Well, some students get waitlisted. Waitlists are valuable for yield protection for students on the upper end of the stats pool
One has to assume that a significant number of the rejected student are NOT in the upper half or quartile of the applicant pool.
Can anyone explain to me the sour grapes comments?
I don’t think anyone here is complaining about the rich having rich people things. The complaint is buying legitimacy, using financial power to fabricate evidence of fitness to lead.
This prevents actually fit people from rising in the ranks and thereby rots social fabric.
It’s in Shakespeare, it’s in the Bible, in Tolstoy, in Lao Tzu, this is not some random whiner value. Talented hardworking people deliver more value as leaders. Those people lose when we have no method of winnowing the harvest through competitive, merit based education and when the supposedly competitive system promotes people based on wealth instead.
Of course many talented wealthy people have talented children. Nobody is claiming otherwise.
But why is anger about cheating, sour grapes?
It seems like a no brainier to me that what happened was wrong. Am I missing something?
@calmom I believe the NEU admit rate for the most recent class (enrolled Fall 2018) was 19%:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21960622#Comment_21960622
Just like U Chicago dropping from 35% to sub 10%, things do change.
@Marcie123 – The most recent CDS for USC shows a 16% admit rate – with no waitlist figures disclosed. See http://oir.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/CDS_2017-2018_FINAL_2.pdf
Not that it makes it easy to get admitted. But still not in the same realm as the 5% schools.
@calmom. Good points. And if NEU is now 19 percent is crazy. My friends used to decide whether to commute to NE or Suffolk. It was a commuter school. A good one but not this level. That’s unreal.
Glad I went to school when I did. I would be asking for only auto admit options with my transcript.
Rowing was the tickets. Before that golf.
There used to be a lot less youth rowing but now it’s very popular. Four girls from my daughter’s class signed D1 NLIs, and our school didn’t have rowing but there were 2-3 rowing clubs in town, and there were several high schools with teams. There are high schools in the Philly area with teams, in the Boston area, and in LA.
By the way, all 4 girls were about 6 feet tall.
@privatebanker To your point, just using my kids small private, very diverse, private school as an example, in the past 4 years we have had 8 students attend HPYSM. Of those, six were either URM, first-gen or recruited athletes. One that was not was an international student from China and one was a multi-generational double legacy at Penn. All incredibly worthy, I might add.
Edited to add that only one of the six was a recruited athlete.
My data source is the common data set posted on the Univ. web site.
I think sometimes there is some distance between the figures bandied about at the time of admissions and the figures that actually show up when the math is all said & done. Also possible for schools with EA or ED programs that the spring figures reflect the RD rate, whereas the overall rate is higher when factoring in the early apps.
@calmom that is from 2017-2018. 2018-2019 was 12.9% and 2019-2020 projected to be 10%.
Definitely not close to 5% but not 17% either which is still extremely low.
@MmeZeeZee:
“Can anyone explain to me the sour grapes comments?”
The sour grapes is when it’s evident the cheating isn’t the focus. It’s the complaints about demographics that one isn’t in “taking” spots from one’s scion. Complaining about about kids with legitimate LD getting consideration when taking standardized test. Saying schools shouldn’t care about athletics. Complaining about children on the lower end of SES getting consideration there children aren’t. Saying schools should go to a lottery system so admiited kid’s don’t feel smarter, etc. This thread is littered with these posts.
@calmom @privatebanker In 2002 Boston University had a 70% acceptance rate. In 2018 they reported a 22% acceptance rate. “In my day” as the saying goes if you were graduating from a Catholic high school in the Boston area and had a rec letter from the principal or pastor you were admitted to Boston College.
Thing change!
I used to think this way about a lot of schools. Back when my first D was applying, I stupidly told her not to worry, because she could always go to NYU. I had no idea how things had changed. Its amazing to me to see kids agonizing about whether or not they can get into Fordham. Its a very different world.
@TomSrOfBoston You are so right.
Dad tried to go to college later in life after ww2 and Korea. He didn’t finish. But he commuted to BC for a couple of years. As he said, that’s where you go if you’re poor and Catholic.
He was always proud that they had places for kids like him. And always revered BC for that mission. And YMCA summer camps for the kids with no money at all. They had a scholarship for the camp. 13 dollars for the week I think. Picked up by the parish
@gallentjill Once upon a time NYU was a safety school for City College rejects!
@TomSrOfBoston in my days BU was 85% and NEU was 100% (1992) … I applied in May and got accepted in June for the fall
. Where are those places now? When all the safety schools become elite, where do the regular kids go?
In NY, the CUNY system is still a refuge for all kinds of diverse students. I feel very grateful to live in a state with a good state and city system. But I don’t think most kids have that opportunity.
@gallentjill UMass Boston for many decades served that role as a commuter college for local students. Now they have residence halls and a significant international enrolment. They are more selective than before but not outrageously so.
One area where the schools mentioned in this thread and their peers really distinguish themselves is the percentage of enrolled freshmen with 700-800 SAT R&W/M (per 2017-18 CDS).
WashU: 85/92
Harvard: 87.21/88.66
Vanderbilt: 82.8/85.6
Rice: 83/84
NW: 72/79
Stanford: 72.8/79.5
Duke: 72/78
Cornell: 71.3/75.9
Georgetown: 67.4/63.35
NE: 65.47/71.68
ND: 65.4/70
Emory: 58.5/67.1
USC: 46.2/57.5
NYU: 46/54
Boston U: 38/55
WF: 33.46/46.38
These are all quite remarkable percentages when you consider that 1400 is 97th percentile (Nationally Representative Sample).
A decade or so ago?
Basically, in 1990s-2000s time frame, USC was trying to get away from its “University of Special Contacts” / “University of Spoiled Children” reputation and move up in the rankings. One of its methods was to attract National Merit students with attractive scholarships (since National Merit students bring high SAT scores that are the main part of USNWR “student selectivity” measures). The scholarships are not as good now because it can now attract a decent number of strong applicants without them.
It does make sense that USC would be a target for some of the cheaters in this scandal due to this type of thing.
@UWfromCA That’s interesting data. Thanks for posting. If I am reading this correctly Northeastern and Notre Dame are nearly identical in this stat package. That’s a truly remarkable change.