And if the high-income, high-SAT score student keep coming, I guess he’ll ship them off to gulags for the glory of the proletariat!

Dave, surely you’re willing to admit that a student from a low-income family who hasn’t had the benefits of SAT classes and tutoring and a prep-school education, probably not even an average public school education, and scores a 1350 has as much potential as a rich kid, with such advantages, who scores a 1550, right? That’s to say, you don’t really think that contextless SAT scores report something actually important, do you, despite how often you mention them? That’s just a sloppy rhetorical shorthand, I hope?

Why on earth is it that what most interests you here is that such a move might lower Amherst’s US N&WR ranking, and not whether it calls into question the adequacy of that system? I’m guessing you’ll respond that, pragmatically, these rankings do matter given high school students’ reverance of them. But given that you’re not running Williams’ admissions office, surely there are more interesting questions here?

If, in a decade, Williams is the way it is today and Amherst is reshaped by Marx’s notions, it seems they won’t be competing for the same students, excepting those who blindly apply to the top 10 ranked liberal arts colleges, the sort of students probably least worth competing for.

I actually attended a talk by Marx at Amherst parents’ weekend (visiting my relative who attends there). He is certainly very sincere and very passionate about his philosophy. At that time, he was speaking about trying to incorporate a moral component into the admissions and faculty recruitment processes, and some of the same questions were raised by parents (eg, does emphasizing moral achievement or potential — no easy task to begin with — mean that other academic factors will be relatively deemphasized). The philsophy expressed in this article potentially goes far, far futher, but it is difficult to tell.

There are two ways of looking at this. One, which Williams seems to be doing now (and should continue to do more of) I think is appropriate: reaching out to students who are qualified but would otherwise not apply to Williams due to lack of recognition or not attend once admitted due to financial constraints. The Questbridge program is one great way to accomplish this, it seems. Improvements to fin aid loan / work study burdens is a second. A third is increasing Williams’ presence at recruiting fairs, schools, etc. in poor urban and rural areas.

Once you take it the next level, essentially, affirmative action for disadvantaged applicants, then I think you are really exceeding the institutional mission. But I’m not sure that is what Marx ultimately has in mind. I think by talking the talk in this grand fasion (which has, obviously, already created enormous publicity) and taking the smaller steps that Amherst has already taken, he is seeking to attract the same exact pool that schools are already fighting over, just in greater numbers: kids who have achieved despite facing obstacles.

I think that Williams should make the same push. If a kid takes the hardest possible classes in his school system, gets straight A’s, has lots of leadership, has to work 20 hours a week to help his family, and has a 1350 SAT, that kid is as deserving of Williams as a kid from Exeter with a 1550, who has taken tons of prep courses, etc. It is fair to adjust AP course and SAT expectations, somewhat, based on obstacles overcome and general socio-economic circumstances. I think those sort of kids already get in to Williams and Amherst, and I imagine they can thrive once faced with greater challenges — the question is, is Marx just trying to get MORE of them (which will only make Amherst more attractive as an institution) or dip further down in the pool, making Amherst an agent for social change but, in the process, admitting kids who might struggle with the course material? I think you could interpret his comments as favoring the latter, but I really think he is trying to favor the former — keep Amherst largely as is, with an extra group of 50-100 kids a year added in each year almost exclusively from the highest-achieving percentile of the lower income kids (with perhaps some displacement of athletes — after all, Amherst isn’t pretty well even with Williams in most high-profile sports by accident). Williams should continue to fight Amherst for these kids. Only if Marx pushes admissions to really start to reach deeper into the pool should Williams stand aside and watch the experiment.

In sum, recruiting a kid who is, essentialy, “equal” in accomplishments and talents, but has lower numbers in some respects due to circumstances — that I’m all for. Admitting students that wouldn’t cut it even if they had been in a more privileged environment, simply by virtue of having overcome tough life obstacles, I don’t think that serves either those kids or the general academic climate of the institution.

Ben, you said a student from a low-income family who hasn’t had the benefits of SAT classes and tutoring and a prep-school education, probably not even an average public school education, and scores a 1350 has as much potential as a rich kid, with such advantages, who scores a 1550, right?

So, if the interest is “procedural justice” (i.e., accounting for those factors), then the proper response is a regression analysis, identifying how much each factor (e.g., private school, SAT Classes) boosts the SAT score, and a corresponding adjustment to the SAT. (Obviously, there should be some way of reporting who has taken SAT prep classes or tutoring and having that reported with the score, but I can’t imagine a non-intrusive and enforceable way of doing this ) The response should not be whole-sale class-based treatment simply based on hypothetical conjectures about the probability of PAST actions based on their economics background.

Why should a kid from a rich family who went to a public school and did reasonable well on the SAT without SAT classes or tutoring be punished in favor of a kid from a poorer family who got a [statistically significantly] lower score, when they’re otherwise indistinguishable? That “class”-based differential treatment, especially given the fluidity of “class” in this country relative to everywhere else in the world, is Marxism in both senses of the word.

