What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education • Hacker News Board

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#171

Post by jforman » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 12:25 AM UTC

jonstokes wrote: post #144

jforman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These schools are big places, so it's not all that surprising different people have different experiences. What department, out of curiosity? I had experience in molecular biology and computer science at Harvard and mol bio at Princeton. (But yes, I saw zero of this in any of those places)

Lol, I'm so sorry, this is unkind and very possibly inaccurate, but I read your "what department" question like this: "Where were you on the internal Harvard hierarchy that we both know is incredibly important to Harvard folks, but that the outside world generally knows nothing about. I need to know where you were on the status ladder so I can decide how much of your comment, like the article author's (she's on the l…

I was a common undergrad in the computer science department, and my freshman Tutor was an awesome guy from the div school. I had no part in politics (although I was aware FAS sat higher than DIV on somebody's totem pole); I just saw no evidence of the behavior described in the article and was curious if other departments behaved differently from CS.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#172

Post by leggomylibro » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 12:30 AM UTC

eighthnate wrote: post #161

leggomylibro wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I was sort of making a facetious joke. Sometimes it's surprising how fervently people revere tradition, and you do see it a bit more often in the UK, imo. Not that I'd be a great judge, having spent less than a month or so there in total.

> Sorry, I was sort of making a facetious joke. Oh. I see. The joke went completely over my head.

It probably just wasn't any good.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#173

Post by otakucode » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 12:43 AM UTC

rdlecler1 wrote: post #16

I was a TA at Yale when I did my PhD there and I contrast that experience to when I was a TA at University of Calgary. Whether it’s a higher sense of entitlement or just grinding it out to maximize your official grade the contrast between these two schools was striking. At Yale you’d better think twice about honest grading because if you did there would be an army at your door with pitchforks ready. You then have to…

Research suggests 'honest grading' is a pipe dream anyway. The book 'A Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives' dedicates most of its final chapter to grading. Even people specifically trained to grade to a very strict standard were incapable of doing so when they knew almost anything at all about the student.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#174

Post by mturmon » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

tomtheelder wrote: post #18

alttab wrote: post #5

Here's a working link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0... The article is short, and only uses an anecdote to support its claim. While I can generally agree that places like Harvard work more in connections, networks, and money than intellectual rigor, the article is too short and missing enough detail to fall flat.

As a former undergrad, the points about grade inflation are 100% correct, and everything else is garbage. > Many of the better-off young people at Harvard appeared to require intense favoritism to reassure them, perhaps because of the less-moneyed achievement and potential that loomed all around. Though some of the anointed developed their capabilities to the full, the institutional imperative to establish a hierarch…

I believe you should re-examine your indignation. One window into the favoritism of these schools is legacy admissions. For instance, about 10-30% of Ivy admissions are to legacies, and on average these legacies have lower scores than ordinary admissions.

Another window is the favors offered to large donors. My wife worked in fundraising for an Ivy. There was no end to the coddling of doddering old donors, by the university president all the way down through deans and managers of large facilities.

There was a dossier on each and every significant donor, maintained by a dedicated research staff, and specific people who were tasked with maintaining and improving relationships with large donors through favors. ("Large" wasn't that large, a $1M gift would be very, very large.) One reference point here is the admission of Jared Kushner to Harvard.

To return to the matter at hand, is it not at least possible that the relevant Dean made an offhand comment to the professor that it was certainly a pleasure to see that the son of $BIG_DONOR was taking Latin this term?

A professor who wanted to please the Dean (don't underestimate the appeal!) would get the hint. A professor who didn't get hints like this might not find legacies enrolled in their class. A Dean who didn't know how to finesse these opportunities might get rotated out to another position.

Yes, I knew a student like this, whose father would fly in and have a conversation with the Dean (not Harvard, but close enough).

