Admissions at Top Colleges: Oboes, Guatemala, and Four Questions

It was quite a news item last month that some of our country’s most selective universities had been taking bribes to admit students with more family money than credentials.  Several schools and several known celebrities were involved, with an unknown, probably massive, number yet unrevealed. 

Yet, other problems have come up over the past year.  The bigotry of affirmative action has been revealed by Harvard, which has apparently considered certain eastern Asian cultures too effective in providing learning environments, valuing education highly, and getting children to excel not only at school but in ACT and SAT performance, and have been limiting their numbers.  On the other end, black students, who since at least the 1970s have had nothing to complain about with their relative chances of top-school admission, have been in some places given bogus high school transcripts to enhance their outcomes even more.  It is clear that applicants’ chances to get into the likes of Yale or even UCLA are not determined solely by academic and test performance.

So what questions should we be asking?

First, what do we need to know about these universities?  Two things.  They are stinking rich – it’s not only Harvard’s $38 billion 2015 endowment, but Yale’s $26 billion, Stanford’s $17 billion, Princeton’s $16 billion, and so on.  They profit immensely from a correlation-causation misunderstanding where their students, most with the very highest intelligence, motivation, knowledge sets, and family support before their first day on campus, tend to excel in post-college careers, which through commensurate donations pushes endowments even higher, makes these institutions even better places to spend those four years, allows them to become even more competitive, and perpetuates the cycle.  Although universities do spend some of their money, mostly they seem to keep it and make it grow, which means they have a strong interest in filling their classes with people who rate to facilitate that.

Second, how do top schools maximize their intake of wealthy students?  Many things, while not indicating high net worth themselves, tend to go along with that, and it is remarkable how many are highly valued in prospective students.  Dartmouth and Williams will take a much higher share of oboe and bassoon players, since those instruments are rarely used outside classical music and thus studied mainly by those in the upper classes, than those excelling at accordion and folk guitar.  Highly selective colleges have millions of high school football and basketball players to choose from, but pick similar numbers from those doing fencing, lacrosse, and crew, many or most of whom are from expensive prep academies.  Admissions officers have long been high on applicants who have done the likes of altruistic, Peace-Corps-like trips to places such as Guatemala, even though such ventures cost too much for many families, and volunteer work, even though those with less money need paying part-time positions instead.  Legacy admissions, of less-qualified children of that school’s graduates, are also inclined to have more money than most, and are real and undisputed.  Overall, not a few individuals who would otherwise complain about income inequality are working, in their university jobs, to cement it into place, with the recent celebrity dishonor being only another way.

Third, how can we get high-end college admissions to be fairer?  Ross Douthat, in his March 17 New York Times column “The Scandals of Meritocracy,” suggested that those discontented with this situation from both the left and the right could be satisfied by a “centrist prescription for reform,” in which “elite schools should emphasize class-based rather than race-based affirmative action," while “phasing out preferences for jocks and legacies.”  Another even more meritocratic way would be to excise sex, race, and ethnicity information entirely, perhaps by electronically removing names and pictures from applications before evaluation.  A third choice would be to admit that the current system strives to neutralize cultural strengths and weaknesses, and admit the top few percent of each group.  Another would be to cut the cord between universities and government, denying them the likes of favorable tax treatment but freeing colleges to admit whoever they see fit. 

That brings us to the final question:  Is pure meritocracy really what we want?  American life is full of competitions, for recognition and career success as well as university admissions and their consequences, incorrectly represented as rewarding only excellence.  Douthat named “three ways that a ruling class can be legitimated – though intergenerational continuity, through representation (of minority groups) and through aptitude.”  He also asked if Harvard’s average SAT score, 1512 out of 1600 for the class of 2022, would be truly better if it went to 1570, and said the “essential premise that intelligence alone merits power is the premise that has given us many present difficulties.” 

My personal bias is toward merit.  I think demographic group membership is far less significant than individual attributes and choices, but, from talk of “reparations” for those many generations removed from slavery to votes for second members of the Clinton and Bush political dynasties, oceans of others clearly disagree.  In our many pretenses that merit is the only meaningful criterion, governing bodies will continue to do what they think they should.  And that is as far as we can go, today, on the issue of unfair university admissions.