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UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

auditor.ca.gov

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Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#281

Post by andreilys »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #263
ajkjk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally opposed to this kind of acceptance-of-bad-things but in this case I kinda agree. If people are willing to pay millions to go to college, that's potentially a great advantage to students who otherwise have trouble affording it -- let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else. By not funneling the donations through weird under-the-table transactions it can be more directly used for a net good for the s…

> I'm generally opposed to this kind of acceptance-of-bad-things but in this case I kinda agree. If people are willing to pay millions to go to college, that's potentially a great advantage to students who otherwise have trouble affording it. That's true until the University is so rich that it no longer has any need to acquire any more money. Harvard has a $40 billion investment fund. No amount of rich kids are going…

Wealth is one parameter, another is influence.

Harvard benefits from the prestige of its alum network, and admitting the children of wealthy parents ensures a certain level of influence/access to said parent.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#282

Post by leapis »

setgree wrote: post #254
jbullock35 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you get recruited to play Water Polo, Crew, Golf, Volleyball, or Beach volleyball at UC Berkeley, and ~95% of kids who play those sports come from wealthy families, and recruiting gave them an edge in admissions, does that count as "inappropriate?" I would say so, but I doubt this report would. The report comes close: "the average grade point average for the bottom quartile of applicants whom UCLA admitted for a…

> the average grade point average for the bottom quartile of applicants whom UCLA admitted for academic year 2019–20 was 4.15, but the average grade point average for its admitted student athletes was 3.74 So the student athletes averaged halfway between an A and an A-? So did I in HS, 15 years ago, and I was a pretty good student! GPAs are really hard to make sense of with all the AP bonuses and whatnot. Standardize…

The way I've seen it calculated is this:

For regular classes, A: 4.0, B: 3.0, C: 2.0, D: 1.0 (with some variance depending on + or - grades offered). For Honors/AP classes, every grade is essentially bumped up 1.0 point.

So yes, a 3.74 is around an A- average, but that's an A- average in less rigorous classes, without competition from top students. That's more of a B-/C+ average in AP/Honors classes (obviously the calculation is far from perfect, though, because every school has it's quirks- at mine, you couldn't get above a ~4.5 overall). For reference, I graduated high school with a 3.6 with multiple Cs and hardly any As, simply by virtue of taking the maximum number of AP/Honors classes. The point being, a 3.74 is not a terrible GPA, but good students are generally over a 4.0 these days.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#283

Post by clankyclanker »

arcticbull wrote: post #215
acruns wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an absolutely wonderful use of the word cache.

You're looking for cachet ("the state of being respected or admired; prestige") not cache ("hidden away for future use").

Also not to be confused with Caché (apparently pronounced like cachet):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterSystems_Cach%C3%A9

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#284

Post by t-writescode »

syspec wrote: post #110
60secz wrote: post #65

Don't know if I'm just jaded -- but I'm seriously not bothered by people making large donations to a university to have their kid admitted. It's a transaction which benefits the university and the student. Granted -- it should be above board and there should be formal policies. Not justifying the specific actions in this case just curious at the outrage.

The problem is that if we normalize it, then they will get addicted to the money and ONLY let in people who's parents can make a large donation. Finally what will be considered a large donation, will go up rapidly.

I argue that this isn't going to go away 100%, so I propose we make a more honest rule. "No more than 1% of students" or "No more than 10% of students" can get in this way and the rest have to be through normal means.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#285

Post by jerf »

strombofulous wrote: post #273
solveit wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. This is by design. There exist tests that can distinguish between the merely very good and the outstanding. Elite US universities go out of their ways to not use them, precisely so they can admit the merely very good legacies.

If you're talking about the SAT and ACT, I would challenge the idea that they can accurately distinguish between the good and outstanding. At most they provide a rough indication. I know this because I got a much higher score than I deserved to on the ACT because you can read the test pretty easily if you put yourself in the shoes of the people making it (I got a 31 overall and a near-perfect 35 on the science portio…

No, there are other ways to separate the pack. A perfect score on those tests isn't rare enough, plus you're still going to see a lot of exceptional candidates who got a few wrong.

They aren't being used, so they aren't the existing standardized tests, which are being used.

But it's not that hard to simply extend the difficulty gradient higher. Stick some math olympiad-type problems on there, for instance.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#286

Post by s1artibartfast »

jjeaff wrote: post #54
TrackerFF wrote: post #42

In this day and age, with all the fierce competition, it's a real problem that elite universities are admitting rich kids on such unfair and uneven grounds. Going to the "correct" school can transform the life of some people, essentially pulling them up from the lower working classes, and opening up the doors to middle, or even upper-middle classes. And what's even worse, a lot of these rich kids could go pretty much…

And just in case anyone thinks the idea that an elite school won't help a rich kid, there have been studies indicating that is the case. The one that comes to mind was the study that compared long term outcomes of students who were accepted to Harvard and attended to those who were accepted but did not attend. Average future incomes were not statistically different. But the study did note that the starkest improvents…

Seems like a worthless study without understanding what they did instead. For example, what if they went to Yale or Cambridge?

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#287

Post by robocat »

hatmatrix wrote: post #200
CharlesMerriam2 wrote: post #34

Have a rule. Our republic, and the California state government, is based on rule of law. One group makes the laws, another enforces it, and a third interprets the conflicts. This works. What we have here is a 'no rules' set of actions. How about rules that say "we will take any student for $200K/year". This is enough money to supply extra supervision and also give a full scholarship to another student.

Like first class passengers footing a large share of the bill so economy passengers can pay less.

I think that is a misconception.

The economy travellers make it possible to travel first class. First class travel is for the moderately wealthy. The very wealthy have their own transport.

Economist article on decline of 1st class travellers: http://archive.vn/OQPt2 (2019).

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#288

Post by musicale »

Many other universities are clear that there are classes of applicants who get special consideration based on non-academic factors, such as: geographically desirable (including out-of-state tuition payers), demographically desirable, athletes, extracurricular stars, children of alumni (=donors), children of faculty and staff (=laborers), and children of donors.

Moreover, universities want students with a wide variety of academic (and other) interests.

Is the issue that Berkeley has to comply with state laws and regulations that mandate that admissions be based solely on academics rather than other considerations? Or is it that they put on a facade of solely considering academics without acknowledging the (many) non-academic considerations that may override admissions decisions?

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#290

Post by MiroF »

strombofulous wrote: post #273
solveit wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. This is by design. There exist tests that can distinguish between the merely very good and the outstanding. Elite US universities go out of their ways to not use them, precisely so they can admit the merely very good legacies.

If you're talking about the SAT and ACT, I would challenge the idea that they can accurately distinguish between the good and outstanding. At most they provide a rough indication. I know this because I got a much higher score than I deserved to on the ACT because you can read the test pretty easily if you put yourself in the shoes of the people making it (I got a 31 overall and a near-perfect 35 on the science portio…

> I got a much higher score than I deserved to on the ACT because you can read the test pretty easily if you put yourself in the shoes of the people making it

I don't understand why that is some secretly accessible knowledge that is only available to some. FWIW, the ACT always seemed more game-y to me what with its hard time crunches and stuff.

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