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Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
71–80 of 157 posts
Re: Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. Anecdotally, I had a sales manager who graduated from Harvard. He was literally no different from any corporate manager I've ever had and just parroted whatever unattainable goals trickled down from the top, providing no clear way to meet said goals
I have worked with people from MIT media lab. I didn't notice them being better than any other engineer. The VCs loved them though and talked pretty much only to them when they visited.
Try mit csail, or some other depts. Some undergrads in particular made me feel rather stupid :)
Re: Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
And if I had to bet I would put money on the money not 'trickling down' as we would hope.
About 65% of students at Yale receive need-based financial aid from the University. Students coming from households making less than $65k don't pay anything at all for tuition/room/board. So clearly some of that endowment money is "trickling down". Source: https://finaid.yale.edu/costs-affordability/affordability
At the university of Whatshisface, tuition is $10^12/semester, and everyone receives $(10^12-10^3)/semester in needs-based financial aid. I assure you that I have a karmatic license to do anything I want - after all, summed across all students I give more than the GDP of many small countries.
Re: Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
#74Just reinforces my belief that an ivy league degree is much more an indicator of socioeconomic class than it is intelligence or aptitude.
As of 2013, the median grade at Harvard was an A-. The mode was an A. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/... Anecdotally, I have heard of places that refuse to hire Harvard grads for this reason.
It's a bizarre situation. In grad school, at least where I went (no place elite), a 'C' was a failing grade, because we were supposed to be doing outstanding work by virtue of being in grad school. I suppose elite schools could argue analogously. "Being here means your work is top drawer". Personally I'd solve the problem by giving written evaluations, which is what my undergrad school did. Useful, nuanced information.
Re: Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
These universities don't have the prestige without the legacy admissions (and alumni donors). There are tons of universities, but it's hard to say anyone "deserves" a spot over someone's family who helped build it.
How is a school prestigious by allowing undeserving[1] rich kids in? [1] In the sense that they're not academically or athletically at the top of the heap.
Because riches and prestige are often found in the same family, so a school or company with an aggregation of such families' progeny is able to reflect some of their shine.
Not saying it's a morally correct, but that's 's how (American) society works. We aren't good at predicting a child's success so we fall back on historical (familial) data.
Re: Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
#76I'm sad to say that I know one of these students that had it arranged for them through what might have been this service.
Re: Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
#77Just reinforces my belief that an ivy league degree is much more an indicator of socioeconomic class than it is intelligence or aptitude.
Yes. You pay for the network, the education is free and optional. However: I have worked with a handful of Harvard MBA graduates and . . . they were the smartest people I have ever worked with, and I have worked with a lot of people.
If we are doing anecdotes the job I had that was predominantly sourced from Harvard was full of bad employees. I work hard at not trying to extrapolate from that small sample size.
Re: Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
#78A smaller subset of this problem is paying people to take standardized tests for you. I graduated from an ivy and had a couple peers who got a perfect score on their SAT's but could only speak broken English. If you're willing to pay someone to cheat on standardized tests, I'm not surprised you're willing to bribe someone to gain admissions also.
I know you are referring to Chinese students. But the reality is that SAT and GRE are stupidly easy, especially math. Almost every Chinese student I know achieved full score in GRE math, and yes, more than half of them spoke broken English.
Re: Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
#79Meritocracy for thee, but not for me. As the upper echelons continue to cordon off segments of the economy and education for just themselves, will the "Bootstraps and Personal Responsibility" mythology finally start to die out?
Part of the way it survives is by setting up the system so that just enough people survive the gauntlet of meritocracy. They're held up as demonstration examples. Pointing out 16 self-made billionaires, for example, leads people to think it's common enough that it might happen for them, too.
An additional twist is that some of those who make it are the ones helping extant powers maintain their grip. WhatsApp and Oracle come to mind.
Re: Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?
#80Just reinforces my belief that an ivy league degree is much more an indicator of socioeconomic class than it is intelligence or aptitude.
As of 2013, the median grade at Harvard was an A-. The mode was an A. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/... Anecdotally, I have heard of places that refuse to hire Harvard grads for this reason.
Grade inflation is a relic of the Vietnam war era where grades were systematically inflated to keep people from the draft. Also happened uniformly across top tier schools and its hard to do a rollback (especially at one institution only).