Neither I nor my children benefited from legacy admissions. Indeed, if anything, we were the group left behind, neither rich enough to be anywhere near the top one-tenth of one percent who enjoy privileges of real wealth, nor poor or ethnic enough to enjoy the largesse of the elite. So as far as self-interest goes, it would be mine to join in the chorus of voices condemning the sham of elite schools feigning meritocracy when, as this report of a story in the New York Times concludes, “being rich is its own qualification.“
A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things. For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.
This study was produced by “Opportunity Insights, a group of economists based at Harvard who study inequality,” which is an ignominous source given that its purpose is not to study the myriad factors implicated in its data, but rather inequality. If you look for inequality, guess what you tend to find?
The new data shows that among students with the same test scores, the colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings. The result is the clearest picture yet of how America’s elite colleges perpetuate the intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity.
These three factors are attributed to wealth. And indeed, wealth is no doubt a common thread between them, although it’s not quite as direct as suggested. Legacy admissions has been under the most vociferous attack, being the least justifiable and the most likely to keep anyone whose family wasn’t in the club before from ever gaining entrance to the club. Of course, it gives no value to the loyalty created by making a university the “family school,” including the potential for donations as the family accumulates more wealth than it knows what to do with.
But I came from nothing, and went to an Ivy League undergraduate university, Cornell. My son was recruited to numerous schools as a fencer and ended up at MIT, where athletics got you bupkis in the admissions office. It’s possible we were anomalies, or just really lucky to beat the curve, but it’s also possible that we just worked hard enough to make our own luck. Though I wouldn’t pretend we didn’t enjoy some luck as well, as others who worked hard didn’t get in.
But what is ignored in this study, even assuming the claims that they have adjusted for incomparable factors to reach a conclusion that people with the same test scores but with money fared better by dint of money alone.
Children from middle- and upper-middle-class families — including those at public high schools in high-income neighborhoods — applied in large numbers. But they were, on an individual basis, less likely to be admitted than the richest or, to a lesser extent, poorest students with the same test scores. In that sense, the data confirms the feeling among many merely affluent parents that getting their children into elite colleges is increasingly difficult.
Universities want to open themselves to the poor and minorities, but there is no call for concern for the forgotten middle and upper-middle class, also white and privileged like the tippy top kids, but not enough to buy in. So what’s keeping them out?
There was a third factor driving the preference for the richest applicants. The colleges in the study generally give applicants numerical scores for academic achievement and for more subjective nonacademic virtues, like extracurricular activities, volunteering and personality traits. Students from the top 1 percent with the same test scores did not have higher academic ratings. But they had significantly higher nonacademic ratings.
Is there somebody in the boiler room at Harvard admissions running the net worth of the parents of applicants to whisper to the admissions officer who gets “higher nonacademic ratings,” or is there something else afoot? Are rich kids more personable? Do they engage in better extracurriculars? What do they have the upper-middle class, who aren’t exactly sucking wind, students lack?
Many who want very badly to place the blame solely on wealth, as if being wealthy is a personal flaw, are more than happy to leave the dots connected the way the study does. But does this miss the point and conflate wealth with the benefits wealth allows, such as an appreciation of education, a desire to excel, a willingness to put in the time and effort to do so, the ability to get along with others rather than despise others for their “privilege” or “victimhood”? Or is it just money, power and privilege begets opportunity which begets money, power and privilege?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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That was hysterical, although the one reference they left out was the Rongovian Embassy. But I guess that’s only for us olds.
If the admissions process at fancy schools were truly meritocratic (and I will define that as “marginally more capable of doing excellent work in and out of the classroom”), you would expect to see a strong wealth effect when selecting students. For one thing, generalized intelligence is partly/mostly heritable and also associated with higher wealth. If you select for kids smarter than average, their parents will be smarter– and richer– than average too. Also, to the extent that “merit” is more nurture than nature, richer parents will be able to provide the resources to prepare their kids. In the extreme, if high school calculus class were necessary to attain merit, but also banned because of DEI reasons, only rich kids with calculus tutors will be meritorious. Even recruiting players of rich-kid sports is a form of meritocracy, if excellent work out of the classroom includes rich-kid athleticism. Of course, the rich can also play games that you cannot even imagine (eg, hiring Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist and screenwriter Jules Feiffer for ”editorial guidance and illustrations” for your 9 year old son’s picture book [if links are allowed on Tuesday, see this https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/david-e-shaw-college-donations.html ]) but that may be just another form of preparation.
