Even worse than movies, though, is the Internet. Before the Internet, most students might have known only one or two exceptional students who went to a highly selective school. But now, we have all these threads on College Confidential with hundreds of students detailing their stats and extracurriculars, and comparing notes on where they got accepted. So it appears to students that getting into a selective college is the norm, and students are just trying to keep up with the Joneses in some nationwide contest. College Confidential makes the problem worse with a special page for “Top Universities” and another one for the Ivy League, as if these were the Holy Grail. Yep, I’m afraid that this Web site is part of the problem.
“And USC’s early scholarship application deadline is very very carefully designed to attract cross-applications from Stanford SCEA kids. While Stanford SCEA kids can’t apply EA or ED to other privates, they do allow non-binding early private apps if tied to a scholarship. Voila!”
@northwesty
excuse me? Stanford at any time can change their rules re SCEA. So your thinking that USC is trying to attract Stanford SCEA applicants is a** backwards.
And, there are OTHER colleges , besides USC, that top students can and DO apply to for scholarship consideration, which ALSO have early scholarship deadlines. My DS applied to other programs, besides USC, because we were on the hunt for Merit $$.
Some of those colleges and U’s offer AUTOMATIC acceptance and full tuition scholarships, which is a FAR cry from USC’s 5% early acceptance rate [ akin to Harvard’s overall acceptance rate I will point out] . Applying to USC is no guarantee that a hi stats students , who may also be applying to RA to HYPS, etc, etc, will actually BE accepted, let alone receive a scholarship. USC has gotten very good at smelling out hi stats applicants who have NO genuine interest in actually going to USC.
Me thinks you are trying to connect dots, where there are no dots to connect.
In China if you are caught cheating on the college entrance exam you are sentenced to jail for up to 7 years and chinese jails are no club med either…also testing centers you have to walk through a metal detector to eliminate bugs and hidden microphones against cheating
http://time.com/4360968/china-gaokao-examination-university-entrance-cheating-jail-prison/
@mdphd92 I didn’t read it that way at all.
I was just joking because rich people seem to be persona non grata. And sometimes we forget there’s a lot of farmers, builders, plumbing contractors and other skilled craftspeople thst fit that economic strata thst seem to be responsible for all the ills of the world.
The three of the richest guys I know of Mark Zuckerberg Bill gates and Michael dell didn’t even finish college. Either did Steve Jobs. And warren buffet went to Nebraska
And all will leave hundreds of billions to charity when they die and have in their lifetimes. And a lot of people have good jobs because of them. It used to be the American dream to move from one spot to another. And mostly on your own.
Even the robber Barron’s when there was real income inequality Vanderbilt Rockefeller Getty Carnegie. All endowed the world with wonderful things and money to support these museums and charities long after their deaths.
Take a look at Dave Thomas from Wendy’s. Orphanage his whole life. No big college. Big success. Dies and leaves billions to help orphans around the country. Is he the type of evil rich guy many are describing?
I never thought any of them or the like did anything f to prevent me from doing anything.
Do their kids have an advantage over other kids. Sure. I guess. But there so much opportunity and the less time we spend resenting others the sooner you’ll get to where you want to go. And sometimes it doesn’t work out. Dust off and try again
I can’t be the only solidly middle class+ parent who legitimately considered “fit” for their children. This scandal seems to have painted a rather broad stroke for how parents consider undergraduate studies for their kids. I have to believe there are far more parents like me who are giving their kids every possible opportunity for the best school that “fits” them without considering drastic steps like cheating the system. Completely understanding that for not our SES and all the opportunities that go along with that, my kids would probably end up at different schools than the ones they’ve matriculated to, which is another discussion that we should all be more concerned with."
@sportingclaymom…Fit was always most important to me and I sure hope more parents feel that way too.
Oh yes, those “most popular” colleges back in high school above…UCSB, SDSU, & Cal Poly SLO were the PUBLICS. Of course, USC the most popular PRIVATE.
“Even worse than movies, though, is the Internet. Before the Internet, most students might have known only one or two exceptional students who went to a highly selective school. But now, we have all these threads on College Confidential with hundreds of students detailing their stats and extracurriculars, and comparing notes on where they got accepted. So it appears to students that getting into a selective college is the norm, and students are just trying to keep up with the Joneses in some nationwide contest. College Confidential makes the problem worse with a special page for “Top Universities” and another one for the Ivy League, as if these were the Holy Grail. Yep, I’m afraid that this Web site is part of the problem.”
@mdphd92…So true…and the student suicide rate keeps climbing.
Editing… The point is that it’s a policy suggestion to drive intrinsic motivations for behavior, not an anti-meritocratic measure to assuage egos.
I can see the point of debating whether a lottery would work but I don’t agree that suggesting a lottery for those who meet the criteria, is in any way whiny or sour grapes.
@Fisherman99 Good point and on fit too.
Suicide is a real problem. My brother committed suicide at age 19 and was at an elite school. It’s really generationally bad for a family
It’s a real problem. And we had bozo suggesting in a thread post to talk about these families killing themselves.
Yes they made really bad, terribly misguided decisions and need to be punished. But now they are The Manson family.
Perspective people!
“Suicide is a real problem. My brother committed suicide at age 19 and was at an elite school. It’s really generationally bad for a family”
@privatebanker…my condolences on your brothers passing. Unfortunately, there is so much pressure on the students now. Suicide rates much higher in high school and probably even way before that.
@Fisherman99 Thx. It was almost 30 years ago and zero awareness of sympathy really at the time But it’s awful. I have been involved with the Samaritan’s for some time. It helps.
