5 ms·

Why would Ivy schools pass your children over?

• phpisthebest 3y ago
  Follow the Recent Lawsuit against havard admissions for a clue ;)
• tristor 3y ago
  Nobody ever openly talks about it, but the East Coast Ivies are still heavily WASPy, and it's largely due to things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Register https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Register Basically, if your family name isn't in that list, you have a massive reduction in your probability of being accepted, regardless of merit. If your name is in that list, then you likely will be accepted regardless of merit.
  • amluto 3y ago
    Do you have a source? I’ve never heard of this, and I would be quite surprised if anyone I know or knew well at any elite school was on this list.
    • ghaff 3y ago
      I'd be very skeptical. I know a ton of people who went to East Coast Ivies. Many are not from the East Coast. Many are not literally WASPy and I can't imagine most of them being in a Social Register--and it's not like I especially have known an out of the mainstream crowd.
  • rayiner 3y ago
    People don’t talk about it because they don’t have the vocabulary to talk about it. We act like the descendants of English/Dutch north-easterners, who profiteered from slavery (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/04/slavery-probe-harvards-ties-inseparable-from-rise https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/04/slavery-probe...) are in the same group as German immigrants who came to the Midwest as indentured servants or Italian immigrants who came here in the 20th century. The false concept of “white people” totally obscures the fact that there are different groups, with different histories, origins, and cultures, who are very differently situated.
  • onetimeusename 3y ago
    >but the East Coast Ivies are still heavily WASPy, >and it's largely due to things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Register https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Register These are very likely not true especially the second part but since specific ethnicity is not tracked it's much harder to disprove. But I would wager this is is not true at all.
  • epcoa 3y ago
    This is utter shite nonsense dude. I know literally hundreds of ivy alums. Pretty sure none of them are in the register. Social register is barely relevant for many years and of no consequence to Ivy league admissions.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• ethanbond 3y ago
  Because there are far more children who check all those boxes than there are slots at the Ivies?
• okaram 3y ago
  Ivies have about a 5% admission rate, and they probably have a much higher percentage of valedictorians than the general population. They probably reject way more than 50% of the valedictorian/800 SAT applicants they have. Unless you are super-special, you need to be at that level and be lucky
  • ghaff 3y ago
    This is why I wrote in another comment that making it about Harvard somewhat muddies the discussion because Harvard probably is more likely to admit at least a slice of students that are far more about pedigree than anything else. But as you say, you need to not only have the credentials, something else that sets you apart, and even then the Teela Brown luck gene. When you're being that selective, there's no way that you're realistically finding strong signals in all but the most exceptional circumstances to admit specific individuals. (And things have only gotten more competitive. I would be shocked if I would get into my undergrad school today.)
  • Tactician_mark 3y ago
    There's a great Veritasium video about this. The idea is that if there are far more applicants than positions, then even if luck plays a small role - say, 5% of the outcome - successful applicants are overwhelmingly likely to be extremely lucky as well as highly qualified. Since so many people are close to that 95% competence factor, only the luckiest - by whatever metric of "luck" you like - can succeed.
    • r00fus 3y ago
      Sounds like the hiring policy of one of my VPs from a job long ago (during a recession) (As he dumps half of the hundreds of résumés into the recycle bin) “Unlucky people don’t work here”
• camel_Snake 3y ago
  Because higher education is objectively not a meritocracy. The mere existence of legacy admissions proves this. Of course those with degrees from Ivys and other selective schools don't want to acknowledge this - it devalues their degree. Same for those who aspire to attend these schools - whether they have an 'unfair' advantage or not.
• jgeada 3y ago
  That's simple: Ivy schools are mostly for $$$ to schmooze with other $$$, with a thin veneer of actually talented kids that had to pass insurmountable odds to get in. The talented kids are there to make the $$$ think they're also talented and had to pass the same rigorous criteria. Smoke and mirrors all of it.
  • bboylen 3y ago
    People parrot this point a lot but it doesn't make any sense. The average SAT/ACT at the Ivy's are near perfect, the number of mediocre rich kids paying their way in is a small fraction of the student body. And yes test scores aren't the best metric for "talent" but it is one of the better signals you get in a college application.
    • mildconcern 3y ago
      Yeah, but the money paid by that small fraction of the student body is colossal. They're not numerous enough to change any GPA/SAT averages, but they likely pay many times more in tuition & donations than the rest of their class put together. That's why they're the main focus of these places, even if their numbers are small.
    • HDThoreaun 3y ago
      All the schools lie about their average test scores to boost their rankings(source, president of northwestern when I took his econ class). We have no idea what the ivies averages are.