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

Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

triblive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 815 posts

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#91

Post by nostromo »

noobermin wrote: post #37
nancyhn wrote: post #4

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

I fundamentally do not understand why merit is something you should focus on when it comes to admission into a university. The entire point of an education is to learn, may be you need the bare minimum to enroll but universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least. Just because thats how it should work in some people's heads as the ideal doesn't mean it makes any actual sense…

Perhaps it’s politically incorrect to say, but students learn best when they’re around students that are of similar intelligence and motivation to succeed.

Taking a brilliant kid and putting them around underachievers doesn’t do anyone any good.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#92

Post by MostlyStable »

lisper wrote: post #76
boeingUH60 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s as if you’re trying to make perfect the enemy of good. Standardized tests aren’t perfect but they give less privileged kids the best choice at attending a good college. The kids of the upper class and the rich will always have an upper hand compared to the poor. However, standardized tests limit how wide the upper hand is. An upper class kid still has to study and pass the test, and the poor kid can also do that…

I think you are underestimating the extent to which standardized tests can be (and have been) biased. https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racis...

I think you're underestimating how biased literally every other possible metric of admissions can be.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#93

Post by [deleted] »

savanaly wrote: post #63
banana_feather wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations. Wonder not. "[T]here is no statistically significant evidence that legacy preferences impact total alumni giving." https://production-tcf.imgix.net/app/uploads/2016/03/0820191...

That doesn't answer the question though, does it? https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

[deleted]

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#94

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

lisper wrote: post #32
nancyhn wrote: post #4

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

I hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure merit? Because [EDIT] many measures of "merit" (was: standardized testing) can be (and often are) biased by race, cultural background, and economic status. For example: Student 1 has built a fully automated chip manufacturing line in his basement. Student 2 has build a robot that solves a maze in fifteen minutes (a…

> Now which one would you admit?

Why not both? I think a lot of the debate over college admissions misses the fact that so much of this is artificial scarcity. Some of the big schools like Harvard/Yale/Princeton etc. could easily increase the size of their incoming classes many times, and still have them only be filled with highly qualified candidates.

Top schools exist not just to educate, but to ensure that the social hierarchy is maintained. If it were purely to educate or to ensure diverse learning environments, the top Ivies could solve this easily by quadrupling the size of their classes, but then this would of course dilute the exclusivity that is the primary reason for these institutions in the first place.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#95

Post by makeitdouble »

loeg wrote: post #13
ubermonkey wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only one of these is a good thing.

I don’t think discrimination against asians was a good thing!

There was an interesting piece in a NPR podcast on the effects on the more "elite" students:

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/16/1182630192/the-indicator-from...

Basically, when the top students couldn't enter the more selective schools, they'd go to private or a bit less competitive schools and compensate the difference in education/networking in other ways, making it a wash when looking at their income years later. In contract students who benefited affirmative action where getting a way better deal at the exit and saw more significant salary difference compared to those who couldn't attend the more selective schools.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#97

Post by lozenge »

CSMastermind wrote: post #16

Don't legacy admissions often mean that their parents have donated significantly to the University? In a sense wouldn't that just mean that those students are essentially paying a very high premium to attend there and subsidizing the education of all the other students? I'm not against abolishing them but I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.

What's the point of the donations to maintain an institution, if the institution's effect is to further entrench the advantages held by the already well-off and well-connected legacy admissions?

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#98

Post by stcroixx »

CSMastermind wrote: post #16

Don't legacy admissions often mean that their parents have donated significantly to the University? In a sense wouldn't that just mean that those students are essentially paying a very high premium to attend there and subsidizing the education of all the other students? I'm not against abolishing them but I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.

Yes, but as it’s a finite resource, it’s also taking a spot of someone deserving on merit. Schools will have learn to operate without free money.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#99

Post by zuzu89 »

coding123 wrote: post #69
lisper wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure merit? Because [EDIT] many measures of "merit" (was: standardized testing) can be (and often are) biased by race, cultural background, and economic status. For example: Student 1 has built a fully automated chip manufacturing line in his basement. Student 2 has build a robot that solves a maze in fifteen minutes (a…

S1 S1 definitely.

depends on their race

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#100

Post by commandlinefan »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #70
nancyhn wrote: post #4

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

I agree with you that the end of legacy and race-based admissions is a good thing. I think it's dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes when there is huge inequality. This best analogy I can give is the "sports stars" analogy. Professional sports is probably the most even playing field I can imagine - there is such a huge incentive to win games that pretty much all else besides skills on t…

> dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes

People who argue against meritocracy seem to forget that it's the only proposed alternative to the "birthright"-ocracy that civilization has been trying to pry itself from the jaws of for centuries.

Post reply on HN