College admissions explained in a 90 second clip:
Your thesis kinda depends on the various gatekeepers in society giving a shit about the quality of the education you actually got, and the understanding and knowledge you have, instead of wanting to rely on lazy shortcuts unfortunately, and you’re welcome to let me know when that’s the case. Obviously not every gate is kept by someone sorting by US News and World Report rankings, but there are certainly some gates kept by gatekeepers who are way more likely to open up when you have certain things on your resume.
Not sure this stuff uniquely American issue. Saw some article recently that South Korean families were spending absolutely obscene amounts of annual income on tutoring for some standardized exam and just now they are removing the questions from the exam that weren’t part of public school curriculum or something
Would be interesting to see this weighted for percent of students impacted, like wonder if the .1 percentile is same total number of students as 0-50
ETA or maybe it is if the income rank is among the actual applicants not among total US?
Agreed, definitely more info would add better context to this graph.
I intuited it to mean among actual applicants, but I could be mistaken. It makes intuitive sense, though. Sure, most poor people aren’t applying and don’t have good scores, but those that do get some help and may have some interesting stories to tell that earns that help. The upper middle class is a jungle of white suburbia with great scores and similar stories with little to set them apart. The very top have legacy and massive donations to help them along.
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The top schools also have a bunch of sports only really rich people play to mask legacy/donation admissions. Find me a poor person who plays squash or knows how to sail.
rowing
Yeah, ngl, I’ve had thoughts about how I can get my girls into lacrosse, or crew, or what have you.
that’s not how it works, during braxton’s senior year, they realize he doesnt have the grades or test scores to get into princeton, but oh, dad knows a guy who knows a guy who knows their volleyball recruiter, has this kid ever played a sport in his life? yes? ok he might ride the bench in his first year but we’ll take him (and then he just quits eventually).
it’s not like rich kids just being into sports poor kids can’t do, it’s rich kids getting into schools from sports they’ve literally never participated in in their lives. lots of rich kids in my area did this. if they can’t straight up cheat on standardized tests like they did in the corona del mar scandal, they do shit like this. or just buy it. but the kid always gets in.
ref: Corona del Mar High students expelled in cheating scandal
I remember so clearly a Girl I went to HS with. Never exercised a day in her life, ends up going to U of Michigan on a crew scholarship. We made so many jokes about it, she couldn’t even swim
I realize that exists, but let’s talk about, say, Stanford. Stanford takes immense pride in winning the NCAA Director’s Cup for being the best school across all sports. How does Stanford get there? It ain’t men’s football. It’s women’s sports, and obscure sports, and especially obscure women’s sports. Do they blow some of their scholarships on rich donors? Maybe, but it’s also clear they care a fair bit about fielding top tier women’s basketball, women’s lacrosse, women’s softball, women’s gymnastics, women’s water polo, women’s golf, women’s crew, women’s tennis etc. teams year in and year out to win that cup.
Maybe the Ivies don’t care so much about all their sports, but you know they have their pet rich-kid sports that they may not offer scholarships for but they will offer admissions preference for. Of course the rich can hijack this more easily, but there’s still a lane there for people who are very good at key rich kid sports that elite universities (and no one else) care about.
You…. Don’t need to swim to do crew? I’m confused here.
If education is this scarce resource, we as a country could just do another Land Grant Act and build fifty new state universities, it’s all just bullshit artificial scarcity.
she didnt do a single day of crew
Check for public boat houses with programs. I know there was one in Portland.
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They often throw each other in the water if they win or make the team or whatever.
Any ideas on how old you have to be to do crew?
Obviously still statistically easier than trying to become a starting D1 quarterback or something but it’s definitely non-trivial undertaking to be good enough at even an obscure sport for somewhere like Stanford. (Outright Fraud/scams excluded). Probably just a step below being a US Olympic trials level contender I would think where you got kids doing obscure sports from age 2 because their parents are gold medalists or whatever
this is way too good
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Amazing.
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