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L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

nytimes.com

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Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#191

Post by marrone12 »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #168
darawk wrote: post #57

The actual problem here is not the bribery. The problem is that those bribes are being captured by random 3rd parties, rather than by the school itself. The correct way to implement college admissions is this: Charge a sliding scale fee based on application quality, and then use the excess revenue generated to subsidize poor kids tuition. Your kid has a 2.5 GPA and wants to go to Harvard? Great, that'll be a million…

The only reason admission to elite schools is so coveted is because, in theory, you can't buy your way into a degree. Once you can buy your way in then no one will want to. Your idea would work for a bit but eventually, it would fall apart.

Well, being a legacy student can absolutely get you into the school. You can't buy it for yourself now, but someone can have bought it for you earlier.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#192

Post by saagarjha »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #182
saagarjha wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The relationship between colleges and the accomplishments of the people attending them is tenuous at best. There are thousands of people at good universities that do essentially nothing, and wherever you are you have the opportunity to do better than them.

No, not really. People that get into Stanford or MIT did cool stuff when they were younger to get there. I still haven't done cool stuff!

I mean, you've still got quite a lot of time to do cool things?

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#193

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Blackthorn wrote: post #2

They're not that elite if they're gonna get ensnared in this one. If you're one of the elite you just donate a building, which is a completely legal way to get your kids into a school of your choice.

But that misses what's going on here. Some of the indicted parents certainly did have the means to donate a building. But social status is now built on at least the appearance of a meritocracy. Donate a building, and everyone says your kid just got in because you donated a building. Bribe a coach secretly, and sure, everyone knows your kid had tons of advantages growing up, but you can at least keep up the facade that the kid deserves to be there.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#194

Post by asdff »

TonyGonzalez wrote: post #157
dvt wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, no one takes USNWR rankings seriously -- it's well-known that public schools are dinged due to lower endowments and higher student counts. To wit, the idea that Berkeley is academically comparable to USC is a joke.

Maybe at the graduate level Berkeley should be ranked higher but how are public schools dinged? UCLA has an endowment almost as high as USC’s with comparable student body size. Thinking public schools are dinged because they’re poor is factually wrong. Also, Berkeley is about where it would be given its acceptance standards and standardized scores outside of EECS are among the lowest in the top 25. The only school wh…

The student bodies aren't all that comparable. Although they both have 45k students, USC has twice as many graduate students as UCLA and they even outnumber the undergrads.

But really, its pretty foolish to compare an entire school to another. A given program against another given program? Sure. There are fields that USC and UCLA each might be at the top of, and there are fields where they are going to be much worse. That's the real rub with these rankings, combining and binning aspects of schools that aren't related at all. The only thing that's worth looking at is the rigor or research output of a specific program.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#195

Post by asdff »

yumraj wrote: post #154
dvt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USC is definitely a status symbol on the West Coast ( especially in Southern California). It's obviously not on the same academic level as UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford/Caltech, but it's still very much an exclusive brand. You don't get it because you don't live here and aren't surrounded by wealthy 16-year olds that yearn to go to USC (often times over UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford). (Disclaimer: I'm a UCLA alum.)

I don't know how common it is, but once a person I knew had referred to USC as University of Spoiled Children.

More recently known as the University of Scandals Continuous

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#196

Post by mythrwy »

tus87 wrote: post #188
leftyted wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd urge you to think more about this. You can imagine the same thing for murder trials: 10 million per victim or you go to jail. You can use the money to make the world better! I'm not so sure. These institutions have an embedded narrative. For universities it's that they are meritocracies, where class/race/gender/etc do not matter. For the justice system it's that everyone is equal before the law and the guilty wil…

WRONG. Murder is a negative to society. A loser going to Harvard is not, may even improve society if they study well.

If Harvard had infinite seats maybe.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#197

Post by defen »

azeotropic wrote: post #98
azeotropic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? UCLA is a public university. Or am I missing the joke?

You did miss something. The first guilty plea was from a couple who paid to get their eldest daughter into UCLA and their next daughter into USC. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-01/first-par...

Noted, thanks

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#198

Post by CydeWeys »

leftyted wrote: post #165
darawk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not so sure. These institutions have an embedded narrative. For universities it's that they are meritocracies, where class/race/gender/etc do not matter. For the justice system it's that everyone is equal before the law and the guilty will be punished. Do they have that narrative though? We already have affirmative action, which is the explicit inclusion of race/gender/class in admissions criteria. We are alrea…

> Do they have that narrative though? We already have affirmative action, which is the explicit inclusion of race/gender/class in admissions criteria. We are already a long ways from pure meritocracy. I think affirmative action is a bad idea for exactly this reason. It has eroded the narrative. It's trendy for left-wing types to argue things like "Harvard isn't a meritocracy" or to sneer at the idea of a meritocracy…

> I think doing this in the open would be a disaster.

Thought experiment: What would happen if it were public knowledge how much each student was paying to attend school? If you were far down the sliding scale and you were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to get in, and that was public knowledge, would it hurt the school's reputation as much? Then it would be clear why this particular person got in, and their intelligence (or lack thereof) wouldn't weigh against people who earned their place by merit, which you could tell by seeing that their tuition cost is low or zero.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#199

Post by CydeWeys »

leftyted wrote: post #135
opportune wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really like universities to be meritocracies. However I went to a highly ranked school for undergrad and I can assure you it was nowhere close to a meritocracy, nor did it really try to pretend that it was. That narrative may exist for you and others, but it's entirely accidental.

I also went to a highly ranked school. It wasn't a perfect meritocracy but it was at least oriented towards merit. But my initial point remains: the idea of the meritocracy is necessary. I don't think universities can exist without it, at least not in this form.

Isn't research the main driving force behind many universities? Would they really be affected that much by how some undergraduates got in, especially since they likely wouldn't even be participating in research anyway?

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#200

Post by asdff »

willio58 wrote: post #108
rhegart wrote: post #49

Affirmative action on one side, cheaters on the other. At least a dozen people cheated on the SAT in my school and had the audacity to brag about it. Financial aid if you poor, paid for if you rich. Middle class honest kids hurt the most. Had top 1% scores, no ivies or UCLA for me (got UCB at least) and I’m Asian. My little cousin, same scores and rejected from UCSC 10 years later...much worse now than before

Two people in my high school told me they cheated on the SAT. They got _perfect_ scores and the high school actually bragged about them during graduation. They also happened to live across the street from each other in a relatively large town. I’ve always wondered what they did to cheat, I wonder if they’d be as open about it now since they’re both graduating at MIT and Harvard soon.

I guarantee they continued to cheat at MIT and Harvard. It is stupid easy to cheat. Most of the time the proctoring TA doesn't even walk the aisles.
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