The Influence of Affluence: Socioeconomic status at elite schools

Prep School Admissions
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I know I’m sort of the curmudgeon on here about “qualified” versus “lesser qualified,” etc. With regard to boarding schools, we’ll never know how far down the qualification scale the admissions offices will reach to satisfy their social engineering goals. Mostly because the admissions offices will lie, and no one cares enough to sue.

But I, for one, have no doubt that they will reach down way below the level of “slightly lesser qualified.” The reason I say this is because of the example of Harvard Medical School in the 1970s, continuing at least through the 1980s (when, presumably everyone got smart enough to cover their tracks). The school, while adamantly denying everything (it would later come out through court cases), lowered standards so far to accept certain students that professors became alarmed for public safety. Not only were admissions standards dramatically lowered, but grading was changed and even certain milestone tests were allowed to be taken up to 5 times by favored students (a dramatic change in policy). The lid was blown off this whole scandal by a well-known professor, the late Bernard Davis (professor of microbiology I believe at Harvard Medical School), who recounted the whole episode in a 1986 book, Storm Over Biology: Essays on Science, Sentiment and Public Policy (see pp. 160-200 approx.).

Also, I don’t know what people around here consider slightly less qualified for boarding schools, but if you search the chance and results threads in here you will find at least one or two students who claim to have been admitted to a top 10 or possibly top 20 (depending on who you ask) boarding school with an SSAT percentile in the 20s.

If Harvard would literally risk people’s lives by changing longstanding policies, can there really be any doubt that AOs in high school will “bend the rules” to a point where they break? After all, just about everyone at these schools gets a B- or better in every class (just check the grade distributions in those handy college profile pdfs that the schools produce), so is there really any worry about any student “succeeding” at least on academic measures?

One other little anecdote that might be relevant. At a highly regarded private day school in California (regularly listed in the top 10 schools in the state and even sometimes appearing on “top 50” kinds of lists of private schools - including boarding schools - in the entire United States), a good friend of mine was told at a parent interview that the “admissions committee likes to see an SSAT greater than 65%, but exceptions are sometimes made.”

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Boarding school originate in a time when the ONLY qualification was the ability to pay.

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^ Lol, @GnarWhail. I also know a student with a criminal record (juvenile) for assault and drugs who was accepted to boarding school no problem. But don’t worry, it’s not one of the ones ever mentioned on here :slight_smile:

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MODERATOR’S NOTE: There is ONE thread on CC dedicated to AA discussion. Please do not post about AA in oany other thread.

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Shattuck St Mary’s is a prep school in MN with a center of excellence in ice hockey.

For simplicity, lets assume the schools main objective is to field the best ice hockey team possible within their existing budgetary constraints, which require that at least 15 of the 20 players on their varsity team pay full tuition.

The schools board of Trustees believes that by dominating the hockey world, their school will thrive.

The admissions office focuses almost exclusively on hockey ability to the exclusion of all else (academics, geography, race, etc).

Accordingly, the school will admit the top 15 full pay hockey performers. If there are five higher performing FA applicants, they will be selected.

If the top twenty hockey applicants are full pay… the entire team will be full pay.

They will not water down they hockey team for the sake of economic diversity, because it is not part of their mission… hockey excellence is.

When and if they accept greater talent on FA they may tout economic diversity exists at their school, but it is simply a by-product of their true objective.

This is true capitalism. It is very efficient and is alive and well everywhere. Schools are operating based upon what they believe are in their economic best interests and portray these policies, with various levels of transparency to present the the school in the most favorable light.

N

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@QuietMan SSM highly subsidizes the tuitions of it top hockey players whether they need it or not and uses it as a magnet for to attract lower level players who are full pay. I’d call that bait and switch, more than capitalism.

SSM is not a very strong school academically, particularly compared to the top New England schools. As such, it can focus on getting the best hockey talent without much concern for the player’s non-hockey intelligence. Schools like Exeter have a much harder time getting hockey players into school and have addressed this by focusing their recruiting efforts on older applicants (repeat and PG) who’ve gotten high grades at lesser schools (and their GPAS are already well established) and are perceived to be stronger players than their 4-year brethren but who aren’t quite up to the level of the SSM player. While some of the hockey players at schools like PEA and PA may have lower grades than the overall student body, there are others who come in with equally high grades and scores. Ironically those are generally the players from a school like Exeter who get the Ivy League deals, as they are used to offset the impact on the Academic Index of the players who are recruited for their athletic prowess despite having low test scores and grades in high school. It is important to note that there are many buckets of students that have a lower bar for admissions and it is not just athletes at least at the top BS-- despite the insistence by many on this forum it is primarily athletes, legacies and the well-to-do (development) that get preferential treatment. Its a bit self serving to assert that minorities are getting no benefit when the whole concept of preferences is predicated on giving such preferences and likewise “holistic admissions” by definition allows for preferential treatment for ANYONE they deem appropriate to the schools’ needs. At any rate, affluence and socioeconomic status at these schools is really not much of a factor at the top schools any more. The money is from a very diverse pool-far different that 50 years ago.

