Not only most wealthy people and their kids get easy admission but special privileges at popular schools. Mom corresponding with school, brother setting up interview and similar stories are disturbing.
The Trump interview was 1966 and Jackie’s intervention was 1980. It’s 2020. A lot of progress has been made since then.
Selective colleges talk incessantly about increasing socioeconomic diversity, and over these decades, despite legacy, niche sports, and other advantages, college populations do reflect those efforts. Admissions officers are honoring students who work to help their families, and those who come from families with low incomes. Public school students are the majority at Harvard by a good margin.
I really enjoyed reading the letters from Jackie Kennedy to her son’s deans and advisors at Brown. She sounds so much like a CC parent that had it existed at the time, she sounds like she would have been a very valuable member. I wonder what her screen name would have been ??
As for anyone who is “shocked that there is gambling in this establishment!”*, I very much doubt that things have changed at all with regard to the offspring of the wealthy and famous. If anything, the letters show a parent who at least recognizes her son’s culpability in his own failures to meet the requirements of his university, and is grateful for the help that Brown has extended to him. I’ve seen posts from irate parents on CC who sound way more entitled than she does.
*Casablanca (1942)
Between Trump & Biden families, it seems more than half a dozen deserving applicants were waitlisted by U Penn and Georgetown to accommodate privileged children. I doubt all of them made it there on merit.
You can think whatever you want, but you can’t prove that any admit is responsible for some other applicant’s waitlist decision. Remember, just as colleges have buckets for athletes, scholars, musicians, etc., they also have buckets for legacies/donors/ that are just as important to rounding out the classes they craft each year. College admissions in the U.S. is not a meritocracy and never has been, but that is another discussion.
Ultimately you have to define “merit.” Applicants who they want to get in, do. That is merit. However the school makes that determination. number of different factors go into that determination.
Private schools can admit whoever they like, for whatever reason they like. It’s only really “wrong” if those trying to get students in are lying about it as with all the “athletes” who weren’t or SAT/ACT testing issues and similar.
That said, I seem to think the students from my rural school who get the stats, have the ECs, and want to go there seem to have higher admission rates at Top schools (use whichever number you like) than typical low percentage numbers. It’s likely some folks grouse about that hook. I don’t. We don’t send many - if any - in any given year. Top schools are not always popular choices even for those who have the stats.
Even without special privileges and preferences in admissions (e.g. development, VIP relation, legacy, etc.), college attendance and choice is heavily constrained by parental circumstances and choices (mostly in the financial realm, but sometimes in other realms). Only within these parental constraints does the student’s own personal achievement and merit matter in college attendance and choice (and the student’s own personal achievement and merit are influenced by parental support of such or lack thereof).
In other words, it would not be inaccurate to say that college attendance and choice is mostly based on “inherited” factors, with a small component of the student’s own personal achievement and merit.
I’ve learned a lot by reading these forums. There are predictable threads where parents who have a hook (full pay, legacy, connections, URM, athlete) defend their advantage while those who have no hook bemoan their child’s diminished chances for admission to elite colleges. Sometimes you get someone who breaks the profile, which is also interesting.
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Trump and his children all were admitted to Wharton as transfer students and the admission rates for transfer students were a bit higher than for freshmen. The Trump interview story may not be true as they may not have interviewed transfer students. My son was admitted at Wharton as a freshman and graduated the same year with Ivanka Trump. He said she seemed quite engaged in the classes he shared with her.
[quote=“ucbalumnus, post:8, topic:2106409”]
You summed it up perfectly.
The Brown admissions office has a separate division specifically to recruit children of the rich and famous.
@MADad I think not. You may be referring to wealthy donors having a rep in Advancement who can field their interest in sending their kids to Brown. Many colleges have this and it’s a lot tougher to pass muster than some athlete recruiting policies. It’s not a separate division of admissions and the kids still get vetted per the same standards as others.
