor dollars are green and good regardless of whether the donor is an alum or not.
Daddy Kushner didn’t go to Harvard. But he gave a couple million to Harvard so Jared and his brother could attend Harvard.
The elders of the billionaire Bass family mostly went to Yale, but they’ve given millions to Duke. And their kids all went to Duke.
That percentage of kids coming from private schools also includes lower SES students who attend those schools on scholarship. Their parents, just like the affluent parents, want their kids to attend those schools because they presumably prepare the students better. I send my youngest to a STEM magnet school in the nearby city for a similar reason - they have provided opportunities not available in our local district. Those students also include those who completed HS and then spent a year of post-graduate study at the private school to enhance their applications before applying to the elite colleges.
Yes all that is true @privatebanker and would be interesting to see of the public school kids, what % are coming from specialized high schools or high income schools.
I have no idea what this % is, but also have to account for the portion of kids who don’t want to go to college because they are going into a trade, or some type of employment that doesn’t require a higher degree. I don’t knew how many of those there are (likely significant though) but would assume a very very high percentage are from public schools. But I still maintain the big issue is that the quality of public school education is not equal for all and that starts with math education in elementary school.
If the Ivies weren’t filled with students who came from wealth & privilege, they would lose their cachet and might fall to the level of desirability of, say, NYU. Because a big part of the draw for many is the perception of the elite university (as rich-elite vs. scholarly-elite) and the idea that the undergraduate college is a place to make “connections.” (including social & romantic, as well as career-oriented).
If you took away those elements and instead had a more socially egalitarian mix – let’s say, 75% of kids coming from public high schools distributed throughout the country – and you would still have a good and highly selective college, but not a particular reason to strive for Harvard over, say U of Michigan or Boston U. Especially for the wealthy, full-pay families — why should they pay $$$$ on tuition and donations in order for their very rich offspring to rub elbows with the hoi polloi?
I wonder if that was some of the allure of USC in this case, which otherwise is utterly is mysterious to me. (USC doesn’t even break the US News top 20 for ranking – it is a good school, but not one I would perceive as an academic elite and one that seldom comes up on CC as anyone’s “dream” school). But perhaps it is still perceived as a good social environment for the offspring of the rich and famous.
@northwesty with regard to #2428, I don’t think you know much about how competitive crew is at the high school level for both boys and girls. Maybe it is different on the West Coast but in the East there are very strong high school programs as well as highly competitive club programs for boys and girls. I don’t know how a fake crew recruit could slip thorough the cracks since it would be very simple to verify their experience in the sport.
What you say may be true of USC (idk) but the following quote is just wrong, "Because basically no women row prior to college, womens crew is almost entirely a walk on sport. Zero experience required to join the squad and see how you do. Very little recruiting. "
I tried to keep up with threadnado but am skipp at least 30 pages!
What I would like, because I think it’s healthier for the kids, is more transparency from the colleges.
One of the gray areas, imo, are elite colleges that claim to be “need blind” - obviously if big donors have an edge, than that’s not always true.
and I think maybe an actual lottery for a certain number of admits could be healthy too - if they say," we have too many qualified candidates so we did a lottery for x number of spots. We won’t say who these are, since we treat all our admitted students the same."
That way rejected students realize it was partly luck, and admitted students won’t feel that they are necessarily “better” than other kids and will maybe give them some humility.
And parents will feel their kids did have a fair shot.
Re: #2475 @calmom
USC may be large enough to have both a relatively large (for a highly selective private school) cohort of students from poorer backgrounds and a cohort of “special contacts” students and those who seek them.
@ucbalumnus – yes, that is what I am guessing. Maybe it’s my age, but USC was a perceived as a safety by my son - one of the schools that promised a half-tuition scholarship based on his NM status, and one which sent lots of paper mail that went straight to the recycling bin. Because of its size, we couldn’t see its value over attending a UC campus. It certainly wasn’t elite, and it didn’t have the attraction that a smaller LAC (say, Pomona) might offer). So it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of someone paying a $500K bribe to get their kid in the door there. Harvard? Sure. USC … for me it’s a big meh.
@calmom good post. I would say USC is ranked #22 in the country along with Georgetown. That’s pretty high, IMO