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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

#521

Post by bradleyjg »

kaibee wrote: post #354
bradleyjg wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public makes a huge investment in Harvard, both directly through grants and indirectly through waived taxes. Is subsidizing social networking with and among the privileged a good use of public dollars?

Well, you get smart kids who actually earned their spot connected to the rich kids with money. The first group isn't as privileged as the second group. This certainly isn't the best system, but if it was removed, would something better naturally emerge, or would we just further reduce social mobility without any benefit? /realpolitik

It seems like your model here is that we eliminate alumni preferences at Harvard, rich kids stop getting in but that has no impact on their future elite status. The smart kids miss out on connecting with them and end up the only real losers in the change.

I think you should consider another possibility—-that things like getting into Harvard is how rich kids end up being elite. Take those things away from them and many will still be wealthy but they won’t be elite. They’ll be the guy working a mid level job (or none at all) that just happens to have a really sweet house and vacations in Aspen.

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

#522

Post by Scarblac »

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…

But also, why is meritocracy so above any criticism? Why is it considered so great?

It would be fairer to just pick at random. Or even better, make sure everyone who wants a good education can get one.

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

#523

Post by tick_tock_tick »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #406
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…

We do not live in a perfect world. Instead, we live in a world where a collection of individuals has had the fruits of their labor stolen from them for most of the past 400 years, served in wars where promises were made and not kept upon their return, and are still being discriminated against in representative democracy. And when someone enumerates all the reasons that these people have been harmed, financially, spir…

Sins of the father isn't a popular position in this country. It's also a very hard way to get elected.

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

#524

Post by _cenw »

kypro wrote: post #154
boeingUH60 wrote: post #14

Very good decision. Let’s see if them Ivy Leagues with enormous endowments would follow…likely not because that’ll cause a big drop in gifts and donations.

> likely not because that’ll cause a big drop in gifts and donations. This is a topic that I haven't had much interest in so sorry if I'm being dumb here, but I struggle to see how this could be a good thing? I guess the way I'm seeing this is that if you're too not smart enough to get into these universities but are lucky enough to have parents with lots of money, you can basically bribe your way in. While this seem…

or we could just… tax the rich instead? the not stupid ones too?

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

#525

Post by janalsncm »

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?

Would you say the same in reverse? Should baseball teams also not discriminate based on athletic ability? Academic excellence requires dedication and commitment as well, perhaps we should reserve a few spots on the team for strong students.

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

#526

Post by HDThoreaun »

gitfan86 wrote: post #518
tylerhou wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Bill gates was one of the spoiled rich kids. But ignoring that the relationship goes both ways. The legacies want to be surrounded by people who are legitimately smart, high achievers. The smart high achievers want to be able to network with the legacies as they are what gives the institution prestige and make the alumni network valuable. Having only legacies or only meritocratic acceptances would be worse for both groups.

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

#527

Post by tivert »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #234
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…

This is definitely true, but we can go a step deeper. You have to think about what Harvard's goals are. Maximizing academic success is not very high on the list. The real goals are maximizing career success, donations, and cultural cachet/prestige. When legacies are considered with these goals in mind they make a lot of sense. Legacies are likely to have successful careers due to their parents resources and power, th…

> This is definitely true, but we can go a step deeper. You have to think about what Harvard's goals are. Maximizing academic success is not very high on the list. The real goals are maximizing career success, donations, and cultural cachet/prestige.

Exactly. Harvard is about being the source of the next generation of elites. IIRC, they're far more likely to admit the captain of the high school football team over an otherwise similar nerd with better grades/test scores, because the captain is demonstrating leadership potential and is more likely to be some next-gen big shot.

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

#528

Post by melagonster »

toast0 wrote: post #454
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.

> more importantly, can fund top class research that costs ALOT of money. That's important if you're at the college to do research; but many people attend college to get instruction. Top class research says nothing about top class instruction.

but some people try to find top class instruction of research. what's can better than hiring best researchers, give them foundation for research and require they teaching students how to research in same time?

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

#529

Post by belorn »

digging wrote: post #459
randyrand wrote: post #437

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. Everything correlates with race. Height, disease, money, eye color, divorce, number of pokemon cards, you name it. You may as well call it eye-color discrimination, height discrimination, pokemon card discrimination, etc, as well. It just makes no sense at that point. So what exactly is the poi…

> 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…

gerrymandered district maps can get struck down on the basis of intention of racial discrimination. Correlation and intent are two very different concepts, and it is very dangerous to assume that everything that correlates do so by intent.

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

#530

Post by koolba »

Scarblac wrote: post #522
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…

But also, why is meritocracy so above any criticism? Why is it considered so great? It would be fairer to just pick at random. Or even better, make sure everyone who wants a good education can get one.

The rationale for meritocracy is that a limited resource should be allocated to the individual that will make most use of it. Demonstrating that you understand the prerequisites and are studious is a pretty good indicator that you’ll attend class and strive to learn more.

Randomly picking students with zero minimum qualification would be a massive waste of resources.

Randomly picking students above a given objective standard would be okay. Though arguably not as good as given the best of the best first dibs (depends on who you ask!).

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