@ucbalumnus – Now I am curious how the in-state/out-of-state differential has widened at say Michigan and UVA.
My guess is that the multiplier is now larger for OOS than in-state, but I haven’t looked at the figures. Interesting diversion from this thread.
@mdphd92 They figured this out a long time ago regarding ultimate personal responsibility in decision making and the benefit of a random element in some matter where the results are final and life altering.
The firing squad always has a blank.
For additional comments on the Life article this thread may be of interest to some: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1897982-the-historical-selectivity-of-colleges-by-sat-score-tiers-p1.html.
@mdphd92:
“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?”
This is rich…perhaps because Universities don’t feel they need a lottery to construct a class. This is what certain parents feel, but parents don’t make admission decisions lol.
Made a new thread on the 1960 Life magazine listed costs, SAT scores, etc.:
@ShanFerg3 All decisions made by human beings involve an element of randomness. For example, there are studies that show that parole decisions depend greatly on the time of day.
https://www.wired.com/2011/04/judges-mental-fatigue/
By extension, a reader for an admissions committee is likely to make different evaluations depending on the time of day he or she reads a given application. So, there is already an element of randomness involved, not to mention the randomness of which reader a particular applicant gets. Including a lottery among well-qualified applicants would just make this fact clearer to everyone.
Alternatively, admissions committees should emphasize to applicants the degree of subjectivity involved in their decision making. I believe some admissions committees already do this somewhat by telling applicants that they could have had a second group of candidates just as qualified as their admitted group.
@mdphd92 your entitled to your opinion on this. My opinion is admissions is more calculated than random
Leaving aside the use of the term as someone else pointed out…
I don’t think that there is any evidence that the 5% who got in are significantly smarter or more worthy than the 5% trailing them. I’d bet money that if you took the top 10% of applicants, they would all be extremely similar intellectually, aside from an extremely small group at the right end of the curve.
Please note that I am not in said group. I am not arguing for a policy that would affect my (non-existent) chances of admission.
My impression is that these are brilliant and hard working individuals who for whatever reason caught the fancy of an admin officer, instead of another equally qualified person catching the admin’s eye. That’s life. Life is about chance.
The only question is whether you admit it and thereby reduce the hoops people are jumping through, in addition to the excellence that comes from intrinsic motivation.
Again, it is a policy question and I might be wrong about the effects of the policy but I don’t think it was proposed merely due to sour grapes. It is actually used in our school district for special programs and it works fine.
HYP didn’t much care about USC. But Stanford did"
this is laughable!
my DS applied to USC early in 2006, when USCs acceptance rate was 25% AND to Stanford SCEA .
I learned about USCs early application deadline for merit consideration in 2004 - 15 years ago- from other CC parents.
NOTHING has changed in the past 15+ years re: Stanford’s SCEA policy re allowing application to other colleges that have early scholarship deadlines btw.
And I am in regular contact with the Dean of Admissions at USC, so I do know what I’m talking about.
I quote-
“Thanks for your writing and for your continued presence on College Confidential. The misinformation runs rampant and it is refreshing to see that there are a few folks who are willing to set the record straight.”
USC has LONG had their early application deadline for the Trustee’s full tuition scholarship and non NMSF presidential scholarships.
so I would REALLY like to see the proof behind this statement-
"Stanford fought USC over this for a while, and then USC fought right back. Eventually Stanford caved to USC gaming. "
your “citing” other CC posts doesnt mean the posters knew what they were talking about.
dont you have anything else to do besides bash USC?
@lkg4answers wrote:
Foshay is a K-12 LAUSD public school serving a low-income neighborhood near USC. I believe USC is directly involved with the school through its Neighborhood Education Initiative. Kudos to USC for this and its many other efforts to improve the educational opportunities of underserved populations.
As for the privates, USC always draws a fair number of kids from top local private schools. It may or may not be the “dream school” for these private school students (it is for some), but it is a very good local school, the parents of many of these kids can afford it, and many are loyal alums. Plus, it is generally an easier admit than the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, CalTech, etc. (And for those not near the top of their class academically, it is generally an easier admit than UCLA or Berkeley.)
https://www.apnews.com/b723b0a037a34ebe9a15183c9bcbb17e
If Georgetown was covering up back in 2017, why should we think Georgetown is not covering up now as well?
Class action suit has been revised to include students from less elite universities. This change also makes clear that lawyers are behind the suit, not the students themselves.
That only applies to students vying for China mainland colleges. It does not apply to applicants to US colleges. This later group has several cheaters.
Explanation by USC athletic director Lynn Swann of why he and the admissions office knew nothing about the scheme:
I am not sure I follow this. Swann seems to be saying that Donna Heinel added a fraudulent student name to a list given by coach of a team DIFFERENT from the bribed coach. Otherwise how could the coach who provided the original list not know? For example, the student is applying as a rower, but Heinel added the name to the list provided by the coach of the soccer team? And the admissions office did not look at any part of the application except the academic credentials, and therefore did not notice the mismatch? This would entail that the admissions office signed off on admitting the student without reading the guidance counselor report, the teacher letters of recommendation, or the student essays, and so without noticing that these talked about a different sport? The admissions office just looked at the transcript and SAT/ACT scores? Even if this is not corrupt, certainly it would be a mishandled admissions procedure.
