BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK
MARIUPOL STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATES THE CLASS OF 2023
Ukraine’s Mariupol State University held its graduation ceremony about 400 miles away from its war-torn home city of Mariupol last week. Only about 60 of the university’s 500 graduating students attended the event in person, with the rest tuning in online. The university has been educating students virtually since the city fell to the Russian offensive last year; with about 5,000 students before the war, it now has an estimated 3,200 students actively enrolled. The university has begun constructing its new campus at a former military education center in Kyiv.
WESLEYAN DOES AWAY WITH LEGACY ADMISSIONS
Wesleyan University announced last week that it will no longer factor legacy into its admissions process in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. Wesleyan joins highly selective schools like Amherst, MIT, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon, who have already ended legacy admissions.
NEW VDOE MODEL POLICIES
FCPS shared the Virginia Department of Education’s new model policies last week, raising concerns about what the changes in the policies may mean for LGBTQIA+ students. Glenn Youngkin emphasizes parents’ rights in the publication, which quotes Virginia code § 1-240.1: “A parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent's child.” As such, schools are now ordered to defer to parental preference on a variety of issues, ranging from preferred pronouns to the use of school counseling services. The policies also mandate that every student (and their parent) has the right to opt the student out of sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with transgender students. FCPS is conducting a review of the policies, and reaffirmed the commitment to inclusivity for all students.
UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS RESIGN
This week saw two major resignations of university presidents, at Stanford and Texas A&M - both related to the universities’ journalism programs! A Stanford freshman journalist exposed photoshopped images in President Marc Tessier-Levigne’s research in November, after years of rumors that the research was doctored. In December, a Board of Trustees review of 12 of Tessier-Levigne’s papers found issues in the five papers on which he was the primary author. Though he is stepping down, Tessier-Levigne will remain on Stanford’s faculty as a biology professor.
At Texas A&M, President M. Katherine Banks resigned following controversy over her appointment of journalism director Kathleen McElroy. Dr. McElroy said that she was initially offered a five-year contract, but that it was changed to one year after conservative alumni groups objected to her work promoting diversity, including an op-ed that argued for the hiring of more non-white university professors. The controversy over the appointment, which Dr. McElroy ultimately turned down, led to the resignation of both Dr. Banks and the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.
SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE ADDS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION SUPPLEMENTAL ESSAY
If you are a student with opinions on the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision, Sarah Lawrence wants to hear what you have to say! The university has added a new supplemental essay option to its application, which reads:
"In a 2023 majority decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, 'Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected the applicant's life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.' Drawing upon examples from your life, a quality of your character, and/or a unique ability you possess, describe how you believe your goals for a college education might be impacted, influenced, or affected by the Court's decision."
BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK
Everyone is talking about a new study from Harvard and Brown researchers, published this morning, which found that the top 7% of college students come from families earning over $611,000 - the top 1% of the income distribution in the United States. It also found that on average, legacy students at top colleges were actually more academically qualified than non-legacies, and that graduates from private high schools had stronger academic credentials, objectively, than those from public high schools.
This aligns with an argument that professors and others have made for a long time - that increasing socioeconomic diversity means admitting fewer highly qualified students to college. But the studies also found that 16% of college students come from that top 1% of income - far higher than the percentage that excel academically. The three factors that this newsletter sees as the cause are (a) legacy admission, (b) admission from top private schools, and (c) admission for recruited athletes, who are often more affluent than other applicants.
At first glance, the data suggests that the higher the household income, the greater the chances of admission to a highly competitive school. However, this is not the case. One nuance I noticed is that this trend only applies to the top 5% of household incomes. Between the 20th and 95th percentiles, the relationship between parent income percentile and acceptance rate is inversely proportional.
Look carefully at the numbers. Once you hit the 40th percentile in parent income, admissions rates fall. They go up slightly between the 95th-97th percentiles, a little more between the 97th-99th, and of course they skyrocket at the 99th percentile.
I would highly recommend reading the study yourself, by the way, as there are a lot of fascinating nuggets like this and I can’t summarize all of them!
It is no surprise that colleges are often liberal enclaves, with students typically more likely to vote Democrat. This Politico article explores the impact that liberal college towns have on more conservative areas of the country, arguing that Democratic votes in Dane County, home of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, make it nearly impossible for Republicans to win in Wisconsin. The same pattern is happening in a variety of other states, too - examples include Arizona, the Carolinas, Georgia, Texas, and even our home state of Virginia.
OFFICE HAPPENINGS
Essay work is full steam ahead here in our office! We noticed a definite lag in schools releasing their essay prompts after the Supreme Court decision, but many of our students have been able to get a great head start on their supplemental essay work anyway.
So many, in fact, that I used my time out of the office last week to catch up on essay edits! I thought this was a funny picture - I was on a boat from Cannes to St. Tropez and hot-spotting in :) Every hour counts, right? I have mostly graduated from direct essay work with our students, but I still provide extra levels of review on every single essay they produce with our team (at no extra charge!). If you’re thinking “wow, she must review a TON of essays” - you’re not wrong. I do. But the perfectionist in me needs to do it or I can’t sleep at night!
I’m sad to say that my essay edits are now taking place in a much less exciting environment, as I’m back in the office! We’re gearing up for the Common AppⓇ release next Tuesday - we’ll be working hard to make sure that all of our clients have an updated, comprehensive guide to completing the 2023-2024 application during the week of its release!
Have a great week!