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Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

reuters.com

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Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#61

Post by neonsunset »

jedberg wrote: post #57
neonsunset wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was going so well until the pivot in the last two paragraphs. Is admitting the most capable students unfair? It is inherently discriminatory based on their knowledge and ability, which seems is what people want, but it also means that having more resources to be better equipped aka better nurture, which tends to positively influence individual's prospects, is suddenly something many are not okay with? Obviously,…

> Is admitting the most capable students unfair? Are they actually the most capable students, or did they just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a higher chance? There is a difference between better nurture and lack of opportunity. It's true, we shouldn't be correcting for lack of opportunity at the college admissions level, we should be doing…

A student with a full family and access to tutors, with better mental health and social situation will be able to score significantly better.

However, the downside to "solving" this is significantly worse. By giving a headstart to students based on their superficial or socioeconomical characteristics creates perverse incentives in the system and disconnects it from a selection process.

Usually, countries that are not US solve this by providing free tutorships or lectures to aspiring students, scholarships and a fixed quota of free placements in the admission for top performing students (each country may have their own flavour of the policy, but the main thing they !fortunately! did not use to be based on race or gender).

It is usually much better, in my personal opinion, to provide the "help" to those who seek it rather than trying to equalize for outcome. Poor upbringing can and usually does damage and incapacitates individuals to an extent. But any movement among the lines of "not having issues or being better prepared means you have to do more work" explicitly discourages the optimal behaviour, incentivizing victim-hood and demoralizes individuals which did use the opportunities available to them or managed to create ones.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, communism is bad.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#62

Post by jedberg »

Telemakhos wrote: post #59
jedberg wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is admitting the most capable students unfair? Are they actually the most capable students, or did they just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a higher chance? There is a difference between better nurture and lack of opportunity. It's true, we shouldn't be correcting for lack of opportunity at the college admissions level, we should be doing…

Would different test-based or merit-based metrics radically change the result? After all, isn't the purpose of a holistic approach to college admissions basically to make the criterion not one of any measurement of quality merit, but of belonging to the right demographic mix that the college seeks to attain? Further, why should colleges try to correct for lack of opportunity? Their job is to educate people, and not e…

> Further, why should colleges try to correct for lack of opportunity?

Public schools should do it because they are part of the education system that needs correction.

Private schools arguably are still part of the public education system since they all get Federal dollars, and thus the same argument applies.

If they're getting tax dollars, that makes them a public good, and therefore they should be doing things that help all people, not just some people.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#63

Post by thesausageking »

Telemakhos wrote: post #30
Analemma_ wrote: post #17

To the people complaining about this: this is actually a very positive development that I welcome and you should too. This entire time, elite U.S. colleges have been carefully steering conversations about admissions in the direction of racial quotas, to avoid talking about how by far the largest driver of unfairness in the admissions process is legacy admissions and donation quid pro quo arrangements. If you want to…

Imagine what would happen if colleges fired their admissions departments, set aside all considerations of wealth and race, and had a database admit students with a single query on a result of standardized test results ordered from highest score to lowest, accepting students in that order until the year's class was filled.

It would be a lot worse. Harvard could fill its classes 4x over with students with perfect SATs and GPAs. They would miss out on the ones who published ground breaking biology papers, wrote code for important open source projects, etc.

It would also put a ton of pressure on high school students to get perfect scores, creating a ton more stress than they already have. And at the expense of much more valuable things they could be doing with their time.

The current system has issues, but there are worse ways to do things.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#64

Post by Telemakhos »

rfrey wrote: post #45
Telemakhos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine what would happen if colleges fired their admissions departments, set aside all considerations of wealth and race, and had a database admit students with a single query on a result of standardized test results ordered from highest score to lowest, accepting students in that order until the year's class was filled.

Then you would have universities exclusively populated by people who are good at taking whatever type of standardized test you're administering.

