

The college admissions scam - ilamont
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/01/10/the_college_admissions_scam/?page=full

======
grellas
In every society, the wealthy have advantages over those who are less well
off, and the shock to me would be to discover that such advantages did _not_
extend to a higher rate of admission to the best schools. In my thinking, to
call this a "scam" says more about the author than it does about the
admissions process he is questioning.

I think a lot is revealed here in the way the author handles the SAT. This
test is still widely used as a major part of admissions. The author cites
academic studies indicating a strong correlation between high test scores and
high family income. So far, so good. It is the conclusion he draws from this
that is suspect, and that is to suggest that the test simply serves as a false
cover for institutions claiming to admit based solely on merit while
systematically favoring the wealthy in reality - hence the alleged scam.

This to me is logically flawed along _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_ lines. If
the SAT truly does not test for merit, that is fine - abolish it. If, however,
it does indeed test for merit and rich kids tend to do better at it, this
means only that such kids tend on average to be better prepared academically
at this stage in life than are poorer kids. But isn't that what a system based
on merit is supposed to determine? Why then call it a scam?

Apart from the SAT, it may be that the author's other evidence in support of
his contention is enough to support his thesis. When I hear "scam," however, I
expect something pretty strong to support it and when I see the sort of
analysis that appears here with respect to the SAT, I tend to think that the
author himself is prejudiced on this issue (i.e., that he himself prefers to
see a leveling quite apart from merit and is using a hypocrisy argument merely
as an attack tool), leading me to regard the rest of what he says with a
healthy measure of skepticism.

~~~
chrischen
I think his fundamental definition of merit is how well two students would
perform given equal academic preparation.

So knowing calculus doesn't make you smarter than someone who doesn't because
that other person may have never had the opportuniy to learn it.

~~~
grellas
Yes, I would agree. He states that the SAT score serves as a "proxy" for the
resources such students have had available to them in high school and, one
would infer, is therefore rigged against middle class and poor students who
had lesser quality resources at their disposal.

The unstated premise, though, is that elite academic institutions have a
social obligation to act affirmatively to equalize outcomes in society by
finding alternative ways to qualify students for admission besides the
academic capabilities such students demonstrate at the time of applying. Since
they have no way of knowing who has what innate merit that may not yet be
reflected in academic test scores or historic grades, this _ipso facto_ leads
to a system where they have to apply quotas or arbitrary weighting adjustments
(e.g., x% upward adjustment in GPA to account for having come from a poor
school district) to achieve the equalization sought. Such adjustments will
then have the effect of excluding some applicants with higher current
performance scores in favor of others with what administrators deem greater
unrealized merit, which seems a fairly arbitrary outcome. Whether this would
lead to inclusion of more students based on true merit would seem to me to be
a dubious proposition but it would decidedly put the schools in the business
of trying to iron out social inequalities through admissions standards tied to
something other than measurable academic criteria. This is the logical outcome
of divorcing the idea of merit from any objective means of measuring it.

------
patio11
"Nor does diversity extend to racial composition. Of course every college
boasts about its efforts to enroll a more racially diverse student body. But
here are the facts: A New York Times article in 2004 revealed that Harvard’s
incoming freshman class was 9 percent black, but between one-half and two-
thirds of those black students were actually West Indian or African immigrants
or the children of immigrants, and many others were biracial. In short, they
weren’t African- _American_."

The racial spoils system is mindbogglingly perverse and unjust, and nowhere is
this more apparent than the squabbling among people to preserve their access
to the crumbs they can take from it. Study hard in high school, pah, that's
for Asians -- we've got to keep those Johnny Come Lately Africans from taking
_our_ spots!

~~~
sachinag
In the U.S., we've effectively created segregated public university systems
that preserve and extend the status quo even as HBCUs have trouble maintaining
enrollments. In every major metropolitan area, there's at least one or two
public four-year colleges that are predominantly African-American. Under the
cover of "extending access", we've re-created separate but equal in our higher
education system: a place where mandatory busing won't solve our issues.

