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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

#421

Post by Jotra7 »

chaostheory wrote: post #393
hunson_abadeer wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Not sure why this wasn't mentioned more often but it's because of donor money. Donor money that funds things like new cafeterias and other facilities ultimately benefits everyone at school and helps keep tuition prices in check, also complicates the ethics ie if they didn't have enough donors, then tuition will go up and it'll be even less affordable

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

#422

Post by Jotra7 »

Brusco_RF wrote: post #322
ethbr0 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you have done differently, in an attempt to evolve a complex, layered, and ossified industry that absolutely cannot stop providing service for even a day?

I'd start by removing the subsidies and special rules around student loans. That makes colleges compete on price again which puts downward pressure on tuition.

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

#423

Post by efficax »

Admission for the children of faculty and staff (esp. if tuition is waived) is such an incredible benefit for the people that work at these institutions that I hope that is not also being abandoned. Legacies/big donors/alums sure, I don't care, but I'd hate to see university workers lose one of the best benefits they get.

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

#424

Post by hunson_abadeer »

chaostheory wrote: post #393
hunson_abadeer wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Not sure why this wasn't mentioned more often but it's because of donor money. Donor money that funds things like new cafeterias and other facilities ultimately benefits everyone at school and helps keep tuition prices in check, also complicates the ethics ie if they didn't have enough donors, then tuition will go up and it'll be even less affordable

Yeah, it would be sad for Harvard to get unaffordable.

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

#425

Post by thebradbain »

kneebonian wrote: post #379
thebradbain wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Would absolutely not get you in anywhere selective 2. Would absolutely not either I believe the whole concept of “meritocracy” for purpose of admissions is a lie— choosing the criteria to measure against is itself a subjective act.

> I believe the whole concept of “meritocracy” for purpose of admissions is a lie— choosing the criteria to measure against is itself a subjective act. Let me ask you. Do you also believe that requiring a display of proficiency in mathematics to get into the best schools is inherently discriminatory? What about requiring a demonstration of the capability to understand and complete basic subject matter material in the…

There’s no shortage of people who meet any of that criteria!

The whole point of a selective college is they have to select from a pool of already qualified applicants. There is no objective measure to measure against when you’re splitting hairs. Even were you to limit it to “objective” requirements like test score and GPA, how do you decide between two students for one spot when both have the exact same scores?

There is no shortage of perfect scores applying to Harvard. And yet a majority, or even a plurality, of any given class of admits didn’t have perfect scores.

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

#426

Post by ghaff »

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…

MIT doesn't have athletic scholarships. But I'm pretty sure they weight athletics like they do many other non-academic activities (e.g. music).

ADDED: If you're national class in a sport, they'll probably try to figure out a way to admit you so long as you meet some set of qualifications which mean you probably won't flunk out. (MIT tries pretty hard to keep people from flunking out.)

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

#427

Post by nazgulnarsil »

Larrikin wrote: post #359
chmod600 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff“ Athletes have merit. Arguably more than some academic departments.

Why should a top high school baseball prospect take up a spot at a college instead of a spot on a local A league team?

Not what you meant, but the answer is because they are a profit center for the college.

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

#428

Post by largeluke »

ativzzz wrote: post #299
dfadsadsf wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People go to Harvard not for the excellence of the education, which I'm sure is good but is pretty much equivalent to top state public schools, but for the network and the signaling. 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…

There are plenty of academic opportunities at Harvard that are not available at state schools. Because they attract many of the top students in the world, they're able to offer highly accelerated or advanced courses that other schools can't.

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

#429

Post by gnicholas »

Admissions rates for legacy students are much higher than for the general applicant pool, sometimes by an order of magnitude. But that raw comparison doesn’t shed much light on how much the legacy status actually helps, as opposed to the differences among legacy applicants and the general applicant pool.

Is there any data that shows how these students compare to other students who are comparable in terms of family income, high school type, GPA, SAT? I would assume that all of these variables could be significantly different for children of alumni (especially of elite institutions, where admissions is most competitive), so it would be helpful to know what these numbers look like after removing some obvious confounders.

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

#430

Post by elil17 »

dionidium wrote: post #394
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 just don't see this. In our society we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, and that it therefore clears the very high bar required for limiting freedom of association…

But favoring legacy status in admissions is a form of racial discrimination because non-white people are much, much less likely to have legacy at elite institutions.
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