291–300 of 815 posts
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Why is SAT score a good way to decide which student is more deserving of a spot? There should be some SAT score floor. But beyond that other factors should take over. If the floor is at n and two applicants appear - one with a score of 1.1n and the other 1.2n, I don’t think that’s enough information to decide who should get the spot.
> Why is SAT score a good way to decide which student is more deserving of a spot? Name a better way.
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I want to get rid of letters of recommendation as well. I would personally like to go off of only a single nationwide standardized test.
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?
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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…
There's been a few studies. [1] is one framed in economics, so it measures earnings. You're right, though, that earnings is probably an overly blunt measure of success at best. I think the difficulty in measuring quality of life statistics is that much of it is difficult to quantify, so studies fall back to easily quantifiable metrics. Edit: [2] expands the measures to include educational attainment and family outcom…
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…
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…
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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…
Our current health insurance laws should NOT be a model for anything, ever!
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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…
Why is SAT score a good way to decide which student is more deserving of a spot? There should be some SAT score floor. But beyond that other factors should take over. If the floor is at n and two applicants appear - one with a score of 1.1n and the other 1.2n, I don’t think that’s enough information to decide who should get the spot.
It's a good way of figuring out who is intellectually capable. SAT scores have a very good prediction rate of success in college.
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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.
In the ACA aftermath, I believe you saw more insurance companies exit markets because they couldn't be competitive and profitable on prices with standardized plans.
Which is its own problem and led to a lot of limited-insurer markets, but a different one.
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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.
Network - one of the best things you can do is put a bunch of intelligent, highly motivated people in one room and have them work on stuff together. Top tier universities are basically this. The actual education offered on top isn't that relevant as long as it's passable - these people will find a way to educate themselves
Signaling - having Hardvard on your resume is a global signal of your status and opens up so many more doors by simply having it listed by your name
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…
> will it still be worth the price of admission? Definitely. Will it still be the same value you're getting? Perhaps not. Notably, some schools like MIT already don't consider legacy, and are still worth the price.