4 ms·

I think one point of the story is that more applications, and "better" applications, does not mean "better students." It just means that the application proces

I think one point of the story is that more applications, and "better" applications, does not mean "better students." It just means that the application process is in a financial arms raise that (in many cases) squeezes out the talented in favor of the well-heeled. Which ultimately does not lead to the best outcomes for society.

rayiner 13y ago
Harvard's entering freshman class in 1976 was about 1,600: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1976/3/5/harvard-to-accept-1600-for-next http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1976/3/5/harvard-to-accept.... It's target class size this year is ~1,650. In that time frame, the number of people taking the SAT or ACT has increased from roughly 2 million to 3.3 million (65%). The real difference at Harvard, etc, is bigger than that, because in the 1970's, qualified kids whose parents couldn't afford the tuition probably wouldn't have even considered Harvard. Even leaving aside the increased competition from test preparation, no matter how you slice it there are a lot more people for the same number of spots.
- clicks 13y ago
  It is worthwhile to note that as data from ACT/SAT board of the last 2 decades indicates, the pool of candidates who are qualified enough to get into Ivy leagues are considerably richer than ones who are not[1]. I graduated from an inner city school in the midwest, no-one in my class was admitted to a top tier school (or even a second tier school, now that I think about it). But there were actually quite a few many who actually applied to Harvard or Princeton and such. I wasn't able to appreciate until recently that activities like band afterschool, cross country, and 4's on AP tests aren't good enough to land a spot in any big-name university. Presumably the number of dead-in-the-bucket applicants like this have gone up, so I'm less inclined to interpret the drop of acceptance rate as some indication that it's suddenly much more difficult for rich kids to get accepted than it used to be a decade ago. [1]: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-family-income/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-...

rayiner 13y ago

Harvard's entering freshman class in 1976 was about 1,600: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1976/3/5/harvard-to-accept-1600-for-next http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1976/3/5/harvard-to-accept.... It's target class size this year is ~1,650. In that time frame, the number of people taking the SAT or ACT has increased from roughly 2 million to 3.3 million (65%). The real difference at Harvard, etc, is bigger than that, because in the 1970's, qualified kids whose parents couldn't afford the tuition probably wouldn't have even considered Harvard. Even leaving aside the increased competition from test preparation, no matter how you slice it there are a lot more people for the same number of spots.

clicks 13y ago
It is worthwhile to note that as data from ACT/SAT board of the last 2 decades indicates, the pool of candidates who are qualified enough to get into Ivy leagues are considerably richer than ones who are not[1]. I graduated from an inner city school in the midwest, no-one in my class was admitted to a top tier school (or even a second tier school, now that I think about it). But there were actually quite a few many who actually applied to Harvard or Princeton and such. I wasn't able to appreciate until recently that activities like band afterschool, cross country, and 4's on AP tests aren't good enough to land a spot in any big-name university. Presumably the number of dead-in-the-bucket applicants like this have gone up, so I'm less inclined to interpret the drop of acceptance rate as some indication that it's suddenly much more difficult for rich kids to get accepted than it used to be a decade ago. [1]: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-family-income/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-...