From my time living in Amherst for a year and talking to friends who were there under Marx for a couple years, he’s quite comparably loved as a president to Morty. you may not like him, but then again, there’s a group of alums who don’t like Morty as well.

Their admissions numbers are outstanding and growing stronger. Marx has made Amherst a hot spot in elite institutions in a lot of respects. One part of Marx’s work not mentioned is his very interesting work to get a lot of his 25% of students who qualify for Pell Grants from the surrounding working-class area, through using Amherst’s intellectual and monetary resources more effectively in the surrounding area.

(perhaps unsurprisingly) I would be thrilled to have Marx making David go apesh*t as our president. not that i’m advocating overthrowing Morty at all (when I’m mad, I just think about some of Williams’ former presidents…I think we know who i’m vaguely referring to), I just wanted to note that Marx is making Amherst an identifiable leader in an important civil rights issue for higher education. With power comes great responsibility, and Marx is definitely focusing Amherst on its responsibilities.

Wesleyan lost a bulk of its endowment, it didn’t screw up by admitting lower-income students. apples and oranges.

Speaking of the “fluidity” of class, Williams alum Paul Kingston wrote a book, “the classless society” that i was assigned to read last semester. and then it got ripped apart by my professor…

Jeff said it better than I could, so I’ll sign on as a co-sponsor of his remarks and add a few minor points:

a) Amherst is already “walking the walk” on this issue. They have consistently enrolled the highest percentage of Pell Grant students (under $40k per year) of the top three liberal arts colleges AND they currently have the highest median SAT scores.

b) Let’s be honest. Every college “dips deeper into the pool” to meet institutional priorities. Some dip deeper for more athletes. Some dip deeper for more minorities. Some dip deeper for legacies. Some dip deeper for more development admits. Some dip deeper for more full-fare customers. The only thing we are talking about here is what priorities each college establishes with their “deeper dipping”. In a way, those choices contribute to defining the college.

c) Low socio-ec recruiting is the latest dance craze, sweeping the nation’s elite colleges. And, probably for good reason. In real terms, elite colleges may be skewed even more towards high-income customers than they were 30 or 40 years ago.

d) Marx has some room to play with. For the Class of 2008, Amherst’s median SAT scores were 20 points higher than Williams’ at both the 25th and 75th percentile marks. With a higher percentage above 1400 than Williams, he can afford to dig deep a little more often. If necessary, just replace a few more 1400s with 1500s to make up the difference. I do think that he’ll ultimately run into a Board resistance if he tries to reallocate low-stat athletic slots.

Loweeel:

The College Board publishes a boatload of data clearly demonstrating a statistical correlation between family income and SAT scores. 100 points on the SAT correlates with about $100,000 of annual family income.

Look at elite college admissions. Start with the prep schools and high schools sending the applicants. Do you really think that any Williams applicants from Exeter or Newton North or Scarsdale High doesn’t take the SAT prep courses offered by the school? The average high school in lower income neighborhoods doesn’t even offer SAT prep.

Or look at the extracurriculars required for admission these days. Well-rounded doesn’t cut it anymore. The colleges are looking for sustained interest in lacrosse or violin or acting or debating or science research. Where is a low-income kid going to get those opportunities, especially if he has to work bagging groceries after school? The trend toward seeking kids with a “strong passion” for a single extracurricular interest has systematically excluded non-wealthy kids.

HWC,

I know that there is a correlation, but what I am proposing is to do something a little more exact than saying that income equals points — we should see the quantifiable aspects of public vs private schools and sat courses and see how effective that is first. Just using family income as a catch-all for a whole basket of factors seems is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We want to account for the advantages that money DOES buy, not disadvantage income per se as the Marx “brothers” would prefer.

I think there are some great posts here. I think that many Amherst alumns, including myself, are excited about the energy and creativity that Tony Marx has brought in (especially after patience ran out with Tom Gerety’s style, although he did a tremendous job raising money for the school). Tom Parker, perhaps surprising to Williams alums given the comments in the athletic article, has also won major support with faculty and alumni who were concerned about athletic recruiting. I agree generally with hwc and Jeff I’ll just add that there is more on Amherst that accompanies the article above, including an admissions chart and and interview with Parker links here: http://www.amerst.com/archives/2006/02/17/more_on_amherst_in_business_week.php#comments

For Amherst’s sake, it is hoped that what Marx meant was that SAT scores are imperfect measures of aptitude and that consequently Amherst is going to approach the admissions process a little unconventionally by way of adjusting appropriately for that imperfection. But far be it for me to put words in his mouth.

Good scores on AP science exams are not good predictors of success in college science, study finds:

Chronicle link

Ben asks:

Dave, surely you’re willing to admit that a student from a low-income family who hasn’t had the benefits of SAT classes and tutoring and a prep-school education, probably not even an average public school education, and scores a 1350 has as much potential as a rich kid, with such advantages, who scores a 1550, right?

