I don’t doubt practicing for the SAT helps your score. Practicing under the tutelage of a skilled instructor like yourself may be even better. Don’t you think, however, that ability and willingness to prepare for an exam is as much a predictor of college success as “intellect”? Do you think that high school grades or class rank are any less influenced by economic opportunities or more “equitable” than the SAT? (search for “does the SAT predict college success” in your favorite academic database – there’s a huge literature, you can find examples to cite either way. On balance from the ones I read, I am inclined to accept that SAT scores plus high school GPA is a better predictor of success than GPA alone)

I have been involved in grad school admissions before I came to Brandeis. It’s very useful to have GRE scores to refer to, especially for applicants from colleges with lesser name recognition (I know how to gauge the meaning of an “A” or a “B” from MIT; I don’t know what it means at Montana State). One could perhaps argue in that example that the standardized tests promote wider educational opportunities.

I’ll put this out there to start- I’m financing part of my education by working in the test prep industry. I teach SAT classes, and a major corporation pays me the big bucks to be a part of the system that gives advantages in admissions to those with money. People have paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a few hours in a classroom with me and a couple of practice tests. It’s insane, and every liberal/occasionally slightly socialist/hippie bone in my body screams against it, but it’s also the best damn paying job I can get in college, and as IP has discussed, Brandeis is damn expensive.

Test prep WORKS. And the colleges have no idea which students have had the advantage of test prep. My students have seen score increases as high as 100 points PER SECTION. That’s not something you can place with their intelligence- that’s all about their families’ ability to pay my company hundreds of dollars. Unless students are required to report every form of test prep they do, the SAT is not at all an equitable measure of anything relevant to college admissions. I’d love to see the SAT completely disappear, even if that meant I was out of a job.

I know the sampling is un-scientific but I’ve been doing alumni admissions interviews for years and I’ve yet to interview an applicant who had an alumnus for a parent.

I just don’t think that Brandeis has (yet?) that large multi-generational tradition that many other schools have. Case in point: Brandeis was not one of the ten schools to which my own college-bound son applied.

http://www.brandeis.edu/budgetandplanning/budgets.html

the categories are a bit vague, but since “returns from endowment” are indirect fruits of donations, the chunk from donors is at least 20%, perhaps more.

my point (2) was in reply to the statement in the post that said:

““Racial Diversity” usually means admitting African students instead of “African Americans” (instead of a good amount of both, you get a lot of one group disguised as another)”

In my experience that is not true at all, for the reason I gave in point 2.

as to point 3: I think pretty much all universities have some degree of legacy bias and preference for the rich and famous. I have no insider info about Brandeis admissions so I cannot comment on specifics. But where you say:

“I’m going to call Brandeis tomorrow and ask what percentage of their admissions is set aside for legacy admissions.”

I think that you will not get a meaningful answer. If you do, more power to you. So yeah, I do think the whole system is shady.

As far as tone goes – I always sound sarcastic, even when I’m not. I agree with the premise that the system is imperfect, but changing it will be hard.

What do you replace SATs with? grade point averages? those are very very hard to compare district to district. Do you want a portfolio of work? A Levels? the Baccalauréat? Do you judge solely on interviews and recommendations?

We agree for once.

your argument to point 1 is very convincing. Applicants should be judges blind of finances, parental contributions, race, religion, etc.

As to your points:

1. In 20-30 years, you may have kids and they may want to go to Brandeis. Do you think that your efforts on behalf of the school should influence their admission?

If my kids wouldn’t get in to Brandeis on their own, I don’t want them going here. There are so many good colleges out there, I don’t *need* them to go here.

Furthermore, how shallow would I be if I answered differently? Legacy admissions are wrong. They make a mockery of the meritocratic ideal. It wasn’t cool to discriminate against me because my parents didn’t (and couldn’t! They’re from Iran) go to Brandeis, and it still won’t be cool to discriminate against someone else’s kids because I did.

2. Foreigners don’t count as minorities in any meaningful way — to the extent that we apply for grants and the federal government wants to track minority recruiting, only US citizens and permanent residents count. A diverse student body is generally a good thing (assuming other variables held constant), but diversity of foreigners doesn’t help us raise money.

