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

#281

Post by pc86 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

francisofascii wrote: post #250

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…

> 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?

If it costs more than $60 million to build the stadium, sure.

What good is a $60 million donation if it costs you $100 million on something you weren't going to buy in the first place?

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

#282

Post by motohagiography » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

philip1209 wrote: post #20

Next step: Ending use of athletic ability in admissions.

People against athletic admissions have zero clue about what excellence requires and means. It's an attitude I can only describe as disgusting because it creates a prejudice against people who have actually worked at something and taken risks to succeed. It is equivalent to banning music scholarships.

Who benefits from removing those who actually develop a physical competence and commit to training and competition?

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

#283

Post by ghaff » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:48 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…

>People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school.

It also depends on what the "lesser" schools are. I expect that if someone missed out on the significantly random admissions lottery to get into Harvard but were admitted to Dartmouth, Cornell, or Williams (or even UMass Amherst) instead, I expect that if they'd have done well at Harvard they'll do just fine.

I expect for the lower socio-economic students, the delta is probably related to being among fellow students who maybe set a bit higher bar than other schools would.

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

#284

Post by kweingar » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

Ultimately the existence of elite universities is the root of the problem. Most colleges take a huge majority of the students who apply, so neither legacy students nor affirmative action make too much a difference for them. Universities should be more like this and less like incubators for the ruling class.

All of the drama recently revolves around wealthy students being denied their rubber stamps or underprivileged students being denied their golden ticket. It’s bad that college performs these functions, so let’s work to fix that.

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

#285

Post by xkcd-sucks » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:49 PM UTC

julienchastang wrote: post #187

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…

It's kind of begging the question to assume multigenerational family ties to a university are "not merit" when a big part of a university's value proposition is social networking: One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc. Personally I didn't understand that at the time, would have rejected the notion on principle, and still don't really like it, but is definitely worth consideration

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

#286

Post by RajT88 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:50 PM UTC

underlipton wrote: post #192

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…

The answer has always been to close the delta between the value of a Harvard degree and wherever else your kid can actually get into. The unspoken (or uncomfortable) aspect of that is that Harvard et al. receive outsize prestige because they're associated with outsize wealth, and access to that wealth through the personal and professional connections one can garner there. Wealth concentration in society is the fundam…

Exactly so. I know a guy who got into the top MBA program in the nation (U of C). He had no undergrad degree, but was born to a wealthy family. His wife was born to an even wealthier family, and he quickly after flunking out of undergrad within a few years found a career as an executive.

Connect the dots on how all that works.

(Curiously he insists he's a "pulled himself up by his bootstraps" type character)

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

#287

Post by bumby » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:50 PM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #246

bumby wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Wouldn't that still cause a correlation between schools that have legacy scholarships and alumni giving? In your lotto ticket example, there is a correlation between the jackpot and the number of tickets sold.

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

#288

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #249

ethbr0 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doubtful.

The only reason the cost of college is high is because 18 year olds that know nothing about finance don't have to pay for it now because they can get loans.

You take away the loans, and you take away the ability of the college to charge whatever it wants and kids keep paying.

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

#289

Post by twixfel » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

kweingar wrote: post #284

Ultimately the existence of elite universities is the root of the problem. Most colleges take a huge majority of the students who apply, so neither legacy students nor affirmative action make too much a difference for them. Universities should be more like this and less like incubators for the ruling class. All of the drama recently revolves around wealthy students being denied their rubber stamps or underprivileged…

Exactly, the universities are extremely wealthy and could in principle choose to use that money to increase intake, but then it dilutes their status as a luxury brand, so they don't do it. But what business is it of the university to be a luxury brand anyway? They should be simply maximising the public good, and that means taking way more students with the huge endowments they have.

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

#290

Post by EatingWithForks » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

cyberlurker wrote: post #275

dublinben wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One would hope consumer choice would come into play and students would start shopping around for the best deal.

This didn't work in the same way it doesn't work with insurance: students are limited by more than just price alone. Location matters a lot (a student may be staying with their parents). And also if all univiersities raise their prices in this way, there's nothing the students can do.