Colleges have sports teams that compete against one another and create substantial school pride and recognition. Is it wrong to take students who have the grades and scores to get in already, plus have exceptional athletic ability in a sport in which the college fields a team, to admit students to play on those teams?
as a schlub testifying against interest, I agree with you. Colleges should give a boost to applicants with exceptional athletic ability. And not just college: in my experience, former student-athletes make much better surgical residents, owing to their experience going to practice and dealing with teammates. on the other hand, limiting the boost to students with “the grades and scores to get in already” is fraught, first –because MIT notwithstanding– most schools in fact lower the academic bar for athletes, and second, in our brave new world, applicants won’t have “scores”.
There are a great many valuable lessons to be learned from sports about competition, effort, responsibility, perseverance and achievement. Ironically, these are not the most valued lessons these days.
Participation in athletics is important, but (and maybe I am wrong in what you’re suggesting) I am not sure about the merits of boosting applicants for “exceptional athletic ability”, unless they are clearly professional/Olympic level-gifted. There’s a big-fish-in-a-small pond effect to many athletes who are physically gifted, but then flounder when brought up to the next level where everybody is physically gifted, like the star high school wide receiver who was just bigger and faster than everyone else in his part of the state. Being a late-comer to the importance of athletics, its value for college, and later in life, is repeated practice, pushing yourself just to the brink of your limits and learning what they are, physical and mental discipline, and of course teamwork, even in more individual sports like gymnastics.
I’d favor student-athletes, but more on the basis of evident persistence and discipline rather than physical gifts. The overwhelming number of students are going to end up in the workforce, where mental gifts are important. Physical gifts just aren’t as important, because even stellar high school athletes are extremely, extremely unlikely to become professional or Olympic athletes.
Who do you think gets recruited? The only athletes recruited at those who are national and international level standouts. It’s extremely difficult to be recruited to a top school for athletics.
It’s a strange coincidence, how people who work hard, save money and adhere to a strict moral code are unfairly benefited by society. Hard work, frugality and honesty seem to be correlated with good luck, leading to accumulation of wealth and the ability to pass on that wealth to offspring. Why this happens is a mystery, but I suspect that the patriarchy is to blame.
The quote from the article our Host pulled says that even affluent parents are complaining about how hard it is to get their kids into elite institutions. Are they not sufficiently moral? Did they fail to accumulate a proper hoard of wealth? Maybe they should just work harder. Lazy, merely affluent bums.
If you made $500 an hour, 8 hours a day (and had 0 expenses) it would take almost 700 years to make a billion dollars.
No one gets to the top 0.1% of wealth by working hard. I would argue that you can’t by adhering to a strict moral code either, but I’m sure our host would slap me down if I got into that.
Hourly wages are not the only path to wealth.
Huh. So money matters to these schools. Who knew?
Many decades ago, I received a recruitment letter from Harvard, because I was a National Merit Scholar, and that was worth a fancy letter. Very nice paper and print quality.
What it wasn’t worth was any money. At least at Harvard. Their letter explained how my parents should be able to mortgage their house and take loans on their vehicles to pay for the fine education offered by Harvard. As my parents had several other children, and no plans to pick up any of our college expenses, there was an unbridgeable gulf between the actual world and the world assumed by Harvard.
I could afford a state school, where there was some money available for National Merit Scholars. It had a good library (though bereft of the splendid bathrooms at Harvard’s Widener Library). The faculty were knowledgeable, and mostly, good teachers. I did alright. I have done alright in life. As a consequence, I tend to discount the complaints of people who fancy their lives were ruined by not being able to attend an ivy league school. Of course, as I have often advised, “don’t be poor.” But also, take what you have and run with it.
