This stood out to me in the article: "This income bracket tends to comparison-shop merit-aid packages or discounts in regular decision, and colleges know that, so they know their chance of yielding these kids is lower.”
Projecting yield is super important for schools so it doesn’t surprise me that if the data shows a lower yield rate for this income bracket, that it’s going to make a difference in acceptance rates.
What I really disagree with are the comments in the article that students wasted their time in HS studying so much if they didn’t get into an Ivy. I think parents set their kids up for major disappointment if that’s the message they are sending. Strong study skills and a solid work ethic are so important, much more so than the school name on the diploma.
Seems consistent with the stories we read on CC.
Yes, I found that quite insightful.
Absolutely!
That’s a fair point, but it’s worth noting that the only quotation on this topic in the article comes from the student, not the parent. In my anecdotal experience, when I have heard this expressed by my daughter and her peers, it was always student-driven, not parent-driven. Our job was to dissuade her from the perspective she built herself, not avoid providing it in the first place. Maybe just anecdote, but it’s definitely true that much of the pressure and drive today’s kids feel come from themselves and their peers, not the parents.
This is soooooo true. DS and all of his peers are so rank conscious. It makes me crazy. He wouldn’t consider certain schools because of their ranking.
Amanda is more bitter than resigned. Paying over $50,000 a year for a private high school seemed as if it would be enough. Now, she says, “it’s ■■■■■■■■. This ■■■■■■■price tag for nothing.” Amanda says of Marie, “She may be happy, she may be flourishing, but is she reaching her potential? Absolutely not.”
But this mom is way off base and maybe a little deluded.
This is referring back to the Chetty study, which we discussed at length before.
I think one of the key things to keep in mind is the graph in question controls for test scores. This is critical because there is a well-confirmed relationship between family income and test scores.
So if you don’t control for test scores, you will in fact see higher admissions rates, and in fact much higher attendance rates, as you go up in family income. The “problem” is so many upper-middle-class kids have high test scores (and other high academic indicators) that there is a crowding out effect on an individual level, even as these colleges are in fact admitting many, many such kids as a percentage of their admit classes.
But in the lower SES ranges, so few kids have competitive test scores and other academic indicators that the admissions rates on an individual level can be higher, but the total number of such Ivy+ admits is still much lower. There is no crowding out effect because there is no crowd.
To be sure, this does not explain why the attendance rates tend to take off even more in the top 1% and top 0.1% sorts of ranges. That is where things like legacy policies, special opportunities to distinguish oneself, and so on seem to be playing a large role, basically serving to counter-balance what could have been an even more intense crowding out effect.
OK, so elite private colleges are in fact elitist, and that helps high numbers elite kids.
But elite private colleges are also trying to skim off the few high numbers/low SES kids available. But that is not meaningfully reducing the number of slots available for high numbers/upper-middle-class kids, because there are only a few such high numbers/low SES kids to go around.
Instead, the real “problem” is just that so many upper-middle-class kids have high numbers these days. And only a fraction can attend the Ivy+ specifically, because that is very few slots in comparison.
So, necessarily, many high numbers upper-middle-class kids will have to attend other very selective private colleges and public universities. As they always have.
I’d also note that if “all” your hard work in HS does is get you in-state tuition at a good flagship university, that is already a demonstrably great outcome.
Combining these points, if you have demonstrably developed well academically and personally, then go to such a university, you are likely to have just as much career success as if you went to a Ivy+ college instead.
So in the really critical ways, your hard work very much is paying off. But of course this is from the perspective of thinking that being able to brag about how selective your college admissions might be is not actually a critical payoff.
This article is misleading. The title is about the Ivy League, but the content is about the Ivy Plus. A big difference in that the Ivy League schools offer need-blind admissions to all U.S. applicants whose income status has no bearing on their admissions. Yet, the article is about the connection between a certain income status and admissions outcome for yield protection. Although the article is about the Ivy Plus, it does mention Yale as if to imply that the Ivy League plays the same yield protection game.
Need blind schools read between the lines. This reading isn’t about providing aid but rather protecting yield. Many upper middle class families won’t be entitled to any aid or very little making these elite schools difficult economically. These schools know that.
Correlation is not the same as causation.
I believe this to be a simple numerator/denominator problem.