~~~
javert
HBCU = historically black college or university

What I don't understand is that in my state, so many blacks choose to go to
HBCUs, even when (it seems) they could go to a better non-HBCU school.

~~~
rsheridan6
Probably because they want to be around other black people.

------
amanfredi
The author spends a lot of effort ignoring the simple explanation that wealthy
families can spend more money on things that make a world of difference in
educational opportunities later on, such as books in the home and parents who
know how to read.

The educational gap between poor and wealthy students is certainly something
worth trying to remedy, but colleges wanting the best students is no more a
conspiracy to keep the poor powerless than the demand for money is a
conspiracy to keep them poor.

~~~
meterplech
As an SAT tutor I can remark that wealthy families have a real advantage in
the process in being able to pay the high fees for SAT training. I think the
best way to eliminate such an advantage would be to ask students to report
what sort of tutoring or classes they got.

~~~
sachinag
Agreed; I've been doing pro bono SAT teaching in inner city schools since
2000, but nothing can replace one-on-one SAT tutoring, which I've never seen a
grant for.

~~~
qeorge
How does one get into this? Are you a teacher, or are schools also looking for
professionals in other fields to help out?

~~~
nostrademons
A bunch of my friends from college are doing or have done this. For pro bono
stuff, I believe you just find an SAT tutoring place you'd like to help out
and volunteer. It's pretty manpower and time intensive, so they're always
looking for qualified people. You definitely don't have to be a teacher. I
believe they ask for your own SAT scores though, and only take people that
scored significantly above what would be expected from the people you're
trying to tutor. My friends are mostly in the 1500+ range, and a bunch have
perfect 1600s, so they're pretty hot commodities on the market.

~~~
sachinag
I started teaching for Kaplan back in 2000, and pretty much used that as my
credential.

(I've since left Kaplan to work on Red Ivy Prep, my side project that aims to
find repeatable TODOs based on learning styles. Thankfully, I have a sister
getting a PhD in learning and memory research who's helping me out with the
theory. I'm trying to do a free all-day drop-in workshop for students here in
Boston on MLK day, but it's a lot harder without that credential anymore.)

~~~
qeorge
Thank you both for following up. I like this, because its something actionable
that I can do to have an impact on an unfair system.

I am having trouble locating SAT test prep centers in Raleigh, NC who provide
free training (via Google). I will try to contact the school system directly
this week.

------
nostrademons
The legacy/athlete spots are the price of free tuition for middle-class
students. The money has to come from somewhere, and if it's not coming from
tuition fees, it has to come from wealthy alums. Those wealthy alums are more
likely to donate if a.) their kids get in and b.) their school keeps winning.

Elite colleges have largely opted for a system where they set aside a portion
of slots to keep the money flowing, and then use that money to make sure that
anyone else who can get into the remaining slots will be able to come, and
nobody will be turned away because they can't afford it. I find this system a
little unsettling, since it's hard to pretend this is _fair_. But as someone
who attended an elite college and was only able to do so because they paid for
2/3 of my tuition, I'm not really in a position to complain. It seems better
than a system where everybody has an equal shot of getting in, but anyone
making less than $100K/year doesn't have a prayer of being able to afford it.

------
reader5000
College is just a big inefficient n-player prisoner's dilemma. Defection is
getting a degree. Cooperating is not getting a degree. As soon as one person
defects, everybody defects and are worse off than if nobody defected. (If
everybody has a degree you have no competitive advantage in the job market,
and you are ~100K poorer; thus everybody is worse off than if nobody had
purhcased a degree). The system merely serves as a proxy for IQ tests which
are generally illegal in hiring.

~~~
plorkyeran
If the only thing you get out of college is a piece of paper saying you
graduated then you did something very wrong.

~~~
byrneseyeview
If after four years in the work force, you only learned what you would have
gotten from a BA program, you're probably digging ditches.

~~~
jacobolus
Really? Where in the work force do you get to learn about GIS software, play
with expensive photography equipment, sit with scientists, philosophers,
historians, literary critics, etc., to discuss their fields, not to mention
chatting over dinner with all kinds of diverse 18–22 year-olds who in a decade
or two will be actors, politicians, artists, diplomats, company founders, and
so on? What job do you have whose members are all involved in myriad dance
troupes and music groups constantly putting on $5 shows and concerts? What job
dumps a stream of free co-worker–written literary magazines, political and
scientific reviews, and a daily newspaper in your door box?

