The new meaningless of 'extraordinary'

Spring 2022. There is one very large thumb on the admissions scale at elite universities. The same groups pointing out the privilege of others still seem intent on exercising their own privilege and extending it to a wide array of privileged groups.

This is institutional racism at its worst, and all the time the instituions claim to be standing on some high moral ground.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

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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 collection admissions 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.

One key exchange from the comments: