More on Amherst Dean of Admissions Tom Parker ‘69:

Since [President Anthony] Marx came along, Parker has been speaking out about a virtually taboo subject: how top universities already bend their standards for all kinds of kids. There are the affirmative action programs for minorities, which most elite schools still run. There are also so-called legacy admits, for whom Amherst reserves roughly 10% of its seats, says Parker. Alumni kids get red-carpet treatment, often including a personal audience with Parker. Yet they rank as twos, on average, he says — meaning that some score three or less and wouldn’t be admitted on their academic credentials alone. But top universities simply can’t ignore legacy donations. “The way you finance a place like this is with alumni contributions,” says Parker.

Comments:

1) Affirmative action programs which “most elite schools still run.” What is with the “most”? I can’t think of a single elite school that does not practice affirmative action for URMs. Should we trust what the writer tells us on other “facts” when she gets this one so wrong?

2) Amherst reserves (precisely?) 10% of the seat for legacies? Interesting. Recall that Williams has approximately 12% legacies for many years. I think that the increasing ratio of graduates to students since the doubling of the size of the college 30 years ago means that legacies today are much more qualified than they were 20 years ago. The fact that Amherst has an explicit 10% quota make it more plausible that Williams does the same. I bet that the international quota of 6% was set to be exactly half of the legacy quota, if there is one.

3) It is not clear if legacy applicants or legacy enrollees have AR 2 on average. I think it is enrollees. I heard from a fellow representative at a college fair last fall that the average SAT score for Amherst legacy accepted students was, like Williams, very high. We have done the math on this before. Short answer is that legacies get some special preference, but nowhere near what URMs and tip athletes receive.

4) Parker knows, and should admit, the fund-raising provides a very tenuous rational for legacy preferences. Consider the current campaign at Williams. Note (page 2) how $200 million out of the $400 million in total money is projected to come from 20 donors. (These families and ones like them get special admission advantages, whether or not they are legacies.) Note the 20,000+ donors (almost all alums) who give less than $100,000. None of these donors matter much to the overall health of the campaign. As long as the College takes care of the big donors, its financial health is not significantly impacted by legacy preferences or the lack thereof.

Recall our post, from Michael Lewis, on this topic in the context of Harvard.

But here’s the rub: Unless they fork over a sensationally huge pile of dough, donors are unlikely to get anything in return from Harvard. A few thousand bucks is unlikely to impress anyone. Even 50 grand won’t improve their children’s odds. (The Harvard application from the legacy whose parents have given less than millions goes into the same pile as the one from the legacy whose parents have given nothing.)

The issues of preferences for big donors (alum and not) is a largely separate issue from those for alums who give less than $1 million. Parker does a disservice by conflating the two.

I am drawn to the article on Amherst President Marx like a rugger to beer.

The centerpiece of Marx’s crusade is to change what happens in the converted 19th century farmhouse where Amherst’s 14 admissions officers work. Marx is convinced that the process is stacked against poor kids. But changing that threatens the entire admissions rationale of elite colleges. The key issue: how much to lower academic credentials. Amherst got to No. 2 in the rankings in part because of its incoming students’ stellar grades and test scores. Those factors are just one part of college rankings, so Amherst might slip only a few spots if other selective colleges don’t follow its lead. Still, that could hurt. “If Marx lets in more low-income kids, he’s going to risk his school’s reputation,” cautions Anthony Carnevale, a senior fellow at the National Center on Education & the Economy.

Letting in smart low-income kids does nothing to Amherst’s reputation (except to improve it). Letting in not-so-smart low-income kids has the potential to be devastating to that reputation.

Bringing in more low-income kids would require added compromise. To meet Marx’s 25% goal, Amherst would have to take more threes [on a 1-7 scale], says Parker, meaning those who may have straight As but SATs as low as 1360. Even though Amherst already does so for minorities, legacies, and athletes, faculty members are worried. “This could be a radical departure that fundamentally changes the character of our institution,” warns physics professor David Hall, who heads the Faculty Committee on Admissions & Financial Aid.