Yes! Jeffs provides such an example with:

If a kid takes the hardest possible classes in his school system, gets straight A’s, has lots of leadership, has to work 20 hours a week to help his family, and has a 1350 SAT, that kid is as deserving of Williams as a kid from Exeter with a 1550, who has taken tons of prep courses, etc. It is fair to adjust AP course and SAT expectations, somewhat, based on obstacles overcome and general socio-economic circumstances.

I agree! But don’t you think that Williams (and Amherst) already do this? Don’t you think that they realize that kids that need to work 20 hours a week will have less time to study?

At least until someone prevents evidence to the contrary, I presume that the Williams admissions department does its job, that it accurately identifies students with the most academic talent, that it correctly adjusts for life’s unfairnesses so that, once all have arrived at Williams (and had a couple of years to “catch up”), the students it identifies as “equal” do, in fact, perform similarly in junior/senior classes.

If anyone has evidence to the contrary, please present it. For example, if Williams were not doing this adjustment correctly, you might expect that the best senior year GPAs and/or thesis students would be disproportionately drawn from poorer students.

Ben asks:

That’s to say, you don’t really think that contextless SAT scores report something actually important, do you, despite how often you mention them? That’s just a sloppy rhetorical shorthand, I hope?

One man’s slop is another man’s conciseness, I guess.

I think that the academic ranking system used by places like Williams and Amherst does a very good job. I don’t think that I could meaningfully improve it, at least given the resource constraints currently in place. In other words, I think that AR 1s do better than 2s do better than 3s (and so on) because those ranks provide an accurate measure of academic talent/interest, even after we allow for a year or two of “catch up.”

For example, taking three AP tests at a high school with only 3 AP classes offered counts as much in the process as taking many more APs at Exeter. The admissions departments already adjust things in this way. (I don’t think that they adjust the AR ranks for other stuff though. Instead, these are graded “straight,” with allowances made for other activities/responsibilities added later in the process.

From this, it follows that replacing a bunch of 1s (accurately measured) with a bunch of 3s (just because the 3s come from “poor” families) will dilute the average academic quality of Amherst.

As a side note, it appears that the plan is not to replace some current students with these new poor students but to expand the class by 25%.

I agree with Ben that there are many other interesting issues in this article. More blogging to come!

Furthermore, I don’t think that even accounting for purchasing score-raising services and private schooling, even coupled with full-fare admission for everybody more than inconveniced by tuition, would result in equal representation of all economic quintiles at top colleges.

I’m sure I’m going to get myself in trouble by this, but how is that new?

From what I’ve read, most psychometricians and psychologists believe that a substantial portion of intelligence (as defined by IQ) is heritable — i.e., that children’s IQ has between a .6 and .8 correlation with their parents’ IQs. While we can quibble over the exact validity of the SAT, nobody can seriously argue that the SAT has SOME positive correlation with IQ (though it’s certainly lower with the new SAT’s “writing” requirement). Similarly, though I am wildly unsure of the exact amount, I would be wildly surprised if there were not SOME positive correlation between IQ and annual income. Engineers, Doctors, and PhD scientists earn more, and are on average smarter, than garbagemen and janitors, the fictional portrayal of Good Will Hunting notwithstanding.

So, multiplying through these chained correlations and accepting the assumptions above, we get the following proposition: there is some positive correlation between parent’s income and child’s SAT scores that has nothing to do with people with more income buying advantages for their children. As long as top colleges use metrics positively correlated to intelligence in their admissions standards, they cannot achieve a “flat” parental income profile of the student body absent specific (and unwarranted) discrimination against students whose parents have higher incomes.

In order to defeat that proposition, one or more of the following must be true: (a) there is no heritability component of intelligence or IQ; (b) IQ has nothing to do with intelligence; (c) the SAT has no positive IQ correlation; (d) there is no positive correlation between income and IQ

Before responding to this post, please note the following standard mandatory disclaimers.
1. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION
2. This is a series of generalizations, and as such will neither be true in every circumstance nor predictive of the abilities or potential of any single individual.

I think that the whole socio-ec recruiting is more of a response to Grutter v. Bollinger and the changing face of the Supreme Court then anything else. They see that affirmative action will not be around forever and need to find a way to get around it and still be able to discriminate against the most measurably qualified students. One thing that I find surprising is that people who support affirmative action and socio-ec recruiting are against athletic tips. All are avenues to let in less qualified students.

If the SAT is teachable find a way to stop that. Maybe an IQ test, which is what the SAT was originally trying to be would be more fair. There has to be a way to quantify intelligence so that students can be measured across schools fairly. AP would be a poor solution, because again it is trainable, and the quality of the high school and teachers play a huge part in scores.

