Elite College Admissions
[Guest post by DRJ]
The TaxProf writes about how America’s elite buy their way into elite colleges:
“My wife and I scrimped and saved to send our two kids to an exceptionally strong private school in Cincinnati, and we are thrilled by the great college choices our kids have had. But we have been surprised by the college admissions results over the past two years at their high school — not by the thumb on the scale in favor of racial minorities, athletes, and legacies, but by the extent of the admissions bump enjoyed by students from wealthy families. Such students have fared better in the admissions process than non-wealthy students with higher test scores, higher grades, and richer extracurricular and leadership activities.”
I agree with his conclusions but what amazes me is so many people still play the elite college game. Does he really believe the only or best path to success in life is through elite colleges? If so, things will never change.
— DRJ
When a majority of the Supreme Court came from Harvard Law, it is a bit tough explaining to your kids that they can get a really good education in fly-over country.
Charlie B (d207cf) — 4/23/2010 @ 8:07 pmAre the alma maters of the SC Justices the only metric as to what a good education is? Frankly, that is very silly. It is quite easy to explain to a kid attending University of Michigan, University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Notre Dame, Rose Hulman, and countless other fly-over heartland schools that they are getting a really good education.
JD (9f2abc) — 4/23/2010 @ 8:18 pmCharlie B,
If you think the only job worth having is Supreme Court Justice, then you’re right that elite educations are the only way to go.
DRJ (09fa6c) — 4/23/2010 @ 8:20 pmI think the media and the left share a great deal of blame for some current negative views of state and smaller colleges. After all, look what a field day they had with Palin and her supposed lack of, *sniff* educational bonafides. My god, can you imagine, Hawaii Pacific University? North Idaho College? Matanuska-Susitna College? …and the University of Idaho?
Seriously. What could she be thinking!
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/23/2010 @ 8:55 pmWhat is also a shame is how a very good public school like UCLA has become even more selective of its admits than the crosstown rival and rich school, USC. This is an absolute reversal from when I matriculated decades ago.
UCLA (and the entire UC system) is now also about to price themselves out of reach for all but the upper middle and rich classes. Which leads precisely to your point, DRJ. UCLA was not established to train elites. It was always for those who could not cough up the dough for a USC or Stanford. Not anymore.
Ed from SFV (f0e1cb) — 4/23/2010 @ 10:03 pm“UCLA (and the entire UC system) is now also about to price themselves out of reach for all but the upper middle and rich classes. Which leads precisely to your point, DRJ. UCLA was not established to train elites. It was always for those who could not cough up the dough for a USC or Stanford. Not anymore.”
Welcome to prop 13.
imdw (490521) — 4/24/2010 @ 5:32 amExcept that the credentialism is self-reinforcing because it’s a gateway to careers we think of as important. Want a job in big law? Better go to a top 15 law school. Want that prestigious fellowship with Brookings or Cato? Better not come from a football college. I think if you dig a little deeper, actually ask the hiring folks at those places why they return to the Ivy League well time and again, you’ll find that they hire what they know. Taking a risk on a kid from a school where they don’t know the administration or professors will look bad for them if the kid doesn’t work out for the job.
The credentialism isn’t an absolute bar to the uncredentialed, but it’s a handicap. You had better be published twice as often, network twice as hard, and be twice as attractive as the credentialed applicant you’re going up against.
Credentialism pisses people off because it’s an abandonment of meritocracy, but I question whether it’s avoidable. What’s the alternative? Impose mandatory means tests on all applicants at top universities, most of which are private, to make sure the rich aren’t overrepresented? Attack credentialism at the employer level?
What we can do is point out that the world doesn’t begin and end with prestigious jobs in New York and Washington. An accountant in Dubuque working 45 hour weeks can have a better life than a frazzled corporate financier in Manhattan who doesn’t actually get to see his high-priced apartment.
IOW, fetishes lose their power when we stop importing meaning into them. Credentialism stops being a problem when we reject the idea that America only exists at its edges.
