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UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

auditor.ca.gov

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Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#371

Post by adjkant »

Thorrez wrote: post #347
leapis wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I've seen it calculated is this: For regular classes, A: 4.0, B: 3.0, C: 2.0, D: 1.0 (with some variance depending on + or - grades offered). For Honors/AP classes, every grade is essentially bumped up 1.0 point. So yes, a 3.74 is around an A- average, but that's an A- average in less rigorous classes, without competition from top students. That's more of a B-/C+ average in AP/Honors classes (obviously the ca…

Most schools do that, but not all. My school (a private school in the US) didn't bump up anything.

Colleges recalculate GPA's by high school to compare apples to apples. So even if your school doesn't, many colleges will use this weighting system.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#372

Post by unishark »

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?

A club might go elsewhere for a pool or track, but I don't think it's at all common for a plain old PE class to go off campus except perhaps to use a gym if the school lacks one. And I don't think having your own pool is very common for a high school or below.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#373

Post by dehrmann »

When it's private schools doing it, or coaches at private schools doing it as a side hustle, I really didn't mind--private schools can do what they want, and if they want a rigged system, go for it. There's a reason Jack on 30 Rock called USC "the last bastion of the incompetent rich."

When a public school does this, it's a violation of the public trust and taking advantage of taxpayers.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#374

Post by rahimnathwani »

CharlesMerriam2 wrote: post #34

Have 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.

"This is enough money to supply extra supervision and also give a full scholarship to another student."

Imagine there are 10 students for 5 spots, and there is an objective ranking from most-qualified (#1) to least-qualified (#10).

Now let's assume student #10 can pay that $200k. That funds their spot plus another spot. So instead of admitting:

{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}

You can now admit:

{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10}

Doesn't this seem unfair to candidates #7 to #9, who are more qualified than #10, but will end up with a less valuable credential?

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#375

Post by vkou »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #308
vkou wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the only result of affirmative action admissions, or are there a few you are leaving out? Do you have a better plan for dealing with systemic racism[1], that does not have the drawback you cite? Do you believe that systemic racism doesn't exist? Or do you believe that it does exist, but we shouldn't do anything about it? Which of those three options are you championing? [1] I understand that the mere mention…

> Do you have a better plan for dealing with systemic racism Get rid of all the bullshit administrators to lower the cost of college back to what it was 50 years ago so that poor people can go without getting into a lot of debt.

That's a solution to a different problem. College could be free, it wouldn't solve this problem.

Which of these three options do you propose?

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#377

Post by koonsolo »

erostrate wrote: post #370

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…

Same in Belgium and Netherlands. There is no reason to send your kids to private schools, since the state funded schooling system is already good enough.

Same goes for universities (don't know about the impact on research though, just talking about education here)

And I also highly doubt that graduating a "prestige" university really makes much difference here. If you want to make more money, start your own business.

In my opinion, a lot of problems in US come from the fact that they don't offer proper education to the lower class. In Europe it's great to share a class with kids from all kinds of backgrounds.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#378

Post by saagarjha »

klyrs wrote: post #351
saagarjha wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, a test that splits between the top 0.01% and the top 1%. One student goes to national competitions, the other is merely a decent student at your local high school. The SAT lacks the granularity to distinguish between them.

Throughout my academic career, I've met quite a few brilliant mathematicians with no interest in such competitions. And quite a few "goes to competitions" folks with little interest in higher pursuits. Placing too much faith in any measure is fraught

I’m not saying it’s the only measure we should have. But in the context of the chain this was in I was feeling a sort of “does it really matter if we can separate these people” and I just wanted to illustrate that in actual competitions that discriminate to this level you get a meaningful difference out of it. Now, whether that is an effective indicator of success…I’m not completely sure. A lot of the math competition winners I know are doing startups and HFT, so there’s that.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#379

Post by saagarjha »

lumost wrote: post #352
saagarjha wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, a test that splits between the top 0.01% and the top 1%. One student goes to national competitions, the other is merely a decent student at your local high school. The SAT lacks the granularity to distinguish between them.

My point was that there is likely diminishing likelihood that the a test with such granularity would return a meaningful score. One would need to include a both a wider and deeper set of subject matter that still conforms to the context of the test. Eventually such a test would pick out the best studiers of generalized aptitude tests. While studying for a test is useful in academia - it's not "The" skill. It's much s…

I just included that to point out that there is a tangible difference at the high end, it’s not just “everyone getting 800 on the math SAT is similar in their mathematical ability”. Whether competition performance correlates to mathematical achievement in college later in life is unclear, although I do want to point out that many do end up becoming professors and such. Many of the rest don’t show up on the “math radar” because they major in computer science instead and get jobs in the industry.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#380

Post by vmception »

mywittyname wrote: post #89

People are always going to use their money to buy status. So as long as these college offer prestige & status, people with money are going to use it to get in. Much like doping in sports, you have two paths you can take: try to combat cheating, or accept the cheating as part of the game. I think these universities should accept that they are providing an education, but they are selling prestige, and split their admis…

> I think these universities should accept that they are providing an education, but they are selling prestige

But this has how it has always been. Everyone knew it was always like this, had a feeling it was like this while they were considering or going through higher education, and now a couple articles and investigations come out.

Is anyone surprised here?

The only thing that has occurred is that people covet these institutions and also think they have a chance of accessing them, thanks to illusions of meritocracy that become real enough to be meaningful avenues for a wider population than before.

In the past it was very clear who didn't have a chance and who did.

Look at the example applicants in the article! A babysitter who knew reality and took a chance they got - babysit with this connected family and ask for the favor. DUH! Ka-CHING! Even dropping out of that kind of university looks good. Life upgraded. What game are the rest of you all even playing?

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