Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
theatlantic.com
Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
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Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
#2The principle that you should not be penalized by the family you are born into would also prohibit racial preferences, but I don't see that addressed in the article.
Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
#3So long as admissions are not solely test based (like in many countries) then it will be gamed. The 2019 college admissions bribery scandal is the tip of the iceberg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber...
There are also other ways of getting easier admission to selective schools in the US by saying you are for example Native American.
Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
#4>The year I arrived, Hopkins had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). Now those numbers are reversed—3.5 percent of students in this year’s freshman class have a legacy connection to the university, and 19.1 percent are Pell-eligible
This change happened in five years. Such a policy change would be extremely popular. For proponents of race-based affirmative action, this would serve as somewhat of a proxy due to the correlation between race and class. For opponents, removing legacy preferences makes admissions more meritocratic.
The only groups with something to lose are (i) mediocre children of alumni, and (ii) the university's endowments if alumni decrease their donations. I don't believe (i) is a strong factor in a university's calculations, which leaves (ii). I believe universities are happy to see the public fighting about race-based affirmative action: indeed, dividing and pitting the low- and middle-income groups against each other over their limited subset of the pie, means they will not be working together to increase their overall share of the pie.
(I think this issue could and should be considered orthogonal to race-based affirmative action. Race-based AA was never put on a stable enough legal footing and will continue to bounce back and forth in the courts until it's resolved, while this could be resolved quickly and uncontroversially.)
Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
#5>The year I arrived, Hopkins had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). Now those numbers are reversed—3.5 percent of students in this year’s freshman class have a legacy connection to the university, and 19.1 percent are Pell-eligible This change happened in five years . Such a policy change would be extremely popular. For proponents of…
It would be interesting to study the effect of this on donations and the endowment. There should be some measurable effect. Additionally, if there is an effect on donations and the endowment, it would be interesting to study the effect that that change has on endowment payouts. Does lower donations, due to lower legacy admissions result in less funds for University operations?
Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
#6>The year I arrived, Hopkins had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). Now those numbers are reversed—3.5 percent of students in this year’s freshman class have a legacy connection to the university, and 19.1 percent are Pell-eligible This change happened in five years . Such a policy change would be extremely popular. For proponents of…
It would be interesting to study the effect of this on donations and the endowment. There should be some measurable effect. Additionally, if there is an effect on donations and the endowment, it would be interesting to study the effect that that change has on endowment payouts. Does lower donations, due to lower legacy admissions result in less funds for University operations?
I haven't heard of studies on this but I would say the effect is potentially huge. For instance, just going by numbers of legacy admits at Harvard: www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-class-is-more-than-one-third-legacy.html
And any natural experiment that could have been done due to JHU's change was probably messed up by the largest donation to a university, ever: www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/us/michael-bloomberg-johns-hopkins-donation.html
Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
#7The principle that you should not be penalized by the family you are born into would also prohibit racial preferences, but I don't see that addressed in the article.
The article doesn't seem to have anything to do with the "principle that you should not be penalized by the family you are born into".
Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
#8>The year I arrived, Hopkins had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). Now those numbers are reversed—3.5 percent of students in this year’s freshman class have a legacy connection to the university, and 19.1 percent are Pell-eligible This change happened in five years . Such a policy change would be extremely popular. For proponents of…
It would be interesting to study the effect of this on donations and the endowment. There should be some measurable effect. Additionally, if there is an effect on donations and the endowment, it would be interesting to study the effect that that change has on endowment payouts. Does lower donations, due to lower legacy admissions result in less funds for University operations?
My single datum indicates it results in a 100% drop in donations from families with a rejected student.
Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
#9The principle that you should not be penalized by the family you are born into would also prohibit racial preferences, but I don't see that addressed in the article.
When deeply accustomed to privilege, attempts to restore merit often present as penalty.
Removing legacy preference in favor of merit is not penalization.
The article does not advocate admission based on racial preference. It does point out that a level playing field allows more applications of merit from races that would traditionally be displaced.
Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins
#10So long as admissions are not solely test based (like in many countries) then it will be gamed. The 2019 college admissions bribery scandal is the tip of the iceberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber... There are also other ways of getting easier admission to selective schools in the US by saying you are for example Native American.
Enough people falsely believe they are Native American - the "Cherokee princess" myth; http://www.native-languages.org/princess.htm - that I can't believe that simply saying one is Native American is enough to get easier admission.
Here's how I envision it. I write in my essay that "I'm proud that I'm part Native American. My grandmother told me that her great-grandmother was Cherokee. My ancestors were forced off their land, and I think that's a tragedy.", etc.
Admissions officer reads it, rolls eyes, then plops it into the rejection pile.
Do you have something more substantial in mind than just "saying" to get easier admission?