Law Professor Paul L Caron has a short review on the book The Price of Admission. The book basically says that the odds are stacked against you for admission to an "elite" college or university if you aren't a legacy, have money or participate in a "patrician" sport.
I used to think that "elite" schools were overrated. Neither of my brother went to an elite college and neither did I. I was just glad to get in somewhere. My wife graduated from Purdue, as did her brother and both parents. I admit that I was impressed by that. With the recent presidential campaign and the way former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin got kicked around♠ for having gone to a couple of no-name schools, I am now not so sure.
Interesting little note. OxBridge no longer gives special consideration to legacy applicants.
Regards — Cliff
PS: Hat tip to Instapundit. Since this is Law Professor to Law Professor, do you think there is fee splitting going on here? :-)
♠ I am borrowing this term from radio personality George Anthes.
3 comments:
The only known advantage of "name" schools is not what one knows as a result of attendance, but rather, WHO one knows...
What's in a NAME? A recognized legacy that must constantly reinforce itself or wither and die. One of the enduring reasons that Englands famous...or perhaps infamous considering the follies of some of its brood....Sandhurst lives on.
On the other hand, having lived in and about Oxford for four years, while the "moneyed" were certainly well represented there...and that includes the Rhodes scholars who in my opinion were/are selected more for political reasons than intellectual prowess.....I found that more often than not, intellectual capacity and potential for growth were the dominant characteristics of the student bodies of the "University's" colleges. I say that only because the University is not a formalized entity in the same sense of American universities.
Of course, I, like many, can only stand outside the window to the country store, having been educated at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in painfully pedestrian institutions of "higher learning".....not as high as good money can buy.
Neal -- much agreed with your first paragraph. There's also a "branding" that comes with the degree. I am taking the GMAT next month, applying to two VERY well-known Massachusetts business schools, and hoping for the best.
What do I think the MBA will give me?
If it were just the knowledge itself, I could probably just rent a carrel at the local library and forego the two years' income but save the tuition $$ (actually will be using post-9/11 GI Bill, but that's another story).
But I'll get the networking, the high-octane atmosphere, and the "brand" that will help my employment prospects (uhh...don't want to count chickens before they hatch, this assumes they'll have a place for me).
However, the perception many have that people can just "buy their way in" to certain schools is pretty wide of the mark.
I read the article that Cliff linked to, and while yes, the author finds a few extreme cases where the right last name or family income helped someone, those exceptions do NOT prove the rule.
The irony of the discussion that usually surrounds certain high-prestige American institutions is that the ones often most associated with wealth and privilege have the largest endowments and are in fact "need blind."
What that means is that when Harvard decides whether to take John Q. Senior, they're not evaluating his (more accurately, his parents') ability to pay. For a smaller private school with an equally high price tag, that's not the case -- money really DOES matter, and it does help someone get a foot in the door.
Trust me, I'm not denying that Harvard's population is largely composed of people from high socioeconomic status, but there are other reasons for that...and a high-achieving middle class kid from Lowell or Brockton or wherever else can still find a place there (it happens every year). When that kid looks at the aid packages from Harvard, and compares it to BC, BU, and others, he'll find the OPPOSITE of what most conventional American wisdom might lead people to think...in fact, if the combined family income is under $180k/yr, he'll pay nothing and owe nothing.
Next, to the "legacy admit" thing, there's a textbook correlation-causation problem that gets overlooked often. Let's say Jim and Jane meet at MIT. Jim and Jane fall in love, get married and a few years later start having kids.
Let's look at those kids' advantages -- genetics (smart parents), money (assuming that Jim and Jane are doing well for themselves in the world), and a focus on education in the house (no doubt, Jim and Jane didn't wind up at MIT by accident).
Jim and Jane's kids may benefit from a slight *bump* but the bump is far from a shove...and they might do alright if it weren't there at all.
Lastly, over the past generation we've changed what we define as an "elite" school...look at Tufts, Emory, Northwestern, etc. -- all degrees that hold more intangible *value* now than they did 30 years ago, which is a reflection of the high caliber of their students and graduates.
Where the author did hit the nail on the head was with the # of spaces that schools reserve for athletes in their freshman classes. Why should a synchronized swimmer have a leg up on someone more academically qualified?
I don't really know, but that's the school's decision...as someone much wiser than me once said, admission to college is "not a reward for something you've done, but a bet on who you're going to be."
Once you frame it that way, I think traditional notions of "fairness" become less relevant for the individual schools.
I remember reading about this book and saying to myself, "Wow, I apparently don't go to Harvard. And neither do most of my friends." My dad said almost the same thing.
While there are certainly some legacy students here, I have yet to meet one who wasn't qualified. And as the previous commenter noted, Harvard has the ability to have need-blind admissions. And while other schools also have this, few are able to actually make college affordable. BC is an excellent example of this; it would have cost about twice as much per year.
A few weeks ago the Financial Aid Office published the statistics about the incoming class of 2014. The average financial aid grant was $40,000. That doesn't sound like a bunch of rich kids to me.
There are a large number of stereotypes that exist about schools like Harvard. Most of them simply are not true.
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