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

#611

Post by rank0 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:36 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #609

rank0 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enlighten me. Which G20 nation has better economic conditions than the United States? According to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average... The PPP adjusted median income is highest in the US (not counting Iceland/Luxembourg for obvious reasons). And as a follow up, how stable is the government in your example countries? The US has the worlds oldest document-based government. The rest of…

> counting Iceland/Luxembourg for obvious reasons Obviously you wouldn't want to count any cases that contradict your claims.

Lol. The US is hundreds of times larger than those countries. It does t even have to be about the US…

Do you really think it’s reasonable to compare Luxembourg with its 600k population to a country like Germany which has 84M citizens?

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

#612

Post by wpietri » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:36 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #586

rayiner wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the list of people appointed to run executive agencies, serve as judges, etc., and see the degree to which our society is run by elites from a handful of schools. The Supreme Court that issued this decision has one Justice who didn’t go to either Harvard or Yale.

This is a really thought-provoking reply. I appreciate it. The thing it makes me wonder, though: Isn't this unmerited dominance of Ivy Leaguers in our society the real problem that both AA and the discussion about legacies, is purporting to "solve" or "improve"? It seems like every society has elites, and we're trying to put a thumb on the scale (or remove other thumbs on the scale really) in hopes we can propel the…

Consider two extremes: positions in the next generation's "elite" are randomly selected vs auctioned off. In the latter case, you quickly develop the problem of a parasitic elite who uses that elite power to extract wealth to buy places for their kids in the next generation.

The essential reason America exists was we said "hell no" to a parasitic, hereditary elite, the British "nobility". So I think it's very in keeping with the American experiment to prevent the reemergence of that sort of elite. I'm not sure we should have an elite at all, but to the extent that we do, I think college admissions should absolutely not favor people based on wealth or family ties.

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

#613

Post by TrackerFF » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:37 PM UTC

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?

Some of us come from parts of the world where these things simply do not exist. So it is a very, very foreign concept.

So you're good at sports, or some instrument, or whatever. That's nice - but why should it give you an edge over other people when it comes to school admission?

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

#614

Post by xp84 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:39 PM UTC

kneebonian wrote: post #381

kiba wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're still creating a meritocratic elite, based on capacity limit and price of admission. Not everybody get to have an elite education, or afford such an opportunity. Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay.

> Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay. We already have that for the most part, I can find courses from half a dozen of the worlds best universities online for free right now.

Bingo. At this point, you can acquire a better education on most topics through self-directed free routes like that as long as you're motivated. Or for some areas there are things like bootcamps, the best of which teach the actually marketable skills much better than colleges.

I'd argue that college ceased being primarily about education a long time ago. College in my humble opinion is:

• Place to rub shoulders with elites (mostly only applies at Ivies, or at prominent schools within certain niches probably)

• Proving you have sufficient grit and responsibility to endure adversity and get things done - or more accurately, some in society are willing to use it as a decent filter to exclude those who are lazy and unmotivated. Notably, this has a high false-negative rate, meaning lots of hardworking, motivated people don't attend or graduate from college due to money, time, cultural expectations of their social group, etc.

• Least important: A filter to exclude people who apparently can't be taught. Has the same false negative problem, some fall through here because their schooling sucked and they didn't learn how to learn.

Only that first aspect is really related to whether minorities need a boost or legacies need to be brought to an even playing field. Education itself is easy to get at many schools, and is often better than these fancy 'research schools.'

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

#615

Post by underlipton » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:42 PM UTC

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…

This is a straining of the issue with discrimination, which cannot be divorced from its history. Corrected:

It is illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race to the advantage of those previously, explicitly advantaged by their race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, because part of the country's attempt to uphold this prejudice lead to the single bloodiest war in the country's history.

Affirmative action was upheld for more than a half-century in recognition of these incontrovertible truths, and was only overturned with the rise of a Supreme Court whose partisanship would be unprecedented, if it had not been preceded by the courts that gave us Jim Crow. No one even voted this change in.

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

#616

Post by underlipton » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:44 PM UTC

az226 wrote: post #533

underlipton wrote: post #149

It's funny to me how cynical and skeptical HN is about diversity-related admissions, but how quickly everyone jumps to point out the positives of legacy admissions. These aren't people who are being objective. We are now mask-off with regard to how this is simply an emotional matter centered around what is most advantageous to whatever group. The least we could do is be open about the role of self-interest here.

If they were admitting legacy students who were hundreds of points lower on the SATs and bad grades, then yeah, it’d be as bad as affirmative action. But in practice it’s only ever used to break ties. If affirmative action was implemented the same way legacy admissions is, I doubt the lawsuit against Harvard would ever exist, and opposition essentially non-existent.

>If they were admitting legacy students who were hundreds of points lower on the SATs and bad grades

They are.

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

#617

Post by underlipton » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:46 PM UTC

dublinben wrote: post #278

underlipton wrote: post #149

It's funny to me how cynical and skeptical HN is about diversity-related admissions, but how quickly everyone jumps to point out the positives of legacy admissions. These aren't people who are being objective. We are now mask-off with regard to how this is simply an emotional matter centered around what is most advantageous to whatever group. The least we could do is be open about the role of self-interest here.

Don't you think there's just as much self-interest behind the the primary argument of relying exclusively on "merit"? This is likely being promulgated by a demographic who over-indexes on this dimension and is lacking in any other that may be included in a holistic admissions process.

>Don't you think there's just as much self-interest behind the the primary argument of relying exclusively on "merit"?

Oh, absolutely.

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

#618

Post by meetingthrower » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:48 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #595

CraigRo wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 certai…

Hah just heard that come up in another context. Confirmed. Heard the price tag was $3m and you have to take a gap year.

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

#619

Post by dotnet00 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #573

dotnet00 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever this obvious bs excuse is used, the glaring question becomes of why are Asians suppressed by it? If it's about classically suppressed races and systematic racism, it's pretty hypocritical to be penalizing Asians. Especially when recent years have also seen a surge in people pretending to care about racism against Asians.

Because racism can have different effects depending on who is perpetrating it. The recent surge in racism against Asians has been mostly about verbal and physical violence directed against Asian people. For the most part, Asian people haven't been missing out on educational and professional opportunities because of it. That's not been the case for other manifestations of racism. There's really no hypocrisy here; you…

Are you making the ridiculous implication that systematic racism against Asians hasn't existed prior to recent events?

>For the most part, Asian people haven't been missing out on educational and professional opportunities because of it.

Yes, no thanks to you! Apparently being willing to throw away our childhoods studying to make up for racism's effects means we deserve to face more racism.

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

#620

Post by meetingthrower » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #426

importantbrian wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

They have slots. Coaches have a certain number of slots, but yes there is a minimum academic performance that they have to adhere to. If you're recruited you know it.