The November 2003 Atlantic carries some interesting articles, many of which are available on the Web, on college admissions. Of interest to aviation enthusiasts will be the article by William Langewiesche on the Columbia space shuttle investigation. At the very least it will make you feel fortunate that you’re not working for a large bureaucracy.
Speaking of bureaucracies, the college admissions articles are collectively very revealing.
First, due to the dumbing down and rescaling of the SAT test it is very tough to predict who will get into top colleges. Harvard, for example, receives about 500 applications every year from students with 1600 (perfect) on the SATs… and rejects more than half of them! Paradoxically the dumbing down of the SATs seems to have had a pernicious effect on black high schoolers. White kids go to SAT cram courses and get 100% of the easy questions right. Black kids don’t necessarily do well on those questions that are easy to prep for but often do much better on questions that can only be answered by those who’ve hit the books. ETS, the fantastically profitable non-profit (“non-taxpaying” would perhaps be more accurate) that runs the SAT, responded to research showing this racial bias by trying to figure out how their data had leaked rather than looking at the substance.
“Selective” colleges and those ranked high in reputation by U.S. News and World Report (which immediately causes a rush of applications and therefore a “selective” statistic) are swamped by applicants. At the same time a National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) found that the actual quality of undergraduate experience was uncorrelated with the U.S. News top schools ranking (the results of this survey are kept secret from the public and the Ivy League schools have refused to participate but a handful of state schools make their results available). Those pesky economists, who tend to reduce everything to dollars, make the case in a National Bureau of Economic Research report (link) that selective colleges are of no value. Kids from rich families who go to Harvard end up being richer adults than immigrants who go to state schools, of course. However, students who get into really selective colleges but decide to go to less selective ones end up having the same lifetime income than those who accepted their spot at the really selective school.
In terms of practical advice to young people and their parents anxious to game the system the magazine offers little. The obvious technique of being born into the correct racial group is not covered. In addition to practicing racial discrimination, however, it is important for Asian-Americans and non-Hispanic whites not to forget that college admissions departments also engage in sex discrimination. Liberal arts colleges are hurting for male students so, for example, the chance of getting into Pomona College will rise from 20% to 27% if Jane Applicant decides to embark on a hormone and surgery program to turn herself into Joe Applicant. A sex change operation is even more effective when applying to engineering and science schools. Across the street from Pomona is Harvey Mudd College where Joe Applicant’s 29% acceptance rate can turn into 61% after a sex change. The effect of an applicant’s sex is larger at MIT where males are admitted at the rate of 12% and females at 28%.
[If your kid doesn’t want to undergo surgery but you still want him or her to get into a school with a high reputation the message is “send Johnny to an airy-fairy liberal arts school and send Jane to Nerd Central”.]
Hmmm… is the data for Harvey Mudd based on the number of students that get accepted, or the number that accept their acceptance, i.e. that actually matriculate? Here at Caltech, the admissions office are always complaining that after prefrosh weekend, when it comes to deciding which of the thick envelopes looks best, girls are less likely to pick the Institute than guys. I don’t know the details, but the male/female ratio of people accepted is presumably more even than the ratio upon matriculation.
One great thing about “selective” schools is the way they treat poor people. Since the tuition and fees at a fancy residential college will probably soon overtake the average American household income, and since these schools have a lot of money, there is often generous financial aid available. Here are the three possibilities: (1) you’re rich, (2) you’re middle-class, or (3) you’re poor. In case 1 you can drop $35k/yr without flinching and perhaps you already have because your microWASP has already been studying at Andover or a luxury ski school. In case 3, you can’t possibly afford college BUT if you’re smart and lucky enough to get into a really good one they probably have enough money to help you out a lot. Case 2, the middle class, is the toughest. Schools expect these people to take a severe lifestyle hit in order to pay for college. I think the best deal for these people, who have worked hard to build up a life savings that a college might feel entitled to, is to rapidly convert all your savings into gold nuggets or perhaps antiques when your child turns 17. Unlike real estate, stocks, farms, businesses, and damn near everything else, you won’t have to tell the school how much of these you have. Sure, it’s a pain, but if you can convince the school you’re poor you can get a megadiscount on a $120k expenditure. 😉
Shimon: the gold nugget idea is brilliant! Wouldn’t you have to lie on the “all assets reporting sheet” though in order to conceal their existence? Still, I’m not sure how a college could figure out that parents had cashed in their mutual funds on gold ingots instead of crack.
Jaap: the data for Harvey Mudd and other schools are all for whether or not the college accepts the student; 61% of girls who apply to Harvard Mudd are accepted. Whether any of them choose to matriculate is not covered in this set of statistics (and is really irrelevant to the potential applicant whose goal is first and foremost to get in!).
Eh…who needs MIT. If it a space shuttle you want, then try this:
http://www.spacecamp.com/spacecamp/
And its not just for kids…they also have corporate team building and incentive programs! You know, I would have expected to hear more about dot-com management teams spending shareholder money on “team building” trips to Spacecamp. I know if I had been a dot-com CEO, my team would have been “brainstorming” there all the time.
