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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

#671

Post by alex_young »

rank0 wrote: post #666
alex_young wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's look at France then. They have lower numbers on paper when you look at things like per capita GDP, but they live longer lives, work about half the hours we do, take a full month of vacation, have access to free higher education and healthcare, etc. The estimates for their overall wellbeing are very similar to ours [0]. At to income distribution - in France the lowest quintile controls 8% of incomes [1], while i…

There’s a lot of great things about the French economy. There’s also plenty of areas where they lag behind the US. The French labor force participation rate is ~74% compared to ~62% in America. The French homeless rate is 3x the US rate. France just defaulted on its national pension obligations a few months ago. What policy exactly should we copy from France? If we’re still arguing about wealth redistribution policie…

Sure, I’m not suggesting we copy any one policy, but the assumption that people in the US are better off than everyone else and that it is somehow because we don’t tax wealth is kind of silly.

By some measures many European nations are better off economically than we are. And many of these countries have wealth taxes.

We’d also be remiss to overlook that the US had a tremendous advantage in not having our infrastructure destroyed in the middle of the 20th century.

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

#672

Post by tomjakubowski »

alex_young wrote: post #590
rank0 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enlighten me. Which G20 nation has better economic conditions than the United States? According to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average... The PPP adjusted median income is highest in the US (not counting Iceland/Luxembourg for obvious reasons). And as a follow up, how stable is the government in your example countries? The US has the worlds oldest document-based government. The rest of…

I think it's worth pointing out that income inequality is much worse in the US; the Wikipedia page you referenced reflects this somewhat: "2020 average wage in the United States was $53,383, while the 2020 median wage was $34,612." If you define 'better economic conditions' as meaning more wealth in total, sure, the US is at or near the top. But however, if you're interested in knowing how most people are doing, the…

I'm not disagreeing with your wider point, and in particular I do agree there's a lot to admire about Swiss society—but want to mention they have had a few bouts of instability in the past several hundred years.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_in_the_Napoleonic_...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_and_Regeneration_i...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderbund_War

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

#673

Post by anonu »

All this assumes that admissions is a formulaic process. The application probably still asks where your parents went to school. Admissions are still made of humans that may be subject to biases. Faced with two equivalent candidates, one legacy and one not, it should be a 50/50 decision on which to pick. But in reality some cognitive bias will tilt the process in favor of one. My guess is it would be the legacy candidate.

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

#674

Post by bilbo0s »

belorn wrote: post #565
bilbo0s wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because money. Sorry. That's the reality that everyone fails to talk openly about when discussing athletics. It brings in a lot of money for the top schools like Stanford, Michigan, Texas, Alabama and so on. You find a way to replace that revenue, a lot of schools would be happy to get rid of it. But until then? I mean the B1G has a tv split of almost 100 million a year "per". Once all the former PAC12 schools unite…

Maybe they should open up a casino instead. That would bring in a lot more money without needing to the through hoops of using sports teams to finance higher education.

Too expensive.

For Villanova, a basketball team costs next to nothing. And requires very little admin. A casino costs millions. And requires literally orders of magnitude more admin.

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

#675

Post by kaitai »

dionidium wrote: post #394
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…

> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. I just don't see this. In our society we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, and that it therefore clears the very high bar required for limiting freedom of association…

Now let's back up a moment. In US society we have said for the last 60 years max that it's usually illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race, and before that it was legal and actually approved of to discriminate on the basis of race. Discrimination on basis of race is written into the founding documents of the land. That's what makes it the one of the deepest fractures in our society, the fact that it was legislated for the vast majority of the time the colonies and then country have existed.

It's also worth acknowledging that elite social clubs have always had the ability to pick who they want -- the pretty people, the rich people, the well-connected people. Given that racism is suddenly (last 60 years) less popular/legal than it used to be in the US, is it any wonder that the elite social club of Harvard wanted to pick the most attractive candidates coming from groups previously denied admission? Now the end of "affirmative action" says that Harvard can no longer curate the class it wants to have its favored racial mix. Since this end of affirmative action is a direct strike at Harvard's ability to pick its elite the way it wants to, how do we continue to justify legacy status, again? "You can't pick people with the experiences you want; you just have to pick rich kids/according to heredity, that's the only fair way to do things." Really? Why?

America hasn't always hated racism, but it has always hated a hereditary nobility.