You don’t think suggesting a lottery because one doesn’t want kids that get in to think they are smarter exhibits sour grapes?
^^ Not sure what the above chart of tuition costs in 1960 vrs today has to do with what merc81 wrote?
The above lists 1960 costs of attendance.
Here are comparisons of 1960 costs from the above, CPI adjusted 1960 costs, today’s costs, and multiple:
1055 8949 65145 7.27 Rice
2440 20697 77259 3.73 Columbia
2550 21630 75925 3.51 Yale
1095 9288 32224 3.46 Michigan (in-state, upper division)
1002 8499 28090 3.30 Colorado (in-state)
1290 10942 36028 3.29 UCB (in-state)
1095 9288 30298 3.26 Michigan (in-state, lower division)
1060 8991 21608 2.40 Iowa State (in-state)
The dots on the SC/Stanford thing have long been connected here on CC. That’s exactly where I (an avid and wily merit hunter like you) learned about it.
SC’s merit scholarship timeline (apply 12/1, hear 2/1) is a work around to the HYPS REA/SCEA policies. Some inside baseball played by USC that I was really impressed with. It let’s USC attract early apps from very high end kids (i.e. kids with enough chops to apply SCEA to HYPS) without violating the HYPS rules.
HYPS say you can’t apply SCEA and then also apply EA (even if non-binding) to another private. SC, cleverly splitting hairs, took the position that its merit program was still RD and thus consistent with an HYPS SCEA application.
HYP didn’t much care about USC. But Stanford did, insisting that requiring the schollie apps by 12/1 and then giving decisions by 2/1 made USC’s schollie program “early.” Stanford was totally right imho. USC had set something up that was “early” (not allowed) but claimed it was still regular (so therefore allowed). Stanford fought USC over this for a while, and then USC fought right back. Eventually Stanford caved to USC gaming. So now Stanford’s REA policy has an explicit carve out for schollie plans like USC’s. I think UMiami (another big merit school) now does the same thing copying USC’s innovation.
More history below from a prior CC thread.
“Stanford used to say (applicant year 2010 - 2011) that if you applied early to USC to get in under the Dec 1 wire for the scholarship consideration that you violated the SCEA policy at Stanford – even though the Dec 1 deadline had nothing to do with admissions. Stanford took the position that applying early on the basis of a deadline to achieve some advantage was the functional equivalent of applying early to a school, even it it wasn’t applying early for actual admission. An early scholarship deadline was treated by Stanford as an early application deadline.”
“This policy had the intended effect of keeping great scholarship applicants to USC, who still wanted to apply early to Stanford, from applying early to USC – with the result that great minority candidates would end up getting rejected by Stanford and not end up taking their shot at USC, where they may have been highly competitive. Eventually, two things happened: (1) USC internally waived the deadline for outstanding applicants (meaning that if you got your application in after Dec 1, you still were considered), so USC refused to let Stanford game its deadlines and gamed Stanford right back, and (b) Stanford recognized that they were being way too restrictive as compared with any other college on the planet, none of whom had an equivalent policy and none of whom wanted to be blamed for keeping minorities out of contention for scholarships (wherever they might find them). So, yes, now you are perfectly fine applying to USC before the deadline of December 1 for the scholarships.”
@ucbalumnus — Was the chart that you had posted before this replacement reporting tuition only costs and this one includes R&B? If so, the multipliers are higher now with R&B included.
In the previous chart, I thought that the 1960 numbers in that Life magazine were tuition, not tuition plus room and board etc… So the multipliers were incorrect because they were to today’s tuition, not today’s cost of attendance. The corrected chart compares today’s cost of attendance to those 1960 numbers.
sour grapes. Disparaging what one cannot obtain, as in The losers’ scorn for the award is pure sour grapes . This expression alludes to the Greek writer Aesop’s famous fable about a fox that cannot reach some grapes on a high vine and announces that they are sour.
Agreed. There are many debates in the organ transplant field about the system for determining who should receive an available organ. Some people argue that “social worth” should play a role, so that a committee should decide whether one person is more worthy than another, based on age, occupation, family situation, potential social contributions, and so on. However, others argue that it is sometimes difficult to make these decisions in a fair way, so therefore some random element needs to be introduced. Furthermore, as a matter of public policy, there are reasons to make such a random element clear to potential recipients.
Nicholas Rescher, in Ethics 79, 1969, 173-186, points out three advantages of including an explicit random element: (1) it acknowledges that any acceptable selection system is inherently suboptimal; (2) it makes matters easier for the rejected patient and related parties; and (3) it relieves administrators of the burden of ultimate and absolute responsibility. Rescher does not advocate for a completely random system, but rather one that combines social worth criteria and a random element.
Organ transplant decisions are similar to college admissions decisions in that they both involve allocation of a scarce resource, and they both involve inherently objective and subjective choices among candidates. However, organ transplant decisions literally mean life or death, and are therefore an order of magnitude more momentous than college admissions decisions (although some students may beg to differ!). If ethicists and physicians can seriously debate a lottery for organ transplants, why can’t we discuss this for other topics as a matter of policy?
@ucbalumnus I’m sorry it’s a bit late here in east coast. But are the multipliers a compounded annual rate of growth?
No, just the ratio of today’s cost of attendance to the CPI-adjusted 1960 cost of attendance from the Life magazine in 1960. I.e. most of those colleges in the chart are between 3 and 4 times as expensive at list price as they were in 1960, after CPI-adjustment.