But really, some folks are so hyped on finding things to gripe about. You miss the point that, today, top colleges, like Penn and Brown are fiercely competitive to get into and your kid has to be totally on the mark for serious consideration. That’s not your ordinary “average excellent” or “but he’s tops in his one high school.” It would serve better to explore what your target top colleges DO look for. Not fuss over something that happened decades ago. Focus on today and your own goals: the best app/supp you can muster. Learn what that means. Today.
The Brown rep specializes in the “soft turndown”, not in recruiting the children of the rich and famous.
Reiterating Lookingforward’s comment. Focus on what makes YOUR kid special, and help your kid find the optimal match. Getting aggravated about a Kennedy (long dead, tragically, btw) and whatever special treatment you think he got really doesn’t help your own child maximize his or her education.
Part of what Harvard and its ilk are selling is access to the rich and famous. If you don’t let their kids in the kids that get in on merit won’t make those connections. In any event Brown in 1979 was pretty easy to get into back then. A friend of mine got in with low 600 scores.
Since this thread is in the Parents’ Cafe, it may be more appropriate for advice to parents to be said. Since parent-based constraints (mostly but not exclusively financial) are the main limiting factor in most students’ college choice and whether they can attend college at all, parents who want to allow their kids the greatest choice in this matter based on their own achievements and aspirations need to figure out how to reduce the parent-based constraints as much as possible.
Obviously, some of the things that can be done in this matter need to start long before a kid is in high school. Examples include choosing a spouse carefully to reduce the risk of divorce and having a financial plan to ensure sufficient savings and investments for kids’ college as well as other long term financial goals like one’s own retirement. Of course, some of the financial things may be more difficult for parents in a low income profession, or who are burdened by their own student loan debt.
But other potential parental restrictions need to be carefully considered as to whether they will be too limiting, such as distance restrictions and the like.
In addition, parental support or lack thereof can have a significant effect on what the kids can achieve and what they may aspire to.
Parent limitations I’ve seen regularly:
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Support of going to college at all - some openly diss the idea totally, some won’t let girls go, but boys are ok
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Cost - very, very few around us are full pay and ok with that
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Choice of major
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Distance from home and/or access to decent transportation
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Religious affiliation (this is #1 for certain parents, but it’s not #1 for being most common that I’ve seen)
Care about the ranking of a school is rare among parents or students in the world I work in. I often have to try to get them to even look in depth about whether a program is considered good within the field. Many - both parents and students - are more swayed regarding the mailings/swag, general overall look from a tour, and dorms/student life of a school than they are about professors or class offerings within a major. I only see Top 10/25/50/100 or bust on CC. The few parents who insist on “a” school are more likely to want community college (money) or Penn St (best school out there) than anything else.
I doubt it would be a surprise to any that the rich might be able to buy their way into any particular school. “The rich always have more advantages in this world than average people. Why should college be any different?” (That’s seriously how I expect the hypothetical conversation would go.)
Related to these, sometimes there are parents who want the student to stay at home under parental supervision and commute to attend a nearby college (other colleges would not be acceptable even if they were less expensive including residential living costs). This seems to occur mainly with female students.
With all due respect, having lived in southern NE my entire life, when JFK Jr, Steven Spielberg’s child, etc, were at Brown back in th 80’s, their celebrity recruitment office, for lack of a better name, was written about in local newspapers. It is a thing, or at least it was a thing, back then.
I did not mention this due to anger, envy, or any other emotion you may want to ascribe to me----I simply mentioned something that was documented as something that existed.
OP brought up Penn and Brown. In another thread, he asked what top schools don’t consider legacy. I don’t think this is about kids-to-college, in general. Or whether applicants to, say, state schools, face challenges.
He (or she) is presuming a kid OP thinks is qualified for a very top school gets bumped to WL because some famous name got in, back umpteen years. Not.
And back those decades, it was a lot easier to get into all the tippy tops. Even today, if you think about it, there aren’t that many wealthy donors who have 17 year olds wanting the legacy college. Fewer who truly qualify.