The meaningless of being 'extraordinary'

Today's college admissions process is a nightmare, with the university placing big thumbs on the scales, when judging both who gets admitted and who gets financial aid of any sort. If anything is clear, it's that elite universities are the epitome of privilege, exercising it in their own self-interest and in the interest of certain seemingly twisted priorities -- at least twisted in the sense of the traditional mission of the university. It may not be institutional racism, but claims that the university's ob is to educate us about bias and privilege simply fail the smell test when it comes to not practicing what they preach. The really bad news is that multiple privileges are at work here, and the mainstream, well-educated, "good family," accomplished, hard-working, middle class, stellar high school student is at a disadvantage by not having all the privilege and advantages of these special interest groups.

I have long wondered just how big a thumb a school can place on the admissions scale, what with legacies, children of faculty and staff, athletes, and diversity priorities each demanding a share of the set asides for privileged groups.

To Get Into the Ivy League, ‘Extraordinary’ Isn’t Always Enough These Days - WSJ.pdf

Download PDF • 14.22MB

Add in the role of endowments and discount rates to then see how much money the school chips in for aid from its endowment versus how much it takes from full payers to fund aid for others.

Then look at how each of these preferred groups garner aid or enjoy lower admissions standards compared to those unprivileged yetb from the same race or ethnic group.

Then acknowledge that students apply to so many places -- from stretch to safe schools -- that until you look at yield, my sense is that there are a much higher number of acceptances going unaccepted by the student than there are rejections accumulated by the applicants.

It all reinforces the idea that given the very high cost to attend and the potential earnings power from graduation (or just the ego gratification of acceptance) and the relatively low cost to apply (including fewer schools asking for very expensive SAT and ACT scores), that a college application is more or less a lottery ticket, with a lot of low payoff winners and a tiny tiny number of jackpot winners. And that does not include the ego gratification of being able to claim that you were admitted to twelve different colleges offering a total of $1 million in aid and loans.

Some naive readers of this interesting profile in non-inclusiveness might think that this privilege is restricted to white males alone. Not so. The privilege awarded by these universities most often has nothing to do with skin color or gender. Sure, there is some privilege extended to non-whites, but that does not include Asians. And i some cases, that privilege is accorded to black students with special consideration for things other than academic prowess.