Interesting news about Harvard admissions

This is sports-related, since recruited athletes at Harvard, who are mostly white, must make up a substantial number of the students described in this study.
“43% of Harvard’s white students are either recruited athletes, legacy students, on the dean’s interest list”—donors’ kids—“or children of faculty and staff. Three-quarters of these applicants would have been rejected” otherwise."
Surprisingly, it takes a British newspaper to break this story.
This is a link to the study cited in the newspaper story, but it has a paywall.
I'd be interested in similar statistics for Cornell and other Ivies. My guess is that while the percentages may vary from school to school, it would come to the same conclusions.

I'd like to hope that the percentage at Cornell are lower.

"Meanwhile in stark contrast, African American, Asian American and Hispanic students make up less than 16% of ALDC students."

16% of that population sounds closer to actual population levels than I would have expected.

Non-paywalled link to preprint of the study:

[public.econ.duke.edu]

43% of Harvard’s white students are either recruited athletes, legacy students, on the dean’s interest list”—donors’ kids—“or children of faculty and staff. Three-quarters of these applicants would have been rejected” otherwise.

But Harvard has a 5% acceptance rate. If you took Harvard's current class excluding athletes and legacies and applied the studies metrics, what percentage would be "rejected otherwise"?

" Additionally, there
is widespread concern about the “fairness” of college admissions. Applicants with greater
academic preparation and accomplishments expect to be admitted at higher rates relative to
less qualified applicants. "

OMFG!!! How dare they discriminate to prefer more qualified candidates!

Still reading, but I have already found two things that they did not control for:

1. Early Decision (which matters less at Hahvahd, since they have a non-binding Early Action) - My younger son was told that legacies are expected to apply early decision, since they should know if Cornell is the right place for them.

2. Athletic Department pre-screening - Saying that recruited athletes are almost guaranteed admission completely ignores the fact that admissions pre-screens recruited athletes, letting coaches know if they would be admitted before the application process is complete.

Thanks for pointer to the latest. There was an article in SLATE on the web dated Oct. 3rd, 2019, that covered a Judges opinion towards beginning of court case on the issue of Admissions ...

Havard Isn't Off the Hook - A federal court upheld affirmative action at the university. Now it needs to stop admitting so many legacies and athletes.

There is Harvard, for smart kids. And there is "Harvard," for rich kids.

This is true for every Ivy (even our beloved), but especially for HYP.

Trotsky
There is Harvard, for smart kids. And there is "Harvard," for rich kids.

This is true for every Ivy (even our beloved), but especially for HYP.

50+ years ago a Harvard alumnus visited my high school to talk with anyone who showed up and I came away with a few good lines. Someone asked about study abroad and the rep said that Harvard doesn't support study abroad. "We bring the best scholars in the world to Harvard, so there is no reason to go anywhere else." He also explained that 10% of the students will be in the bottom 10% of their class, which would be devastating to those who could get into Harvard based on academic prowess. The bottom 10% was therefore reserved for athletes and children of alumni.

seems like people want it both ways.. Do they only except the highest qualified kids? Do they except a mixed pool of kids? It like if you go to a HS that has no AP courses and you get to college and some kids come in with 15-20 credits is that fair?

upprdeck
seems like people want it both ways.. Do they only except the highest qualified kids? Do they except a mixed pool of kids? It like if you go to a HS that has no AP courses and you get to college and some kids come in with 15-20 credits is that fair?

A few weeks ago an in-law cousin whose son is applying to engineering schools spun a tale that I have been doubting. His son's top choice is Cornell with RPI a close second. (He has a Rensselaer Medal that at first meant 30k/yr off tuition but due to stalling on his part has been upped to 35k.)

We were talking about Cornell and I mentioned that I was amazed that the recent pictures of Cornell Chem E classes look to be 50/50 male/female. The dad stated that many engineering schools are attempting to get a 50/50 mix and that because of the application metrics Cornell is able to accept women as half of their incoming class.

Does anyone reading this know if this is true?

marty

upprdeck
seems like people want it both ways.. Do they only except the highest qualified kids? Do they except a mixed pool of kids? It like if you go to a HS that has no AP courses and you get to college and some kids come in with 15-20 credits is that fair?

A few weeks ago an in-law cousin whose son is applying to engineering schools spun a tale that I have been doubting. His son's top choice is Cornell with RPI a close second. (He has a Rensselaer Medal that at first meant 30k/yr off tuition but due to stalling on his part has been upped to 35k.)

We were talking about Cornell and I mentioned that I was amazed that the recent pictures of Cornell Chem E classes look to be 50/50 male/female. The dad stated that many engineering schools are attempting to get a 50/50 mix and that because of the application metrics Cornell is able to accept women as half of their incoming class.

Does anyone reading this know if this is true?

At least half women, I'm told by engineering school fundraiser. Times have changed.

marty
He has a Rensselaer Medal that at first meant 30k/yr off tuition but due to stalling on his part has been upped to 35k.

The offer was only $5000/yr back in 1993, IIRC. Man, even accounting for inflation, they're paying out serious money to Medal winners now.

I can tell you that back when I was applying to colleges, my cousin was a professor in the Harvard Business School. She told me that despite that fact, she had zero influence in getting me accepted. For the record, I didn't get accepted there.

Also for the record: I applied to Sucks simply so I could turn them down. Cornell was always my first choice, hands down.

Al DeFlorio

marty

upprdeck
seems like people want it both ways.. Do they only except the highest qualified kids? Do they except a mixed pool of kids? It like if you go to a HS that has no AP courses and you get to college and some kids come in with 15-20 credits is that fair?

A few weeks ago an in-law cousin whose son is applying to engineering schools spun a tale that I have been doubting. His son's top choice is Cornell with RPI a close second. (He has a Rensselaer Medal that at first meant 30k/yr off tuition but due to stalling on his part has been upped to 35k.)

We were talking about Cornell and I mentioned that I was amazed that the recent pictures of Cornell Chem E classes look to be 50/50 male/female. The dad stated that many engineering schools are attempting to get a 50/50 mix and that because of the application metrics Cornell is able to accept women as half of their incoming class.

Does anyone reading this know if this is true?

At least half women, I'm told by engineering school fundraiser. Times have changed.

My question is whether the 50/50 admission rate is achieved by preference given to women.

Scersk '97

marty
He has a Rensselaer Medal that at first meant 30k/yr off tuition but due to stalling on his part has been upped to 35k.

The offer was only $5000/yr back in 1993, IIRC. Man, even accounting for inflation, they're paying out serious money to Medal winners now.

Back in 1960, I don’t remember any financial inducement with the medal. I came instead to Cornell where tuition was about $1200 per year, among the highest in the country, and room and board another $1000.

George64
Back in 1960, I don’t remember any financial inducement with the medal. I came instead to Cornell where tuition was about $1200 per year, among the highest in the country, and room and board another $1000.

I'll call that number quite a bargain back then, I think. But inflation calculations are so very murky.

The Medal back in '93 also included a waiver of RPI's application fee, so of course I applied. Safety school, you know.

Still, I've always thought it was a pretty slick program. Why not try to "cherry" pick the math/science nerd of every high school in NYS?

David Harding
50+ years ago a Harvard alumnus visited my high school to talk with anyone who showed up and I came away with a few good lines. Someone asked about study abroad and the rep said that Harvard doesn't support study abroad. "We bring the best scholars in the world to Harvard, so there is no reason to go anywhere else."

I would suspect that hasn't been true for a while, since the entire Let's Go travel book series is written by current Harvard students. (My cousin was an editor during a summer in Ireland so I guess it wasn't technically a semester abroad.)

