Elite colleges: Meritocracy or aristocracy?

NEW HAVEN — Tens of thousands of Americans each year apply to elite colleges, but a scandal involving alleged test score tampering and sports coach bribery has thrown into question whether the process by which applicants are evaluated is designed to maintain the status of the nation’s gentry.

Fifty people were charged Tuesday after a number allegedly paid up to six figures to cheat the admissions systems of elite colleges, including Yale University, either through tampering with college entrance exam scores or by bribing athletic coaches into recommending non-athletes for their teams.

“Coaches do get a number of spots on their list,” said Joie Jager-Hyman, a former Dartmouth College assistant director of admissions and founder and president of college counseling firm College Prep 360. “Their applications get read well before the regular applications get read.”

Jager-Hyman said coaches do get a “rubber stamp” for a small handful of applicants so long as athletes meet some

minimum standards: basically whether admissions officers feel confident they won’t fail out of the school.

Rudolph Meredith, a former Yale women’s soccer coach, was implicated in the documents filed in the U.S. District Court, alleging he solicited and accepted bribes to recruit students to his team. In a letter to stakeholders, Yale President Peter Salovey said he was “dismayed and disturbed,” and Yale itself is a victim.

A spokesman for Yale declined to comment Wednesday.

“As a regular applicant, there’s a different process,” said Jager-Hyman.

She said regional admissions officers will read applications and develop a brief summary for the larger admissions committee. Applications are reviewed to see whether students are exceptional, she said, and it’s often not enough to just be “good at everything.”

“You need a compelling reason for them to take you,” she said.

On average, she said, every applicant who makes it past a first round will be discussed for about 10 minutes.

Jeffrey Milem, dean of University of California Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, said the college admissions process often reproduces and reinforces various inequities.

“Kids who come from means, however you want to define that, have historically always been advantaged in the admissions process,” he said.

“They almost always attend better schools, whether public or private, they have access to testtaking courses, they have access to hiring admissions consultants to work with them to develop their file for admission and help them craft their responses to essay prompts,” he said. “By attending wealthier schools, they have more of an opportunity to take advanced placement classes, which are the types of things that factor into admissions decisions at institutions with a highly selective admissions process.”

“The vast majority of elite institutions in this country have always been or for a long time were very exclusionary,” Milem said. “Legacy admissions further privilege wealthy people, because the parents of kids who apply under legacy were from wealthier backgrounds, and as time goes on that pool of legacy grows.”

Milem said the idea of meritocracy that elite colleges speak of has been dismissed by some in his field.

“One thing we know about the typical measures of merit we use — grades and test scores and such — kids from higher income backgrounds score better on all those indicators,” he said. “Some campuses are not engaging in a more robust process they call holistic review that looks at a variety of factors and doesn’t place such a heavy emphasis on traditional measures of merit.”

On its admissions website, Yale assures applicants the process is done methodically.

“As we carefully and respectfully review every application, two questions guide our admissions team: ‘Who is likely to make the most of Yale’s resources?’ and ‘Who will contribute most significantly to the Yale community?’ ” the site says. “We estimate that over three-quarters of the students who apply for admission to Yale are qualified to do the work here. The great majority of students who are admitted stand out from the rest because a lot of little things, when added up, tip the scale in their favor.”

Jager-Hyman said no student gets in without demonstrating some measure of merit, but elite schools are looking for something that differentiates candidates or proves their worth to the institution.

“They’re looking at what you contribute,” JagerHyman said. “Not everybody gets in for the same reason.”

What those reasons are, she said, could run the gamut. She said in her role at Dartmouth there was a wall between the admissions department and the development department, but the two do talk.

“It’s not bribes,” she said. “But every student is there for a reason.”

Jager-Hyman said she had never seen a culture of bribery in admissions, but it’s no secret that money can buy advantages. “Mega donors” might get more than a 10-minute discussion, she said, but it’s possible for them to hear no.

“They say no all day,” she said. “But you have to think about why you’re saying no.”

Jager-Hyman said it is in the best interests of higher education admissions departments to be relatively vague about what criteria they use to admit students, as it drives up the number of applications they receive.

In New Haven’s Westville neighborhood, Hopkins School educates 716 students from 60 municipalities from around the state for a tuition of $43,500. Twenty-two percent of students receive financial aid and the average class size is 12 students.

Starting as juniors, students have regular contact with college counselors, who work with them individually to prepare them for post-graduation.

Erika Chapin, the school’s director of college counseling, told Hearst Connecticut Media in 2017 that students get personalized attention, focusing on their passions and preferences.

At the beginning of this academic year, New Haven’s public schools laid off 24 educators, mainly school counselors and library media specialists. A number of counselors are now intermittent, splitting their time between multiple schools. In 2016, school board member Darnell Goldson alleged that a number of New Haven college applications did not make it to schools before the proper deadline because they did not leave guidance offices on time.

Daniel Cocchiola, coordinator of counseling and career pathways at Hamden High School, said his perspective on Tuesday’s scandal is that an entire college admissions industry has emerged of private consultants promising students and their families guaranteed admission into elite schools. “When I’m interacting with private consultants when I’m visiting admissions activities at colleges, I recognize that what they’re promising oftentimes seems different to the reality of what I’m faced with,” he said. “I wonder how you can be so sure about an admission. This scandal speaks to me about the level that people would lie to get access.”

Rudy Meredith