“@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.”
Sure there are some kids who row before college. But the numbers are pretty small as compared to the huge increase in roster spots for womens rowers. Since the roster spots were increased to serve a legal compliance objective (i.e. counter balance mens football) rather than respond to an organic increase in the popularity of rowing. So the supply/demand equation in womens D1 college rowing is just very different than what you see in other college sports.
Like this kid. 100% legitimately recruited to the UW crew team, which is one of the best crew programs in the country. Never been in a boat in the water until after she physically arrived as a UW frosh recruited athlete.
So this sport has some pretty peculiar (but legitimate) recruiting practices. And there’s also tons of novice walk-ons, with many of those novices quickly dropping out the program. So if I was an AD employee on the take, the womens rowing team would be a great place to slip in a couple of kids who were completely fraudulent as athletes.
Imo, they misunderstand what “merit” is. In high school, it’s high gpa/rank, advanced classes, certain roles kids play that make them big deals among that set of peers, etc. Colleges are a different scheme.
It’s like, if you want a job as a busboy versus a summer position at Google. Don’t you expect a difference in the core qualifications and evaluation process? Or you think every loved kid should be hired? Do you get bent out of shape that Google is corrupt or rigged? Note, they may tell some expectations, but are not transparent to the degree you expect colleges to be.
Yes, female crew can be a big tip, assuming the college needs them. But the point isn’t to pretend to be a gal rower or coxswain.
@lookingforward
“And, see that not all applicants in the top range or two are accepted. That’s not because they weren’t high SES or didn’t hold some national title. Or cure cancer. It’s the quality of their apps, how they met, in full, what these schools want. Most people, if they look at all, tend to stop at stats.
Most also make wild assumptions that urms can’t be as qualified, aren’t out there doing and that only wealthier ones can be interesting.
It does pay to look at Chance threads once in a while, see the misconceptions- and the misplaced encouragement from outsiders.”
Great post. I hope people pay attention to this post and not dismiss it because it’s not what we want to hear. I think you’ve encapsulated the process perfectly.
We can’t control the results but we can control the process if we want to, by just saying “no” to participating.
For the 15plus years I’ve been on this board, it seems to me there has been a general acceptance of the idea the ADCOM has a plan. And I’ve known young people trying to improve their admission chances by stating an interest in an under enrolled major, playing particular instruments, or participating in certain sports. I knew some of those students weren’t going to pursue the major, or music or sport if admitted. So they weren’t intending to add what they were offering the school in their application. Sometimes those students were accepted and sometimes not. Now, however, we read about different sort of fraud. They couldn’t even play the sport. And they were accepted.
Rather than try to impact the elite admissions selection process, which is probably impossible, I suggest we try and figure out how to just opt out. We won’t convince elite U to use a lottery, but we can refuse to send them our applications. We created this over hyped, over stressed world. We can all change our minds and choose less competitive public universities, that will be delighted to accept our kids. Over and over on this board, we say “you can get a great education anywhere” and “smart kids do the same regardless where they attend” and “they bloom where they are planted.” Let’s walk the walk and wave good-bye to elite U.
apologies if this idea was already posted… I am doing my best to follow this thread but also reading one on the same subject on Purse Forum and getting a bit confused.
and…
to make a quote:
[quote] text text text [/quote]… just remove the *
Private colleges were founded by the rich donors. It’s pointless to attack the rich people.
The issue here is cheating, not only with private colleges but also with public colleges (UCLA, and hopefully not other public colleges are involved).
Princeton has very high test scores year in year out – 32-35 ACT middle 50%. The median family income, year in year out, at Princeton is also very high – $186k according to the NY Times database. Since those characteristics persist year in year out, we know those two things are highly correlated.
We all know that high test scores do not guarantee Princeton admission. Princeton is drowning in 34 ACT applicants. But Princeton’s system produces the same result every year. A big part of it is the insistence on very high stats, which we all know correlate very strongly to higher SES.
SCEA/ED type policies also correlate high SES. Legacy also correlates high SES. Ivy-type sports also correlate high SES. The pool of kids and families interested in going to a place like Princeton correlate high SES. For example, the outsize percentage of Princeton kids who come from private schools.
Put it all together – Princeton’s class correlates high SES every year without fail. Which is fine. Princeton has a budget and bills to pay. And while its overall class trends high SES, they do have lots of kids who pay less than the $70k sticker price. Such a sliding scale pricing model doesn’t exist for anyone at the BMW dealership.
Why do we accept American colleges could charge $70k+ a year when many of its citizens don’t even earn that much in a year? Oxbridge don’t cost nearly as much while consistently are “ranked” higher than most if not all American colleges!
