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Wow. Just wow. I wish you could see how hard dh (Caltech PhD.) He’s at it at least 12 hours a day and works major hours on weekends as well. You don’t think understanding cancer is productive work?</p>
<p>It’s true. When you go into academia, or law, or any of those non-productive careers, the first thing they do is issue you one of those little wooden paddles, with a ball attached by a rubber string, just so you’ll have something to do.</p>
<p>@epiphany–It’s not that I don’t sympathize with students who cannot realistically afford their top choices. Back when I received my first financial aid “award,” the college in question expected me to take out a loan in excess of my family’s annual income, just for the first year, and to have summer earnings that exceeded my father’s earnings during those same summer months. Of course, I went elsewhere. My mother was upset that our family’s frugality seemed to have reduced our estimated need, as family debts were also quite small. I don’t actually know what’s going on with Chicago–just that they can’t print money, and they don’t have as much as HY&S (&P, I assume–didn’t look that one up).</p>
<p>lol, Hunt.</p>
<p>Mathmom, Siserune apparently means your H’s job is not boring enough. Give him time, with maturity his life is sure to become acceptably dull.</p>
<p>What do they call those paddle, ball and stringy thingies, anyway?</p>
<p>Don’t forget buggy whip manufacturers.</p>
<p>“It sounds like a couple of people have a grudge because they did not get as much financial aid as they wanted.”</p>
<p>Sorry. You’re barking up the wrong tree. D did not apply to U of C. Got accepted to the 3 Ivies she applied to, all of whom offered full aid. I’m basing my perception on what previously admitted U of C admitted students have told me. I guess they don’t know what they’re talking about, and the aid packages must have been identical to the Ivies.:rolleyes:</p>
<p>The topic comes up often, on & off CC, because people often say to ivy-applicants: What’s wrong with you? U of C has tremendous intellectual worth; why does it get passed over for Ivies? Well, for people who don’t care about popularity contests, it often boils down to cash and little more. </p>
<p>Sorry for the cold hard facts of life.</p>
<p>Epiphany, I was quoting post 252 by Consolation (who apparently did apply to Chicago) in addition to challenging your characterizations.</p>
<p>I’m not questioning what certain individuals have told you. They certainly are in a good position to make judgments about their own aid packages. However, while anecdotal evidence may be interesting and suggestive, it is not always a reliable basis for broad conclusions. I see a mix of comments about Chicago aid packages from CC posters. Some kids are disappointed, others are very pleased.</p>
<p>I’ve shown you some public data. It seems to paint a different picture than the one you and Consolation do. One possible explanation is that, while the average need-based aid grants by Chicago are comparable to (or even higher than) grant amounts at other schools, the distribution patterns are different. The student demographics are different. Chicago may be targeting a higher proportion of need-based aid at students in lower income brackets, leaving people in the middle or upper middle feeling shortchanged. I really don’t know. It’s also possible that they should re-examine their merit aid practices, and use more of that money to help people at the higher end of “need”.</p>
<p>Again, it’s too bad they don’t publish their Common Data Sets. That would be helpful in analyzing how the admissions gap and the money gap plays out at this school.</p>
<p>If “Risky Business” came out in 2009>></p>
<p>Very funny, collegealum314!</p>
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<p>Make that “all” professions. There’s really not much productivity on the easy and engaging spectrum of experience.</p>
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<p>Productivity is difficult or boring in all professions.
Academia is a profession.
