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

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

#161

Post by nostromo »

OO000oo wrote: post #120
nostromo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Students learn best when they have a quiet home to study in, 3 quality meals a day, parents who aren't working 3 jobs they can ask questions to, parents who aren't fighting about paying the bills that month, good school supplies, etc.

Agreed. So let's go solve those problems directly and stop pretending the solution is to put underachieving kids into top schools to make ourselves feel better.

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

#162

Post by curiousllama »

gizmo wrote: post #109

I recently came across a somewhat provocative defense of legacy admissions. The argument is that the iveys are great because they bring together the children of the rich and powerful (legacy admissions with connections) with really smart and hungry students (children of the middle class, mostly). It's arguably a good deal for both. Smart kids get access to wealth and power and they get to learn how the world works. T…

> will it still be worth the price of admission?

Definitely. Will it still be the same value you're getting? Perhaps not.

Notably, some schools like MIT already don't consider legacy, and are still worth the price.

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

#163

Post by criddell »

honkycat wrote: post #84
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.

Merit isn't enough. I went to a po-dunk school in rural Missouri. I would never be able to I compete with kids from a rich Chicago/NY school. In the same way a black kid from a poor inner city wouldn't be able to. This is part of the problem. The world isn't egalitarian. The poor will continue to get poorer, the rich will get richer. Solution? Lottery? Don't have a great one.

I agree with you. Saying something is merit based is only half of an answer. What exactly is and isn’t meritorious?

I’m not convinced that scoring well on tests beyond some point is a particularly good way of deciding if a student deserves a spot or not.

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

#164

Post by sangnoir »

evancox100 wrote: post #119
1234letshaveatw wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about smaller, recurring donations? Does that increase the cost?

Probably not, because they don’t come with the string attached that “you must build a new building and name it after me to receive this donation”.

"..and the building (a dorm) must not have any windows"[1]

1. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/22/nightmare-of-t...

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

#165

Post by underlipton »

pirate787 wrote: post #33
noobermin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, relying on donations doesn't seem tenable without discrimination. The only way out is to treat it as a public good and fund it as one.

Carnegie Mellon is a private university, and obviously there's already a strong public commitment to college education through subsidizing the student directly.

It's a private university founded with the intent to be a public good. It exists ostensibly to be a counterweight to the ills brought about by the concentration of wealth and power under its founders, in recognition of their outsize influence on society.

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

#167

Post by ethbr0 »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #141
ahi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large alumni donations can and often do increase the cost of education of all the other students. They frequently lead to large capital investments that then have uncovered operational costs. I used to work for one of the wealthiest universities with 100s of millions in capital improvements annually that couldn't provide functional HVAC and a fresh coat of paint to the buildings it had.

Most universities have really messy financials. A lot of money gets spent on projects and programs that don't directly benefit the education students receive, or the research output of the university. Things like sports investments, ballooning administration staff, or flashy construction projects. At the same time, TAs, grad students, adjunct professors, and other staff are frequently underpaid and overworked. There'…

The US federal government should do the same thing to public universities (US definition) that they did to insurance companies via the ACA -- cap administrative overhead.

For every dollar in tuition, >Y% must be spent on qualifying direct educational expenses. E.g. teaching faculty salary, etc.

If a college fails to meet that threshold, and spends too much on non-qualifying costs, they are required to rebate the difference to students.

If a college refuses to do this, they're no longer eligible for federal educational money (Pell grants or loans, etc).

Then let colleges optimize themselves to get under the limit.

It caused a lot of scrambling and long-overdue efficiency improvements in another legacy, slow-to-change industry (health insurance).

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

#168

Post by TurkishPoptart »

ecshafer wrote: post #152
thebradbain wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for, you know, Letters of Recommendation, which at top schools are often the deciding factor. All else being near-equal (or not), a letter from a Kennedy is going to get you into Brown versus say, a regular high school teacher that many of comfortable-but-not-connected suburban students applying to college will be using. Maybe a local lawyer, if you’re special. Those are who families who scream “meritocracy” s…

I want to get rid of letters of recommendation as well. I would personally like to go off of only a single nationwide standardized test.

Nope, these are "racist" now. I'm not going to explain why at the risk of getting downvoted.

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

#169

Post by ecshafer »

gizmo wrote: post #109

I recently came across a somewhat provocative defense of legacy admissions. The argument is that the iveys are great because they bring together the children of the rich and powerful (legacy admissions with connections) with really smart and hungry students (children of the middle class, mostly). It's arguably a good deal for both. Smart kids get access to wealth and power and they get to learn how the world works. T…

I doubt that the mixture of rich and smart kids actually happens that much. I didn’t go to an ivy, so I can only speculate. But I imagine the rich kids hang out with each other and the poor smart kids hang out with each other.

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

#170

Post by dehrmann »

I'm amazed at how schools with legacy and donation-based admissions can maintain high rankings when you never know if someone with a degree from there just got it because their parents donated $5M. Before someone says "the student still has to graduate," Harvard has a 97% graduation rate.
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