“The basic thrust of the article is that Marx is going to start letting in lots of 1350 SAT students from lower income families while rejecting more 1550 SAT students from higher income families. …. [I]t seems inevitable that it will reduce Amherst’s ranking, at US News and elsewhere.”

I’m in a Williams classroom almost every day and I can assure you that SAT scores are a poor guide to how much a student has to contribute to a class, how much he will get out of the class, or how well he will perform in the class. Moreover, I don’t need US News to tell me how good a school Williams — or Amherst — is. I say, good for Tony Marx! And just so you know, Morty is doing much the same thing here.

There are also additional problems from giving low-income applicants an admissions bump or from giving a penalty to high-income applicants.

First, this system discriminates against students from larger families. While there are certain economies of scale, there are also variable costs for numbers of children. parental income of 300,000 to take care of 7 kids (9 total people) is a lot more of a challenge than Parental income of $100K to take care of 1 child (3 total people). You can’t just consider parental income alone in determining “economic diversity”.

Similarly, not all parental incomes are equal, even controlling for family size. Colleges already give a bump factor for geographic diversity — why treat income the same when students are from locales with wildly varying costs of living? Who would add more economic diversity — the student fron new york city or boston proper with a combined parental income of $80K or the student from Helena, Boise, Missoula, or Fargo with a parental income of $75K?

Third, the administrative cost of effectively and accurately implementing this system would be mindboggling.

At least in the area of financial aid, there is already some gaming the system, minimizing your income on paper to get more aid and loans from the government and the colleges. A close friend of mine who went to a different high school has a stepfather who is a very skilled accountant. While they were not what I would call rich in any sense, they were upper middle class, and her stepfather, using generally accepted accounting principles, made it look like she was lower-middle class on paper.

This sort of admissions sharply increasing the incentives to play around with reporting income. While the “rich” compete for just as many slots, the “poor” are competing for slots from which the rich are precluded, in an exact economic analog of the system the Supreme Court Rejected in Bakke v. Regents. Thus, while the rich have the same odds as before, the poor have BETTER odds.

Even more so than race, this system can be gamed quite easily because attempts to prevent gaming will drastically increase the administrative burden of the admissions office in determining compliance. Can you honestly imagine the admissions offices sifting through 5 years of state and federal income tax returns, property tax receipts, and tuition bills, trying to acertain the actual income of an applicant’s parents? Each admissions office would have to become a mini-IRS.

Who is in the best position to monkey around with this? People with the highest income (or those skilled in accounting) not only have the most incentive to cheat and give their kids a benefit, they are most able to hire accountants to make them look poorer on paper. Those with substantial non-income wealth could easily arrange deferred a substantial portion of compensation with their employers to make their net income smaller for the years that the colleges look at to determine “class” for admissions. In fact, employers would probably leap at the chance to offer this “flex-pay” benefit! It would cost them nothing, and the parents would get quite an advantage.

I’m well on record with my position that considering race in admissions is a bad idea and unconstitutional. However, unlike this sort of system, it’s pretty hard to game (unless you happen to be born in Africa, or have a drop of “favored minority” blood)

For the record, I think that many of the short-hand mathematical tricks above, that can be used to form a logical train like the following, are flawed: “student A comes from a family making $100,000 a year, so his SAT scores will be 100 points higher than student B, who comes from a family making $50,000 a year”

Why?

Because SAT scores are, and always have been, highly dependent upon test-prep. If a $50k student took a test prep course and a $100k student did not, the $50k student might end up with the 100 point bounce.

Therefore, we need to focus on whether students have the intellectual aptitude and demeanor to prosper at Williams. I just cannot see, for the life of me, why a hundred points on the SAT would make such a huge difference in this demeanor.

At the same time, I think accepting students whose parents made 50% less than their fellow classmates *would* make a huge difference, and a positive one, for the school.

Right now the problem is that at Amherst and Williams, we’re turning away qualified students who would enrich this school. Why are we doing so? Because they

a) don’t know Williams exists
b) think they cannot afford it
c) think they wouldn’t be a good fit

Each of these is a problem. And none of them have to do with pushing talented kids out of Williams. The problem with Williams, and Amherst, is not that talented people could be pushed out by untalented people. The problem is that there are simply too many talented people applying for too few spots. If we accept that, then the focus needs to be on making sure our class is the best class ever, not about whether some rich kid didn’t get in here.

Peter Just: I’m in a Williams classroom almost every day and I can assure you that SAT scores are a poor guide to how much a student has to contribute to a class, how much he will get out of the class, or how well he will perform in the class.

Are they a poor guide (low positive correlation), no guide (correlation pretty close to zero) or a contra-indicating guide (negative correlation)?

How much of a correlation between SAT scores and classroom performance would be required to rebut this “bump” for lower-income lower-SAT students?

reed–
I think all of Loweel’s points stand, unless you can prove one of the following (as taken from Loweel’s post):
In order to defeat that proposition, one or more of the following must be true: (a) there is no heritability component of intelligence or IQ; (b) IQ has nothing to do with intelligence; (c) the SAT has no positive IQ correlation; (d) there is no positive correlation between income and IQ.

