I’d like to agree with this because it represents a rather noble view of what motivates elite colleges and universities . . . and because Pizzagirl is right more often than not. But I must dissent on this one. Pulling from the same affluent suburban schools again and again is exactly what the most selective colleges do in our area, Minneapolis-Saint Paul. The AOs do information sessions every year at the three or four most exclusive private schools and at three or four high schools in the most affluent suburban districts. They show approximately zero interest in schools in the central cities, or in less posh suburbs, or in anyplace in Minnesota outside the Twin Cities metro unless possibly in Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic where there are lots of sons and daughters of doctors. The AOs insist they “know all the schools” in their assigned territory, but as I have come to understand it this really means they know the handful of top private and high-end public schools they think are worth knowing, and they write off all the other schools–probably 95+% of all the schools in the state–as not worth knowing because there’s not a sufficient density of highly qualified students who can be converted to likely applicants with a little encouragement.
What’s their incentive to do this? Well, I imagine partly it’s simple path-dependency; they go to the places they know and where they’re already known and have institutional relationships, especially with the GCs who can be invaluable allies in generating applications. But it’s not just laziness. My niece did that job for a while; she found it grueling, long hours, lots of travel, endless hours and days and weeks away from home. My guess is they’re just being efficient. The AOs have professional pride. Doing their job well means producing a substantial number of applicants from their assigned territory, and ideally getting a certain number of them admitted; otherwise they’re not doing the institution any good. Under pressure to produce and with time a scarce resource, they go to the likeliest sources of the production they’re looking for, and that’s the usual suspects, the most affluent suburban schools and the top private schools that are capable of churning out multiples of qualified applicants, instead of the random one or two they might squeeze out of a Saint Paul Harding or a Minneapolis Washburn. And that’s ultimately reflected in the demographics of those who attend the elite colleges. Stanford’s student body is 50% full-pays, and given how generous their FA is, you’d have to assume that means 50% of Stanford students come from families earning somewhere north of $200K/year and with substantial assets. At some elite colleges the percentage of full-pays is even higher.
@bclintonk To me, pizzagirl is an idealist. While I admire her for being an idealist (or sometimes), I often find her blurring the reality we live in and her ideals by mistakenly yet authoritatively and forcibly describing and arguing on how things work in real life… Back to topic, I think you got it exactly right in suggesting that it’s the “most efficient” way in which elite college AOs do their job to draw big numbers from a group of high schools year after year, i.e. best possible pool that provides most qualified candidates, most admissible, most would-be-willing-to-attend, and most doing well when they get there… I want to add that although it feels like they have little interest in a lot of areas/schools, they have come a long way in recent decades in expanding their reach for racial, geographic, and socioeconomic diversities, which does have an impact to their way of recruitment and admission. That being said, traditions die hard. It is like legacy admits. You bet legacy admission is a lot harder today than 40-50 years ago because of these diversity initiatives, but the practice is very much alive and not going away any time soon. The so-called “Feeder school” tradition perhaps has been impacted more than legacy but nonetheless those schools remain reliable sources for elite college AOs. There’s a Crimson article from a few years ago that talks about this: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/13/making-harvard-feeder-schools/
“The AOs do information sessions every year at the three or four most exclusive private schools and at three or four high schools in the most affluent suburban districts. They show approximately zero interest in schools in the central cities, or in less posh suburbs, or in anyplace in Minnesota outside the Twin Cities metro unless possibly in Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic where there are lots of sons and daughters of doctors. The AOs insist they “know all the schools” in their assigned territory, but as I have come to understand it this really means they know the handful of top private and high-end public schools they think are worth knowing, and they write off all the other schools-”
I don’t really dispute this. It’s really unfortunate, though. Understandable but unfortunate, and it feeds into the belief that one’s school is “owed” something.
@panpacific – why are you stirring up the pot here? You know the BS college dynamic does not fit this discussion. At least be honest about where you’re coming from and which high schools you’re talking about.
@ChoatieMom That’s not right. What do you mean “BS college dynamic does not fit this discussion.”? Does everyone need to spell out exactly what school they get their experience and knowledge about anything? Can you tell me how they “dynamic” is different among elite boarding schools, well known private day schools, big name magnet schools and wealthy suburban public schools, or in other words, schools that can be qualified as “feeder schools” for elite colleges? What are we talking about here anyway?
Do you not get that of the 30,000 high schools in this country, only a relative handful fall into the categories of elite boarding schools, elite private day schools, big name magnet schools and wealthy suburban public schools? I don’t have an issue with what you’re saying when you put it in the context of those kinds of schools. What I do object to is when people come on here with the “well, Harvard (whatever) owes my kids’ high school something” or “gosh, if we don’t send kids there, they will punish next year’s crop” without specifying that this only applies to a very small handful of schools and without acknowledging that they are the exception, not the rule, among those 30,000. It’s the lack of big picture perspective.