Or is he saying that Heinel added the name of a student who was not applying as an athlete at all to a list provided by a coach, thereby obtaining admission as an athlete for a student who applied as an non-athlete without any coaches knowing? Cases like this have not been reported in the press, and the very possibility of such cases opens a whole new world of fraud. And again, the admissions office did not look at any part of the student application except the academic record, and therefore did not notice the mismatch between admission as an athlete and application as a non-athlete?
Finally, I thought each coach/team is accorded a fixed number of slots. So if a coach has 5 slots and Heinel added one more student to the list, there would be too many students for the admissions office to accept. On the other hand, if the team was allowed 6 slots, why would the coach only request 5 students?
Moral of the story: this doesn’t add up.
I assume that a good number of us who read CC have businesses. Wouldn’t you like to have the problem that the elite colleges have where they turn away 90% of possible customers? What would you do as a business person if your business was so oversubscribed? You’d raise your price, of course. I’ve always thought that it was strange that Harvard and Fordham have similar “list prices”.
Instead of switching to a lottery system where we could blame luck for our kid’s failure to be admitted, if colleges practiced better capitalism — pricing their services based on what people are willing to pay — the better schools would cost more. We’d have another data point to help adjust our thinking on which colleges were most appropriate for our kids.
So you want to create a school for the rich and famous?
@1NJParent The rich and famous would pay full price and the excess would allow tuition discounts for lower income students. That is essentially what happens now at private colleges.
@northwesty We live near two rivers, and there are rowing clubs for all ages. A lot of HS students row. I can’t imagine that there aren’t lots of other places in the US like this.
@oldandwise. You can increase pricing or build more space to accomadate the overflow. Which due to construction would probably lead to higher pricing.
@TomSrOfBoston also at public schools like Michigan etc.They run it like a private school and maybe why their successful at it. Huge endowments
I haven’t followed this thread closely the last few days since college basketball has been to good, but has anyone brought up the idea of allowing people to actually legally “buy” seats for their kids.
So this is how it would work. Full disclosure first… You have the money and you want your kid going to school “x”. First they have to have the grades etc or close enough. You pay full price but plus a premium. That premium goes into a fund for grants to help kids that need it ie :lower income. Plus your company has to offer “x” amount of paid internships to students for “x” amount of years. You are also expected to give to the endowment for “x” amount of years.
Or something like this. Each college has a certain amount of these to sell yearly.
Probably a horrible idea but at least there is some benefit to the school and students and it’s out in the open.
@Gudmom. Several years ago my kids school, which was number 1 in our state at the time, wanted to start a rowing team. They had some guy speak to the kids and the push besides being a fun sport is that the Ivys etc really like rowing, especially female rowers. Their school is backed up to the Chicago River and yes in other areas of the city you can see rowers in the morning doing their thing. It didn’t take off once the kids found out they would have to be ready to go like 5:00 am before school… Lol…
“By extension, a reader for an admissions committee is likely to make different evaluations depending on the time of day he or she reads a given application…”
See, that’s just one quote I could use, but shows there’s a perpetual inclination to trust what you heard or read somewhere, try hard to reconstruct from that. We had a long runnng thread years ago that insisted if an adcom didn’t like your local sports team or your pizza, you were doomed. But these speculations do not uncover facts.
And you start at the wrong point. I.e., that all these great high school kids with high gpa, some titles, maybe an award, some cancer research, are in a solid competitive position, to begin with. You forget there is an app package to complete, your presentation of self. And more. You seemingly refuse to believe the kids you think have “merit” can do anything less than submit a perfectly competitive application. Sorry, they do not. They can ramble, go off topic, not understand what College X is about, reveal thinking issues, and more.
It doesn’t matter if a family is wealthy. Kids make the same patterns of mistakes. They start under-informed, assuming their own hs greatness makes them different. They take CC advice literally, to just be themselves. As If that’s the “it.”
This thread is not about that. It is about a cheating scandal.
Rather than succumb to the usual partial-facts/many assumptions about admissions, you should focus on trying to understand “what IS.”
And a big part of that is the fact coaches (and the general pull of recruiting) have too much power, imo and ime.The usual standards that expect or demand a kid present better than just the hs resume are set aside for athletic talents. A coach (or anyone) can present a kid as holding a trump card outside the usual holistic expectations. These accused families used that.
And so, whether rowing or sailing, or you-name-it, a big loophole was used in this scandal.
This is not about whether Georgetown told URI or URI asked. Or comparative prices or competition. We’ve gone over “sour grapes” enough. Some rich kids who apparently would not have qualified via the usual non-recruit process apparently got a major tip. And did it unethically and by making some facilitators wealthier.
They cheated the system that exists. If you want to debate the system that exists, you should look for more accurate info on what that actually is. And then go forward.