To my eye, those are all pretty solid assumptions.
As he also mentions, this is by no means a causal relationship.
Unpopular though it may be, I find rational justification (beyond the ability to pay for test prep) for the concentrations of wealthy students at elite colleges. It just so happens that many of their wealthy parents happen to be very intelligent.
The size of this skew towards the rich is of course a matter of debate, but I find no reason to believe there should be a flat distribution.

Maybe an IQ test, which is what the SAT was originally trying to be would be more fair. There has to be a way to quantify intelligence so that students can be measured across schools fairly.

That’s how college admissions was done back in the early 1900s. Turned out it was “too fair” as Jewish enrollment skyrocketed and the alumni went nuts worrying about their traditional turf.

When places like Harvard publicly suggested “Jew quotas” to combat the influx of high scoring, lower income urban kids, the outcry was too much. So “well-rounded” and “geographic diversity” became the new buzzwords in admissions to protect the franchise. “Well-rounded” as in the sorts of things Jews didn’t do and “geographic diversity” as in there weren’t as many Jews in the hinterlands as there were in New York City.

So, let’s not cry too many tears for wealthy white customers of elite colleges. They are in no danger of being shut out!

As I look back with fond memories of Williams (and discussed those with my high school offspring college hunting), I only identified two negatives. One was the geographic isolation. The other was the overly homogenous student body. Yes, there were some non-preppy, low income students, but many of them left after a year or two and/or felt disenfranchised. So, if these colleges want to broaden the ranks, I see that as something that will make the school a better place.

hwc writes:

Do you really think that any Williams applicants from Exeter or Newton North or Scarsdale High doesn’t take the SAT prep courses offered by the school?

Could we quit with the Exeter bashing, please? There have been a lot of such comments lately. To answer your question, I knew very few students who took the SAT prep courses. The ones that did were generally the worst students academically who really needed an edge. I certainly didn’t take any prep courses. They cost extra and occurred at night, when most people were busy with work or other activities.

I understand that Exeter is an easy example to bash, but the last three references to Exeter on EphBlog have been incorrect, unfounded assumptions. I am tired of threadjacking to correct blatantly wrong assertions.

though i’m tempted to get into the whole sat and correlation and causation discussion, I won’t because I find it tedious and such an oversimplification of the admissions process, the SAT, statistics, etc. Lowell’s right that SATs are correlated, but what does that mean? And when was the last time intelligence, as defined by the SAT or a psychometrician, was the only or even purely most important thing to a college admissions or college success? Better to move on (for those interested in more detail on testing, inequality, and social structures, see Inequality by Design, cracking the bell curve myth by a whole bunch of Berkeley sociologists).

I would just like to say that one of the interesting findings of the NLSF (a longitudinal survey of college students that basically mirrors COFHE) is that minority students are extremely heterogeneous a population in elite colleges, and white students are extremely heterogeneous in regards to income, family education background etc. Food for thought (if you want a book on it, check out Source of the River, by one of my profs here. Soon to come out in paperback)

Diana, is it okay to use Andover as a stereotype? If not, then Groton? I grew up in the inner-city of Cleveland and don’t appreciate the overtones and nuances of this subject.

Diana:

Don’t be so literal. I hardly think it’s bashing Exeter to suggest that the entire experience is the best college admissions prep that money can buy.

For example, how many times over the last 10 years have Williams admissions people visited Exeter? How many times have Exeter guidance counselors picked up the phone and called people they know by name in the Williams admissions office? Or gone to dinner together?

Now, let’s compare those contacts to the Williams visits to Portsmouth High School or Amesbury High School, both located within minutes of Exeter? You and I both know the answer. Zero.

Beyond UNH or UMASS, the guidance offices at these schools provide zero support for students considering schools like Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore. When one of these kids takes the initiative to seek out and identify these colleges, visit for an overnight, and craft a well-researched application (totally on their own), I’m certainly going to be interested in that kid, even if they don’t have 1560 SATs.

hwc,

I believe you are saying that it was wrong to add geographical diversity and well rounded characteristics to exclude Jews? But it is acceptable to include socio-ec and racial components to exclude asians and whites? That sounds like quite the paradox.

Maybe if they just took the best students, we wouldn’t have to deal with this.

Maybe if they just took the best students, we wouldn’t have to deal with this.

Fine with me. Let’s start by getting rid of the 66 low-stat athletic tips (who, BTW, are disproportionately white and private/parochial school educated at schools like Williams and Amherst).

Of the 23 players on this year’s Williams hockey roster, 19 came from New England/New Jersey prep schools, three came from pro-team affiliated Junior programs, and one (yes, one) came from a public high school.

Diana wrote:

“Could we quit with the Exeter bashing, please?”

Well, maybe…(joking)

But those of us who were lucky enough to attend outstanding private secondary schools (and who are on board in any small sense with Tony Marx) should ask why our high school alma maters aren’t doing more to enhance socioeconomic diversity among their own student bodies. I can only speak for my high school, which needs to do more (in fairness poor investment decisions in the 80s and 90s have created serious constraints to meaningful financial aid advancement at my high school) but I wonder if schools like Exeter, Andover, Choate, Deerfield etc, as well as top private schools across the country are even less accessible to lower class talent than Williams or Amherst. Maybe private schools like Exeter have done their share, but would Tony Marx feel compelled to implement this program if that were so?

Regardless of the answers to these questions, our best prep schools could be major players here since they are in a much better postion to prepare students for college level work. That certainly would relieve some of the burden of maintaining high admissions standards if we were able to connect bright young lower-middle class kids to a rigorous college prep education when they are in 7th grade instead of waiting until they are 18.

Tony Marx is aiming to change more than Amherst…it is definitely a call to progressive academic institutions at all levels to view their roles in a different light.

anon:

The prep schools have done OK increasing their diversity. However, that really gets at the heart of the problem. Colleges have tried to take the easy way out on diversity. Rather than outreach programs, they all sit back and battle each other over a handful of “prep school minorities”.

This problem is highlighted by the fact that despite decades of affirmative action, Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore ALL had lower percentages of black enrollment in both 1986 and 1996 than they did in 1976. By 2000, after 30 years of affirmative action, Swarthmore’s black enrollment was slightly higher than in 1976, Williams and Amherst slightly lower. For 2005, Swarthmore had fallen back to just below its 1976 number, while Amherst and Williams were slightly on the plus side of the ledger. I think that says that relying on “prep school minorities” is not doing the job.

Think about it. 40% to 50% of the students at these three colleges come from private high schools — all but ensuring an exclusively wealthy customer base that isn’t even remotely representative of the American population. Most Americans don’t send their kids off to New England boarding schools.

Even the list of public high schools shows the same wealthy suburbs as in the 1970s. Westchester, Natick/Newton, Shaker Heights, Bergen County, etc. It’s the very nature of these colleges and the only way they will ever change it is through a conscious effort.

hwc:

the comparision to 1976 black enrollments is striking…

“I think that says that relying on ‘prep school minorities’ is not doing the job.”

I wouldn’t argue with that, but my question was asking whether prep schools (and not just the ones in NE) had done enough to increase the size of that small pool of lower class whites and minorities. I think I get from your post that they have done a respectable job of increasing that pool.

But I wonder if that calls into question the logistical viability of Marx’s larger plan. I think he has the idea that if Amherst does this, not only will other colleges follow suit, but secondary schools with resources will also engage. But if the ability of private secondary schools to generate a larger pool of qualified diverse candidates is tapped out, how far can his plan go, assuming that the average public school landscape does not improve? And does his goal require much more than expanding the size of the entering class, i.e. more aggressive forms of community outreach (building and mananging schools in depressed areas)?

frank uible: sure, you can use Andover as your stereotype (but Guy Creese ‘75 went there, so be careful). In fact, if your statement is true, feel free to insert any prep school name there. However, my guess is that any school name inserted into this sentence: “Do you really think that any Williams applicants from [exclusive prep school] doesn’t take the SAT prep courses offered by the school?” is going to be wrong. So is “I don’t know why anyone would bother donating to [prep school with large endowment]” because obviously, people do.

The truth of the situation, hwc and others, is that Exeter students don’t care so much for Williams. There are about four Exeter students in each Williams class. Considering the amount of college counseling and guidance that hwc describes, one would expect more, no?

No. This is something I point out often. If you can get in to Williams (~20% admission), you can probably get into Dartmouth, Cornell, and Brown (~30% admission). Why would you go to Williams (”Williams and Mary? Roger Williams?”) when you could go to an Ivy-League school? We all know many answers to that question, but most Exeter students with the choice choose Dartmouth over Williams.

In fact, I appreciate your point about the guidance counselors and admissions officers all going to dinner, but I doubt it, for the reasons outlined above. There are probably at least 15 schools* to which Exeter sends more students each year than it sends to Williams. This is too bad, but it is the way it is.

And one thing I’d mention, anon, is that private prep schools are trying to give a good education to more students. I am not familiar with what other schools are doing, but Exeter is working very hard to be need-blind. One alum’s $5 million donation brought the percentage of students on financial aid from 30% to 35% of the student body. With a couple, like one or two, more gifts like that — and this is a great reason for alums to give money to Exeter despite its large endowment — Exeter will be need-blind. And then maybe people will stop using it as the quintessential exclusive prep school and start appreciating the level of education that actually goes on there (and at similar educational institutions).

Well, no, probably not.

* Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, Tufts, UPenn, Wellesley, and Yale all have about twice as many Exeter students as Williams.

