Where Do Ordinary A Students Go, Now? [Part II]

[In Part I, I define OASWAP and quantify the number of displaced students]

Probing the Displacement

We’re faced with a change at the margin: there was never room for all the 200,000 OASWAP students to attend elite colleges. In any case, plenty of the 200,000 students above the 93^rd percentile are students of color, and not displaced. At worst, we are switching from 14,000 in / 186,000 out, to 0 in / 200,000 out.

But given fixed capacity, there must be a displacement, and the displacement must number in the thousands, and the displacement has to land disproportionately on the OASWAP group: the very strong, but not quite outstanding students, coming largely from affluent but not wealthy families, white and Asian kids from the suburbs, more or less. A trickle of the better-advised among these, especially those in the 97^th and 98^th percentiles, with the best self-presentation skills, had historically gained entrance to Pomona, Brown and the rest; but no longer. Where do they go?

A key assumption: these students still seek the prestige, and the imprimatur, that drew them to apply to Pomona and Brown in the first place. They still want to answer the question, Where are you going / where did you go to school, with an instantly recognizable elite name.

A first cut: half will go to slightly less prestigious but still prominent private universities—the non-Ivy schools among the top 20 in the US News ranking, say—while the remainder will go to flagship public universities, such as Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, etc. A smaller number will go to the second dozen liberal arts colleges; good schools all, but seldom with enough name recognition.

The first cut has to be adjusted.  Only the most elite schools, old, with large endowments, give really generous aid packages to middle class students. A top 20 private university, not in the Ivy League, faced with a strong but not spectacular student, will follow the FAFSA formula to the letter. And the FAFSA formula is heavily biased against moderately affluent students in the suburbs of major cities on the West Coast, and to a lesser extent, in the Northeast. FAFSA takes no account of the burden imposed by California mortgage payments.

The consequence: in many cases, the private university will cost the middle class student $15,000 to $20,000 more, per year, than the flagship public university. That means student loans up to the max, $57,000 over the four years, to attend a private university, versus what might be no loans at all, to attend the flagship public university.  Some families will pay up to have the University of Southern California, and not UCLA, as their alma mater; but large numbers will not.

This FAFSA analysis argues that more than half the 14,000 displaced middle class students will seek to attend a flagship public university.  But there is a second complicating factor: most states don’t have a flagship public university.  The University of California, Berkeley, may carry all the prestige a middle class person needs, especially in California itself; but the University of Massachusetts, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Nebraska do not carry that same sign.

To sum up: displaced OASWAP will largely attend flagship public universities in the few states that have a top ten public university, for compelling economic reasons.  Outside of those states, the displacement will be more diffuse. On the numbers, California will account for about 2000 of the 14,000 displaced; and most of these will look to UC Berkeley or UCLA, the top two public universities in the nation, according to US News, and among the top 25 universities in the nation, by the same source; also among the top universities in the world, by other sources. Some will go to USC, or the several other fine private universities in the state; but because FAFSA ignores mortgage payments, and because California incomes are high to reflect those payments, FAFSA will be particularly miserly in computing financial aid for Californians.  Hence, most displaced ordinary A students from California will try to attend a UC campus instead. Most already intended to apply to one or more UC campuses anyway.  What has changed is that in the old days, a certain number were going to apply to both UC and Pomona and Brown, and get accepted at Pomona or Brown, and attend there; now, they will only be accepted at UC—if there.

Hereafter, I’ll focus strictly on California. Now we can look at the impact of displacement-in. We can examine, and speculate about, the consequences of having an extra 2000 ordinary A students apply to the University of California, more especially the UCLA and UC Berkeley campuses, and finding, as of March 31^st, that their UC acceptance—if forthcoming—offers the most prestigious and affordable option available, given that Pomona, Brown and all the rest of the elite have turned them down.

More exactly, the increase will come not so much in the count of applications to UC Berkeley, but in the yield, the number of accepted applicants who accept Berkeley’s offer and attend. For many years now, most Californians who would apply to a Pomona or Brown would also apply to UC, as a rational way to spread their bets, so the displacement will not be so noticeable in terms of applications.  There will be some increase in applications, as students who might have thought “UC is too big,” or “those homeless near campus are a turnoff,” and who preferred a small idyllic campus, or a luxurious one, sense the way the admissions wind is blowing, suck it up, and apply to UC, despite qualms.

To return to raw numbers: in recent years, UC Berkeley and UCLA have each accepted about 13,000 students, and enrolled about 6500. My point: there has been no capacity increase in the UC system, either.  In fact, until the recent increase (10,000 more Californians across the system, over the next few years), there had arguably been a decrease in capacity for native Californians, as UC, desperate for funds, began to accept more and more international and out of state applicants (who pay much higher tuition). Also acting to restrain capacity is the UC system’s own mandate to use holistic admissions, which will again favor marginalized populations over the OASWAP being displaced from the Pomonas and Browns.