Hall is right to be worried. If you think that, on average students with 1360 SATs do as well as though with 1560s, then you don’t know what you are talking about. People like Marx like to tell stories about specific students who come to Amherst with low scores and then thrive, winning academic awards, writing excellent theses, being named to Phi Beta Kappa. And such stories are certainly true. But they do not represent the average result. In fact, the typical academic performance of 3s is certainly worse than that for 1s, even during senior year (by which time any disadvantage in terms of preparation should have been alleviated).

The only way to meaningfully increase the percentage of students from the bottom quarter of the income distribution is to admit a bunch of applicants that you currently reject, applicants that are not as academically talented/focused as your other students.

Marx hopes to ease such concerns by finding more top-notch low-income applicants. Certainly, many students have never even heard of Amherst. So Marx is asking his admissions officers to visit more low-income high schools. And he’s enlisting Amherst students in a tele-mentoring program in which they walk seniors from those schools through the college application process. Marx also started using QuestBridge, a Palo Alto (Calif.) nonprofit that has enlisted 8,000 high school teachers to identify talented low-income students for elite colleges.

More delusions! But, of course, it depends on what you mean by “top-notch.” There are thousands of low income students with, say, 1250 SATs and high school grades to match who would love to come to Amherst, especially for free. Let them all in and Amherst will be a different place.

Although the competition for talented low income students is not as tough as that for URMs or helmet sport athletes, it is getting there. Does Marx really think that more visits to bad high schools are going to help? Amherst (and Williams) might be able to accomplish something on the margin, convincing a smart low income kid that she is better off at an LAC than at an Ivy. But the tyranny of numbers remains. There are just not enough low income applicants to go around, just as there are not enough URMs and hockey players. Amherst might be able to steal a couple from its competitors, but not enough to meaningfully change the overall distribution.

Unless, that is, Marx succeeds in changing the admissions criteria in use. If I were a Amherst faculty member, I would be worried.

The article on Amherst President Marx does a good job of illustrating how radical he really is.

Since Marx, now 46, took over in 2003 as Amherst’s youngest president ever, he has waged a ceaseless crusade to make the college a leader in welcoming more lower-income students.

We are all in favor of making Amherst (and Williams) more welcoming, for rich and poor, dark purple and light purple, foreign and domestic. Yet Marx is after much more. Rant continues below.

(more…)

Fascinating, must-read article on Tony Marx’s campaign to remake Amherst. (Hat tip to an anonymous Eph parent.)

When Marx finally met the [presidential search] committee, he made an impassioned appeal. Elite U.S. colleges such as Amherst, he said, are perpetuating deep inequalities in American society. They equate success with serving the privileged elite and have largely abandoned talented youth from poor families, he charged. This deepens the country’s growing class divisions and exacerbates the long-term decline in economic and social mobility. Feeling he had nothing to lose since he hadn’t sought the job, Marx exhorted the trustees to tackle the problem head-on. “I’m not interested in being a custodian over a privileged place,” he remembers telling the gathering of wealthy alums and academic stars that day.

There are lots of amazing details here. More later. In the meantime:

1) Whenever I get frustrated with Morty, I should just step back and thank my lucky aim-high stars that we are not stuck with Marx. He would drive me nuts.

2) Does this mark the start of the downfall of Amherst? 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. (Actually, the story is more complex than that, but let’s save it for another day.) This may or may not be moral. It may or may not improve the quality of the education at Amherst. But it seems inevitable that it will reduce Amherst’s ranking, at US News and elsewhere. Right now, Williams and Amherst split 50/50 in head-to-head competition over students. I would predict that if Amherst’s academic selectivity goes down far enough, Williams’ winning percentage will increase.

If, in a decade, Williams worries as much about competition from Amherst as it does today about competition from Wesleyan, the reason will certainly be Anthony Marx’s egalitarian notions of merit and higher education.