[HN Gopher] Stanford to continue legacy admissions and withdraw ...
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Stanford to continue legacy admissions and withdraw from Cal Grants
Author : hhs
Score : 150 points
Date : 2025-08-09 12:54 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.forbes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com)
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| No surprise. C'mon, they host the Hoover Institution and
| celebrities and rich people pay coaches to get their kids in.
| It's a power funnel racket.
|
| PS: I'm an ex-Stanford FTE.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| People went to jail for those bribes. It's not a legal tactic
| to begin with
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Just because the bribes were too small. If they were large
| enough to help build a building, then they become legal
| again.
| energy123 wrote:
| It was because the bribes benefited a small number of
| administrators instead of being equitably distributed
| across administrators
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| No, it's because the money went to individual employees
| directly, rather than being received by the institution.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| While I was being glib, that is an insignificant detail
| in the context of this post about legacy admissions.
|
| The point is you can gain admission via some nebulous
| definition of merit, some combination of merit and
| knowing someone who gained admission before, or paying
| for admission.
|
| Also, while the "institution" receives the money, I
| guarantee some people (the highest admins and their
| friends - fund managers, construction contractors, etc)
| gain more than most others (e.g. adjunct teachers and
| students).
| ivape wrote:
| You're defining a country club. Every layer of our
| society grosses me out.
| orangecat wrote:
| They went to jail because they bribed people who were not
| authorized to accept bribes instead of the people who were
| (with the latter people charging much more, of course).
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Has Thomas Sowell ever commented on legacy admissions? I can't
| find anything but I imagine he would not be a fan, just like he
| isn't a fan of affirmative action.
| alecco wrote:
| Stanford became Harvard.
| jen20 wrote:
| Was there a point in recent memory where it wasn't? As a non-
| American I'd always considered them to be the Oxford and
| Cambridge (respectively) of the US.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| They're West coast. "Elite" schools in the U.S. are typically
| East coast (old monied).
| chasd00 wrote:
| Just want to point out that "old money" in the USA is a
| different thing than "old money" in Europe. The whole USA
| is only around 350 years old.
| EFreethought wrote:
| Some of the American old money came from European old
| money.
| andrewl wrote:
| Some would say Harvard and _Yale_ are the Oxford and
| Cambridge of the US. But we're a big country, and we have a
| lot of schools. Many lists of top schools include these,
| alphabetically ordered:
|
| Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University,
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University,
| Rice University, Stanford University, University of
| California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of
| Pennsylvania, Yale University
|
| But this discussion of rankings reminds me of a quote from
| John Allen Paulos:
|
| _In fact, trying to convert a partial ordering into a total
| one is, I think, at the root of many problems. Reducing
| intelligence to a linear ordering--a number on an IQ scale--
| does violence to the complexity and incomparabilities of
| people's gifts._
| onetimeusename wrote:
| They all became each other. The second (or maybe first) most
| popular degree at Harvard now is CS. Students apply to all the
| Ivy+ schools and a few backup options, maybe 20 in total, and
| you pick the best one you get accepted to. All the students
| have done the same things, they have very similar GPAs and
| scores, they all mostly went to Ivy feeder high schools, they
| do all the same extra curriculars like math and CS club and
| teaching underprivileged kids to code. It's all the same. Maybe
| they are more easily distinguished for grad school.
| simianwords wrote:
| It's interesting to see that merit best admissions is pushed from
| both sides of political spectrum - legacy admissions and DEI.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think legacy admissions is only supported by the elites --be
| they leftists or rightists. Normal leftists and normal
| rightists don't support legacy admissions (pay to play). I
| think the vast majority of people would support fair admissions
| (GPA + something else that signals academic aptitude).
|
| Most people would detest the extracurricular noise that some
| institutions use because often only people with money can
| afford their kids doing those things and two they are bullshit
| things. By most people I mean potential students such as those
| that in great numbers end up in state schools or community
| colleges.
| NewJazz wrote:
| How do you compare GPA across different schools?
| mc32 wrote:
| I think you can gauge that from the historical performance
| of students from those sources. Of course, there is a lag
| as schools either improve or dilute grades.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Hmm. Yeah it is a hard problem to solve. It is basically
| a mass interviewing system.
| acomjean wrote:
| Isn't that why standardized tests like the SAT/ACT...
| exist?
| simianwords wrote:
| I agree with you but I meant both democrats and republicans
| are pushing merit based admissions. Gavin Newsom against
| legacy and Trump against DEI.
|
| On the point people vastly prefer GPA - I don't agree because
| people on the left prefer DEI and affirmative action.
| rayiner wrote:
| I think even most democrats oppose it:
| https://manhattan.institute/article/study-finds-most-
| democra.... Though unfortunately, it appears that what
| swings democrats from support to non-support is learning
| that it hurts asians, not just white people. :-/
| impossiblefork wrote:
| You can't be a leftist and support legacy admissions. You can
| be a right-liberal and support legacy admissions, but even
| the mildest mild-mild leftism would reject that kind of
| thing.
| kbelder wrote:
| And yet they don't.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Liberals are not leftists. They are not egalitarians and
| they are not really for social equality.
|
| Allowing universities legacy admissions is a position so
| far to the right that I don't think any political party
| anywhere outside of the US propagates for it. There isn't
| a social democrat in Denmark or something who has vaguely
| leftist view but who also believes that universities
| should admit people based on their parents having gone
| there.
| philwelch wrote:
| If anyone really favored social equality they would
| support abolishing the elite universities entirely.
| Anything short of that still produces an identifiable
| class of people who attended these institutions, and it's
| the existence of that class in the first place rather
| than its partly hereditary nature that runs counter to
| social equality.
| philwelch wrote:
| If you look at the political tendencies of the elite
| universities that themselves practice legacy admissions,
| those tendencies are overwhelmingly to the left of the
| American political center. I know it's popular to make a
| "no true Scotsman" argument against anyone to the right of
| Mao Zedong but it's silly.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| So by what definition of leftist thought could this
| possibly be okay?
|
| Wikipedia has one (ideologies that seek social equality
| and egalitarianism), which this is clearly incompatible
| with. It's certainly unacceptable to socialists,
| communists, anarchists, syndicalists or social democrats.
|
| Liberals are not leftists. Liberals are mostly
| inviolable-property + free-trade type people.
| philwelch wrote:
| Soviet Russia was not an egalitarian society, it was a
| brutal dictatorship governed by an effective ruling class
| of party members. Mainland China is the same. If that's
| your standard of "leftism", you're drawing the line
| somewhere to the far left of any self-proclaimed
| communist party that has ever held power in any country.
| This is clearly absurd.
| NewJazz wrote:
| I think you are failing to distinguish individual
| elements of the universities you are commenting on.
| Administration and faculty are very different people.
| Admin need faculty for prestige, but faculty need admin
| for funding. Are a majority of prominent faculty members
| advocating for legacy admissions?
| philwelch wrote:
| You're implying that there's some crypto-right-wing
| people somewhere in the university and that these people
| are solely responsible for legacy admissions, but you're
| not even willing to state this absurd implication, let
| alone provide any evidence for it.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| You're close. The issue is we can't discuss class, so they look
| for all sorts of other analogs which they can get the wealthy
| folks on board with. DEI is acceptable to the wealthy because
| they ultimately see less of a threat there than from a person
| of the same race from the South or Midwest. In the workplace,
| the female Stanford legacy can still be underprivileged then
| thanks to gender versus the white male from a poor state with a
| land grant degree.
| simianwords wrote:
| both DEI and legacy are going away so it works in your
| favour.
| rr808 wrote:
| Legacy is better than people think. The undergrad academics at
| T10 universities really aren't anything special. People want to
| go because of the connections with wealthy & well-connected
| students, but then complain when wealthy well-connected students
| get a easier ride. You fill Harvard of Stanford with only people
| with 1600 SATs will turn them into places you dont really want to
| go to.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Research from Opportunity Insights shows legacy preferences
| reduce social mobility while multiple studies find no evidence
| legacy admits enhance campus culture or alumni giving beyond
| what could be achieved through need-blind admissions.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Top universities don't exist for social mobility, that is
| merely happenstance that the people that want to pay have
| gatekept access to the purse by having attended university.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| The same Opportunity Insights found that legacies were more
| qualified than typical applicants.
| kappi wrote:
| Stanford has become legacy + LGBTQ only for undergrads. Even
| their math departments are filled with only them!
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Exactly, that Austrian woman that tried to get rid of all her
| wealth found out that its impossible because even if she's at
| PS0 she knows too many people that will support her ideas,
| drive too much publicity to her causes, and food, shelter,
| board seats, academia, and everything else is always
| accessible. The path doesn't have to be forged.
|
| Universities were always finishing schools for the elite, for
| like 1,000 years its been that way, and the best ones in the US
| are here for that since before the country was incorporated,
| here since almost half a millennia ago!
|
| The last 80 odd years of dealing with the lower class and
| proletariat _at all_ is a footnote and will be an experiment of
| folly deep in a university archive for the next 1,000 years as
| they merely revert to the mean.
|
| Every problem that universities have _go away_ when they go
| back to their roots. Its the corporate and public sector that
| tied access to having a degree from these places, that's not
| the university's problem.
|
| And to your point, correct, if the proletariat were only
| surrounded by themselves they would not want to be there.
| xmonkee wrote:
| This is such a bizarre and gross take. Yes our history is a
| history of class struggle. But history does progress. For
| thousands of years we were supposed to be property of kings
| so shall we mean revert to that?
|
| I went to an "elite" public university in India which has a
| sub 1% acceptance rate. It was mostly extremely smart and
| driven middle class kids from incredibly diverse social
| backgrounds. Everyone had the time of their lives. And almost
| everyone now (20 years later) is doing incredibly well in
| life. They are doing startups, public policy, research, tech
| leadership etc. There is zero legacy admissions. And yes
| there is a network effect, of course. You can count on the
| friends you made at uni, but not because they inherited the
| influence. You don't have to lick boots to have a good life.
| justinhj wrote:
| They really shouldn't get public money then
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I agree, this article is relevant to my interests because
| Stanford is doing just that! At the state level
|
| Looking forward to inspiring consensus to do it at the
| federal level voluntarily too. The federal administration
| catalyzing that won't be controversial after its done.
|
| The current board members at these schools just need to be
| inspired by another school.