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

#676

Post by Retric »

sidlls wrote: post #664
tivert wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many times have I heard from people that the USA is about "equality of opportunity" and not "equality of outcome"? Legacy admissions is directly contrary to equality of opportunity, and undermines the idea of meritocracy in university admissions... Understanding "equality of opportunity" to be literal and absolute is nonsense, because to do so would require hobbling people with natural talent (for instance), si…

I think you have it backwards: targeting "equality of outcome" necessitates policies to pick winners and losers. Specifically, it requires policies that aim to minimize both. Equality of opportunity doesn't mean hobbling talented people or enforcing that everyone be given identical opportunities. It simply means that people regardless of talent (in a given ability) ought not be restricted from an attempting to take a…

All admissions policies pick winners and losers, that’s the point. A collage which sifts the relative importance of SAT scores vs GPA is picking winners and losers, it’s hardly an argument in favor of any specific policy.

AA increases how much innate talent matters vs some peoples social position. It’s the same outcome as removing legacy admissions, just with a slightly different set of beneficiaries.

Collages have many leavers to get these kinds of outcomes. Favor elite prep schools and suddenly you have a surplus of high income families etc.

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

#677

Post by wrp »

importantbrian wrote: post #330
xkcd-sucks wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of begging the question to assume multigenerational family ties to a university are "not merit" when a big part of a university's value proposition is social networking: One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc. Personally I didn't understand that at the time, would have rejected the notion on…

Yeah, I think part of the problem is that people don't really understand this. I have taken classes at a community college, a directional state school, an R1 and my master's degree is from a highly selective school. My n=1 experience is that the coursework from any accredited program is largely the same. The professors at the state school were actually better than at any of the other schools from a pure teaching pers…

Absolutely, but it's hard to convince people of this. Elite schools (generally) provide better facilities and peer support, but the quality of teaching is usually better at non-elite (but not bottom-of-the-barrel) schools. Also, grade inflation is, or was, not such an issue. You don't get a "Gentleman's C" at a public college.

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

#678

Post by rank0 »

alex_young wrote: post #671
rank0 wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of great things about the French economy. There’s also plenty of areas where they lag behind the US. The French labor force participation rate is ~74% compared to ~62% in America. The French homeless rate is 3x the US rate. France just defaulted on its national pension obligations a few months ago. What policy exactly should we copy from France? If we’re still arguing about wealth redistribution policie…

Sure, I’m not suggesting we copy any one policy, but the assumption that people in the US are better off than everyone else and that it is somehow because we don’t tax wealth is kind of silly. By some measures many European nations are better off economically than we are. And many of these countries have wealth taxes. We’d also be remiss to overlook that the US had a tremendous advantage in not having our infrastruct…

Glad we could find common ground! I’m not claiming that life in America is inherently better…just pointing out that things are pretty fucking good all considered.

I’m not in favor of a wealth tax though I frankly still don’t see any evidence that it improves society. Our edge as a nation comes from our insane technological and economic output. Squeezing the private sector too hard can drive away that innovation.

At some point in the future our economic machine eventually falters and we’ll loose reserve currency status. That’ll mean a massive drop in US living standards across the board…so I hope it happens way after we’re dead.

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

#679

Post by abduhl »

kelnos wrote: post #584
WillPostForFood wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lying is wrong" is a non-sequitur - like West is to the left. It is morality for 5 year olds or Sam Harris. >Then what's the problem with AA? Not using it to compensate for structural disadvantages is being in the wrong in its case... AA fails on that criteria as well. It isn't compensating the people who were wronged and the burden falls on people didn't do the wrong. Poor asian immigrant gets kicked out so Harvard…

On the contrary, when California enacted a ban on AA in university admissions in 1996, enrollment of minorities plummeted. Sure, maybe some of them would have dropped out, and some may have changed majors, but at least they would have had the opportunity, and certainly some would have been able to take advantage of it.

It seems that the only demographics that plummeted were whites and Native Americans per https://edsource.org/2020/freshmen-enrollment-csu-and-uc-by-...

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

#680

Post by rank0 »

jinjin2 wrote: post #670
rank0 wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the response! > By contrast, social democratic societies in Europe have lower median (PPP) income, but higher income redistribution means that far fewer people face such struggles. The idea that EU citizens do not face poverty is simply false. The EU sheltered homelessness rate is very close to the US, both under 0.2% which is phenomenal honestly… Poverty rate statistics are quite tricky to decipher. But…

How about Denmark? Seems like a smooth running country. Hardly any national debt. Free healthcare and education for all. Consistently rated as one of the happiest countries on earth.

I don’t know much about Denmark but it sounds like a great place!

I’d be concerned that policy in Denmark wouldn’t work in the US due to the enormous differences in size, culture, geography, etc.

That’s why I think it really only makes sense to compare G20 countries or entire regions like US:EU

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