I am named after my uncle. First, middle and last name. He graduated with MBA from Harvard. When he passed 12 years ago I found his college transcripts. I fantasized about using his transcripts to get a high paying job. Just don't think I could pull off looking 30 years older. Not to mention I did OK on my own accord. But, that Harvard name is definitely a conversation starter.
Buying your way into a prestigious university...
- Thread starter rayinpenn
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I am named after my uncle. First, middle and last name. He graduated with MBA from Harvard. When he passed 12 years ago I found his college transcripts. I fantasized about using his transcripts to get a high paying job. Just don't think I could pull off looking 30 years older. Not to mention I did OK on my own accord. But, that Harvard name is definitely a conversation starter.
stepford
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Nor would it be the case if admissions were entirely meritocratic. There's always a luck-of-the-draw aspect. That's why one should never apply to a single "school of one's choice" but to a slate of desirable alternatives commensurate with one's performance. Do that and you're very likely to get into one of the schools you want. Whether 100% or 80% of admissions are merit based doesn't really change this.
In fairness, my argument would go out the window if the fraction of merit based admissions at top universities were severely reduced - say well below 50% - but I haven't seen any evidence of that.
In Megacorp, it's a fact where I was. Ivy Leaguers got faster promotions or got hired into executive roles from outside the company ( at a higher base salary) than staff that did not have these credentials. And these Ivy league alumni had their "private" clubs that they belong to for life. Having this on your plate got you somewhere but not all the time.
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You were trying to make the point that sneaking kids in does them no favors, remember?
You said: "I guess my question in all of this is what's the point? If your kid doesn't have the ability to get into a top ranked university then they'll just crash and burn when the serious work starts.
Sneaking a kid into a school where they don't belong isn't doing anyone favors."
Sorry, you are simply mistaken. Many applicants are rejected who would have done fine if they had been admitted. Many of those who were "sneaked" into schools have done fine.
I have no idea what point you are now trying to make regarding "percent of meritocratic admissions".
Exactly. I know some Cal Tech alum and they are very smart but not particular successful in life in the traditional sense. The USC alums I know are much more main stream and extremely well connected. I do not like USC but I'd send my kid there if they wanted to live in So Cal after college.
stepford
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
And those who did just fine were probably smart enough that they could have applied normally and had a decent chance of admission. They just wasted Mommy and Daddy's money making it more of a sure thing.
I'm saying that admission is a numbers game and always has been. If there are (let's say) 10,000 available spots every year in elite Universities and your kid has one of the top 5000 academic records then they have a good chance of getting in. If their performance is more like top 20000 then they should broaden their application pool. If a few of these spots are skimmed off the top through bribery, legacy admissions or any other admissions chicanery then this strategy still works - maybe you need to apply to a few more schools, but it's still basically a numbers game among schools of similar quality.
This is true so long a most of the admission slots are available to the whole pool of applicants (i.e. merit based or meritocratic admissions). If the number of merit based slots were so drastically curtailed that most qualified applicants no longer had a shot at getting into a school commensurate with their abilities then the situation would be qualitatively different. Nothing I have seen so far suggests to me that this is the case.
ChiliPepr
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I have a friend from Harvard who had two quotes that stuck with me... they were:
- "The only "A" I needed was the ones in Harvard."
- "The hardest test I took was the one to get into Harvard."
ChiliPepr
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I disagree completely! Harvard had 6,958 applicants and accepted 935. I would bet at least 50% of those 6,000 rejected applicants would have graduated from Harvard without an issue.
stepford
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Right. And knowing those numbers, those 3000 qualified applicants would have also applied to Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc. and likely got into one or another. Certainly some rich folks have an inside track, legal or not. But their kids, if truly qualified, could have played the game and gotten into one of the elite Universities "through the front door". If they weren't qualified then I stand by my original assessment.
ChiliPepr
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Harvard's acceptance rate last year was 13.4%.
No argument that they could have gotten into another institution, just not the one the wanted to.
I am not saying that what these people did is right, excusable or legal. I am only arguing that there are many people that could have graduated from a specific top university that were not accepted to the university.
ChiliPepr
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Sorry, I am wrong on that! That was the percentage of early applicants. Last year Harvard had 42,749 applicants, and 2,024 were accepted, for a 4.7% acceptance rate.
ExFlyBoy5
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
This is true but you still have to pass the bar exam and the bar doesn't give a crap where you went to school. So yes, if you go to Harvard Law...you are pretty much guaranteed the JD (and the social capital that goes with it) but you are NOT guaranteed to be a lawyer. I know three folks that went to and graduated from Harvard Law and oddly enough, only one of them took the bar exam. The other two are doing totally different w*rk; albeit at pretty decent incomes. It's really irrelevant though, since HLS's bar passage rate is 97.3%.
