Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Reagan also did not go to T10 schools. So, it works for both parties.
@tpike12, It’s not an example from @brainstormcouture’s personal experience. It’s the experience of 2 of his classmates. The only part of the apps we know he’s seen are essays which may or may not have been submitted. And we’re supposed to take the word of a 17-year-old over experienced admission counselors for who’s the most compelling applicant for their college? Surely they know their needs better than a high school senior.
@tpike12, you hit the nail on the head! Read my response to @privatebanker. It’s post #3499.
@brainstormcouture Congrats. Two of my favorite schools for producing the most important grads to me. My friends. Something in the air at both schools seems to produce hard working, smart and nice grads.
Awesome for you. Enjoy your time there. Bias alert. Boston really is a unique place to be an undergrad especially for jobs locally after you graduate. Local networks are very real. And it’s just a really interesting place with so many students from around the world and the profs and docs and researchers that live in the area.
@momo2x2018, I’m not ‘the friend.’ Read my response post #3499.
@bronze2 I added a bunch to my post #3497. Lol.
@brainstormcouture I think we are all mixing up 2 issues. We know that development kids have an edge on getting into college. We can’t know for certain about any individual student, but the fact that the preference exists is clear. In another post, I linked an article about the extent of the preference at Duke. Yes, Billionaire kids have an advantage.
The second issue is whether these development kids are actually displacing brilliant deserving kids and whether their acceptances are “unfair.” I am arguing that they are not harming the brilliant kids and that it is not unfair. In fact, it is the opposite. Their funds - both donations and tuition - makes it possible for schools like Harvard and Yale to accept brilliant kids who can’t pay. The example above of the student who was accepted to Yale and many other top 10 schools despite needing FA shows how the system works. This kid might not be in his very first choice, but he certainly shouldn’t be crying on anyone’s shoulder because he has to go to Yale.
@privatebanker LOL. I think LBJ did it the old fashioned way and went to Texas State. Even today, quite a few politicians went through their local state college system - they provide a superb education too, though much underappreciated in CC discussions.
@gallentjill 100% accurate!
One step further OP.
They are in completely different buckets of consideration.
All schools look for development candidates (with a very strong profile but perhaps not elite) to help the broader and long term mission. This being long term institutional viability, professors, research funds, student resources and economic mobility - for friends just like yours.
Your friend was competing against other “geniuses”. Friend #2 competed in the development pool.
Someone from her considered group would have been accepted regardless. Good for her.
@austinmshauri, okay, so you don’t wish to take my word for it, based on the experiences of 3 of my classmates (see post #3499 above which now brings the total count up to 3 other Class of 2019 students from my school). Btw, I have more examples I could give too.
Now, would you be willing to take the word of “experienced admissions counselors” like for example, the former Dean of Admissions at the University of Pennsylvania? Yes? No? Maybe? Please read the Los Angeles Time article which was published on March 29, 2019. It’s titled: “Colleges need to start disclosing all their admissions data to the public.”
Below are two of the most ‘enlightening’ excerpts from that article. These statements clearly make the same point I’ve been making all along, and for which so many posters here have felt the need to ‘take arms against.’ It’s very strange to take issue with facts that “experienced college counselors” have wrestled with for years, and to which I’m now a witness as evidenced by 3 of my classmates.
Excerpt#1: “For instance, early-decision programs are often regarded as a way for students to demonstrate enthusiasm for a particular school. But such programs effectively favor wealthy students, who have the means to apply without needing to compare financial aid offers.”
Excerpt#2: “When I became dean of admissions at a need-aware college, I was alarmed that we admitted certain students simply because they didn’t need financial aid. Students with straight A’s and strong test scores who needed aid were passed over in favor of students with Cs, Ds and academic dishonesty issues on their records because they could pay the full freight.”
And sorry for error in post #3497.
Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College. Not Whitttier. That was President Nixon as cited in the post correctly.
@brainstormcouture You could give the entire acceptance data from every student from your HS since the beginning of time, and you still could not make an argument that was valid statistically. I get it. You made your point. The horse is dead. However, just as we recognize that your opinion will not change, it’s unlikely that any other user’s opinions will change based on your arguments. That said, this site is not a debate society, so let’s move on.
And again, I’m not the grammar police; I’m correcting your inaccuracy; she was an associate dean of admissions at Penn. And she wrote an op-ed piece, not an article. And to be 100% accurate, she left Penn in 2008, which in college admissions circles is a lifetime ago. She is also now a private admissions consultant, so IMO, she has her own agenda in writing her piece. YMMV.
@brainstormcouture the point is that She didn’t take the spot from any of her classmates. Yes, it is a shame that colleges feel the need to accept subpar candidates who can pay the full price. But again, they are not accepting them INSTEAD of the most qualified applicants. Without the full-pay students they wouldn’t be able to educate the most qualified students.
