Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants • Hacker News Board

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#201

Post by flavius29663 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

nemothekid wrote: post #108

flavius29663 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don't have 20000 applicants from the top 1%, because not all will apply to every top school.

Princeton's SAT score percentile, last year, ranged from 96%-99%. That is still, potentially, 80,0000 applicants. Furthermore, it's not like the applicants are ranked and accepted in order of test scores. My point is that having test scores doesn't make this process that much easier for a school like Princeton. They were already down weighting test scores after you scored in a certain range; you still needed to pile…

This sounds to me like such a non-problem that is blown out of proportions. Somewhat typical for American way of handling politics. Back at home for example (in Romania), there is an SAT equivalent (that is also much tougher). The universities can each choose to use just that in the admission, or they can choose to give another test on their own. These admission tests are usually setup around the country such that large universities don't have it on the same day. For the top universities the admission tests can be quite difficult, a top 1% would be at the bottom 25% if they don't prepare specifically for those tests. The tests are usually given for Math, so they're pretty fair and easy to score. And if you prepare for one university it's pretty much the same for all, with slight differences.

That math is hard, but at least you know what to expect. And if you prepare properly, you kind of know where you stand. I don't understand how US admission is acceptable: very wishy-washy, essays, extra-curricular activities, references...who decides what matters most? It's by design unfair and unpredictable.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#202

Post by analog31 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #151

analog31 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I don't think there's a social or economic reason why higher education should be a scarce good. Likewise health care. There was a recent article suggesting that Stanford should just replicate itself in multiple states. My own preferred route would be bottom-up: Start by bolstering the community and technical colleges, then the regional public colleges, and finally large state universities. The "elite" private…

Princeton != Higher education writ large. Exclusive educational institutions like Princeton are inherently a scarce good.

Indeed, and in fact, I'd like to see the press stop reporting on elite schools as if they represent "education." That attention distorts the rest of the education system. I also understand that something scarce is inherently scarce, but don't believe its scarcity is something that the public needs to support. Let 'em do whatever they want, and tax 'em up the wazoo.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#203

Post by csa » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #74

Admission rates may or may not be a long term indicator of anything, but it doesn't take an indicator to know that elite-exclusive college has been getting more exclusive. That aside, a lot is covid related. On-campus education is a good that has been underproduced... this is excess demand. Maybe we'll be graduating fewer doctors, nurses, and such than expected over the coming decade

> but it doesn't take an indicator to know that elite-exclusive college has been getting more exclusive.

Or maybe there are just a lot more “reach school” applications.

I agree that the overall applicant pool is improving, but it is not improving nearly as much as the admissions numbers alone suggest. The number of applications from applicants who are very unlikely to be admitted are increasing substantially.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#204

Post by busyant » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

csa wrote: post #183

busyant wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it extremely difficult to believe that I would've been evaluated the same way in grad school applications if I hadn't done the post-bac where I did. I have a similar background: undergrad @ middle-of-the-road state school. PhD at HYPS school. As you would expect, I was a teaching assistant for a couple of undergraduate courses. As such, I got to know many undergrads. I would occasionally bump into them when…

> I would occasionally bump into them when they were about to graduate and I was frequently shocked when they told me stuff like, "Yeah. I'm going to Harvard Med" (or some other illustrious program) and I would think to myself, "You were a good student, but I knew undergrads at my state school who were just as good. And Harvard Med didn't even given them an _interview_." 1. I am not sure what you taught and how much…

> 3. The goal of admitting someone to Harvard Med isn’t having them excel at Harvard Med — it’s having them succeed as significant researchers in the medical field after they graduate from Harvard Med.

I'm not sure I would agree with this. I was a postdoc @ Harvard Med, so I knew a fair number of med students there as well as grad students. I don't want to dismiss your assertion out of hand, but I think the truth is a little murky here.

> Do you think that the students from your undergrad could do this?

In short: yes.

> Do you think that they aim to?

This is a key question and here the answer would often be "no." One key differentiator that I saw between HYPS and my state school is that EVERYONE at the HYPS places was _driven_. They were not looking for occupations where they would 'take orders.' In contrast, many (not all!) of my friends at the state school were roughly as smart as the people I met at the Ivies, but they were not necessarily _driven_. For example, I knew plenty of remarkably intelligent nursing majors at my state school. No one I met at the Ivies would ever consider being a nurse. That being said, I knew several people at my state school who were quite talented and driven pre-meds and the elite schools barely sniffed at them.

