<p>Yes, that is why I added the term “atypical circumstances.” For full disclosure, one needs to look at the number of families with large income receiving aid AND look at the amount of money distributed. It is obvious that 200 families receiving 4,000 a piece only make a small dent in the 100MM financial aid budget at Harvard. In addition, some of the information that can derived from the research available at <a href=“http://www.williams.edu/wpehe/downloads1.html[/url]”>http://www.williams.edu/wpehe/downloads1.html</a> is illuminating. For instance, the paper DP69 “Gordon C. Winston and Catharine B. Hill, “Access to the Most Selective Private Colleges by High-Ability, Low-Income Students: Are They Out There?,” October 2005” does provide support to Mini’s suggestions. This said, this subject has been abundantly debated right here on CC.</p>
<p>"2) the athletes (by which i mean RECRUITED athletes at ivies) are laughable: they’re not good enough to compete with their peers at big schools that give scholarship money, and they’re too dumb to contribute at all to the intellectual atmosphere. Also, no one goes to athletic events (except for the game against harvard), so there’s really no school spirit argument. </p>
<p>Endearing comments, to say the least."</p>
<p>Wow, what narrow-minded, ignorant people you are! EVERY athlete recruited to the Ivies that I personally know, (and this includes crew, runners, waterpolo, baseball players, volleyball players) had STELLAR academic credentials!! It was their impressive athletic achievement (that you obviously so disdain), that set them apart from all the other run-of-the-mill academic egghead applicants and earned them admission.</p>
<p>True, they may not be as elite of some huge DI university athletes, but it is precisely because they were required to meet a miinimum academic standard (which is quite high) to even be considered. Also, they recieved absolutely NO money while agreeing to commit hours of every day to their teams.</p>
<p>There are definitely some athletes at the lower end of the Ivy academic spectrum that were admitted, but that is the exception, not the rule.</p>
<p>It is sad that you have no appreciation for the tradition and history of Ivy League athletics, nor appreciate the sacrifices that collegiate athletes have made to get where they are. I wonder if you ever made any effort to attend any of the athletic events at Yale before passing judgment.</p>
<p>Life is not all about academics. Some of the most sought-after candidates in the business world are collegiate-level scholar athletes due to their tenacity, competitive nature and desire to win.</p>
<p>Assuming that the “evidence” of higher scores by Asians in the range that “matter” becomes a fact, should we not roll back the clock to a not so distant past where the opposite was true? Should we not analyze why the number of Asian students multiplied at our leading schools as the numbers of Caucasian atrophied despite having higher scores? </p>
<p>Again, it is worth repeating that a 50 points difference in a composite SAT does not guarantee that each subscore was higher. While Asians score higher than Caucasians in Math, they DO trail in verbal scores. Are we supposed to ignore the simple fact that perfect verbal SAT scores might be more valuable and more rare than perfect math scores at non-technical oriented schools?</p>
<p>Let’s say they aren’t identical, but they are equivalent. Say for example that they are all musicians of the same caliber, but in order to get a complete orchestra you’d have to accept students from both groups. It would look like asians needed higher SAT scores to get in. But the truth is that what really happens is that the adcoms look at the group and say, okay all these kids have SATs over 1500 so we know they’ll do fine academically, but now we need to build an orchestra. </p>
<p>You really are exaggerating the value of small differences in SAT scores. My son is much, much better at math than he is at verbal things, but he’s scored an 800 in CR twice while making careless mistakes in math every time that bring down his score.</p>
<p>Athletes contribute to alumni enthusiasm at HYP as well as Stanford. If they did not, how could one account for the very existernce of the IVY League–formed specifically not around academics but athletics? How would one account for the fact that every single sports coach position was endowed during Harvard’s last fund-raising campaign before money was given for the library, for graduate students’ subsidies, for additional professors’ chairs and much needed new buildings? Alumni are notoriously supportive of athletics at HYP. Been reading the Yale Daily News and the Harvard Crimson re: tailgating at the Harvard-Yale game? If the Game were not such a big deal, why would they devote so much ink to it year after year?</p>
<p>I think it is reasonable to assume that the shape of applicant pools to HYP and etc. have changed since 1981. There are clearly many more Hispanics (there were virtually none then), and more Asian-Americans, representing far more subgroups than in 1981. Applicants are likely spread more widely, with top students from little towns and small cities, with incomes in the “high average” range ($40k-92k), more likely to apply. The percentage of students applying from the old-line preps, as a percentage of the total applicant pool has likely declined as well.</p>
