Is The College Admissions Process Broken?

[roycroftmom]

Fine with me. Just note that the music conservatory and sports academies don’t share that interest in admitting those with diverse extracurricular skills

[blossom]

You don’t need to convince me. I’m the broken record who has posted about the Fortune 50 CEO who majored in Renaissance Studies (truly, the most gifted and kindest leader I’ve ever worked for), and who has hired hundreds and hundreds of people for all sorts of roles requiring different skills and abilities. I get knocked for being an elitist for “claiming” that you don’t need to major in finance to DO finance; I get knocked for being a no-nothing for claiming that it’s ok to major in anthropology or history and you can still find a job; I get a lot of obnoxious messages from all sorts of posters.

It’s ok. There are truly successful people doing incredible things all over the place if you look for them.

[roycroftmom]

There are truly successful people who did not graduate college ( S. Jobs, B. Gates).

Anecdotes and outliers exist in everything.

[hebegebe]

@L_NewEngland

I was just looking up a small PE firm for work purposes and happened to look at staff. 100% male except the EA.

The pipeline of women ready to apply for PE is also very low, because the pipeline starts in college with women who are willing to put up with the heavy demands of investment banking, and then ready to repeat that with private equity. A lot of women decide that’s not for them. The talented women who are willing to go through that are in high demand, and are likely to be snapped up by the major firms.

[AustenNut]

@roycroftmom

Gifted article on how college admissions skew youth sports in the US

That was an interesting article and I could certainly comment on several aspects of it, though not all would be germane to this thread.

called for ending admissions preferences for athletes because they are one of the reasons that there is so much money spent on youth sports.

For money spent on youth sports in soccer, lacrosse, fencing, etc, I would not be surprised if there are a number of families who are hoping that it could result in an athletic hook for their children to highly rejective schools. And if it doesn’t result in that, then it’s still a signifier of their own financial success to their peers. So if colleges stopped having athletic hooks, then perhaps those youth sports would decrease in popularity. Then again, it could become even more of a financial signifier for those who are still willing/able to pay the big bucks even though there would be no college admissions impact.

But for sports like football, basketball, and baseball, I think there are families with much less economic means who are participating in expensive youth sports because they see that as their kid’s best shot to big $$$$, and they haven’t seen many signs of big financial success coming out of their own educational systems. And if their kid doesn’t make it to the NFL/NBA/MLB, then at least it might get their college expenses paid, which would put them in line for more financial success.

As related to this thread, many families don’t know a great deal about the college admissions process. So families may not even know about need-based aid and how substantial it can be at some colleges, though of course, that is only if their children are amongst the top 1% and can get into those schools. Additionally, many may have heard horror stories about college loans and think that college is unaffordable without an athletic scholarship to accompany the admission letter. So for the sports where there is significant money that can be made, I don’t see any changes in admissions preferences impacting the youth sports market.

[Thorsmom66]

I wholeheartedly believe that you can be successful from a variety of backgrounds and with many majors. I was a history and French major but had a successful career in financial services before pivoting into a second career later in life. I found you could learn any technical skills on the job as long as you had good written/oral communication, strong analytical skills etc. . Personally, I lament the pre-professional mindset of college students today - especially since the job landscape is constantly shifting. The best thing a kid can be is flexible and willing to pivot when necessary.

[NorthNorth]

Classical education was often heavily liberal arts. I believe a well-rounded education is highly undervalued.

[roycroftmom]

The $90k annual price tag tends to focus one on obtaining a job.

[ucbalumnus]

@Aimlesscat1

Regarding publics, particularly state flagships I think that there needs to be much more clarity for high stats kids. CA is particularly bad with this. They pretend that all UCs are equal and that UC Merced and UC Riverside are peers to UCLA and UCB which of course is just foolish though they are both very good schools.

California has a large population, so the number of flagship-aspiring applicants is very large relative to the size of UCB and UCLA. It would be more comparable to other states if there were (instead of 9 UCs) a theoretical flagship the size of all 9 UCs put together. Such a theoretical super-UC would be about as selective as UCM or UCR, which would be comparable to how selective many other states’ flagships are.

[LostInTheShuffle]

@Chekov

“Athletes should be given the same consideration in the admissions process as other students, like musicians, who dedicate themselves to their craft.”

Scott White would probably react the same way I did to @KBdad’s graphic above!

[L_NewEngland]

@Chekov

As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, it’s hard to generalize on this.

I said “often” “lot” and “more likely” so I thought was being clear I wasn’t generalizing across the board (though was saying there was a tendency IME). I doubt anyone would argue that it is a truly random assortment of personalities and backgrounds that go into NYC banks, PE firms or hedge funds…

I’d also point all that income gap data is necessarily incorporating a lot of past norms and actions (what job someone was hired for 10 years ago, etc). There is a question in my mind if the gap will be as big 20 years from now with pretty big shifts in hiring practices and culture at a lot of corporations over 20 years ago.

