Simon- not true in Europe. Absolutely not true. There are universities which are actual pipelines (not just figurative ones as in “this will help you get a job in X”) and if you aren’t part of that pipeline- good luck to you.
The US is much more dispersed. And we are the country which loves second chances. I have middle aged cousins in parts of Europe who say they hate their jobs. I say “So go back to U and get a certificate in X and reboot” and they laugh hysterically. “You’re such an American! That doesn’t work here”. They still find it exotic that I’m married to an engineer who never worked in engineering. Which is not at all exotic in the US!
Just to be clear, I’m not Asian, just going off the conversations I’ve had with other immigrants. I’m more in the same boat as @Mumfromca
And I’m certainly not taking a “top X or bust” attitude with my kids. Visiting a bunch of the elite east coast colleges with my eldest was very offputting (especially the arrogance and privilege at tippy top places) and I’ve never seen the point of spending $300K per kid when we have great state schools here in CA where they will meet a much greater range of people from all social classes. For me a merit scholarship wins almost every time over full pay.
But as an outsider, I find it sad that the US college system seems much less interested in prizing academic talent (from both rich and poor, regardless of location, race, etc.) than other countries, and in many cases is instead proud that it is openly corrupt in allowing rich or connected people to buy their way in.
The argument that those donors’ money helps other students is all very well, but in the end, the effect on society is pretty corrosive, as it just leads to others seeking non-academically based ways to secure their “share” of the pie. And later on, it tends to teach that connections (including the potential to buy off politicians) are key to success in business.
When my child (who’s 11) came home telling me, one of the classmates struggled and weeping in the math class about how stupid he is (apparently he was told at home by parents how stupid he is because his parents’ view of “meritocracy”). I felt terribly sorry for this child.
Even though I don’t force/push the “meritocracy” by judging just the grades, my child is witnessing this type of the judgements in school on daily basis.
It is unfortunate. Reading this thread, it seems to imply this is region specific, narrow view of meritocracy from rich metro areas?
Not all immigrants are the same. My DD went to a school with >50% free lunch kids. There were kids that had parents with advanced degrees and kids that had parents that did not finish HS. And that includes Asians. Her most humbling experience was serving food to her classmate and his whole family in a soup kitchen. I am not exaggerating.
I read somewhere that people meaningfully interact with a circle of only 150 other people. So, yes, we all live in our own bubbles and get information from people in our bubble. In my bubble people are equally upset with the price of college education but they send their children to Germany (where college education is free even for Americans - a novel concept of education that is free ) or the UK or Canada, not the east coast.
I fully agree that people should get educated and that a lot of info is available online. For instance, we educated ourselves on the British and Canadian systems when my D was applying and the information was completely transparent. For instance, one of the top British colleges, I could see how many British, European and Americal students were accepted, how many APs the american students had and what those APs were (and of course, you have to have a 5 on those for them to count), what score on the entrance exam the people that applied and the people that were accepted had, and what score on the interview the people that were invited for an interview and were subsequently accepted had. There were no outliers - people with scores below certain cutoffs were simply rejected no matter if they were children of head of states or virtuoso soccer players/violinists.
I could also see meaningful rankings (a.k.a league tables) where I can check a ranking based on student satisfaction, entry standards, graduate prospects and research quality - for the college as a whole and per subject.
Whereas in the US, the rankings are mostly based on perceived prestige and perpetuate the stereotypes.
Also, acceptance criteria are deliberately vague and it takes a law suit to understand the secret sauce. As a busy mom with a full time job, I did not have time to read law suites. Who gets in, who gets a scolarship - it’s all black magic. I learned from this site that Amhearst mostly accepts athletes (up to 1/3). Is it true, is it false, it’s all hearsay, it’s not written anywhere. As @Twoin18 we always emphasized to our kids that sports are for fun, and learning comes first (typical misguided immigrant parents )
I also wholeheartedly agree that the society should do something to give disadvantaged kids a chance. Not necessarily based on their skin color - there are a lot of affluent people of color (US and foreign-born) that were not disadvantaged in any way growing up and were accepted to elite colleges (I read this on the internet so who knows if it is true) but kids who value education but did not have adequate access to it in k-12. However, is this the responsibility of the higher education and isn’t it more efficient to address the root causes in the k-12 system?
This can also be made more transparent. The colleges should reserve seats for the disadvantaged kids and make this information public. I think the UC system already does that.
For many of these colleges, athletics is part of their mission. The idea was to have students who were good academically and athletically. So they do not see athletics as a way for the college to gain fame through having famous athletes as their graduates, but see athletics as integral to their character.
The fact that many are indeed sports which are wealthy kids sports is an unfortunate result of the fact that most of these colleges were established when colleges were only for the wealthy, and so they included the sports which their student base played.
So it is highly unlikely that they would get rid of that athletics. However, they should indeed expand their varsity sports to include sports that one doesn’t need a very large amount of money to do.
Of course, since it has become a point of honor to beat the other colleges in the conference at these sports, it’s no longer enough to have who students who play sports, now they need ones that can beat other colleges.
As for semi-professional - why is this any better? Why should colleges be in the business of training athletes in the first place?
Research quality is not relevant for undergraduates. It is a way to increase the ranking of the wealthier universities which have bigger research budgets. It should be replaced with factors like “opportunities for undergraduate research”.
Also, “students satisfaction” surveys should only be taken a couple of years post-graduation. Many students will report higher satisfaction when they get higher grades, or are more entertained by professors. After a year or two, grades are no longer important, and mastery of material needed for a graduate’s job is what is appreciated. A student who got a C on a topic, but then is able to use their knowledge effectively at work will be more satisfied than a student who got an A, and realizes that they really don’t understand anything. However, during the school year, the A student will report more satisfaction.
A factor which also should be added is the satisfaction reported by the employers who hire the graduates of these colleges.
I doubt that the entities which rank colleges have any idea about the qualities of undergraduate research opportunities. Wealthier colleges may be able to subsidize some of the undergraduate researches, but subsidized researches aren’t usually of the highest quality.
The student survey was actually surprisingly accurate. The year my D18 was applying, we came accross an article in the Economist which aligned well with the numbers for student satisfaction. Helped us eliminate some places.
I think the push to try to get into a selective, ranked, brand-name school and be picked from an ever-growing pool stems from simple FEAR, in most cases.
Fear among families of the middle class and upper middle class that their kids will not end up as well-off as the parents are (as I understand is the trend). The American Dream is slipping away — that belief that everyone who works hard can succeed at whatever they put their minds to do and be comfortably middle-class or better in this country.
So scared families want to hedge their bets. It isn’t enough to raise a hardworking student and well-rounded avid learner. They want to be sure their child goes to a college that will provide the MOST sophisticated education, connections, and opportunities, with the greatest possible prestige and recognition, in order to increase the odds of success.
As a bigger share of high school graduates get a college degree, how can they make THEIR child stand out? As wages stagnate, how can they make sure THEIR child is on track to land an elusive high-salary position? How can they increase the odds that THEIR child will be able to enjoy a lifestyle equal to that in which they were raised?
Then they see the neighbor’s kids running off to meet with a few more advisors, add on a few more ECs, take one more dual enrollment course — and it is hard not to panic and think that sending your kid to the local flagship is “settling” and means your kid will be left behind.
Fear feeds on itself and results in decisions that are not always rational or healthy.
Mantra I see here all the time. Its just very inconsistent with what I saw with my kids and their friends, other people I know with people with kids in college and those with kids who will eventually be in college. Others I talk with across the country. The idea that only kids who go to Top X schools (no matter how you define X) will succeed, have a good chance at success or whatever is totally nuts to me (and contrary to what I see each and every day). Sometimes I think its more paranoia than it is fear.
And there are definitely some anti-holistic admissions people here. They want everything to be done by computer with strict formulas. Sometimes the formulaic approach is viewed as being better. Though in other instances its viewed as being better for a particular kid.