|
| W Stanford
| PeterStuer wrote:
| The 'roots' were places of intellectual amusement, only for
| the very affluent idle and the clergy.
|
| Ain't nobody else had time for that.
| bumbledraven wrote:
| > You fill Harvard of Stanford with only people with 1600 SATs
| will turn them into places you dont really want to go to.
|
| Isn't that basically Caltech? They had a 3% acceptance rate in
| 2023, the lowest in the nation. https://www.usnews.com/best-
| colleges/rankings/lowest-accepta...
| rr808 wrote:
| Yes sure there will be some elite purely academic places, but
| Caltech so small its a blip, most high schools are larger.
| jfengel wrote:
| When you prefer legacy students, you perpetuate the kind of
| discrimination in effect when their parents and grandparents
| were admitted.
|
| Perhaps this is better for the school as a whole. But when that
| argument was made to help students who were previously
| discriminated against, people swore that didn't matter, because
| all discrimination is bad.
|
| Legacy students are the easiest way to see that discrimination
| is not over yet. There are many others but this one is really
| transparent. There are many potential ways to deal with it, but
| "end discrimination for them but not for me" isn't a good one.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yes. Imagine if you could get an elite Wall Street or
| Consulting job based significantly on who your dad is. That
| would be unfair, discriminatory, and otherwise pretty
| terrible, except for the already elite and wealthy. Oh,
| wait...that already happens, and it's indeed terrible in all
| the ways you would predict. This really needs to be cracked
| down on, but the rich and powerful will always support it.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| The rich having their way is the blueprint for a third-
| world country.
| musicale wrote:
| > When you prefer legacy students, you perpetuate the kind of
| discrimination in effect when their parents and grandparents
| were admitted.
|
| Universities will likely claim that legacy and (especially)
| donor admits bring more money into the university, which in
| theory allows them to increase overall economic diversity
| (and likely social and demographic diversity as well) of the
| student body by admitting a larger number of qualified
| students under a need-blind admission policy.
| jfengel wrote:
| Many of these universities have vast investment funds.
| Expanding would indeed allow them to provide more
| education, but that does not appear to be their goal.
| musicale wrote:
| Expanding need-blind isn't the same as overall expansion.
|
| Many universities have adopted need-blind admissions (not
| including donor admits), eliminated or reduced student
| loans, and/or expanded undergraduate admissions - all
| efforts that support economic diversity.
|
| Stanford (for example) implemented need-blind for
| domestic student admissions (but still not
| international), and largely eliminated (or at least
| reduced) undergraduate student loans. Undergraduate class
| size seems to have expanded from ~6500 (?) in 1983 to
| ~7500 today, and may continue to expand slightly:
|
| https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/04/president-
| levins-r...
|
| However, it's worth noting that Stanford acceptance was
| above 25% for the class of 1979 (vs. 3.6% for the class
| of 2029.) Application growth has drastically outpaced
| admissions and class growth.
|
| https://irds.stanford.edu/data-findings/undergraduate-
| admiss...
|
| Additionally, administrations have generally expanded
| much faster than the undergraduate student population.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Stanford undergrad is only 22% white so this clearly isn't
| happening in practice.
| corimaith wrote:
| But it's the people here that want more access to these elite
| circles.
|
| Placing the notion of discrimination in the context of
| demanding access to an elite circle is like demanding access
| to a banquet while denouncing the recipe. It's incoherent.
| perfmode wrote:
| Everyone at Stanford and Harvard has 1600s. even the legacies
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > The undergrad academics at T10 universities really aren't
| anything special. People want to go because of the connections
| with wealthy & well-connected students, but then complain when
| wealthy well-connected students get a easier ride.
|
| Indeed. And the irony is that even when poorer students do
| attend, they find that the expensive habits of the richer
| students exclude them from mingling with them in many cases.
|
| (Fun fact: one reason for uniforms in Catholic schools was to
| eliminate wealth from the picture.)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Which was always absurd as there's no less vestimentary
| affluence signaling in uniform high schools than in any
| other.
|
| The signs may be more subtle and sublimized to a careless
| outsider, but in the schools those signals are obvious and
| stand out just as blatent as anywhere else.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| > The undergrad academics at T10 universities really aren't
| anything special.
|
| This surprised me when I went from my decent but not great-by-
| ranking (generally ranked in the 50-70 range) undergrad
| university to a top 10 ranked university for grad school. The
| undergrad students weren't noticeably smarter, nor did they
| work harder on average. They were more ambitious and more
| entitled. Cheating was rampant (pre-LLMs, I expect it's even
| worse now) and professors mostly just didn't care. The median
| household income at the top 10 school was more than double what
| it was at my undergrad school.
|
| That was an enlightening experience.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Ambition and a sense of entitlement (manifest destiny) built
| America.
| kelipso wrote:
| Definitely has the opposite experience going from an around
| 100 ranked university to an around 20 ranked university.
| Maybe it depends on the department but I noticed a massive
| difference in the students, difficulty of classes, how well
| the professors taught in multiple classes in multiple
| departments. There were exceptions but there was definitely a
| general trend.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You couldn't even do that - only about 500 people get a perfect
| SAT score per year.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| It sounds hyperbolic and they probably mean high school
| students with 1500+ SAT-I, 5 AP everything, and other
| community leadership achievements.
|
| Meanwhile, there's the ultra-talented people IIT turns away
| every year. Maybe the smart thing would be to also pick up
| international students as second-chance admits rather than
| chase away tourists, students, researchers, and workers?
| PeterStuer wrote:
| US universities have always thrived on full price paying
| foreigners, especially at the graduate level. They also
| make for very cheap and docile TA's
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| People with 1600 SATs tend to be ultra-productive, down-to-
| Earth individuals. (My high school had dozens of them.)
|
| Legacy creates an closed, self-reinforcing, entitled
| aristocracy.
|
| What kind of society do you want?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| They'll turn into Cal, where people absolutely want to go.
| Cornbilly wrote:
| DEI for rich mid-wits is fine for anyone else it's Communism.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Here's another perspective.
|
| Let's say Harvard's admission were to become largely based on
| social status rather than merit. You could say "so be it", but
| let it be known that that is what Harvard is. Being one thing
| while advertising another is lying and the greatest offense.
|
| A positive side effect is that perhaps we won't fetishize Harvard
| as much and keep insisting that one _must_ get into Harvard. You
| don 't. Harvard's brand depends on you thinking you do, of
| course.
|
| The current model of academia in the US and elsewhere is
| wretched. Obscene tuition is one thing. The failure to educate is
| another. Universities got out of the education business a while
| ago. Universities are focused on jobs, that's the advertising
| pitch, which is not the historical and proper mission of the
| university. So you end up with institutions that are bad at both.
|
| So if these "elite" schools lead to a disenchantment with merit,
| I see a silver lining. It could provide the needed impetus and
| motivation to distribute education more widely in smaller
| colleges with a greater clarity and focus on their proper mission
| (e.g., Thomas Aquinas College [0]) while creating a robust
| culture of trade schools. The majority of people do not need a
| college education! And frankly, it's not what they're looking
| for.
|
| Germany does something like this. Fewer people go to university
| there, and they have a well-developed system of trade schools.
|
| Furthermore, you could offer programs that allow students at
| colleges to take classes in these trade schools.
|
| Let's stop trying to sustain a broken model. The time is ripe for
| educational reform.
|
| [0] https://www.thomasaquinas.edu/
| PeterStuer wrote:
| If as you hypothesise universities are focussed on jobs, how do
| you explain the countless utterly useless degrees they keep
| pumping out en mass?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I always found it wildly fascinating how US schools have things
| like legacy admissions, athletic scholarships, standardized
| admission test, admission letter, letters of recommendation,
| extracurricular activities, and what have you.
|
| Such a contrast to other systems where for example your HS grades
| will count 100% - and similar "ungameable" systems.
| huevosabio wrote:
| Standardized tests are the least gameable. HS grades are pretty
| poor proxy given the wide range of quality in HS.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Other countries probably have a more centralized,
| standardized schooling system. In the USA schooling is at the
| local and state level.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Other countries probably have a more centralized,
| standardized schooling system._
|
| Which is basically what the SATs are:
|
| * https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| This is what Baccalaureates, Abitur, Gaokao, etc. are: much
| more standardized high-school final exams, used as a metric
| for university admissions.
| WalterBright wrote:
| These days, people game them by claiming a disability so they
| get extra time.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I doubt the typical students scoring 1540+ have time
| pressure on the SAT. Sure extra time might help someone get
| from 1400 to 1440, but it's not going to get you 1400 to
| 1600.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 40 points is 40 points.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| HS grades are a joke. All it takes is an unforeseen medical
| emergency or a teacher who hates you to tank your future.
| Thank god for standardized tests, otherwise I'd be living a
| very different life.
| rayiner wrote:
| High school grades in the U.S. aren't standardized and aren't
| reliable. A standardized test like the SAT is the strongest
| predictor of college success:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Sat/comments/1alp6vh/the_evidence_i...
| (collecting evidence)
| ghaff wrote:
| I took a grad marketing class once with a business professor
| who studied this sort of thing. GMATs rather than SATs but
| same idea. Basically GMATs mattered more than anything else
| especially metrics such as letters of recommendation that
| were basically worthless.
|
| I knew the director of admissions somewhat at an elite school
| and he said that they basically put a couple of quantitative
| metrics (like SAT) on one axis and read essays and considered
| other metrics like interviews on the other axis for diversity
| before that term became popular.
|
| The upper right more or less got in, the lower left didn't,
| and then they debated the middle ground.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| The SAT isn't strong enough to predict anything. It can
| generally be answered by someone in their sophomore year at
| college or even their freshman, depending on what level of
| courses they are taking.
|
| The problem finding a hard enough test with as little human
| intervention for assessments. Because human intervention
| brings with it subjectivity. This subjectivity was manageable
| when there weren't so many people applying for top schools
| (e.g. in the early 1900's). But right now its not.
|
| SAT/ACT/GRE are no indicator of success. What this "study" is
| merely proving is that schools may have regressed in their
| rigor for grading hard courses.
| malfist wrote:
| Why does it matter if a college student, after three years
| of education, can do well on the entrance exam? Isn't that
| a given?
| peterfirefly wrote:
| It _should_ be. I don 't think it is, especially not
| among the favoured parts of the student population
| (athletics, legacies, "disadvantaged", "minorities").
