How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

> No, it is the opposite of racism. Racism is when some people are treated differently just because of their race. When you do well because you're smarter and work harder, regardless of race, then that's the opposite of racism.

No.. when you say that the children of people in the top 1% who are overwhelmingly of one race should be given disproportionate opportunities because of some genetic factor, that is racism. It is literally saying "people of this race should be given more stuff"

> You are putting words in my mouth.

I am not. I repeated what you said. You said that the children of the 1% are somehow genetically superior. I pointed out that the 1% is overwhelmingly white. And I wrote down your beliefs. That white people are genetically superior.

That is the simple logical consequence of your beliefs. And it a chain of reasoning we have already followed right into slavery and concentration camps as a species. One that we should not follow again.

> Your argument is with Charles Darwin, not me!

Look back on that chain of inferences and think to yourself where you went wrong, how did your thoughts, that you consider innocent, lead to an extremely racist conclusion.

There are only two outcomes possible. Either you look at your chain of reasoning and its simple plain outcome "white people are genetically superior" which you seem to believe in, and you feel ok with that. In which case this is just plain racism. Or you look at it and realize that no there is something deeply wrong here. And you will find that the idea that your parents are wealthy somehow meaning that their children are genetically superior is bankrupt.

Your choice. Racism or changing your thought process.

You have completely missed the point despite your temper-tantrum rage ranting. Maybe grow up a little?

But first, your entire argument against the grandparent comment is "Trump is rich and had some policies that benefitted some rich people" as equaling that his base is in love with the very concept of political and business elitism?

Do you not see how completely nonsensically disingenuous and logically fallacious of an argument that is?

Are you actually interested in having an intellectual discussion on the topic or do you want to rant like you are on Twitter, Reddit, or some cable media show?

Feel free to head over to one of those if that is your intentions.

The primary reason why Trump was elected was because he was the only candidate brave enough to attack both the Bush and Clinton dynastic era policies (on live Television, btw). IIRC, he did replace NAFTA. A lot of Americans actually are interested in the idea of a strong focus on American job availability.

Regardless of a subjective judgement on whether Trump mad e progress on this or not, those were the policies he publicly promoted.

He also has done other public things like Twitter rants against companies that are moving factories to Mexico, etc.

So, his base is entirely aware of all of these things and that is exactly what GP commenter was referring too. And that is exactly what you failed to negate with all of your flamebaiting ranting.

When i was in hs, we started a new robotics club, in our first year we went to nationals, we had a kid who literally did nothing for the club but wanted some kind of title in the club (i didn't understand why at that time because i came from a type of household where my parents never cared enough to even see my report card), he was in no way exceptional except his parents pushed him to work hard so that he got good grades. I bet he wrote a college essay about his passion for robotics and how he had helped build this successful robotics teams that did fairly well at nationals. He went to Harvard. In high school, for every person i saw who valued learning for its own sake, i saw about 10 people who were obsessed with grades/ec's because their parents told them that going to prestigious university x was their only hope for a future (I don't necessarily blame the kids when it is mainly the parents driving the show). I think this kind of attitude towards college and education is pernicious because i believe a society which moves towards an excessive superficial emphasis on brand names (not only in terms of college but in terms of acceptable lifestyles/professions) moves away from individuality into a collective type of society and i strongly believe revolutionary creativity which could advance society always come from individuals.

> No.. when you say that the children of people in the top 1% who are overwhelmingly of one race should be given disproportionate opportunities because of some genetic factor, that is racism.

All I am saying is that if people who are in the top 1% got there because of being smarter and being willing to work hard, then to the extend these traits are heritable you should expect their children to have these traits as well. Such kids can be expected to do well in school. Should they be given disproportionate opportunities? Absolutely not. But if they do well in school do not assume that's because they have been given disproportionate opportunities!

> I pointed out that the 1% is overwhelmingly white. And I wrote down your beliefs. That white people are genetically superior.

Nonsense. I am not white, and I do not believe white people are genetically superior. I am Asian.

I guess the “hackable” part is more or less according to my self imposed constraints along with the unbreakable bureaucracy of the admissions/aid process. Note many of these would not be an issue if I were interested in completing an undergrad degree in decade or so, but I would like to

Most of my initial research was into online programs. I was very surprised by the limited number of good programs offered by “legitimate” schools. These often charged prices that were simply too much even if I continued working full time. Part of this was many still charged out of state tuition rates for online programs (note I cannot even get in state tuition in my state of legal residence right now). Any sort of decent aid was out of the question for reasons that could their own thread. complete undergrad while I’m still in my 20s at least.

However I found a few programs that seemed to have a good quality and were affordable. The problem of course, could I be admitted. As someone who was not school minded when they were younger, I’m definitely not the type of material colleges would usually be interested in admitting. 2 year transfer programs are normally the answer for people like me, but at the time I was not aware of any online AA programs, and while community colleges do offer some evening courses, it could have easily increased the time-cost significantly as I can obviously only take one or two of those a semester and not all classes are offering in that time slot either. Instead, I gambled to see if I could “hack” undergrad admissions by utilizing my time in the industry as replacements for some other criteria. This did not pan out. In fact, of the programs I applied for, only one asked for a copy of my resume, while every one of them was extremely interested in my high school disciplinary record.

Most recently, I did some research and it seemed like I found some AA programs that are fully online in my state. They would guarantee me admission into a 4 year university, which I decided I would be ok to quit working to finish. Then a few days ago I got the acceptance into one of those AA programs only to get suspicious when I looked for certain courses which were certainly not online. As it comes, it seems a number of schools are very vague in whether the AA can be complete “fully online” some including hybrid courses in that definition. I’m not defeated yet as there are other schools which may offer truly online, asynchronous programs. This is important as I cannot get the loans at the moment to quit working and go back full time (in a few years that will likely change, which is why I was fine dropping work to finish the last two years)

TLDR: I’ve been hunting for ways to complete the degree I’m interested in non traditionally (a hack), but every time I’ve found one, it turns out to be too good to be true.