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

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

#241

Post by akhilcacharya » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:05 AM UTC

tntn wrote: post #225

akhilcacharya wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you dying soon? If not, there's no deadline. If the people you know did a cool thing at 20 or 21, and you do a cool thing at 24 or 25 (or 45 or 55 or 65 or ...), it is still cool, is it not? It seems clear that you aren't actually interested primarily in sound the cool things, but doing more cool things earlier than peers.

Not as far as I know, but there’s only 1 real chance to be a “Harvard man” or an “MIT man”.

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

#242

Post by pauljurczak » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

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.

No they are not. The numbers of first generation college students there are too small and the objective is to produce compliant members of establishment, not to rock the boat or derail the gravy train.

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

#243

Post by pauljurczak » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:14 AM UTC

akhilcacharya wrote: post #161

saagarjha wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you feel "condemned for life"?

I know I’ll never be able to match the accomplishments of people that got into Duke the year I didn’t, for example.

Perhaps you are focusing on a wrong sort of accomplishments. Do you really crave to be a highly paid Boeing PR drone, twisting the truth to protect their corrupt management from legal responsibility for 737-MAX screw-up?

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

#244

Post by pauljurczak » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:18 AM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #222

akhilcacharya wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 helped design/write an embedded runtime when I was ~29. Got a lot of patents out of it. If I'd done it at 22, it'd have been a crappy OS. Getting software patents is easy. I used to take time to file one whenever I had a 6 hour or more flight. Boredom and all that. Also my employer's patent bonus paid for my airfare. You have decades of life left. One of my mentors had the time of his life programming in his 50s, p…

Thank you for clogging the patent pipeline for the rest of us! ;-)

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

#245

Post by pauljurczak » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:22 AM UTC

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."

Of course! Just like a political campaign contribution in no way affects the future voting pattern of a candidate.

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

#246

Post by chris11 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:29 AM UTC

beenBoutIT wrote: post #30

munk-a wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reject this - if we want admission in the US to be entirely wealth based and Oligarchic we should just buy that concept whole-hog. Many of us (I hope?) believe that scholarships that allow smart people coming from bad backgrounds to succeed are worth their cost[1] so clearly the ability to make use of your education is part of our general societal motivation to give someone one. [1] There are lots of scholarships,…

In the US the public universities are the only schools that can't be bought into at any cost.

Dr. Dre's daughter got into USC after Dr Dre co-founded a school there. Sure, the donation was made in 2013, but I'm sure the 70 million dollar donation impacted their decision.

https://iovine-young.usc.edu/about/index.html https://variety.com/2019/music/news/dr-dre-usc-daughters-twe...

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

#247

Post by p1esk » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:31 AM UTC

shaklee3 wrote: post #238

noego wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with elite colleges like Harvard, has nothing to do with meritocracy. In fact, it's the opposite. They use opaque and subjective criteria in their admissions process, in order to favor those born into privilege. For a better example of a meritocracy, take a look at New York's elite magnet schools like Stuyvesant. Their admissions process is a pure meritocracy - based entirely on a standardized exam that i…

Economic diversity, yes. But Stuyvesant is 92% white and Asian, which is not racially diverse.

Are you suggesting they let in people who failed the standardized exam just to improve racial diversity?

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

#248

Post by xenadu02 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 5:31 AM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #101

manfredo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One one hand, donating to improve the chances of one's kid getting admitted is kind of scummy. On the other hand, the immense amount of money that gets donated is why elite schools are able to give very generous financial aid. Stanford doesn't even charge tuition if parents make less than $125,000 per year. On principle I'm adverse to wealthy people buying opportunities, but if buying opportunities creates more of th…

If the school would benefit from that building why should it be dependent on a rich kid needing to get in to secure that funding? If that rich family didn't end up having a kid that needed to get into that school then the building would never be built - but the family is certainly able to afford funding the construction of that building. I think that's unfair in it's own way on all parties involved.

Rich people only have so many kids. For the price of admitting ~2 students every 25 years or so you get a free building or an endowment that pays the way for 10s or 100s of students every single year.

Thanks to the current tax environment the school doesn't have some alternate choice; the state is not going to step in and provide that funding.

As an administrator do you take the money or do you skip out on expanding a department or admitting 20 kids who need a full ride scholarship to attend?

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

#249

Post by jaredklewis » Thu, May 02, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

shaklee3 wrote: post #238

noego wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with elite colleges like Harvard, has nothing to do with meritocracy. In fact, it's the opposite. They use opaque and subjective criteria in their admissions process, in order to favor those born into privilege. For a better example of a meritocracy, take a look at New York's elite magnet schools like Stuyvesant. Their admissions process is a pure meritocracy - based entirely on a standardized exam that i…

Economic diversity, yes. But Stuyvesant is 92% white and Asian, which is not racially diverse.

What ratio of the races can be said to be diverse? At a minimum, wouldn't one need to know the racial breakdown of the applicant pool before being able to conclude that Stuyvesant is not racially diverse?

I also don't understand why a three person class with one ethnically Chinese person, one ethnically Arab person, and one ethnically Indian person would be considered to have no racial diversity at all. Why is "Asian" one big race, but (for example) Caucasian and Hispanic two different races? It just seems so arbitrary.

Do you have an opinion on Stuyvesant's admission policy? Your comment seems rather pointed but stops short of condemning it.

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

#250

Post by gnicholas » Thu, May 02, 2019, 6:10 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #240

gnicholas wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in norcal and live in the bay area. Plenty of my high school classmates chose UCLA over Berkeley because they wanted to get farther away from home. Some of them are now med school professors. The difference between these two UCs is not as great as you might think. Neither has the elite status of ivy league schools, but most people I've run across on hiring committees viewed the two ad fairly comparable. Not…

Most people I’ve run into on hiring committees do not know or care what school the applicant went to, or if they even went to school. That data isn’t provided. Interview performance is the only factor. What industry do you work in?

This was in law, and I observed it with regard to both undergrad and law degrees.