You buried the lede, Bruce. You, the son of a sharecropper, were recruited by Harvard. Your parents just didn’t love you enough to suffer for it.
In fairness to them, the Norman Scots tradition holds that parents should put their sons to a decent trade. In the context of the public secondary school system, my father managed to get me on the list for vocational school, where I was trained as a welder. My high school years were mornings in academic classes, then a four-mile bus ride to the vocational school for welding classes. As a precursor, my father had reviewed with me the range of wages for welders and the financial management techniques by which he calculated I could accumulate between $250,000 and $500,000 over my working life. So my parents did have a plan, and it wasn’t a bad plan. Later, though, I made a better one.
If you were a certain age, many parents pushed their children toward the trades. My Dad wanted me to become an electrician, though like you I had a (to me anyway) better idea.
If hard work correlated with wealth ditch diggers would all be driving Ferraris.
I would not be at all surprised to learn that many fortunate people believe the trends around class resentment are merely an expression of jealousy. Must be much easier than an honest and thorough appraisal of how their beliefs and actions impact less fortunate people.
Part of hard work is making hard choices. Many less fortunate people make poor choices. Some are just unfortunate. Some get what they deserve.
Many fortunate people make poor choices. The consequences they experience are rarely as severe.
I know it’s not hard work alone that correlates with wealth, but that’s the one so many wealthy people like to claim because they foolishly believe it’s something they can take credit for based on character, as if the traits necessary for a character that excels in our society weren’t also inherited -making life all one big game of genetic roulette.
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
–Old Chinese Proverb
Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.
— Grandpappy Greenfield
Some people overemphasize their work ethic when they just got lucky. Others overemphasize the luck when they did everything in their power to earn it.
Both are foolish, Jake. Do you always want to be foolish, Jake? Have you consider not always been the fool, Jake? You might like it.
Have you consider not always been payin attention to me, Miles? You might like it.
But you’re adorable. Who wouldn’t pay attention to you?
Breaking news: Money might help you get things you want. More on this explosive story at 11.
Hard not to notice that the mechanism that gets rich kids into Harvard (high personality scores) is the same one that Students for Fair Admissions showed keeps Asian kids out. I’d guess that part of what’s going on here is adcom bias. Like many people, they like proximity to the rich and famous and want to please them.
But what do I know, I’m not attending an Ivy.
While there’s almost certainly bias at play, what makes you leap to the assumption that it’s admissions officers who want to be in close proximity to the rich and famous rather than the rich and famous who prefer the personalities of others like themselves?
And while not technically an Ivy, Leland Stanford Junior College isn’t bad.
That’s fair. It’d be really interesting to know how much autonomy adcoms at elite schools have in making decisions.
Since there is a relatively fixed class size, if universities admit more low-income/underprivileged students, then by necessity they must admit fewer higher-income students. What that ratio should be is a difficult question, but the “middle and upper-middle class” are surely not forgotten.
What the ludicrous graph (no units, no axis labels, not in the original paper) does apparently show is that applicants from uber wealthy families (top 1%) are more likely to be admitted than those from merely very wealthy families (top 95 to 99%). If it is proposed that this higher rate is due to the 1% applicants’ “appreciation of education, a desire to excel, a willingness to put in the time and effort to do so, the ability to get along with others” (hardly likely based on the tabloids’ presentation of these kids), then why are the slightly less wealthy underrepresented in the graph? Is there really a difference between the top 1% and the second 1%?
But the post and especially the comments emphasize that many successful people attribute their success primarily to “hard work”, implying that the less successful are to a large degree guilty of not trying hard enough. Although he works hard, no one claims Ohtani’s success is primarily due to his first-generation immigrant Asian work ethic and that others could achieve similar success if only they tried harder. But “successful” (i.e., wealthy) people seem to not want to acknowledge that they may have abilities that most don’t. [And as with Ohtani, in a different country or a different century, their special abilities might not guarantee wealth.] It is usually difficult to accumulate great wealth without hard work, but it takes more than hard work. And on the topic of hard work, let’s try a link https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the-wireless/373065/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate