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

#511

Post by gitfan86 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #472

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…

I think this may have been true in like, the 1920s, when it was very difficult to connect merit and capital but today it’s fairly easy and the justification doesn’t really make sense.

This is correct. I have three friends that went to HBS and got very high paying careers. Being friends with the CEO's son was not why they got the jobs.

They administrators at these schools really tipped their hands when the Full House admission bribery scandal broke.

They were not upset that someone paid to get into a school. They were upset that someone didn't pay them to get into a school.

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

#512

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

dogleash wrote: post #510

s17n wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that legacy admissions have always been an egregious injustice. One effect of affirmative action was to (partially and imperfectly) ameliorate the admissions situation. Now that's gone. As far as the freedom of association goes, that's not an argument in favor of legacy admissions but it is possibly an argument that the government should stay out of it. Given the central role that universities play in ou…

> The point is that legacy admissions have always been an egregious injustice. To whom? Anyone who would have been accepted to CMU or Pitt but for the legacy apps will be accepted to another school and still be able to get a high quality education. What harm is caused? They have a slightly worse starting hand in status posturing games during the short period of their lives where anyone gives a shit where anyone went…

Anyone who was rejected because they didn’t have the right parents because the spot went to someone else because they did have the right parents.

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

#513

Post by tivert » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

yannyu wrote: post #295

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then we might as well admit that "merit" is heavily influenced by starting conditions instead of pretending that everyone has "equal opportunity". How many times have I heard from people that the USA is about "equality of opportunity" and not "equality of outcome"? Legacy admissions is directly contrary to equality of opportunity, and undermines the idea of meritocracy in university admissions that people have been c…

> How many times have I heard from people that the USA is about "equality of opportunity" and not "equality of outcome"? Legacy admissions is directly contrary to equality of opportunity, and undermines the idea of meritocracy in university admissions...

Understanding "equality of opportunity" to be literal and absolute is nonsense, because to do so would require hobbling people with natural talent (for instance), since not all people have the opportunities created by those talents (there's a famous sci-fi short story about that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron).

IIRC, rejecting "equality of outcome" in favor of "equality of opportunity", means rejecting explicit policies to pick winners and losers.

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

#514

Post by HDThoreaun » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #506

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boils down to this: If you have some fraction of your students who get in, not on their primary merits as students, but for some other reason that benefits the rest of the student body in some way, eliminating that fraction of the students benefits a handful of students who were at the very top of the waitlist to get in, at the cost of the benefits those preferentially selected students provided. In both athletics…

I can make the same argument for AA. A diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, including students who managed to overcome a lot more adversity than the average rich kid, or white-collar family admittee will make for a better, richer learning experience for everyone.

Which is why Harvard had AA. Turns out government funded institutions are banned from discriminating based on race though. But discriminating based on wealth, parental social status, or athletic ability is still cool.

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

#515

Post by bamfly » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

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

Might not be crazy to prefer someone with that ruling-class cred/connections (even if not, themselves, of that background) in certain very-lucrative sales positions. Or investing. Or law (especially the varieties that tend to pay very well). Or lobbying. Or just about any halfway-important position in a non-profit. Or the C-suite of a corporation, and more-so the bigger it is.

And so on.

Lots of cases where "oh, I sailed with her nephew one Summer when we were both at Harvard" or just being able to credibly wear any of several "in-group" school colors ties and talk the talk is worth more than 10 extra IQ points or whatever.

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

#516

Post by janalsncm » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

thebradbain wrote: post #270

School-Cotton wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say an Olympiad 4.0 student — many of whom exist, I went to school with a few — has a much more promising academic career than someone who managed to get good-not-great grades and a single perfect test score. Aside from the dedication of waking up to practice a sport every morning, think of how much time and discipline is it takes to balance being an amazing athlete with being a great…

In this scenario where you have a track star with a 4.0 and a “boring” student who happened to luck out and get a perfect SAT score, did these students take the same classes? Because maybe the reason the track star didn’t do as well is because they don’t know as much as the athlete.

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

#517

Post by tick_tock_tick » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

cataphract wrote: post #487

digging wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think racial discrimination is the right term for discriminating based on things that happen to correlate with race. Fortunately for people of color, it is. You don't have to say you're discriminating based on race in order to be doing so, and the law acknowledges this. That is how gerrymandered district maps can get struck down on the basis of racial discrimination. We do actually get to look at reality wh…

Well, depends on the day. See the Trump v. Hawaii (the Muslim ban case). In this case Trump did say he wanted to ban muslims, but it didn't even matter.

I mean why would it? The law explicitly stated he's allowed to ban immigration and travel of non USA persons based on whatever he feels like. Non USA persons don't get the same rights especially around entering the USA.

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

#518

Post by gitfan86 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #488

janalsncm wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, then why have classes at all? Why have any tests? If college is just a country club for young adults, just auction off seats to the highest bidder and be done with it. You’ll get an elite mix of those with the most “potential”. It also has the benefit of full transparency. A seat at Harvard costs $4 million cash. Don’t have it? Too bad you wanted an education but Harvard has to look out for their own interests. W…

Because you need to maintain some pretense that Harvard grads aren’t incompetent. That’s also why they admit at least a few academically inclined students.

Yeah it is almost like the opposite situation described in this thread.

It is the super rich that are hoping their child will become friends with the next Bill Gates. Not the next Bill Gates hoping he can meet a spoiled rich kid

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

#519

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

te_230349493 wrote: post #408

dionidium wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Legacy admissions discriminate by class (if you are well off to be part of a donor family, you get a leg up) or by birth right (if you were a lucky enough sperm to be part of the family of a prior attendee, you get a leg up). How is the principles of giving preference to a particular class or birth right any different than giving preference to race? All three fly in the face of meritocracy. Yet to not allow this mean…

[deleted]

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

#520

Post by dionidium » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #448

dionidium wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever you think in theory, in practice we have an actual legacy of the extraction, relocation, and enslavement of a particular group of people on the basis of race. We fought a civil war about it and it remains the most enduringly contentious and difficult conflict -- the defining conflict, in many ways -- in our nation's history (right up through today). It will always be a topic deserving of special dispensation…

> It will always be a topic deserving of special dispensation. I completely disagree. Still after another 50 years? Another 150 years? Still 1000 years from now? 10,000? At some point, it has to be eliminated as a special dispensation topic. When exactly that is, and whether that is in the past or the future can reasonably be debated, but to conclude that it should be permanent is well beyond reason, IMO.

I am not so differently inclined. What I mean to say is that as long as we exist this will always have been a part of our history and as a result addressed in Amendments to our foundational documents. Those Amendments are an indelible form of special dispensation.

You can't say that about anything related to organizations playing favorites with the kids of former members. It's by comparison comically irrelevant.