Agreed—hopefully the other students at school were supportive. That’s a lot of personal info to share… |
And having parents who graduated college favors those kids over ones who got their GED. Having parents who are gold collar/white collar workers helps favor kids over those whose parents work at the grocery store or the HVAC company. There will always be someone who has an advantage over someone else. However, outside of about 30-40 colleges, there are 500+ excellent schools where ED is not a huge advantage. Most people whose parents are on DCUM have a huge advantage over the average kid, simply because they grew up in a highly educated family who values education and most did not struggle for the basic needs in life and most did not live in an environment where they are genuinely concerned for their safety daily. It's what life is about. Someone will always have more than you, have more advantages until you are at Bezos/Gates level. It does not mean ED should be eliminated. Colleges goal is to fill their classes and maximize yield. ED allows them to do this. Fact is if you know you cannot afford a school ED, that won't change for RD---these elite schools are not going to give more aid in RD process. If the NPC says X and you can only afford X-Y thousand, then ED vs RD doesn't change that. So you go outside those 40-50 schools and apply to the many many that will offer aid/be affordable for you. Just like anything else in life |
My argument is that we have no idea exactly how big the legacy hook is, because the statistics you love to cite don't take into account that legacies as a whole are likely coming from families with more money. Which means better test scores, more extra-curriculars that create other hooks (i.e., recruited athlete in niche sports), etc. In other words, legacies often have at least some other big hooks or other qualifications too that explain why they're being admitted at a higher rate than non-legacies. |
There are data that disprove your argument. You really think researchers haven't bothered to control for high socioeconomic status, rich kid sports and private schools? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/upshot/ivy-league-legacy-admissions.html
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Controlling for test scores is pretty useless given how low the ceiling is relative to the level of accomplishment that these schools look for. The correct way to do the study would be to control for overall application strength, but if course that's impossible (by design) as the admissions process is holistic and thus not quantitative. |
Test scores are highly correlated with income. You can suggest pie-in-the-sky study design, but legacy admissions are obvious to anyone who has the capacity to look at data (and even those who don't). www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31492/w31492.pdf |
Lol you think gpa, ec, essay are not?? Colleges also found test scores are correlated with academic success in college. |
Test scores are at least most objective and fair.
Colleges are reinstating it for reasons after TO trial. |
THIS. Everything in the process is correlated with income. At least a dedicated low income kid can test prep with free resources even if they can't hire an expensive essay coach and spend their whole life curating impressive ECs. |
Who is arguing that everything in the process isn't correlated with income? The prior discussion was about some person posting that because her legacy kid didn't get into her alma mater, that legacy preferences are worthless. The data studying 12 elite colleges show that in such a selective environment even a minor boost can make a huge differences in admittances, and legacy boosts are not a minor boost. |
Ivy legacies are very different than other legacies. |
DD applied to 20, got into 5 in 2022-2023. DS applied to 6 and got into 4 in 2023-2024. Similar stats and types of colleges, just far fewer of them. Less can actually be more if you're strategic about it: https://youtu.be/2ftoVyPAmB4 |
About how the NYT shopped the idea for this piece around until they found someone to write it: https://www.insidehighered.com/newsletter/sandbox/narrow-views-paper-record |
Getting recruited out of college isn't the only way to get those jobs... If those are the jobs you actually want. I temped my way into six-figure offers at CSFB and DLJ. I accepted a job at Reuters, instead. And that was the 90s. |
Elite colleges exist in the mindsets of the elites, nothing more than that. In the real world, elite colleges are nice but barely thought of.
Elite colleges have also badly damaged their prestige in the last 20 but particularly 10 years. It's hard to get excited by them and it's definitely trickling down into hiring and the boardrooms. |