Why Do Colleges Keep Their Admissions Protocol Secret?

As a college advisor, I wonder why selective colleges like Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Stanford keep “trade secrets” about how they choose their freshmen class each year. Students and parents strive to see the formula that colleges use to determine who gets in and who doesn’t. 

In the book, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton? author Jerome Karabel exposed how the Ivy League was more interested in sustaining aristocracy than shaping young minds. They routinely rejected women, Jews, blacks, and others, and they even changed admissions criteria so their legacy and elite students would get in before the super bright Jews and Asians.

Sadly, it’s still going on today.  Princeton just filed a “reverse Freedom of Information Act” lawsuit against the Dept. of Education and the Office of Civil Rights to prevent their “trade secrets” on admissions decisions from becoming public information. Hmm. I wonder what they’re hiding?

Every year, I see amazing students get passed up by legacy students (students whose parents attended the same colleges and donated lots of money) with substandard grades, average SAT/ACT scores, and no projects.  If colleges were transparent about admissions decisions, I believe that more students would be admitted based on merit and not family name, wealth, and ethnicity. 

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