| siva7 wrote:
| So? In many countries high school grades also aren't
| standardized and counts 100% for admission. The system still
| works reliably and not worse than in america.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Can you quantify that claim?
| sokoloff wrote:
| "Not worse" in what sense? Is there a
| Stanford/MIT/Caltech/Harvard/N-others of equivalent global
| prestige/regard in those countries?
| derbOac wrote:
| That paper is pretty misleading and flies in the face of most
| peer-reviewed research (I don't know that journal, for what
| it's worth).
|
| My guess is because it was focused on those attending elite
| institutions:
|
| "In their paper on admissions to highly selective colleges...
| students at each of the schools in this analysis... Students
| opting to not submit an SAT/ACT score achieve relatively
| lower college GPAs when they attend an Ivy-Plus college..."
|
| My guess is the _meaning_ of a high or low GPA versus
| standardized test changes quite a bit when you have groups
| very highly selected based on a wealth of other information.
|
| The Dartmouth report has always frustrated because they,
| along with that other paper, selectively present conditional
| means rather than scatterplots, hiding the variability around
| points to make things look more predictive than they are.
| Means by predictor level are almost useless without knowing
| the conditional variance for each predictor level. They're
| basically deliberately pretending that there is no error
| variance in the prediction equation.
|
| Meta-analyses suggest that both standardized test performance
| and GPA predict later performance. For example:
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10627197.2015.99.
| ..
|
| In some literature, GPA is superior, and others, testing.
|
| There are other studies from decades ago showing that when
| standardized tests are temporarily removed from admissions
| (e.g., due to a court ruling), it has almost no influence on
| outcomes of admitted students later, suggesting admissions
| committees are able to select comparable students without
| tests.
|
| I'm not saying tests are horrible and should be omitted, I
| just think people really overstate their predictive utility
| and it causes a ton of problems down the road.
| ghaff wrote:
| Basically standardized tests (and GPAs--however corrected)
| are both good predictors. Depending upon the institution's
| objectives, other factors may play in as well though they
| may not correlate that well to GPA in university which may
| or may not be a good thing depending on your perspective.
| My personal opinion in that it doesn't really matter past a
| certain point. (You don't want people to flunk out but the
| _objective_ isn 't really to get good university grades.)
| olalonde wrote:
| In Quebec, grades are normalized using a statistical formula
| that factors in how well students from your high school tend
| to perform in university[0]. This means an average student at
| an "elite" school could end up with a similar score to a top
| student from a weaker school.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_score
| morkalork wrote:
| Wow, interesting. Do students take that into account when
| selecting which CEGEP to attend?
|
| I don't know how it is in Ontario now, but when I went
| through HS there university admissions were your top-K
| grades for the last couple of years and they didn't factor
| in which school you attended. There were no shortage of
| private/alternative high schools in Toronto that catered
| gaming that system with lax workloads and inflated grades.
| mpyne wrote:
| There's a reason the military kept using the ASVAB even
| during the worst parts of COVID pandemic. ASVAB is a very
| solid predictor of success in training, and in Navy
| experience it's predictive value generally correlates with
| with how academic/technical the training pipeline is.
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| If HS grades were used for admissions in the US, it would
| incentivize college-bound high schoolers to avoid challenging
| classes like AP classes, advanced STEM classes, history classes
| beyond state requirements, etc.
|
| The optimal strategy would be to take the easiest classes
| required to graduate, since there's no national authority to
| normalize grades across classes.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You just give multipliers for advanced classes then. That's
| how my high school calculated GPA - if you took all "A" level
| classes your max GPA was 4.0, but if you took AP classes and
| aced them you could end up with a 4.3 or something like that
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| That's how almost all highschools and colleges do advanced
| classes, Honors classes are graded on a 4.5 scale and AP
| classes on a 5.0 scale (and also count for college credit
| so you get to skip some intro classes after admission).
|
| This, of course, leads to yet more grade inflation. Hard to
| compete with a >4.0 student when your school doesn't even
| _offer_ advanced courses!
| typeofhuman wrote:
| HS grades are gameable. Just look at public highschools across
| the US. A significant percentage of graduates can't read. And
| the policies won't let teachers fail or hold-back students so
| they cook their grades to push them through the system.
|
| The ratione behind this was "ending the school to prison
| pipeline." They saw the correlation between drop out rates and
| incarceration and thought they could reduce the latter by
| gaming the former.
|
| This is why you see a lot of college dropouts from that corpus
| because they can't make it. They were lied to.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Also not that uncommon for the star HS quarterback to be
| functionally illiterate yet passing all classes with the
| required GPA for athletics participation.
| watwut wrote:
| To be fair, the absurd thing is that in order to have a
| career in sport he excellent at, he needs to go to
| university. Not being university material is stupid reason
| for not being able to do sports professionally.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Agreed. And it's becomming more common in the US pro
| leagues to see players who only completed high school.
| But the majority still play at least a year or two at the
| college level. It's a filter, and D1 college sports is a
| big business in its own right.
| breadwinner wrote:
| Right. It is called holistic review. Originally invented to
| limit the number of Jewish people in top universities (not
| kidding)! Now being used to limit the number of Asians.
|
| Elite-College Admissions Were Built to Protect Privilege
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor...
|
| The new holistic admissions policy worked as intended,
| successfully suppressing Jewish admissions.
|
| https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...
|
| The 'holistic' admissions lie - The Daily Californian
|
| https://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/01/the-holistic-admissions-...
|
| The False Promise of 'Holistic' College Admissions - The
| Atlantic
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-fa...
|
| Lifting the Veil on the Holistic Process at the University of
| California, Berkeley - The New York Times
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/lifting-...
| fvgvkujdfbllo wrote:
| This is very eye opening. As a geek with strong academic
| background always felt cheated by the system.
|
| My professor explained that academics alone is not enough for
| success in life. He explained that some of the smartest
| engineers report to average business majors in companies. And
| he explained that that I cannot get any scholarships with
| perfect GPA while my roommate, a B student, has scholarships
| because he plays basketball and will likely get in leadership
| role in early on. That is good for the university as their
| graduates are seen as more successful.
|
| It was a hard thing to listen to but I accepted it. I wish he
| told me the truth though.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Aside from "success", it is very reasonable to want to
| admit "well-rounded" or "balanced" individuals as net
| pluses to society.
|
| I heard the lack of balance in the Bay Area: "wierdos, tech
| bros, etc.". A geek can contribute either very positively
| or very negatively to society (ex: tech CEOs, unabomber,
| etc.),
|
| Maybe too young to judge at university admissions, but
| still a reasonable proxy (another topic).
| falcor84 wrote:
| But a massive number of the bay area "weirdos" seem to
| come from elite schools; or is my frame of reference not
| representative?
| mgh2 wrote:
| Maybe is just the concentration of technical talent
| (usually introverts, home buddies), whom put less
| emphasis on social skills.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Just being smart won't get you anywhere.
| nradov wrote:
| Certain types of management and leadership skills are
| learned more effectively in an elite sports team than in
| any engineering coursework. I think a lot of people who
| conceptualize the world in very rigid, rules-oriented ways
| fail to appreciate that.
| hobs wrote:
| Suuure, but in my experience you get the meathead who
| makes a sports analogy every time something needs to be
| done.
|
| Had to listen to someone talking about "humping it across
| the line" this week.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| He told you the truth
| tjs8rj wrote:
| This only seems confusing to people who valorize
| intelligence as the most valuable trait one can have. What
| really matters is the impact you can have on others lives:
| making them a lot of money, saving them a lot of time,
| making them happy, etc contributing to them or addressing
| their needs
|
| Being smart is valuable, but it's only one ingredient among
| many. You need to be able to communicate with others, take
| risks, work hard, have empathy, be a creative problem
| solver, etc
|
| Being a brain with a body attached is not enough and that's
| good
| no_wizard wrote:
| This reminds me of a documentary I watched some time ago,
| I wish I could remember its name. This is what I remember
| about it:
|
| The entire premise was following 2 people, one guy barely
| graduated community college, the other was incredibly
| intelligent. Went to an elite university, got a masters
| really young, and I believe was a member of Mensa.
|
| The difference was in other areas. The first guy had a
| lot of persistence and didn't stop when things got hard.
| Ended up becoming a very successful person, married with
| kids, had their own business.
|
| By contrast the other guy despite being legitimately one
| of the smartest people in the world, simply withered into
| obscurity, had trouble maintaining gainful employment,
| relationships etc. A very stark contrast to the first
| person.
|
| I realize the point of a documentary is to highlight
| extremes but I think it does say something about the
| relative value of intelligence as it correlates to
| successful outcomes
| bachmeier wrote:
| The problem I have (full disclosure: I'm a professor) is
| that those things have nothing to do with a university. If
| they're doing non-academic things, the elite academics of
| the university are irrelevant.
|
| But then that raises the question of why they want to go to
| an elite university. Well, obviously, because being able to
| pass as a good student _does_ matter.
| rayiner wrote:
| I don't think that's the whole story. The Ivy League are WASP
| institutions, and WASP culture always highly valued "well
| rounded" students and looked down on people who single
| mindedly perused an end. Back in the day, they didn't need to
| screen for this explicitly, since it was already universal in
| the applicant pool. They just needed a test to sort out the
| smart ones from the dumb ones. When the applicant pool
| changed, holistic admissions became a way to maintain that
| cultural trait.
|
| You see the same thing with asians today. The competitive-
| admissions high school I attended went from. 30% asian to
| almost 70% asian. There was a backlash, almost entirely from
| very liberal white people. I don't think any of them disliked
| Asians _per se._ But they wanted to preserve a certain
| culture in the school and all the Asians led to a change in
| the culture.
| oa335 wrote:
| > WASP culture always highly valued "well rounded" students
| and looked down on people who single mindedly perused an
| end
|
| Citation please.
| rayiner wrote:
| E.g. https://groveatlantic.com/book/flight-of-the-wasp/
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| > The Ivy League are WASP institutions, and WASP culture
| always highly valued blah blah blah
|
| Ok, screw that and screw the Ivy League and the WASPs with
| it.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Ok, screw that and screw the Ivy League and the WASPs
| with it.
|
| I understand the sentiment and sometimes share it. But
| I'm also sad to recognize that while elite asians like me
| can excel within the systems created by WASPs, we
| probably wouldn't have created such systems ourselves.