=> Productivity is difficult or boring in academia</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification, tk!</p>
<p>I wasn’t aware, actually, that it’s the mid-level income students that were being affected. I tend to hear more from lower-end of income in that regard (for U of C), but I agree that it’s unfortunate that more hard data has not been published.</p>
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<p>That’s incorrect. The Espenshade and Chung model showed white acceptance rate dropping slightly (with or without the presence of race preferences) as soon as athletic and legacy preferences were eliminated. The only simulation that showed an increase in the white acceptance rate was the one retaining athlete/legacy preference and dropping the racial preferences.</p>
<p>In other words, rich whites are the beneficiaries of the affirmative action system at elite colleges. Dropping the focus on athletics would replace upper class golf, lacrosse, and sailing aficionados with (mostly middle class) nerds, Asians, Jews, and immigrants. Minorities would also lose out, but surely the impetus for “holistic” admissions at elite schools is to keep the share of the affluent from going too low. </p>
<p>The Espenshade and Chung model is qualitatively correct but underestimates the effect of athletic preferences. Their data flags recruited athletes but does not account for the effect of athletics on admissions in general. Athletics is, more than anything else, a way for the affluent and test-score challenged to “merit” a shot at university places they would not qualify for otherwise. This too gives an advantage to the rich in the war against the middle class. As I mentioned above, the poor and minorities are a sideshow in this game. Preventing status decline for those at the top is the business of private schools at both the high school and the college level. </p>
<p>Another interesting finding of the Espenshade and Chung model is that SAT score above 1500 had an additional effect beyond SAT itself, i.e., SAT points in that range count more than they do overall.</p>
<p>Well I think siserune is right. Affirmative Action was invented for rich white boys, decades before it ever was used to help a few URMs. It was invented in response to the phenomenal success of Jewish applicants on the new standardized tests that began to be used in college admissions early in the last century. To placate rich white alumni, admissions began to consider Letters of Recommendation and other extracurricular factors (especially athletic prowess) to compensate for their son’s modest performance on admissions tests. </p>
<p>(See [Getting</a> In: The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge]Getting”>Getting In | The New Yorker))</p>
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<p>Well, this is a minor point, but I don’t think sailing really recruits. I know a bunch of MIT people who tried sailing when they got to MIT, and I think they won the championship, so I don’t think they recruit.</p>
<p>Perhaps, athletic recruitment should be holistic. In fact, we should make any school apply the same holistic policy to building athletic teams that it does to general admission.</p>
<p>Good point! I think a few short kids could really bring a different “perspective” to the basketball team.</p>
<p>Not sure what “holistic” athletic recruitment would mean. Award extra points for general fitness, speed, strength, and endurance? Finish taking the SAT test, then go out in the yard, hit the dirt, and have them count how many push-ups you can do as part of your score? </p>
<p>Oh, you mean holistic team building, right? So it would not necessarily matter (above a certain threshold) how objectively well you perform in your sport. You’d have to submit let’s say some peer letters attesting to your wonderful spirit and passion for the game. You’d want to crank up a certain number of service hours washing balls and grooming the fields. Participation in half-time performances would also boost your score as a “whole” athlete. Yah, we could get very creative with this!</p>
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<p>MIT is known to not game its admissions to anywhere near the extent of the Ivy League schools. It has racial preferences but little or nothing in the way of athletic and legacy preference. Which indeed raises the Asian, middle-class and public-school numbers to the detriment of the rich, white and private school applicants.</p>
<p>In particular, MIT is famous for having the largest number of athletic teams of any school, and being a walk-on is a real possibility for many of their varsity teams. The flip side is that with the ongoing budget cuts, the number of sports at MIT is about to be reduced. That would not happen at the Ivy League schools, because the availability of marginal sports as an enrollment path for the academically undistinguished is considered sacrosanct. Harvard admissions is run by a former member (I think captain) of their hockey team.</p>
<p>^^Yes, I’m aware of that. I just thought that because MIT won with no recruiting that the ivies must not be recruiting either. I could be wrong.</p>
<p>The Ivies recruit for as many marginal sports as they can afford (which is to say, all of them), mainly for two reasons: </p>
<p>First, it allows them to give an admissions break to the affluent and especially the private school crowd.</p>
<p>Second, there are numerical constraints on the aggregate amount of Academic Index discounting allowed for the athletes. The constraints are a combination of school policy, Ivy League, and NCAA rules. The more teams the school can field in sports with relatively OK academic characteristics (fencing, sailing, golf, etc) the more the allowance for running down the SAT scores of the football team. </p>
<p>For sailing specifically, here is an article that boasts about Yale’s recruiting prowess:</p>
<p>[Yale</a> Daily News - Sailing team sets its sights on NCAA championships in Hawaii](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/1595]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/1595)</p>
<p>All this is very interesting. So what you are saying, siserune, is that the ivies are fielding sailing, golf and teams in similar sports so that they can recruit academically weaker football players?</p>
<p>I’m saying that part of the reason for keeping a large stable of teams in sports of the affluent is to counterbalance the lower-SAT working class staples of football, basketball and hockey. There was a long Crimson article some years ago, linked here many times, on Harvard athletic admissions that detailed some of the calculus for the Academic Index quota on the larger and lower-SAT sports, particularly football. So the short answer to your question is “yes”.</p>
<p>It should also be noted that the low-SAT sports involve a similar twofold calculation: recruiting the better athletes for those teams not only improves the school’s win-loss record, it is a means for artificially increasing the racial, economic and geographic diversity measures.</p>