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#175

Post by plandis » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 1:22 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #114

ahelwer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A grade is supposed to represent your ability and understanding of a topic, but that's only half the equation. Are exams an adequate proxy for ability and understanding of a topic? They aren't for me. When I want to understand something, I create something which requires and demonstrates that understanding - this could be a Wikipedia article, a piece of software, or a lecture. Nothing of value is demonstrated by sitt…

I've never understood how someone could master a topic yet could not answer questions about it. I know from my own personal experience that when I bombed an exam, it's because I simply did not understand the material. When I did well on an exam, I had corresponding confidence that I understood it.

Conversely, I was able to pass (with As) some physics exams without really understanding. That became painfully obvious in my solid-state physics lab class.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#176

Post by drharby » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 1:36 AM UTC

maksimum wrote: post #54

irrational wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Harvard really considered more prestigious than Oxford or Cambridge? That doesn't follow my perception.

Oxbridge have an average acceptance rate of 18% for undergrads. Harvard is 6%. Assuming similar applicant pools, many who got rejected by Harvard would have been accepted at Oxbridge. Obviously that's only one measure of prestige.

That's a major assumption. Another major assumption overlooked is that those capable of admission don't want to attend these schools.

Low hanging fruit would be diehard applicants to MIT, Caltech, or the Service Academies

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#177

Post by quuquuquu » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 1:39 AM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #148

Animats wrote: post #25

Harvard's graduation rate is 97.5%. Yale 97%. Princeton 96.9%. It's hard to flunk out of the Ivy League. Non Ivy League highly selective schools: Caltech 92.3%. Stanford 93%. MIT 92.2%. UC Berkeley: 90.9%. Low 90% success rate is normal there.

I just remember the difference between Stanford 30 years ago and San Jose State. At Stanford students that were failing a class or getting a grade that was too low would just drop it and retake it the next semester. At San Jose State you couldn't drop a class after the first two days. Stanford you could retake a class for a higher grade. SJSU, you could retake a class if the grade was lower than a C. But they'd avera…

That sounds like a hellacious place to attend school.

That's like judging an engineer based on a blended average of their output, for 3 months, compared to Nikola Tesla.

If you can't compete with him, sorry, it's gonna have to be a B-.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#178

Post by chrismealy » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 1:47 AM UTC

arx1422 wrote: post #141

I didn't go to Harvard and I'll freely admit that when I come across Harvard people, they are as a general pool, stunningly impressive in whatever discipline they are in.

A Harvard MBA once told me that going from zero to ten is a 1000% increase. I was not impressed.

Also, George W Bush.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#179

Post by axedwool » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 2:00 AM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #153

WalterBright wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood how someone could master a topic yet could not answer questions about it. I know from my own personal experience that when I bombed an exam, it's because I simply did not understand the material. When I did well on an exam, I had corresponding confidence that I understood it.

It is the difference between knowing "given a task in this knowledge area, I can accomplish it" and uselessly loading up on all that information to perform in a purely artificial situation the likes of which is never seen again.

So, good preparation for how interviews work, then?

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#180

Post by tehwebguy » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 2:32 AM UTC

csa wrote: post #149

tehwebguy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a scam it all is. How tragic that you TAs are apparently complicit. Edit: Thanks for the downvote but giving higher grades because it's more convenient than doing the right thing is... the wrong thing. Painful that at some point it felt like your (and many others') best choice but it was still wrong flat out. Hey maybe now you can "change the system from the inside!"

Some additional questions after your edit: 1. How does one define the "wrong thing"? Genuine question. 2. What about soft grading makes it a scam? Since letter grades are distinctly not criterion referenced, I struggle to see a strong justification for this claim. Please help me understand. 3. What makes you think that anyone in the system wants it changed? I humbly suggest that very few people actually do -- the cur…

I'd say giving one a grade they didn't earn, because it is more convenient for you, is the wrong thing.

It's surely a breach of ethics to evaluate someone's work and report that they did better than you concluded they did for convenience. I'd call that ethical breach "the wrong thing."

OP said to think twice about "honest grading" so I think dishonest grading is the problem with what you are calling "soft grading."

I don't think anyone inside wants it changed, I don't think anyone ever does when a broken system benefits them more than those outside. That's why it was in quotes.