|
| What other group in history has created a system so fair
| that they were replaced-without being conquered--within
| the very institutions they themselves created? My dad was
| born in a village in Bangladesh and my brother went to
| Yale and is an executive at J.P. Morgan (two of the WASP-
| iest institutions in America). WASPs are a minority in
| these institutions now. This sort of thing basically only
| happens in Anglo countries.
|
| Good reading:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/george-bush-
| wasps...
| abeppu wrote:
| > created a system so fair
|
| I think that's really begging one of the important
| questions here. _Is_ the system fair now?
|
| The system clearly wasn't originally fair (when elite
| schools excluded women, people of color, etc).
|
| They became more open after decades of struggle driven in
| large part from the outside, and helped along by the GI
| bill, as well as a broader shift towards getting more
| public funds.
|
| The demographics have changed, but to the degree that
| it's more fair, is that because WASPs created them that
| way, or because women and other racial groups changed
| society more broadly?
| rayiner wrote:
| It's critical to distinguish between being open to
| outsiders when you have the power to exclude them, versus
| advocating in your own interest to be included. Everyone
| advocates for their own inclusion when they have no power
| --that's just human self interest. But such advocacy
| can't create a fair system, by definition. Minorities and
| immigrants exist everywhere and advocate for themselves.
| But most societies don't allow them to advance. Uyghurs
| in China can say whatever they want, but it won't make a
| difference.
|
| WASPs were unusual in creating systems that saw openness
| to outsiders as a virtue, and then actually giving up
| their own power to allow others into the institutions
| they built. The first black Harvard student was admitted
| in 1847. Two Japanese students got a degree from Harvard
| law school in 1874. But if you look at societies where
| African and Asian people have the power to exclude, those
| places _aren't_ very open to outsiders.
| MPSFounder wrote:
| I reject this. Refugees such as myself (for I was one as a
| kid), and many disenfranchised people would never have been
| able to become accomplished without this "hollistic" review
| you loathe. Asian and Jewish kids today can game the system.
| Instead of workign summer jobs like the rest of us, their
| parents can enroll them in private summer school and they get
| to rehearse full time on those tests you seem to favor. There
| is a reason we should consider the beyond. Grades and tests
| can be gamed by those who can afford to do so. I will take a
| refugee from Vietnam or Syria, a black kid from Detroit, or
| the child of a single mom who overcame adversity ANY day of
| the week over a rich Cali boy of Asian or Jewish descent who
| benefited from this system. While my experience is anecdotal,
| I think those on here who criticize the hollistic approach
| (and merge it with FOXNEWS crap like DEI, and I will add,
| coming mostly from WASPs, who were NEVER affected by it),
| have no idea what they are criticizing. America has always
| been about giving an equal footing. I proved myself in the
| business world, and those who had perhaps more music lessons
| and more standardized tests than I did, are currently
| employees at companies making mediocre careers. So if you are
| a young reader of this comment, and regard this nonsense like
| what breadwinner is espousing as normal, know that myself and
| many others stand for the holistic admission over the gamed
| system that today favors the rich. Stay curious, ask others
| for help (I will always lend a hand to any disenfranchised
| person), and while some doors will shut, you will find an
| opportunity you can seize. Most importantly, don't accept
| this crap. Your story is important, and accomplishments are
| not a game of numbers. If it was, China would be dominating
| us in many sectors, yet their contributions to much of STEM
| is mediocre at best. It is eclipsed by nations like France or
| Germany, 1/10th the size. Your story is so much more. Those
| in power seek to keep you out, by favoring a perfect test
| score so their offspring, lacking in ingenuity, can memorize
| and regurgitate. That's never the case in the business world,
| and rest assured it is not the case in the sensible one
| either :)
| rayiner wrote:
| > Asian and Jewish kids today can game the system.
|
| This is just a cope. Poor Asians outperform in standardized
| metrics as well. New York's selective admissions high
| schools, for example, are dominated by asians but have
| almost half of students qualifying for free or reduced
| price lunch.
|
| To another example, comparing Asian kids and Hispanic kids
| raised in the bottom quantile of the income distribution,
| the Asian kids are over three times more likely to end up
| in the top income quantile as adults: https://www.nytimes.c
| om/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/make-y...
| MPSFounder wrote:
| This is not the perception I heard. People from SE Asia
| are welcome to comment on this (and they would provide a
| better perspective than I can) but I know several Cali
| people of Flipino or Vietnamese descent whose parents are
| not wealthy surgeons, and they also favor the holistic
| approach. It also becomes a problem of numbers. Hispanic
| and Asian kids are the fastest growing denominations in
| the US. It is very likely that many of them are recent
| immigrants and are not wealthy. Of course, I am not
| saying that having a sad story in and of itself is a hall
| pass. All I am saying is many comments here state that
| focusing SOLELY on grades and tests is fair, despite the
| fact that is not true. I went to a Top 5 college. I was
| not rich. I grew up with a mom that saved ice cream
| buckets to reuse them. I saw many rich kids' siblings
| take entire summers off to study and plan their
| applications. Whereas kids where I grew up in Detroit
| held summer jobs at country clubs, ice cream shops, and
| mall stores to help with bills. How are standardized
| tests fair with this context in mind? I am getting
| heavily down voted. I will say this. I was a white kid,
| whose parents were not wealthy. I was a refugee. And I am
| in favor of the holistic approach. I think it speaks
| volumes on here when rich white guys who are typically
| progressives line up with Trump policies on this matter
| (the other big one being Israel). I think this is where
| you take a hard look in the mirror, and question whether
| what you believe is right. I am not arguing further on
| this topic. I am a living experience of it. Reducing
| entire applicants to those metrics that are believed on
| here to be objective is reductionist, and I promise you,
| the most accomplished engineers and founders will not
| come from that pool of applicants you worship.
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm not talking about perception I'm talking about
| statistics. There's lots of poor asians--they are the
| highest poverty rate group in NYC--and they outperform on
| standardized metrics as well. Moreover, putting aside
| that the data shows test prep has limited benefits, you
| don't have to be "rich" to prep for standardized tests:
| https://www.city-journal.org/article/brooklyns-chinese-
| pione....
|
| > I know several Cali people of Flipino or Vietnamese
| descent whose parents are not wealthy surgeons, and they
| also favor the holistic approach
|
| Asians are heavily propagandized to support affirmative
| action.
| devmor wrote:
| I don't know man, my parents were so poor that we lived in
| a tent some summers and I still managed to score among the
| top on standardized tests.
|
| Maybe you're just not as intelligent as you think you are,
| so you're looking for someone to blame and settled on
| ethnic biases.
| MPSFounder wrote:
| Maybe I am not. But then again, maybe you are just
| academically inclined. I was responding to the ethnic
| argument the OP posted. Just becuase you tested well does
| not make you intelligent buddy. Any user here is welcome
| to compare you and I's accomplishments. I am willing to
| share my Linkedin with a 3rd party, you do the same. And
| theyy come up with a verdict. Here is a tip btw. I shared
| my opinion, you shared yours. Insulting my intelligence
| makes it no wonder you lived in tents. It is
| disrespectful. I guess life has yet to kick vulgarity and
| lack of class out of the tent boy, did it?
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| That's a lot of words for petty racism. France and Germany
| don't do holistic admissions or use racial criteria, and of
| course for historical reasons don't have Jewish quotas
| either.
|
| But go on and tell us about all the scholarly achievements
| of the countries who _do_ use ethnic quota systems for
| their university admissions.
| MPSFounder wrote:
| Jewish quotas were removed decades ago. In fact, today,
| many donors and beneficiaries of the legacy system are
| Jewish. Today, the disenfranchised are not Jews. In fact,
| Jews are among the richest ethnic group in the US (look
| at their median household income). There is a reason many
| deans got fired from Ivy leagues when they attempted to
| protect free speech. It is because Ackman and most donors
| are Jewish, and their threats could make a dean bark on
| command. I imagine you are still living in the 60s. Most
| of the disenfranchised in the US today are blacks,
| Hispanic, SE Asians, and refugees. Half of the
| billionaire class in these United States today are
| Jews... So your argument about quotas is ridiculous.
| Europeans were not allowed education under the French
| monarchy. We can go back further in fact. Or look at
| different settings (Ghaza children being denied food and
| education?). Ridiculous reasoning on your part.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| You're the one insisting we need to reduce the number of
| Asians and Jews at universities. I'm the one saying
| admissions criteria should be racially and ethnically
| blind -- not to mention that the universities should
| drastically increase the size of their freshman classes
| to keep up with population growth. Go on and cry more
| about how a quota system isn't keeping some groups down
| to benefit the groups you favor.
| steele wrote:
| Detroit has Black, Asian, Jewish, etc kids of all
| backgrounds working summer jobs - just like every other
| diverse major city. Guess you were a refugee fleeing
| Russian bot hate farms.
| tzs wrote:
| Counterexample: Caltech uses holistic admissions and no one
| has found any signs of it limiting Asians.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| I thought most countries just do general country-wide admission
| tests?
| PeterStuer wrote:
| No, at least not for all subjects. I think over here medicine
| still has an admission test. Engineering used to have one
| long ago.
|
| All the rest, there are very lenient high school diploma
| requirememts, and no crazy costs like the US. All that want
| can basically attend, until they fail to pass a few times.
| diggernet wrote:
| Having HS grades count 100% is a really bad idea. Not because
| of anything about the schools, but because HS age isn't
| representative of people's abilities. I had terrible HS grades
| due to a complete lack of interest. After growing up a little
| and getting my act together, I got A's in college. Thank
| goodness they didn't base my admission on HS grades.
| philwelch wrote:
| High school grades are gameable, probably moreso than athletic
| scholarships or standardized tests.
|
| Legacy admissions are part of the hereditary class system. The
| reason people go to elite schools isn't just to receive an
| education, it's also a status symbol and networking
| opportunity. If you do manage to get accepted by an elite
| school purely on merit, that's not just an opportunity for you
| personally, it's a chance to pass that status down to your
| children.
|
| But yeah the rest of it is bullshit (and often a fig leaf for
| discrimination).
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Standardized tests work much better than high school grades,
| and also handle cases like young students who go to university
| at or before the "normal" age of a high school student.
|
| The SAT and GRE aren't perfect, but they're a massive help to
| students who would otherwise be outside the normal path. Get a
| high score on the SAT, and nobody cares whether you went
| through traditional K-12.
| elashri wrote:
| > GRE aren't perfect
|
| This is understatement, GRE being required for STEM
| postgraduate studies was always university requirement for
| all not something the STEM department would want.
|
| One can argue that the quantitative part have a point but for
| the language part, you must be kidding me. Unless you are
| going to English literature it is just plain stupid (maybe
| even if you study literature).