Are you suggesting that having people capable of scoring well on exams of common necessities for college education, like mathematics and language skills, is not desirable? The SAT is not a trivia test: a student who can pass a test on math up through precalculus is going to get more value out of college than one who does not understand algebra and has to spend time in remediation. I would much prefer to have a university exclusively populated by people good at solving math problems and comprehending readings than by people selected for their "good vibes" and to fit a diversity quota.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#65

Post by jedberg »

neonsunset wrote: post #61
jedberg wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is admitting the most capable students unfair? Are they actually the most capable students, or did they just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a higher chance? There is a difference between better nurture and lack of opportunity. It's true, we shouldn't be correcting for lack of opportunity at the college admissions level, we should be doing…

A student with a full family and access to tutors, with better mental health and social situation will be able to score significantly better. However, the downside to "solving" this is significantly worse. By giving a headstart to students based on their superficial or socioeconomical characteristics creates perverse incentives in the system and disconnects it from a selection process. Usually, countries that are not…

I agree with you. This should not be solved at the college admissions level. Resources should be provided to younger students with potential to equalize there. But it's still better than doing nothing at all.

> Again, and I cannot stress this enough, communism is bad.

Again I agree with you. But I'm not sure how that's relevant. Changing the way we do college admissions isn't communism.

In fact, admitting students purely based on test scores is something that happens in communist countries.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#66

Post by Aloha »

antegamisou wrote: post #41
angmarsbane wrote: post #35

Isn’t part of the benefit of getting into these universities the fact that you get to interact with people from a wealthier economic class? You have the opportunity to meet people who can invest in your ventures or who can introduce you to people who can.

> You have the opportunity to meet people who can invest in your ventures. and who are also completely lacking empathy for the financially challenged at best, disregard and look down upon the less privileged at worst. Both may lead to social isolation of persons with different socioeconomic background attending said schools.

You can be middle class or upper middle class and have that viewpoint if you've had insufficient exposure to people from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#67

Post by graphe »

jedberg wrote: post #57
neonsunset wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was going so well until the pivot in the last two paragraphs. Is admitting the most capable students unfair? It is inherently discriminatory based on their knowledge and ability, which seems is what people want, but it also means that having more resources to be better equipped aka better nurture, which tends to positively influence individual's prospects, is suddenly something many are not okay with? Obviously,…

> Is admitting the most capable students unfair? Are they actually the most capable students, or did they just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a higher chance? There is a difference between better nurture and lack of opportunity. It's true, we shouldn't be correcting for lack of opportunity at the college admissions level, we should be doing…

> Are they actually the most capable students, or did they just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a higher chance?

They are the most capable. You call them abitrary, without stating what makes them arbitrary. Until you prove they're arbitrary, your opinion isn't worth addressing.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#68

Post by graphe »

therealcamino wrote: post #46
Telemakhos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine what would happen if colleges fired their admissions departments, set aside all considerations of wealth and race, and had a database admit students with a single query on a result of standardized test results ordered from highest score to lowest, accepting students in that order until the year's class was filled.

What would happen is you'd still get a result shaped by wealth and race, just laundered through a layer of standardized testing.

Which races are barred from wealth?

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#69

Post by julienchastang »

voisin wrote: post #8
honeybadger1 wrote: post #4

It's always about money now.

Always has been.

Not really. A couple of generations ago, you could attend a US state college and pay off the tuition by working summer jobs. Now, due to a long list of factors, colleges attempt to extract every nickel out of parents/students. I don't have the reference on my finger tips, but universities are employing AI algorithms to achieve this. In turn, parents have to hire consultants to get advice on bargaining the tuition price down -- in sum, an arms race.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#70

Post by groffee »

julienchastang wrote: post #58
q1w2 wrote: post #43

I used to work in the admissions office of a top 5 school in the US. I was naive and initially shocked by "the list" when I was told about it. A list of applicants who were the children of faculty, staff, very large benefactors, and politicians. They could NOT be denied by any admissions councilor without a very serious reason (eg. convicted of a violent crime). I raised an eyebrow. Then I discovered that that list a…

> Then I discovered that that list accounted for a full 25% of EVERY incoming class. This is open knowledge. From the WSJ, https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-get-into-the-ivy-league-extr... : ``` Nearly half of white students admitted to Harvard between 2009 and 2014 were recruited athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or on the dean’s interest list—applicants whose parents or relatives have donated…

It's open knowledge NOW, not when OP discovered it. You clearly wouldn't get into the class.
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