Therefore, we should expect a second order displacement to occur, as students who might once have squeaked into Berkeley, as solid 95^th percentile applicants, albeit with a plain vanilla extra-curricular record and no compelling story, get crowded out by a surge of 98^th and 99^th percentile applicants, now shut out of Pomona and Brown, who apply to Berkeley, get in, and accept the offer.

That implies a third order displacement, as the 94^th, 95th and 96^th percentile applicants, who no longer have much of a chance at UCLA and Berkeley, crowd into the next tier of UC schools (generally thought to be Davis, Irvine, San Diego, and Santa Barbara).  Last, we can expect a fourth order displacement, as the 91^st, 92^nd, and 93^rd percentile students, who once had a shot at UC Davis etc., crowd into the remaining, less prestigious UC campuses; or who, like the 89^th and 90^th percentile students, who once had a shot at a lesser UC campus, get crowded out of the UC system altogether, and into the California State University system, which is so large that it does have the capacity to absorb them, without further visible displacement.

*The UC system has a state charge to educate the top 9% of high school graduates. Hence, in past years, as long as plenty of the top students in that range went elsewhere, an ordinary A-minus student could hope to gain entry to some UC campus, if they were careful about where they applied, and lucky.

The plain vanilla A student.  I’ve been writing as if admissions committees at Pomona, UCLA, UC Davis, and all down the line, were ruthlessly efficient in applying criteria of academic merit in determining who will be displaced. I’ve written as if Pomona and Brown keep the 99.5^th percentile and up, and discard every ordinary A student below that threshold; as if UCLA keeps the 97.5^th percentile and up, and displaces everyone below; as if UC Davis keeps the 94^th percentile and up, and so forth.  But it doesn’t work that way.

Pomona and Brown are actually rejecting a fair number of applicants at the 99.5^th and even 99.9^th percentiles (students with average scores of 750 to 770 per component, to use the SAT metric); likewise, Berkeley and UCLA are rejecting plenty of students at the 98^th and 99^th percentiles; even a UC Davis or UC San Diego will reject a fair number of 98^th and 99^th percentile applicants. It has to be that way, once holistic admission criteria are invoked. Admission committees have to proceed that way, first, to avoid the charge that “holistic” is a cover for lowered standards applied to some racial groups. Admissions officers have to reject some number of top scoring students, second, because their belief in holistic criteria is heartfelt and genuine. The Zeitgeist at elite schools  makes it seem obvious that a 97^th percentile student, with a scattering of B grades, who reports a Brobdingnagian  level of community service, and an unusual family background, really is a superior candidate for admission, relative to a student that reports all A grades, and a 99.5^th percentile test score, and nothing else. Third, admissions committees may happily choose the 97^th percentile student over the 99.5^th percentile student, on the well-founded psychometric principle that most differences, that far out on the tail of a statistical distribution, are noise; and that even any real differences are irrelevant to success outside the testing room, even in the artificial classroom environment, much less the world, where drive and determination are needed to leverage raw ability.

The fundamental criterion for displacement, at every level of the system, is whether the applicant is a plain vanilla candidate, LMO in the lingo, “Like Many Others.” Every elite school application pile contains thousands of applicants from affluent families, white or Asian, with great grades, strong test scores, well-crafted personal statements, a scatter of extra-curricular activities, and no other distinguishing factor.  No star-caliber athletic, musical, literary or artistic talent; no unusual family background; no personal odyssey; nothing on offer but a comfortable, conventional, mainstream suburban life. Rejecting any one of these individuals will have no discernible effect on any statistical measure of the entering class; but each such rejection helps to legitimize the claim to have used holistic criteria.  “It’s not just about your test scores.”  “Good grades are only part of what we seek.” In a word, selective college admissions are increasingly not about academic merit, assuming such a thing exists and can be measured; the operative question is, Of course you have demonstrated more than adequate merit; but are you special?

The upshot is that Berkeley and UCLA will receive some incremental applications from, and extend more incremental acceptances to, really strong students.  The applicants displaced from Pomona and Brown will include 99^th and 99.5^th percentile students, and not just 98^th and 97^th percentile students.  But all will be plain vanilla students by my definition.  And in turn, Berkeley and UCLA will increasingly have the luxury of saying, “Not one sport? No musical instrument?  Nothing but grades and test scores?” and then passing on that student, if, ethnically, they are LMO.

To wind up, I will focus only on Berkeley and UCLA, and ask again: What consequences can we expect, from this epochal shift in how elite private colleges select from among their abundant applicants?

Continue to Part III