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

It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

chronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 379 posts

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#191

Post by treeman79 »

WalterBright wrote: post #184
mc32 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have said, there are many other good schools for everyone, even for the Ivy Leaguers. But with the Ivy League you get cachet and connections. I don't begrudge them. They can have them. They will have them regardless as you said. Why want to be the thing you don't like anyway. At least it's not as bad as having to have attended the Sciences Po, or have to have attended Eton/OxBridge and the like. The bad par…

Costs will go even higher if graduates are allowed to dispose of loans via bankruptcy. Simply because the responsible ones will have to pay for the irresponsible.

Cost will drastically fall.

Right now colleges can charge whatever they want and students will happy sign up not comprehending they have to pay back loans. It’s a complete gravy train.

No one in their right mind will give a loan to a student that isn’t going for a high income degree. Doctor/engineer Etc. Even these will be harder to get.

So colleges won’t be able to charge 50k a semester since few can afford that.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#192

Post by treeman79 »

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #14

> recirculating resources among the most exclusive and wealthy while chanting social-justice keywords Indeed, Harvard aggressively defends its admissions program as "holistic" while rating Asians as having lower personal ratings that they define as measuring "likeability", "courage", and "kindness" [1]. You might ask yourself how an institution which claims to be anti-racist exhibits behavior of the opposite kind. [1…

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

- Animal Farm.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#193

Post by briefcomment »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #183
krastanov wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have studied and taught (as a graduate TA) at some of these institutions so maybe I am not objective, but some of your premises are flatout wrong. Especially when it comes to money: it is not the majority, but a substantial portion of undergrads in these institutions are from lower middle class or lower (economically) backgrounds. The rest are upper middle class and few are actually from rich families. The higher s…

Quantitative concentrations in Harvard are probably the ones that are the least affected by legacy admissions and “holistic” reviews. I guess you are more likely to see such applicants in sociology, WGS, VES and other concentrations stereotypically seen as easy. I doubt people who get a ride based on their athletic achievements in spite of their low GPA flock to CS and physics.

Student athletes at these schools are generally smart. No reason to think there aren't enough athletic smart people to fill up a relatively small number of spots.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#194

Post by Dracophoenix »

mlac wrote: post #21

“In 1940, the acceptance rate at Harvard was 85 percent.” I didn’t realize that was the acceptance rate, but JFK’s application to Harvard is interesting and that acceptance rate adds context: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/jfks-v... And maybe it’s not people pulling the ladder up behind them - it’s that the ladder has become more visible and desirable without expanding or changing. I do have so…

Just to add to your point, in 1940, Harvard (and most other universities) had its own exam and its own application. The person who was going to spend the time to try for Harvard was a boy (and only boys) who had finished high school (an accomplishment achieved by less than half of all students back then), had book smarts (a common quality today but not in the past), and some form of "noteworthiness" (whether that was in family prestige or science fair awards). As you can see, all these things put together make for a very low denominator with which Harvard could have easily achieved an 80%+ acceptance rate. These factors were already self-selecting for the "Harvard Man." Now they aren't. You are correct in your point that the ladder has become more visible. That visibility has bred more competition and more metrics to suss out who should have a seat at the College.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#195

Post by LudwigNagasena »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #62
scarmig wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College admissions' treatment of Asian American applicants is the most explicit form of institutional racism in the US today. It's the kind of racist discrimination that, if applied against any other group, would get the perpetrator sued to oblivion.

I say this as an Asian person: surely black folks getting disproportionately policed and killed is a bigger manifestation of institutional racism, no?

Actually statistical studies usually don’t find racial discrepancies in the lethal use of force even when they don’t use control variables. However the differences exist in non-lethal use of force even when you account for various control variables (time of the day, location, income of the civilian, etc.)

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#196

Post by rejectedandsad »

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #178
rejectedandsad wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you aren't making millions at any salaried job short of being a C level exec. Just graduating from Harvard isn't making you millions I mean it is happening at Google - look up how much Liz Fong Jones made as an ex-Caltech, ex-MIT engineer. Definitely happens to the MIT to Jane Street crowd and also happens to the people that can get offers at the IPOing startups I can’t even get interviews at. Not like I have t…

The company I work for now pays substantially more than Google/Facebook/et. al and most people on my team are from random state schools, many with no experience at FAANG. You can certainly make millions from a pre-IPO startup (and I have 2nd degree knowledge of many people that did get rich off IPOs), but you're not making that at the Google of today. I'm sorry you feel that way about your past. You should consider s…

> The company I work for now pays substantially more than Google/Facebook/et. al and most people on my team are from random state schools

That's...interesting, because it's certainly not the way the LinkedIn pages of most folks at Hudson River Trading, 2Sigma, Stripe or Citadel would imply (I did get into Citadel, but for a 2nd tier role). Of course, it would make sense for Netflix, which has a more Amazon-like hiring strategy.

