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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

#551

Post by somethoughts »

kulahan wrote: post #451
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…

I never really understood the complaint. Rich people spend massive amounts of money to send their kid to a school. That massive, completely unnecessary investment is then reinvested across the students attending the school, who come from all different backgrounds. This is, in effect, one of the most common ways wealth is redistributed in the US. Why is it so bad? Maybe we should limit it, but the actual practice itse…

Yes perhaps the unstated benefit of elite private schools is the long term relationships formed between children of legacy (i.e. generational wealth) and highly capable and hungry individuals who are getting in on merit alone.

The two problems I see with legacy admissions is that:

1.) It has never been explicitly stated as a policy. If it were an upfront "get one admission for every 10 full price admissions/tuitions you buy" that would seem fairer. That said - I can see why a private school might be hesitant to be so transparent...

2.) The schools need to grow in order to keep the percentage of new admits to legacy admits constant as every generation of graduates is likely to produce at least 2x increase in legacy admits.

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

#552

Post by rank0 »

screye wrote: post #179

Legacy admissions should not be legal in public universities. Massive public schools like UMass, Mich, StonyBrook, GATech, Minnesota, Penn State still take legacy admissions. It's nice to see CMU follow in the footsteps of other top private tech schools like MIT & Caltech that claim to not use legacy status. It's no surprise that Ivies, Stanford and most private colleges all heavily favor legacy. Afterall, a large pa…

I have a hard time defining my own stance on this point.

For example, my alma mater GAtech allows for automatic admissions of my immediate relatives provided they reach some bar like 3.5 gpa + 1400 SAT (math+reading).

Do you think this should be illegal? It’s quite clearly an attempt to create an enduring GT community. It’s also clearly not the same as racially discriminatory admissions.

I do see the argument that it’s unfair…but should it be full blown illegal? “Non-legacy” isn’t a protected class in America unlike race,sex,religion, etc.

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

#553

Post by elteto »

letrowekwel wrote: post #541

Admissions are easy to do right. Just give anyone with a valid educational background (like college/high school completed) a chance to participate in a strictly observed live exam, which is then graded anonymously. 100% fair, leaves no place for discrimination. This is how many countries do it in Europe and it just works. But what about economically disadvantaged minority groups? That's easy to fix too. Just give sch…

We will never have this because neither side wants it:

Schools do not want it because they lose total control over who they accept. Harvard wants to accept the children of the current ruling class knowing that they will become the next one, and in doing so keeping alive the mythos of Harvard as ruling class incubator.

The other side, which we can call the affirmative action supporters, don't want it either because they see it as a racist by proxy system. And also because it turns out that Asians and Indians (and others too) would do exceedingly well with this system.

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

#554

Post by HDThoreaun »

letrowekwel wrote: post #541

Admissions are easy to do right. Just give anyone with a valid educational background (like college/high school completed) a chance to participate in a strictly observed live exam, which is then graded anonymously. 100% fair, leaves no place for discrimination. This is how many countries do it in Europe and it just works. But what about economically disadvantaged minority groups? That's easy to fix too. Just give sch…

What do you put on the exam? Harvard isn't just looking for academic success. They're looking for the next generation of leaders. How do you test for that?

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

#555

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#556

Post by TechBro8615 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #436
Larrikin wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because money. Sorry. That's the reality that everyone fails to talk openly about when discussing athletics. It brings in a lot of money for the top schools like Stanford, Michigan, Texas, Alabama and so on. You find a way to replace that revenue, a lot of schools would be happy to get rid of it. But until then? I mean the B1G has a tv split of almost 100 million a year "per". Once all the former PAC12 schools unite…

At some schools I'm quite sure that graduating athletes also end up making more money than their non-athletic counterparts, which - even ignoring the "big sports" aspect of it - makes them more likely to become future donors to the university.

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

#557

Post by nluken »

janalsncm wrote: post #525
motohagiography wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure if you’re being serious but that is indeed how it works at many places. I was straight up told that I could get a spot on some schools’ track teams over others who were faster than me because my test scores would increase the team average

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

#558

Post by bena »

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…

I have not seen this argument used when discussing the striking down of affirmative action.

That anyone who doesn't get accepted to a school "because of affirmative action" could still "be accepted to another school and still be able to get a high quality education".

Why protect an institution like legacy admissions that is about as far as meritocratic as possible?

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

#559

Post by elteto »

alephnerd wrote: post #402
numbers_guy wrote: post #58

I was just watching a podcast interview in which a British-German professor employed at an Ivy League university in the US, was talking about the elite universities in the US, and how there is no equivalent in Germany. [1] The interview is in German, but what he is basically saying is that the American attitude is to very openly and purposefully create and maintain this system of elitism and everyone is openly in com…

A buddy of mine at Stanford invited me to one of their CS/Eng Grad Student Socials a couple years ago. There was a pretty large clique of Germans there. Over drinks, I came to find out all those Germans attended the same university (TU Munich), and more specifically, attended the same handful of elite private Gymnasiums. Even though they all attended a public university which doesn't have legacy admissions, these chi…

You obviously got it wrong. The parent commenter explained that there is no elitism in Germany, because a professor said it in an interview, in German. Don't you know that Germany is the sacred, holy land, unique amongst all other lands on Earth, where elitism doesn't exist? You must have confused them with Austrians.

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

#560

Post by kelnos »

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.

We get to stop talking about it once racial discrimination stops happening, and we've managed to right the scales when it comes to past discrimination.

If we can do that in 50 years (doubtful) then we can stop talking about it. Ditto for the other time frames you mention.

Even then, we shouldn't really stop talking about it. Forgetting our history increases the likelihood that we'll slip back into old patterns and do it again.

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