Hadlowe (061332) — 4/24/2010 @ 5:39 am“UCLA (and the entire UC system) is now also about to price themselves out of reach for all but the upper middle and rich classes. Which leads precisely to your point, DRJ. UCLA was not established to train elites. It was always for those who could not cough up the dough for a USC or Stanford. Not anymore.”
Welcome to prop 13.
Yeah because the huge number of illegal immigrants and the irresponsible spending of the state government had nothing to do with California’s finanicial troubles…..
gahrie (9d1bb3) — 4/24/2010 @ 5:55 amA school’s reputation is usually based on its graduate and professional programs. Undergraduate instruction by and large gets short-shrift at big name schools so professors have time to concentrate on research and graduate instruction.
It’s the teaching assistants and lecturers who shoulder the instructional burden for the vast majority of undergrads. Consequently, a superior undergraduate education can often be had at second-tier schools and for much less money.
Transfer to the big leagues for grad school or for professional schools, like business, law, or medicine. With a sheepskin from Stanford Law on your office wall, no one will care about the 4 years you spent at Chico State.
ropelight (e0e500) — 4/24/2010 @ 6:25 amBut this creates problems in getting into Stanford Law from Chico state, no?
Hadlowe (061332) — 4/24/2010 @ 7:16 amYou ask an interesting question, Hadlowe. Let’s consider the issue: two equally qualified candidates, same LSATs, GPAs, extras, recommendations, and backgrounds. The only difference is undergraduate school.
Would Stanford Law’s admissions committee favor the the outsider or go with the home campus candidate? I don’t know, but there are people who do. Some of them might even read Patterico’s blog.
Maybe someone with direct knowledge will chime in. It doesn’t have to be exclusively limited to Stanford, any elite school will do.
ropelight (e0e500) — 4/24/2010 @ 7:44 amBut this creates problems in getting into Stanford Law from Chico state, no?
Not the same but I do know that Santa Monica College is the main feeder school to UCLA, so all reasonableness is not lost.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/24/2010 @ 8:05 amHow do you think Teddy Kennedy got into Harvard?
Alta Bob (e8af2b) — 4/24/2010 @ 8:53 amThe reason elite colleges are elite is because they have very high educational standards.
Michael Ejercito (6a1582) — 4/24/2010 @ 9:12 amProp 13 did not affect the funding of the UC/CalState systems, which were never funded by the property tax. Any shortfalls in their funding is the direct result of the Legislature diverting funds from those institutions to areas that the pols think will better ensure their re-election.
AD - RtR/OS! (9562e0) — 4/24/2010 @ 9:30 am#14, ME, standards are down across the board at all levels of our educational system. But, as you say, some schools are head and shoulders above others. I agree, but I’m trying to point out that quality can be uneven within schools (low at the undergraduate level, and high at the graduate level) as well as between schools. So, how do we tell which is which?
Measuring quality is rather complicated, often it can be like beauty, strongly influenced by perception. However, we all have a gut feeling about it.
Important measures are the overall quality of tenured faculty. Lots of books published, a significant number of research grants, a few Nobel Prize winners, some ex-federal government big shots, and major corporations offering jobs to graduates are among the key indicators of high quality.
Stanford is well supplied with all the above indicators of quality. But, is that quality so concentrated at the graduate level, and focused on the professional schools, that undergraduates are being short-changed?
ropelight (e0e500) — 4/24/2010 @ 9:35 amProp 13 did not affect the funding of the UC/CalState systems, which were never funded by the property tax. Any shortfalls in their funding is the direct result of the Legislature diverting funds from those institutions to areas that the pols think will better ensure their re-election.
It’s not so much a matter of the legislature being stingy with the funds as it is the higher education system exploding their budgets with silly political exercises such as creating ethnic studies departments, the hiring of Deans of Multiculturalism and related nonsense, and the rise in assorted vice presidents and other useless administrators.
There has been a great deal of talk recently about a looming higher education bubble. The super-elite schools may be able to avoid this due to their reputations and their large endowments, but it will be interesting to see how smaller private colleges, as well as public ones, survive. When even mighty Harvard of the $26 billion endowment is laying off employees, it ought to cause a certain degree of consternation among university presidents.
