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

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

#51

Post by abirch »

Anechoic wrote: post #30
nancyhn wrote: post #4

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach For the right definitions of "merit", yes. I'm not confident we've figured that part out yet.

We can't even define the purpose of college. E.g., is it only graduating and Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, ..., Mark Zuckerberg are all failures?

Meritocracy works best if you have something to measure against.

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

#52

Post by ghaff »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #40
philip1209 wrote: post #20

Next step: Ending use of athletic ability in admissions.

Sports programs at university pay for themselves. They pay for themselves because people buy tickets to games, which they do to see exceptional athletes.

Maybe at schools with big football/basketball programs. At a school like MIT which was being discussed yesterday, sports certainly do not directly pay for themselves.

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

#53

Post by nancyhn »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #9
nancyhn wrote: post #4

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

[flagged]

Racism is bad and you should feel bad that you judge people based on their skin color.

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

#54

Post by onetimeusename »

nancyhn wrote: post #4

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

We're not, we're heading towards tribalism. The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white more so than anything else. With limited data on other schools, Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits.[1] That didn't stop people who wanted an alleged merit based admissions policy from continuing to call it a racist backdoor. Carnegie Mellon did not publish any stats on their legacy admits however.

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, universities have promised to continue to look at race as a factor that still complies with the SC ruling which means a backdoor for race. FWIW white students are the most underrepresented on elite campuses so it would be hard to argue that there are admissions policies favoring them.

[1]: https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/academi...

[2]: https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/30/stanford-to-expand-outr...

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

#55

Post by CrampusDestrus »

noobermin wrote: post #37
nancyhn wrote: post #4

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

I fundamentally do not understand why merit is something you should focus on when it comes to admission into a university. The entire point of an education is to learn, may be you need the bare minimum to enroll but universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least. Just because thats how it should work in some people's heads as the ideal doesn't mean it makes any actual sense…

Resources are finite. If college courses were recorded lessons or they just gave you a theory book and an exercises book, then of course we could automate everything. Just sign up, pay your fee and take the exams and once you're done you get the degree, even full remote. Your taxes will go towards professors and a fuck ton of TAs for questions and exercises and to keep the infrastructure running.

But we're not there yet

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

#56

Post by kyleblarson »

Yeah right. Just as schools are already working around affirmative action rulings to continue to effect actual institutional racism, they will find a way to continue to give legacies a leg up in the admissions process. With the size of endowments of top schools these days they effectively operate as for-profit hedge funds that happen to have educational institutions attached. Does anyone seriously think a school would say "thanks for that library you donated but your grand kid only has a 3.8 gpa so maybe look at state schools."

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

#57

Post by dotancohen »

banana_feather wrote: post #36
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.

>I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations. Wonder not. "[T]here is no statistically significant evidence that legacy preferences impact total alumni giving." https://production-tcf.imgix.net/app/uploads/2016/03/0820191...

Lack of evidence is hardly evidence of lacking.

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

#58

Post by numbers_guy »

I was just watching a podcast interview in which a British-German professor employed at an Ivy League university in the US, was talking about the elite universities in the US, and how there is no equivalent in Germany. [1] The interview is in German, but what he is basically saying is that the American attitude is to very openly and purposefully create and maintain this system of elitism and everyone is openly in competition with each other. All of this is alien to us here in Germany.

At first glance it seems like we got the better deal. But then you think more about it more. All the German elite send their kids to study in the US instead of studying in Germany, because there they get to network with the elite kids from all over the world. But this is not a very good thing for Germany. First of all, we have less say in how he next generation of elite in our country think. Secondly all the smart and talented people in Germany who cannot afford to emigrate get no chance to mingle with these elite kids.

So if we had a system of elite unis here in Germany it might on some level be better.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4Y9SomH9Nc

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

#59

Post by HeavenFox »

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.

AFAIK, legacy admission and donations are two separate "tracks", if you will.

Donations are when the "donation office" giving a list to the admissions office.

Legacy admission is when the student ticks a box on the application.

The former is to recognize past contributions, where the latter is more for future contribution (if your whole family went to Harvard, presumably you will be more likely to give money to Harvard)

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

#60

Post by nashashmi »

lisper wrote: post #32
nancyhn wrote: post #4

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

I hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure merit? Because [EDIT] many measures of "merit" (was: standardized testing) can be (and often are) biased by race, cultural background, and economic status. For example: Student 1 has built a fully automated chip manufacturing line in his basement. Student 2 has build a robot that solves a maze in fifteen minutes (a…

Student 1. He has the resources needed to move ahead. And unless my university can provide self help to the motivated, student 2 may not work out well here.
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