On Demand
Getting In
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Lloyd Thacker, director of The Education Conservancy, and Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College, uncover the realities of college admissions in the U.S.
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Comments
A couple questions ...
If two-thirds of college applications come from women, are colleges under any obligation to admit fewer women out of the pool of qualified applicants in order to compose a class about half female and half male? Does Title IX come into play in these admissions decisions?
good comment rae! i wondered about that myself - the title nine thing i mean.
i jumped over to the education conservancy website - a great organization - i had to think about that at first but 1 minute 10 of the little video convinced me. and dan rather! what a star! oops, that's off topic. sorry :)
are men necessary, other than the teaspoon of DNA?
What does lightly endowed mean? I would be censored here if I wrote what I think it means!
the times had an article about this issue about 10 years ago- so this is nothing new. the question is whether a college should even try to be 50/50 male/female. I don't see what it should have to be that way...probably it would be better to have it less than 2-1 though in general.
FYI the state of Michigan has outlawed not only looking at the Race of the applicant in admissions to state schools, but also the sex. Thus white males (and black males) will likely be rarer and rarer at UM. similarly asians will soon be dominant if they are not already. serves the foes of affirmative action right.
Robert
it's means they have too many asians i think
"You can serve your long term education goals by being honest and believing in yourself."? Sounds like magical thinking to me.
"Be who you are and the college choice will take care of itself."?
Suppose young George W. Bush wanted to apply to your college.
He's a goof-off, he doesn't want to get an education, all he wants is a good time, but his father can give your school a $1 million endowment (which could subsidize 20 capable hard-working students).
Would you accept him?
hjs: Actually, it sounds like this board has too many racists.
Do Lloyd and Jennifer have any comments on how this works on a graduate admission level?
norman
if his father went there, yes!
don't forget cheerleader and life of the party!
WL
and too many no humor PC nazis?
Don't listen to these people!
Game the system! Lie about your extra-curriculars and pad your application until it can't hold any more BS. That's how I got into NYU. My brother tried the honest way and was differed from Columbia.
But shouldn't college admission be based on raw academic abilities and knowledge (that cannot be tested by SATs)? Most countries do this. Only rich kids can have extra curricular activities.
I am the Dir. of Admission at a small Jesuit College in the tri-state area. I would just like to point out that there are MANY quality schools out there. Part of the problem is caused by the frenzy associated with trying to get in to the handful of schools at the top of the US News 'rankings'. Small classes, faculty committed to undergraduate teaching, a quality core curriculum: look around, lots of us are offering these things and more.
people should stop wasting their time worrying about getting into these colleges. There is lots of evidence to prove that where you go to college isn't a major factor in a person's earning power or their happiness. Life doesn't end after college.
Apply to CHEAP SCHOOLS! Where you go to undergrad is NOT that important unless you are going to one of the top universities in the country (Harvard, Yale, MIT etc), that school specializes in something you know you want to study, or your potential employer went to the same school as you. Aside from that you can get a good education at most state schools. My little sister just went through this process. She got in to all these expensive liberal arts schools, but even after scholarship money they would cost over $30,000. Instead she's going to SUNY New Paltz, a solid school where she can attend and have no debt from when she graduates. Is an employer really going to care if she goes to SUNY or went to Hampshire. Probably not.
Your guests are full of it.
Being "full selves" hardly ever gets anyone in. You are all looking for a checklist of things, and let's be real here. Money matters, too.
Your guests are disgenuine and I understand why but for the real poor kids out there, with little resources, there is a huge disadvantage...
#14
Don't admit that in writing.
Be bad but deny everything, admit nothing, demand proof and don't put anything in writing.
It's total dissembling to claim that student family income never determines whether a student does or does not get into the college. I have worked behind the scenes at an Ivy League University. Schools will mark students whose parents have offered donations or are very wealthy as "institutional interest" or other markers that will ensure admission even to under-qualified students.
hjs:
And too many lame comedians who aren't funny! You call that humor? Why don't you apply for the illustrator position at the New Yorker. I hear they're looking for people like you.
A recent editorial in the Times noted a troubling correlation between SAT scores and family income:
There is also the troubling fact that SAT scores track with student income. Wake Forest President Nathan O. Hatch took issue with that in an opinion piece in the Washington Post in which he explained his school’s decision to go test-optional.