JWV (08e86a) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:05 am“Prop 13 did not affect the funding of the UC/CalState systems, which were never funded by the property tax.”
Prop 13 is not just about property tax.
imdw (8222e7) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:13 am#15, AD, while prop 13 did not directly reduce funding for the UC system, it did result in lower revenues for CA state government. UC’s budget suffered indirectly. For the 3 years following prop 13’s passage, UC’s budget was cut. I know, I worked in UC Systemwide Administration and grappled with the consequences.
To protect UC’s educational programs, the full first year cut was absorbed entirely in the Administrative area. I was on one the planning committees which had to make the cuts.
ropelight (e0e500) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:15 amSo, please, imdw. Produce a long essay (not cribbed from Google, literally cut and pasted, like your friend CH) about Proposition 13. My guess is that you weren’t even born when it was passed.
So prove me wrong. Write a long, long essay. After all, you are the one snarking away.
Eric Blair (f4bc41) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:25 amAnecdotal, so valueless, but the only Stanford PhD with whom I am acquainted was Stanford straight through undergrad. He was a known quantity when applying to the philosophy graduate program and so was guaranteed entrance. This doesn’t mean he didn’t merit admittance, quite the contrary, just that he’s a prime example of risk averse admittance.
I recall some minor fooferaw a few years ago with the US News law school rankings because a few schools were waiving the gpa requirements for their own undergrads who scored high enough on the LSAT. Because they waived the gpa requirement for those admissions, the universities were not required to report a significant percentage of low gpa admittances, boosting their gpa numbers, and thus their rankings, overall.
It’s not the same thing as the problem DRJ mentions in the post, but it’s a symptom of the same condition, the rational belief that its less risky to go with what you know.
The schools were safe in admitting (relatively) low gpa undergrads who came from the same school because they could easily ask Bob over in the English dept. whether applicant A would be a decent law school candidate. You know Bob, so you know how much weight to give his opinion. Plus it let them fudge their numbers a bit to try to attract a higher level of general applicants from elsewhere, so there was extra motivation to promote internally, so to speak.
What we classify as elite universities stay that way by trying to skim the cream. Intelligence and wealth are not automatically related, but there is a strong associational relation between the two. Intelligence and heredity are not automatically related, but there is a strong associational relationship between the two. Admitting children of wealth should garner higher than average intelligence.
More cynically, the wealthy got to where they are by adopting and utilizing the rules of society to their benefit. One of those rules is that an elite university education is a key to the kingdom. Sending their children to those universities is in the best interest of the people sending their children there and the universities who wish to maintain their status as elites. Whether it is in the best interest of a meritocratic society is a separate question, and not one to really concern them.
Hadlowe (dcac42) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:27 am“So, please, imdw. Produce a long essay (not cribbed from Google, literally cut and pasted, like your friend CH) about Proposition 13”
Why do you need a long essay? if you want to find out that prop 13 is not about property taxes, just read prop 13. Do you want me to find a link for you or do you think you can google it?
“My guess is that you weren’t even born when it was passed.”
Why would that matter?
imdw (8222e7) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:34 am“if you want to find out that prop 13 is not about property taxes”
I mean, not *just* about property taxes.
imdw (8222e7) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:35 amNice trollish answer, imdw. And I wrote what I did because that is how you roll.
My guess is that you are aggressively ignorant about almost everything upon which you post, other than what you read on DK or DU.
So prove me wrong. Write the essay. You think you are smart. Most of us suspect otherwise; we think you just post to troll. So prove us all wrong.
Of course, that would take work.
On a related note, regarding your youth, well, that is pretty obvious.
Again, how did that apology work out? You know, the one where you got spanked for violating a very clear rule of the host? I think that alone demonstrates your lack of honesty.
Eric Blair (f4bc41) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:49 amLacking honesty is the least of it’s myriad problems.
