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

#641

Post by bandyaboot » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:24 PM UTC

rufus_foreman wrote: post #605

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…

>> gerrymandered district maps can get struck down on the basis of racial discrimination Under current interpretation of civil rights laws, district maps can get struck down on the basis of racial discrimination if they are not sufficiently gerrymandered.

I assume you’re referring to section 2 of the voting rights act? If so, I find that a pretty disingenuous framing. Can you point to an example of what you would consider to be a fair map getting struck down because of a VRA violation?

Since it’s the most recent high visibility VRA districting case, let me just say from the outset, the SCOTUS case involving the AL congressional map is most definitely not such an example.

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

#642

Post by tssva » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:25 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #601

tssva wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A track star olympiad sounds like someone that has a sense of dedication and a work ethic that will serve them well in academics. A person who has scored well on a single test they had a long time to prep for but displays no other outstanding qualities seems like someone that might be overwhelmed and not able to keep up with the academic requirements of university.

definitely doesn't play out that way at top schools lol

I know many people that have gone to top schools on athletic scholarships and achieved academicly and beyond school. I don't know many with high standardized testing scores and not thing else going for them at top schools, so it is hard to say how that plays out. I know many that have ended up at not top schools because they have high testing scores which would have helped them get into top schools if they had anything else going for them. Many of those have failed at not top schools. So what do you mean when you say things don't play out that way at top schools?

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

#643

Post by lobocinza » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:25 PM UTC

Shacklz wrote: post #463

kulahan wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> This is, in effect, one of the most common ways wealth is redistributed in the US. Why is it so bad? Because the government could simply tax those with wealth more and use taxation as a means of redistribution. Like most western countries do. Anand Giridharadas dissects this topic rather convincingly in his "Winners Take All", see also his infamous google talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM

This is like shooting yourself in the foot. Billionaires will just move their wealth elsewhere. The only things this would accomplish are weaken the US economy and the dollar.

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

#644

Post by rayiner » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:26 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.

That’s funny because Trump v. Hawaii proves the opposite. Obama was the one who identified those specific countries. They just happened to all be Muslim. Trump said he wanted to ban Muslims, but did so by using a list of countries that Obama had generated based on presumably non-racist reasons.

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

#645

Post by BryantD » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:28 PM UTC

somethoughts wrote: post #551

kulahan wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Speaking as a legacy Harvard admission, I wouldn’t say you get a lot of long term relationships beteeen legacy students and merit students. Some, for sure, but there are different social circles at Harvard. Check out the Harvard social clubs sometime.

That said this is a decades old anecdote rather than data.

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

#646

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:32 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #417

yannyu wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why does legacy admissions being bad justify racial preferences? Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Here's an interesting defense of racial preferences a mutual acquaintance wrote on HN some years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758529

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

#647

Post by kiba » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:35 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #614

kneebonian wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's fine and all, but self directed education is a skill in itself in that you need to be able to figure out how to teach oneself and troubleshoot when you're stuck in addition to cultivating a mindset and habits. This is a thing not taught broadly to people, or otherwise well known. It is an entire topic in itself that people write entire books about it.

For sure, there are ton of folks who self taught themselves programming and other skills, which seems to occur mostly be an accident.

There's also the time component. You can learn a lot really fast if you can spend a year without needing to be paid, which is really not possible to achieve unless you're already wealthy.

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

#648

Post by r_singh » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:44 PM UTC

Surprised that it's effectively the opposite in India. IITs (and other institutes in India) have reservations for schedule castes and tribes and I hope in the coming decades they will change this to reservations for lower income groups. Preference is even given to women with the same score/profile.

Does the US have something similar? Why/Why not?

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

#649

Post by rank0 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:47 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #634

rank0 wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median (not average) PPP income is highest in the US. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income While it’s true our income inequality is larger, the fact still remains that the median American makes more money than the median European (or any other comparable region). Ask yourself: Is it better for everyone to be richer and have high inequality? Or is it better for everyone to be poorer but more equal? EDIT:…

Comparing absolute numbers for income is a bit of a fool's errands, even when you use PPP. The philosopher John Rawls has a famous thought experiment of choosing a form of social and economic organization without knowing where you personally might end up on whatever heirarchy it generates or contains. Rawls' point was that in such circumstances, most even semi-rational people will choose the one that makes it the mos…

I appreciate the response!

> By contrast, social democratic societies in Europe have lower median (PPP) income, but higher income redistribution means that far fewer people face such struggles.

The idea that EU citizens do not face poverty is simply false. The EU sheltered homelessness rate is very close to the US, both under 0.2% which is phenomenal honestly…

Poverty rate statistics are quite tricky to decipher. But all the data I can find says that there isn’t an outsized difference between the regions. Rates in US states vary as much as EU member countries with plenty of states from both regions exceeding or below US/EU averages.

I’m not trying to be a blind patriot stereotype or even claim that the US is “better” than other portions of the world.

My only point is that objectively speaking, living standards in America are PHENOMENAL. We should not “redistribute wealth like other western nations” because I can’t think of any G20 nations that have a clearly preferable economic system.

Also to your point about Rawls, if you go too far with redistribution you remove the incentive for people to do difficult or unpleasant work. We’ve witnessed this countless times over the past century in all the failed socialist/communist societies. In a less extreme example we just witnessed France default on its pension obligations!

Nobody is going to work for free. The US spends more money than any other nation on social welfare programs. It’s inefficient and unsustainable. How can we honestly consider expanding wealth distribution programs when we can’t even afford what we have now?

If you can think of a particular nation’s system we should emulate I’d love to hear the argument with an open mind. I honest to god cannot think of any.

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

#650

Post by conjecTech » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 11:48 PM UTC

rank0 wrote: post #552

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…

I wish _all_ students with that profile were automatically accepted. I went to GT and while I guess it's nice in some ways that its now considered an elite university, I much preferred the persona of admitting everyone and weeding out people out so that they could give kids without stellar resumes a chance.