Well, since I don’t understand why some Americans even have the doubts about the values of “Medicare for all”, I guess I would never understand our tolerance of private colleges with ginormous endowment charging arms and legs for college education.
I agree Coolweather. It has never in history been an egalitarian system. In private colleges it has always been about institutional need and how much parents can afford. That in no ways excuses bribes and cheating but there is thus strange dynamic now where the expectation is that all students if they reach a certain academic hurdle deserve access to a private education. I would like to see the college testing services proactively manage their greed and I think this was a wake up call for universities to manage the application process tighter and one way they can do that is to exert influence over the number of applications that can be submitted by one student giving admissions more opportunity to do a thorough job.
Bcos top private colleges are a drop in the bucket wrt to the total number of college graduates. HYPSM could charge $200k per year to the scions of the international elite and I wouldn’t care, nor should public policy care.
IMO, society should care more about educating the masses and the price of attendance at their instate publics. (The only people who really have a claim to care is those desiring a Supreme Court appointment and then Harvard or Yale law is much more important than Harvard or Yale College.)
How is cheating fixed by limiting the number of times students take the tests? They can cheat on the first exam just as easily as they can on exam 3 or 4. I don’t see how limiting the number of applications individual students can submit will prevent people from paying ringers to take exams or bribing coaches for spots on rosters either.
This scandal happened because people cheated and bribed their way in, and because coaches were able to influence which students were admitted. The number of exams taken or applications submitted aren’t relevant. The scores were certified by the test companies and the athletics were certified by the universities’ own coaches. It’s unfair to lay this at the feet of admissions and insinuate that they didn’t do their jobs.
The practice of allowing repeated testing along with the whole array of test/prep options - together with college practices of superscoring is itself a form of “cheat”, albeit an open one. But basically it puts some students at an advantage over others, and it happens to be an advantage that money can buy. And at the same time, it puts the lie to any claim that the test scores are an objective measure of anything.
Obviously having someone else take your test is cheating, but in a way it seems to me just the inevitable end result of the process of doing everything allowed to maximize scores.
I hate the idea this scandal has the potential to negatively impact students with a legitimate need for accommodations.
In my “opt out of competitive college admissions world”, all our kids can be one and done with no prepping. Imagine.
What is your explanation for the huge over representation of the upper SES ranges in the most selective private schools? E.g. top 3% or so (the no FA students) make up about half of the undergraduate students, while the bottom half (the Pell Grant students) make up only 11-22%.
Also on the issue of rich people stacking the deck at private schools. It’s true but only ten of these students can be top ten in their class.
They are all competing in a school with obviously test prepped, violin playing peers with ghost written essays. How do they stand out? And the students at these schools at the bottom half of their class are still rich. Where are they going?
It has been pointed out to me and I hadn’t realized, that many of these private schools also produce many super high quality students who attend on scholarship.
And the successful Catholic private schools are full of an economically diverse pool.
It is my belief that the really great students from all schools find a place to go.
There’s not a enough room at HPYSM.
That’s why there are hundreds of other great schools.
The actual problem is that we all place such outsized value on hpysm. And based on age old elitism and outdated modalities not supported by research.
“How is cheating fixed by limiting the number of times students take the tests?”
The better/simpler/easier fix is to require kids to send in all their test scores. And to also decline super-scoring. Which any school could implement in one second.
Georgetown (run by social justice oriented Jesuit priests) does this very explicitly to slow down the testing/prep arms race and also level the testing playing field. Would also easily flag any suspect jumps in scores. I don’t think there’s any allegation so far that the Gtown tennis players were also sending in bogus scores.
I guess kids could still try to cheat on their one and only test. But, end of the day, cheaters gonna cheat no matter what you do.
But many schools wouldn’t want to do this unless their peers did too. The schools very much love to publish and brag about their astronomical test scores, and it also helps their rankings a bit.
Would also cut into the business of ACT and SAT. So all around, an excellent thing to do!!
@lookingforward I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that students need to understand what the school is truly looking for and that if their application doesn’t show that, they have no shot regardless of stats. On the other hand, I think its a little harsh to suggest that everyone who was denied somehow didn’t measure up in some way. Given that the elites have far more qualified students then they can possibly except, of necessity some perfectly suited students with great applications are going to be denied.
There is an element of luck here. There is nothing you can do if you are applying from NY and they are looking for geographic diversity. There is nothing you can do if they don’t need a bassoonist your year. But hopefully, the brilliant bassoonist didn’t spend a decade practicing 5 hours a day simply to get into Harvard. Hopefully, it was a passion and now he has all the benefit of being an accomplished musician. It may not open any particular door, but it will open many doors nonetheless.