Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

#41

Post by rb808 »

sweeneyrod wrote: post #36
rb808 wrote: post #30

I think legacy admissions are a good thing for the organization and the other students who go there. People in the US have a close attachment to their university, they would like their children to go there and they donate a lot of money. Take away legacy admissions and you just get people who want to go there for the reputation and endowment. The endowment quickly fades because people are less likely to donate, and w…

I'm sure Harvard's reputation would be fine without admitting a load of thick kids who happen to come from privileged backgrounds (the smart ones would get in anyway). Maybe their endowment would suffer, but since they currently have about as much money as the whole of Latvia I expect they'd survive.

Harvard and the Ivies have been doing what they do for centuries and they're still successful. I'd suggest they know what they are doing when they let in privileged kids. If I could get into an Ivy I'd probably like to have some "thick" privileged kids in my class too to help fund my startup.

Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

#42

Post by walshemj »

protomyth wrote: post #28
notlukesky wrote: post #3

So long as admissions are not solely test based (like in many countries) then it will be gamed. The 2019 college admissions bribery scandal is the tip of the iceberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber... There are also other ways of getting easier admission to selective schools in the US by saying you are for example Native American.

Hopefully, the admissions office requires you to furnish your tribal ID or paper showing you are an enrolled member. There are plenty of articles showing blood tests are inaccurate and basically showing ignorance of the whole issue.

Coaching students for Oxbridge in the UK is another example

Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

#43

Post by throwawayjava »

protomyth wrote: post #29
virtuous_signal wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, and in addition to the claim that legacy admits make the entire college experience more affordable for everyone else, is probably the strongest objection. I would venture the following: if we agree on the norm that "power should stop being transferred dynastically or through nepotism in a modern civilized society", and abolishing legacy preferences bring us closer to this norm, then the negative effects…

That's never going to happen unless you truly change human nature. We are tribal and protect our families. Nepotism is a family member making life better for other members of the family. I'm not sure we will still be a society if we eliminate family bonds.

> I'm not sure we will still be a society if we eliminate family bonds.

There's a significant difference between not having nepotism and eliminating family bonds.

> We are tribal and protect our families.

Many of virtuous_signal's arguments boiled down to the observation that protecting your family via nepotism or dynastic preference isn't even necessarily good for the effected family member in the long run. I think that poster makes a good argument that dynastic preference in university admissions is a net negative for its beneficiaries.

The negatives of nepotism also show up in business, where, with rare exception, nepotism tends to genereate a huge drain on both productivity and external respect.

Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

#45

Post by CydeWeys »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #14
virtuous_signal wrote: post #4

>The year I arrived, Hopkins had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). Now those numbers are reversed—3.5 percent of students in this year’s freshman class have a legacy connection to the university, and 19.1 percent are Pell-eligible This change happened in five years . Such a policy change would be extremely popular. For proponents of…

"mediocre children of alumni" This is an unfair description of the advantage of legacy at an elite school. It's typically an edge, like playing a sport or belonging to an under-represented demographic.

The non-mediocre children of alumni can still get in. "Mediocre" is being used here in a relative sense.

Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

#46

Post by dan-robertson »

hooloovoo_zoo wrote: post #18
virtuous_signal wrote: post #4

>The year I arrived, Hopkins had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). Now those numbers are reversed—3.5 percent of students in this year’s freshman class have a legacy connection to the university, and 19.1 percent are Pell-eligible This change happened in five years . Such a policy change would be extremely popular. For proponents of…

Another group that stands to lose are those students who were admitted on merit and no longer have access to “mediocre” students with good connections.

This relies on a correlation between “legacy” and “good connections”. But if it’s about good connections, why not just have a policy like: “if you’re sufficiently good you get in and if you don’t have a ton of money we can provide scholarships to make things more affordable or free; and if you’re ok but rich, you can pay 2x the usual rate for admission up to some quota of these admissions”

You could even replace “rich” with “rich and well-connected” though it may be hard to determine the second part.

This seems like a more honest system and it doesn’t strike me as obviously unfair or unreasonable to have. Someone paying double fees isn’t taking someone else’s place so much as providing for someone else’s place.

Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

#47

Post by virtuous_signal »

nugget wrote: post #40
jostmey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it: The number of legacy students has fallen almost to zero, so now Johns Hopkins announces they are getting rid of legacy students, not before.

Yes this seems more like an attempt to capitalize on a negative trend (legacies no longer applying and matriculating) to achieve positive brand association (Hopkins is now leading the way towards a meritocratic future). I'd be curious what led to the fall in legacy students in the first place.

This totally might be the case. However it's still a good change and might lead to other colleges following suit. I'm reminded of a recent trend among the Ivies where Princeton was the first to eliminate loans from its financial aid packages[1] and instead offer only grants. Of course they have the largest endowment per student in the country, so the amount they collected from low-income students via loans was probably trivial. However it did seem to kick off a trend to the extent that all of the ivies[2] (dartmouth and cornell being more stringent) have replaced loans with grants for low-income students.

[1] https://paw.princeton.edu/article/no-loan-pledge-decade-late... [2] https://blog.collegevine.com/does-the-ivy-league-offer-schol...

Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

#48

Post by MandieD »

peterwwillis wrote: post #38

There's huge waiting lists for international students to get into Hopkins. What this will probably result in is that it makes headroom for more international students to get in (because if you're sourcing "qualified and promising students from all backgrounds" there's probably gonna be more of those across the whole globe rather than locally). Also, the Pell Grant averages just over $4K, going up to about $6K. The tu…

Hopkins was pretty generous with financial aid ca. 20 years ago when I was there - our household income was in the $80-90k range, putting us well above US average at the time, but still well below the average JHU student's family. We forked out a total of about $55k between tuition and living expenses for my whole 4 years, and I vaguely remember the “sticker price” being in the $30k/yr neighborhood. I maxed out on federal student loans ($16k total), and my parents made up another $24k in PLUS (Parental Loans for Undergraduate Students) that we had a tacit understanding that I’d take over after graduation (I even managed to pay them back for what they’d paid while I was in school!), and I worked summers, but that just went towards living expenses.

Most of my aid was straight-up need-based, on top of $2k/yr National Merit and federal Work-Study, the latter of which had me running around doing desk-side support and learning a TON about end-user behavior.

Graduating into the post-DotCom bubble was a little rough, but unlike some of my CS classmates from more prosperous backgrounds, I felt absolutely no shame taking a boring government contracting job that covered my loans and what I thought was a nice lifestyle.

Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

#49

Post by morpheuskafka »

bradleyjg wrote: post #23
virtuous_signal wrote: post #4

>The year I arrived, Hopkins had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). Now those numbers are reversed—3.5 percent of students in this year’s freshman class have a legacy connection to the university, and 19.1 percent are Pell-eligible This change happened in five years . Such a policy change would be extremely popular. For proponents of…

> (ii) the university's endowments if alumni decrease their donations. The tax law says you aren't supposed to be able to deduct contributions to charitable organizations if you get something in return. Edit: Point being that this system is illegitimate in the first place, not that it doesn't happen.

You are supposed to reduce the value of the deduction claimed by the fair market value of anything in return. So if they send you a $10 sticker or invite you to a banquet with $500 in food, you can't deduct that part. The question is, how exactly can one determine the FMV of a boost in admission consideration (not even just the admission itself, but an un-quantifiable additional favorable factor in review)?

Re: Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

#50

Post by _jasper »

rm999 wrote: post #32

Really happy to hear this. As someone who went to Hopkins I would fully encourage my children to apply (I had a great time and got an amazing education). But the idea that I spent a few years of my life there 40 years ago feels irrelevant to the admissions process. Any advantage given would be counterproductive in several ways: 1. It would coddle the child at a time in their life when it's essential to learn independ…

With you on 1 and 3 and I'm curious how this decision polls with other stakeholders (i.e. alumni with college-age children whom they want the best for).

Your #2 is basically a restatement of mismatch theory[1] which has generated tremendous controversy when applied to the affirmative action debate.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/the-nee...

Post reply on HN