I don’t know any work place as diverse as the most boring monoculture of an
engineering college.

~~~
byrneseyeview
People don't stop being interesting when they get their diplomas. At my last
job, one of my coworkers (in his mid 20's) already held local office part-
time; another fronted a mildly successful band. The writing quality at school
newspapers tends to be really bad, unless you're at a good school (stop by a
state university campus and pick up a copy some time).

I agree that not all jobs have interesting people. But the people who are
interesting in school tend to _stay_ interesting. In fact, they're more fun to
deal with once their goal changes from "Continue getting financial aid /
parental aid" to "Do something that pays well."

~~~
jacobolus
Plorkyeran claimed that college is about more than a diploma, which you
responded to by saying that you learn things on the job that you wouldn’t
learn in college. My retort was that colleges are incredibly diverse, and
enable many conversations and experiences that simply wouldn’t all happen in
any other single place, and the best you can do is to tell me that people are
still interesting after they graduate?

I’m sorry, but the constitutional law scholar, the electrical engineer, the
chamber singer, the neurobiology review editor, the congressional staffer, the
south asian dancer, the ancient babylonian historian, the photographer, and
the basketball player aren’t going to all be sitting at lunch talking about
the lecture they just listened to about Kant with their venerable philosophy
professor in any job I’ve ever heard of.

Yes, there are interesting people everywhere (in the supermarket, for
instance, or at a rock concert or hiking through a national park). That
doesn’t mean that the college experience can be easily replaced anywhere else
I can think of. Which is not to suggest that college is essential, but only
that it has value beyond certification or specific curricula.

> _... they're more fun to deal with once their goal changes from "Continue
> getting financial aid / parental aid" to "Do something that pays well."_

Both of those sound like awfully boring goals. I’d be pretty disappointed in
any friend of mine whose chief ambition in life was to make lots of money.

------
tokenadult
Strong on anecdotes. Weaker on verifiable data. It fits the mood of angst of
parents of young people who are applying to college this year. (I am a parent
of a current applicant, but I'm trying not to be so anxious.)

~~~
tptacek
Can you provide two clear objective assertions the article made that it didn't
support with adequate evidence?

(I found the tone hyperbolic but the analysis compelling).

~~~
tokenadult
I see viraptor has provided one of the two examples that readily come to mind.
Harvard in 2004 may not generalize to most colleges today, and black people
who are biracial is largely irrelevant, because a person with one white parent
and one black parent has always been "black" for purposes of enforcing Black
Codes

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_%28United_States%29>

and other mechanisms of legally supported prejudice against black people.

"A counselor told me when my daughters were applying for college admission
that the first thing I had to do was withdraw my application for financial
aid. When I said that colleges professed to be 'need blind,' she laughed."

Not only is that an anecdote, that is an anecdote from a biased source.
Professional college admission counselors use parental anxiety on the part of
wealthier parents to generate their business. They are never going to refer to
information that might suggest that large categories of applicants don't need
their services.

There may indeed be some evidence that colleges favor wealthier rather than
poorer students,

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_27/b3840045_...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_27/b3840045_mz007.htm)

<http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0621.pdf>

<http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ff0615S.pdf>

<http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/carnrose.pdf>

[http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/kahlenberg-
affacti...](http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/kahlenberg-
affaction.pdf)

<http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/05/a-thumb-on-the-scale.html>

[http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/financial-aid-
leveragi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/financial-aid-leveraging/4)

<http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=510012>

<http://www.equaleducation.org/commentary.asp?opedid=1240>

[http://www.jkcf.org/assets/files/0000/0084/Achievement_Trap....](http://www.jkcf.org/assets/files/0000/0084/Achievement_Trap.pdf)

<http://www.reason.com/news/show/123910.html>

[http://www.ihep.org/publications/publications-
detail.cfm?id=...](http://www.ihep.org/publications/publications-
detail.cfm?id=117)

[http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2008/11...](http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2008/11/10/colleges_reach_out_to_poorer_students?mode=PF)

[http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkBGMsvJKR...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkBGMsvJKRKaL67qxkOCaDByDJFAD94R70G02)

and I for one would like to know what the most recent and most carefully
gathered data show on this issue, but I wouldn't take a professional college
admission counselor as a competent, objective source on such an issue, and no
journalist should either.

