You are wrong to use a slash between ability and potential. The kids with strong socioeconomic backgrounds do well and go on to do well. The kids who don't, don't.
So how does an admissions officer predict college success? Is it just assumed that people with strong socioeconomic backgrounds do well, and the people without don't?
As I understood it, my job was to "find the cool people...since they usually do really well."
And by cool, I mean people who are doing interesting stuff, interestingly. That was the definition I went by. Others had their own. That's why committee is so much fun.
Could you elaborate on this?
I've always been curious what is going on in the admissions dynamics such that it will result in one person having the choice of 10 top tier schools versus 1-2. They all fall on the interesting side of the continuum, but what is going on that leads to these thresholds of admissions success?
The star quarterback of his smalltown football team goes down with a career ending injury during preseason practice before his junior year.
Instead of standing on the sidelines with a headset and clipboard and having the local paper write a human interest piece about how he's "helping the offence," he takes a job at a local marina taking care of the boats.
He's quickly put in charge of the place. While doing this, he learns he's fascinated by the boats, their lines and curves and decides he wanted to study architecture. (I fudged the details here but that's the story.)
Let's break this down:
1. Kid faces setback.
2. Kid responds in unexpected way.
3. Adults recognize his competence and give him considerable responsibilities.
4. Kid handles this well (his boss wrote a great letter of recommendation)
5. While working on his unusual project, kid discovers passion for something.
6. Kid wants to come to your school to engage with that passion.
That's kind of the textbook example. Admittedly, his social circumstances (middle class white kid with lots of connections via football) helped him make that decision between steps 1 and 2. I bet he had a parent who was like "son, you're done with football. Let's go on a new adventure." And that can make all the difference. But still, the kid executed.
We didn't admit the guy. That's why the job's tough. Because there's 1000 kids with stories as good as his or better.
But he certainly got more attention than the average kid.
So who is a better bet, from an admission's office's perspective, a kid from a poor background or a kid from a very wealthy background, assuming their grades, quality of high school education, test scores, et al are identical? (I'm assuming that the main concern is the student's academic performance in college, NOT his career afterward; obviously, the rich kid will pwn in that aspect.)
I would bet on the poor kid, because he's likely to have higher "g", to so speak. Are you arguing that the rich kid is the better bet, because his advantaged background will continue to pay off in a way that's underrated by the standardized tests and grades?
Well, that's not really a fair question. Each kid would get looked at one his own. The rich kid might make a great impression. The poor kid might make a great impression. They would never be set side by side for an either/or. It just isn't done that way.
Also, your assumptions are pretty out there.
1. The odds of a poor kid getting the same quality of education as a rich kid are very, very low, especially if you knew just HOW good of an education rich kids in the U.S. can get. The most informative part of my two years in admissions was the week I spent visiting elite boarding schools in New England to meet with students thinking about applying.
My meals and conversations with the students there were astounding. Their teachers all had PhDs. There was not one ugly or overweight kid in any of the schools. The students were years ahead of where I'd been in math and science coming out of a public high school in the Midwest. And they aggressively questioned me about every aspect of Princeton's curriculum and admission process. When I would visit public high schools in the Midwest, the kids rarely, if ever had questions for me. They had no clue what to even ask me about. "Princeton" was just so completely foreign to them. Not so for these kids, who all had friends currently studying there. Many of them had siblings who'd graduated from there already.
So this was a real eye-opener. You can be the best kid in a crappy school, but the fact that you were in a crappy school is going to have an impact in the grand scheme of things. That's why we'd never compare kids across contexts. It just made no sense.
Similarly, the test scores, grades "et all" for the rich kid would probably all be higher.
If there was a "poor kid" who had incredible credentials AND didn't sound like a basket case, then he'd be hotly pursued by every top school in the country. But those kids are very rare, so it's not realistic to pit a student like that against a "rich kid with good grades and scores" which is as common as air in these applicant pools.
If I did have to pick, I'd take the more precocious kid every time. I'd pick the kid who's able to make stuff happen for him. There are poor kids that can do this. There are rich kids that can do this. It's much, much rarer to find a kid from a less privileged background with this mindset though.
There was not one ugly or overweight kid in any of the schools.
When I left my public school for a private, east coast boarding school, the lack of any fat kids was the thing that struck me the most the first day I arrived. The second thing that struck me was the utter lack of assholes and bullies.
One other bit of food for thought: I ended up going to private high school and then ivy league for college. But today I consider myself less educated than my dad, who paid his own way through a lesser tier college. The reason is my dad studied engineering and had useful skills by the time he graduated. Very few ivy league students learn anything useful in undergrad. The college is mainly a big social club. Kids from a disadvantaged background can derive advantage from mixing with this higher social class, but the its not the classroom education that's value add. For this reason, I think people should worry less about inequities in ivy league admission. The schools simply aren't value-add anyway, so attending has little bearing on your life outcome.
