Book Reviews and Studies

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Notes

1. Of course, this student had another relative who gave him the opposite advice (advice he took) and, after much competition and consideration, he ended up at Wesleyan University, a respected “Little Sisters” school to the traditional Ivies. Speaking half to himself (since he had been rejected at Brown University) on an admitted student List‐server at Wesleyan, Jordan Goldman wrote some revealing thoughts on how bright kids make their “consumer choice” among the American higher education scene:

I went to visit Ivy U. [i.e., Brown University], good faculty good rep. First thing I noticed, though, was that the kids were unbelievably pretentious. A lot of them had come from extremely rich families, took their acceptances to the ivys [sic] as a given, not something they’d work for, deserved.

It seemed they were there not because they chose the school, but because their parents told them to go there, it had a good name, because they didn’t really think things through, but Ivy U.’s prestige made the choice for them. Like they hadn’t looked into the school at all, instead looking only at [the] name and how highly it was rated in U.S. News & World Report.

It’s funny, if you stripped an ivy [sic] of its name and prestige, and took a bunch of kids over to see it, they wouldn’t be nearly as enthusiastic about going there. Most of the ivys [sic] have huge classes, irrelevant coursework, no personal attention, huge core curriculums [sic] (which I’m extremely against) – and yet people flock there because of the bumper sticker that they get to put on their car.

Sense any resentment? In my school alone, the three most brilliant kids I’ve ever met – honestly, mid‐blowing brilliant – all got turned down from the Ivys in favor of these two girls that stay up all night, every night, memorizing textbooks word for word … Yeah, they both got into princeton, brown, upenn, yale and columbia [sic] –and from what I’ve heard, this isn’t the exception, it’s the norm. So, while schools like Wes[leyan] accept kids that would be a fit to their philosophy, reputation‐minded ivys [sic] admit SAT scores rather than people (The Gatekeepers, p. 238).

As J. Steinberg notes,

Around the country, countless other high school seniors were having similar conversations with themselves at the same time. Just as a record number of applicants had reached for the Ivies that fall and winter [1999], a record number had been turned down in the spring [2001] (p. 239).

2. This reviewer would wish to see an equivalent study of the origins of the ‘A‐Level’ Test in the UK as comprehensive as Lemann’s book is for the SAT test. His limited knowledge does not recall such a study.

3. As Lemann observes:

Back in 1922, Walter Lippmann had predicted that if intelligence testing ever really caught on, the people in charge of it would “ occupy a position of power which no intellectual has held since the collapse of theocracy.”

Improvising on a phrase of William James, Chauncey remarked,

What I hope to see established is the moral equivalent of religion but based on reason and science rather than on sentiments and tradition (p. 69).

4. A man with a mission to reform American Ivy League higher education admissions, away from the old collegiate model of admitting boys of “appropriate” (i.e., WASP, high social‐economic‐status) backgrounds into their schools almost universally, regardless of academic ability, towards an admission model based upon measurable academic ability, which would open the Ivies’ gates to “smart” applicants from under‐represented areas (the US South and Midwest), social classes and ethnic groups, particularly Jews. As Lemann states, Conant:

…had a plan…had a plan fully worked out … to depose the existing, undemocratic American elite and replace it with a new one, made up of brainy, elaborately trained, public‐spirited people drawn from every section and every background. These people (men actually) would lead the country. They would manage the large technical organizations that would be the backbone of the late‐twentieth century United States and create, for the first time ever, an organizes system that would provide opportunity to all Americans. Conant assumed, in fact, that picking a new elite in just the right way would enhance democracy and justice almost automatically. It was an audacious plan for engineering a change in the leadership group and social structure of the country – a kind of quiet, planned coup d’état. (pp. 5–6).

5. As a possibly valid counterpoint to this observation (given its reliance on pre‐1990 data), consider what Harlow Unger pointed out in his, A Student’s Guide to College Admissions: Everything Your Guidance Counselor Has No Time to Tell You (New York; Facts on File, 1990):

As I’ve said before, some students attending the most selective colleges are below average in many ways. Indeed, such colleges have accepted students with combined SAT scores of under 1,000 and students who did not rank in the top 20 percent of their high school class, let alone the top 10 percent. Let’s take a closer look.About 15 percent of a recent Harvard University freshman class of more than 1,600 scored below 600 on their verbal and math SATs. About two percent of a recent Yale freshman class of more than 1,300 scored below 500 on their verbal SATs and 19 percent scored below 600; one percent scored below 500 on their math SATs and 10 percent scored below 600. At Wesleyan University … 12 percent of a recent freshman class of nearly 700 students did not rank in the top 20 percent of their graduating high school classes, and two percent didn’t even rank in the top 40 percent! Wesleyan is in Barrons’s top category of the 36 most selective colleges in America (p. 2).

As Steinberg notes of the admission officers at Wesleyan,

… like their counterparts at other schools, they inevitably had their pet interests and causes. And in the end, the diversity of interests and backgrounds of the committee members [not all academic stars themselves] helped ensure the diversity of the incoming class. Who else but Ralph [Figueroa] would keep a keen eye out for the rare applicant who listed handbells as a musical interest? (pp. 140–41).

6. Pugsley defines four types of British universities (“traditional elite”, “quasi‐old”, i.e., “red brick” universities, “quasi‐new”, i.e., “plate‐glass” universities, and “real new”, i.e., converted polytechnics. She defines their graphic marketing techniques in relation to the “architecture” shots employed by the elite universities, to the “aerial views” employed by the “redbrick” institutions, to the “people” (always in multi‐cultural groups) favored by the “quasi‐old” schools, to the “abstracts” geometric designs favored by the newest additions, the “real new” universities. They seem to suggest that the institution should play up its achieved history, if it has one, its nice social present if it can, or its starkly anti‐humanistic envisioned future if it has neither acquired nor achieved attribute to promote.

7. Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp.44–95.

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