Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by loeg » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #173

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…

Not to detract from your larger point, but these days, it might depend on the Kennedy.

They're all bad! https://www.joshbarro.com/p/the-kennedys-were-always-bad

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

#242

Post by lazyasciiart » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

LegitShady wrote: post #220

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It means a new building. And are you saying that if admitting a legacy kid or taking a restricted donation is net negative they shouldn’t do it? They just need to know in advance if the future donations from the family will be worth it? How simple!

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

#243

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

numbers_guy wrote: post #58

I was just watching a podcast interview in which a British-German professor employed at an Ivy League university in the US, was talking about the elite universities in the US, and how there is no equivalent in Germany. [1] The interview is in German, but what he is basically saying is that the American attitude is to very openly and purposefully create and maintain this system of elitism and everyone is openly in com…

Elites all around the world send their kids to schools to study in the U.S., or places like Oxford. Presumably more countries besides the U.S. or the U.K. have systems of elite universities. Even if Germany had such schools, you think your elites would be content with them? The problem isn't with educational egalitarianism, it's with global hegemony and your country's elites trying to sidle up with the facilities of the hegemon. Don't get rid of your egalitarianism to cater to the fickle whims of your elites.

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

#244

Post by nkjnlknlk » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

psychphysic wrote: post #215

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.

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

That has actually been the case and stance many leftists took on AA. I think it was, at one point, recognized as a bandaid on a deep, bleeding wound. Neither a correct nor sufficient solution but it was the only one that could get through the door.

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

#245

Post by dfadsadsf » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #228

thebradbain wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally could not think of a more boring way to curate a student body, but even more so than that, I think that’s completely unfair to the many, many way-more interesting people who make up top schools’ student bodies: why does Jimmy Also-Ran with the perfect score on a single test and nothing else get to go to college while track-star Olympiad with a 4.0 doesn’t?

Because universities are academic institutions, not track-and-field training facilities (or at least they are in countries that take education seriously, unlike the US). Who cares how boring it is?

With that, the US is widely recognized to have the best universities in the world. A lot of countries claim to take education seriously, but the result is often very mediocre.

Very few people will pick IIT or Beijing University if they are offered spot at Harvard.

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

#246

Post by lazyasciiart » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #202

savanaly wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The article clearly says there's no evidence of a "casual relationship between legacy preference policies and total alumni giving." Can you explain your point further? Maybe you are aware of better data than what was used in the cited study?

Maybe the individual legacy preferences don’t influence it but the knowledge they exist does. For instance, there is no statistical likelihood of winning the jackpot from buying a lottery ticket and people keep buying tickets when they don’t win - but if the jackpot just got removed, do you think that would affect people’s choice to buy a ticket?

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

#247

Post by lazyasciiart » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #112

gizmo686 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why tie it to legacy though? The university could just offer a secondary admissions pool with a higher tuiting cost.

Then your $1B is provably not a donation, and hence subject to taxes.

It’s already not a donation if it is tied to a benefit to a specific person in your family.

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

#248

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #241

Apocryphon wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to detract from your larger point, but these days, it might depend on the Kennedy.

They're all bad! https://www.joshbarro.com/p/the-kennedys-were-always-bad

Even this random one seems weird and out of touch:

https://www.insider.com/jfk-grandson-jack-schlossberg-viral-...

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

#249

Post by dublinben » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #167

ARandumGuy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 diff…

The colleges will just respond in the same way that the insurance companies did, by jacking up prices. Raising the amount they're charging for premiums / tuition allows them to still maintain or grow their total overhead amount, even at a lower rate.

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

#250

Post by francisofascii » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

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…

> university leadership that's choosing to make large capital expenditures

SUNY Binghamton recently received a private donation of $60 million, with a rule from the person donating it had to be spent on a new baseball stadium. Do you think the university leadership should have declined the offer?