Okay, so this is just a little bit off topic. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Did anyone see the print edition of the Wall Street Journal today (Tues. Oct. 28)? There’s a story on page B1 that’s titled, "More Employers Ask Job Seekers For SAT Scores". I don’t have access to the on-line edition, so I’ll just copy a single sentence from the article: "With thousands of resumes flooding in for even a single open position these days, employers see the scores as one more way to differentiate among applicants."
That’s ridiculous…I took the SATs 14 years ago. I don’t see how my score on a high-school test is relevant in the present.
What is newsworthy about this post and the linked articles is also something that the vast majority of people do not want to hear: a person’s success is most strongly correlated with how able he is and how much effort he expends in training. I.e. how well ya do is correlated most highly with how hard ya work, not necessarily where ya went to school.
This news is threatening to those who a) come from a disadvantage and b) who are not confident in their ability to grow and succeed on their own. Thus, families, governments, and writers all latch on to the myth of “attending the right school”. (The common phrase is actually “getting in to the right school,” which is clearly more of a predictor, but as a rule when making decisions parents confuse “getting in” with “attending” and often pressure children into the wrong choice, in my experience).
Of course, motivated students will often seek a selective school as a part of the search for a *competitive atmosphere*, but the correlation of the *attendence* of such a school with success is weakened by the fact that many students are accepted to a selective school but opt to attend another school with an equally competitive learning environment.
To illustrate an example of “getting in” but “not attending”: In my case, the choice between attending MIT for $40,000/year with no aid or the University of Texas engineering for $0/year on scholarship was a no brainer, because I knew MIT would significantly harm the family’s cash flow and hamper my desire to attain more than just an undergraduate education. Plus at UT I could take classes, do research, *and* meet smart, attractive women in great numbers! (never underestimate the… 😉
I can say that a tuition-free MIT might help change the undergraduate population from the pool of bitter Ivy-league rejects that I met on my visit there in the late 90s to a pool of motivated, frugal achievers, similar to what I found at the University of Texas. I keep hoping to hear more on that plan at MIT and elsewhere…
Interesting.
If you were offered the choice between an MIT education, or a UT education plus say $100K in cash, which would you choose?
For a middle class family, it might make sense to offer their childred a cash award if they choose to attend a state school.
ChrisJ wrote, “a person’s success is most strongly correlated with how able he is and how much effort he expends in training”
There’s good evidence that a person’s success in life is strongly correlated with emotional intelligence (i.e., ability to persevere in the face of obstacles, to get along well with others, to not dwell on painful memories, etc.). For more information, see:
"The Talent Myth: Are smart people overrated?", an article by Malcolm Gladwell,
and
Emotional Intelligence, a book by psychologist Daniel Goleman.
You might want to hold down the “shift” key when you click on those links, so that a new browser window will open.
Shimon: you’re forgetting another option; those moving up from the working class. Say you have a working-class family, with a typical lack of any savings, where one or more parents spends 10-15 years going to school. Just about the same time they start earning middle-class money, and start paying back their own student loans, their children are applying to universities. But guess what? The government doesn’t ask how *long* a child’s parent was making the money they are now, nor do they care if the parent has student debt of their own.
And one other thing to consider: financial aid is underfunded. So just because y students qualify for $x, doesn’t mean there’s $x*y of aid to give.
It was interesting to me that when I was applying to college, it was about $10,000 cheaper for me to attend MIT than going to Cornell or Carnegie Mellon. This is because my family was in the “poor” category and MIT is richer has a bigger financial aid budget. I have to say the education is very good and it does help me perform better at the work place. But this “edge” might not be worth $150K.
If maximizing future earnings is the goal, I think it would be better to go to the state school, then use the $150K you saved to pay your way through Harvard business school later on.
Business 2.0 magazine ran an excellent article back in July, 2002. The article argues that — contrary to popular opinion — an MBA degree will not enhance your career. This conclusion comes from a rather rigorous examination of 40 years’ worth of data. The study was conducted at Stanford University.
The article is reprinted here:
"What’s an MBA Really Worth?"
Jaap Weel: I can’t answer your question, but one article in the series discussed the extremely fine balancing act that admissions offices go through to select students that will are not only qualified, but will accept the university’s offer. It’s not stated outright, but I got the impression this is the reason why 50% of 1600 SAT scorers are rejected from Harvard. Harvard tries to make sure a certain mix of students _accept_ to balance the freshman class. Students with 1600 SAT scores will likely recieve offers elsewhere.
Regarding parent income, the series also talked about how admissions offices are wary of accepting too many poor kids (who will get grants instead of loans) because they will break the college’s endowment.
I thought this was a really interesting series. The part on the NSSE was particularly reveiling.
I am glad I do not have $100,000 worth of student loans from a selective private college. No thank you (my 15K from a state school is high enough).
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