George64

Scersk '97

marty
He has a Rensselaer Medal that at first meant 30k/yr off tuition but due to stalling on his part has been upped to 35k.

The offer was only $5000/yr back in 1993, IIRC. Man, even accounting for inflation, they're paying out serious money to Medal winners now.

Back in 1960, I don’t remember any financial inducement with the medal. I came instead to Cornell where tuition was about $1200 per year, among the highest in the country, and room and board another $1000.

When I received the RPI medal as a high school junior in 1967 there was no mention of any benefits.

Scersk '97

George64
Back in 1960, I don’t remember any financial inducement with the medal. I came instead to Cornell where tuition was about $1200 per year, among the highest in the country, and room and board another $1000.

I'll call that number quite a bargain back then, I think. But inflation calculations are so very murky.

The Medal back in '93 also included a waiver of RPI's application fee, so of course I applied. Safety school, you know.

Still, I've always thought it was a pretty slick program. Why not try to "cherry" pick the math/science nerd of every high school in NYS?

Harvard just gave a book--about Harvard, of course--to the top male in the junior class at my high school. Not worth much toward tuition.

marty

upprdeck
seems like people want it both ways.. Do they only except the highest qualified kids? Do they except a mixed pool of kids? It like if you go to a HS that has no AP courses and you get to college and some kids come in with 15-20 credits is that fair?

A few weeks ago an in-law cousin whose son is applying to engineering schools spun a tale that I have been doubting. His son's top choice is Cornell with RPI a close second. (He has a Rensselaer Medal that at first meant 30k/yr off tuition but due to stalling on his part has been upped to 35k.)

We were talking about Cornell and I mentioned that I was amazed that the recent pictures of Cornell Chem E classes look to be 50/50 male/female. The dad stated that many engineering schools are attempting to get a 50/50 mix and that because of the application metrics Cornell is able to accept women as half of their incoming class.

Does anyone reading this know if this is true?

I can't answer the question, but want to note that my ChemE class (2009) was >50% female, so it's not necessarily a recent trend (at least for ChemE).

marty

Al DeFlorio

marty

upprdeck
seems like people want it both ways.. Do they only except the highest qualified kids? Do they except a mixed pool of kids? It like if you go to a HS that has no AP courses and you get to college and some kids come in with 15-20 credits is that fair?

A few weeks ago an in-law cousin whose son is applying to engineering schools spun a tale that I have been doubting. His son's top choice is Cornell with RPI a close second. (He has a Rensselaer Medal that at first meant 30k/yr off tuition but due to stalling on his part has been upped to 35k.)

We were talking about Cornell and I mentioned that I was amazed that the recent pictures of Cornell Chem E classes look to be 50/50 male/female. The dad stated that many engineering schools are attempting to get a 50/50 mix and that because of the application metrics Cornell is able to accept women as half of their incoming class.

Does anyone reading this know if this is true?

At least half women, I'm told by engineering school fundraiser. Times have changed.

My question is whether the 50/50 admission rate is achieved by preference given to women.

For how many years did engineering, architecture, graduate business, law and medical schools give "preference" to men?

Al DeFlorio
For how many years did engineering, architecture, graduate business, law and medical schools give "preference" to men?

Vet school is something like 4-1 women. It was even circa 1980.

Cornell Chronicle says, among top quarter of male and female vet wage-earners, men make $100,000 more than women. Not clear what the overall average is. [news.cornell.edu]

At the 2018 reunion the administration made a big deal about the incoming Engineering class be >50% women. Around the same time I read about a dean at Tufts, who was on the market for a university presidency, was getting kudos for raising the female share in Tuft’s engineering school to 15%. Then again, back in the day (1960s), IIRC, Cornell’s Engineering school had 5 women and the ratio of men to women overall was 6:1.

