haute math

12:43 pm January 24th, 2003




			Sisyphus Shrugged - haute math Lasciate ogni speranza and put your feet up.

jmhm


	haute math
	William F Buckley in the Times: The dean of admissions at Harvard, William Fitzsimmons, has defended so-called legacy allowances with heroic attention to data. He told The Wall Street Journal that he read personally "all applications from children of alumni," which last year amounted to (an astonishing) 727. How heavy was the edge given to these applicants? Oh, not much: The average SAT score of legacies admitted is just two points below the school's overall average. But how does he justify any preferment at all? Well, alumni recruit students, raise money and "often bring a special kind of loyalty and enthusiasm for life at the college that makes a real difference in the college climate," he said. What he didn't add, from the same article in the Wall Street Journal he's quoting without attribution: Sons and daughters of graduates make up 10% to 15% of students at most Ivy League schools and enjoy sharply higher rates of acceptance. Harvard accepts 40% of legacy applicants, compared with an 11% overall acceptance rate. Princeton took 35% of alumni children who applied last year, and 11% of overall applicants. The University of Pennsylvania accepts 41% of legacy applicants, compared with 21% overall. At Notre Dame, about 23% of all students are children of graduates. ... Although universities have always paid special attention to their alumni, the legacy preference was formalized early last century, in some cases partly to limit enrollment of Jews. Today, the practice often has that effect on other groups. At the University of Virginia, 91% of legacy applicants accepted on an early-decision basis for next fall are white; 1.6% are black, 0.5% are Hispanic, and 1.6% are Asian. Among applicants with no alumni parents, the pool of those accepted is more diverse: 73% white, 5.6% black, 9.3% Asian and 3.5% Hispanic. and this woodnote wild from the Michigan case: One of those students, Patrick Hamacher, was turned down by Michigan despite having a legacy preference. An earlier version of Michigan's legacy preference had boosted his 2.9 high-school grade-point average to 3 for purposes of considering him. The suit that he and co-plaintiff Jennifer Gratz filed asks for the elimination of race as a factor in admissions at the university. But Mr. Hamacher says he actually doesn't think Michigan should consider either race or parentage in its admissions. He is now a graduate of another university, Michigan State. So the student who's suing was willing to get in ahead of more qualified applicants. Funny we didn't hear that earlier... The average SAT of legacies admitted at Harvard is two points lower than that of the average student admitted which number includes the legacies? Take out the legacy scores from the average and tell me how the average legacy stacks up to that number. Better yet, let's talk mean scores. Better yet, how about Mr. Buckley go back to the Dartmouth Review where his kind of reasoning is more at home.

ahhhs. -- hmmm?


	Comments

From: gopherbomb	Date: January 24th, 2003 10:29 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)

I think it's just wise policy. After all, those poor sons and daughters attending on Harvard legacies have endured years of being perceived as total pricks by the ignorant, unwashed majority.

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From: (Anonymous)	Date: January 24th, 2003 07:07 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
Elementary math problem

The average SAT of legacies admitted at Harvard is two points lower than that of the average student admitted which number includes the legacies?
Take out the legacy scores from the average and tell me how the average legacy stacks up to that number.

Jeez, it ain't that difficult to compute! All the necessary information is there.

If legacies comprise 40% of all students, and the average score, S_L, of the legacies is 3 points lower than the average score, S_ALL, among all, then the average score of the other 60% of the students, S_O is 5 points higher than that of the legacies.

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	From: jmhm	Date: January 25th, 2003 06:11 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Elementary reading problem

Ah, but legacies aren't forty percent of all students. Legacies are ten to fifteen percent of students. Forty percent is the number of applying legacies who get in.

I'm not a math expert, but it does seem to me that you would need to know the number of legacies applying and the total number of students accepted at least to figure this out.

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From: (Anonymous)	Date: January 25th, 2003 10:26 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
Re: Elementary reading problem

Easy enough- simple google search says that 19520 (http://ivysuccess.com/harv.html) applied in fall 2001 (admitted for 2002, class of 2006). 11% were admitted, meaning about 2147 total. 727 of the applications were legacy, and 40% were admitted, giving 291 legacy admits, leaving 1856 non-legacy admits. Doing the math above, that means the average for the non-legacies was 2.3 points higher than the legacies and 0.3 points higher than the total average. Not much difference.

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	From: jmhm	Date: January 25th, 2003 10:57 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: Elementary reading problem

You're extrapolating the admissions data, then assuming that he's referring to the past year when he gives his figures?

I'm not sure that's how it works.

(although why the people who have the best access to state-of-the-art coaching, which is known to raise scores hundreds of points, should have lower SATs at all confuses me deeply.

You aren't just a tiny bit chagrinned about the elementary mistake you made in your first peremptory comment?

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From: (Anonymous)	Date: January 25th, 2003 11:24 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
Re: Elementary reading problem

You don't need to be a math expert. This is elementary algebra.

Let S be the average score of all admittees. Let S_L be the average score of the Legacy admittees, and S_O be the average score of the Other (non-legacy) admittees.

We are told that the Legacy admittees comprise a fraction f of the total. So the Other admittees comprise a fraction (1-f) of the total.

We are also told that the average score of the Legacy admittees is d points lower than the average of all admittees, ie

S = S_L + d

From the definition of "average", we also have the relation

f S_L + (1-f) S_O = S

Putting these together, we get

S_O= S_L + d/(1-f)

I gave the example of f=0.4 and d=3, but you can plug any numbers in you want.

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	From: jmhm	Date: January 25th, 2003 11:33 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: Elementary reading problem

I'm sure that's a marvellous solution to whatever problem you think you're solving, but what you consistently fail to recognize that you don't have the information that you think you do.

See, the nice man _parsed_ his information in such a way that _one would think_ that you had enough information.

You don't.

Cheers.

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From: (Anonymous)	Date: January 25th, 2003 07:05 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
but

The thing is, if you read anything about the admissions process of a school like Harvard, they always emphasize that SAT scores are not the be-all and end-all. They don't want a lot of kids with 1600 SATs who don't do anything, they say; if you can play c ello real good, or you're a Westinghouse Talent Search winner, or blah blah blah (not to mention if the volleyball team needs someone at a certain position), you'll get in over someone with higher scores.

D'you think that legacies have to play the violi n to get in?

Matt Weinert

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