“Holistic admission is a totally different ball of wax. It was implemented to facilitate the transmission of privilege from one generation to the next, not to select the most competitive of candidates.”
That was relevant in the days when entry to an Ivy League school often meant a handshake between the dean of admissions and a headmaster. But that’s hardly relevant today.
Look, if the elite schools wanted to “facilitate the transmission of privilege,” they would go about admissions quite differently from what they actually do.
They would not offer substantial financial aid and revert to full-pay only.
They would auto-admit legacies.
They would not actively recruit / do outreach in the underprivileged areas in their neck of the woods.
They’ve done none of these things.
They offer incredible financial aid, making it close to free for the particularly poor. They participate in things like Questbridge. That’s not a strategy one does is one is trying to keep “those people, not our kind, dear” out.
Every single elite school still rejects the majority of legacies – even though, with a genetics-uber-alles mindset, you’d certainly agree that there’s no reason to believe legacies are on average less qualified.
There are significant efforts made to recruit in inner cities, as well as in states typically less served by elite schools (e.g., mountain west states).
If they are “facilitating the transmission of privilege,” they’re doing a pretty poor job of it, by admitting all those pesky poor kids and non-legacies, and giving them money to boot.
Most of the Ivy League schools still get around 40% of their students paying list price (i.e. from families in the top 2-3% of the income range), with only about 10-20% getting Pell grants (i.e. from families in the lower 40-50% of the income range).
Holistic admissions ensured that I got to rub shoulders with YoYo Ma, Peter Sellars (theater/opera director and MacArthur Fellow), the guy who wrote *Memoirs of a Geisha /i, the ex-governor of Massachusetts, a few Microsoft millionaires who joined the company in the first wave etc. I’m sure some of these people had much better SAT scores and grades than others. Mine were great BTW and I’ve done nothing famous.
“Transmission of privilege” is a very specific accusation, IMO. Canuckguy, which groups specifically do you think are “at the top” and keeping the spoils for their brethren? How are they defined?
Mathmom, and maybe a whole lot of other folks who didn’t go on to be big names but had/have considerable influence around them, even the sorts that seem small but inspire many, over time.
“We can hope to raise his grade. But teaching him more vocabulary words or drilling him on the parts of speech will not open up new vistas for him. It is not within his power to learn to follow an exposition written beyond a limited level of complexity, any more than it is within my power to follow a proof in the American Journal of Mathematics. In both cases, the problem is not that we have not been taught enough, but that we are not smart enough”.
Charles Murray isn’t terribly intelligent? Well, I kind of suspected that.
Look, anyone who’s decently smart (say top 10% in intelligence, though it could even be top 50%) and has the requisite desire certainly can learn to see all sorts of interpretations and complexities in a written piece of work as well as understand any math proof.
The brain is an amazing muscle (even if it technically isn’t one) and very malleable.
“Tickets to Hamilton aren’t selling for five times face value because Lin-Manuel is “book smart” plus hard working.”
You meant,“not just”. It’s almost certain that Lin-Manuel is both those things, and they helped a lot in making “Hamilton” the quality theatre that it is.
“Look, if the elite schools wanted to “facilitate the transmission of privilege,” they would go about admissions quite differently from what they actually do.
They would auto-admit legacies.”
This rules out USC as an elite, I suppose*. Or maybe the Trojans are more keen on transmitting privilege than others.
*All legacies are guaranteed a transfer there if they meet a certain GPA somewhere else for a year; at least up until very recently.
While I understand and to some extent, agree with your larger point…not sure what you’re describing is limited or is necessarily attributable to holistic admissions.
One could make the same point about alums who graduated from colleges outside the US which don’t practice holistic admissions such as UTokyo/Kyoto/Waseda/Keio, Yonsei/Seoul National/Korea, NTU/NTNU, Beida/Tsinghua, Oxbridge, Heidelberg, etc.
That was the “just saying” statement you made about holistic admissions. It made no mention of Harvard or US elites.
By omitting that, that implies holistic admissions plays a crucial part in creating an educational environment of influential alums…even if they don’t end up becoming famous renowned movers and shakers in society.
My point is holistic admissions may have very little relation in creating that as many elite institutions which don’t have holistic admissions also have such influential alums not only in their societies, but also in the US as well.
Moreover, the same could be said for US based elite/respectable educational institutions which don’t have holistic admissions such as the exam public magnet high schools like BxScience, Stuyvesant, TJSST, Hunter College High School, etc*.
Some influential alums across multiple fields from high schools using non-holistic admissions: NeildeGrasseTyson(BxScience), James Cagney/Theolonious Monk**/Noam Elkies/Lucy Liu/Grace Meng(Stuyvesant), Lin-Manuel Miranda(Hunter College High School), etc.
** Didn’t graduate as he dropped out to start his long renowned music career during the Depression years.
I think the real point of mentioning that “holistic admissions isn’t the only way to get influential alums” is to have yet another chance to bring Stuyvesant into a conversation where it has nothing to do with anything.
Is getting influential alumni the main point of holistic admissions?
Isn’t the more important goal to create a rich academic and social environment for the current students? If some of them later become very influential, that’s wonderful too, but most won’t (not on the national stage, anyway.) Ideally the relative few who do are better educated (and their influence more positive) for having been exposed to a more diverse mix of classmates.
Holistic admissions is essentially universal among selective colleges, which makes it hard to believe that each had idiosyncratic reasons for adopting that policy. Each college may have a specific and idiosyncratic blend of characteristics and roles it is trying to find, but the basic idea that admission decisions should be made holistically can’t possibly be college-specific.
Most colleges either admit the majority of applicants or admit primarily based on stats.
At how many colleges are holistic admission reviews very important?
50 or so? Whatever their specific goals, the most selective colleges evidently try to craft classes of students they don’t think would emerge naturally if they selected based on GPA/rank and scores alone. Most of them seem to be putting a thumb on the scale to achieve greater SES, ethnic, and geographic diversity, as well as diversity of talents and interests. So no, not all specific approaches to class-crafting are the same (but there do seem to be some prevailing themes among most selective colleges).
MIT admits a class of students ~75% of whom want to be STEM majors. That works for MIT. How would the MIT adcoms react if suddenly next year 3/4 of their best applicants were prospective social science and humanities majors? MIT people must like being a STEM-focused technical institute (and want to keep it that way). I wonder if they wouldn’t start putting a thumb on the scale for prospective STEM majors with the requisite math background, even if their overall qualifications weren’t the strongest.
Because “holistic admissions” is how we make most decisions in life. That’s how we choose our friends, our spouses, our jobs. No one has a spreadsheet for selecting who they are going to date (well, I suspect a few people on CC may, but no matter).
Note as well that when parents and students come on here asking for others’ perceptions or experiences with various colleges, or relate their own experiences visiting the campuses or talking with others who have gone to the college in question, they are evaluating holistically as well.