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Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

dailyprincetonian.com

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Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#191

Post by 908B64B197 »

amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #162
granshaw wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also 100% based on academic and test taking skill - would be good if a more well rounded assessment could be used instead

Can you name a "well-rounded" assessment that doesn't just end up being a measure of privilege?

With these tests, you are still selecting for privilege, just differently.

More stable situation at home (so a better study environment) tutoring and, especially for language-based "soft" exams, gravitating in the right social circles will teach someone the "right" culture to reference in his essays...

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#192

Post by jfengel »

endisneigh wrote: post #181
jfengel wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what kind of data you would use to drive it. A lot of the most important aspects of education aren't readily measurable: the ability to write, the network connections you make (to fellow students, professors, alumni, donors, etc), capacity to work in teams, and so on. You risk the same things you get with tech firms using leetcode and puzzles to select... well, to select those who are good at leetcode an…

I’m not sure what having a network has to do with being educated.

I'm saying I'm not sure how you'd measure "educated". Many subjects aren't well suited to testing, and even for those that are, the tests don't often correlate all that well to problem-solving ability, insight, or other valuable skills.

You can measure wealth, but I'm suggesting that wealth outcomes has more to do with your life circumstances than with how much knowledge you acquire in school (by whatever mechanism you would measure that).

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#193

Post by amznthrowaway5 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #191
amznthrowaway5 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a "well-rounded" assessment that doesn't just end up being a measure of privilege?

With these tests, you are still selecting for privilege, just differently. More stable situation at home (so a better study environment) tutoring and, especially for language-based "soft" exams, gravitating in the right social circles will teach someone the "right" culture to reference in his essays...

At least for tests like the SAT, this is not correct. SES and coaching don't affect SAT scores much. A major reason why elites hate it so much and instead want "wholistic evaluations". Instead the ceiling of the test should be raised.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#194

Post by ngc248 »

chakerb wrote: post #166
jean-malo wrote: post #152

I've always thought that the French model for top-tier engineering schools was cruel but it might have some merits. You essentially study for two years post high-school to take a competitive exam, your ranking in this exam determines where you can go (first place chooses, then the second place gets to pick etc.) You suffer for two years but at the end it's based mostly on merit. Obviously it's not entirely based on m…

I went through program like this (french-speaking country). My concern after doing those two years are: 1- You learn a lot of useless subjects!! I'm a software engineer now but I studied organic chemistry for two freaking years!! And I don't plan to use that knowledge (most of which I totally forgot) anywhere in the future. Something that I wouldn't have picked if I was studying CS in the US. 2- You're using the same…

In my university, the first two semesters were spent in studying subjects from all the engineering disciplines like mechanical engg, civil engg, chemistry, physics, maths, CS, EC etc and I though it was a very good thing too since you get to know the basics of most engg disciplines. If it was just you own discipline from the start it woulda been pretty boring.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#195

Post by whimsicalism »

908B64B197 wrote: post #182
1cvmask wrote: post #4

So when we remove the legacies and school fund donators (roughly half) - about 40 to 50 percent of the class, athletes (affirmative action for rich whites with relatively lower credentials and scores) - about 10-20 percent of the class, and regular affirmative action ( about 15 percent of the class and mainly affluent politically connected blacks and latinos). The remainder is the group based on traditional credentia…

> athletes (affirmative action for rich whites with relatively lower credentials and scores) I guess the hours of training don't count. > mainly affluent politically connected blacks and latinos I'd be curious to see stats on the number of kids of Brazilian/Mexican and Nigerian millionaires (in US dollars).

> I guess the hours of training don't count.

The sports these sorts of schools focus on are crew, polo, squash - those are designed to help Brahmins [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Brahmin

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#196

Post by dheera »

robertoandred wrote: post #150
dheera wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't really prove anything though. For engineering degrees the math section is too easy; for arts degrees it's irrelevant. The English section is all about memorizing a bunch of words you'll never use. It's not a good test.

There's no reason a standardized test's worth should hinge on what a student might focus on in college. There's no reason any college student shouldn't arrive without a basic grasp of English or math.

> basic grasp of English or math

I don't think the SAT measures a "basic grasp" of English, it measures memorization skill.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#197

Post by CheezeIt »

OliverJones wrote: post #98

As a long-ago grad of one of these fancy-schmancy schools with vast endowments and big revenue streams from application fees, I have this question, and complaint: Why haven't they expanded their number of students in proportion to population growth? Why shouldn't their product be available to more people? Yeah, small class size? BS. They've mastered the art of large lectures and small sections. They enjoy government…

Why does Spanner use a fixed shard size instead of scaling shards to the size of the dataset?

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#198

Post by gugagore »

dolni wrote: post #188
gugagore wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's flowery language. Some people are dumb, some people are geniuses, and most people are just mediocre. It's not fair, but that is the way life is. What you are dismissing as "flowery language" appears to be a different epistemology from yours. I cannot reconcile "there is a wide range in between" with these concrete categories you are giving. If you believe in these categories wholeheartedly, then it makes sense…

What I believe is this: people are complex creatures with sophisticated brains. Measuring "ability" objectively is nigh-impossible for a lot of things, but it's not impossible to get a general sense of someone's ability in a particular field. > What you are dismissing as "flowery language" appears to be a different epistemology from yours. I cannot reconcile "there is a wide range in between" with these concrete cate…

> There absolutely are children who are "blue" or "red". There aren't a lot, but they are there. [...] The analogy isn't perfect

It is perfect. Color, as you're using it, is a phenomenon of human perception. Different people have different color categories altogether [1]. Think of it this way, there is no spectrum of EM energy that is red or blue. But you can get a bunch of people to agree on naming some spectra "red" or "blue" based on how they appear. How do you do that? You teach people those categories. That's culture. We uphold these color categories with TV shows, toys, etc. I think there's a lot of use in categories like "red" or "blue". I find relatively less benefit in categories like "genius".

Let's see, you (paraphrasing) say "it's nonsense not to sort students" and also say "most students are purple, so how do we sort them?". It's my turn to be blunt: I see no coherence in what you're saying.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ao_(color)

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#199

Post by mancerayder »

slibhb wrote: post #94
endisneigh wrote: post #7

It's a shame that we're here in 2021 and the best we can do is basically just "selection bias." Basically all universities have no statistical proof that they can educate people beyond this. This is not to say that the schools are bad, but most of the education is simply due to the types of peers you have, not really due to the school itself. Princeton and Harvard admit, for the most part, people who already excelled…

> Princeton and Harvard admit, for the most part, people who already excelled significantly in high school. Such excellence is already indicative of ability. > Ideally our fixation would be on a hypothetical institution that admits people entirely at random, and through some means (whether authoritarian, or montessori, waldorf, immersion, etc.) shows that beyond a reasonable doubt the school itself has improved the p…

>This view of higher education as training students or increasing the socioeconomic prospects of students is fairly new and it's not working. The former view is better. College should be for academically gifted high school graduates.

I had a low GPA in high school and a high one in college.

It's not a challenge intellectually, it's a challenge to your work ethic and discipline as well as (very important) social skills, none of which I had in high school.

So, what you're saying is false. Because when you say academically gifted, I picture fast learners or creative minds, not the hardest of the hard workers.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#200

Post by JJMcJ »

flowerlad wrote: post #126

College admissions in the US are messed up. There is no way for a student to be in control of their destiny through hard work, because there are far too many variables and randomness in college admissions. Ideally what colleges should do is to use a standardized test and go strictly by the results of the standardized test. Standardized tests are not perfect, but if there are flaws in standardized tests then fix them,…

The problem with objectivity is that "good high schools" tend to be cram schools for admission to prestige colleges. Not to mention the admissions consultants who will tell a student what to do to maximize their chances for a target school.

THE FOLLOWING IS MADE UP AND IS NOT ADMISSIONS ADVICE: The consultant says "Harvard, help rebuild a clinic in El Salvador, but Yale, tutor poor kids in Oakland instead, be sure it's Oakland, the admissions committee has never heard of Richmond."

Also geography. I'm sure that Princeton could fill their entire incoming class with students from one or two zip codes on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, for example. They don't want to do that, so they must specifically spread out admissions.

Considering the school: Suppose a kid from let's say Gunn High School in Palo Alto, whose parents are a surgeon and a Stanford professor, takes only two AP classes. Hmm, maybe just a doofus who will bust out of Princeton within the first year.

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