Swampy
At the 2018 reunion the administration made a big deal about the incoming Engineering class be >50% women. Around the same time I read about a dean at Tufts, who was on the market for a university presidency, was getting kudos for raising the female share in Tuft’s engineering school to 15%. Then again, back in the day (1960s), IIRC, Cornell’s Engineering school had 5 women and the ratio of men to women overall was 6:1.

The engineering class of 1965 had one woman, and her last name was Cornell.

[en.wikipedia.org]

Overall ratio:3.5 to 1

Engineering felt very male dominated in the early 80s. There was quite a bit of Hum Ec MRS degree husband-shopping.

Glad to see that shit's gone the way of a competitive Cornell football team.

Trotsky
Engineering felt very male dominated in the early 80s.

It was. My ChemE class was 15% women which was the highest percentage to date. Class of '83 was going all the way up to 20%!

Trotsky
Engineering felt very male dominated in the early 80s. There was quite a bit of Hum Ec MRS degree husband-shopping.

Glad to see that shit's gone the way of a competitive Cornell football team.

I look in the dictionary under spit take and there's your post.

[tda; thread drift alert] As for husband-shopping, there's a Princeton mother who generated waves in 2013 saying how important it was for her Princeton daughter to spend 4 years looking for a suitable life partner, and start freshman not junior or senior year because women't "shouldn't date younger."

Susan Patton Princeton '77 on don't-date-younger
"As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?"

[www.usatoday.com]

Swampy
At the 2018 reunion the administration made a big deal about the incoming Engineering class be >50% women. Around the same time I read about a dean at Tufts, who was on the market for a university presidency, was getting kudos for raising the female share in Tuft’s engineering school to 15%. Then again, back in the day (1960s), IIRC, Cornell’s Engineering school had 5 women and the ratio of men to women overall was 6:1.

The best engineering schools draw the most talented applicants and every person who gets in is more than qualified to do the work. That observation can also be made about Ivy League athletes: their SATs or ACTs may be fractionally lower than the incoming class average but still high enough that they can do the work. Plus the coaches do a better job, perhaps, than academic advisors in tracking how each player is doing throughout the year.

Jeff Teat was in the freakin' Arts College. You don't do that unless you're up to the work.

On the legacy point, I was always under the impression that legacy was only meaningful if the parent alumnus also wrote a big check, like 6 figures big. Anyone have any insight?

arugula
On the legacy point, I was always under the impression that legacy was only meaningful if the parent alumnus also wrote a big check, like 6 figures big. Anyone have any insight?

I don't know if that is true or not, but I do know that I have been meeting with applicants for many years on behalf of CAAAN. Most years, one or two of the students I meet with have some type of legacy connection to Cornell, although not always a parent. And most of the time, those applicants do not get in. Based on my conversations with those students, it's unlikely that any of them have come from families who have made major donations to Cornell. But I can tell you that being a legacy does not mean an applicant is a slam-dunk for being admitted.
To put this in context, on a given year I will meet with 10-15 students. Some years none of them are admitted. Most years, one might be.

arugula
On the legacy point, I was always under the impression that legacy was only meaningful if the parent alumnus also wrote a big check, like 6 figures big. Anyone have any insight?

I went to a dinner for legacies back when I was an undergrad in the early 90s. At that, a university official (I don’t recall if alumni relations or admissions or what) alleged that 90% of legacies would have been admitted even without the legacy connection. But what else would they tell a roomful of legacies, “you guys don’t really belong here”?

When I applied in 1989, they explicitly only asked if you had parents or grandparents with Cornell degrees, but then only provided 4 lines to fill in. It was tricky to fit all 6 names in there….

Doubt any legacy boost is dependent on a large family donation. Btw for the current freshman class, Cornell admitted only 8.7% of applicants, with a 64.3% yield.

I know people who who were legacies and children of faculty members (sometimes both) who did not get admitted. In those cases, Cornell often offers the guaranteed transfer option -- go somewhere else for a year and if you meet whatever the GPA threshold is we'll let you in as a sophomore. Do many other elite schools do that?

