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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

#211

Post by glangdale »

darawk wrote: post #148
glangdale wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of an elite school is that it's meant to be 'elite', i.e. selective. The more dumb rich kids get in, the more the value of the school's degree declines. This deal has always been bent at the high end ('buy us a new library wing and we'll ignore that little Timmy has a room temp IQ') but not overtly broken, which is what this proposal (and the behavior that people are being prosecuted for) amounts to.

> The point of an elite school is that it's meant to be 'elite', i.e. selective. The more dumb rich kids get in, the more the value of the school's degree declines. If that had any truth to it then affirmative action wouldn't work.

It's pretty wild that you think that providing preference to the most able people who have typically come from disadvantaged backgrounds (i.e. affirmative action) is equivalent to providing preference to insanely rich people who are vastly underperforming their privileged cohort.

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

#212

Post by ajross »

mochomocha wrote: post #173
ajross wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go research financial aid programs and outcomes at elite US Universities. The fact that these schools are subject to financial pressure at the margins absolutely does not mean that they are closed to needy students. There are MANY unfair elements of the US educational system that disadvantage poor and minority students, but access to elite schools for the deserving fraction is just not one of them. We're doing fine h…

What about the middle-class kid who doesn't qualify to any of these programs whose chance to get the best teachers and nurturing environment is spoiled by the dumb rich kid taking a spot and wasting it? What about the extra administrative, time burden and uncertainty of outcome the poor kids have to suffer to chase all these financial aid programs? There's clearly room for improvement.

> What about the middle-class kid who doesn't qualify to any of these programs

Citation needed. I was that kid myself. There are no "programs" to "qualify" for. You file a financial aid form. Whatever you and your parents can reasonably pay, you pay, and the school covers the rest. It works for everyone. And one of the reasons it works for everyone is revenue that the school generates, and yeah, that includes some shady benefactor greasing.

I'm not going to sit here and deny that legacy admissions are distasteful and unfair. I jumped in the thread to point out that what they do not do is significantly disadvantage the needy. If you really care about these issues, call your congressperson about federal education funding and stop bitching at Harvard.

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

#214

Post by akhilcacharya »

CydeWeys wrote: post #204
akhilcacharya wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 graduated from a state school over a decade ago. I'm working at a good company now doing things that some people would consider "cool". And I couldn't even tell you off the top of my head what university a single one of my coworkers went to. I think to some degree that you're using the school you did go to as a facile excuse to explain why you "haven't done cool stuff", when it's quite possible that that's not the…

Well, my state school (rank #50+) is quite a bit different from yours in terms of quality (rank #25 or less) for starters. I didn't get anywhere close to an 800 on my Math SAT, whereas I'm sure a lot of people at UMD CS did (and a few at my school did too!).

>I think to some degree that you're using the school you did go to as a facile excuse to explain why you "haven't done cool stuff", when it's quite possible that that's not the reason at all, and that even if you had gone to that school you still wouldn't be "doing cool stuff".

Right, it's more of a correlation for inherent inferiority in my case more than anything else, but that's besides the point.

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

#215

Post by akhilcacharya »

saagarjha wrote: post #192
akhilcacharya wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not...really? I'm 22, turning 23. I know a bunch of people that got patents in high school, competed in math/informatics olympiads and have multiple published papers (of varying quality, but nonetheless). Never had any of that or knew how to do it.

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

#216

Post by [deleted] »

saagarjha wrote: post #201
akhilcacharya wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a lot of inherent ability tied within ability to be accepted into an elite program (SAT score, etc) that I simply don't have. That doesn't help matters at all.

> there's a lot of inherent ability tied within ability to be accepted into an elite program Yeah, the ability to be accepted into an elite program. This often has little bearing in real life (honestly, how much do you really care about the ability to get a good SAT score anymore?).

[deleted]

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

#217

Post by saagarjha »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #215
saagarjha wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not...really? I'm 22, turning 23. I know a bunch of people that got patents in high school, competed in math/informatics olympiads and have multiple published papers (of varying quality, but nonetheless). Never had any of that or knew how to do it.

> I know a bunch of people that got patents in high school, competed in math/informatics olympiads and have multiple published papers (of varying quality, but nonetheless).

For each of those people there are a hundred that haven't done anything like that. "Ability" is a continuum: there are levels between "not doing anything" and "at the top of everything". Join your local research lab, try some competitive programming, do some open source work–just try your best and see what you can do! Not everyone can be the very best (though, it's entirely possible that you can, if you work hard and get lucky, so I don't want to close that off to you), but that doesn't make you unable to do cool things.

(FWIW, I'm in a middling undergraduate program, have no patents or papers in my name, and while I've competed in olympiads I have probably not done so at the level you're thinking of; I still feel that I've done cool things. YMMV, but if you want to chat personally feel free to shoot me an email.)

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

#218

Post by naveen99 »

sgustard wrote: post #96
olliej wrote: post #29

I feel like the solution here is to not bribe your children's way into school. If your children aren't academically talented and you don't have the money to publicly buy a building for the school you should accept that and just let them live off your money and power as is traditional.

Stanford has explicitly said they do not accept donations in return for admission, for what that's worth. Source: https://news.stanford.edu/2019/03/14/admission-case-info/ "A donation does not purchase a place at Stanford, and we work very hard to ensure that prospective donors understand this. Stanford does not accept gifts if it knows a gift is being made with the intention of influencing the admission process."

By definition a donation cannot come with strings attached. but it will influence their admissions process, because they don’t want to discourage future no strings attached donations...

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

#219

Post by apatters »

manfredo wrote: post #69
ForrestN wrote: post #40

I'm surprised that this scandal doesn't seem to be causing anyone to think one step further and realize that the entire premise of "elite" colleges with competitive admissions is a device for the perpetuation of inequality. We're devoting most of our advanced educational resources to helping people who would already be successful reap even more rewards. I understand the idea of meritocracy in fields with life or deat…

Many of these "elite" colleges are one of the best avenues to eliminate inequality. Many of them have significant (at least double digit) percentages of the student population that are first generation college students. Elite universities often have the greatest degree of racial diversity.

They don't eliminate inequality, they just facilitate a game of musical chairs. America has a very high and very well documented level of income inequality. It's also well documented that the people at the top often change. There's a lot of turnover at the top from generation to generation.

But the system property of inequality -- that is to say that American society is a highly stratified society with huge winners and huge losers -- is not going away, in fact American society is becoming more stratified. The elite universities perpetuate this system by conferring exceptional career benefits to their alumni.

Even though a few people will get promoted to the top, and nowadays some of them will even be women, people of color, etc., this system of inequality has some pretty painful drawbacks for most Americans, which manifest in long working hours, higher rates of mental illness, etc. as compared to more equal societies.

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