Sorry, I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at.

3. A sane admissions officer doesn’t keep or give out information on the details of legacy admissions / admission of kids of people with clout. If you do, bad things result (see http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/illinois-2/)

Again, I think I misunderstand you. The problem in that story was that the University of Illinois was acting horribly, not that they were caught. You seem to imply that similar things are happening at Brandeis.

Your line of argument as I understand it seems to be the same as Yahoo’s infamous defense: If the government responded to a FOIA request revealing their shameful practices, then they would be publically ridiculed and might lose customers.

The shame lies in politically motivated or legacy admissions, not in the revelations of said acts.

4. Wealthy donors, many of whom are alumni, fund much of the operation of the university. Are you ready to slash the budget of the university by 5, 10, 20 percent to achieve your goal of admissions equity? Are you willing to sell the art to achieve this? What else are you willing to forego?

The university hasn’t released the statistics on exactly how much different wealthy people are giving to the university, and what they’re getting in exchange. Until that happens, how can we make that sort of decision? We only have the implication of an anonymous person on the internet that it’s a bad tradeoff.

So, sorry, until the data is in, I don’t have enough information to agree with that critique.

That said, you’re right that we do face a tradeoff.

It’s obvious that money spent on educational enrichment (music lessons, individual coaching for sports, etc.) can (but does not always) improve performance, but it still requires effort on the part of the student. I live in a high-rent zipcode, my kids go to the public schools — not every rich kid is an overachiever.

We agree! It’s not that Universities are mendacious financial vampire squid; Brandeis sincerely wants to help people! However, being rich (almost by definition) opens doors, gives you opportunities, and gives you access to ways to invest to make your life better. We should be vigilant, is all.

6. It’s easy to complain about inequities. Seriously, *how* would you replace the current system?

There are clear, easy, measurable steps that Brandeis as an instituation could unilaterally take to become a leader in just admissions.

- Impressively, Brandeis already has some infrastructure in place to deal with these problems. TYP and POSSE being the most prominent. Instead of cutting these programs, we should expand them!

- There are other vectors for dealing with this problem. Like I mentioned previously, rolling back legacy and athletic are great, common-sense places to start.

-We can weigh the SAT less heavily and/or make it optional.

- Either abolish early admissions (in favor of early action), or make it easy for accepted students to reject the offer for admissions on grounds of insufficient financial aid.

Now, pursuing these policies alone won’t make Brandeis a leader – there are notable other schools doing so as well. However, pursuing all or most of these approaches will indeed show the world that Brandeis knows how it’s done.

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This article has some good ideas. This article examines historical evidence on how relying on exam scores in general is not the only way to go.

More on why the SAT system has serious flaws.

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Lastly, I know tone is hard to judge over the internet, so I’d like to thank you for speaking up, express joy at the cut and thrust of policy debate, and eagerness to engage and discuss this issue.

2. Foreigners don’t count as minorities in any meaningful way — to the extent that we apply for grants and the federal government wants to track minority recruiting, only US citizens and permanent residents count. A diverse student body is generally a good thing (assuming other variables held constant), but diversity of foreigners doesn’t help us raise money.

3. A sane admissions officer doesn’t keep or give out information on the details of legacy admissions / admission of kids of people with clout. If you do, bad things result (see http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/illinois-2/)

4. Wealthy donors, many of whom are alumni, fund much of the operation of the university. Are you ready to slash the budget of the university by 5, 10, 20 percent to achieve your goal of admissions equity? Are you willing to sell the art to achieve this? What else are you willing to forego?

5. It’s obvious that money spent on educational enrichment (music lessons, individual coaching for sports, etc.) can (but does not always) improve performance, but it still requires effort on the part of the student. I live in a high-rent zipcode, my kids go to the public schools — not every rich kid is an overachiever.

6. It’s easy to complain about inequities. Seriously, *how* would you replace the current system?

There are certainly studies that suggest this but they are far from conclusive and account for all variables. Remember correlation and causation are two different things.