[L_NewEngland]

@hebegebe

The pipeline of women ready to apply for PE is also very low, because the pipeline starts in college with women who are willing to put up with the heavy demands of investment banking, and then ready to repeat that with private equity. A lot of women decide that’s not for them. The talented women who are willing to go through that are in high demand, and are likely to be snapped up by the major firms.

That applicant pool isn’t 50/50. Totally agree. Having worked at a number of organizations that made if a priority to bring in talented, qualified people from various backgrounds (even when hard) I can say my experience is you can do it. You need to make a strategic goal and be a welcoming space though. These are really smart guys (I have zero doubt) this is not something they are really trying to fix in a meaningful way or they would made it happen.

And I think the fact lots of women don’t go into it is indicative of the culture of these firms more globally…

[tamagotchi]

@Chekov

It’s a whole different world. The opposite of bro culture.

Well, not quite the opposite… I have known a bunch of high level math and chess guys (young math geniuses who ultimately became professors at princeton, MIT etc), and I have seen the macho chest thumping posturing going on there, too… just of the intellectual variety… who is the smartest of them all? A sort of big brain bro culture.

[shawbridge]

Thanks. Is this team by team or do they spread the revenue from football and basketball to cover crew etc.? I know that as a former Ivy minor sport athlete (I was a walk-on so alas no admissions advantage), I get requests every year to donate to Friends of XXX sport or Friends of IvyU Athletics on top of the many requests I get to donate to IvyU. So I assume that the lesser sports don’t cover their costs.

Every once in a while, an Ivy player makes it to the pros (in basketball, think Bill Bradley, Geoff Petrie, Brian Taylor, Armand Hill from Princeton basketball or Jim McMillian of Columbia or Chris Dudley of Yale and in football, think of Calvin Hill and Foye Oluokun of Yale, Kyle Juszczyk of Harvard or current rookie Andrei Iosivas of Princeton). The only one who I think left school early was Brian Taylor and he came back after an ABA/NBA career and completed his political science degree.

[Thorsmom66]

You forgot Jeremy Lin - and, of course, Fitzmagic.

[Aimlesscat1]

@hebegebe

In contrast, because the Davidson programs are highly subsidized due to the founder’s generosity, most of the families there attending there were relatively poor, and their kids attended underperforming schools throughout the nation. These were +3SD kids who were attending schools where it was likely that nobody else was remotely close to their ability.

Were these bright kids the superstars in their school system? Often, no. Because they were constantly bored and had few friends, they often underperformed in their school system. Some had behavioral issues. It was an incredible waste of talent.

I know what you are saying, I was that kid. But a weeklong program over the summer doesn’t help that kid very much because they spend virtually all of their time in the other world.

Places like TJ are great for the kids in the 8 North Eastern counties who make it in but what about the kids who were just below the line or better yet kids from the 8 counties on the Kentucky border? What is being done for them? Same for the NYC schools, what happens to the kids who were close but not quite there for Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science? It creates an ‘all or nothing’ situation at 8th grade similar to how people feel about elite college admissions. The difference is that in elite college admissions it only feels that way since there are plenty of virtually equivalent schools in the T100. This isn’t the case for HS so it really may be ‘all or nothing’ for the kids.

@Thorsmom66

But that isn’t true at some other top schools where they are admitting students that wouldn’t get a second look absent their sport (most would be on the auto reject pile). And that’s OK - they will all graduate and be successful - I just don’t like the pretense that the academic bar is the same because it isn’t.

But it isn’t remotely as described by some on this thread who speak of these kids as if they don’t belong. As you mentioned they graduate and are successful. Everyone ‘knows one’ but the number of kids significantly below the bar are relatively small and do not negatively impact either admissions or academics in a negative way.

@Mwfan1921

Do you know that many schools have eliminated anything resembling gifted programs and/or break out groups for kids of different levels?

That they have done it doesn’t make it right. San Francisco is the poster child for dysfunction within their public schools in the name of ‘correctness’. The result is close to 40% of kids attend private schools.

@Zrt42

Maalik is a very bright young man with high school grades that made him a good fit at Texas

Which means that he was capable of doing the work at Duke.

@Mwfan1921

IMO the far more serious issue is student-athletes who are in college who are basically illiterate. That should never happen. It doesn’t at the highly rejective schools, but is not uncommon elsewhere.

I agree that the athletics situation in the Power 5 conferences (and many mid-majors) at many schools is wrong, very wrong. Football and basketball athletics at that level is warped and to pretend otherwise is to ignore what is right in our faces. But, to pretend that athletes and athletics in the Ivy league and high academic D3 conferences are similar to P5 athletics is equally wrong.

@roycroftmom

Gifted article on how college admissions skew youth sports in the US, unlike other places.

