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It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

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Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#251

Post by failwhaleshark »

How does one "break-up" individual universities?

What metrics should be allowable for admissions? (I suggest making legacy admissions and favoring race-/gender-/etc. attributes illegal.)

Why not get bright minority and poor students, and girls for STEM, supported with mentoring, admissions coaching, resources/funding, and other assistance that makes a massive impact? This way, admissions standards can, and should, be minimized to merit, rather furthering victimhood or privilege.

It's like: If we throw away the SATs, ACTs, and other rank-able tests, what's left to compare students? Essays?

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#252

Post by plank_time »

devnonymous wrote: post #247
mlyle wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a difference between cramming someone into a caste in perpetuity and ... them having a childhood where they're exposed to job skills and study habits that somewhat favor a certain career because that's what their parent does. My kids saw a whole lot more of "how technology works" and mathematics during elementary school than most kids. A lawyer's kid probably heard a lot more of argument, rhetoric, an…

> the lawyer's kid could go do technology and my kid could grow up to be a lawyer-- it's just a somewhat less likely outcome. And what would be the likelyhood of the child of a single mom working 2 unskilled jobs to be either of those? Like I mentioned in a different comment, Systematic barriers exist without being consciously built and are then perpetuated as just the natural way of things.

Someone I know is an illegal immigrant from Central America. She cleans houses for a living. Her husband is also illegal immigrant and he paints houses. Her daughter is going to one of the top private schools in SF, on a full scholarship. She dreams of Yale, and I would bet that she gets it easily.

If you are dedicated to education, there is plenty of opportunity to succeed. It’s sad that some bloodlines don’t make it out of poverty easily, but that’s just how the world works. For those that make the effort, it’s very available.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#253

Post by rdevsrex »

Another reason why children of academics, doctors and other professionals are likely to have a better shot is simply the age at which their parents had them.

I don't have any data, but I'm sure there aren't a ton of grad students with kids.

Having kids when you are young, kind of puts a limit on how much you can devote to your career.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#254

Post by exporectomy »

sohei wrote: post #238
sokoloff wrote: post #11

> Faculty members at prestigious universities are 50 times more likely than the average person to have a parent with a Ph.D. American meritocracy has become a complex, inefficient, and rigged system conferring its graces on ambitious children of highly educated and prosperous families. What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that a…

> It’s equally unsurprising that the ambitious children of highly educated and prosperous families themselves pursue such a similar path and achieve similar outcomes. That kind of misses the point. You want to train as many effective engineers and researchers as you can. The point of the article is that most Ivies can comfortably train more people, but doing so would reduce some of the scarcity "value" of an Ivy Leag…

But are Ivy League universities really that much better at training people or is their success mostly due to skimming from the top of the applicant pool? If the latter, then it seems like those students would do just as well if they didn't exist and nothing's really lost or gained either way by their exclusivity.

If they have a magic recipe for creating success, why can't other universities copy it? Does it depend on scarce elite professors? In that case, they probably can't scale themselves up either.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#255

Post by exporectomy »

zarkov99 wrote: post #110
sokoloff wrote: post #11

> Faculty members at prestigious universities are 50 times more likely than the average person to have a parent with a Ph.D. American meritocracy has become a complex, inefficient, and rigged system conferring its graces on ambitious children of highly educated and prosperous families. What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that a…

Most of all your kids are likely to have IQ's close to the median of you and your wife. This is likely the most important factor of all as heart-breaking and unfair as this is.

Closer than other kids but with regression to the mean (of the population).

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#256

Post by TMWNN »

fighterpilot wrote: post #22
b9a2cab5 wrote: post #14

> recirculating resources among the most exclusive and wealthy while chanting social-justice keywords Indeed, Harvard aggressively defends its admissions program as "holistic" while rating Asians as having lower personal ratings that they define as measuring "likeability", "courage", and "kindness" [1]. You might ask yourself how an institution which claims to be anti-racist exhibits behavior of the opposite kind. [1…

What's telling is how similar the Asian admit percentage is between the top colleges except for Caltech. It wasn't always like this, but they've all (ex-Caltech) converged on almost the same number now. It appears to be collusion either of the sort discussed in the article or the informal sort where each college copies their competitors' quotas.

>What's telling is how similar the Asian admit percentage is between the top colleges except for Caltech. It wasn't always like this, but they've all (ex-Caltech) converged on almost the same number now.

