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We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

mitadmissions.org

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Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#11

Post by argonaut »

itchyjunk wrote: post #6

I was randomly checking out MIT's admission page a few days ago and drooling about what it means to go to a school like that. I saw the no legacy preference and merit based admissions and was pretty impressed. What I didn't know was this was a non-common thing. Now I am curious about what all colleges does it legacy based. Edit: No luck finding just a list of colleges that does legacy admissions but found a list for…

You won't find a list of college with legacy admissions because almost all private colleges do it.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#12

Post by neil1 »

_m8fo wrote: post #10

This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' b…

This has been sort of done with Charter schools that use a lottery based acceptance system.

The problem with even random systems is that parents that are willing to fill out the many forms required are usually more involved in their children's life then the median in poor communities.

Also - many charter schools don't provide federally funded free lunches which means that the poorest students who rely on these lunches are unable to attend these schools.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#13

Post by ThrustVectoring »

_m8fo wrote: post #10

This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' b…

The survivorship bias is kind of the point. An employer can't administer an IQ test, but they can hire from MIT or Stanford. They can't pull employees from the good old boy's network, but they can recruit from Harvard.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#14

Post by zeroer »

_m8fo wrote: post #10

This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' b…

> MIT and other 'elite schools' barely teach well anyways.

This is true, but there's a lot of value in being surrounded by peers who are at your level or a little better who push you to become better than you would otherwise.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#15

Post by assface »

_m8fo wrote: post #10

This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' b…

> Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' barely teach well anyways.

Ignore this person, they don't know what they are talking about.

For better or worse, the 'elite' schools have money. That means they can hire teaching-track professors. These are professors whose sole job is to teach and advise (i.e., they don't spend all their time doing research). And they do a really good job at it. Much better than overworked professor that is more focused about research and grants.

Edit: People are conflating "teaching" versus "research" professors, so I want to provide an example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CS50

This course is taught by David Malan. He has dedicated a lot of his life to this course to make it be awesome. The reason why he can do this is because he is a teaching professor. If you look at his CV, you will see that he does not have any PhD students. His main job is to teach undergrads at Harvard and he can put more of his time to it than a professor that has to also worry about research. He doesn't bring the university as much money because he's not writing research grants, but they can still afford to keep him around. This is the point that I was trying to make.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#16

Post by adamnemecek »

assface wrote: post #15
_m8fo wrote: post #10

This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' b…

> Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' barely teach well anyways. Ignore this person, they don't know what they are talking about. For better or worse, the 'elite' schools have money. That means they can hire teaching-track professors. These are professors whose sole job is to teach and advise (i.e., they don't spend all their time doing research). And they do a really good job at it. Much better than ov…

> These are professors whose sole job is to teach

No, no it really is not. It's getting grants, advising grad students, etc etc. From my experience, professors spend very little time on classes besides lectures.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#17

Post by _m8fo »

assface wrote: post #15
_m8fo wrote: post #10

This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' b…

> Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' barely teach well anyways. Ignore this person, they don't know what they are talking about. For better or worse, the 'elite' schools have money. That means they can hire teaching-track professors. These are professors whose sole job is to teach and advise (i.e., they don't spend all their time doing research). And they do a really good job at it. Much better than ov…

I had a very different experience, going to an "elite school". Basically kids teach themselves most things, and professors are there for clarification, in my experience. Also, are you suggesting that professors at elite schools are not overworked? haha.

EDIT: I saw your edit. That's true, but is irrelevant. Most people lecturing are not in that position, unfortunately. Liberal art schools try to address that though. I tried to look up some stats for you, but unfortunately many schools do not publish. I tried to look for the distribution of classes being taught and the types of people teaching them.

What we would have to see is the percentage of students being taught by a person whose primary purpose is to teach.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#18

Post by _m8fo »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #13
_m8fo wrote: post #10

This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' b…

The survivorship bias is kind of the point. An employer can't administer an IQ test, but they can hire from MIT or Stanford. They can't pull employees from the good old boy's network, but they can recruit from Harvard.

This is only because schools are so crappy to begin with, by design. If a degree actually meant something it wouldn't matter what school you attained it from.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#19

Post by assface »

adamnemecek wrote: post #16
assface wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' barely teach well anyways. Ignore this person, they don't know what they are talking about. For better or worse, the 'elite' schools have money. That means they can hire teaching-track professors. These are professors whose sole job is to teach and advise (i.e., they don't spend all their time doing research). And they do a really good job at it. Much better than ov…

> These are professors whose sole job is to teach No, no it really is not. It's getting grants, advising grad students, etc etc. From my experience, professors spend very little time on classes besides lectures.

> No, no it really is not. It's getting grants, advising grad students, etc etc.

You are talking about tenure-track or research professors. A teaching-track professor (typically) does not have PhD students so they do not have to get grants.

https://www.cmu.edu/policies/faculty/appointments-teaching-t...

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#20

Post by chayesfss »

zeroer wrote: post #14
_m8fo wrote: post #10

This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' b…

> MIT and other 'elite schools' barely teach well anyways. This is true, but there's a lot of value in being surrounded by peers who are at your level or a little better who push you to become better than you would otherwise.

Value for who, the people paying or the people attending?
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