Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

triblive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 815 posts

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#331

Post by criddell »

tekla wrote: post #297
criddell wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is SAT score a good way to decide which student is more deserving of a spot? There should be some SAT score floor. But beyond that other factors should take over. If the floor is at n and two applicants appear - one with a score of 1.1n and the other 1.2n, I don’t think that’s enough information to decide who should get the spot.

There is an incredible about of SAT prep that is free. It's a good way of figuring out who is intellectually capable. SAT scores have a very good prediction rate of success in college.

High SAT scores are only a good predictor against low SAT scores. Can you say that extremely high SAT scores are a better indicator of college success than very high SAT scores?

I’m not saying SAT scores are useless, just that they should only be used as a filter and not for ranking.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#332

Post by londons_explore »

eniotna wrote: post #321
gizmo wrote: post #109

I recently came across a somewhat provocative defense of legacy admissions. The argument is that the iveys are great because they bring together the children of the rich and powerful (legacy admissions with connections) with really smart and hungry students (children of the middle class, mostly). It's arguably a good deal for both. Smart kids get access to wealth and power and they get to learn how the world works. T…

What you're paying for is essentially to signal to employer that you've been able to make it into a very select club which is in turn acting as a proxy for intelligence/conscientiousness. As long as the seats are be limited, it will be worth the cost.

True - but if some other place existed which said "We only let in 50% children of harvard students and 50% really smart people", would that place turn out to be more desirable to hire from?

I suspect so... Those connections are perhaps more valuable than great exam grades.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#333

Post by philwelch »

dbish wrote: post #253
gizmo wrote: post #109

I recently came across a somewhat provocative defense of legacy admissions. The argument is that the iveys are great because they bring together the children of the rich and powerful (legacy admissions with connections) with really smart and hungry students (children of the middle class, mostly). It's arguably a good deal for both. Smart kids get access to wealth and power and they get to learn how the world works. T…

Is MIT still worth the price of admission? I would certainly say so and they don't do legacy, and I would trust the Princeton/Harvard line on a resume a lot more if it was guaranteed they didn't get in because of non-academic reasons (like parents, sports, etc.)

MIT and Harvard are almost completely different. The promise of MIT, as I understand it, is sort of a ruthless no-compromise academic excellence. The promise of Harvard or Yale is that you are going to be inducted into the American ruling class. These are different goals.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#334

Post by OO000oo »

ativzzz wrote: post #314
OO000oo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In such a case, I won't feel better yet will I? So we'll try again...

Just like we've tried in the past again and again and again... and a few thousand years later here we are and we will keep trying :)

Exactly. A lot of progress was made in that time, so I have little patience for defeatism.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#335

Post by ghaff »

bumby wrote: post #311
ghaff wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school. It also depends on what the "lesser" schools are. I expect that if someone missed out on the significantly random admissions lottery to get into Harvard but were admitted to Dartmouth, Cornell, or Williams (or even UMass Amherst) instead, I expect that if t…

> I expect for the lower socio-economic students, the delta is probably related to being among fellow students who maybe set a bit higher bar than other schools would. That's one explanation, but not the guess that the study's authors had: > "One possible explanation for this pattern of results is that highly selective colleges provide access to networks for minority students and for students from disadvantaged famil…

I could see that from the list of the colleges. Certainly it would be a lot easier to fall through the cracks at Penn State than at more elite schools. It's probably also true that your experience at large state schools in general is probably more a function of what you make of it than smaller, more selective schools.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#336

Post by azernik »

CSMastermind wrote: post #16

Don't legacy admissions often mean that their parents have donated significantly to the University? In a sense wouldn't that just mean that those students are essentially paying a very high premium to attend there and subsidizing the education of all the other students? I'm not against abolishing them but I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.

That's a separate category of admissions advantage - "dean's list" or "donor" is usually what it's called. "Legacy" is just children of alumni regardless of whether they've donated, and "staff" or "faculty" is relatives of workers.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#337

Post by chmod600 »

julienchastang wrote: post #187

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible. > "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of…

“for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff“

Athletes have merit. Arguably more than some academic departments.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#338

Post by doctorpangloss »

bumby wrote: post #202
savanaly wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't answer the question though, does it? https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

The article clearly says there's no evidence of a "casual relationship between legacy preference policies and total alumni giving." Can you explain your point further? Maybe you are aware of better data than what was used in the cited study?

> better data

I am personally aware of a very large donation to MIT with the express purpose of admitting the high schooler, and I am less acquainted with a similar situation at Harvard. I have personally seen another alumni development quid pro quo, not a monetary donation, at MIT. Honestly it seems like common sense that the two are related. The mistake from a scientific point of view is how to define legacy preferences and how to measure such impacts. It is certainly there, it’s an interesting question as to how to measure it.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#339

Post by az226 »

psychphysic wrote: post #215

It's weird to me that "stop being racist" some how has led to universities considering giving up legacies, "prestige"/donation based admissions and even athletic admissions. If it's the case that affirmative action was being used to mask other unfair practices that will be utterly ghastly.

It’s all about woke optics.
Post reply on HN