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We've all heard about the Clout List in the admissions office at University of Illinois. But it's never been clear where the students came from. The Trib's database project, the first that we've seen from Olde Chicago Journalism lately, lets you check out your metro-area high school's clout statistics - while encouraging tutt-tutting and tsk-tsking from, well, everyone else.
The subject of the individuals' names has yet to be broached - publicly - but it seems like a logical next step for the tool would be to mask the kids' identities while tracking how well they did during their time at the U of I.
The reason? While it's unfair that perhaps less-deserving students were on a special list that nearly guaranteed them admission to our publicly-funded university - it's even worse if those kids wasted the opportunity they were given.
We're hoping the Trib's new database-style initiative is where they're headed in the future - we love crowd sourcing journalistic efforts, after all.
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This is nothing but affirmative action for rich white people. I say out them all.
True, it would be a good story if it turns out that the less-deserving students "wasted the oportunity they were given." Don't hold your breath.
Having graduated from one of those high schools on the Tribune's list, and having also been denied admission to the U of I many years ago (for bogus "class rank" reasons), I'd bet that many of the the clout-fortunate students did just fine. I'd also bet that their performance as a group was not signficantly better or worse than the "deserving" student population. Actually, given the schools they graduated from, I would not be surprised if they performed better...
"While it's unfair that perhaps less-deserving students were on a special list ... it's even worse if those kids wasted the opportunity they were given."
I don't think seeing clout kids' performance would really be all that informative, as you can't know how the kids who were bumped would have performed. My argument throughout this has been that if you were so close to the bubble of getting into a state school that some clout kid would bump you, you probably weren't destined for a brilliant academic career to begin with. I think it's a reasonable assumption that the clout kids were low performers ... otherwise they wouldn't have needed clout. Many of them probably did waste their opportunity ... an opportunity no less likely to have been wasted by the bumped.
This would never happen at the University of New Mexico. Everyone's a Lobo, Woof Woof Woof!
Don't out the kids. The kids don't have the clout, their parents do. The kids probably don't even know what happened behind the scenes to get them into school.
The kids are 18.
Wait just a second...are you trying to tell me that the kids who went to better high schools had a better chance of getting into U of I? I'm shocked! How could such a thing be allowed to happen right under our noses?