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| For native speakers of English, the language part of the
| exam is just seen as a general test of intelligence.
|
| For non-native speakers, it's just a test of how well they
| learned English, and nobody in admissions expects them to
| score as well as native speakers.
|
| Beyond this, there are subject-specific GREs. They're far
| from perfect, but they're more uniformly comparable across
| all candidates than grades are.
| elashri wrote:
| Have you actually taken the exam or looked into a sample
| test?
|
| There is no intelligence in most parts, it is just you
| memorizing a lot of words that you will never hear or
| use. Maybe you are confusing different parts of the exam.
|
| > For non-native speakers, it's just a test of how well
| they learned English, and nobody in admissions expects
| them to score as well as native speakers.
|
| That's different test/s. Programs will require
| TOEFL/IELTS for that purpose.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Athletic scholarships and standardized test admissions are way
| less gameable than HS grades
| odo1242 wrote:
| Yea, especially since the people who get the highest grades
| in HS, in the US where you have a decent amount of latitude
| to pick your classes, are generally just the students who
| refused to take any hard class.
| liquidpele wrote:
| Or the ones that do 10+ faked "AP" classes over the summer
| and transfer those credits in. Not kidding.
| WalterBright wrote:
| In my high school, the honors classes gave an extra point
| for your GPA average. So the "easy A" classes weren't quite
| the ticket.
| daemonologist wrote:
| My high school gave an extra half point for honors and a
| whole point for AP classes*, but my experience was that
| regular classes were easier by _far_ more than that (at
| least in cases where all three levels were offered). I
| had disliked biology in middle school and separated from
| the "AP crowd" to take honors environmental science
| instead, and it felt at least two or three letter grades
| easier than the other AP sciences.
|
| Of course the top tier students were likely to achieve an
| A regardless, so the more challenging courses would look
| better. For me though it probably would've been optimal
| to choose easier classes; admissions might not even be
| aware that a more difficult option was offered.
|
| * If I recall correctly though, colleges were usually
| interested primarily in the unweighted GPA.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Athletics + Test cheating:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal
|
| https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-
| arts/story/2023-12-01/...
|
| https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2019/03/admission-case-
| inf...
| flappyeagle wrote:
| That's not gaming that's cheating.
| liquidpele wrote:
| Ungameable... lol. Take a look at Asian countries for what
| happens when you rely only on grades... cheating becomes the
| norm since numbers are all that matter.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Cheating is not the norm in Asian countries.
|
| The real downside is that school is insanely competitive,
| students study incredibly long hours, and they feel intense
| pressure to perform well on their exams.
|
| The upside is that the students are much more serious about
| their studies than in the US, in general.
| corimaith wrote:
| But social mobility for serious kids is much easier in the
| United States than elsewhere. It's also in USA that going
| to your local state university or community college isn't a
| large barrier to your future career, and transfers are
| common.
|
| And when it comes to the levers of power, connections are
| still what defines future leaders in Asia, not grades. This
| entire idea of "serious students" are ultimately just a
| bone to throw to the masses.
| sahila wrote:
| > But social mobility for serious kids is much easier in
| the United States than elsewhere.
|
| This is an unrelated point, is your contention that the
| US is better off with unserious students? Social mobility
| / wealth accumulation for the masses does suck in other
| countries but it's great that people are still seriously
| motivated by schools. It's a big reason those students
| immigrant to the US and companies here hire those people
| in masses.
| corimaith wrote:
| >This is an unrelated point, is your contention that the
| US is better off with unserious students?
|
| It's that America has the capacity to fully absorb it's
| talent so it's not a problem. The reason why other
| countries have more is because they don't have the
| capacity to absorb them due to less opportunities so the
| competition is higher. Many of those "serious" students
| in China or India will still end working in factory jobs
| and delivery drivers because they weren't good enough.
|
| >It's a big reason those students immigrant to the US and
| companies here hire those people in masses
|
| Eh, if they were hiring domestic students I wouldn't say
| there would be much of difference. Unless if you are
| running a startup, most of these "serious" students will
| be just writing basic CRUD apps. Value comes from
| experience here, not talent. Well, if I was American
| though, I wouldn't bother competing againt millions of
| desperate Chinese or Indians for opportunity cost
| anyways, I'd be going more into law or finance. And those
| fields are less diverse.
| snapetom wrote:
| I was just about to comment on Asian countries and
| mobility.
|
| If you do grades only, there's also the phenomenon where
| getting into the right Kindergarten-level school
| determines your entire school career. In many countries,
| your current school is a significant factor of your next
| school.
|
| Imagine not getting into the right Kindergarten having
| life-long consequences.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Forced to TA students like this in the US, both foreign and
| domestic, I'd say the real downside is that this produces
| incredibly brittle individuals. "Failure isn't an option"
| is not an attitude compatible with pushing your own
| boundaries or even just life in general.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| And yet the innovation density is lower
| SilverElfin wrote:
| They had that previously in some places. California
| universities used to not have affirmative action (quotas) but
| they apparently removed consideration of test scores to help
| achieve the racial composition they felt was "correct" in
| another way, since it was resulting in a skew towards whites
| and Asians in their view. Not sure what the process is today.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I was the valedictorian in my high school. I did nothing to
| earn it, never did any work, and wound up at Caltech grossly
| underprepared. It took me over a year and a half to figure out
| how to work and study.
|
| Admissions required a triad - top grades, top test scores, and
| something significant in extra-curricular activities. And
| finally, an interview. Bomb any of those, and you're out. I was
| rejected by MIT because of the interview.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think it depends on the school at the time. I got rejected
| by one school probably because I didn't have a varsity letter
| and had a so-so interview. I got accepted to at least two
| others that were at least as "good" at the time.
|
| There's a lot of luck of the draw when you're applying to
| schools with a pretty low admittance rate.
|
| I joke with someone I know pretty well in my alma mater's
| alumni office that I'd probably never get in today and they
| smile and follow it up with an "oh well, you're fine." :-)
| And they're not unhappy that I'm an alumnus. 3 people from my
| school's 59 person graduation class got in; certainly would
| never happen now.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I found out years later that I was a marginal candidate,
| and ironically it was the interview that made the
| difference.
| ghaff wrote:
| Which is the luck of the draw thing. If you're on the
| bubble for whatever random reasons, a decline or accept
| on even a marginal measure because you did/didn't click
| with someone can make the difference.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I was well aware of the vagaries of chance, which is why
| I applied to the top 10 engineering universities in the
| country. I was accepted by Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, and
| Caltech. As a backup I had ASU.
|
| I knew nothing about Caltech, and by amazing luck it was
| perfectly suited to what I wanted and my personality.
|
| For a while now, I've been running the D Coffee Haus
| monthly meetings, where myself and fellow nerds meet and
| talk about nerdly stuff. It's as much fun as the same
| thing at Caltech.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't remember what schools I applied to in general.
| But I didn't get into Dartmouth and did get into MIT
| which was something of shocker. Did go to the latter as
| an undergrad (though had never visited the campus) and
| have stayed involved. Started a non-profit at the former
| as a grad student at Dartmouth and still involved so all
| good. At the time, didn't seem to make a lot of sense to
| go to west coast (or UK) in part for schools as air
| travel was still relatively expensive.
| adastra22 wrote:
| HS grades are quite gamble---the high school wants to show off
| better admissions stats and so gives out easy A's.
|
| This is not a hypothetical btw, this really happens.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I'm okay with academia being an institution of the elite, as long
| as we stop pretending that their BS (or BA) will make everyone
| successful. We can't all be elite; that's not how that works.
|
| Rich people are going to waste their time and money no matter
| what, but I didn't want them also wasting yours and mine. The
| man-hours and percent of the GDP (often paid for with taxes) we
| put into conflating cause and effect is absurd.
|
| We dodn't need merit-base academia, we need merit-based
| employment that disregards elite and academic status.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| I agree that participation in the middle class shouldn't depend
| on borrowing six figures as a teenager. I dream of the day
| where any worker has economic security
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| How likely is it we'll have the one when we don't even have the
| other?
|
| We'll have neither, of course. The wealthy will always be able
| to pay for what they want -- merit be damned.
| musicale wrote:
| "It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their
| merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have
| merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class
| without room in it for others."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
| SoftTalker wrote:
| When a Bachelor's degree became a proxy for "can show up and
| complete assigned work" for employers that was the start of its
| decline as an academic credential.
| delfinom wrote:
| That's already happening with technical/trade/alternate school
| to career paths are rising up and some colleges are panicking
| with declining enrollment.
|
| I am on a co-op board here in NY, pretty much all our young
| buyers the last 2 years are all gen-Z who went the non-college
| route and have saved up more than enough to put a downpayment
| on a home for themselves and have a mortgage instead of college
| debt.
| dehrmann wrote:
| How did they save for the down payment? The ROI for college
| isn't what it used to be, but there isn't a clear non-college
| path in the US, either.
| corimaith wrote:
| When you are brokering deals with wealthy clients or executing
| trades with millions, the notion of trust is much more
| important than merit. And what better is a sign of trust that
| coming from the circles, and with nothing to stake but
| reputation?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Rich people are going to waste their time and money no matter
| what
|
| You don't become rich by wasting time and money.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You do by wasting other people's time and money.
| rayiner wrote:
| Props to California for doing this. Stanford showing its true
| colors here.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yes, perfectly reasonable to pull state funding for private
| enrichment. Now, all we have to do is get rid of the racism in
| "holistic admission" and use a demonstrably fair system like
| performance on standardized tests.
| MPSFounder wrote:
| You are delusional.
| genghisjahn wrote:
| Pick up a copy of Palo Alto and read thru that. Lots of
| interesting Stanford history there.
| breadwinner wrote:
| This seems reasonable. California doesn't want to subsidize the
| education of the privileged few who qualify as "legacy
| admission". And Stanford doesn't want to give up the financial
| support from alumnus.
| musicale wrote:
| Stanford undoubtedly did the math and determined they would
| lose money overall (gifts are 7% of Stanford's income, tuition
| and fees 13%).
