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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

#381

Post by imtringued »

tester756 wrote: post #297
ajkjk wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grade inflation for everyone is an issue at most colleges. Grades should reflect your credibility in a subject, and should be roughly normalized across subjects. But because they are so important for the rest of one's career, they end up being heavily pressured towards A's -- which results in careers not paying as much attention to them because they're widely understood to be not meaningful. A better world would see…

>But because they are so important for the rest of one's career Seriously? I'd never even thought about mentioning college grades _in my country_ and if somebody e.g during interview tried to use tham as strong argument then I'd consider it as a red flag why anybody competent would need to brag about something unreliable as grades?

For people getting their first job it's the difference between getting an interview or not.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#382

Post by [deleted] »

godelski wrote: post #357
solveit wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm specifically not talking about the SAT and ACT since they're widely used by elite universities. Those tests top out way too early and can't reliably distinguish between the top 1% and the top 0.1% (The fraction of perfect scorers is much smaller than 1% but the standard error of measurement is way too large). The exams I have in mind are those like the science olympiads and the Cambridge STEP. STEP in particular…

Are you trying to get students that can pass specific kinds of tests or students that will be successful? The two aren't strongly correlated. I'd argue successful builds more prestige for the university. And let's be real, everyone knows these tests are purposefully tricky. In the real world people don't give you multiple choices and try to trick you into picking the wrong answer and then laugh at you when you picked…

[deleted]

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#383

Post by kooshball »

btilly wrote: post #32

I have failed to be outraged. 1/3 of them were admitted as student athletes. Everyone knows that it is official policy at most schools to accept people with athletic ability who would not qualify academically. Why? Because those athletic programs make the university a lot of money! How is admitting someone because their family gave a lot of money any different in principle? It is just a question of reducing how many…

Totally false that athletics makes the school money. The exceptional cases are the top 10 division 1 basketball/football programs that people talk about. The vast majority of college athletics programs do not make money. Just think about it, you think a UC school is making money from a student golf or tennis player?

Also these students admitted as "athletics" did not actually qualify and were never part of the team.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#384

Post by sprafa »

woodruffw wrote: post #360
User23 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also pure test based admission ends up being something around 75% asian, 15% white, and 10% others. See Stuyvesant for example[1]. For some reason Harvard feels like being 75-80% Asian would be bad for their brand so they got sued for discrimination. But Harvard is Harvard and it's hard to win a lawsuit against an institution that is that well connected. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School#Demogr…

As someone who went to one of those “pure test based” NYC schools: this is not the testament that you think it is. The number of Black and Hispanic students at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science was an order of magnitude higher in the 1970s; the current demographics are a consequence of paid preparation being a reliable way to score highly on the SHSAT.

It’s amazing that people don’t realise this. I always think back to the study that showed the amount of books in a household was a strong predictor for IQ. Background matters a whole lot, but high performance people don’t want to hear it, because they want to feel like it’s all their own credit.

Nope. Just like money, there’s also an intellectual family bank that gets inherited. And it’s not genes, it’s access to knowledge which is purchased by capital.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#385

Post by habosa »

This should be considered tax fraud for the donors. The donations they made are charitable contributions, which they surely deducted from their income taxes. When you donate to charity you can only deduct the amount in excess of the benefit provided to you. For instance if you buy a $50 ticket to a charity dinner where they give you $50 of food and drinks, you can't deduct that at all.

So these people donated and then got admission to UC Berkeley in exchange. Surely that has some value! I don't know how you determine that figure, but it's >>$0

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#386

Post by lotsofpulp »

ajkjk wrote: post #322
lotsofpulp wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The correct way to do this is via marginal tax rates.

What makes it 'correct'?

Taxes are the fairer way for society’s rich to help the poor.

Letting rich people choose who to subsidize results in them building up their own tribes.

Obviously government has some of the same risks, but theoretically, at least they can be countered with laws requiring transparency and allowing for corrective actions if problems are found.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#387

Post by dcolkitt »

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…

> compared long term outcomes of students who were accepted to Harvard and attended to those who were accepted but did not attend.

I don’t know if this comparison controls for the confounders. Alice and Bob are both accepted to Harvard, and Alice decides to attend and Bob decides to chill out at the University of Maui for four years. That’s pretty indicative of Alice being more ambitious and achievement-oriented.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#388

Post by [deleted] »

erostrate wrote: post #370

In France to get into an elite STEM university ("engineering school") students all take the same maths/physics/CS exams and the overall grade is the only factor deciding admission. Everything is state funded. It's not perfect, but it levels the playing field a lot more than other systems. And it's good at making sure talented but poor students have access to the best programs. At those the level is high, for example…

[deleted]

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#389

Post by secondcoming »

sprafa wrote: post #384
woodruffw wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who went to one of those “pure test based” NYC schools: this is not the testament that you think it is. The number of Black and Hispanic students at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science was an order of magnitude higher in the 1970s; the current demographics are a consequence of paid preparation being a reliable way to score highly on the SHSAT.

It’s amazing that people don’t realise this. I always think back to the study that showed the amount of books in a household was a strong predictor for IQ. Background matters a whole lot, but high performance people don’t want to hear it, because they want to feel like it’s all their own credit. Nope. Just like money, there’s also an intellectual family bank that gets inherited. And it’s not genes, it’s access to kno…

Was that study done before everyone had an internet connection?

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#390

Post by [deleted] »

erostrate wrote: post #370

In France to get into an elite STEM university ("engineering school") students all take the same maths/physics/CS exams and the overall grade is the only factor deciding admission. Everything is state funded. It's not perfect, but it levels the playing field a lot more than other systems. And it's good at making sure talented but poor students have access to the best programs. At those the level is high, for example…

[deleted]
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