<p>But what do we find? Over the past 15 years, with some exceptions, the percentage of Pell grant students attending (incomes lower than $40k) has declined. The percentage of students in the $40-92k cohorts has become relatively tiny. The percentage of full-freight customers has remained the same. The percentage of students coming from the top 20% (but not top 3%) of the U.S. population, (now roughly $100k-$160k) has increased substantially. And the median income/assets of the full-freight customers has increased.</p>
<p>You can cross-tabulate the two, and see what you come up with.</p>
<p>Anecdotes? In our town, highly educated state capital, up until this year, as far as I am aware, not a single student who was not athlete, was admitted to HYPS for the past four years. (This year there was one at Yale.) Didn’t matter if they had 1600/2400 board scores, championship debater, val or sal. Didn’t matter what race or ethnicity. What virtually all of them had in common was that they fell into the $40k-$92k cohort. And of those, those who were accepted were athletes.</p>
<p>“How would one account for the fact that every single sports coach position was endowed during Harvard’s last fund-raising campaign before money was given for the library, for graduate students’ subsidies, for additional professors’ chairs and much needed new buildings?”</p>
<p>If you want to know what is most highly valued, follow the money.</p>
<p>Cellardweller: thanks, that’s helpful. This suggests that asians are simply overstudying for the SATs b/c beyond 2260, the colleges don’t care </p>
<p>But there may be fatal weakness to your argument. Here is the proof by reductio, it’s rather complicated, so bear with me: </p>
<p>Assumption: Whites and asians are treated race-neutrally because the colleges use a cut-off point. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>In order for this “cut-off point” argument to undermine the hypothesis that there’s racial discrimination, it must be the fact that the average SAT score for asians at the school is at least 50 points ABOVE that cut-off point (2260). FN1 (Can you see why? It’s because if the asian average score is less than 2260+50, than that 50 point difference is still a relevant difference to be considered for college admissions and thus indicative of racial discrimination.) </p></li>
<li><p>But if the average asian score is 2260+50 at the school, then the question becomes: why? there are plenty of asian students who can’t reach that score, why isn’t the college admitting more of those lower scoring students which would lower the average back to that comparable with Whites? After all, SATs aren’t suppose to matter after 2260, so why isn’t the school admitting more of the 2260 or below asians? </p></li>
<li><p>Many possible answers to escape the racism conclusion: those lower scoring asian students are not as academically qualified in other factors, not as impressive ecs, not as impressive essays, letters or recs, etc. But for that to be true, then it must mean that the high SAT scores correlates positively with those soft factors as well, EVEN BEYOND THE CUT OFF POINT! </p></li>
<li><p>But if high SATs scores correlates positively with qualification BEYOND THE CUT OFF POINT for asians, then you would predict the same phenomenon for Whites as well. Moreover, you would predict the same phenomenon across the white AND asian population: i.e. even beyond the cut-off point, higher SAT correlates postively with other qualifications. </p></li>
<li><p>But if that’s the case, then why is there still a difference is the average SAT score for White and Asians? </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Notice that this argument does not rely on causation, merely on correlation of SAT scores to overall qualification. I showed that if colleges used a cut-off mark for Asians, then the upper scores must statistically crunch towards the 2260 mark. The fact that the asian score is 2260+50 means that there’s no such cut-off mark for Asians. If there is such a cut-off mark, then it’s only for White students. This is still racial discrimination.</p>
<p>“Life is not all about academics. Some of the most sought-after candidates in the business world are collegiate-level scholar athletes due to their tenacity, competitive nature and desire to win.”</p>
<p>I-banks and hedge funds do recruit heavily from ivy sports teams. That’s why we have debacles like Enron, Amaranth. hope that helps.</p>
<p>Very few people have outstanding qualifications; they just needed to reject somebody. No one has ever, before they were 18, come up with 6 patents, won a Pulitzer, done all sorts of community service, and been a blue chip athlete all at the same time. The fact is, most people don’t have a chance to do those things. Tons of whites are rejected with perfect SAT scores. African Americans are rejected with perfect SAT scores. The fact of the matter is, at most colleges, a 2400 isn’t considered that much better than a 2350. Although people with 2400s are far more exclusive, admissions people often just see it as another 50 points higher. The difference between 750 and 800 matters a lot less to them than say, a 650 and a 700. Once you’re at a certain point with scores, it comes down to grades and some ECs. International quotas are a good thing imo, and maybe international quotas could account for some of the perceived discrimination. </p>
<p>I don’t believe anyone is forced to put down what race they are. Most Asian Americans have European first names and could change their last names(like many Jews.) Whites are the majority and as a result, are represented at the higher and lower ends of the averages. The smaller a specific group is, the less likely massive variation is, which would explain Asian Americans higher averages(if that is the case?) </p>