One more statistic for HLS: Of the 2017 graduates, 530 out of 610 (86.8%) are in j*bs that required bar admission. 324 (53.1% of total grads) are employed in "big law"; the firms of 500+ attorneys where starting pay is $190,000+/year.
https://hls.harvard.edu/content/upl...yment-Summary-for-Class-of-2017-Graduates.pdf
https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/salary-wars-scorecard-which-firms-have-announced-raises-2018/
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I worked with a new graduate of Harvard in a marketing company. I was paid more than he was, but that was just because I was closer to the CEO than he. I do not have any degree, but the CEO was taking me to cigar bars and NHL games regularly. We were all underpaid in hindsight though lol. And this was only 6 years ago.
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stepford
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
And of that 4.7% what fraction are you asserting were not merit based admissions? My point isn't that elite Universities aren't selective, but that the selection criteria are still mostly merit based. By all means please show me some statistics that prove I'm incorrect.
LRDave
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
All I know is, all of the people in this whole scandal - students, parents, administrators, coaches, etc., - better not try to get on my lawn!
ChiliPepr
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None.
I am asserting that most of the 95.3% that did not make the cut could graduate from there without an issue.
You previously stated that:
stepford said:
I took that to mean that people that got into the university by lying/cheating and graduated could have applied normally and have a decent chance of admission. I am stating that there are many people who apply and do not get in would have had no problem graduating if they had gotten in.
Music Lover
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Universities receive taxpayer money, therefore, they are obligated to make all admission merit based, not just most. The recent Harvard discrimination lawsuit is just one example, and those buying their kids way in (this thread) is another example.
And, then there are all those kids who got in because one of their parents was a high level politician or because of a large parental endowment...those admissions are not merit based either.
Redbugdave
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You make a very good point.
Stormy Kromer
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A member of a very prominent, well known and wealthy family was kicked out of Harvard for cheating on a Spanish test back in the 1950's. (He had someone else take it for him.) He got back into Harvard a couple years later and served in the US Senate for over 40 years.
I'm not defending anyone, I just wanted to point out that this sort of stuff has been going on for years.
I'm not defending anyone, I just wanted to point out that this sort of stuff has been going on for years.
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jollystomper
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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As an Ivy League graduate, and also as someone who volunteered as an applicant interviewer (most of the Ivy League colleges have interviews by alumni as part of the application procedure) for close to 30 years, this scandal is sad but not too much of a surprise.
Admission to these schools is much more competitive than 40-50 years ago. When I applied, the acceptance rate at my school was just below 10% - they probably got about 12000 -14000 applications. Now the acceptance rate is in the 4-6 percent range. The number of applications has close to quadrupled while the number of slots has barely risen.
In terms of merit, I would say a lot of applicants would be successful at my alma mater. I interview over 100 students over those years. There were maybe 3 that I thought "no way". Otherwise almost all were in the top 10% of their school and perhaps a 3rd in the top 2 or 3 percent academically.
The school asks you to evaluate them no so much on their academic work but on other "criteria" - what are their interests, what type of personality do they exhibit, what type of "leadership" qualities can one discern (i.e., captain of a varsity team or created and managed a student club, vs being just a member). Essentially we report the "human" side of the student back. Generally speaking, the school leans towards those who want to come not just to study but to get involved in various extracurricular activities at the school and in the community.
Of course, what we write and rank is only one criteria. I probably ranked 20-30 applicants as "outstanding" and really wanted to see admitted. about 5 of them were admitted. another 2 I had not rated as highly, but they were admitted.
The name does make a difference. When my high school counselor first recommended I apply to Ivy League schools, my reaction was "I'll never get in, that school is just for rich white people". It took him a week to convince me that my academics and activities made me a competitive applicant. I applied to three and was accepted at 2 of them. Interestingly, the one that I thought I would get into, the one that seemed to express the most interest in me, was the one I was rejected from.
While I was a student, I saw very few people drop out of the school because they could not handle the academics. Frankly, the difficulty of getting in carries enough clout that as long as you pass and get enough credits to get your degree, what your grades were are not considered as much as they would be from other schools. Most dropped out because they chose to ignore the academics, or could not deal with the social situations, or violated one of the academic rules (like plagiarism or the test honor system) that usually meant an automatic expulsion/suspension. Those who were like me, minorities and/or first generation college students from their families and/or coming from underprivileged backgrounds were so worried about flunking out that maybe we spent too much time at the library, labs, and computer centers.
The name made a difference then, and it still does. Megacorp was specifically targeting my school for hires. I have been in social situations where people who acted cold towards me, once they found out the school I went to, suddenly treated me quite differently, particularly if they also graduated from that school. Your network becomes much wider - I have friends I made there who are now corporate executives, well known celebrities, well known politicians, whom I still hear from and exchange information on how we and our families are doing, and we get together around our reunions.