If you do not know how likely it is your kid will get admitted to a given school, that is a reach. If your kid is looking at Top X schools, you should be able to find matches and safeties. Apply to a few reaches and call it a day. Though I can see thats a problem if you are in the Top X or die/bust camp. And to the person who asked, you can see multiple people in this thread who fall into that camp. Some people look to find problems in life. Other people have actual problems.
Or put another way, the (original) idea was to exclude all those pesky, studious Jewish students who weren’t athletic and were deemed not to have the right “character”.
True, I’m just saying that it would be more relevant for undergraduates.
I’m sure that it was a great reflection of how the students were feeling while they were attending the university. The question is whether they are satisfied later. Hard classes and low grades can reduce satisfaction during school, but increase it later, if those classes help with graduate’s career.
That being said, the parts of the survey which have to do with quality of life issues are relevant, specifically if they are taken while the students are attending university. On the other hand, part of the satisfaction had to do with how satisfied they were with the teaching also with teaching, which is often related to how the professor is making them feel.
Much study has been done which has shown that there are many factors which play into how satisfied a student feels while at college, many which have to do with things like the appearance and gender of the professor. So I still think that a survey of alumni a couple of years out would help reduce these effects.
Ummm, we’re talking about the late 19th century. The admission policies which were put in place to limit the number of Jews happened decades later.
Moreover, sorry, but the “studious, unathletic Jew” is just another trope which is not supported by the facts. Besides dominating basketball for decades, smack in the middle of the height of exclusion of Jews from “elite” colleges, there were Jews across sports, especially in baseball, basketball (as I mentioned), and boxing. So no, using athletics was never a way that was useful in excluding Jews.
Jews were straight-out excluded, without the colleges resorting to complex algorithms to exclude them. They simply counted out the number of Jews they wanted to accept and rejected the rest. They checked Jewish surnames, interviewed them to see whether they “behaved like Jews”, and tried to get them to drop hints, and found other ways to figure out “who is the Jew in the group”.
So they didn’t use sports to exclude Jews. Sports were, on the other hand, sometimes used to increase the number of wealthy students who weren’t academically all that good, but all universities did it, and still do it.
You can read James Thurber’s description of a star football player in class. That was in 1917 or so, and USO was considered among the top tier colleges (there is a very entertaining document by Kendrick Babcock - the first official ranking of colleges in the USA, from 1911).
Sports were also used to develop a leadership class. The elites were creating the next generation of presidents, heads of large companies, military commanders, etc. This was thought to develop comraderie, character, and object lessons in leadership. And recreation and school spirit…
Is that a myth that these schools want us to believe? How do the other countries, none of which uses sports as part of college admissions, develop their leaders? Oxbridge, for example, have produced their own shares of leaders. What’s unique about US? Or do we produce better leaders? Does anyone believe that too?
@1NJParent , I don’t think anyone believes this now! But it was very much a part of their history. When they admitted only men from primarily elite backgrounds. Who were being groomed to (continue to) run the country.
What still exists today (in colleges and the real world) is the belief that athletes exhibit desirable qualities, including leadership, resilience, ability to work effectively as part as a team, self motivation, persistence, ability to focus, ability to deal with obstacles/loss, good time management. Of course non athletes can have all of these qualities, but some think athletes have relatively more and/or a higher level of these skills.
I was a hiring manager in a Fortune 500 company, as well as strategy consulting, and all of these skills were high on the list of most desired traits that hiring managers sought. Both companies hired lots of athletes.
ETA: this mindset and list of qualities is part of the reason why the service academies admit a high proportion of applicants with athletic experience.
How are some of our elite schools different? They use ALDC preferences (and more) to build a class of largely the wealthy and the well-connected. They enroll offspring of dictators and autocrats around the world. For what? These people are obviously more likely to run large corporations, militaries, and even their governments. Our elites can do this because they can hide behind their opaque system of college admissions. BTW, they also want us to believe that the lack of transparency is for our own good.
) or the UK or Canada, not the east coast.