I think that some of this comes from a different goal. There was more emphasis on creating stellar citizens than stellar scholars. You might not agree with that goal – but I think it informed a great deal of how those schools operated.
Is there any evidence that this system of ours produced better citizens?
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Building on @Mumfromca and @Twoin18’s posts, I find the current admission processes at Oxford quite intriguing and perhaps they could serve as a useful middle-ground template for some US colleges. I’ll use this year’s physics application process to illustrate.
Essentially, around 50% of interview spots (~500) are allocated to the top scorers on the entrance exam and a similar percentage of subsequent offers (around 200-210 in aggregate) are made to the best overall performers (driven principally by entrance exam and interview performance). The remaining spots — for both interviews and ultimate places — are allocated taking “contextual information” into account (principally based on SES rather than race, gender, etc.).
What makes this process workable at Oxford is that the overall objective is defined in quite a focused way: “Our aim in the admissions process is to take the applicants we judge to have the most ability and potential to benefit from our course and teaching” (contrast Yale: “As we carefully and respectfully review every application, two questions guide our admissions team: ‘Who is likely to make the most of Yale’s resources?’ and ‘Who will contribute most significantly to the Yale community?’”).
Perhaps such a process could go some way to satisfying those who yearn for greater certainty in the admission process as well as others who argue that colleges should take into account societal inequalities.
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You all aren’t going back far enough! Since Ancient Greece, the scholar athlete has been held up as the ideal. It is why boarding schools have required sports built into the day six days a week. I suspect that this model was held up as the ideal at universities in the 19th century as well.
Here’s a quote from Plato:
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This will never happen. As private institutions these schools can use any criteria they like for admission. Nowhere does it state that they are looking only for the best academic talent (whether they should be is another question) so for anyone to assume acceptance based on academic performance is most likely to be disappointed. Even if the schools went to a stats based evaluation the number of students with the “right” credentials would exceed the number of available spots. I don’t know why parents get so up in arms about it anyway - you don’t need to apply to schools like Harvard that use holistic admissions if you don’t like it- there are many other high quality colleges where a top stats student is assured of admission. It isn’t as if people are being shut out - they are just upset that they can’t attend certain schools.
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The US is sports obsessed. And in the past 20 years or so, that obsession ramped up exponentially. Particularly youth sports. Amount of time/energy parents/kids put into youth sports is remarkable to me. Don’t really understand it but its there.
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Not if they wanto keep receiving federal funds. Or if they want to keep their non-profit status
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I just don’t equate the lack of transparency with ill intent. The highly rejective schools want to build the classes and community that they want to build. Each year at a given school the focus, the mix, might look a little different.
I don’t understand the angst…is it because they take public research money? Because they are allocating what people perceive as a scarce resource? Other reasons? (I’m really trying to understand)
People don’t seem to have this same angst in other areas of our lives…for example, hiring policies/practices at a given corporation are also opaque. Why aren’t people demanding Ken Griffin give us the detailed interview notes of why he selected certain Citadel applicants over others? Many of these companies have received tax breaks and such, many are the sole gatekeepers of high paying, highly desirable, scarce jobs. Far more scarce than seats at a good college.
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As long as they are not breaking the law (which of course is what the various lawsuits are all about) then why does anyone care what criteria they use? They can admit unicyclists from Wyoming or butterfly collectors from Utah- does not impact their non-profit status in any way shape or form, as long as they aren’t consistently rejecting the Af-Am unicyclists from Wyoming.
Why aren’t y’all more worked up over the middle class being priced out of their own state flagship universities? To me, that’s where the righteous anger belongs. A working couple has been paying taxes to their own state for 18 years and come time for college, there is no way that the four year degree from the state u is affordable, especially in states (like mine) where the flagship is located in a rural area not commutable from many of the population areas. So the relatively affordable tuition becomes NOT affordable once room and board are factored in. (yeah, the kid has to eat and sleep somewhere).
I wish the ink that gets spilled over who Harvard or Stanford is excluding spent more time worrying about the bigger problems in higher ed. And yes, there are the satellite campuses. But in my state, the satellite campuses are great for a kid who wants a degree in elementary ed, accounting, etc. But why can’t the kid study engineering? Why can’t the kid major in chemistry? Do I care that an Olympic caliber athlete will get into Stanford and my neighbors kid with higher scores and a better GPA who can’t throw a ball cannot? No, I do not care. Stanford- you go do what you do.
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Amen sister.
There are so many students who can’t go to a 4 year college because it’s unaffordable. Many families can’t afford their EFCs so that automatically takes the non-merit meet full need schools off the list. It’s bleak out there.
Everyone who has time to post on CC has time to volunteer to shepherd a low income student through the college admissions process. Contact ScholarMatch, or College Point, or a local college access organization and volunteer to help just one student through the admissions process this coming cycle. I promise it will be a good experience.
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I think there is truth here, to a degree. There is concern among middle class and upper middle class parents about whether their children will be as financially successful as they were. I think that leads (in part) to having so many documented extracurriculars rather than kids working at the local fast food chain after school and hanging out with friends.
