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

#251

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

bumby wrote: post #217

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 necessaril…

Can you link to the study?

I'd be curious about how success is defined here. Career is a pretty narrow lens to define it by so I'd hope for something more expansive.

Many of the benefits of having friends in high places are outside of traditional career ladder. The expedited (insert annoying process here), the vacation you're invited on, the unintentional influence you have on some big thing because you happen to be an ear to the decider, etc etc.

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

#252

Post by thebradbain » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

Brusco_RF wrote: post #223

laverya wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essays are incredibly biased though! Do you really think that for some reason essays actually have to be written by the person applying, and can't be gamed with money? That an overworked public school teacher is going to write a better letter of recommendation than a private school teacher? That a rich kid is going to have worse extracurriculars, portfolio or achievements? The Common App is great, but it's not magica…

Not only that, but the person reading the essay is also biased and will select for students who align with their bias. It is a terrible admission metric.

It’s naive to think schools don’t have a system in place for this: separating piles into buckets of test score, ordering by grade, marking a certain number from each bucket as worth another look, then ordering by essay, marking a certain from each group, and repeat on any other metric.

Many schools, selective or not, actually do this whole process — multiple times, with each admissions agent doing a separate order of criteria, to ensure everyone’s application gets read at least twice. The idea being that those with the most “let’s give them another look” across the board are the most notable. Then from that shortlist the debates comparing each applicant, usually sorted by geographic proximity to each other, begin (at Harvard, if you’re from Texas you’re not really competing against New Yorkers for a spot, you’re competing against other Texans for the XX number of Texan spots they usually admit a year).

I did a short stint as a student worker in the admissions office of a very selective college in California (<5% admission rate, but not one many could name off the top of their head), and this is more or less how it worked

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

#253

Post by dbish » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

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…

Is MIT still worth the price of admission? I would certainly say so and they don't do legacy, and I would trust the Princeton/Harvard line on a resume a lot more if it was guaranteed they didn't get in because of non-academic reasons (like parents, sports, etc.)

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

#254

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #247

lotsofpulp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The “provably” in my comment is meant to indicate that people would actually be afraid of falsely claiming donations which are really payments to increase m chances of their kids’ admission, since they could be proven guilty of tax evasion.

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

#255

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

low_tech_punk wrote: post #166

Can we end education resource scarcity please. More open courses by schools and less credentialism by employers could make these debates irrelevant.

Underrated point. Weird to see how in HN, the bastion of self-taught hackers, autodidact polymaths, and people who think secondary education is a waste of time and money, try to argue in favor of the entrenched credentialist power of universities.

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

#256

Post by HDThoreaun » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

DaSHacka wrote: post #140

ghaff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should athletics be uniquely disadvantaged among activities that aren't exclusively academic? Perhaps you think that a test result is all that should count though in which case we'll have to agree to disagree.

I'd assume it's because academic ability and knowledge makes more sense for determining admissions in an academic context, and has a higher chance of being relevant after the student graduates. This is unlike athletics where unless you go pro, the skill becomes functionally useless once you enter the workforce.

> the skill becomes functionally useless once you enter the workforce.

This is laughably false and makes me think you've either never participated in organized athletics or have never had a job. The most important trait for success in the workforce is grit. The same is true for athletics at the highest level. Yes, some of the athletes made it on genetics alone but the vast majority had to work incredibly hard to become a college athlete. Being a successful athlete translates very well into the workforce.

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

#257

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #224

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #205

I hope this continues. Then, we will see legislation pass to re-classify endowment funds as hedge funds. CMU has $3 Billion of assets in its endowment portfolio. Endowments have been getting a free ride in terms of tax treatment, disclosure, and other activities that are regulated for hedge funds. Now that they're upsetting the elite class, the class will respond by re-classifying endowments as hedge funds. Affirmati…

Endowments let institutions weather out political mood swings and changes in enrollment. Any institution that serves a purpose besides "being a branch of the government" needs a war chest of some kind, and if they can use the proceeds to make student lives better, why not have a large endowment?

[deleted]

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

#258

Post by ticviking » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

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”.

Seems simple enough to get someone that vain to cough up an annuity to pay for maintenance and some admins for that building, “we’d hate for your building to wind up like poor Jefferson Hall, we can’t even afford to pressure wash it every 5 years.”

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

#259

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #193

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are the reward ratios in professional sports relevant to other occupations in society? My whole point is that the hollowing out of the middle class and the huge growth in objective measures of inequality in the US are precisely because many other occupations are looking more and more like "sports star" economies. E.g. just look at how the former "main streets" of many smaller towns in the US have been decimated…

That is true, but I do not see the connection with meritocracy. I see “winner take all” dynamics to be a property of economies of scale, which technological advances and computing have greatly enhanced. One might say meritocracy might lead to technological advances leading to economies of scale, but the solution to an increasing income/wealth gap would not be getting rid of meritocracy, but rather redistributing some…

> One might say meritocracy might lead to technological advances leading to economies of scale, but the solution to an increasing income/wealth gap would not be getting rid of meritocracy, but rather redistributing some of the wealth so as to provide a floor for quality of life and quality of opportunities (I would hope).

Yep, that's pretty much what I was trying to say, so my apologies if I wasn't clear. I think the "quality of opportunities" is also a very important point - I made the argument elsewhere that there is no reason for many of the top schools to have such small class sizes in the first place. There is no reason with their huge endowments that they couldn't increase their class sizes and still only admit highly qualified applicants. That's still a meritocracy, but just ensures the "winners" are not arbitrarily selected by making the cutoff so high that you're making random decisions about who to admit (e.g. all ten of these folks had perfect SAT scores but we'll let this guy in because he had a "better personality").

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

#260

Post by dbish » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

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.

See also the massive grade inflation at these schools