There are only a handful of schools that get more than half of admits on sign on. These are year-old stats from US News has only 24 schools with yields of >= 50%. A half-dozen are religious-affiliation schools or specialized (Gallaudet for hearing-impaired students) where you're probably not weighing multiple equal options.

SCHOOL (STATE)		       YIELD
Harvard University (MA)		82%
Stanford University (CA)	82%
Brigham Young University—Provo	81%
University of Chicago		81%
Massachusetts Institute of Tech	77%
Harding University (AR)		71%
Princeton University (NJ)	70%
University of Pennsylvania	70%
Yale University (CT)		69%
Dartmouth College (NH)		64%
Gallaudet University (DC)	63%
Columbia University (NY)	62%
Brown University (RI)		61%
Keiser University (FL)		61%
Yeshiva University (NY)		61%
Cornell University (NY)		60%
University of Notre Dame (IN)	58%
Georgia Southern University	56%
U of Texas—Rio Grande Valley	56%
Kennesaw State University (GA)	55%
Northwestern University (IL)	55%
Duke University (NC)		54%
William Carey University (MS)	50%

Yield is one metric that determines the pecking order of the nation's universities. It also may be why a good-not-great school rejects a too-qualified applicant, knowing they'll never matriculate, and low-acceptance rate is another metric.

dbilmes

arugula
On the legacy point, I was always under the impression that legacy was only meaningful if the parent alumnus also wrote a big check, like 6 figures big. Anyone have any insight?

I don't know if that is true or not, but I do know that I have been meeting with applicants for many years on behalf of CAAAN. Most years, one or two of the students I meet with have some type of legacy connection to Cornell, although not always a parent. And most of the time, those applicants do not get in. Based on my conversations with those students, it's unlikely that any of them have come from families who have made major donations to Cornell. But I can tell you that being a legacy does not mean an applicant is a slam-dunk for being admitted.
To put this in context, on a given year I will meet with 10-15 students. Some years none of them are admitted. Most years, one might be.

I spent over 20 years as a CAAAN committee chair, and my experience showed that alumni children needed to apply early decision for the legacy standing to make any impact. I also think that being an involved alumnus matters almost as much as being a big donor. If you graduate from Cornell, and the next time you think about your alma mater is when your kid applies, why do you think Cornell should preference your kid? However, if you donate, or participate in CAAAN or other CAA activities, then it makes sense that your child's legacy status is a thumb on the scale.

billhoward

Trotsky
Engineering felt very male dominated in the early 80s. There was quite a bit of Hum Ec MRS degree husband-shopping.

Glad to see that shit's gone the way of a competitive Cornell football team.

I look in the dictionary under spit take and there's your post.

[tda; thread drift alert] As for husband-shopping, there's a Princeton mother who generated waves in 2013 saying how important it was for her Princeton daughter to spend 4 years looking for a suitable life partner, and start freshman not junior or senior year because women't "shouldn't date younger."

Susan Patton Princeton '77 on don't-date-younger
"As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?"

[www.usatoday.com]

billhoward

Trotsky
Engineering felt very male dominated in the early 80s. There was quite a bit of Hum Ec MRS degree husband-shopping.

Glad to see that shit's gone the way of a competitive Cornell football team.

I look in the dictionary under spit take and there's your post.

[tda; thread drift alert] As for husband-shopping, there's a Princeton mother who generated waves in 2013 saying how important it was for her Princeton daughter to spend 4 years looking for a suitable life partner, and start freshman not junior or senior year because women't "shouldn't date younger."

Susan Patton Princeton '77 on don't-date-younger
"As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?"

[www.usatoday.com]

Ms. Patton doesn't say where her spouse went to school. Maybe from experience she knows whereof she speaks.

Of course, there's always grad school. True, if one accepts her gendered-ageist assumptions, grad school expands the field even more for men. Then again, those in grad school (men or women) always can harvest from the faculty.