Dmac (21311c) — 4/24/2010 @ 10:55 am“My guess is that you are aggressively ignorant about almost everything upon which you post”
You really didn’t know that Prop 13 was about more than just property taxes? Here I found a link to the text for you:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_13A
Let me know if you need me to point to the part that is not just about property taxes. Or you could look at an encyclopedia in your local library or even online.
[Released from filter — DRJ]
imdw (8128c5) — 4/24/2010 @ 11:00 amYeah, Dmac. It’s just here to play games. I think the apology thing must sting this character to some degree.
Eric Blair (f4bc41) — 4/24/2010 @ 11:07 amUh oh looks like my last post got stuck in the spam filter. Sorry Eric you’re going to have to read prop 13 without a link.
imdw (7ae49a) — 4/24/2010 @ 11:26 amHey little troll: I don’t care about your cutting and pasting plagarism, just as I don’t really care about your poor grammar. I care about your analysis of legislation. Since you are so smart and all.
And you are the one pushing this, remember?
Oh, and I also care about more discussion of your apology to Patterico for being a jackhole. Because it is relevant to why you post here.
Eric Blair (f4bc41) — 4/24/2010 @ 11:34 am“I care about your analysis of legislation. Since you are so smart and all.”
Oh that’s very simple: prop 13 is not just about property taxes. There’s really not much else to write on that.
imdw (5f60be) — 4/24/2010 @ 11:41 amYou really don’t know very much at all, do you? All of the folks reading this know what you are. And it’s not much.
And calling daley a Nazi in the other thread? I can’t wait until Patterico sees that.
Get your grovel on, little troll.
Eric Blair (f4bc41) — 4/24/2010 @ 11:47 am#12, Dana, California’s Master Plan for Higher Education envisioned the Community College system as a place where students could complete their lower division prerequisites and then apply to either a UC or State College campus to complete their upper division and major concentrations. The doctorate was reserved for UC.
However, you are correct that because many CA Community Colleges are geographically situated near major university campuses, a close relationship develops. The same close cooperation also occurs, on a less formal basis, between CCs and private schools: the back door to CalTech is Pasadena City College. I suspect more or less similar arrangements abound.
One of my earliest administrative assignments was to determine the Orin’s of UCSB’s 1977 entering students. It’s been a while, and I don’t recall the details, but there were specific high schools and community colleges which contributed significantly more students than could be randomly expected. I found several causal factors: numbers of UCSB graduates on the teaching and administrative staffs seemed to be as big a factor as upscale parents, especially ones graduated from UCSB. Also, UCSB graduates in the local guidance departments were big influences.
ropelight (e0e500) — 4/24/2010 @ 11:54 amComment by ropelight — 4/24/2010 @ 10:15 am
As with all governmental functions, when finances are flush, all benefit; when money’s tight, everyone has to pull in their belt a notch.
Unfortunately, we here in CA have watched our Legislature let that belt out, and out, and out, regardless of the economic fortunes of the State at Large, and now we’ve run out of belt.
AD - RtR/OS! (9562e0) — 4/24/2010 @ 12:23 pmropelight:
All things being equal, I think the Top 14 or Top 20 law schools would admit an applicant from their undergraduate institution or from an elite college over a lower ranked college. However, elite law schools look primarily at LSATs and GPAs when considering non-affirmative action candidates. Some even offer scholarships to recruit high LSAT/GPA applicants. Smaller law schools like Yale and Stanford have enough top applicants that they are more likely to consider other factors, like undergraduate institution and extracurricular honors and accomplishments.
DRJ (09fa6c) — 4/24/2010 @ 12:29 pmThe thing that often hurts graduates of state or non-elite universities is that some don’t have as much grade inflation as the elite colleges.
DRJ (09fa6c) — 4/24/2010 @ 12:30 pmSo, DRJ, (or anyone else) if you were on the admissions committee, and all other factors were equal, would you vote to accept the homeboy, or the out-lander?
ropelight (e0e500) — 4/24/2010 @ 12:37 pmBeen actually looking for a couple first-rank electrical engineers lately, and I’ve interviewed any number of candidates. I’ve found that (other than some very targeted skills) there are only two things on a resume that matter: where you went to school and where you’ve worked.
