The recommendations in this newly-released report about publishing clearer standards for freshman admissions – including publishing standardized test score minimums – may mean the end of holistic admissions. [Which may not be terrible, as the current system is extremely opaque.] Other recommendations include ending preferences for legacy, athletes, development cases and children of faculty.
On cost and admissions (central to the issues we often discuss in a practical context here), I was struck by what I saw as a mismatch between the diagnosis of the trust issues and the tepid nature of the recommendations.
Like on cost, they basically make the argument the high list cost/high need aid model is the root cause of the distrust, including because lots of people simply do not believe that such generous aid, or any aid at all, exists. But their main recommendations are even more aid, and then basically a more accurate NPC? I don’t think that is likely to move that perception needle.
And on admissions, they basically argue it is a combination of special category preferences and holistic admissions which looks like a black box from the outside. But their main actionable recommendations are just to reduce (not eliminate) the significance of special categories, and then publish a test score minimum. But if lots of applicants above the minimum still get rejected, I am skeptical that will really make it feel like less of a black box.
So I guess this is helpful analysis, but to me it reads like they haven’t come up with any solutions they find acceptable while also being likely to really fundamentally change the public perceptions.
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Their minimum SAT could be 1400. They would still use holistic admissions for those that score above the minimum.
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It’s like they (the faculty) never talked with their customers about this. Which wouldn’t surprise me.
I do agree that if Yale keeps graduate programs that lead to relatively low paying jobs and/or a mismatch in program cost and earnings potential, that Yale should reduce the price of those programs and/or offer more need based aid. (I will say that the nursing example is surprising to me.) From the report:
We recommend that Yale seek to expand financial aid at the School of
Nursing, School of Public Health, and School of the Environment, where graduates regularly carry debt out of proportion to their likely earnings in their chosen professions.
I also support the school working to reverse the ridiculous grade inflation. It’s curious that the faculty seem to believe there are many students who don’t belong at Yale, yet average GPA is at an all time high. Why are the profs giving these undeserving students such high grades? That seems like a faculty problem of their own making.
Lastly, and we obviously can’t talk about race here, but if Yale did move to a fully merit based admission process, the proportion of females and Asian students will increase. But, the faculty know that.
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It seems to me that the majority of colleges are very transparent about their admissions practices. It’s just the “elites,” public and private, that are not. Admissions standards at your non-flagship state college are pretty easy to figure out, in most states.
Is there a problem with higher education? Yeah, it costs too much. I’m not talking about the $40,000/year schools, because there are plenty of lower priced options. I’m talking about supposedly affordable colleges that frankly cost more than middle class families can afford.
Instead of figuring out ways to make college affordable, the smoke and mirrors have been employed. Higher education is denigrated as too this, too that, unnecessary, anything to keep from actually finding ways to make it affordable. If it’s no longer necessary, we don’t need to solve the problem, right? And the children of those who can afford college will go - while we stop worrying about everyone else, because a college degree is just not needed, right?
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Universities have faced pressure to help address societal problems, the committee noted, saying they were “expected to be all things to all people: selective but inclusive, affordable but luxurious, meritocratic but equitable.”
Full stop. I’m sure life was SO much easier for Yale when all they had to do was cater to the rich and hope that every generation or so they might graduate a few successful politicians just to keep an eye on things in Washington. Well, boo-hoo. Thanks to all that successful marketing to the masses, you now have a populist tiger by the tail. Either learn how to deal with it or go back to being an Ivory Tower.
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I also agree. I don’t know if it will actually do much to fix the public perception problem as they analyzed it, but it would be a good thing to do anyway.
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I find that amusing including because I sort of had the same thought. That quote sums up the “problem” nicely, and yet I was skeptical they would really try to stop being all that. And then the rest of the report suggested to me yes, they were going to basically just keep on going down that same basic path.
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"…Yale-specific entrance exam would ensure that no
student is admitted without the requisite academic preparation and ability"
Imagine if they did this and the test was really hard, followed by “Yale test tutors”, followed by claims of inequality and accusations of pandering to the wealthy who have better resourced schools.
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I thought there was already a benchmark of stats that had to be met, maybe with some exceptions?
I think the widely held idea that admissions is somehow hierarchical in terms of scores and grades needs to be addressed. Elite schools want an interesting mix of interests and talents. They are assembling a class. Probably better to have collected butterflies in the Amazon or played violin internationally, than be top of your class in high school with 800’s.
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Of course, colleges (and others) do not all have the same definition of “merit”.
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But somehow, much of that interesting mix of interest and talents that enters elite colleges becomes interested in applying their talents to investment banking and management consulting.