“With a couple, like one or two, more gifts like that — and this is a great reason for alums to give money to Exeter despite its large endowment — Exeter will be need-blind.”

Diana, to the extent that you think Exeter gets bashed, maybe this is a reason why. For years, Exeter has had a higher per-capita endowment than all but a handful of universities in the country yet, they are just getting around to need-blind admissions? Just 35% percent of the student body recieves financial aid?

Wikipedia reports that Exeter has a per capita endowment of $670,000 per student…look at the chart on page 2 of this document: http://www.williams.edu/alumni/campaign/about/WilliamsCoolidge_financial.pdf

Exeter’s per capita endowment is higher than that of Amherst, Williams, Gtown Duke Brown, MIT, Northwestern, DArtnmouth, Hopkins, Wellesley etc. In fact Exeter’s endowment is higher on a per capita basis than all but *7 or 8* colleges in the country!

Now lets compare the percentage of the student body that recieves financial aid at schools with lower per capita endowments than Exeter: Amherst: 58% receive financial aid, Dartmouth: 40-45%. MIT: 75%. Williams is 100% need blind as are most of the schools on the chart.

Given Exeter’s vast resources, why should we be impressed that they are trying to be need blind and that 35% of the kids there receive financial aid? Sure its probably better than most other private schools, but why are colleges with lower endowments and higher costs of attendance stepping up for a greater percentage of students? And we can probably ask the same of several other New England prep schools.

Diana, how about this sentence? 100% of the students at Cleveland (OH) East High School have never heard of Williams College, and the vast majority of them never will.

While we have a very active discussion on other topics going here, a few parts of the article stood out to me:

. “A lot of the affluent students have no consideration for the staff,” she says. “Even my friends wouldn’t look at me when I was in my apron.” After work, Cardona often went back to her room to sleep before getting up to study all night — a grueling routine she found necessary to keep up with classes.

This is somewhat different from my experience of Williams (and visits to Amherst, for that matter)– in the sense that I can’t imagine anyone I knew turning student dining workers into “invisibles.” I thus wonder if it is a perhaps a bit “overwritten”.

At the same time I have tried to express that the Williams Student Body sometimes treats staff very poorly– behavior for which I now have little tolerance. Mea culpa for certainly making such mistakes myself (I perhaps should not implicate my suitemates for badgering a Colonial Pizza driver about his job mobility, but the act occurred, and says a bit about assumptions we all can make).

I would not index such behavior by economic class, at least at Williams, but rather by manners and mores (Sittlichkeit).

Down there is what they call the Black Hole,” where mostly low-income minority students sit, he says. Over there, at the far end of the cafeteria, “is where the athletes congregate. You can’t walk over there unless you play a sport or know a lot of people. It’s an unspoken fiat, but it is very well-followed.”

Why? Again, the description is partially resonant of Williams, partially not. I could certainly point out the “black” table in Baxter, etc.; and that some friends wouldn’t necessarily approach people they didn’t know. I’m a social southerner; while no admirer of the party scene, I never hesitated to join a dinner table with an empty seat, and no negative experiences come to mind. Thus “you can’t walk over there unless you…” x, y, or z does not mesh with social reality to me– though perhaps with social perception.

I am suddenly thinking of a certain smart-alec one year at Berkeley’s International House, who spent his time making risque spoof films of the Administration and otherwise thought himself “the shit” (a substance frequently present in his videography). I once made the “mistake” of causually joining a few friends at “his table” and was greeted with “what do you think you’re doing?”

Without skipping a beat, I replied “Sitting down. What do you think you’re doing?” He had thought it was his table, “by fiat,” but it was not difficult to demonstrate (without really trying) that it was not. Is intentional exclusion going on above, or merely self-segregation?

Thus, in the above, I wonder what would happen if a black student simply walked over and said “hi?” Here at WKU, we have an historically black fraternity with a white president, and a historically all-white fraternity with a few black members. Why? Because the individuals cross the “barriers,” find friends, and fit in.

Which is my way of saying that the barriers traced above seem very artificial and self-imposed to me; or “socially fluid,” as they say over in “contemporary theory.” Want to change them? Change them. I’m sure some of Mr. Marx’s staff could spend some of their personal time walking back and forth between such communities, and taking people with them.

Which reminds me of my next task…

Finally, as a footnote, my approach to dining at Williams was a sort of mixture between making my rounds and the kind of anthropological journey Guy Creese forwards– excepting papers or finals, my minimum night was visiting two dining halls eating with two groups in each, and often a few more. Sure frustrated me in senior year, when Dining Services started programming the card readers to only allow you to enter one dining hall per meal.

