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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

#211

Post by OO000oo »

nostromo wrote: post #161
OO000oo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I will only feel better when the working class controls the society it built.

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

#212

Post by underlipton »

nancyhn wrote: post #86
lisper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That's soft bigotry of low expecations. All you have to do is look at data that includes Asian Americans, which is always conveniently omitted from these racist narratives. Even non-Americans routinely do better on American standardized tests.

It is not. GP is saying that the "expectations" in question aren't as applicable to potential as they're purported to be.

>Asian Americans, which is always conveniently omitted from these racist narratives.

Ironically, so is the diversity of the Asian American community.

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

#213

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #100
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really. Countries that are consistently at the top of world happiness rankings are ones that (a) both support a dynamic economy through meritocracy and (b) have high taxes and a broad social safety net that limits inequality.

To put it another way, I'm not arguing against meritocracy; I'm arguing that it alone does not lead to good outcomes - i.e. I think it's necessary but not sufficient. It's like when people thought "bringing democracy" to all these countries without democratic institutions would be a good thing. Democracy is generally better than the alternative, but only if there are broad protections like equality under the law for minority groups, otherwise it's just the "2 wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner" issue. Meritocracy is similar. It's generally a good thing but not if it results in a very small number of people hoarding all the spoils while everyone else barely scrapes by.

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

#214

Post by nancyhn »

Brusco_RF wrote: post #110
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…

Yeah I see this take all the time. Admissions offices are allowed to take a student's means into account! So in deciding between two students with equal SAT scores, one from a Greenwich private school and one from South Tucson, the one from Tucson is the more impressive student. Affirmative action was misguided because it assumed that because one student was Korean and the other Mexican, the Mexican kid must be disad…

Spot on. I don't see why this is so hard for people to comprehend and why they are fighting the obvious. That very basic level of nuance tends to be missing from these conversations.

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

#215

Post by psychphysic »

It's weird to me that "stop being racist" some how has led to universities considering giving up legacies, "prestige"/donation based admissions and even athletic admissions.

If it's the case that affirmative action was being used to mask other unfair practices that will be utterly ghastly.

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

#216

Post by LegitShady »

w0m wrote: post #188
LegitShady wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

Those are all decisions the university leadership made. David Tepper (?) doesn't run the school - the university leadership decided to make those decisions to get the money. They could have said "this isn't sustainable", and their hands weren't tied.

"Your $100m gift will cost us $200m, we can't accept it as currently stipulated".

All university leadership decisions that they failed on.

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

#217

Post by bumby »

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…

There is at least one interesting study that tried to test this. They took students who were admitted to prestigious universities. They tracked those who attended as well as those who attended "lesser" schools instead. They found no real difference in success later in life, so it may be confusing cause and effect. People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school. In other words, prestigious schools are good at selecting for people who would be 'successful' regardless.

The one caveat that did get a benefit were low socio-economic students, who did see a measurable difference in success. That's a class you didn't mention in your post. The thought is that it's precisely due to the network effects.

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

#218

Post by LegitShady »

simiones wrote: post #133
LegitShady wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How often does anyone donate millions of dollars with no strings attached, especially to a university?

If someone offers you $5m and in return you have to spend $25m, you can choose not to go -$20m by just not accepting the $5m under the terms proposed. Thats fiscal leadership.

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

#219

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by LegitShady »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #144
LegitShady wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you're referring to small incremental donations while their person you're replying to is referring to the giant "you must name a building after me" ones.

Naming a building after someone doesn't have a financial aspect.

If a gift requires further spending later and the overall benefit is net negative, its up to the university to negotiate terms or turn it down.

It's all university leadership failing to steward their university.

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