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Who cares about the Ivy League?

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Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#121

Post by adamsmith143 »

nineplay wrote: post #69
Auracle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're assuming that people who are admitted to Ivy League schools a) have higher IQs than average and b) have parents with higher IQs than average. Neither of these need to be true. It's a incestuous system where it's easy to believe that people of average IQ have been born into privilege for generations and succeeded only because of their family wealth and connections.

Are you saying that say MIT and Caltech students don't have higher than average IQ? It's almost a certainty that they do and I'm sure it extends to the Ivy league and other elite schools.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#122

Post by user_named »

alephnerd wrote: post #64
ericmay wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall it does work like that though. Google (or other tech companies/elite institutions) attends MIT engineering career fairs, it doesn't attend others. Corporations are not good at identifying promising talent outside of their traditional (Ivy League, etc.) recruiting grounds so they stick with their traditional recruiting grounds and then they'll favor "diverse" students from their traditional recruiting grounds.…

I'm not denying that, but you are ignoring the fact that Google would open that booth at a LOT of public schools as well. Just off the top of my head - UC Berkeley, UCLA, Mich, Iowa State, UIUC, UW, UW Madison, UCSB, Oregon State, UMass Amherst, etc. And honestly, I really don't think you understand how hiring whas changed at a traditional corporation. For management track roles, these companies (eg. Danaher, Abbvie,…

I don't think it's true that companies disregard the ivies and instead look for leadership recruits at no name schools. Source?

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#123

Post by AnimalMuppet »

api wrote: post #73
uneekname wrote: post #30

I think the point about college mobility rates was an interesting one. But then the author lost me a bit: > what is the economic rationale for having a bunch of educational resources and top students concentrated in a few small elite schools? ... the country’s most talented people into the country’s most important jobs I don't think that's it at all. I believe nearly anyone could be among "the country's most talented…

I agree that toxic elitism isn’t new, but I do also agree with the author that it has intensified. Only a few colleges matter. A degree from the others is “actually a dunce cap” according to Peter Thiel. Absolutely everything happens in only a few cities, which of course have developed completely ludicrous property prices. Nothing happens anywhere else, so if you want a good career you have to at least spend time in…

"Actually a dunce cap"?

Let's see. Bill Gates dropped out. So did Mark Zuckerberg. Steve Jobs went to Reed College (where?) and didn't graduate.

Maybe Peter Thiel's perspective is a bit distorted?

> Absolutely everything happens in only a few cities...

Maybe Peter Thiel isn't the only one with a bit of a distorted perspective?

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#124

Post by [deleted] »

rcme wrote: post #76
uneekname wrote: post #30

I think the point about college mobility rates was an interesting one. But then the author lost me a bit: > what is the economic rationale for having a bunch of educational resources and top students concentrated in a few small elite schools? ... the country’s most talented people into the country’s most important jobs I don't think that's it at all. I believe nearly anyone could be among "the country's most talented…

> I believe nearly anyone could be among "the country's most talented people" if they were wealthy, given access to near-limitless resources, accepted into an elite school. I think a lot of people, myself included, want to believe this. It's nice to think that all humans have great potential inside of them! Unfortunately, reality might not respect our perfectly reasonable sensibilities. After having a child, I began…

[deleted]

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#125

Post by nearbuy »

uneekname wrote: post #104
rcme wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Results: Parents who read 1 picture book with their children every day provide their children with exposure to an estimated 78,000 words each a year. Cumulatively, over the 5 years before kindergarten entry, we estimate that children from literacy-rich homes hear a cumulative 1.4 million more words during storybook reading than children who are never read to. This study just says that kids who are read to are expos…

> But does it matter? Yes, it does. It matters a lot. "The Word Gap ... has important consequences for children’s later vocabulary, literacy and school performance" [0] Even if this whole line of research gets debunked, reading to your kids won't hurt! > eventually converge to something approximating their parents' IQs I haven't read much about this research, maybe it holds more water than I think. But does it matter…

If we're trying to help our kids, it would be nice to know which interventions actually affect adult intelligence.

The word gap research isn't a randomized trial. It mostly shows that children from poorer families in the US hear fewer words.

It's difficult to study because interventions often produce positive effects in the short term that disappear by the time the child reaches adulthood.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#126

Post by majesticglue »

nearbuy wrote: post #105
uneekname wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, I think you're missing the point too. You are right that many folks who get access to these top resources don't then go on to become so successful, however you might define success. But a larger proportion of them do compared to other groups. I'm not saying that an individual is guaranteed success if they're born into a wealthy family. But I am saying that a wealthy neighborhood of kids who have access…

Without randomized controlled trials, there's no easy way to separate the effects of increased educational spending and tutoring from hundreds of other factors that might affect someone's admission rate. Clearly we expect it helps or we wouldn't spend money on it. But it's not clear if educational spending is the dominant factor in academic success or a small factor among many. In at least one study I've seen, smalle…

As someone who has privately tutored many rich kids vs poor kids for nearly a decade, I don't think I need to see a study to see how much more advantages they have. It's pretty apparent the advantages.

