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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

#61

Post by boeingUH60 »

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…

It’s as if you’re trying to make perfect the enemy of good. Standardized tests aren’t perfect but they give less privileged kids the best choice at attending a good college.

The kids of the upper class and the rich will always have an upper hand compared to the poor. However, standardized tests limit how wide the upper hand is. An upper class kid still has to study and pass the test, and the poor kid can also do that.

If admissions become “holistic”, poor kids would have little chances. Good luck to that poor kid competing subjectively with kids whose parents send them on impressive charity trips and get them unpaid internships at the most prestigious companies.

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

#63

Post by savanaly »

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...

That doesn't answer the question though, does it?

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

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

#64

Post by HumblyTossed »

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.

> merit-based approach.

There are still issues with this. Food insecurity being a primary one. But apparently universal school lunches is not as important to people as having a HUGE military budget. What kind of beast doesn't want to feed kids!?

Edit: Apparently plenty even on HN. Wow. Color me shocked.

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

#66

Post by chiefalchemist »

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.

There are plenty of choices for higher edu. What's the benefit of forcing a one-size-fits-all business model on all of them? Why should small out of the way esoteric college - or any other for that matter - have to follow Carnegie Mellon or similar?

This isn't being inclusive or diverse, it's assimilation at the institution/industry level. Yeah, ironic.

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

#67

Post by el_nahual »

mlyle wrote: post #19
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.

At the same time, we're getting rid of testing in admissions decisions. So instead we're in an era of squishy, difficult-to-judge metrics... and of course, the places where one could stand out-- interesting stories on one's transcript or essay-- are increasingly being evaluated by AI.

The cynical(?) explanation is that it is precisely because of the dismantling of standardized testing that getting rid of legacy admissions tenable...because it means schools can still proxy for class in admissions decisions (except veiled as extracurriculars, or "oh, this student knows calculus" in boston/sf).

If Harvard or USC were on the list I'd wager this to be the case, but MIT, Mellon & Pitt are serious schools so I believe them when I say it's in favor of increased rigor.

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

#68

Post by nova22033 »

onetimeusename wrote: post #54
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…

actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits

Is the SAT score the only measure of merit?

The non-legacies are going to miss on the chance to make social connections with legacy admits who have a lot of connections...and access to a lot of resources..

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

#69

Post by coding123 »

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…

S1

S1 definitely.

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

#70

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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 agree with you that the end of legacy and race-based admissions is a good thing. I think it's dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes when there is huge inequality. This best analogy I can give is the "sports stars" analogy. Professional sports is probably the most even playing field I can imagine - there is such a huge incentive to win games that pretty much all else besides skills on the playing field is ignored. But what it results in is a teeny tiny elite making millions, and nearly everyone else barely making enough to get by. So if the rest of the economy was like the sports stars world (and more and more of it is leaning that way), what reason do the rest of the 99.99% have to support this meritocracy? Sure, you can say it's an improvement that the best people are in charge, but if it's clear my genetic talents will prevent me from ever being a star, my incentive is really to tear the whole system down if none of those benefits ever make it my way.

I think one contributing factor you see behind so much increasing social strife, the resurgent interest in unions, etc. is the belief that unless you make it to a top job after a top school, you'll barely be scraping by your whole life.

Pure meritocracy in a "winner take all/most" economy leads to a very unstable society.

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