What should colleges do to manage the increase in apps?

BKSquared
Mon, 26 Apr 2021 23:09:38 +0000

You have either misread or purposefully misinterpreted what I wrote. This is what you wrote

MWolf:

Yale representatives are not stopping by the majority of high schools in low income communities and convincing them all to apply, but they are stopping by every (emph added) affluent public and private high school.

The implications being that Yale pretty much ignores an entire group of schools but solicits “every affluent…” I simply pointed out that my son as a Yale rep is directed to meet and pitch Yale to schools in the low income communities that you claim are mostly ignored. A big part of his spiel is the affordability of Yale to low income families. As to the college days, those include every public and private school in our region. There is not a special one-on-one day at the more affluent publics and privates. You make it seem like Yale does a “poor school” day for the masses and then has special targeted days for the affluents. You then misattribute this to me:

MWolf:

So, what you are saying is that wealthy schools get individual visits and extra attention, while poor schools do not, right?

No, not at all. Read what I wrote in its entirety and in context.

I don’t doubt that Yale and other highly selective schools target certain feeder schools, but that is where there is also greater demand and a larger pool of qualified students who will likely be applicants. I am not making a bold broad claim that Inner City PS 287 is getting the same attention as Exeter. I am saying that Yale is also making a concerted outreach to prior underserved communities.

MWolf:

How can they be providing the same amount of money in grants to the same number of students, while claiming that they accepted 2x as many poor students?

This is not difficult math. The distribution of FA is just different. Say there are 100 students and 52 got aid in 2013, 11 being Pell and 100 students with 53 getting aid in 2019, 20 being Pell. Let’s even say that the avg grant in both years were an even 75%. For easy math, let’s say CoA is $100/student and Pell students receive the full $100. For 2013, the 52 students got on average $75 each or $3,900 in the aggregate. Because the 11 Pell students receive $1,100 in the aggregate, the remaining 41 FA students split the remaining $2,800 ($68.29 on avg). In 2019, the 53 FA students split $3,975. The 20 Pells get $2,000, leaving the remaining 33 splitting $1,975 or $59.85. The non Pell FA recipients in 2019 on average received 12.4% less than those in 2013.

MWolf:

So those Pell grant students almost certainly (*emphasis added) were accepted instead of students from families who made less than $65,000 and who were eligible for similar amounts of aid as the Pell grant students.

We actually don’t know the final distribution. Could be that the extra 9 Pells replaced 9 other 0 EFC students and the rest got about the same or they replaced higher EFC students and the remainder got proportionately less. Assuming in 2019 we added 9 Pells to get to 20 and still had 9 0 EFC students, they would account for $2,900 in grants, leaving $1,075 for the remaining 24 FA students to split (on avg $44.79). The numbers still work. We cannot draw a definitive conclusion on these limited facts.

MWolf:

So I’m sorry but “55% aren’t White”, is not the same as “55% are underrepresented minorities”. Not even close.

Never said that minorities were URMs, you’re twisting my words. If I go back to the 1999-2000 school year, the total percentage of Blacks, Native Americans and Hispanics at Yale College was 14.3% vs 29% for the class of 2024. You can see a steady increase in the percentage of URM’s beginning in the '90’s. https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pierson_update_1976-2000.pdf

MWolf:

As for “legacy”, I am skeptical of their numbers, since only Yale has that data, and it is only reported unofficially.

Yale has been reporting legacy numbers for years. I find it hard to believe that they would just make stuff up. If you go to the link that provides historical numbers, we can see that legacies were in the low 20% in the late '70’s through '80’s and started to drop in the 90’s at the same time that URM enrollment started to go up.

Agree that Yale and most of the selectives are not egalitarian. That is not their mission or purpose. However, there is a concerted effort to provide opportunity to the best students who can make a difference for themselves, Yale and our communities at large, without regard to financial resources. Since I have been involved in admissions for the past 25 years+, there is a clear recognition that applicants don’t start the race from the same starting line. Yale is far from perfect, but I object when people throw out generalities and hyperbole that are misplaced.