<p>Not a ■■■■■ post</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/09/04/harvards_admissions_of_gilt/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/09/04/harvards_admissions_of_gilt/</a></p>
<p>The author of the article, Alex Beam, is a Yale grad who writes about 20 anti-Harvard columns a year - looking for a chance to make sport at the expense of what he sneeringly calls “The World’d Greatest University” even when, as here, Harvard is far less “gilt” than his alma mater in re the topic he is allegedly discussing </p>
<p>Beam is an Exeter grad who was not admitted to Harvard and thus was forced to matriculate in New Haven. He has never gotten over it…</p>
<p>Is this a thread from the Gilded Age?</p>
<p>This is not news. All colleges admit “development” cases. However, the impact that they have on the rest of the student body outweighs the fact that the applicant might not be “qualified” enough (in virtually all cases, they are - they have fantastic stats).</p>
<p>In reality, all top universities do this, not just Harvard. I thought everyone knew that the rich, famous, athletic, underrepresented have an “in” at college.</p>
<p>Of course they do. The author of this column just likes to twist Harvard’s tail. </p>
<p>After all, would it be even be news if it was Yale, etc in the title?</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I apparently don’t seem to have enough idle time to waste on college admissions cult forums in order to know what practices such as “Z-listing”’ are</p>
<p>right… “upper class sports like rowing” definitely get secret scholarships… that totally happens</p>
<p>Maybe the writer of the Boston Globe article is a ■■■■■, but the author of the [book</a> which inspired the article](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097967/sr=1-1/qid=1157480315/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8235552-6598357?ie=UTF8&s=books"]book”>http://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097967/sr=1-1/qid=1157480315/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8235552-6598357?ie=UTF8&s=books) isn’t. Dan Golden is a Harvard (undergrad) alum and a Pulitzer Prize winner who is now at the Wall Street Journal. The book painstakingly documents lots of corruption in admissions (including at Harvard) – rich people buying spots with money. We CC folk are probably too jaded to be surprised by these “development cases”, but the author’s anger makes it hard not to take a fresh look. The book also argues persuasively that it’s not “just something private colleges have to do to get money”.</p>
<p>Surely, it’s in the interests of top schools to pretend that this is nothing too special or interesting, but maybe it’ll inspire a fresh debate over a form of corruption that we’ve become numb to.</p>
<p>Actually, BROWN is the posterchild for sucking up to the rich and famous in Golden’s new book - which was, apparently, hustled out to take the heat off affirmative action programs.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/05/admit[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/05/admit</a></p>
<p>In point of fact, the most startling admissions “favoritism” policy these days is probably at MIT, of all places. </p>
<p>Last year, females constituted 27% of the applicants at the tech school in Cambridge, MA, but over 49% of the admits! </p>
<p>Now THAT … is affirmative action!</p>
<p>You won’t find any argument from me there, Byerly, much as I love that school.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I think it’s much less contemptible to practice affirmative action for a historically underrepresented group (surely there has been some oppression of women in science, or of black people in society at large) than to practice it in favor of the rich and famous. Nobody claims Harvard is the worst, but bending the rules in favor of the rich and famous even a little is despicable, especially for a school of Harvard’s prestige and wealth. If you read the book, you will find plenty of hard examples of Harvard doing exactly that.</p>
<p>All old chestnuts. Most of his local “research” consisted of Googling Crimson stories and reading Karabel’s book for like-minded sentiments. The author’s agenda is pretty obvious. Favoritism is GOOD if it suits <em>my</em> prejudices, and the group to whi <em>I</em> belong, but BAD if it suits <em>somebody else’s</em> prejudices and <em>their</em> contemptable, underqualified peers.</p>
<p>He openly admits to an agenda, but it seems that when a Harvard alum indicts his own alma mater for selling spots, it is time to wake up. I realize it is in your interests to say “old chestnuts”, but I think it’s sometimes good to let fairness prevail over school pride.</p>
<p>And there is a non-whimsical reason for favoring underrepresented groups over rich and well-connected ones. The latter people will do fine anyway. Society is better off when people who have never gotten a chance get a chance.</p>
<p>btw, he’s not as doctrinaire as you think. He is outraged on behalf of Asian kids who get screwed by traditional affirmative action. I think his purpose in this book is to point out how various little guys get screwed by big policies (affirmative action for the underrepresented OR overrepresented).</p>
<p>“Harvard leftist attacks Harvard for not being sufficiently leftist!!!”</p>
<p>This is news?</p>
<p>Karabel is a Harvard grad, too.</p>
<p>Jim Fallows is an ex-Crimson editor.</p>
<p>Ross Douthat was an ex-Crimson columnist.</p>
<p>You don’t get your book published or get people to read your stuff by attacking Middlebury or the like.</p>
<p>Can you imagine people snapping the maggie off the newsstand to read a Time story captioned “Who Needs Middlebury?”</p>
<p>His “purpose” - admittedly and quite simply, was to counterattack in order to protect an unpopular pattern of racial preferences.</p>
<hr>
<p>The next thing you know, the old Liberal Lion himself - Teddy Kennedy (a legacy BTW, who had to cheat his way through) will be fulminating about the unfairness of it all. Typical PC liberal: just like Teddy fighting energy saving windmills off Cape Cod because he might be able to see them on the horizon off the family compound!</p>
<p>I think Golden would be reasonably happy with abolition of race-based prefences, as long as alumni-based preferences and wealth-based preferences came along. What would you say to that?</p>
<p>I would say … horse manure.</p>
<p>When Golden thinks preferences for others threaten his <em>own</em> sub-group’s status, he will oppose them, and not before.</p>
<p>Have you ever thought that tose rich people give money - lots of it. That make it possible for an inner city kid to get admission as well as free ride to those schools.</p>
<p>I think resorting to one-dimensional political labels is kind of below a well-educated Harvard man of your stature, Byerly. These issues are too complicated for that.</p>
<p>simba, there are schools that have a lot of money without selling spots.</p>
<p>Why Ben … you must be joking! </p>
<p>Golden’s book is <em>loaded</em> with the “one-dimensional” race and class-based political labels of which he is so enamored. </p>
<p>And just to think … he is a “well-educated Harvard man”!!</p>
<p>And I notice you are not above a little incendiary word-smithing yourself … ie, “selling spots.”</p>