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Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

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Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#361

Post by jessriedel »

macspoofing wrote: post #352
csa wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or if you don't have a full scholarship, Harvard tuition is not worth the degree and student loans you end up with. Ivy League schools are famously generous with financial aid. If the tuition cost is an issue for your family, odds are that you won’t be paying sticker price. It would not be uncommon for a typical “middle class” family (not upper middle class,…

>Ivy League schools are famously generous with financial aid. That requires quite a bit of qualification on your part. Ivy League schools will allocate a certain number of seats to allow those with the grades but without the means to attend the school. I guess that's generous, but let's not overstate this generosity. They need a lot more students paying full price. >If the tuition cost is an issue for your family, od…

> Ivy League schools will allocate a certain number of seats to allow those with the grades but without the means to attend the school.

Incorrect. All of the Ivies perform need-blind admissions for US citizens; they make an admissions decision without knowing whether the student will need financial aid (which is determined according to a formula). Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are furthermore need-blind for all non-American applicants, while the others look at need for a varying selections of non-American.

https://www.forsterthomas.com/admissionsconsultingblog/which...

Obviously, this is possible because they have huge endowments (they could do just fine charging zero tuition) and they know that statistically a large fraction of the admits will come from very wealthy families that will pay most/all of tuition.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#362

Post by Spivak »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #306
Spivak wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cramming for the test right at the end with SAT prep will add a few points but won’t do anything dramatic. But if you get put in the “honors” track of a lot of high schools where the name of the game is to teach material informed by the SAT, ACT, AP, and IB teats then you almost can’t help but do well since you’ve been cramming for 4 years.

It turns out actually learning the material on a test over the span of a few years helps you do well on the test. That used to be called getting an education.

Right! But the problem is that you don’t actually get much of an education along the way. You get a bunch of not super useful knowledge that you’ve almost surely forgotten and some test taking skills. This is the downfall of so many programs that teach to the test.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#363

Post by evanpw »

retortio wrote: post #233
MagnumOpus wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not wealthy donors Harvard's admission rate is 30% for "legacies" which make up one in six of their students, and even higher for donors. These are the kids who get in while being thick as a brick. The injustice is not primarily the black kid with 1400 SAT getting in over the east Asian kid with 1580 -- the injustice is the hundreds of CEOs/senators' kids being assured admission even being dumber than a sack of ham…

I would expect legacies to have a higher admission rate. They are a subpopulation coming from homes with intelligent parents, likely grew up in intellectually stimulating environments, and were probably focused on the Ivy League before many of their peers had even heard that term. There is definitely some application boost legacies get simply by virtue of being a legacy, but their applications are probably quite stro…

This should be easy to test, right? Look at the percentage of students admitted to Harvard whose parents went to Harvard vs. the percentage admitted whose parents went to some other similarly-selective school.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#364

Post by defen »

macspoofing wrote: post #359
defen wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. If you can't afford Harvard tuition it's free - e.g. if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. So yes, it's actually massively worth it if you can get in, because you graduate with no debt and have a name-brand diploma and access to an extremely well-connected group of people. It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier inst…

>Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. OK, but there are other places that provide scholarships. >if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. That's awesome for students from low-income families. I support it 100%! But let's be clear here, a family with a household income of $66k/year (up to, I don't know, $200k/year) cannot afford $85k/year tuition without the stude…

> But let's be clear here, a family with a household income of $66k/year (up to, I don't know, $200k/year) cannot afford $85k/year tuition without the student going into massive debt.

Click the link - "Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0-10% of their income, and those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10%, based on their individual circumstances"

Essentially nobody graduates from Harvard with a significant amount of debt.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#365

Post by RNCTX »

akyu wrote: post #115

I have a hard time understanding the logic here. GPAs are essentially useless, so what else do we have to go off of? "Hollistic admissions" processes seem to be even more skewed towards rich kids, as they have far greater opportunities outside of the class room to pad their resumes in exactly the way that colleges look for. This seems entirely backwards to me. If there is a systemic bias in test scores, it is still b…

The logic is they want to be less transparent because they have to find room for ever more legacy and donor-based admissions.