<p>If the policy of factoring race into the equation were true, wouldn’t Li’s logic suggest that affirmative action is “white discrimination?”</p>
<p>mini,
“The past 15 years” is a very large chunk of time in admissions history. Statistics from the last 5 years will look somewhat different from those of 6-10 yrs. ago, & further different from 10-15 yrs. ago. That’s the result of the (more recent) peak Boomlet population influence on college admissions, combined with waves of newer immigration which were not necessarily anticipated in earlier predictions of a massive convergence of pressure on “elites.”</p>
<p>The conscious shift that HYP has made from race affirmative action to economic affirmative action may not show up signficantly for a few years, but, more importantly, it is an ACCEPTANCE statistic, not an enrollment statistic that tells the story: 4-8 or 6-10 acceptances to an “elite,” for one needy student, cannot fairly be equated with one enrollment.</p>
<p>As to your anecdotal “evidence,” your area must be very different from ours, and from the NE as reported on CC.</p>
<p>From D’s high school:
Rich legacies & double-legacies were passed over for middle-class, lower-middle class, & needy students in each case by Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Penn. Not a single acceptee to those schools were athletes, but a couple had classical music training such as piano & stringed instruments. So there goes your theory about how supposedly athletics & money trump everything. Score differences & GPA differences were almost non-existent among this group who applied to these schools. (Insignificant differences among very high-scoring & graded applicants; 10 or 20 pt. or in many cases zero differences in scores; .00X differences in GPA.)</p>
No. I dont think it is sad at all. When I read this cat saying this stuff, it became very obvious to me he has little ability to be objective on this issue. For me, such nonsense effectively decreases the amount of posts on this thread. No problem.</p>
<p>“Life is not all about academics. Some of the most sought-after candidates in the business world are collegiate-level scholar athletes due to their tenacity, competitive nature and desire to win.”</p>
<p>“Scholar” athletes, not usually scholars(or as scholarly as the rest of the school, mostly due to time commitments at DIII schools) are recruited for business because they have selling power to alum. This would be especially true with I-banks and Hedge funds. Some athletes do very well after college in business because of their desire to win and tenacity, but they don’t have that because they play sports. They always had that. It just so happens that those qualities can be important in sports.</p>
<p>Proof that Ivy sports teams’ graduates caused debacles like Enron and Amaranth? Pretty libellous statement, in my opinion.
Parent of a couch potato with no interest in athletics, but lots of interest in accuracy.</p>
<p>“The conscious shift that HYP has made from race affirmative action to economic affirmative action may not show up signficantly for a few years, but, more importantly, it is an ACCEPTANCE statistic, not an enrollment statistic that tells the story: 4-8 or 6-10 acceptances to an “elite,” for one needy student, cannot fairly be equated with one enrollment.”</p>
<p>To be fair, the data has begun to show up in the case of Princeton. There has been a statistically significant change in the percentage of students receiving financial aid. HOWEVER, two-thirds of that increase are in the $100k-$160k (top 20%) cohort. Now that’s not a bad thing - they (the students) do after all need the money, and Princeton makes back the small amount they pay out (as Xiggi notes) in tuition increases. It is a win-win for them, especially when it keeps these students from choosing Vanderbilt or Emory where they will get an equally fine education (with a much larger scholarship).</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in 2004, there was a smaller percentage of African-American students at Princeton than there was in 1971 (and it was among the highest of the Ivies.) </p>
<p>“it is an ACCEPTANCE statistic, not an enrollment statistic that tells the story”</p>
<p>Yes, I know - and if you cross-referenced the two sets of data that I provided, you might begin to see the picture a bit more clearly.</p>
<p>ok, the Amaranth comment was a cheap shot and not accurate. Sorry! =P</p>
<p>but the original point still stands: the fact that ibanks recruit heavily from sports teams is indicative of nothing other than the fact that 1) athletes are more interested than others in becoming ibank analyst drones and 2) the old-boys network is still alive and strong. it does NOT mean that athletes at ivies at smarter or more capable at banking and business.</p>
<p>you are very condescending. you refuse to actually engage someone in debate, prefering instead to make snide remarks to others. I guess this is what “maturity” is suppose to be: still a jerk, but a more subtle jerk.</p>
<p>Indeed, you should apologize, though not to me.<br>
Who says that athletes are smarter? The claim has been that Ivy athletes are just as smart as other students–not dumb jocks. </p>
<p>If you want to cultivate rich alumni, you might do worse than admit prospective ibankers with good networking skills. However, ibank analyst drones seem to be heavily recruited from among strong math students. Certainly many Asian students would qualify?