Swampy

billhoward

Trotsky
Engineering felt very male dominated in the early 80s. There was quite a bit of Hum Ec MRS degree husband-shopping.

Glad to see that shit's gone the way of a competitive Cornell football team.

I look in the dictionary under spit take and there's your post.

[tda; thread drift alert] As for husband-shopping, there's a Princeton mother who generated waves in 2013 saying how important it was for her Princeton daughter to spend 4 years looking for a suitable life partner, and start freshman not junior or senior year because women't "shouldn't date younger."

Susan Patton Princeton '77 on don't-date-younger
"As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?"

[www.usatoday.com]

Ms. Patton doesn't say where her spouse went to school. Maybe from experience she knows whereof she speaks.

Of course, there's always grad school. True, if one accepts her gendered-ageist assumptions, grad school expands the field even more for men. Then again, those in grad school (men or women) always can harvest from the faculty.

Aha! Just as I thought:

Susan A. Patton, Princeton 1977
"My husband was not a Princetonian, but my best friend is."

After 27 years together, Patton and her ex-husband finalized their divorce last month. “He went to a school of almost no name recognition,” she said, declining to name the institution. “Almost no name recognition. A school that nobody has respect for, including him, really.”

Hummmmm. I wonder what role her "best friend" played in her divorce.

nshapiro
I spent over 20 years as a CAAAN committee chair, and my experience showed that alumni children needed to apply early decision for the legacy standing to make any impact. I also think that being an involved alumnus matters almost as much as being a big donor. If you graduate from Cornell, and the next time you think about your alma mater is when your kid applies, why do you think Cornell should preference your kid? However, if you donate, or participate in CAAAN or other CAA activities, then it makes sense that your child's legacy status is a thumb on the scale.

You’re right, service to Cornell does count. A lot. And <sniff> two-plus decades of various service to Cornell, the magazine, my class ... is for naught when your kid bypasses Cornell and applies to <sob> BU because he believed their hotel school has more hotels to work at in town.

When he was accepted, our son got a solicitation call from the dean of the BU school who was a Hobart undergrad / lax team manager same era as me and we reminisced about both being there in Geneva the day Hobart fans pelted Cornell with beer bottles and (I am imagining some Harvard hockey story?) perhaps also fish. That ticked off coach Richie Moran no end -- well, your players maybe getting hurt would have that effect -- and while it may not have ended alcohol in the stadium, it did end the practice of rolling filled kegs into the stadium, as well as playing lax in Geneva for a while.

And before I handed the phone to Greg, the dean at BU said the nicest thing to me about Greg's likely career arc from what he knew, and he said it in an uplifting fashion: "It sounds like school will not get in the way of your son's education, as it didn’t for me."

billhoward

nshapiro
I spent over 20 years as a CAAAN committee chair, and my experience showed that alumni children needed to apply early decision for the legacy standing to make any impact. I also think that being an involved alumnus matters almost as much as being a big donor. If you graduate from Cornell, and the next time you think about your alma mater is when your kid applies, why do you think Cornell should preference your kid? However, if you donate, or participate in CAAAN or other CAA activities, then it makes sense that your child's legacy status is a thumb on the scale.

You’re right, service to Cornell does count. A lot. And <sniff> two-plus decades of various service to Cornell, the magazine, my class ... is for naught when your kid bypasses Cornell and applies to <sob> BU because he believed their hotel school has more hotels to work at in town.

When he was accepted, our son got a solicitation call from the dean of the BU school who was a Hobart undergrad / lax team manager same era as me and we reminisced about both being there in Geneva the day Hobart fans pelted Cornell with beer bottles and (I am imagining some Harvard hockey story?) perhaps also fish. That ticked off coach Richie Moran no end -- well, your players maybe getting hurt would have that effect -- and while it may not have ended alcohol in the stadium, it did end the practice of rolling filled kegs into the stadium, as well as playing lax in Geneva for a while.

