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How to get your kid into a better college
The only out-of-school activity that increased the likelihood of a student ending up enrolled at an elite college was parental [sic] visits to art museums.
That is correlation, not causation, but I believe you can thread out the implied lessons. Read more here. How about this?
Two types of participation made it more likely students would end up at elite colleges: yearbook or school newspapers and “hobby clubs.” ...Numerous activities had no apparent impact on whether or not students will end up in college — elite or otherwise. School plays, interscholastic individual sports, intramurals, cheerleading, academic honor societies, public service clubs — no impact is clear from any of them.
Here is one author's home page, full of fascinating material. Here is the other guy. What do you all think of these results?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 2, 2006 at 03:51 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
If a parents activities have more impact upon acceptance to elite colleges, coule this be a form of institutional knowledge, not taught, but passed down, generation to generation?
Posted by: elambend at Jun 2, 2006 7:40:08 AM
This depends a lot on how you define "elite" college i.e. Berkeley vs. Ivy League.
Note as well the list above doesn't mention "interscholastic team sports." And it only refers to participation, not to excellence. It's pretty clear the Ivies give heavy preferences to people capable of interscholastic Ivy-level competition in both individual and team sports. The same goes for real evidence of talent in music, acting, debate, etc -- do you think Princeton admitted Brooke Shields for her math SAT scores?
The point I would take from this study is that resume-padding participation doesn't matter -- real commitment and real ability do.
Posted by: DK at Jun 2, 2006 8:28:28 AM
Here in Australia it's pretty much your grades only that get you into university. Recently I heard an
advertisment on the radio for a private school that has no sport or extra-curricular activites. The idea
being that these are distractions that just get in the way of getting good grades. Personally I think the
U.S. would be better off if it were more like Australia in this reguard, but that's just me.
Posted by: Ronald Brak at Jun 2, 2006 9:36:56 AM
Are the number of trips to museums known to the university? All other variables (i.g., sports) is probably included in transcripts etc. Is there a SES indicator?
Posted by: dave at Jun 2, 2006 10:57:28 AM
I think I agree mostly with DK. Here's my alteration in the discussion: you can be neither terribly talented or terribly committed and participate in the activities that had no effect, but to do something as thankless and tedious as the yearbook and school paper, you have to at least have commitment. As for the 'hobby' groups (and yearbook/school paper, to a lesser extent), could these be an issue of sample selection (i.e., only talented geeks apply?)?
Posted by: hamilton at Jun 2, 2006 11:00:48 AM
What about autocorrelation? It seems something like an academic honor society is correlated with G.P.A. (another likely variable) since studious students would be more likely to be members.
Second point, it may be worthwhile to look at financial aid offerings (while controlling for race, ethnicity, income). Two 3.0, 28 ACT students may end up at the same university, but the student active in extra-cirricular activities may receive more scholarships for volunteer work.
Posted by: Tom at Jun 2, 2006 11:51:11 AM
>>“A chance mention of the new Bertolucci film or the Ruscha show at the Whitney may tip an applicant from one pile to another,” the authors write.<<
Let's make it known that it's name-dropping, and not art museum attendance, per se, that leads to the high admissions rate. The last think I need is a bunch of bored, giggling, resume-padding high school kids standing in front of me. Oh well, at least they'll all be headed for the Impressionist room, where bad art goes to get famous. Nobody at any museum in Europe or NA has ever bothered me in the Northern Ren hall.
Also, Tyler, "better college" is not the same as "elite college." I would venture that the way to get your kid into a "better college" would be to get the child to forget about harvard and apply to a school where he has a chance of meeting a professor before he's a graduate student.
Posted by: Thelonious_Nick at Jun 2, 2006 12:24:53 PM
Schools like the Ivies never base their decision solely on grads or test scores, they look for 'well rounded' students. However, this abiguity leads to confusion among the applicants, so they pad their resumes with extra-curriculars in the hope of looking well rounded (often at the encouragement of 'application counselors'). Where the benefit of the parents cultural knowledge comes in handy may be the application interview that many Ivies have. It may be name dropping, it may also be cultural knowledge and customs passed on by the parents (rather than the student attempting to learn them by himself).
One thing that this study does show, and something that I think many suspected, getting into some of these schools, for a certain level of student, is essentially a crapshoot.
[PS - one reason journalist/yearbook students may do well is because they have learned to write in a pithy, grab-their-attention manner that works for a short college essay]
Posted by: Elambend at Jun 2, 2006 12:55:42 PM
In the last 15 years Stanford has changed its undergrad admission strategy from one rewarding "well rounded students" to one that privileges "angular" students. The idea is that people who obsess about a few things tend to make more significant contributions than those who are above average at lots of things (but not necessarily exceptional at any one). This change poses two questions: first, how can studies account for changing admissions criteria and second (echoing earlier comments), how might one measure intensity of participation (i.e. obsessiveness) rather than simply participation.
Posted by: Omar Wasow at Jun 2, 2006 1:59:49 PM
I mentioned Marginal Revolution as my favorite blog in my interview with UChicago. I got in. I also, coincidentally, repeated Arnold Kling's "quantitative sociology" criticism of Freakonomics in the same interview (although I didn't go so far to mention the other reason I didn't love it, the "Steve Levitt advertisements" that appear every chapter).
"Economics blogs visits" should have been one of the queries, I'm assuming there would be a positive visit between MR articles read among high school students and elite college acceptance rate ;).
Posted by: Sean at Jun 2, 2006 5:19:29 PM
^ autocorrelation - hs students likely to read MR (or others) are also more likely to be enthusiastic about the subject matter. As much as I value TCs and ATs posts, I doubt there's a significant independent effect of reading them relative to self-selection.
What you should be concerned with is the increasing trend towards rewarding early specialization. There is simply no incentive to being a BWRK vis a vis HYPSM+++.
Posted by: quitacet at Jun 2, 2006 11:22:55 PM
People who go to art galleries tend to make bigger donations.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg at Jun 3, 2006 12:38:12 AM
I did all that extracurricular crap for my college applications but had trouble getting in anywhere fancy and ended up at my state school.
For my grad school aps I literally put "none" under "Interests", "Activities", and "Awards" and I got in everywhere I applied.
I disagree that colleges want well-rounded students. They want empassioned freaks who are really good at something.
Posted by: Paul N at Jun 3, 2006 6:46:55 AM
For some reason I wrote "visit" instead of "correlation". Oops.
Posted by: Sean at Jun 3, 2006 11:18:15 AM
Here's a simple formula: do one or two things (academics + sports or arts or hobby) really, really well and you'll probably have your choice of schools. I've never seen the benefit of involving yourself in a plethora of activities and doing them all with average results.
Posted by: Anonymous at Jun 3, 2006 4:27:22 PM
" I would venture that the way to get your kid into a "better college" would be to get the child to forget about harvard and apply to a school where he has a chance of meeting a professor before he's a graduate student."
That's assuming that students will get better learning opportunities with professors than they will with graduate teaching assistants or adjuncts. Frankly, I've yet to see the evidence to support that assumption, and I can remember back to plenty of anecdotal counter-examples.
That said, I agree with the main point that elite should not be seen as synonymous with high quality teaching or learning.
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