|
| Boo-hoo, rich university loses money. Like the 21% Trump tax on
| endowment income, etc. Maybe they'll have to fire some useless,
| non-teaching administrators and build fewer country club dorms
| and luxury amenities, right?
|
| But... Stanford would probably argue that admitting a single
| less-qualified donor child can cover the financial aid expenses
| of dozens of qualified students whose parents simply have less
| money. (Financial aid is 5% of Stanford's budget.)
|
| If this is true, California's goal of banning legacy and
| (especially) donor admits could have an unintended consequence
| of reducing the number of qualified but non-rich students who
| will be admitted.
|
| But... many gifts are restricted, you say! Buildings. Endowed
| faculty chairs. Particular research centers and programs.
| Specialized scholarships. Etc. Nonetheless, Stanford has to
| balance its budget, and even restricted gifts save money and
| allow them to shift dollars from one place to another. (Note
| debt service is 4% of the budget as well.)
| ghaff wrote:
| Universities definitely favor unrestricted gifts. But, to the
| degree that you make a restricted gift, you can be sure that
| there's often money shuffling in the background to the degree
| the gift is substantial.
| corimaith wrote:
| If rich people stopped going to Stanford, Stanford will loose
| its reputation in a few generations.
| g8oz wrote:
| I think it works in the opposite direction. Rich parents
| basically buy admission for their mediocre offspring at a
| university made prestigious by the abundance of very
| intelligent but less wealthy students.
| ivape wrote:
| That 7% from rich people, where does it go?
|
| Let's say the school decides they have enough money without
| that 7%. They figure out they don't need to be that rich.
| Does that mean they can't do more institutionally or does it
| mean they can't do more organizationally (which is just get
| bigger, more heads, more money)? What does it really mean for
| them to suddenly become ethical and say they don't want that
| blood money anymore?
|
| That's what I'm trying to figure out. It's a follow the money
| situation, and it's important to figure out who is beholden
| to that 7% when it comes into their system. If we find out
| it's the giant cafeteria building, then maybe we settle for a
| smaller one. But if we find out it's making certain people
| fat in the pockets, then you're on to something.
|
| ----
|
| Aside, society should really start encouraging the most
| talented to consider the ethics of institutions they go to.
| Whether that be Palantir or Stanford. Legacy admissions is
| just straight unethical, and Stanford students need to
| protest this.
| musicale wrote:
| Stanford presumably determined that the loss of donation
| money would be greater than what they would have to spend
| to cover financial aid without help from Cal Grants.
| ivape wrote:
| You are not reading what I'm saying acceptingly. I am
| suggesting the math they did only helped them conclude
| they would have less money. It did not lead to a
| conclusion that they can't keep being an elite
| institution servicing and creating high level academics
| at fair prices while still being profitable and growing
| financially. Very roundabout way of suggesting they are
| greedy at their core.
| musicale wrote:
| "Follow the money" is a good point. Universities spend an
| enormous amount of money, and it's often hard to see what
| it's actually being used on. Stanford has so many
| administrative staff that they built a separate campus
| for them in Redwood City.
| https://redwoodcity.stanford.edu
| musicale wrote:
| edit/correction: 21% was the original proposal but it was
| reduced to 8% in the final bill that was passed
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >But... Stanford would probably argue that admitting a single
| less-qualified donor child can cover the financial aid
| expenses of dozens of qualified students whose parents simply
| have less money. (Financial aid is 5% of Stanford's budget.)
|
| Sounds like an argument for taxing the rich, if they've got
| so much spare money they can carry dozens of other people's
| kids through school.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Yup. And you can think of legacy admissions as college
| "whales", people who pay full price for an advantage and
| subsidize the price for less wealthy students. It's absolutely
| an imperfect system, but it at least redistributes a little
| wealth along the way
| globnomulous wrote:
| > alumnus
|
| Alumni. Stanford may care most about just that one alumnus, but
| my suspicion is that they care at least as much about other
| alumni and alumnae. :)
| technothrasher wrote:
| > Alumni.
|
| Often "Alums" nowadays, as Alumni is traditionally male
| gendered.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Alumni if there is even one man. Alumnae if there isn't.
| Alumnus/alumna for individuals. That's just how Latin
| works.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Aluminum works for me.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Aluminium
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I don't think I've ever heard this. The alumni of the
| university has always, from my experience, been used to
| refer to everyone that graduated; gender playing no role at
| all.
| dcrazy wrote:
| It's one of those "well actually" things that the Latin
| nerds would point out. So the Latin nerds who went into
| college administration decided to change it to be a
| clearly English derivation.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Its not just about money. Having legacies at the school is what
| makes non legacies want to attend. If applicants didnt care
| about networking with the rich and powerful theyd go to
| caltech, the reality is that having connections to powerful
| people is the main value add undergrad at ivies provides versus
| upper tier state schools. Why would stanford ever get rid of
| their main value add?
| sahila wrote:
| You're making big assumptions here regarding students desires
| to attend stanford. Ignoring everything else though, having
| two elite universities that cater to merit is better than one
| just for the sake of doubling the number of students.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > Ignoring everything else though, having two elite
| universities that cater to merit is better than one just
| for the sake of doubling the number of students.
|
| Not for stanford. Its goals largely boil down to increase
| the endowment and create a powerful alumni network.
| Accepting legacies is a great way to accomplish both those
| things. This is the same reason schools give preference to
| athletes even though it brings down the schools academics.
| Competitive athletics requires skills that translate very
| well to the workplace(grit, teamwork) so successful
| athletes are likely to become successful corporate workers.
| musicale wrote:
| Interesting point. Elite universities offer a good education,
| a respected credential, and connections. Stanford is also a
| startup factory, being (not coincidentally) adjacent to
| Silicon Valley and containing a business school in addition
| to the engineering school.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| What does stanford offer undergrads that berkeley doesnt?
| IMO access to legacies and the larger alumni network is
| about it.
| musicale wrote:
| Better faculty to student ratio (1:6 vs. 1:19). Closer
| proximity to actual Santa Clara (Silicon) Valley (and
| Google, NVIDIA, etc.) More NCAA championships and Olympic
| medals. Still leading in "big game" football series
| (though currently on a losing streak.) More Turing
| awards.
|
| Not as many Nobel prizes - or elements on the periodic
| table - however. Berkeley (having many more undergrads)
| also has more alumni.
|
| (But note for both schools that good researchers are not
| necessarily good undergraduate instructors.)
| cherryteastain wrote:
| We know this argument does not apply in practice because tons
| of people want to go to top universities that do not consider
| legacy like MIT. Outside America, universities that regularly
| feature in global top 20 lists like Oxford, Cambridge, ETH
| Zurich and Imperial College London etc also do not do
| legacies and they also get tons of interest.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Legacy admissions and holistic (discriminatory) admissions should
| be disallowed as long as these universities receive public
| fundings directly or indirectly.
| malfist wrote:
| Seems reasonably. You and to discriminate? That's
| disappointing, but nobody is going to stop you, but the public
| tax dollars sure as hell shouldn't support your discrimination
| corimaith wrote:
| The entire notion of "elite" universities is discriminatory.
| If going to your average state university with high
| admissions was okay then there wouldn't nearly be as much
| drama.
|
| If the elite colleges are not comprised of the rich and well
| connected it beats the entire point of an elite college.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| > If the elite colleges are not comprised of the rich and
| well connected it beats the entire point of an elite
| college.
|
| Depends on how you define "elite", and I assume you mean
| some sort of hereditary or economic-class-based definition.
| But elite colleges could (and should) still work if they
| run on competency-based merit. I believe elite talent in as
| many fields of endeavour should absolutely be catered to.
|
| > The entire notion of "elite" universities is
| discriminatory.
|
| Well, when you put it that way, many things are
| discriminatory, for better or worse.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If the elite colleges are not comprised of the rich and
| well connected it beats the entire point of an elite
| college_
|
| The functional purpose of a meritocratic elite is to
| concentrate the smartest and most ambitious in your nation
| (in each generation) so they can cross leverage each other.
| This dates back to feudal societies switching to a civil
| exam system during Enlightenment. (Also in imperial China.)
| That's a productive form of discrimination.
| corimaith wrote:
| I think it's the opposite actually. I think the moment
| you're consciously, systematically trying to optimize for
| "smartest and most ambitious" on a meritocratic basis is
| the point in which your respective field falls into
| decline and is relegated to slow, incremental
| improvements rather than revolutionary jumps. Primairly
| because "the smartest and most ambitious" are more about
| seeing that specific field as vehicle for wealth and
| prestige rather than actual passion. Many of the legends
| of the past were not good enough for the elite
| institutions of their time.
|
| I mean really, it's the question of why this over
| preexisting patronage systems. And looking at the
| "achivements" of this so-called "meritocratic elite" this
| last century (especially in enshittification) leaves alot
| to be desired.
|
| It's just one self-serving 1% attempting to ursurp
| another 1%. And they certainly aren't going to be solving
| your problems. They don't have the ability to solve the
| coordination problem, the housing crisis, involution,
| climate change and Donald Trump.
| Jensson wrote:
| > And looking at the "achivements" of this so-called
| "meritocratic elite" this last century (especially in
| enshittification) leaves alot to be desired.
|
| That wasn't created by the meritocratic elite, that was
| created by the "preexisting patronage systems" where rich
| pays to get their kids influential credential so that
| they can continue to have outsized influence on the
| country...
|
| > They don't have the ability to solve the coordination
| problem, the housing crisis, involution, climate change
| and Donald Trump.
|
| The current system is what caused those, why do you think
| that is much better?