So the choice may be:
- Admit 90 well qualified students or
- Admit 95 well qualified students and 5 less qualified rich kids
Under option 1, only well qualified students get to attend - but only 90 of them
Under option 2, while it looks like those 5 rich kids took someone else’s spot, each in fact opened up a spot for another well qualified student.
yes, this is a simplistic explanation, but it’s how things work.
Post#3509 should say the op-ed piece was published on March 27, 2019. And that Sara Harberson was the associate dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania and the dean of admissions at Franklin & Marshall College.
And while I’m here, I’ll post one last excerpt from the thoughts of that former Associate Dean of Admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as, my last observation and what I’ve learned from this whole experience.
“Colleges accept federal funding and therefore need to be held accountable for whom that funding was intended. When the data are public, families will be more informed, and colleges will be embarrassed by the blatant inequality they have permitted. Only then will colleges become better stewards for the next generation.”
I wholeheartedly agreed with this statement! And if the Ivies continue to give preference to those students that can make bank, the least they could do is opt out of taking federal funding from the taxpayers (that includes ‘the little people’ like me and my family). Federal funding is generally intended for students who cannot make bank to pay for the exorbitant price tag of a college education in the United States of America, especially when it’s from an Ivy school.
Ivies can then be 100% HONEST and simply operate like any other country club, yacht club or private organization that admits people based solely on their bank accounts and/or via cronyism and nepotism. I’m certain that many millionaires and billionaires will be just as pleased that their darling student(s) won’t have to cross paths with the ‘riff-raff’ that needs to check the “Yes” box for that very important question in the Common App. “Do you intend to pursue need-based financial aid?”
There is a great deal of inequality in our society (now more than ever). The very institutions that are meant to equalize and level the playing field for everyone, are in fact, perpetuating the great chasm between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’ The latest college admissions scandal, “Varsity Blues,” is but the tip of the iceberg.
How do we know the students from wealthy families are “less qualified”? A few points on a standardized test, which is still within their stated acceptance range, doesn’t mean one student is more qualified than another.
@CTScoutmom I agree with your post. But one small point that is actually a big point.
Harvard and Yale do not submit “subpar” students. Even rich ones.
They may be at the lower bands of academic profile but still in the bands of the profile. Like some first gen, low ses, athletes or urm.
They don’t have to rich and perfect. They have to be very very good. Like all the other students in the spectrum of admits.
One billionaire kid doesn’t set the 25 to 75 band. It’s a lot of accepted students. And rich and poor are in the statistic.
From what’s happened so far it looks like the focus is not on admissions but on scapegoating the various individuals involved :(. I think if we see more things like this, however, there definitely will be more pressure to more transparent admissions policies
@CTScoutmom There is a major error in your example: the number of freshman beds at any college is fixed, not variable. Your example should be:
So the choice may be:
- Admit 100 well qualified students or
- Admit 95 well qualified students and 5 less qualified rich kids AND increase the financial aid award to many of the 95 AND renovate a dining hall AND fund a new computer lab, etc.
@brainstormcouture You continue to say the Ivies are need-aware; they are not (for domestic applicants.) No domestic applicant has a better chance at Ivy admission by checking “No” on the FA question. Admissions probably doesn’t even see that box. Now if you want to argue that very big donors get their kids admitted, we all agree this is true.
Technically, most of them are, but…
Correct.
Hint: Many of the highly selective schools give a tip to low income applicants (and first gen, and…) as part of their focus of increasing access, so by definition they do consider financial need. It’s just not a negative to your app.
I’d add that many of the lower income applicants who are accepted at top schools ALSO have lesser “stats” – simply because colleges take into consideration the level of opportunities that the students have had, and what is available at their schools.
I think the glaring problem with the anecdote about the brilliant mathy kid going to Yale & the billionaire D accepted at Harvard is that there is no mention of the girl’s interests. Harvard is going to weigh the merits of math/STEM applicants against other math/STEM applicants – and they are going to apply an entirely different metric to a student with a humanities bent. Also, colleges often make seemingly offbeat waitlist decisions based on yield considerations – Harvard probably loses a good number of math superstars to MIT, so maybe coming across as too much of a math genius could be a problem. (Harvard probably doesn’t have much to worry about when it comes to yield in most cases-- but I have seen quite a few instances of a student turning down Harvard in favor of MIT on CC over the years )
I remain very grateful to the private colleges that admitted and offered funding to my financially needy daughter, despite her bottom quartile SAT & ACT scores & minimal academic preparation in math & science. No matter how many richer kids they also admitted. I assume that the colleges aim to keep the total number of financial aid recipients fairly constant, as well as the total allocation of dollars. Colleges that say they are need-blind are indeed need-blind as to individual decisions in the RD round (with the obvious exception of development cases). They keep the balance of need vs. non-need students constant through other means, including broader decisions about admission criteria & specific areas where decisions are need-aware, such as admission of international students, or in some cases waitlist decisions.