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

UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

auditor.ca.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 456 posts

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#361

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #230
potatochup wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note, but why are water polo and volleyball considered upper-class sports in the USA? I understand regular polo, rowing, etc, because of the cost of equipment. But at my school (on the other side of the world), volleyball was for the islanders, and water polo was for the misfits who couldn't make it in a more popular sport. What sports in the USA are for the plebs? Baseball?

>Side note, but why are water polo and volleyball considered upper-class sports in the USA? Beach volleyball is more common in areas close to the beach. Beach and indoor players are also significantly taller than the average person-- in the league that my college was a part of, the shortest woman playing middle blocker was still 185cm. Height and beach access both have correlations to socioeconomic factors. For vario…

> Most African American and Hispanic children don't know how to swim.

Out of curiosity, how common is it for public elementary, middle and high-schools to include swimming lessons in (mandatory) PE class in general? How often do schools without their own swimming pools take their PE class at a nearby public pool?

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#362

Post by mantap »

godelski wrote: post #350
solveit wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. This is by design. There exist tests that can distinguish between the merely very good and the outstanding. Elite US universities go out of their ways to not use them, precisely so they can admit the merely very good legacies.

> There exist tests that can distinguish between the merely very good and the outstanding. What tests are these?

Yes does outstanding mean a high depth of knowledge in one area, does it mean a high breadth of knowledge in many different areas? Does it mean a high potential to learn (memory/metacognition skills)? Does it mean comfort with high levels of abstraction? All of these would require different tests.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#363

Post by krastanov »

solveit wrote: post #300
strombofulous wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about the SAT and ACT, I would challenge the idea that they can accurately distinguish between the good and outstanding. At most they provide a rough indication. I know this because I got a much higher score than I deserved to on the ACT because you can read the test pretty easily if you put yourself in the shoes of the people making it (I got a 31 overall and a near-perfect 35 on the science portio…

I'm specifically not talking about the SAT and ACT since they're widely used by elite universities. Those tests top out way too early and can't reliably distinguish between the top 1% and the top 0.1% (The fraction of perfect scorers is much smaller than 1% but the standard error of measurement is way too large). The exams I have in mind are those like the science olympiads and the Cambridge STEP. STEP in particular…

I have some useful background here that leads me to strongly disagree with you. I did well at these international science olympiads in high school. To do that I studied for the particular shape of the exam questions. I became friends with many other people who were high performers at these olympiads. Later on I got a PhD from a prestigious institution and I am now a scientist at another one. Throughout this time, I was very involved in the pedagogical work at these institutions.

One very important piece of insight I gained throughout that time is that after you use some exam to get the top 25% (ish) percent of students, the exam performance really does not matter: it does not correlate with scientific output or originality of work. If anything, I had to unlearn some of the skills that made me good at olympiads because they were severely limiting my creativity. At an olympiad you know there is a solution, while true research problems might be unsolvable and need to be approached differently.

TL;DR: Exams (selective or not, hard or not) are great at giving you the top 20% of students, but they are inherently terrible at telling you who among the top 20% will be a productive scientist or engineer.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#364

Post by garmaine »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #361
Rebelgecko wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Side note, but why are water polo and volleyball considered upper-class sports in the USA? Beach volleyball is more common in areas close to the beach. Beach and indoor players are also significantly taller than the average person-- in the league that my college was a part of, the shortest woman playing middle blocker was still 185cm. Height and beach access both have correlations to socioeconomic factors. For vario…

> Most African American and Hispanic children don't know how to swim. Out of curiosity, how common is it for public elementary, middle and high-schools to include swimming lessons in (mandatory) PE class in general? How often do schools without their own swimming pools take their PE class at a nearby public pool?

Fwiw, I have never heard of this. Swimming wasn’t a part of PE where I grew up.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#366

Post by mas3god »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #163

Here's the real problem: Universities are expensive places to run and need huge resources to build buildings, hire and retain faculty, and other costly endeavors. Hence, the need for donors. Once you have donors, it is VERY hard to avoid this sort of tit-for-tat deal. The best way to get around the funny business: have a system where students are classified into bins. Be very clear with donors: if a student isn't in…

Im pretty sure universities only became expensive once student loans got subsidized and every 18 year old kid in America could jump 100k in debt at the taxpayers expense.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#367

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Balgair wrote: post #295
kevincrane wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California (or at least my part of it) it's pretty common.

I'll echo this. Most HSs that I know of in CA have pools. But I can't find any info online about percentages or breakdowns (urban, rural, suburban, etc). I'd say west-coast states and those that don't freeze have an easier time with pool upkeep and year round usage.

Yeah, I don't have hard information on this either, but I get the impression that it's a much different calculation if you're in a climate where the pool has to be indoors.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#368

Post by godelski »

mantap wrote: post #362
godelski wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There exist tests that can distinguish between the merely very good and the outstanding. What tests are these?

Yes does outstanding mean a high depth of knowledge in one area, does it mean a high breadth of knowledge in many different areas? Does it mean a high potential to learn (memory/metacognition skills)? Does it mean comfort with high levels of abstraction? All of these would require different tests.

Or what even is "success?" Isn't that what garners prestige for the school? Do these tests determine your soft skills? Your ability to network? Handle different stressed environments? How you can manage people?

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#369

Post by MiroF »

Galanwe wrote: post #354
arcticbull wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha it’s should be the same - but maybe that’s because I learned French in Canada.

It's different, though maybe native English speakers will struggle because there is no equivalent of "é". "et", "è", "ai" are all pronounced the same. Similar to the "e" in "best". For "é" and "er" I struggle to find a definite English equivalent sound. Sometimes "a" is close, but it depends on the accent of the speaker. Maybe the best example is just the last "é" when pronouncing "Beyoncé" or "fiancée"

> "e" in "best".

But I pronounce chachet nothing like the e in best. It seems much more similar to a french "é"

This is how I pronounce it:

https://www.google.com/search?q=cachet+pronunciation&oq=cach...

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#370

Post by erostrate »

In France to get into an elite STEM university ("engineering school") students all take the same maths/physics/CS exams and the overall grade is the only factor deciding admission. Everything is state funded.

It's not perfect, but it levels the playing field a lot more than other systems. And it's good at making sure talented but poor students have access to the best programs. At those the level is high, for example the best math program probably has the highest Fields medal per student ratio of any university in the world.

The downside is that universities and engineering schools are small and underfunded so they don't stand out in worldwide rankings.

How do rich people game the system? They can to some extent game it earlier, putting their kids in better high schools. But the kids will still have to take the same exams. So generally they just avoid this system and put their kids into business schools, which are not state funded and where admission is based on much softer and game-able criteria. Or they send them to US universities.

Post reply on HN