To clarify for those who don't understand your point, Caltech is unique among elite universities for not using affirmative action in undergraduate admissions.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#257

Post by TMWNN »

analog31 wrote: post #136
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #68

It’s time to break up the education system from all the extracurricular fluff. The universities are fostering identities around themselves: students join debate teams, sports teams, religious groups , orchestra, etc under the aegis of their universities and attach their personal identities to these things. To me personally it seems kind of ridiculous. What if you are a young adult who is interested in trades, but you…

>>> What if you are a young adult who is interested in trades, but you want to play in an orchestra. Play the bassoon. ;-) A friend of mine who was a school music teacher told me that getting good at the bassoon was pretty much a ticket to a generous college scholarship. Not necessarily at your first choice of scholarship, but somewhere. If they can't get a student to play bassoon, then they have to hire a ringer fro…

>Play the bassoon. ;-) A friend of mine who was a school music teacher told me that getting good at the bassoon was pretty much a ticket to a generous college scholarship.

Reminds me of Oxford and Cambridge's organ scholarships, which are also the only way to apply and be admitted to both universities for undergraduate study.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#258

Post by fra »

BurningFrog wrote: post #236
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why the SAT is "going away" as you noted, or at least the cited reason, is precisely what I noted. If you want to take the position that there is no truth (or even just a better approximation thereof), that "we can all just believe what we want to believe", then there's no way to ever progress on such matters.

I'm absolutely not a "there is no truth truther". More noticing the prevalence of confidently certain people for every opinion.

All serious research I have seen says that the SAT correlates to wealth, and not to college success. Indeed GPA is a much better predictor of college success.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#259

Post by scbrg »

haihaibye wrote: post #205
aerovistae wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really misses the point I feel, although I struggle to say why.

He used median instead of mean, and forgot regression to the population average. IQ is only ~80% genetic

> He used median instead of mean

What's the difference when you only have two values in the set?

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#260

Post by plank_time »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #196
b9a2cab5 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I work for now pays substantially more than Google/Facebook/et. al and most people on my team are from random state schools, many with no experience at FAANG. You can certainly make millions from a pre-IPO startup (and I have 2nd degree knowledge of many people that did get rich off IPOs), but you're not making that at the Google of today. I'm sorry you feel that way about your past. You should consider s…

> The company I work for now pays substantially more than Google/Facebook/et. al and most people on my team are from random state schools That's...interesting, because it's certainly not the way the LinkedIn pages of most folks at Hudson River Trading, 2Sigma, Stripe or Citadel would imply (I did get into Citadel, but for a 2nd tier role). Of course, it would make sense for Netflix, which has a more Amazon-like hirin…

I’m a 50 year old Asian software engineer. Let me give you some advice because you sound angry and miserable.

You must have been beaten down by your parents over the last several decades and it has rubbed into you. I get it. Back in the 70s when I grew up, it was worse because they could legit beat me with a belt if they wanted and it was socially acceptable.

You need to understand that you are doing great. You have a job at Amazon that will help you get jobs for the rest of your career. The Amazon name pops on a resume. Stop worrying about others that got into Google or Facebook or Jane Street. All you are doing is reinforcing a circle of self hate. Fuck it.

I failed getting into Google 5 times. I failed getting into Facebook 3 times. I flunked at Amazon twice. Fuck, I haven’t gotten into any FAANG at all. That doesn’t measure your self worth. Who the fuck cares. I think you are probably jealous at all those that got in but stop thinking about it. You can forge your own path and be extremely successful without ever working at a FAANG. I worked at Uber but besides that it was all two-bit startups and shitty companies. and I did okay but you will probably make more from Amazon than I ever did at Uber. But I really made the most money in real estate. I’m semi-retired at this point because of that.

There’s nothing more important in life than being happy. Stop worrying about money. Worry about being happy. Go spend money on shit that makes you happy every now and then. Take vacations. Get a girlfriend and go traveling. Stop worrying about money and worry about proficiency. If you are programming because you think it will bring you money and not because you love it, then your life will be miserable.

Let go of the trauma that your upbringing brought you. It’s toxic and you are suffering for it. I get it. My parents wanted me to be a doctor and when push came to shove I told them no. They were furious for years but I never felt so free in my life. I stopped caring about them and what they said and just moved on.

You’re still young. Don’t waste your life stewing over others that got into better schools or better companies. Take what you have now and leverage it as you move up the ladder. Make smart decisions for your career based on what interests you, not just because of FANG or money. If you are happy and are progressing, money will coke and it will be on your own terms, not your parents and not from killing yourself while working at Jane Street like a slave.

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