Access is a huge issue and one that I spend quite a bit of time thinking about. The biggest barriers to participation isn’t the cost of club sports (though it is high) it is facilities. Team sports are high demand in our area and Soccer fields, Basketball courts, and volleyball courts are both expensive and in short supply. When the public schools charge $300/hr to use their gyms after hours rec sports become a challenge.

The idea that admissions preferences drive this just doesn’t hold water at least for team sports in the bay area. Interestingly though, fencing, squash, and rowing are growing rapidly (particularly among ORM) with new facilities and clubs popping up. College recruiting could be driving those sports to a higher degree.

@NorthNorth

Success comes in all forms. That’s why I think diversity of students is underrated on here. IQ, EQ, leaders, musicians, athletes, whatever. Kids are not just GPAs and SATs.

A wider view of “success” hopefully leads to a better understanding that “success” is defined in many ways.

@roycroftmom

Fine with me. Just note that the music conservatory and sports academies don’t share that interest in admitting those with diverse extracurricular skills

They are specialized in a way that elite American universities aren’t currently nor have any desire to become in the future.

@NorthNorth

Classical education was often heavily liberal arts. I believe a well-rounded education is highly undervalued.

I agree, especially over the arc of one’s entire career.

@roycroftmom

The $90k annual price tag tends to focus one on obtaining a job.

That is the great challenge. The skills learned in pre-professional types of education are key ‘early career’ drivers while the skills learned in a classical education become more valuable mid-career and on.

@ucbalumnus

California has a large population, so the number of flagship-aspiring applicants is very large relative to the size of UCB and UCLA. It would be more comparable to other states if there were (instead of 9 UCs) a theoretical flagship the size of all 9 UCs put together. Such a theoretical super-UC would be about as selective as UCM or UCR, which would be comparable to how selective many other states’ flagships are.

Very true but the system isn’t aligned that way though they try to pretend that it is. And, the current system is completely broken for top CA students. UCLA and UCB together have a superior seat to population ratio to than UT-Austin. CA could easily implement a system that provided a fairer shot for high stats kids in the state. Using just the top 4 (UCLA, UCB, UCI, and UCSD) you could build a hybrid platform which guaranteed admission to one of the 4 to the top x% of each HS in CA and to kids with a certain level of academic achievement but were outside of that top x%. Such a system would provide opportunity to top performing kids across the state relative to their resources while also including a greater share of kids from areas where academic success is more concentrated. The seats are there, it just takes acknowledgement that it is a multi-dimensional issue needing a multi-dimensional solution.

[L_NewEngland]

@tamagotchi

and I have seen the macho chest thumping posturing going on there, too… just of the intellectual variety… who is the smartest of them all? A sort of big brain bro culture.

Sorry I didn’t mean chest thumping and some macho posturing…(I think you can indeed find that anywhere)… but more like saying things like “all the women in my group slept the way into their roles” a quote from someone at GS (said to me personally)…or a relative used to work on wall street would tell stories of ridiculous evenings or trips to vegas with coworkers (off the clock, to be sure but with coworkers)…

[shawbridge]

PE has been a little more old line – hire friends of friends who went to the right schools. In part because a big part of PE is selling – to investors, to prospective acquisition targets – which places greater weight on social skills. There are some PE folks who are really innovative but a lot do pretty cookie-cutter stuff. The rest have often been hire from the same schools and even the lacrosse teams etc. I think that has been changing, but because PE is fuzzier, selling matters a lot more.

I’m a little out of date here, but the female PE partners I knew did not have kids while the male PE partners typically did have a) kids; and b) multiple spouses.

Hedge funds and especially quantitative hedge funds have tended to attract folks from the mathematical areas, many of whom are weaker on social skills. You need the folks who are going to help raise money, but results tend to be easier to discern than with PE (at least on a year to year basis). I knew almost no female partners of quantitative hedge funds (I can think of one in Europe but just met her and don’t know anything about her) but my knowledge is dated.

VCs also do a lot of selling, but partners there tend to have an engineering background and have been at/operated a tech company prior to joining. So social skills combined with technical background (and some not so strong on the social skills). I have worked with a few female VC partners. But, technical background or work with a tech company are probably critical. Incidentally, the female partners I know well were founders and have kids.

I agree with @blossom that if they really wanted to, they could make their work forces more diverse, but it would cost money and more important would take partner time.

Having responded to previous texts, why is tangent about PE firm partners in the college admissions is broken thread?

[L_NewEngland]

Also I think we are so far off track from college admissions it isn’t even funny

I’m done relaying/clarifying my opinions on this matter:)

[AustenNut]

@shawbridge

Having responded to previous texts, why is tangent about PE firm partners in the college admissions is broken thread?

Because far more threads at CC than I care to count usually end up talking about elite college admissions or elite jobs/fields and ROI relating to elite pursuits, no matter how far away from the original thread’s topic.