Obviously, I didn't know everything about the Ivy undergrads that I taught, but I knew enough of them well enough to have a sense of how talented they were with respect to research (my classmates and I supervised many undergrads doing research).

There is an inherent difficulty in these types of discussions: we are both basing our opinions on small amounts of subjective data.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#205

Post by jnwatson » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #59

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…

I went to a middle tier undergrad and a top tier grad school. The difference was night and day in terms of rigor and general academic interest. I don't know that the profs were particularly better or worse at one school, but the student body was very, very different in terms of interest and ability, and that has a huge impact on the way you learn. I took a single writing class in undergrad. Most students were not cap…

In my experience the largest difference in rigor was the department. My macroeconomics class was laughably trivial ( spent a week on point/slope), but all my engineering and science classes had high expectations.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#206

Post by csa » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

azhenley wrote: post #81

As a prof, I'm terrified of the exploding enrollment in CS. My 2021 enrollment for a juniors/seniors course is up 70% from recent years and still growing. Can't imagine what it'll look like in two or three years.

I’m not sure what the leadership of your department and university want your enrollment to be, but a very tough (reasonable, but tough) required weeder class early in the CS sequence will clean out the people who like the idea of being a CS major/grad more than the actual reality of being a CS major.

This will allow the faculty to teach the upper class courses at an appropriate level in terms of difficulty and level of engagement with students (versus classroom management and handling weak students).

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#207

Post by jean_tta » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

% of applicants admitted is not super informative.

Two more interesting metrics would be:

* how many applicants admitted actually enroll (and not go to some other college)

* related, bu what is the "rank" of the last admitted applicant: how far do they need to reach to fill their spots?

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#208

Post by bumby » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

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

I’d argue the idea of college being vocational is not very new. The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 was, in part, a way for training people to better integrate into a more industrialized economy.

“to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/304

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#209

Post by bumby » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #148

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finished at near the bottom of my undergrad. Got a PhD and a job that uses those skills, which puts me in the top 10% of graduates in my field. So yeah, study and research are very different.

What the hell are you all getting PhDs in where it is a doable path if you are near the bottom of your undergrad? I've explored a PhD in CS, and reading what people write I've gotten the impression that it is extremely difficult to get into programs.

It can be doable if you deliberately select jobs that can demonstrate research aptitude as a way of getting into a PhD program. In my case, it’s also awfully helpful if you have an employer willing to foot the bill, as it means you won’t have to scrap and compete for limited funding positions.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#210

Post by brightball » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

InitialLastName wrote: post #107

brightball wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to get there, IMO, is a lot more freedom to experiment. Not just charters, but something closer to a startup culture. A) Innovative teacher decides to go out on his own B) 20 parents like what he has to say and want to enroll their kids C) Existing tax money pay the per-student rate for the 20 enrolled to participate D) Program is successful, more parents and students want to enroll. New teachers are hired an…

It only takes looking at the responses to the common core to see how resistant parents can be to any innovation in education. "Move fast and break things" is great when your worst-case scenario is your parents letting you move in while you clean up after your failed startup. It's got a lot more downside when it's an experiment with the development of real humans.

It's entirely different when the teachers and the parents "choose" something like common core.

My kids went to a private school for elementary in the middle of the common core dust up in public schools, so before we enrolled them the one of the first questions we asked about was common core.

They told us they were also adopting the approach but that their teachers had been discussing it for years, had a complete transition plan for how to introduce it at each grade level, transition kids based on what they'd been taught at previous grade levels and how to inform parents about what to expect.

The key was that the teachers and admins, through their own professional expertise, were able to research options to improve how they taught and implement them with the blessing of the parents who choose to send their kids to the school. And it went great.

All of the common core horror stories that I've heard, especially around math, were due to horrible execution after the program was essentially forced on everyone. It's a completely different experience when everyone involved decides, "this is the best way and here's how we're going to do it well" vs "everybody has to do it this way now."

Common core was the main driver of choosing a private school for elementary up to at least 4th grade largely because we wanted a consistent learning experience for our kids in their early developmental years. I didn't want risk politics causing disruption in those early years (ideally ever, but early years are where I have my biggest concerns).