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Id be interested to read about some "holistic" admissions
| success stories. There must be by this point tons of examples
| of students admitted "holistically" who are now doing great
| things because of the opportunity they were given.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Most, if not all, Canadian admissions are holistic. All the
| universities are pretty easy to get into as long as you have
| the grades, especially for undergrad. As a result, for
| undergrad at least, no one really cares what school you went
| to.
|
| From outside looking in, the American system has a
| hilariously unequal system. Certain opportunities are hoarded
| by an insanely small set of schools, almost entirely based on
| "prestige" and financial dominance. And it's this crazy arms-
| race/pressure cooker to _get in_. But once you 're in, grade
| inflation is everywhere and people aren't actually working
| super hard. No one freaks out about admissions to "mid-tier"
| schools. It's entirely about a select coterie of schools who
| people rightly perceive as gatekeeping to an incredible
| extent.
|
| None of the schools actually emphasize being accessible and
| hard to graduate from. The incentives are all weird and cater
| to a small elite population. The name on the degree is more
| important than _earning_ the degree.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I dunno about other colleges, but Caltech you earned the
| degree. Many students dropped out because of the workload.
| There were a couple that were able to coast through, but
| they had IQs easily over 160.
|
| They didn't do legacy admits as far as I knew.
|
| But what it's like today, I have no information.
| only-one1701 wrote:
| Thats the exception then; at Stanford all you need to
| graduate is a pulse.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| In CS/CE/math/physics?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Walter, can you give a rough timeframe to go with that
| anecdote?
| WalterBright wrote:
| late 70's
| uranium wrote:
| It was the same in the '90s. Something like a third
| didn't make it through in 4 years, although a long tail
| managed it in 5 or more.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A classmate dropped out in his sophomore year, and 10
| years later asked to come back and finish. Caltech said
| sure, and aced the courses and earned his degree.
|
| I asked him, were you smarter after 10 years? He laughed
| and said nope, he was just willing to work this time!
|
| (Another gem about Caltech - once you're admitted,
| they'll give you endless chances to come back and finish.
| Your credits did not expire.)
|
| One of my friends finally graduated after 6 years there.
| He endured endless students mumbling "7 years, down the
| drain!" as they passed by. (The line was from Animal
| House.)
| h2zizzle wrote:
| I've heard MIT was similar. But their graduates have
| never had quite the prestige and easy in to influential
| circles as the boys (eventually girls, too) down the
| street.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Assuming you work in tech, that's because the only school
| that matters is Waterloo and 90+% of Waterloo students move
| to the USA after grad.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Almost all our Canadian hires have been at Waterloo at
| some point. Even when we do random resume pulls and
| interviews, Waterloo seems to have the most competent set
| of candidates when you're talking about new grads.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > But once you're in, grade inflation is everywhere and
| people aren't actually working super hard.
|
| Clearly you've never enrolled in a EECS class at Cal
| throwawaylaptop wrote:
| I was #3 in highschool out of a 550 graduating class. I
| thought I was bright.
|
| Went to Cal for mechanical engineering, and while I
| survived the engineering classes, the physics classes
| wore me out and the math classes were almost impossible
| for me. I barely made it out of there.
|
| I honestly wish I went somewhere easier so that it wasn't
| a constant struggle to keep up and survive. I think I
| would have actually learned more.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I know that feelings but be assured, it's better to be
| mediocre when you're surrounded by amazing people than to
| be the best in a place where no one cares. I can
| guarantee you learnt more than other places even if you
| don't feel like that at the moment.
| throwawaylaptop wrote:
| I've had 20 years to think about this, and while it was
| always fun to get the positive vibes telling people I
| went to Cal, I still think UC Davis or SLO would have
| been better.
|
| It's not like my only other option was to go to CSU East
| Bay, although I know people that built decent careers
| from there too to be honest.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| I've heard people say this about difficult colleges or
| degrees before, so you're not alone. The push to make
| something overly hard can simply leave some capable
| people behind by not matching their style or pace of
| learning. But also I think some of the less famous
| universities simply care about _teaching_ while the top
| ones leave that to random grad students and instead brag
| about their research credentials. The thing is,
| professors doing research doesn't help students learning.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I think all that matters is that most if not all
| professors care about teaching. And my experience at top
| universities has been that most still care about teaching
| and the grad students they need to rely on is because of
| the class size. There were definitely some that were
| basking in their own glory from the past, but those were
| few. Can't tell about all universities, but I'd assume
| it's the same everywhere. The reality is that given what
| it takes to become a tenured professor, you're bound to
| have at least a few who generally suck at teaching.
| yojo wrote:
| I took a Math 1A class (intro to calc) at Cal where the
| prof turned his back on class at the start of the hour,
| then proceeded to mumble incoherently for 60 minutes
| while filling a chalkboard with equations. He'd turn back
| around at the end of the hour. Many students brought
| pillows. I learned literally nothing in lecture.
|
| This professor wasn't demanding, he was just making zero
| effort to actually teach.
|
| Great researchers are not necessarily great teachers,
| especially for intro courses. Anecdotally, I think this
| is a common issue at "prestigious" schools.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| It comes down to the notion that America is a classless
| society being farcical. There has always been an elite that
| jealously guards their power and influence. Entrance into
| it - or the ersatz version that is the bourgeoisie - has
| always (along with immigration) been modulated based on
| what was most likely to preserve the existence of that
| elite.
|
| And it's not a conspiracy; it just shows how much power
| that elite has, that they're able to make these things
| happen when they need them to. A sudden turn away from
| nativism and condoning of proto-anarchy when the black
| population (first slave, then free) threatened to upend the
| social order. Socialism lite (and more immigration, but
| only from preferred European nations) to head off full-
| blown socialism after capitalism first drove to excess and
| then blew itself up. Truman getting the VP spot. Bank
| bailouts (so many bank bailouts). Even the begrudging
| "opening" of elite institutions to Jews, blacks, Asians
| (staring down the barrel of their own, rival,
| institutions).
|
| Anything to prevent their power and influence
| decentralizing in an enduring manner.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| > All the universities are pretty easy to get into as long
| as you have the grades, especially for undergrad.
|
| The is partially true but leaves out an important
| difference between Canadian and American admissions. In
| Canada you are admitted to a particular major, not the
| university as a whole.
|
| E.g. At the University of Waterloo, CS and some of the
| engineering majors can have < 5% admissions rate and are
| extremely merit based. At the same time, applying for the
| general Bachelor of Arts at UWaterloo is uncompetitive and
| very easy to get admitted.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| This may not count as "holistic", but my grand-uncle went to
| City College of NY when it was both open admissions and free.
| He had the equivalent of an 8th grade education in his home
| country.
|
| He ended up with a BS in Chemistry, went on further
| academically, and eventually was the general manager of a big
| factory (I think for GE, but not 100% sure) in the 80s before
| being killed in a car accident.
|
| There's a million stories like this. Most debates about who
| is more "qualified" for what in this context boil down to
| subjective vibes about whatever people think. At best, it's
| pride in Ivy League education, at worst it's some racist
| nonsense about the "others" taking status and jobs away.
|
| I went to a random state school that some would eyeroll at.
| Life has been fine, and I'm glad I didn't waste my time
| pursuing some bullshit admissions process.
| m463 wrote:
| Maybe the way would be to correlate all admissions with
| success, and add a feedback loop.
|
| I read somewhere that people who graduated at the top of
| their class generally became average with respect to success.
|
| Also, I suspect success has to be quantified, which might be
| hard.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > Also, I suspect success has to be quantified, which might
| be hard.
|
| I wouldn't say hard. It's expensive, time consuming, and
| the people who can perform qual to quant conversions
| usefully need to have a foot firmly planted on each side of
| the subject matter fence.
|
| More to the point, nobody's really interested in compiling
| this kind of data. Adding dimensions beyond income to your
| definition of "success" would result in e.g. revealing
| there isn't anyone from your school successfully practicing
| family law.
| abeppu wrote:
| Isn't the point that _all_ admissions from a range of
| institutions over a period of years (decades?) were
| "holistic" admissions, and thus basically all post-college
| success stories are holistic success stories? Further, _it's
| actively harmful_ as well as unfounded to post-hoc try to say
| that person X would _only_ have been admitted under a
| holistic framework.
|
| In the same way, if up until last year, your company had any
| form of DEI, it's pretty toxic to point to any of your
| colleagues, claim that they were diversity hire and their
| success is a credit to DEI policies b/c that undermines them
| in a way that's impossible to provide evidence against.
|
| The implication that "you were only <hired or admitted>
| because of a policy that gave you credit for
| <trait/circumstance>" can't have a factual basis unless you
| have all applications and notes from the admissions/hiring
| deliberation process, which the person in question almost
| certainly cannot.
| materielle wrote:
| This has actually been one of the ideas floated by
| regulators.
|
| The idea is that merit based admissions is actually pretty
| complicated, so we can allow individual universities continue
| to experiment with their own implementations and approaches.
|
| However, we can hold them accountable by grading them based
| on retrospective data.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| Yep, I think these two things can be true at the same time:
|
| 1. Admitting a certain amount of students based on legacy
| status is not necessarily a bad thing
|
| 2. A University should not be eligible for taxpayer funds if
| they have admissions like (1) or similar holistic criteria.
|
| In a society as diverse as America I think 2 is a fair line to
| draw. And the universities with large and powerful alumni
| networks where legacy admissions are most relevant have the
| least "need" for public funds. They have huge endowments.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| The best way to do this has always been to accept a ton of
| students and weed out a big percent of them in intro courses.
|
| Have the basic grades and test scores? Ok welcome to CS1 where
| 2/3 of you will not make it thanks for playing
| Gimpei wrote:
| A compromise would be to double the undergrad class size while
| limiting legacy to something less than or equal to what it is
| today in absolute terms. Many more deserving students would get
| and Stanford would get to keep its cash cow. But of course that
| would entail Palo Alto to let it expand, which it very much wants
| to do. And good luck with that.
| ndgold wrote:
| I mean this means that the alumni are worth more money than the
| state awards, right?
| thelock85 wrote:
| If you reduce the choice to public funding vs wealthy alumni
| stewardship, and there seems to be no meaningful pathway to
| circumventing the current assault on public funding, then why
| should you alienate your wealthy alumni?
|
| Obviously the situation is much more complex and nuanced, but
| this framing (amongst others I'm sure) seems appropriate if you
| are thinking on a 25,50,100 year time scale in terms of impact of
| your decision. The country is littered with public and private
| universities who made poor moral choices across the 19th and 20th
| centuries but I'm not aware of any institutions suffering long-
| term reputational harm (or threat of insolvency) as a result of
| those choices. (Then again, maybe it's because the harm was swift
| and final at the time)
| downrightmike wrote:
| The poor choices started in the early 90's when the SCOTUS
| decided that MIT didn't have to pay taxes as long as they gave
| enough charity discounts to students.
|
| Everyone else jumped on it and abused the student loan system
| by jacking up tuition and then applying charity grants to
| basically all students. Leading to our current Student Loan
| crisis.
| blackguardx wrote:
| This is the first time I've seen this framing. Typically
| folks blame bloated admin and fancy dorms. Where can I learn
| more about this take on the student loan crisis.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Those are not incompatible statements.