Thanks for all the inside info, brandnewlow. I actually went to Princeton for undergrad in the 90s and find your insight fascinating.
What I found with the prep school kids there (I was from a mediocre public school) was that the great education they received in high school did not teach them to learn on their own. This was particularly true in the sciences (physics, in particular) but might not have been true at all for those following the pre-med/i-banker/mgmt consulting track.
Even though they might have seen some of the material in high school, the depth at which it is addressed in college called for a level of thinking that depended more on mental maturity then on familiarity with the material. I remember a classmate from France who showed me his linear algebra notes from high school and had obviously done matrix manipulations but just couldn't get the proofs in Mathey's 1st year linear algebra class. He ended up switching to industrial engineering, doing management consulting, MBA, etc., and is assuredly making more $ than I am.
I met a lot of folks who took advantage of their advantages, and a lot who didn't.
But the real thing I noticed was that all these folks talked to their professors differently than I did. I was intimidated and afraid of them. I told myself that most of them were jerks, when in reality I was just really insecure about my ability to say something intelligent. My perception of authority was completely different than theirs.
I took a class with Robert George during my sophomore year, Constitutional Interpretation. It was considered one of the most challenging humanities courses in the school when I was there.
There was a 90 minute, fast-moving Socratic lecture once a week. George wanders the lecture hall, pointing at students and pulling them into arguments about the points of whatever cases you're discussing.
Then there was a 90 minute precept once a week. 20 students and either the professor or a preceptor (often a NYC lawyer friend of George's) would lead a conversation about the week's cases.
Basically, precept was a 90-minute, 20 person argument. And I just folded. I'd never been on a debate team. I'd been raised to think arguing and questioning other people in public was the height of rudeness. What happened in precept just did-not-compute. I'd read all the material. I'd make just as many notes as the other guy, but when it came time to "fight" about it, I just shut down. I was terrified.
Now, the other students were probably just as terrified as I was. But they'd also probably been in classes like this before. There was some precedent for talking about ideas in this sort of controlled, but boisterous way. What looked to me like a lot of fighting was really just a spirited debate. I was just completely psyched out by it.
That was a real wake-up call. I was able to see that there was a basic tool of "successful" people that I seemed to lack in the toolbox. I got a lot better at it eventually. But that's the sort of difference I observed.
As you mentioned, part of the reason you didn't have this skill initially was in part because of how you were raised. It didn't have anything to do with how smart or how good a student you were.
What I didn't realize until well after graduation was how the non-academic side of the Princeton experience can shape one's career, e.g., the socialization that happens at "the Street" or the during spring breaks. These were just training grounds for later life. Personally, I found the academic side fascinating but didn't care much at all for the social scene there, but in retrospect, I probably wasn't sophisticated enough to appreciate it (and maybe still am not :) )
Being from a middle class background, after graduation I expected to go grad school, get some more education and get a job as an engineer. Somehow most of my classmates viewed engineering as a stepping stone to something else: mgmt consulting, business, etc. I wondered where I missed this info, and I think it was at the eating clubs (I had done Stevenson Hall). Not to say that I regret my choices -- they simply never appeared on my radar and so I didn't make a conscious choice.
I didn't get involved in Street culture either. Looking back, I don't see how I could have fit into it at the time. Nevertheless, the ordeal of bickering at an eating club probably would have been a good experience to have under my belt.
But the real thing I noticed was that all these folks talked to their professors differently than I did. I was intimidated and afraid of them. I told myself that most of them were jerks, when in reality I was just really insecure about my ability to say something intelligent. My perception of authority was completely different than theirs.
It's very interesting that you bring this up. I noticed this, in the workplace, when I worked at a hedge fund. People who came from wealthy backgrounds had no fear of the boss and seemed, from the outset, to be half a level above same-rank co-workers. They had a refined knack for putting authority in its place, which doesn't mean being a jerk; on the contrary, it means doing what the boss wants while "training" the relationship as one among equals. They treated work as an extended education, and their relationship with their boss as mentor/protege. This is an attitude that's not restricted to the well-heeled, but somehow, those from privileged backgrounds were able to do it in a way that didn't piss anyone off. (In this case, you have to worry more about pissing off co-workers than the boss.)
I'm so-so at this skill; I'm much better than when I was 22, but not great. I'm not at the level of proficiency where I could enter a large, elite firm at the entry level and become the CEO's protege within a month... and most rich kids can do this.
I'm in a startup, so there isn't this concept of authority or hierarchy in my case.
What I'd say is that you need to be able to go to work without fear. Fearing the boss antagonizes him on a subconscious (if not conscious level). He doesn't want to be a boss, in most cases. Fearing co-workers can socially isolate you. Careful confidence is one thing, but fear is professionally crippling, and the vast majority of people from middle-class backgrounds have way too much of it for their career's sake.