They do more than read between the lines. Many of these schools use CB’s Landscape which has fairly granular data of a student’s neighborhood, by census tract (based on applicant’s home address). Landscape’s neighborhood value looks at college attendance, household structure, median income, housing stability, education level, and crime to generate a picture of the applicant’s likely situation which allows admissions to put the whole app in context. Census tracts can range from 1,200 to 8,000 people.
I agree but in my book that’s reading between the lines.
Along that note, there is now a “Social Mobility” score to college rankings, they don’t even need to pretend to read between the lines anymore.
If you mean USNWR’s social mobility measure, the Ivy plus schools don’t do well on that because they don’t enroll enough Pell Grant students. That metric is something totally different than the data the schools have when reading apps.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/social-mobility
First of all the point that admissions at top schools seems less likely for kids whose parents are moderately high earners seems to be compatible with what I have seen. A range of $158,000 to $222,000 or a bit higher also seems right. I have also noticed that small business owners and farmers seem to be less likely to have their kids attend top ranked universities in the US because the way that financial aid is calculated they cannot afford it.
The same thing does not appear to be true in Canada. Family members who attended university in Canada have noticed students from a wide range of backgrounds, including the children of farmers and small business owners. I know a professor in a “hard to get a job” field in Canada who always tries to have the “what do you intend to do after you graduate” talk with his students. He says that multiple students have said “I am here four years, then I return to my father’s farm and help until he retires, then it is my farm”. I do not think that I ever met the child of a farmer or small business owner while studying at “Ivy Plus” schools in the US (with emphasis on the “plus” in my case). The one possible exception was one fellow student whose father was a senior partner at a New York City law firm – which might not count as a “small business”.
However, I think that this is a bigger problem for the universities than it is for the students. In my experience the most intelligent and hard working children of the strongest high tech employees find universities that are a good fit for them. Frequently they attend very good public universities. Then they get hired by top high tech companies and have a great career.
I used to see a lot of coworkers from MIT and Stanford. Now I see a lot of coworkers from U.Mass Amherst and UNH and San Jose State and universities outside of the US. The large majority of my coworkers at this point attended university outside of the US. I do not see this as a problem for the coworkers. They got a great education at a very good university.
This is very, very true (I agree that the comments in the article are wrong). Studying hard in high school is a major step in a student getting ready to first find a school that is a good fit for them, and then to do very well as a university student, and then to do well as an employee. Just as one example my daughters did not need straight A’s in high school to get accepted to the universities they attended. Then they got to university and found themselves in what are typical premed classes. Having done well in high school helped them to be ready to do well in the tough premed classes. Of course a student who goes into engineering or math classes in university will similarly be far better prepared to do well if they were a good student in high school. Then the graduates find themselves in a biotech lab with cells to grow or in a veterinary clinic with sick patients or in a high tech company with software to debug and the same responsible habits continue to help enormously.
I think that the article contains some interesting insights which are compatible with what I have seen. However, I think that the students will find their place. Over time responsible behavior and good grades and doing whatever you do well will help a student regardless of where they end up.
That is not what “need blind” means.
Need blind schools don’t consider an applicant’s level of financial need in their admission decision. In other words, an applicant requiring a very high amount of aid will not be treated adversely.
It does not mean that factors such as school district, zip code, parents education level, etc. (all of which can be proxies for income level) are not considered. In fact, they are - whether explicitly (such as publicizing a policy of favoring low income students) or otherwise (for example, placing lower weight on certain accomplishments of a wealthy and well connected kid).
The “plus” schools mentioned in the article are also need blind, as are thousands of public schools.
If the Ivy League schools don’t care about yield, why do they offer ED or REA and fill more than half their class through this early round? Why not offer unrestricted EA like MIT?
Going through the process with my son currently and the article is exactly what we’ve experienced. We got an early decision reject letter from a mini-Ivy. It said, you are in by all measures but, you need too much aid. So we earn too much to fall into the “need” based criteria and not enough to afford it. Note, we also refuse to bury our family in debt for university. So that is on us.
My son will end up going to a non-Ivy or non-mini Ivy but,here is kicker: He is getting merit scholarships which will make some very good schools very affordable. The problem with the IVYs or minis is you need like a 1500+ to get merit.
Parents: Ivy’s is old school thinking. Let your kid explore all of the other great schools out there.
Actually, the Ivies don’t provide merit aid at all.
The Ivies don’t offer merit aid, regardless of SAT score. Not sure about the little Ivies.