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But is the minimum rigor of Yale academics so hard that ordinary measures in the US cannot be used for the baseline “requisite academic preparation and ability”? Or do they really want a harder test to be used for sorting among the right tail applicants?
Yes about 40%. Very disappointing. My kid is still in the arts. I suspect, from what I have learned through contact with other Harvard students and families, that many of the “interesting” interests and talents were pursued for admissions purposes. But not all, certainly not all, and 60% is still heartening I suppose.
The positive point I try to make with students though, is that rejection is not rejection of the individual. It is also about what the college needs. One would think that a whole class of valedictorians with 800’s (who didn’t do much outside of school, for instance) is not what these schools are after. Of course doing something “interesting” outside of school takes money, and sometimes a driver (and sometimes sophisticated parents) unless it is a local job.
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Why are people so judgmental of those who make the choice to work in IB or consulting?
I guess I get IB because there seems to be a prevalent disdain for those whom others perceive are solely focused on maximizing earnings. In reality, most IB careers are short, under five years, and many who spent a couple of years as an IB analyst do not go on to become masters of the universe types.
But management consulting? What’s the disdain/disappointment with that? (full disclosure I worked ~25 years in consulting.) Consultants help a wide range of clients in a wide range of industries with their company’s issues. Many interesting people, who are well educated in the arts and humanities, become consultants because these jobs allow them to continuously learn and grow. Every day is a challenge, every day is different. Seems like a good job for smart people who want to tackle complex problems and who are willing to work hard.
It’s disappointing to me that others post frequently about their disdain for people who have made the choice to work in IB or consulting.
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I don’t feel disdain at all. One of my favorite of my kid’s friends did consulting for awhile and my nephew is in banking. It’s just the high proportion, which contradicts the idea of assembling a class with varied interests and goals. I think the idea was cross pollination, not contagion. But these days young people cannot afford a house or condo, cannot afford having kids, and going after money is completely understandable (not to mention loans). I also think consulting is kind of a default for kids who don’t know what to do next: they find a path and leave. So that affects statistics.
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But, I doubt as high a proportion of students were thinking IB or consulting when they were applying to college though (notwithstanding what we see with the relatively few students who choose to post on CC.)
IMO as students are going through college, jobs like management consulting become attractive because they require problem solving skills, communication skills, curiosity…students learn/perceive these jobs as places where smart people go, and that’s attractive to some. The pay can be high, but certainly not on an hourly basis!
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I find this challenging to discuss because on the one hand, I agree certain business jobs, legal jobs, and so on can actually be really good picks for intellectually curious people.
But on the other, I am concerned about the sorts of dynamics documented in the Mother Jones article and elsewhere, essentially that a lot of kids at these schools are find it hard to stop competing for elite prizes, and specifically see less competitive career paths, like say to becoming a K-12 teacher, as a waste of their education. When that dynamic is contributing to so many of these kids chasing employment with prestigious consulting or legal firms or so on, then that isn’t so good in my view.
And I do think some of the things discussed in this report are related to all that. Like, the high-list-price/high-aid model means that in actual fact, a decent percentage of these kids are paying as little, possibly less, as they would pay for an in-state public. Nonetheless, the high list price is reinforcing the message that their degree is actually “worth” a lot more than that.
And then holistic admissions, at least at the most selective levels, is contributing to this very unfortunate sense in certain circles that basically everything you do as a kid has to be some form of competition, some way of proving yourself more worthy of the big life prizes than other kids. Exploring genuine interests? Developing physically, emotionally, socially, ethically, and so on? Supporting the existing local organizations doing good work to help those in needs? Getting a normal paying job for a HS kid? These are things that the suckers who don’t actually want to go to the most selective colleges waste their time doing.
But again, I don’t mean to suggest the kids choosing to be teachers are good, and the kids choosing to be management consultants, Big Law attorneys, and so on are bad. But I do think the system described in this report is encouraging the dynamic described in the Mother Jones article, and all that is contributing ultimately to the declining public perceptions of these institutions.
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The article seems to omit some important factors such as how the pandemic created a temporary test-optional environment that caused a ripple effect and how political retribution (i.e. congressional grilling of college presidents for allowing too much free speech on campus) may be mistaken for public discontent. “The public” has always had mixed feelings about colleges, certainly more so for the super elite ones such as Yale. They are exclusive, expensive, and they are not for everyone. This is not a new fact.
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And they have very generous financial aid. Expensive for donut hole families but the cut off for free attendance is now $200k at at least a few.
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