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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

#181

Post by laidoffamazon »

laiejtli wrote: post #17

I went to a second-tier public school that never had legacy admissions. Is it really a big deal? Or is this largely symbolic? Do you see kids in your classes who are rich and visibly a level below everyone else intellectually or emotionally? (I did meet a few students who were born rich and enrolled in my second-tier university after failing out of first-tier universities, so that might be my exposure to the practice…

This is exactly what bothers me. This talk about Legacies and even AA for top schools is downright insulting to people like me that worked hard at second-tier institutions and are just ignored afterward as a result. We make up the vast majority of college graduates, why don't we get even a fraction of the support or attention?

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

#182

Post by Apocryphon »

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…

What kind of child, even that of billionaires, wants to build an automated chip manufacturing line? Maybe in Minecraft. Or in Roblox.

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

#183

Post by ethbr0 »

ameister14 wrote: post #160
LanceH wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They love to tell this story. It's absolutely laughable how limited scholarships are for actual academic performance.

I think that depends on the school - Georgia Tech is free for high academic performers from Georgia, for example.

For non-Georgian's reference, the HOPE scholarship essentially funds Georgia public college tuition with lottery receipts, subject to merit only. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOPE_Scholarship

It's changed a bit over the years (+/- qualifications and coverage), but generally does what it says on the tin -- keep a high GPA and graduate in a reasonable amount of time, and most of your tuition is paid for.

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

#184

Post by collinc777 »

dehrmann wrote: post #170

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.

The ranking systems are likely flawed and measure things outside of merit, or measure merit in a non-holistic way.

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

#186

Post by jcranmer »

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…

> 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 the playing field is ignored.

Match fixing has been a perennial problem in sports.

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

#187

Post by julienchastang »

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible.

> "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of white applicants admitted to Harvard between 2014-19 fell into one or more of these categories. Nearly three quarters of them would have been rejected if they had been subjected to the same standards as other white applicants."

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/end-college-legacy-preferences-...

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

#188

Post by w0m »

LegitShady wrote: post #125
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.

This is a little bit ridiculous. There is no connection between alumni donations and capital investments except decisions that university leadership chooses to make. The issue isn't the donations, its the university leadership thats choosing to make large capital expenditures. The donations could go to other things and do go to other things. Any blame you're putting on the donations actually belongs to the people run…

> There is no connection between alumni donations and capital investments except decisions that university leadership chooses to make.

Not (always) true. Direct example with Carnegie Mellon - David Tepper was upset the business school (his alma mater) was appearing to fall behind in recruiting, so he donated ~100m but tied it to the business school getting a new building/quad. Total cost to the university was well north of 200mil; and their hands were functionally tied in how it was spent.

Yes, I know this is an outlier and yes, university leadership could have said no - but you're risking pissing off a doner who's given 100m+ over the years and will likely continue giving (and you know Tepper will continue guiding further capital expenditures as he sees the need).

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

#189

Post by Apocryphon »

nova22033 wrote: post #68
onetimeusename wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not, we're heading towards tribalism. The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white more so than anything else. With limited data on other schools, Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits.[1] That didn't stop people who wanted an alleged merit based admissions policy from continuing to call it a racist backdoor…

actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits Is the SAT score the only measure of merit? The non-legacies are going to miss on the chance to make social connections with legacy admits who have a lot of connections...and access to a lot of resources..

Yeah how often does that actually happen. Did Tommy Lee Jones’ acting career really benefit from him being roommates with the son of Albert Gore, Sr.?

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

#190

Post by collinc777 »

philip1209 wrote: post #20

Next step: Ending use of athletic ability in admissions.

Culturally, the separation of athletics and education is going to be extremely difficult to accomplish.

Although not everyone is a fan, Football is the cornerstone of American culture.

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