Your comment upvoted because you asked me to provide evidence for my statement
in the grandparent comment.

------
Zak
Many of the points in the article ring true for me, but I feel compelled to
offer an alternate partial explanation for some of the trends.

Family income correlates with intelligence and determination. Intelligence
seems to be heritable, and determination may be; it's certainly passed along
through upbringing if not genetics. Intelligence and determination also
correlate well with high school performance, SAT scores and to some degree,
athletics.

There may well be a conspiracy here, but I think we'd see the same trend to a
lesser degree without it.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Ahem, Paris Hilton.

~~~
mrtron
Ignoring personal taste, she is wildly successful/famous and makes oodles of
money from products just having her name on it.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Paris is rich because she's rich, and famous because she's famous. To me,
she's a symbol of much that's wrong with the US today. None of this says that
she's particularly intelligent or savvy.

~~~
mrtron
Which brings us full circle back to the article:

"Golden’s focus was on legacy admissions, which are essentially affirmative
action for the rich and which provide huge advantages for applicants..."

------
leelin
Fortunately for this community, prestigious degrees seem to be declining in
importance. Anyone can found a startup, investors can look at traction and
track record, etc. Even big software firms that hire thousands of people a
year spend a lot of money and effort to recruit from a broad range of schools.

The last very obvious pocket of degree elitism where CS / engineering grads
might go seems to be Wall Street and management consulting (for very rational
reasons).

------
aneesh
"But while these are overt ways to provide advantages for the wealthy, there
are far more insidious and subtle methods of skewing the admissions process.
Take early admissions. Early admissions account for 35 percent of the incoming
class at Duke this year, 20 percent at Brown, 50 percent at Yale and 40
percent at Stanford."

While he makes a good point, the author doesn't note that both Harvard and
Princeton recently (~2006) ended their early applications programs completely,
to much fanfare. We can hope that other schools will follow their lead soon.

------
jcnnghm
Student test scores also strongly correlate with parent test scores, even more
so than inter-generational earnings correlates. In the paper "Do Smart Parents
Raise Smart Children?", Anger and Heineck assert that while a 10% increase in
parents’ income raises children’s income by 2%, a 10% increase in parents’
test scores raises children’s test scores by 4.5%. Perhaps the real problem is
that mediocre parents raise mediocre children, and no amount of test retooling
is going to change that fact. In their book Herrnstein and Murray establish a
strong correlation between income and intelligence. The chart at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Author.27s_follo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Author.27s_follow-
up) is particularly telling.

It stands to reason that if intelligent people are very likely to earn high
incomes, and are also very likely to have intelligent children, that
intelligent children are likely to have parents with high incomes. Retooling
higher education so that it is as fair and ineffective as primary and
secondary public education doesn't seem like a particularly good idea.

------
riahi
One thing I can say is that medical school admissions, while incredibly tough
and competitive, is far more egalitarian than undergrad admissions. Med
schools want the best students, period. They don't really care where you came
from or who your parents were, but that you took advantage of all the
opportunities availed to you in your college, and perhaps made some of your
own.

~~~
carbocation
This is incorrect, at least at "named" med schools. Family background, ethnic
background, collegiate pedigree, etc, are still of tremendous importance for
admission, and can overcome GPA and MCAT.

~~~
codexon
I knew a black premed and a middle-eastern premed.

Both of them came from privileged families, yet had below par scores and
grades, and both managed to get into Harvard med.

------
manbearpig
Most Early Admissions programs are no longer binding. Students from families
earning less than 100K no longer have to pay tuition at several top schools.
Every school I was accepted to pretty much offered the same financial aid,
which was inline with what FAFSA said my family should contribute. I have
never heard of anybody admitted to a top school having to turn it down due to
finances. There is plenty of aid (grants that you don't have to repay) for
anybody who is not rich.

As for SAT tutoring, well for kids applying to top schools this will probably
improve your M+V less than 100 points. If it's any more than that, you
probably aren't top school material.