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Nowhere in my SSM post did i state whether FA was need besed or merit based at that school.

It is highly unlikey that SSM would extend merit aid to their bottom players and overlook their best prospects and require them (top prospects) to pay full freight in the name of “hockey diversity”. To give some “benders” who lacked hockey opportunities a chance to develop…and to demonstrate the school’s virtue.

Some on this thread seem to advocate that this type of policy not only exists, but is appropriate.

I believe the schools act only in their perceived best selfish economic interest. Period.

M

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I suppose, what I am really trying to say is, the socio ECONOMIC impact on admissions is:

If you dont bring money to they table, you have to offer something else that the school values. You cant be only just as good (or not as good) as full paying applicant.

School would rather have full pay… EVERY time.

Y

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“I believe the schools act only in their perceived best selfish economic interest. Period.”

I couldn’t agree more.

The only thing I would add is that the definition of economic interest should be sufficiently broad to embrace the many perceived benefits being received, and by whom those benefits are received.

The economic analysis should be also be tempered by an understanding that any institutional actor is going to suffer from the classic problems of agency and forecasting when weighing benefits and costs.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but in many top schools, the decisionmakers are elite boards of directors, elite heads of school, elite faculty, etc. They have very personal interests in being “patted on the back” by other elites, such as media, other heads of school, elite parents, etc.

(You can see this quite easily in the nuanced and tortuous - but ultimately incoherent - “explanations” of admittance preferences by insiders like Derek Bok of Harvard in his “The Shape of the River”; analogously, you can see the dangers of saying even the slightest thing that, while perfectly defensible and reasonable, goes against the diversitocracy orthodoxy, as when James Watson - Nobel Laureate and the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix - or Larry Summers - former President of Harvard and former Treasury Secretary of the United States - were either destroyed in the first case or forced to resign from Harvard in the second for saying things that were verboten.)

So, in short the decisionmakers’ perceptions of economic benefit are quite proscribed and informed by the political climate.

The second difficulty is forecasting. Do these agency actors have any real ability to forecast the future costs and benefits of economic choices made? In classic micro and business theory, this difficulty is “solved” by the free market causing poor forecasters to go out of business. Is that possible when we are talking about elite institutions with massive implicit government (non-free market) interference in the education market generally? (Consider just how much money people will pay for a good, private education when the alternative is a completely dysfunctional public system.)

Consider just the many boarding school sex abuse scandals that have come to light, and in particular the callous and clumsy handling of so many of them by these same heads of school, board members, etc. Are these the people you trust to forecast accurately the future costs and benefits of decisions made now? And, back to the agency issue, will any of them really pay a price for wrong decisions? For instance, weren’t many of the sex offenders allowed to simply retire at the end of their teaching career, while the front office was busy paying off some of the victims?

Anyway, I do agree with the basic point. And I do hope the moderator allows these comments to stand because the issues raised are worth discussing imho.

Quick edit - “School would rather have full pay… EVERY time.”

Only after they have gotten enough applicants to satisfy their need for “pats on the back.” :slight_smile:

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Satchel, very clear, cogent, and well articulated post. Pleasure to read your writing.

r

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@QuietMan @SatchelSF is an exceptional writer, thinker and communicator. I second your comment

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“I believe the schools act only in their perceived best selfish economic interest. Period.”

I disagree based on theory of economics.

Decisions are made by human to maximize own pleasure. Those who make decisions for the schools will make choices that are not maximizing the school’s economic interest to certain degree, because “doing good” is often quite pleasurable.

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MODERATOR’S NOTE:

As long as the discussion stays on topic and does not turn into a circular discussion/debate amongst 2-3 members, it’s fine.

And that’s the example of off topic; it adds nothing to the thread, so this post along with the response, I deleted.

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Something being lost here is the belief that every school has the fiscal and/or economic flexibility of Andover or Exeter. Very few schools do. Maybe two or three others. Every other boarding school needs more full pay students. More full pay day students. More day student applicants. More cash.

And I’m not sure the cohort of those full-pay students has changed much at all–if you consider American full-pay applicants. Any diversity of full-pay students has come in the form of overseas applicants, but for the most part, the largest and/or most competitive schools have a lower percentage of foreign students than the rest of the schools. There are many full-pay foreign students at American boarding schools now. Absolutely. But that growing market is being exploited in desperation as much as anything as schools with fewer resources attempt to keep up with the arms race in science buildings and new ice rinks and fancy student centers and treats of all shapes and sizes.

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@MaineLonghorn what is AA discussion? I feel like I missed something.

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I would say affirmative action.

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MODERATOR’S NOTE:

Correct.