This will presumably be a lot easier to do without having to maintain a false sense of propriety in admissions.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#366

Post by jjoonathan »

webmaven wrote: post #283
wait_a_minute wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about those? Definitely not the new American left.

Classism may not be quite as "trendy" as racism or sexism right this minute, but I think you'll still find plenty of interest in the topic (and it's intersections with the others) on the left.

Yes, but people judge actions, not intentions.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#367

Post by csa »

macspoofing wrote: post #352
csa wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or if you don't have a full scholarship, Harvard tuition is not worth the degree and student loans you end up with. Ivy League schools are famously generous with financial aid. If the tuition cost is an issue for your family, odds are that you won’t be paying sticker price. It would not be uncommon for a typical “middle class” family (not upper middle class,…

>Ivy League schools are famously generous with financial aid. That requires quite a bit of qualification on your part. Ivy League schools will allocate a certain number of seats to allow those with the grades but without the means to attend the school. I guess that's generous, but let's not overstate this generosity. They need a lot more students paying full price. >If the tuition cost is an issue for your family, od…

All of this is untrue, and frankly it sounds like you are talking out of your ass.

1. Harvard (iirc, all Ivies) has need blind admissions. This is plastered all over their admissions materials. They want the best students period (edit: there are exceptions for international students at some schools).

2. None of the Ivies need the students to pay full price for tuition due to their endowments and other revenue streams. In fact, you would laugh if you saw how little undergrad tuition contributes to the school’s operating budget.

3. Scholarships are not the main source of free money. Most of the free money is in the form of need-based grants. Most (all?) of this grant money goes towards reducing all or part of the tuition cost.

4. For folks who come from modest means, loans and family contributions will be used almost exclusively for room, board, and miscellaneous expenses. The typical loan amount might surprise you by how low it is, and a 6-figure loan balance for an undergrad would be very unlikely (I’ve never heard of one, although they may exist).

Note that I am referring undergrad and not to graduate schools, especially professional schools... those are completely different.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#368

Post by [deleted] »

akyu wrote: post #115

I have a hard time understanding the logic here. GPAs are essentially useless, so what else do we have to go off of? "Hollistic admissions" processes seem to be even more skewed towards rich kids, as they have far greater opportunities outside of the class room to pad their resumes in exactly the way that colleges look for. This seems entirely backwards to me. If there is a systemic bias in test scores, it is still b…

[deleted]

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#369

Post by [deleted] »

filereaper wrote: post #31

I highly recommend watching the video by Scott Galloway on The College Implosion. [1] "Colleges have become luxury brands and are adopting a strategy of artificial scarcity to create irrational margins" There's a large movement right now where many are saying the large tuition fees for Zoom lectures aren't worth it. Colleges sell themselves for the experience and are a luxury lifestyle brand almost, but with covid th…

[deleted]

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#370

Post by honkycat »

not_a_moth wrote: post #120
filereaper wrote: post #31

I highly recommend watching the video by Scott Galloway on The College Implosion. [1] "Colleges have become luxury brands and are adopting a strategy of artificial scarcity to create irrational margins" There's a large movement right now where many are saying the large tuition fees for Zoom lectures aren't worth it. Colleges sell themselves for the experience and are a luxury lifestyle brand almost, but with covid th…

Anyone intimate with Germany's vocational training system, that's used as an alternative to college by approximately half of all graduating high school students? 2-3 years small salary vocational training straight out of HS at 1 of 400k participating companies in 1 of 400 role types. I want to know why implementing this isn't a national debate in US, it seems like such an obviously good idea.

The US is politically constipated. The people at the top do not want to help the people at the bottom at their expense, even though they have ALL of the power at this point.

They are not malicious, per se, but they don't explicitly care that a large portion of the population is becoming so abject that working in the amazon fulfillment gulags is their only option, and that public infrastructure is crumbling.

So when you ask: "Why doesn't the US do something GOOD for once?" The answer is: Oh, we want to. But our lords purse strings are too tight.

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