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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

#381

Post by kneebonian »

kiba wrote: post #326
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…

We're still creating a meritocratic elite, based on capacity limit and price of admission. Not everybody get to have an elite education, or afford such an opportunity. Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay.

> Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay.

We already have that for the most part, I can find courses from half a dozen of the worlds best universities online for free right now.

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

#382

Post by chmod600 »

code_runner wrote: post #367
chmod600 wrote: post #361

I’d like to see more numbers for context. How many students were favored by legacy status, and approximately how much favoritism? They often mix legacy numbers with athletes for some reason… I guess to make the numbers more dramatic? Or maybe because insecure intellectuals look down on athletes in general?

What difference do the numbers make if the policy is better? If it changes 1 or 100 outcomes, in my mind this is absolutely the correct call. Numbers would be great and they should definitely produce them, but I don’t think they would change my thinking they legacy admissions is negative.

The news likes to stoke outrage and context (especially numerical context) helps moderate it.

Also, small problems often have different solutions than large problems. Solutions that don’t scale are fine if the numbers are small.

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

#383

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

lisper wrote: post #76
boeingUH60 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s as if you’re trying to make perfect the enemy of good. Standardized tests aren’t perfect but they give less privileged kids the best choice at attending a good college. The kids of the upper class and the rich will always have an upper hand compared to the poor. However, standardized tests limit how wide the upper hand is. An upper class kid still has to study and pass the test, and the poor kid can also do that…

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...

"Since their inception a century ago, standardized tests have been instruments of racism and a biased system."

Standardized tests were invented in Sui dynasty China, in the early 600s AD, as a way of selecting officials for the imperial bureaucracy. They were invented precisely because they were more objective than the prevailing method of selecting officials - recommendations from the aristocracy.

There is a long history of standardized testing being a means for rewarding merit, instead of more easily corruptible methods of selecting officials/students/etc., such as recommendations. Just to illustrate my point: Do you know why Harvard abandoned standardized testing in 1926 as the sole means of determining admissions? Because "too many" Jews were passing the admissions test. Harvard's "holistic" admissions policy was invented for the sole purpose of restricting Jewish admissions.

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

#384

Post by philip1209 »

motohagiography wrote: post #282
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?

The federal funding going to these universities is to subsidize education, not athletics.

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

#385

Post by hunson_abadeer »

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…

> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify.

I've heard this repeated nearly verbatim in a couple of places, and it's such a puzzling framing. Why was this practice any less ethically challenged prior to the SCOTUS decision?

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

#386

Post by lordnacho »

importantbrian wrote: post #375
tekla wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily true. The more prestigious schools have more budget to hire better professors, but more importantly, can fund top class research that costs ALOT of money. Your random college probably can't afford a research nuclear reactor, but MIT sure as hell can if they want. Getting a position as a undergrad on those research projects is incredibly competitive.

> The more prestigious schools have more budget to hire better professors Better by what metric? It has not been my experience that instructional quality is in any way correlated with budget or prestige. > Your random college probably can't afford a research nuclear reactor, but MIT sure as hell can if they want. Idaho State has a research reactor. As does Kansas State, Missouri S&T, NC State, Ohio State, Oregon Stat…

Have to agree about the professors. They aren't there to teach, they're there to do research.

I found that despite being in regular 2 v 1 tutorials, a large number of professors are simply not that interested in teaching.

The best tutors ended up being PhD students. They knew how stuff actually worked, and had been through the material recently enough to understand how undergrads might not get it.

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

#387

Post by tssva »

ecshafer wrote: post #292
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?

The track star olympiad sounds like they have a bright career in track. I don't see what that has to do with academics.

A track star olympiad sounds like someone that has a sense of dedication and a work ethic that will serve them well in academics. A person who has scored well on a single test they had a long time to prep for but displays no other outstanding qualities seems like someone that might be overwhelmed and not able to keep up with the academic requirements of university.

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

#388

Post by bsder »

> Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify.

Placing University of Pittsburgh, a public university which has almost a 67% acceptance rate, in the same conversation with private universities that have acceptance rates in or near the single digit percentages borders on journalistic fraud.

I would also say that Pitt, unlike a lot (most) of universities mentioned, had many programs attempting to help those from more humble backgrounds get into the university. It used to have a very strong night school. It also had many programs in the summer for students who were "on the edge" of getting in but needed to learn some extra skills (like how to study, how to use libraries, extra classwork learning how to write, etc.).

I don't know what kind of programs Pitt still has, though. So my information could be outdated.

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

#389

Post by dionidium »

lisper wrote: post #76
boeingUH60 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s as if you’re trying to make perfect the enemy of good. Standardized tests aren’t perfect but they give less privileged kids the best choice at attending a good college. The kids of the upper class and the rich will always have an upper hand compared to the poor. However, standardized tests limit how wide the upper hand is. An upper class kid still has to study and pass the test, and the poor kid can also do that…

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...

To the contrary, the NEA wildly overestimates it and employs junk question-begging "disparate impact" [0] reasoning throughout. The article is full of stuff like this: "There is a clear correlation, for example, between test scores and property values."

To the extent that society is meritocratic at all and intelligence is heritable (and it is), we should expect test scores to correlate with all manner of measures of success, including property values. Articles like this don't even take that question seriously. They just ignore it. It's proof by repeated assertion. It may be fashionable to insist that this is prima facie evidence of bias, but that is a question of logic and not a difficult one, whatever exceedingly average minds like Ibram X. Kendi think of it.

[0] As a legal concept "disparate impact" is what it is. The law means whatever its authors intend it to mean. But as a matter of logic, it's embarrassing, and beneath this forum.

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

#390

Post by philwelch »

dbish wrote: post #362
philwelch wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT and Harvard are almost completely different. The promise of MIT, as I understand it, is sort of a ruthless no-compromise academic excellence. The promise of Harvard or Yale is that you are going to be inducted into the American ruling class. These are different goals.

For students, sure, but when being hired (or funded) they all have similar “elite” tier intelligence/potential, nothing about ruling class

In tech, sure, but that’s because it’s tech. How many MIT alums are on the Supreme Court?
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