UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors • Hacker News Board

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#451

Post by MagnumOpus » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

krastanov wrote: post #363

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…

I have some useful background here that leads me to strongly disagree with you. I did well at these international science olympiads in high school. To do that I studied for the particular shape of the exam questions. I became friends with many other people who were high performers at these olympiads. Later on I got a PhD from a prestigious institution and I am now a scientist at another one. Throughout this time, I w…

Your anecdotal evidence is contradicted by wider evidence.

In particular the famous Benbow study [1] that established that even among the top percentile of the population there are massive differences: the top quarter percentile (99.75-99.99) was 2-3 times more likely to have authored academic research later in life, and about 1.5x more likely to have attended postgrad education, to have gone for a STEM degree, to have gone for a PhD than the bottom quarter of the top percent (99.00-99.24).

[1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/smpy/1992-benbow.pdf

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#452

Post by MagnumOpus » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #414

saagarjha wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying it’s the only measure we should have. But in the context of the chain this was in I was feeling a sort of “does it really matter if we can separate these people” and I just wanted to illustrate that in actual competitions that discriminate to this level you get a meaningful difference out of it. Now, whether that is an effective indicator of success…I’m not completely sure. A lot of the math competitio…

> A lot of the math competition winners I know are doing startups and HFT, so there’s that. That's in line with my experience, too. Selecting olympiads is a preference for highly competitive people. In math, at least, collaboration is much more important.

Most of 21st century Fields medal winners are IMO medalists, so that seems to contradict your hypothesis. Terence Tao, Venkatesh, Miryam were all famously young and/or good contestants.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#453

Post by csense » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

If a rich guy's willing to pay a lot of money to get his dumb kid into a university, enough to fund scholarships for two or three smart-but-poor kids, what's the ethical problem?

I see no problem with universities having an admission tier for rich people that's like 10x as expensive as normal tuition, but completely bypasses the application process.

Or maybe they auction off 5% of their seats and let the market set the price for those no-qualifications-required seats.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#454

Post by arcticbull » Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 5:37 AM UTC

Galanwe wrote: post #442

arcticbull wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, I speak French. Québecois French, but still. I'm not telling you how it's pronounced in French, I'm suggesting how I pronounce it in English using French as a reference. I don't really think an accent aigu sounds anything like an accent grave. I don't pronounce "cachet" as "cachè" but rather "caché".

Indeed, I got confused reading the English pronunciation on wiktionnary. You are right it's pronounced like "caché" in English. My apologies.

Nothing to apologize for! That's what I love about HN, we're all here to learn. Leave the apologizing to us Canadians ;)

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#455

Post by krastanov » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 3:29 AM UTC

MagnumOpus wrote: post #451

krastanov wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some useful background here that leads me to strongly disagree with you. I did well at these international science olympiads in high school. To do that I studied for the particular shape of the exam questions. I became friends with many other people who were high performers at these olympiads. Later on I got a PhD from a prestigious institution and I am now a scientist at another one. Throughout this time, I w…

Your anecdotal evidence is contradicted by wider evidence. In particular the famous Benbow study [1] that established that even among the top percentile of the population there are massive differences: the top quarter percentile (99.75-99.99) was 2-3 times more likely to have authored academic research later in life, and about 1.5x more likely to have attended postgrad education, to have gone for a STEM degree, to ha…

This is interesting, thanks for sharing it! It would take me some time to read it, but given that you seem the have already looked into this, I was wondering whether you have suggestion for a wider set of studies, a meta-study maybe.

I am asking, because if I have to choose between my empirical observations (anecdotal as they are, given it is n=1 observers), and a single piece of research without followups, I do feel justified to stick to what I have seen myself. But I am open to be convinced otherwise.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#456

Post by krastanov » Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

MagnumOpus wrote: post #451

krastanov wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some useful background here that leads me to strongly disagree with you. I did well at these international science olympiads in high school. To do that I studied for the particular shape of the exam questions. I became friends with many other people who were high performers at these olympiads. Later on I got a PhD from a prestigious institution and I am now a scientist at another one. Throughout this time, I w…

Your anecdotal evidence is contradicted by wider evidence. In particular the famous Benbow study [1] that established that even among the top percentile of the population there are massive differences: the top quarter percentile (99.75-99.99) was 2-3 times more likely to have authored academic research later in life, and about 1.5x more likely to have attended postgrad education, to have gone for a STEM degree, to ha…

To update on the sibling comment I posted, after reading this study, I think it is pretty flawed. They indeed have an interesting population they have chosen to test, but to claim that they are the 1% top performers is incredibly misleading. The other 99% of their peers were never tested in the same fashion, which leads to obvious sampling and bias problems. This special population was treated differently from the other 99% of students from the very start of the study, so there is no surprise that new internal dynamics will appear among them, simply by virtue of being observed and treated as a separate group.

To start testing the validity of the claims in this paper a study needs to be performed where the strength of effect has to be considered, when comparing a similar one-percenter group and a larger ten-percenter group. My prediction is that the strength of effect would show only negligible differences, confirming my hunch that the special treatment[1] is what created the new subdivision in this new group.

More reading material on this topic would certainly be interesting, if you have anything in mind.

[1]: The special treatment in this paper being telling a kid "you are only a 7th grader, but you are as smart as a high schooler".