Since almost all applicants would qualify academically, the school does consider many other criteria that might give certain groups an advantage. Groups that might be accepted at a higher rate are children of alumni (this is the highest rate from what I can tell), athletes, performing arts, certain (not all) minority/social "diversity" groups.
In sum, the school gets so many qualified applicants that merit based admission alone is not enough, there have to be other factors... and that sadly is where situations like the current scandal can come about.
Admission to these schools is much more competitive than 40-50 years ago. When I applied, the acceptance rate at my school was just below 10% - they probably got about 12000 -14000 applications. Now the acceptance rate is in the 4-6 percent range. The number of applications has close to quadrupled while the number of slots has barely risen.
In terms of merit, I would say a lot of applicants would be successful at my alma mater. I interview over 100 students over those years. There were maybe 3 that I thought "no way". Otherwise almost all were in the top 10% of their school and perhaps a 3rd in the top 2 or 3 percent academically.
The school asks you to evaluate them no so much on their academic work but on other "criteria" - what are their interests, what type of personality do they exhibit, what type of "leadership" qualities can one discern (i.e., captain of a varsity team or created and managed a student club, vs being just a member). Essentially we report the "human" side of the student back. Generally speaking, the school leans towards those who want to come not just to study but to get involved in various extracurricular activities at the school and in the community.
Of course, what we write and rank is only one criteria. I probably ranked 20-30 applicants as "outstanding" and really wanted to see admitted. about 5 of them were admitted. another 2 I had not rated as highly, but they were admitted.
The name does make a difference. When my high school counselor first recommended I apply to Ivy League schools, my reaction was "I'll never get in, that school is just for rich white people". It took him a week to convince me that my academics and activities made me a competitive applicant. I applied to three and was accepted at 2 of them. Interestingly, the one that I thought I would get into, the one that seemed to express the most interest in me, was the one I was rejected from.
While I was a student, I saw very few people drop out of the school because they could not handle the academics. Frankly, the difficulty of getting in carries enough clout that as long as you pass and get enough credits to get your degree, what your grades were are not considered as much as they would be from other schools. Most dropped out because they chose to ignore the academics, or could not deal with the social situations, or violated one of the academic rules (like plagiarism or the test honor system) that usually meant an automatic expulsion/suspension. Those who were like me, minorities and/or first generation college students from their families and/or coming from underprivileged backgrounds were so worried about flunking out that maybe we spent too much time at the library, labs, and computer centers.
The name made a difference then, and it still does. Megacorp was specifically targeting my school for hires. I have been in social situations where people who acted cold towards me, once they found out the school I went to, suddenly treated me quite differently, particularly if they also graduated from that school. Your network becomes much wider - I have friends I made there who are now corporate executives, well known celebrities, well known politicians, whom I still hear from and exchange information on how we and our families are doing, and we get together around our reunions.
Since almost all applicants would qualify academically, the school does consider many other criteria that might give certain groups an advantage. Groups that might be accepted at a higher rate are children of alumni (this is the highest rate from what I can tell), athletes, performing arts, certain (not all) minority/social "diversity" groups.
In sum, the school gets so many qualified applicants that merit based admission alone is not enough, there have to be other factors... and that sadly is where situations like the current scandal can come about.
friar1610
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Here's what I've been wondering about...
- Mommy and Daddy do something unethical to get Johnny or
Sally into a prestigious school.
- Do you think Johnny or Sally will cheat to pass their courses? After all, that's what Mommy and Daddy did to get them in.
- And if they do manage to graduate, what sort of ethics will they take into the business world? After all, cheating got them into college and through college. It'll probably continue to work.
- Mommy and Daddy do something unethical to get Johnny or
Sally into a prestigious school.
- Do you think Johnny or Sally will cheat to pass their courses? After all, that's what Mommy and Daddy did to get them in.
- And if they do manage to graduate, what sort of ethics will they take into the business world? After all, cheating got them into college and through college. It'll probably continue to work.
Silver
Full time employment: Posting here.
I think this is exactly my issue with this situations, and many others. It seems like the concept of "personal responsibility" has greatly diminished in importance, along with a sense of pride for what is earned because of hard work. Why is that?
Music Lover
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I think it's because kids are now being taught that they are victims rather than being taught the value of hard work. It's always someone else's fault if they failed or didn't get what they wanted.
Moemg
Gone but not forgotten
It is amazing how different some people think . The average person would think I want my child to go to a good school so I will encourage good school habits and get a tutor if needed not I will write a huge check or have someone else take their sat's . They deserve the humiliation this scandal is bringing .
I have worked with a few Harvard grads over the years and while they are obviously smart I have been extremely unimpressed by their ability to a) be practical and b) run a business. Just my limited sample study but very similar traits in several different individuals i saw.