Yes a really "dumb" kid will still be "dumb" academically, but people here are severely underestimating what money can buy in education. I've seen really "dumb" kids be brought up to the level of "passably smart" simply because of resource access.

When you have teachers who are not overworked and are paid lovely salaries (ie 6 figure salaries), imagine every teacher you have actually cares and invested in your education? Imagine every class has recordings of every lecture as well as a curriculum that has a lot of forethought and time put into it? And imagine if the school has a lacking teacher, than the parents hire some ex-olympian, or ex-superstar coach or teacher to make up for that? I've seen parents hire ex-olympic athletes to get some untalented rich kid to close to olympic level.

Honestly, I think it's really understated how much educational spending can affect a kid. Most people will not see what I've seen, and even from someone who came from a middle class background who used to believe wealth does not matter when it came to education, even I was shocked by what money can buy in "academic success" and my opinion changed. I at this point, don't need to see a study because it was that drastic.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#127

Post by ryandrake »

ericmay wrote: post #38
alephnerd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't necessarily work like that anymore. I have 4 close friends of mine who did EECS@MIT who didn't get recruited at Google.

Overall it does work like that though. Google (or other tech companies/elite institutions) attends MIT engineering career fairs, it doesn't attend others. Corporations are not good at identifying promising talent outside of their traditional (Ivy League, etc.) recruiting grounds so they stick with their traditional recruiting grounds and then they'll favor "diverse" students from their traditional recruiting grounds.…

> For example if "Google" wanted to make a difference it would actually ban hiring from Ivy League or top-20/30 universities (wiggle room on details here) and instead focus on universities that have higher admission rates (50% or so), large public universities, big time diverse populations relatively speaking.

I would love to see a company do this experiment. It would really put their self-proclaimed focus on diversity to the test! Too many companies helplessly say "Oh, we really want to hire a diverse workforce, but by golly it's so hard and we just can't find diverse candidates from our candidate pipeline of only Ivy-league and top-tier schools!" Focus on hiring from mid-tier state schools and see if that's still true.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#128

Post by alephnerd »

user_named wrote: post #122
alephnerd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not denying that, but you are ignoring the fact that Google would open that booth at a LOT of public schools as well. Just off the top of my head - UC Berkeley, UCLA, Mich, Iowa State, UIUC, UW, UW Madison, UCSB, Oregon State, UMass Amherst, etc. And honestly, I really don't think you understand how hiring whas changed at a traditional corporation. For management track roles, these companies (eg. Danaher, Abbvie,…

I don't think it's true that companies disregard the ivies and instead look for leadership recruits at no name schools. Source?

Not Ivy =/= No Name School

CMC has no reputation out East, but has a massive west coast PE/IB alumni network.

Danaher's GM Development Program (leadership track program) targets Carnegie Mellon

You need to attend an elite university to succeed, but an elite university doesn't have to be an Ivy. Selective public schools like Cal, Mich, UVA, UT Austin, UCLA, etc are feeders as well as Selective Privates like Tufts, UChicago, BYU, CMU, CMC, NYU, USC, etc.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#129

Post by ericmay »

jmchuster wrote: post #112
ericmay wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall it does work like that though. Google (or other tech companies/elite institutions) attends MIT engineering career fairs, it doesn't attend others. Corporations are not good at identifying promising talent outside of their traditional (Ivy League, etc.) recruiting grounds so they stick with their traditional recruiting grounds and then they'll favor "diverse" students from their traditional recruiting grounds.…

New grad talent is a huge pipeline for Google or any other FAANG, and they'll recruit at every well-rated and large engineering program they can find, the large majority of which aren't just MIT. And tons of engineering programs that aren't those, though they may just do all their recruiting through the colleges' online resources, since they have a limited number of humans to physically travel.

Online recruiting isn't the same as in-person recruiting though. Note that Google (just using them as a stand-in) recruits in-person at MIT but doesn't at other places where they "recruit online" from.

Re: Who cares about the Ivy League?

#130

Post by jseliger »

majesticglue wrote: post #119
jbullock35 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most Ivy League students weren't born smart. They're exceptional because they were given access to what they needed to succeed. That must be part of the answer, but it can’t be the whole answer, or close to the whole. There’s huge variation in educational outcomes among those who get the access that you describe. What explains why some people in this group have such good outcomes, while most have relatively lacklus…

A lot of the comments here come from a place of ignorance... I've had the unique experience of private tutoring many "elite" students in high school for math and physics for nearly a decade in Los Angeles a while back. Basically both rich kids and less fortunate kids who can only afford my tutoring rate every once in a while vs rich kids who can if they wanted to afford my help every day. It's not simply "better text…

That's an interesting comment; can you put a burner email in your profile?
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