And those were of course the days when I could sit with the Crewbies, and consume 6,000 calories a day without topping 160lbs. Speaking of things to miss…

diane:

Your list is a little misleading. All the schools you mention (except Wellesley) also have two to four to six times as many students as Williams, period. Wellesley (like the other womens colleges) is increasingly a safety school, more often than not, among the Exeter/Ivy crowd. The prep school crowd’s college lists tend to be very much rankings/prestige/tradition driven (I mean, how much thought can someone really have put into it when they apply to Columbia AND Dartmouth?), so of course Williams will take a back seat to the… reverent deep breath…IVIES!

anon:

I think the more progressive elite colleges have started to figure out that they need to reach out beyond the prep school minorities and get their hands dirty recruiting at public high schools (or at least write a check to Questbridge to do it for them). That’s what Marx is talking about at Amherst. Swarthmore’s admissions office has a policy now that one out of every three high school visits must be to a school with a large traditionally underrepresented population (minority and/or soc-ec). They’ve increased their public school percentage to 62% in this year’s freshman class.

I don’t think this is all philosophical nicey-nice. The demographic trends in the country show a declining college age population in New England with the growth in college applicants coming from regions with increasingly diverse populations. The colleges don’t want to wake up thirty years from now and find themselves an irrelevant 20th century anachronism.

I fear this will get lost at the bottom of this long thread, but for what it’s worth.

A story: Suppose you were building an armada. You had two choices:

1) Put all your best shipbuilders to work on the flagship. You then put all your best sailors on the flagship, with all the best cannons and your best captain. And then you throw together the rest of your fleet.

2) Spread your best shipbuilders around. Same with the cannons and the leadership and the sailors.

Your best ship is worse than before, surely, but the rest of your fleet is better.

I sense that nearly everyone in this thread is selecting a strategy based on idealogy. But no one has touched on why you are building an armada in the first place. Yes, Amherst plausibly becomes a worse school by the measures we typically use here. But does that make our country worse? Sure, put alot of smart people together and they all get smarter. But is the benefit even larger if we put less smart people together with smart people? Why and what for and no one has answered that yet.

If you really think you have a definitive answer to this problem, you are simply arrogant. If you think you are approaching a solution, then you are merely delusional.

Enjoy the banter, but you aren’t even touching anything meaningful.

Many people on this board have been going on and on about the wealth-SAT scores correlation assuming that test prep plays a large role. I agree that test prep on a national scale makes a huge difference, but does it also for a school like Williams? I’ve seen people boost scores from 1050-1200, or even from 1200-1350. I’ve never seen anyone boost an SAT score from 1450-1580, though. I don’t think test prep works well at all for the upper eschalons of scorers–the sorts of students who are candidates for Williams.

All I can offer are personal perceptions, but very few of my Williams friends took any sort of SAT prep courses. I personally neither took an SAT prep course nor went to a good high school. I think income makes a huge difference when you’re talking about good college candidates. I do think money will buy you admission (or a better chance at admission) to a lower 1st-tier school. I don’t think money will get you far when you’re looking at getting into a schools like Williams, Amherst, or Swarthmore.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my group of friends at Williams either is lying about not taking test prep courses, or is an anomoly at Williams. However, I would be that we’re typical, and that the majority of Williams student didn’t have essay counseling, test prep, or any of the sorts of income-related admissions advantages you’re assuming are inevitably tied to non low-income applicants.

currenteph:

How many times did most your friends at Williams take the PSATs and SATs combined? Three? Four? Five?

That is a luxury not afforded to kids at lower income schools, especially those who may not have a car or the parental involvement to show up at all those Saturday morning test sites.

I seem to recall checks totally several hundred dollars to the College Board by the time it was said and done.

HWC — I took one PSAT, one SAT (and I hadn’t eaten in 2 days or had water for 36 hours when I took the SAT), and didn’t have any prep courses for any standardized tests.

But that’s just me.

Article from the Record on this year’s admissions numbers. Touches on some of the issues addressed in this thread:

http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?view=article&section=news&id=7598

PSAT Twice (soph and junior year) 1550. SAT once (fall junior year). 1530. No prep. Legacy too. That must have been why I got in.

Full disclosure first: I am a current Amherst student, class of ‘07, who was told about this discussion by Diana, who is a friend of mine from Williams-Mystic.

Now, maybe nobody will read this because this is an old discussion, and a very long one.

But I am really glad that people outside of Amherst are talking about the article and Amherst’s plans because, whether you agree or not, the concept of extending the opportunities of an elite college education to a wider socioeconomic range of students requires more schools than just Amherst.

There are many, many things to say about Amherst’s plan, about the Business Week article, and the arguments that have been made here, but the important point is that you did not get the whole picture from that article. As might be expected, it is quite a sensationalized (Marx has been dispelling false rumors for the past week, and I know many of the students quoted and know that their backgrounds and sentiments were somewhat misrepresented) version of the report created by a faculty panel at Amherst. The report does suggest some seemingly radical changes, including multiple measures to encourage more students from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply to Amherst and to support those students once they matriculate.

For details, I suggest you read the actual report: http://www.amherst.edu/~cap/