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Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

reuters.com

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Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#151

Post by juve1996 »

finitestateuni wrote: post #99
julienchastang wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. A couple of generations ago, you could attend a US state college and pay off the tuition by working summer jobs. Now, due to a long list of factors, colleges attempt to extract every nickel out of parents/students. I don't have the reference on my finger tips, but universities are employing AI algorithms to achieve this. In turn, parents have to hire consultants to get advice on bargaining the tuition pri…

I went to a cal state and paid 7k a year in tuition. 3 years later I am making around 300k TC at a FAANG. Everyone who graduated with me seems to be doing pretty well judging by LinkedIn.

It's ludicrous to suggest that this is an easy outcome. If it were, you wouldn't be making 300k TC.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#152

Post by AlbertCory »

jonstewart wrote: post #114
AlbertCory wrote: post #102

> Lawyers for the schools said in a court filing that the "plaintiffs' goal in pursuing such discovery is to harass and embarrass, rather than because it is relevant to their actual antitrust claim." > The defense lawyers also called the demand for admissions and development records "intrusive and burdensome." Prediction: the schools lose, and have to turn over the data. Maybe if their argument was on privacy of the…

Discovery happens before a trial. The plaintiff gets to ask the defendant for relevant documents. This can be clearly weaponized—the plaintiff can request everything and make the defendant spend a lot of time and money on it. A common recourse is for the defense to argue the initial discovery request is overbroad and burdensome. Often there’s some negotiation but of course the judge makes the ultimate call. I won’t o…

You're certainly right about the routine.

If they dumped all the donors over $50,000 for the last 10 years, even on paper, I can't believe it would be that much to go through.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#153

Post by fallingknife »

juve1996 wrote: post #149
fallingknife wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you have tiered exams. e.g. if you score >1500 on the SAT, you can take the harder SAT-2 which would be used for admissions to top schools.

Diminishing returns, really. As you continually test the margins will get smaller and smaller and the outcomes won't change much. Someone scoring >1500 on the SAT will likely just as well graduate from ivy league as someone who scored 1550.

Someone with a 1300 would do fine. But only because thy aren't as difficult as top schools should be because, as we see from their admissions policies, they are status and credentialing gatekeepers to elite status, not really top educational institutions.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#154

Post by leereeves »

latency-guy2 wrote: post #131
leereeves wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

43% of the vote in democratic primaries is quite popular. And Bernie is a great example because identity politics was specifically used against him; his supporters were derided as mostly white male "Bernie Bros". Sounds like exactly what GP was talking about: steering conversations to race and sex to avoid talking about economic inequality.

Sure, 43% seems popular. Until you compare it to 55%. > And Bernie is a great example because identity politics was specifically used against him; his supporters were derided as mostly white male "Bernie Bros". Really? I thought "Bernie Bros" were deemed the 'working class' as proclaimed by Bernie style 'Socialists' that model their economic ideals based on a fictional EU. This seems like it's rewriting history. > So…

> Really? I thought "Bernie Bros" were deemed the 'working class' as proclaimed by Bernie style 'Socialists' that model their economic ideals based on a fictional EU. This seems like it's rewriting history.

"Robinson Meyer, a writer for The Atlantic, coined the term Bernie bro in an October 17, 2015 article to describe young, white, progressive men who, in his view, support unrealistic progressive policies"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Bro

And if you think this is all off topic, you must have missed this quote from the root of this thread:

> U.S. colleges have been carefully steering conversations about admissions in the direction of racial quotas, to avoid talking about how by far the largest driver of unfairness in the admissions process is legacy admissions and donation quid pro quo arrangements.