And before I handed the phone to Greg, the dean at BU said the nicest thing to me about Greg's likely career arc from what he knew, and he said it in an uplifting fashion: "It sounds like school will not get in the way of your son's education, as it didn’t for me."

Funny, my son went to BU, and his roommate was studying in BU's hotel school. The roommate had been rejected by Cornell but hoped by doing well at BU he could transfer. I don't know what happened to him.

Al DeFlorio

The engineering class of 1965 had one woman, and her last name was Cornell.

[en.wikipedia.org]

There was a lone women engineering student from roughly the same era, so maybe it was Ms. Cornell, who drove a British racing green MG. I remember, because I coveted, but never owned one. Anyhow, one day her car was parked in front of Carpenter Library, where a group of engineering students lifted it and put it between two of the stone piers, so snug, it couldn’t be driven out. A great stunt, only eclipsed by the pumpkin atop Libe Tower.

arugula
On the legacy point, I was always under the impression that legacy was only meaningful if the parent alumnus also wrote a big check, like 6 figures big. Anyone have any insight?

Yes. It's wealth, not legacy status per se. A rich non-legacy who writes a big enough check also gets their braindead spawn in.

No doubt the university has a suitably self-serving rationale for this. My favorite was Harvard's excuse for not admitting Jews in the 1920s. "We of course would love to, but our job is to educate the leaders of tomorrow and because of the rest of the country's antisemitism, Jews won't be those leaders so we are sadly forced to deny them entry."

Ivy hypocrisy is evergeen. At least we're slightly better than the other 7. The People's Ivy & etc.

tldr: cook the rich alive, slowly, on a spit. Except my personal rich friends, of course. They are the meretricious exceptions.

Swampy
Funny, my son went to BU, and his roommate was studying in BU's hotel school. The roommate had been rejected by Cornell but hoped by doing well at BU he could transfer. I don't know what happened to him.

I never would have considered BU in high school and now I wouldn't get in. BU is now in the top 50 universities per WSJ, ahead of BC, which must annoy the people on Chestnut Hill. Some of the credit must go to BU president John Silber, who annoyed both the students and faculty, suggesting some of them weren't very good and weren't working very. The faculty were outraged, but it's unclear if the reason was because Silber was wrong, or because he was right. He certainly was a difficult person to deal with. Perhaps on par with Elon Musk.

Trotsky
tldr: cook the rich alive, slowly, on a spit. Except my personal rich friends, of course. They are the meretricious exceptions.

Meretricious is a fabulous word; many people think it has something to do with merit. As opposed to "appealing, flashy, no real value/integrity." My boss at PCMag upon leaving a previous job told his then-boss she was one of the most meretricious people he'd met. The moment he left her office, she looked it up. It went from bad (definition) to worse (archaic definition): "characteristic of or relating to a prostitute."

Weder
I know people who who were legacies and children of faculty members (sometimes both) who did not get admitted. In those cases, Cornell often offers the guaranteed transfer option -- go somewhere else for a year and if you meet whatever the GPA threshold is we'll let you in as a sophomore. Do many other elite schools do that?

I remember a piece by John Marcham '50, then the editor/publisher of Cornell Alumni News, and son Prof Fred Marcham PhD '26, when his son was not accepted by Cornell.

billhoward

Trotsky
tldr: cook the rich alive, slowly, on a spit. Except my personal rich friends, of course. They are the meretricious exceptions.

Meretricious is a fabulous word; many people think it has something to do with merit. As opposed to "appealing, flashy, no real value/integrity." My boss at PCMag upon leaving a previous job told his then-boss she was one of the most meretricious people he'd met. The moment he left her office, she looked it up. It went from bad (definition) to worse (archaic definition): "characteristic of or relating to a prostitute."

The Times does not acknowledge an error.

Still, put me in your wills.