| runako wrote:
| As I understand matters, it started in the 70s and 80s as
| states pulled back from funding public institutions. This
| funding was the mechanism which allowed public institutions
| to be affordable to families such that a person could pay for
| a year of public college by working in a grocery store over
| the summer.
|
| MIT + the more expensive private colleges are effectively a
| rounding error in terms of number of students matriculating,
| but they do play in the same market and will price
| accordingly. But the big driver of what they can get away
| with is that a college like University of Tennessee is
| $35,000 annually, for a total ticket likely north of $150k.
| (Not picking on them, just chose a state at random.)
|
| Worth noting that this is a deliberate political choice. At
| any time, a state could choose to return to subsidizing in-
| state college at its public institutions, perhaps in exchange
| for working in the state after graduation.
| mixdup wrote:
| >As I understand matters, it started in the 70s and 80s as
| states pulled back from funding public institutions.
|
| Yes, absolutely this, and accelerating heavily in the late
| 00s after the financial crisis. In some states, especially
| for non-flagship universities, you can overlay the decrease
| in state funding and tuition increases and they're nearly
| the same line
|
| Tuition explosion isn't all just the proliferation of
| assistant deans and VPs (although that is a problem, too),
| a huge portion of it is that public higher education is
| essentially public in name only these days
| itkovian_ wrote:
| These are some of the richest entities - forget about
| universities - just entities full stop, in the entire country.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Stanford's endowment is less than $40bn.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| > Stanford has considered alumni and donor status for
| academically qualified students in the past
|
| I have an argument to make in favor of allowing legacy status for
| admissions. I am basing this on personal experience and some
| analysis of data done at similar schools when they were forced to
| release it due to lawsuits.
|
| The way admissions works in the US now it has basically become a
| lottery for qualified students. We have more qualified students
| than we have seats at the top schools. The idea that there are
| some unqualified students who make it in only because their
| parents are alumni, at least at Stanford I have never seen. The
| top schools are all so competitive that they are all pretty
| similar and they would not do things to jeopardize their
| reputation or standing. So I think it's just not the case that
| there are unqualified legacy admits. At Harvard for example the
| legacy admits had higher SAT scores than the average admitted
| student which makes sense when you think about it. Children of
| alumni are probably better prepared for admissions.
|
| So when choosing, Stanford might have to make a choice between
| two students with the same GPA, the same SAT score, the same
| interests, etc. and legacy status could decide it and I am ok
| with that. Building a campus network of people is a huge
| competitive advantage a school can have. You would be surprised
| how many people who are non legacy admits have pretty well known
| parents anyway or have parents who went to an extremely similar
| school. Singling out legacy admissions is not extremely
| meaningful and I don't think it's used to let in unqualified
| students at all.
| cma wrote:
| How about for schools that had racial segregation within living
| memory? Can't be an old legacy there if you are the wrong race.
| Even without formal segregation there was discrimination of
| some amount. Can argue it went both ways at different points
| with affirmative action programs but most schools with AA
| weighted legacy just as high.
|
| I think it is best to do away with legacy admits especially
| because of racial history but also because it is a kind of
| nobility system, but that will make schools rely on government
| more right now which seems to be as bad for academic freedom
| and freedom to not fund genocide as the donor model.
| telotortium wrote:
| > How about for schools that had racial segregation within
| living memory?
|
| Maybe if you're a Boomer, although even by the time they were
| going to university, racial discrimination was rapidly being
| replaced by affirmative action. This is the 2020s - even
| though some problems from that era still haven't been solved,
| brute forcing the solutions from back then won't make them
| any better and has already produced a major backlash.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I'm not a boomer. I have kids who are in high school.
| Racial discrimination is very much within my living memory,
| obviously affected other parents in my cohort, and still
| exists all over the city I live in.
| telotortium wrote:
| > Racial discrimination is very much within my living
| memory, obviously affected other parents in my cohort,
| and still exists all over the city I live in.
|
| If we're talking about Asians, I agree with you, as far
| as non-Bob Jones universities are concerned.
| adastra22 wrote:
| The word used was segregation, not discrimination.
| ghaff wrote:
| As I mentioned in another comment, the objective of elite
| schools is not to just admit 1600 SAT (or whatever the metric
| is these days). It's to admit "good" students and then to look
| at other factors. You have successful parents that went to the
| school isn't the only other factor but it's not a terrible one
| for both financial and other reasons. Neither is admitting
| students who didn't completely ace the SATs but also have other
| notable accomplishments.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > The way admissions works in the US now it has basically
| become a lottery for qualified students.
|
| That's not the way I would phrase it. A lottery would mean the
| outcome is random. There is nothing random about it. They
| consider essays, extracurriculars, and income, and look for
| evidence of hardship, diversity, athletic ability, and
| leadership. 100% subjective, sure, but not random.
| brewdad wrote:
| For any student who meets the qualifications, it is
| essentially random. There is a process that seeks to find the
| best students but it is flawed in the same way the job
| interview process is. Plenty of exceptional applicants get
| rejected and more than a few accepted students don't succeed
| at the level one would expect.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| But at institutions with sub 10% admit rates, it _is_ random.
| It 's not a uniform distribution because you can do things to
| help your odds, but unless your family has a building on
| campus or you're an olympian or something... admission isn't
| guaranteed.
| runako wrote:
| They consider all those factors and then aim for a mix. No
| admissions board wants a class of 100% track stars or 100%
| economic hard-luck cases or 100% rich kids, etc. But they are
| faced with a bunch of kids who meet the GPA etc. criteria and
| also fit into each of these buckets.
|
| Result is it's effectively random for each qualified kid.
| adastra22 wrote:
| They do all that and then have 10x - 100x the students left
| in the pool. They can't make offers to them all, so it ends
| up being mostly random in that final selection.
|
| That's why the person you are replying to said "qualified."
| tyre wrote:
| > they would not do things to jeopardize their reputation or
| standing. So I think it's just not the case that there are
| unqualified legacy admits
|
| This is known to be false. Development cases, where donor's buy
| admission, are real. They're limited, but universities do them
| regularly.
|
| If you look at Jared Kushner's case, for example, his parents
| weren't even legacies!
|
| If they keep this number small, like five per year, would it
| really dilute Harvard's brand? I doubt it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_case
| analog31 wrote:
| I think a century from now, we'll look back on privatized higher
| education the way we look back on privatized health care:
| Something that evolved by a series of compromises, that society
| depends on, but that is perpetuating inequality while also
| gouging us and not making us healthier.
|
| Ironically, the appeal of an "elite" university depends on the
| public image of the student body. The university has to manage
| that image through its admissions process. Any open criteria for
| "merit" will quickly turn the student body into a monocultural
| freak show. This would in turn diminish the public image of the
| university -- the exact thing that the students were hoping to
| benefit from.
| decimalenough wrote:
| > _Any open criteria for "merit" will quickly turn the student
| body into a monocultural freak show._
|
| So just to spell the quiet part out loud, what you're saying is
| that admissions based purely on merit would mean the student
| body would become entirely Asian, and this would be a "freak
| show" that's bad for the university's image?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| The same group in society has been lamenting "too many Jews"
| in higher education for generations -- and has several
| Supreme Court cases against their discrimination.
|
| Quotas to DIE have all been ruled to, in practice, amount to
| illegal discrimination on the basis of race, but some people
| truly believe Harvard and UNC were right to discriminate
| against Asians.
| tyre wrote:
| I think if you look at polling, people's feelings on
| admissions is heavily influenced by whether the criteria
| helps/hurts them. Especially when it comes to students and
| parents.
|
| Which makes sense. If it came to your kid, would you give
| up their spot at an Ivy for the "common good" (assuming you
| saw it that way)?
|
| Or would your definition of what's right/wrong change to
| fit the practicals of the circumstances?
| Jensson wrote:
| For a large majority purely numerical merit based
| wouldn't change what school they could go to, but it
| would make it so much easier for them to plan and know
| where they can go since now its no longer based on the
| whims of some random bureaucrats.
|
| So most people would benefit, a tiny minority who
| currently unfairly get into elite colleges would be hurt.
| brewdad wrote:
| That's certainly one possibility for "merit" but "merit"
| could mean lots of things. Stanford goes big into athletics.
| Perhaps merit could mean they'll only take students who
| placed in the top 10 in their state in some athletic
| competition. Perhaps merit means if your parents didn't
| attend, you won't get in.
|
| Merit doesn't have to mean SAT scores.
| moomin wrote:
| It could mean many things, but you'd still need to explain
| the monocultural freakshow remark.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I think you injected a lot of assumptions in there.
| tyre wrote:
| which monoculture?
|
| side note: "monoculture" and "freak show" seem incompatible. an
| entirely homogenous student body doesn't sound too freaky
| cameldrv wrote:
| I think that's the trick. These university admissions
| committees are essentially choosing the ruling class for the
| next generation. What makes a good ruling class depends on more
| than just test scores and grades, so admissions committees look
| at other things the applicant has done, and at least they used
| to also do an interview with an alumnus. All of this is fairly
| gameable though, and the kind of person who would excessively
| game these metrics might not be person who they want to choose.
| Knowing that someone is the child of someone who already was
| admitted and indoctrinated into the values of the university is
| a pretty good signal that this person is more likely to be the
| kind of person they want to admit.
|
| Now all of this runs into the same fundamental issue that any
| decision like this does, namely, that ideally you want everyone
| to have an equal chance, but also, you want them to do a good
| job in their role. Unfortunately, people, through no fault of
| their own, are born into different circumstances, and some are
| prepared, in many different ways, better or worse than others,
| and this strongly affects how well they will perform.
| wombatpm wrote:
| The GI Bill fundamentally changed college.
|
| The Vietnam draft with College deferments broke colleges and
| universities.
|
| Now every white collar job requires a degree - because every
| boomer overseeing those roles thinks it's necessary.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| i wouldn't be opposed to legacy admits if they were required to
| pay full tuition and judged to a higher standard: the legacy
| admit must have both a higher gpa, and sat score than the inbound
| class average.
| hulahoof wrote:
| I'm not from the US so apologies if I miss something that seems
| obvious, but why should they have a higher standard instead of
| the same standard?
| adastra22 wrote:
| You didn't miss anything. That was a bizarre statement.
| tines wrote:
| So being legacy puts you at a disadvantage with no advantage?
| adastra22 wrote:
| Then you are against legacy admits as your policy would
| actively discriminate against them.
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