IOW, steering conversations to race to avoid talking about class and economic inequality.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#155

Post by Spivak »

lolinder wrote: post #107
Spivak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One school cuts their financial aid program, sucks but not illegal. Every school cuts their financial aid program, smells like price fixing. Students would have chosen a school with a more attractive financial aid program, which is a real effect — it’s super common to apply a bunch of similar schools and go to the one that gives you the most financial aid but the allegation is that all the programs dried up all at on…

> it’s super common to apply a bunch of similar schools and go to the one that gives you the most financial aid but the allegation is that all the programs dried up all at once and not going to college at all pretty much isn’t an option for a lot of fields. Not going to one of the "elite" schools is, though, and it's not like financial aid disappeared at all the state schools. The reputational difference between the…

Assuming it’s true, I think the government should step in because price fixing is illegal, really doesn’t matter who or why, and the students who paid more because of this scheme should be compensated.

And having all these schools’ names be dragged through the mud during the court proceedings will further your goal.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#156

Post by musicale »

As I understand it, most "elite" universities give special consideration to the children of parents who make large donations, in order to encourage such donations.

Is this not well known?

I have heard a couple of arguments in favor of the practice:

1) It brings more money into the university (most important reason for the university)

2) It enables the university to admit and educate a larger number of students than it could otherwise afford to (potentially pro-social reason)

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#157

Post by [deleted] »

halostatue wrote: post #76
Telemakhos wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that having people capable of scoring well on exams of common necessities for college education, like mathematics and language skills, is not desirable? The SAT is not a trivia test: a student who can pass a test on math up through precalculus is going to get more value out of college than one who does not understand algebra and has to spend time in remediation. I would much prefer to have a univer…

I took the SAT decades ago, so the predictive nature of the SAT may have changed since — but I doubt that it has changed that much. At that time, the SAT was good at predicting the likely performance of a prospective college student … for one term. That’s it. I got an excellent score on my SAT (not a perfect score, but I thought that it was a bullshit measure — which, like all standardized testing, it is — so I didn’…

[deleted]

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#158

Post by ambyra »

jedberg wrote: post #51
Telemakhos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine what would happen if colleges fired their admissions departments, set aside all considerations of wealth and race, and had a database admit students with a single query on a result of standardized test results ordered from highest score to lowest, accepting students in that order until the year's class was filled.

That's how University of California admissions used to work for the most part. The formula was: Weighted GPA * 1000 + SAT Score + SAT II English + SAT II Math + max(remaining SAT II scores) Then they ordered everyone by that number, and if say they were offering 5000 kids admission, the top 2500 would automatically get an offer letter. Then they would work their way down the list reading essays and adding bonuses for…

Would be interesting to see what would happen if they applied that formula per each high school, not per graduating body, with each high school getting some guaranteed college slots. Maybe poorer schools would get more attention this way.

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#159

Post by [deleted] »

jonnybgood wrote: post #71
Telemakhos wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that having people capable of scoring well on exams of common necessities for college education, like mathematics and language skills, is not desirable? The SAT is not a trivia test: a student who can pass a test on math up through precalculus is going to get more value out of college than one who does not understand algebra and has to spend time in remediation. I would much prefer to have a univer…

You didn’t address the comment you’re responding to. You won’t have students who are good at math and language skills. You’ll have students who are good at taking math and language skills standardized tests. Being good at math and being good at taking a math standardized test is two different things. A student can excel at math but be terrible at taking tests for many reasons. You’ll have bright students falling thro…

[deleted]

Re: Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism' information

#160

Post by twblalock »

juve1996 wrote: post #151
finitestateuni wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a cal state and paid 7k a year in tuition. 3 years later I am making around 300k TC at a FAANG. Everyone who graduated with me seems to be doing pretty well judging by LinkedIn.

It's ludicrous to suggest that this is an easy outcome. If it were, you wouldn't be making 300k TC.

I know quite a few people who went to various California public colleges and universities and earn that much. In tech, it's the choice of major, not the university, that really matters -- and even companies that have policies of only hiring from certain universities tend to apply that only to new grads.

I know several people who have succeeded in tech in staff+/leadership roles without any college degree at all!

In law, and medicine, and academia in general? Sure, your pedigree matters. But in tech, and in many engineering fields, a state school degree is all you need.

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