So, to answer your question: I don't personally go to work with fear, but I'm not in a hierarchical environment. I don't know how I would handle one if I went back into one.
One other trait I've noticed of Ivy League graduates in the workplace is that they handle grunt work pretty gracefully. You might think the opposite; having come from prestigious schools, they might act as if they're "too good" to do menial tasks, but the opposite seems to be the case. They handle it gracefully because it doesn't damage their confidence. (Of course, if you give an elite college grad only grunt tasks for 6 months, he'll leave because he's not learning anything; but that's different from the ability to take on an unpleasant project without getting insecure about being assigned it.)
If there was a "poor kid" who had incredible credentials AND didn't sound like a basket case, then he'd be hotly pursued by every top school in the country.
In this regard, how poor is poor? And, for my better understanding of your statement, what are some examples of "incredible credentials"? This whole discussion is quite interesting to me, as I applied to exactly one college in my day, in the 1970s, my state's flagship university, largely for financial reasons. I was not aware then of what I hear now, that more selective colleges will both admit and fund students from working class or poorer backgrounds.
Poor would be minimum wage or below. So food stamps, free school lunches, 3 pairs of pants.
Incredible credentials would be 2400 SAT, 780-800 on 3 or more SAT IIs and straight A's.
And yes, the top schools are flush with cash, though they took a beating this past year, and they are using it to bring in kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. It's one of the big trends in the Ivies over the last 10 years.
so that is a rarely encountered characteristic even in the applicant pools of Ivy League colleges. (Princeton's entering class of about 1,243 students is numerous enough to include all of those students, if they all apply to Princeton.)
And not all of the 2400-scorers on the SAT Reasoning Test have the specified scores on the SAT Subject Tests. So I guess I wonder if slightly less incredible credentials would still be noteworthy.
for SAT fee waivers is meant to match the eligibility levels for some federal programs, but might imply somewhat more prosperity than "food stamps, free school lunches, 3 pairs of pants." For sure, anyone eligible for the fee waivers would be shocked by the LIST price of any Ivy League college.
Poor would be minimum wage or below. So food stamps, free school lunches, 3 pairs of pants.
So if he's poor enough that the college can brag about admitting him, he gets in, but if he's run-of-the-mill economic 15th-percentile, he has no shot unless he manages to finagle his way into a high school offering the "right" extracurriculars (e.g. crew)?
Incredible credentials would be 2400 SAT, 780-800 on 3 or more SAT IIs and straight A's.
Out of curiosity, is the difference between 2300 and 2400, or even 2200 and 2400, really that significant? I know that it matters a lot in admissions, but I don't think it has much predictive value over academic performance at the upper levels. IQ tests become less predictive at the upper end, and I wouldn't be surprised if SATs were the same way.
$18-30k works, which would be about 15th-percentile once students, pensioners, and part-time workers are taken out. I'm talking about the level at which a person is definitely poor, but not in abject poverty. In upstate New York, that level of income wouldn't make a person impoverished.
"Recruiting", in this sense, just means encouraging them to apply. These colleges want lots of applications, because it makes their acceptance rate lower, and they'll occasionally find a diamond. That's already common knowledge.
On the other hand, encouraging people to apply with almost no chance of admitting them is not "recruiting"; it's playing a numbers game. I say "no chance of admitting" because it's nearly impossible to clear the extracurricular bar at the socioeconomic 15th percentile. At that level, the "right" extracurriculars are not offered, but you're not so poor that you can pull off an "overcoming challenges" essay (that was the admissions schtick du jour ca. 1998-2003) or that a college can brag about admitting you.
I'll simply say that what you post here is not current information (it may very well have been current information at the turn of the century) and leave it at that. The income range you mention is taken into account in admission decision-making today, and I know current examples of that happening in this year's admission cycle. The Laura D'Andrea Tyson article I posted as a separate submission recently
seems to have been part of changing the culture of university admission offices. A student from a family with an income at the fifteenth percentile of national household incomes is a rare student at the most selective colleges and IF the student has competitive grades and test scores and some economically reasonable extracurricular involvement, the student has a great chance of admission today and a very good chance of lavish financial aid. Colleges today do brag about admitting students at that income level.
My meals and conversations with the students there were astounding.
Right. Very wealthy kids become very good at impressing people early on in their lives.
If there was a "poor kid" who had incredible credentials AND didn't sound like a basket case, then he'd be hotly pursued by every top school in the country. But those kids are very rare, so it's not realistic to pit a student like that against a "rich kid with good grades and scores" which is as common as air in these applicant pools.
It depends on what you mean by "poor". If we're talking about someone from abject poverty, or from Wyoming in a year short on mountain-state applicants, you're correct. If you're talking about someone from upstate New York at the economic 15th-percentile, you're wrong. He would not be highly sought; he'd probably be turned away for not knowing which extracurriculars were "right" (e.g. crew, sailing, lacrosse) and which were not.