The guy with the BS from CalTech is a lot smarter than the guy with the MS from South Succotash State. And the guy whose last two jobs were IBM and Nvidia is a lot more able than the guy whose last two jobs were at failed audio-gadget start-ups.
The only time that you get non-correlation is when you have a combination of those two rules: the lady from South Succotash State and Intel and Nvidia is probably even brighter than the CalTech guy.
Elite colleges aren’t everything, but they get you in the door faster than anything else. It’s yours to lose. Coming from a nowhere college means you have to make it all yourself. Harder, but if you do success is even more certain.
Kevin Murphy (5ae73e) — 4/24/2010 @ 1:20 pmropelight,
The homeboy, but perhaps not for the reason you think. Students that have already succeeded at that college are more likely to stay and complete their studies at the next level. Medical, law and grad schools have a limited number of seats and it hurts to have even one dropout.
But my earlier point is that there are very few times when “all other factors are equal.” At least in law school, non-affirmative action picks are based almost exclusively on numbers. The best thing an applicant can do to get in law school is ace the LSAT, and there are several ways to improve your score — taking the LSAT multiple times, taking the June sitting, taking prep courses, and especially spending as much time as possible practicing the free LSAT exams at the LSAC website.
DRJ (09fa6c) — 4/24/2010 @ 1:21 pmropelight,
FWIW I think some elite law schools are admitting more “out-lander” college grads (provided they have good numbers) to add diversity to their classes. For instance, Harvard Law’s 2009-2010 class has 283 undergraduate institutions represented.
DRJ (09fa6c) — 4/24/2010 @ 1:29 pmI should also point out that I went to one of the [three] first-tier engineering schools in the US,
I’ve done well, but others have done better (people I went to school with have: founded a Fortune 500 company; become head of marketing at the largest IC company in the world; and another guy was an astronaut). I’m just a damn good engineer.
And others have done worse. I personally know three in my class who are utterly unemployable (and I’m sure there are more) out of a graduating class of 100. Another drives a cab.
I am glad I went to that school, but it didn’t really make me what I am. What I got was stiff academic competition and a society of peers, and opportunity from a degree that said I’d passed a particular cut. But there are no guarantees. You still have to make it work, and you can do that coming from anywhere.
Kevin Murphy (5ae73e) — 4/24/2010 @ 1:39 pm#12, Dana, California’s Master Plan for Higher Education envisioned the Community College system as a place where students could complete their lower division prerequisites and then apply to either a UC or State College campus to complete their upper division and major concentrations. The doctorate was reserved for UC.
However, you are correct that because many CA Community Colleges are geographically situated near major university campuses, a close relationship develops. The same close cooperation also occurs, on a less formal basis, between CCs and private schools: the back door to CalTech is Pasadena City College. I suspect more or less similar arrangements abound.
It is geographically near major U’s, but also it can hold down costs as well.
Two of my kids graduated from a private college prep high school. Ridiculously expensive but it was academically rigorous, safe, and challenged them. When it came time for the college rounds and informational meetings, never once were the community colleges mentioned as a viable option. Spend 2 years completing general ed and then transfer on. Instead, the elite schools were touted and representatives visited to cull the cream of the crop. I think it’s unfortunate that it’s fallen out of favor but ultimately, when economically pressed, one does what one can and if it means a community college, then so be it.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/24/2010 @ 1:41 pmDana, I’m suggesting that 2 years at a community college is likely to result in an equal or possibly superior lower division education at a much reduced price.
The professors at elite schools are way too busy with research and graduate instruction to spend time on undergraduates in general, and on first and second year students in particular. Top faculty leave the scut work to teaching assistants and lecturers.
At a Community College at least you’re not stuck with a graduate student TA on work/study.
ropelight (e0e500) — 4/24/2010 @ 3:02 pmI understand your point, ropelight, and you’re right. My point was that although there are distinct benefits, it is a much maligned choice by those very elites.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 4/24/2010 @ 3:53 pm