Abolish legacy admissions. Abolish race-based admissions.
Pure meritocracy.
UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
61–70 of 456 posts
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#62“Applicant babysat for a colleague of the former director of undergraduate admissions”
I understand how donations or children of prominent alumni got around admissions...but babysitting can get someone entry over others? That seems like a bit of a stretch.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#63Have a rule. Our republic, and the California state government, is based on rule of law. One group makes the laws, another enforces it, and a third interprets the conflicts. This works. What we have here is a 'no rules' set of actions. How about rules that say "we will take any student for $200K/year". This is enough money to supply extra supervision and also give a full scholarship to another student.
1 for 1 isn't worth it, and the UC system already plays that game with international students where one international pays for 3 in-states. Make the buy-in price pay for 10 and I'm in support.
1 for 10 seems reasonable, assuming there is also a strict academic requirement for that privileged student. Even more points if it supports their housing and food plan.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#64In this day and age, with all the fierce competition, it's a real problem that elite universities are admitting rich kids on such unfair and uneven grounds. Going to the "correct" school can transform the life of some people, essentially pulling them up from the lower working classes, and opening up the doors to middle, or even upper-middle classes. And what's even worse, a lot of these rich kids could go pretty much…
seeing this as an international student from a developing country, this is simply disheartening. It’s coming to the point where I’m starting to think hard about if it’s really worth applying to a US university at this point.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#65Don't know if I'm just jaded -- but I'm seriously not bothered by people making large donations to a university to have their kid admitted. It's a transaction which benefits the university and the student. Granted -- it should be above board and there should be formal policies. Not justifying the specific actions in this case just curious at the outrage.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
re-leaglize. It was legal until the 90s. When it became illegal, the diversity on campus dropped significantly. There is an argument to be made that the race-based admissions help make up for prior injustices.
I think you also have to determine the purpose of a university. It's either to take the top students, bar none, or it is to educate and uplift poorer students (economically and educationally). Mixing these two doesn't work.
Why can't you mix the two? Admit 1/2 your class as top students, and the other 1/2 as people who are being uplifted.
That is in fact exactly how admissions at the UC schools work. The first 1/2 of the class is admitted on test scores and grades alone, the second 1/2 is admitted via reading of their essays and considering other factors, such as extracurriculars, economic circumstance, and, until the 90s, race.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#67Rather than claim that students are admitted based on test scores and grades alone, why don't universities simply say that admissions are also based on factors such as how influential or wealthy the parents are? Doing so would not be a problem, the only problem is not being transparent about it. Stanford is very clear about the fact that "legacy" applicants (meaning their parents or siblings are at Stanford and presu…
> Rather than claim that students are admitted based on test scores and grades alone, why don't universities simply say that admissions are also based on factors such as how influential or wealthy the parents are? Doing so would not be a problem
For public universities like those in the University of California system, to whom the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution (and, often, similar and sometimes more expansive provisions of state constitutions) apply, it probably would be a problem.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#68Not surprising at all; however, I am curious how someone who didn't meet the admissions criteria is able to graduate CAL with a passing GPA...
One of my kids applied to Cal a few years back...at Cal you apply to the individual college (such as the college of engineering) when you apply. Some colleges are much easier to get into than others and it's very difficult to change colleges once you are admitted, it's like applying to get into the school all over again. Obviously getting into the CS or Engineering programs at Cal is very hard but many of the other programs are much less competitive. I don't know if that's how all the UC schools are or not, but the difficulty of admissions seems like a mixed bag at UC Berkley.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#69Have a rule. Our republic, and the California state government, is based on rule of law. One group makes the laws, another enforces it, and a third interprets the conflicts. This works. What we have here is a 'no rules' set of actions. How about rules that say "we will take any student for $200K/year". This is enough money to supply extra supervision and also give a full scholarship to another student.
1 for 1 isn't worth it, and the UC system already plays that game with international students where one international pays for 3 in-states. Make the buy-in price pay for 10 and I'm in support.
Maybe they could take like 5-10% of the slots and just auction them off.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#70i think we tend to blow these things out of proportion. while it is bad, it sounds like it was 64 students.. when they had 40k students on 2019
so no this doesn’t really have a systemic effect on anybody. and perhaps the money donated actually paid for scholarships for poor kids