Comment by cool_dude85
13 hours ago
>While I admit that legacy and donations can be a factor as they always have been across all institutions, admissions always have been predicated on finding students who are most likely to find true high level success in the real world. This means finding well rounded students: those that excel in leadership positions, extra curriculars, and athletics as well as in the classroom.
The paper says that the three main causes for Ivy-plus admission rates among the 1% are:
"The high-income admissions advantage at private colleges is driven by three factors: (1) preferences for children of alumni, (2) weight placed on non-academic credentials, which tend to be stronger for students applying from private high schools that have affluent student bodies, and (3) recruitment of athletes, who tend to come from higher-income families"
But are these oh-so-important factors what make for successful students? Let's ask the authors.
"Adjusting for the value-added of the colleges that students attend, the three key factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas SAT/ACT scores and academic credentials are highly predictive of post-college success."
Hm. I guess you'll need a new excuse.
It’s even simpler than how you’re putting it. Gini coefficient has risen since 1980 and freshman class quality by objective measures like incoming grades and test scores is declining since 1993. It is really improbable that being rich helps you in college - in fact you don’t need to have a study at all to know that the opposite is very probably true. But people like the guy you’re replying to are so hung up on first principles thinking like “increasing selectivity means greater quality.” He thinks that’s axiomatic, when you need to conduct a pretty serious study to measure quality.
This study was good because it shows how being rich improves your admissions chances. Probably, increasing numbers of richer students have been causing class quality to DECLINE, not improve, and if it weren’t for donations funding research, the universities are actually WORSE off with the children of the merely richest Americans. This aligns with my experience at such universities, over many years, both as a student and an educator.