Where I diverge is that I think most middle class/upper middle class families want their kids to go to a name school, but a flagship is sufficient. The desire for T3, T10, T20, etc, is for the families who see things on social media and want to project the image of a successful family (success being fancy vacations, nice cars, house, and perfect children who are going off to elite schools). So whether or not a family can truly afford all of these things or whether it is a veneer that will crumble away 3 months after someone loses a job, there’s the ones that are projecting this picture, and then the people who are trying to keep up with the Joneses and find that important.
I will just add the (big) caveat of immigrant families to that situation. For many of them the “known” schools are the T5 or so, and lists of rankings are very influential with them. But even though the U.S. is a country of immigrants, they’re not the vast majority of the ones gunning for Top X or bust.
They don’t have to have ill intent. Every entity, public or private, if it could, would love to be able to operate opaquely, so no one can find fault with its operation. That’s just human nature. We now have laws and regulations to reduce such opacity in many of these circumstances because of the lessons we learned in our own history.
There’s no angst personally. My S navigated this system successfully a few years ago. I just think it’s a bad policy. I just read the other day from some students in CS, who have/had experiences in both US elite schools and Chinese elite schools (undergrad in one country and graduate in another), that their Chinese classmates vastly outperformed them. Our elite schools may still be the envy of the world, but for how long? On the other hand, UK has relinquished its superpower status long ago, but its universities are still world class.
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I couldn’t agree more. Kids with the academic chops to have a realistic chance at places like Harvard (even if they aren’t admitted) are going to be just fine. But, at the end of the day, for many it isn’t about the actual education (available many places), it’s about the name (limited supply). Top schools educate a small % of our kids, yet they take all the air out of the room. I just don’t get it.
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I didn’t know that something like this existed. Thank you for sharing.
People can sign up at ScholarMatch to be alerted to the next college coaching cycle (applications will open in April but you can fill out a form now to be contacted when the cycle starts). College Point appears to use ScholarMatch for some of the advising/coaching, as I didn’t see a separate area there for people to sign up to coach.
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I hear you, but I think it depends on your neighborhood.
Those in my zip code are by and large satisfied with the state flagship. Kids of nurses and high school principals and marketing directors around here are not applying to Harvard, by and large.
However, I have friends elsewhere with kids in schools where students are mostly all gunning for Top 10 (and they are not schools full of immigrants’ kids). The whole Varsity Blues scandal exposed a swath of society to whom this is extremely important. The perpetrators there were richer than middle class but not rich enough to just purchase a building on campus the “traditional” way. 
And there are definitely neighborhoods of people not quite Varsity Blues rich — full of kids of doctors, lawyers, corporate vice presidents, and professors — who are desperate to keep their kids in the same circles where they currently reside. That’s why they moved to a neighborhood with a competitive high school to begin with … and that competitive environment feeds the frenzy. And the fear.
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I understand all of this, but to me it’s no surprise that college age Chinese students would outperform US students…data show Chinese are relatively stronger students as soon as schooling starts. Yet I don’t think anyone wants the Chinese college admission process here.
I don’t know how long our elite universities will continue to be perceived as elite, but our healthcare system is relatively worse and many international people seek healthcare here because in some ways it’s still the world’s best.
Some of these students actually got their undergraduate degrees here in the US and then went to China for their graduate degrees in CS. If you look at what is happening in CS, particularly in AI and quantum computing, it’s not just their students are doing better in school, many of their companies are producing better products.
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I think we’re probably saying the same thing just in different ways. Perhaps my earlier message was unclear. I think that immigrants who are Top X or bust are doing it because of the rankings and perception of being the best. The vast majority of the the others, however, align more with what I think of as those who are seeking the Top 10 experience because of prestige and social media and the sense of competitiveness to have their children remain at the top of the financial heap (and the fear that all the things they see on social media/talking to neighbors are necessary to have their kids remain at the top, financially).
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I think a lot of people forget this - that’s why so many people complain when their high stats kids are rejected.
That would depend how high you set the bar. SAT and ACT are not challenging for the most academically talented students and so you get a lot of bunching at the top; by contrast, you will get dispersion if you use, say, Cambridge’s STEP to distinguish math applicants.
Fair enough. From what I’ve come across on CC, I think anxiety-inducing vagueness in the admission process goes beyond HYPS and includes LACs, state schools (GT/Michigan/UCs), etc.
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S1 had the same thing with CHI. They targeted him for some reason, and the barrage of mailings, Books, T-shirts, etc. went on and on. He was never interested, but then (I believe coincidentally) a coach (S1 is an athlete) contacted him after seeing him at a tryout. One thing led to another, then he was encouraged to apply ED by said coach- he is a vg player for the D3 level. He was given a “green light” by the admissions dept.
Because Economics/Business was his area of interest, and he likes Chicago, he finally decided to apply there ED.
He was, of course, turned down.
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