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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

#751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is not the country.

It's the most liberal state in the country so it would get voted down even harder everywhere else.

It's liberal on some matters. It's also the state that let Rodney King's assailants off. Political progressivism doesn't ensure a lack of anti-marginalized racism.

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

#752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point, it has to be eliminated as a special dispensation topic If white supremacy would stop being perpetuated, we could stop worrying about the effects of white supremacy. But the discussion doesn't have to end after a specific timeframe just because you feel uncomfortable with it.

When someone in the future inevitably asks "what was the United States of America?", it will be long past time...

How interesting that you think it's easier to destroy the USA than it is to end white supremacy in the USA.

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

#753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A decade later, turns out I was wrong. Ironically, it’s because the racial identity politics of the last decade made me realize I’m not white, and that race is such a pernicious concept that even the good white people can’t be trusted with it.

That's fine , but you can't reasonably adopt a tone that there are obvious answers to this, or feign surprise that people disagree with you, when you yourself argued the exact opposite --- and when your reason for changing your mind is so idiosyncratic. I assure you that most people do not arrive at their opinion on racial preferences based on a realization that they aren't white. If that's the reason racial preferences are wrong, it's incumbent on you to disclose that up front.

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

#754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

why do you have to take a gap year?

they admit you off of the waitlist if your family donates a lot but i think they get to not count it in this years numbers or next years if they give you a deferred acceptance

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

#755
post #664
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... Understanding "equality of opportunity" to be literal and absolute is nonsense, because to do so would require hobbling people with natural talent (for instance), si…

I think you have it backwards: targeting "equality of outcome" necessitates policies to pick winners and losers. Specifically, it requires policies that aim to minimize both. Equality of opportunity doesn't mean hobbling talented people or enforcing that everyone be given identical opportunities. It simply means that people regardless of talent (in a given ability) ought not be restricted from an attempting to take a…

Legacy admission preference is obviously contrary to equality of opportunity but I guess people will argue about everything.

I say this as a legacy admit

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

#756
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 It pretty much is. Hardvard undergraduate classes aren’t substantially higher quality than at many other state schools.

People say this, not sure what it is based on, unless by “many other”s you just mean Michigan, UC, and UNC.

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

#757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it would be sad for Harvard to get unaffordable.

Noted your sarcasm, but it would be sad for Harvard and its ilk to get EVEN MORE unaffordable for anyone not upperclass.

Harvard is very affordable post -financial aid and I am not sure where the rumors otherwise came from.

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

#758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone in the future inevitably asks "what was the United States of America?", it will be long past time...

How interesting that you think it's easier to destroy the USA than it is to end white supremacy in the USA.

I'm not advancing that argument at all, but rather arguing "even people who do believe that will surely agree that the USA will someday cease to exist and, later, will fall out of history to an extent that someone will have to ask who/what the USA even was and, therefore, the notion that we will forever need affirmative action because '[the USA had] an actual legacy of the extraction, relocation, and enslavement of a particular group of people on the basis of race' is highly questionable".

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

#759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noted your sarcasm, but it would be sad for Harvard and its ilk to get EVEN MORE unaffordable for anyone not upperclass.

I think the argument rings hollow to me mostly because it's not that Harvard has to charge this much. I'm sure they could be providing the same quality of education for 1/5th the price. In fact, with the endowments many of these schools have, they could probably go tuition-free for a couple of decades and still be fine. They charge this much essentially because they can (govt-subsidized loans), and because it helps t…

Harvard has been around for centuries, long-time-horizon planning is rare in the current corporate landscape but less so at such large institutions.

Harvard effectively is close-to-free if you are not rich, but why would they subsidize people from rich families?

Govt subsidized loans thing is wrong also, very few Harvard students have any sort of loan.

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

#760
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

I don’t think I, or the idea of affirmative action said anything about racism against asians, in particular the recent surge (most probably due to Mr CHAI-NUH and his base).

A system of “merit” simply cannot be built on top of a system of racism. Merit is a nice end goal, but making it merit based when you’ve already made it impossible for some races to get merit is racist.

Personally, I think this is an “as a black man” reply to distract from the fact that you have zero actual response.

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