The least one could do, if one is fortunate and affluent enough to have one’s kids attend elite boarding schools / day schools / highest-level affluent suburban schools, is to at least have the humility to acknowledge that their kids are already on third base, instead of moaning how awful it is and what a travesty of justice it is that Harvard punished your school by “only” accepting 4 instead of 8 this year, and boy, Harvard had really better get on the ball and give your school what it deserves.
I’m not saying anyone on this thread specifically has said that, but it certainly comes across that way more often than not on CC.
^^ Why does there need to be so much reading into the “emotions”? Especially when it’s not even present in this thread. And on to your comment “they are the exceptions, not rules”, if you agree and like what @bclintonk said here:
it says that it is somewhat a standard practice that may more or less impact half of elite colleges’ student body. How is it not as “rule” as other rules?
These types of feeder schools are the exceptions, not the rules, among the 30,000 high schools in this country. I"m thinking about it from a school-out perspective. You’re thinking of it from a student-out perspective.
Don’t you think it’s kind of unfortunate, though, that (let’s say) half of elite colleges’ student bodies come from just those handfuls of schools? I sure do. (And my kids went to a standard issue upper middle class high school.)
On this point, I am not arguing with you. I already said I admire you for being an idealist. To be clear, “feeder school” in quotes (as theres none technically going by the old day criteria) is only one of a few things the elite college admissions do to skew the demographics of their student body. For whatever reason, it makes sense to them to do so at this point of time at least.
For the class of 2017:
About half of Harvard students went to a school that sent only one student to H.
11% of schools sent 72% of students.
6% came from the Top 10 feeder schools; about 5% went to Stuy, one of the Phillips, Boston Latin, Trinity, Noble and Greenough, or Lexington.
I may be missing something, but the article appears to list different numbers from the ones that you quoted. 74% of Harvard students went to a school that sent only one student to H, not about half. 11% of schools sent 32% of students, not 72%.
^ Interesting link, but I think post #392 misstates the data. The chart shows:
6% of Harvard’s class of 2017 came from Harvard’s top 10 feeder schools
11% of schools sent 32% of students
About half of Harvard students came from schools that sent only one student to H for the class of 2017
That’s still quite concentrated. It’s a good bet that the 11% of schools that sent roughly 1/3 of the students are mainly affluent suburban schools and private schools. And to be clear about terminology here, this isn’t 11% of all the high schools in the country, it’s 11% of the schools that sent any students to Harvard at all for the class of 2017.
Harvard’s entering class of 2017 was 1,659 students. If you do the math, this works out to something like the following: half the class or 830 students came from schools that sent only one student to H; 18% or 298 students came from 149 schools that sent 2; and 32% or 531 came from about 120 schools sending 3 or more (averaging 4.425 in this group). That’s a total of 1,099 schools out of 30,000 or so in the country. It’s a good bet that many of the schools sending 2, and even many of those sending 1 in this particular year, were also high-end suburban and private schools. Some of these schools may send more in some years, none at all in other years. Most of the nation’s 30,000 send none at all, year after year…
@bclintonk, talent tends to be concentrated. If you look at the membership of the National Academy of Science/Engineering or other national academies, you don’t find them evenly distributed across colleges in the US either. Most of the schools getting multiple faculty elected to one of the academies in a year are among the top research U’s (either elite privates or publics that are research powerhouses). And most of the thousand or more 4-year colleges don’t get any of their faculty elected to any national academy year after year. . . .
I agree with everything you wrote, but it also suggests that a key reason why most of nation’s 30k HS send none to Harvard year after year is most of the nation’s 30k HSs have none who apply to Harvard.
Harvard had a little under 39k applicants last year, so a little more than 1 Harvard applicant per HS, if the number of applicants per HS was evenly distributed. However, the number is not evenly distributed. In my affluent suburban area in southern CA, the local HS averages ~25 Harvard applicants per year and ~1 acceptance per year. Many similar types of HSs average even more applicants per year, particularly ones in the northeast or HSs with selective admissions. With many HSs averaging 10+ applicants per year, then an average of ~1 per HS implies the bulk of HSs in the US have no Harvard applicants.
The widely varying number of applicants per HS also makes it less clear how much the larger number of admits for certain HSs relates to a larger number of qualified applicants, rather than Harvard favoring applicants from certain HSs over others.
^^Talent is concentrated among schools with selection criteria. To some extent, successful and talented people probably are more likely to have talented children.
But I really don’t think the gap is just explained away by saying “well, suburban wealthy kids are obviously just significantly smarter than the students at those schools that can’t even send 1 kid a year.”
