sociological thoughts

"[Ivy League admissions directors] are in the luxury-brand-management business, and “The Chosen,” in the end, is a testament to just how well the brand managers in Cambridge, New Haven, and Princeton have done their job in the past seventy-five years."

"In the nineteen-eighties, when Harvard was accused of enforcing a secret quota on Asian admissions, its defense was that once you adjusted for the preferences given to the children of alumni and for the preferences given to athletes, Asians really weren’t being discriminated against. But you could sense Harvard’s exasperation that the issue was being raised at all. If Harvard had too many Asians, it wouldn’t be Harvard, just as Harvard wouldn’t be Harvard with too many Jews or pansies or parlor pinks or shy types or short people with big ears."

-Malcolm Gladwell, from a recent New Yorker article about Ivy League admissions
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/051010crat_atlarge

While on some level I wish I felt indignant and felt the need to disagree with this elitist portrayal of The Great Institutions that are the Ivy League... I can't because I don't feel that way. Whether or not we want to acknowledge it, much of the exclusive Ivy image revolves around the stereotypical old money prep-school WASP-y athlete a la F. Scott Fitzgerald's era. All you have to do to see living, breathing proof is show up at the 50th or older Princeton reunion. [as an aside: If the Ivy League DID base admissions on academic credentials alone, wouldn't you expect the Ivy League schools to have a reputation/atmosphere equivalent to MIT or CalTech? The fact that they don't shows that other forces are at play here...]

The craziest thing is, I love and romanticize the aforementioned stereotypical image - despite the fact that I would never have been a part of that, 1) because I am Asian, and 2) because I am female. At the risk of sounding sexist/racist/un-PC all at once, there is no doubt in my mind that the first Jewish admit, the first African-American admit, the first female admit, the first low-income admit, etc. all were (reasonably understandable) fodder for shock and outrage among alumni. Obviously everyone adjusted to the times and came out fine, but it seems the "problem" (I use this word loosely) now threatening the stereotypical Ivy image is the risk of those minorities becoming too much of a presence on campus, and possibly overpowering the presence of the legacy admits. Of course I am grateful for the continually changing face of the Ivy League, for to it I owe my admission and education; but at the same time I can't help but mourn the dying blue blood image of an era I have admittedly only imagined.

In a weird hypocritical way, I am enamored of the stereotypical old Ivy League of which I could never have become part, while simultaneously recognizing the merits of homogenization (on racial and social income level grounds) of an elite academic institution. All I'm saying is, it's a Good Thing that many people (and in particular Dean Malkiel at Princeton) support equalization and diversification of the Ivy League and want to attract more scientists/minorities/low-income applicants/insert non-stereotypical applicant here. But at the same time I don't see why it's such a bad thing that older alumni and others want to preserve the classic preppy image of the Ivy League, even if that means admitting athletes and legacies on a preferential basis. Come on, where do you think all of Princeton's money comes from, anyway? I am not a sociologist, and this is a controversial subject to begin with, so don't shoot me. In any case, what do I know, I'm just a lowly first year med student with no marketable skills.

p.s. Professor Howard Taylor would have a field day with this New Yorker article.