Anyway, this gets into the realm of what makes certain students desirable to colleges, rather than racial discrimination. Though I could not care less about college sports, I do not see the emphasis on college sports as an indication of racial discrimination.
Jeremy Lin was recruited by Harvard for his basketball prowess. Race had nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>Ikki, there are no Asian detectors at the admissions offices. Other than URMs and international students, race is in not a factor. But a lot other things are. If it just so happens that many more Asian kids fall into a category that has more kids in it than needed, given the college wants its athletes, its student council president types, its national debater, legacies, development admits, its classics department filled, bodies to march in the band, debate stars, etc, the kids in that particular category are going to get cut, Asian or not, and with all other things equal, you bet the SATs are going to count. So those kids with the highest test scores and that certain set of attributes will be taken. There will be many kids not selected despite phenomonal profiles. The school does not want to be primarily of that type, and it doesn’t matter who is in that category other than URMs; they are all going to be in the same boat. We had a lovely young lady in our school district here who was concert mistress of our county orchestra, near perfect SATs and second in her class. Her outside passion is music and she spends mcuh of her free time pursuing activities, including competitions and performances that have to do with her insturment. She had decided she does not want to go into a conservatory, and want to be premed. She had done research and volunteer work over the summers, and her science scores are right up there. And she took college science courses as well. She was not accepted to HPY where she applied. She is not Asian. But I’d be willing to be that she had a lot of Asian company in terms of profile. But you know, most of that orchestra is Asian, and the best players in it tend to be Asian. A number of them did get into HPY, but the fact that the concertmistress was not Asian did not help her in the least. </p>
<p>For kids that audition for certain programs, though the audition is considered the single most important component for acceptance, academic criteria, particularly test scores is definitely an important factor. With so much talent there, you had better believe every little thing counts so, it’s no surprise that the kids with higher SATs tend to to get selected. So it is for athletes as well. Unless you are the ultimate quarterback or the hockey player of the year, or already NBA material or close to those categories, SAT does come into play for athletic recruits as well. So even within the athletic categories, the kid with the higher test scores will fare better, all other things equal.<br>
Also when it comes to looking at test scores, I am told that few schools are using the new 3 score SAT1. The top schools that require SAT2s, tend to use the 5 test scores, and the ones who do not require SAT2s, are just eyeballing the writing as an additional factor. I guess when USN&WR starts using the triple score as a part of their rating criteria, is when that will be used.</p>
<p>“Meanwhile, in 2004, there was a smaller percentage of African-American students at Princeton than there was in 1971 (and it was among the highest of the Ivies.)”</p>
<p>(a) 1971 vs. 2004 is an era’s worth of difference, including differences in priorities, values, economic realities, population, racial ratios applying to upper level colleges, etc. In fact, technically speaking, it is 2 generations ago.</p>
<p>(b) There was very little economic affirmative action in '71. It was largely about race. (I see you switched the topic at hand from economics to race.) A’A’s of all income levels may have had higher enrollments at P, but non-URM’s (including Asians) in the lower economic brackets were largely shut out, since there was no active effort to recruit, review them.</p>
<p>“There has been a statistically significant change in the percentage of students receiving financial aid. HOWEVER, two-thirds of that increase are in the $100k-$160k (top 20%) cohort. Now that’s not a bad thing - they (the students) do after all need the money, and Princeton makes back the small amount they pay out (as Xiggi notes) in tuition increases. It is a win-win for them, especially when it keeps these students from choosing Vanderbilt or Emory where they will get an equally fine education (with a much larger scholarship).” </p>
<p>“These students” can afford to be gapped for aid at Vandy or Emory. Very poor students cannot. They need the full rides that P gives them. </p>
<p>And one-third of the aid <$100,000 level (i.e., middle class) is a substantial portion of all aid. (Well, it defines middle class in many major metro areas, anyway, where living costs can be high.)</p>