> I've found that a growth mindset is important to ensuring you keep succeeding because there's nobody you can just copy once you've made it this far. Failures shouldn't be depressing but motivating instead.

I've had a lot of people say that, but after being beaten down and called stupid for 25 years it has worn on me.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#197

Post by rejectedandsad »

selimthegrim wrote: post #188
rejectedandsad wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you aren't making millions at any salaried job short of being a C level exec. Just graduating from Harvard isn't making you millions I mean it is happening at Google - look up how much Liz Fong Jones made as an ex-Caltech, ex-MIT engineer. Definitely happens to the MIT to Jane Street crowd and also happens to the people that can get offers at the IPOing startups I can’t even get interviews at. Not like I have t…

I knew Liz Fong Jones at Caltech and she puts one foot in front of the other and goes to the bathroom like everyone else. Have a chill pill.

The fact that she was at Caltech (and then MIT) alone is an indication that she is objectively superior to people like me though, and I have little hope of achieving even a fraction of that sort of success. I can't even get an interview at companies like Stripe because of my school, for instance.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#198

Post by WalterBright »

chriskanan wrote: post #154
sokoloff wrote: post #11

> Faculty members at prestigious universities are 50 times more likely than the average person to have a parent with a Ph.D. American meritocracy has become a complex, inefficient, and rigged system conferring its graces on ambitious children of highly educated and prosperous families. What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that a…

Definitely seemed very true during my PhD. Many of my peers had PhD or professor parents (I don't). I think the primary reasons for the increase are valuing the career through parents and having a mentor who knows the admissions game. I blundered my first couple times applying because I lacked good mentorship in preparing my applications.

> good mentorship in preparing my applications

I don't get this. Why does one need mentorship in filling out an application. I got mine in the mail, filled them out, and sent them in. It never occurred to me I needed someone to guide me.

My dad (MIT) did tell me many years earlier what was necessary to get into MIT: 1. straight A's 2. high SAT scores 3. an achievement in extracurricular activities

(MIT rejected me.)

It's like the Boy Scouts. I talked with an Eagle dad a couple years ago, who talked about shepherding his boy through the Eagle program to get the badge. He was very proud of his son. I mentioned that I was an Eagle, too. He asked me how it was with my dad helping me. I said he never did a thing, and it didn't occur to me to ask. I just decided I wanted one, got the list of requirements, and did them one by one. None of them were hard, it just required time and persistence.

He looked at me like I was an alien.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#199

Post by mlac »

selimthegrim wrote: post #190
mlac wrote: post #21

“In 1940, the acceptance rate at Harvard was 85 percent.” I didn’t realize that was the acceptance rate, but JFK’s application to Harvard is interesting and that acceptance rate adds context: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/jfks-v... And maybe it’s not people pulling the ladder up behind them - it’s that the ladder has become more visible and desirable without expanding or changing. I do have so…

Having gone there, the degree is not the magic wand you seem to think it is.

I don’t think it’s a magic wand. I think it’s a lot like any place and you get what you put into it. But diminishing returns (academically) start at a higher level than other locations.

The network is nice, and people will never wonder if you’re smart or not, but yeah - people don’t pay you because you went to one of these schools.

It can also limit choices and career paths. And have some people may have chips on their shoulders because they didn’t get in to that school.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#200

Post by tasogare »

scarmig wrote: post #54
fighterpilot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's telling is how similar the Asian admit percentage is between the top colleges except for Caltech. It wasn't always like this, but they've all (ex-Caltech) converged on almost the same number now. It appears to be collusion either of the sort discussed in the article or the informal sort where each college copies their competitors' quotas.

College admissions' treatment of Asian American applicants is the most explicit form of institutional racism in the US today. It's the kind of racist discrimination that, if applied against any other group, would get the perpetrator sued to oblivion.

And somehow, bullshit notions like systemic racism, which could for once be used for real, is suddenly not used at all. This shows what "anti-racism" really is: a political discourse serving the interests of a few groups, to the exclusion and detriment of others.
Post reply on HN