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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

#591

Post by janalsncm »

nluken wrote: post #557
janalsncm wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sorry, I should’ve been more clear. I am referring to sports at the highest levels, just like Harvard is academia at the highest level. Maybe it sounds like a joke but that’s only because it’s so ridiculous to even consider.

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

#594

Post by yodsanklai »

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 that even without legacy admissions, you'll still get many/mostly wealthy kids there. You can see that in elite institutions which are purely meritocratic.

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

#595

Post by whimsicalism »

CraigRo wrote: post #570
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…

This statement is a bit misleading, as the criteria get to be hair-splittingly narrow when you are talking about a school with a sub 5% acceptance rate -- you could fill the whole class with valedictorians. Nevertheless, my experience is that in terms of finding a 'better' candidate: Legacy -- legacy preference is pitched as a tiebreaker. Most of the legacies are actually quite good, and many are exceptional, so perh…

Your comment is pretty spot on about the admission dynamics.

> Legacy

I think it is more of a tip than you are making it out to be simply due to yield farming - the smart kid who has a Harvard parent is more likely to go to Harvard over Yale than a generic smart kid, so if you want to keep your admission rates as low as possible you tip legacy.

> 10-20 kids/year who get in this way who wouldn't otherwise.

They certainly exist, Harvard has the z-list.

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

#596

Post by numbers_guy »

elteto wrote: post #559
alephnerd wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The children of the elite are not studying CS at TUM. The parent commentator made a good point that gymnasiums is where a lot of elitism happens, but I was talking about universities and I do not think we were talking about the same "elite" demographics. Moreover, my OP was about how having a culture with elitist elements can provide a ladder for talented but not connected individuals, which is lacking in Germany, because for the most part there is a bigger divide between the educated middle class professions are the truly wealth capital owners in this land.

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

#597

Post by firebirdn99 »

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…

A lot of the costs in modern college programs over the last 20 to 30 years has been due to increase in administrative personnel, building up sports programs, etc.

Modern colleges appear more like resorts than educational institutions. The presidents of these colleges also make massive amounts of money, many of even public or state college, which is highly disingenuous.

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

#598

Post by Apocryphon »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #262
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sports programs at university pay for themselves. I don't see why this even matters (besides the fact that it's not really true except for the biggest sports at some of the biggest sport schools). The debate is over whether it's fair that some students get the benefits that come with being an Ivy League grad without having the academic prowess to otherwise be admitted. Whether or not they are able to cover their co…

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…

> providing very valuable labor to the university for approximately free

Which is perhaps exploitative of the student athletes, who should receive more of a cut of that the revenue they produce.

> they completely pay for the sports programs (some of which the merit-admitted enjoyed, such as having a very large gym open 24 hours a day)

Is that universal though? Not all schools’ sports programs do as well, and isn’t it a wasteful distraction for colleges to be spending tens of millions on stadiums and scoreboards instead of academics? It just seems like another example of excess infecting an institution of learning.

Obviously campus sports is an age old tradition. But the amount of excess just feels like a phenomenon orthogonal to its original role. If schools are going to be lavishly investing in school sports, why not also school music scenes, school art galleries, school esports, school drag car racing, basically taking any competitive, prestige-driven, money-making aspect of society and stuffing it into an academic setting? And then optimizing for admittees who can fulfill those lucrative roles?

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

#599

Post by whimsicalism »

lofatdairy wrote: post #231
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…

>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. This is the one thing they can't get anywhere else. And the legacy students get the prestige and credibility of having gone to a top school, as well as access to hungry students who are eager to take advantage of the opportunities that come their way. I'm not 100% convinced by this argument, insof…

> The number of public school students you meet is just shocking low, even among non-legacies.

at least at Harvard, a substantial majority are from public schools - generally bougie suburban ones, yes, but still public

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

#600

Post by banana_feather »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #338
bumby wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article clearly says there's no evidence of a "casual relationship between legacy preference policies and total alumni giving." Can you explain your point further? Maybe you are aware of better data than what was used in the cited study?

> better data I am personally aware of a very large donation to MIT with the express purpose of admitting the high schooler, and I am less acquainted with a similar situation at Harvard. I have personally seen another alumni development quid pro quo, not a monetary donation, at MIT. Honestly it seems like common sense that the two are related. The mistake from a scientific point of view is how to define legacy prefer…

>I have personally seen another alumni development quid pro quo, not a monetary donation, at MIT. Honestly it seems like common sense that the two are related.

You're comparing apples to oranges. The question is whether consideration of legacy status in admissions is causally linked to greater alumni giving. What you're asking is whether wealthy parents are willing to pay bribes to get their dull children into particular institutions. The two aren't comparable, because rich parents don't need to be alumni to pay bribes.

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