Mr. Hatch cited a California study, which he said showed that “SAT scores correlated with family income but not with college grades’’ and that “the SAT was the poorest predictor of college performance when compared with high school grades and performance on subject tests.’’
Doesn't the use of SAT scores undermine the notion of blind admissions? Please ask your guests.
Best,
Bernardo Pace, Ph.D.
#20- Good advice, but let them find a "David" in NYU. There are thousands of us!
wl, just passing the day. but thanks for the input
I am sad that parents and kids do not get the message to be a great individual person. The competition for educational spots in this city starts at birth. You can't expect parents and kids to switch up their game when it comes time to apply to college. These are lifetime gamers. Your message is falling on completely deaf ears, I assure you.
a white female friend of mine whose mother is South African applied to schools - she always checked off African American and got into all her first choices....
while she comes from a lower middle class family - she feels she never would've got into some of the colleges she did
David! My college roommate (apartment, not dorm) wrote her own glowing recommendation letter for NYU. I guess the admissions office for "America's number 1 dream school" is just too busy to check up on these things. Also, neither of us got much in the way of financial aid. Coincidence?
Anyway, these attitude those two guests have is by their own admission pollyannish.
And if the problem is a supply and demand issue, why not increase the supply for crying out loud?
How about fields like engineering, math, and physics, which tend to be more male dominated? I would think being female would make it more likely for you to get in.
I don't get it. Whatever happened to academic merit as the primary criteria for admissions? If 58% of applicants are women then why shouldn't women be overrepresented in terms of admissions. Its a competitive world, no. I received my higher education in Ireland so my knowledge of the system here is patchy and probably over simplistic but it sounds over complicated to me.
On July 8th, an editorial appeared in the NY Times noting a correlation between scores and family income, not scores and college grades.
Can a college or university that uses the SAT--most of them--really engage in an admissions decision process that is blind to a student's ability to pay? BP
I wish we would just stop with these "diversity" quota's in this country. Admission just solely be merit based. As an African-American woman who has worked hard for her achievements, I don't want to be considered an affirmative action case whenever I compete with someone else!
Get real. EVERYONE is trying to game the system.
Does the courts' holding that unequal admissions to compensate for *historical* discrimination (against women, in this case) come into play, & how?
How about quota for Asians, "model minority" who get penalized for their race, i.e. Asians?
You know, I'm really getting sick of this equal opportunity discourse that X or Y minority is not getting enough seats in Z college. The real problem is that everyone wants to get a good job at the end of the college game and there are only so many nice jobs to fill before some people have to start working at McDonalds and Wal-mart.
The two guests are right in stating that there are many smaller, lesser-known colleges that will give their children excellent educations, and wonderful college experiences.
Parents know this! They also know, and fear, the reality that the name of one of a very few well-endowed schools, will shoot their child to the top of the pile of resumes when the child graduates. They also know that these wonderful-quality, lesser known colleges are probably not well-endowed enough to support the massive infrastructures and networking systems of the Ivies.
So yes, if getting a good education was all there was to going to college in our society, parents and students would certainly be beating a path to the small liberal arts schools' doors.
I have mixed feelings about affirmative action. I am a professor, and I see firsthand the results of unfair admissions. I am sorry to say that we have a consistent number of minorities at our university who should have been directed to community colleges; they often have eighth-grade skills. They stay on probation and end up passing with D- averages and do get their degree -- a degree which is virtually worthless for the work they put in. Securities should be put in place to make sure they can handle the rigors of a four year university.
Admission counselors can take measures (like extensive interviews) to find those who maybe had a bad time in high school but will be fine in college - and more important who WANT to be in college for the right reasons.
According to the Princeton Univ. researchers, without the "discrimination", 80% of the Princeton class will be filled with Asians. Thus, it reports that it is giving 180-200 higher SAT scores to two other minorities but 50 points taken out from Asian Students SATs scores. Is this fair to give this kind of severe bias against Asian students? I was told that there was a Jewish quotas and Italian quotas at the beginning of this century, and it is Asians' turn. My friends' argument is that "We can't have college campus resembling Stuyvesant High School in NY City where 70% are Asians! That can happen to all top colleges in the US without the Asian quotas!"
This year and last year, I have witnessed so many cases of this bias against Asian students, including my own family.
Is this what America, the land of equal opportunity, is about? It is time for a very serious discussion.
www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/06/11/asians
www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/18978
and many other references.
Kiyoka
are you asking for asians to be in the same pool as whites?
This thread is closed.
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