If Harvard revolutionized its admissions tomorrow, elite debutants would find a different way to signal.
Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
131–140 of 386 posts
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever Eight of the nine current sitting Supreme Court Judges are either Yale or Harvard Law graduates. It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. Degrees from those schools are basically licenses to occupy the highest positions in the country's adminis…
> It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. And, in addition, because at least presently, anyone who didn't do Ivy+ is essentially never going to be a SCOTUS judge. The obvious objection is that given there are only 9 justices at a time, essentially nobody is ever going to be a SCOTUS judge anyway. But that misses the important gating…
What law schools are admitting 18yos?
I don't know if it's intentional but you're conflating mutually exclusive lines of thought.
The argument that such decisions should be made at age 22 instead of age 18 doesn't support — in fact contradicts — your argument that trajectories toward SCOTUS should not be related to law school admissions (which do indeed happen at age 22 instead of age 18).
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "lets all be poor" As the parent of two exceptionally-achieving children who were rejected from the "elite" colleges - I've become a lot more sympathetic to the mindset behind this line of thinking. My kids literally couldn't have done more or tried harder - since kindergarten - than they did. They both graduated valedictorian with perfect GPAs, scored in the top 99% of the SAT, did sports, did clubs, volunteered,…
It’s a similar problem to the scientific journals that extort scientists. The elite universities are not primarily selling education they’re selling prestige. In academia it’s worse because prestige is the metric for getting grants and status since the pay is bad. It’s also not great in private companies since institutional prestige is used to filter inbound interest, but it’s better because at least there are other…
do you have a link to the "admissions content that came out in the affirmative action SCOTUS case"? That sounds very interesting. I found a report on the entire case but its near 300 pages long
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#134This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is required to go there or hire someone from there. Why do Harvard people "drive 20% above the speed limit"? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. I've seen dozens of theo…
I totally agree that Harvard has (and should have) a right to do whatever they want with their institution and admit whoever they see fit. But if we're serious about a liberal/conservative "equality of opportunity" vs a progressive/socialist "equality of outcome" reality, then we should consider that children have very little consent over the kind of education and familial upbringing they get, yet that childhood educ…
>>I totally agree that Harvard has (and should have) a right to do whatever they want with their institution and admit whoever they see fit.
I would agree to this under 3 conditions
1. The university can not accept any federally backed student loans, grants, etc
2. The university must self finance any financial aid given using their massive endowments
3. Those loans must be discharged in bankruptcy
I dont even care about their non-profit status as others do. I care they are getting billions in federally (tax payer) backed loan, with no accountability for the money, and no skin in the game at all
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#135The thing that gets me is that nearly every single podcast or article that talks about admissions and how fair/unfair they are focuses almost solely on Ivy League schools and leaves out the state and local colleges/universities that actually churn out 99% of college graduates in the US. Maybe we tax payers need to do better about steering the conversation towards those institutions that we fund as opposed to those th…
That's an 80/20 or I guess 99/1 though.
The actual quality of most local colleges is poor and is basically just a loan servicer subsidization program. If you want to be the lead engineer of a Fortune 500....you went to the 1%...not the 99. I think your argument is super solid and highlights what I'm saying here..but also the Ivy League club is basically just a billionaire boys club to keep the others out.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "lets all be poor" As the parent of two exceptionally-achieving children who were rejected from the "elite" colleges - I've become a lot more sympathetic to the mindset behind this line of thinking. My kids literally couldn't have done more or tried harder - since kindergarten - than they did. They both graduated valedictorian with perfect GPAs, scored in the top 99% of the SAT, did sports, did clubs, volunteered,…
Why would Ivy schools pass your children over?
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Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "lets all be poor" As the parent of two exceptionally-achieving children who were rejected from the "elite" colleges - I've become a lot more sympathetic to the mindset behind this line of thinking. My kids literally couldn't have done more or tried harder - since kindergarten - than they did. They both graduated valedictorian with perfect GPAs, scored in the top 99% of the SAT, did sports, did clubs, volunteered,…
Why would Ivy schools pass your children over?
Because there are far more children who check all those boxes than there are slots at the Ivies?
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#138This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is required to go there or hire someone from there. Why do Harvard people "drive 20% above the speed limit"? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. I've seen dozens of theo…
> This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. I think you missed the point of the article, which was "Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic, and it does that while subsidized by everyone else." > Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. The author discusses this: "The hardest part of Harvard is g…
The “Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic” idea is repeated a couple of times, and the article doesn’t seem to make any argument at all that it’s correct.
An alternative hypothesis, entirely consistent with the author’s arguments, is that Harvard exists to educate its students (and to do research and have fancy sports and pretty buildings and cultural events, etc), that it’s quite good at this but not necessarily substantially better than its lower class competition, and that its gating function developed over time and is unfortunate.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't that enhance the effect of the gate rather than detract from it? If, ceteris paribus, being around the shiniest of gold stars helps you shimmer a little brighter, that seems likely to make the gating-function effect more pronounced, not less. My criticism of the article is that there's no alternative solution given. You want to abolish all admissions? That's cool. What do we replace it with? A lottery seems l…
One of the points of the article seemed to be to do gating latter rather than earlier. I'm saying that this is detrimental as being around the dullest stars will make you a dull star more often than not.
Perhaps I missed it but I didn't see the author put forward a mechanism for how the "gate later" approach was supposed to work. Did I miss it?
To your point though, absent an implementation of "gate later", it's not clear to me that what the author would want would put you near the "dullest stars". There's no way Harvard (or any other Ivy+) would accept a "gate later" implementation that would give them the dullest of stars. The differentiators between folks with any non-zero chance of acceptance are already pretty small, and I don't think "allow everyone in" would be feasible as they would not have room to put all of the people who want to be there.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "lets all be poor" As the parent of two exceptionally-achieving children who were rejected from the "elite" colleges - I've become a lot more sympathetic to the mindset behind this line of thinking. My kids literally couldn't have done more or tried harder - since kindergarten - than they did. They both graduated valedictorian with perfect GPAs, scored in the top 99% of the SAT, did sports, did clubs, volunteered,…
Why would Ivy schools pass your children over?
Ivies have about a 5% admission rate, and they probably have a much higher percentage of valedictorians than the general population.
They probably reject way more than 50% of the valedictorian/800 SAT applicants they have.
Unless you are super-special, you need to be at that level and be lucky