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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

#691

Post by sillypuddy »

janalsncm wrote: post #591
nluken wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you’re being serious but that is indeed how it works at many places. I was straight up told that I could get a spot on some schools’ track teams over others who were faster than me because my test scores would increase the team average

Sorry, I should’ve been more clear. I am referring to sports at the highest levels, just like Harvard is academia at the highest level. Maybe it sounds like a joke but that’s only because it’s so ridiculous to even consider.

Colleges aren't just trying to produce academics, they're happy to produce business, non-profit, and political leaders as well.

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

#692

Post by Supermancho »

importantbrian wrote: post #375
tekla wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily true. The more prestigious schools have more budget to hire better professors, but more importantly, can fund top class research that costs ALOT of money. Your random college probably can't afford a research nuclear reactor, but MIT sure as hell can if they want. Getting a position as a undergrad on those research projects is incredibly competitive.

> The more prestigious schools have more budget to hire better professors Better by what metric? It has not been my experience that instructional quality is in any way correlated with budget or prestige. > Your random college probably can't afford a research nuclear reactor, but MIT sure as hell can if they want. Idaho State has a research reactor. As does Kansas State, Missouri S&T, NC State, Ohio State, Oregon Stat…

> Better by what metric? It has not been my experience that instructional quality is in any way correlated with budget or prestige.

I can't explain why you haven't seen it, but it's quite prevalent due to the economy of educational resources.

Let's dispense with qualitative arguments and just talk about availability. For example, try to find a class for learning Farsi/Persian in Fullerton, CA. Community colleges don't offer them and the 2 professors that do have curriculum are either at a UC or part time (specific semester + year) at various State schools while they also teach, the more popular, Arabic. How many of each resource are allocated to how many of each school? There are limits and those limits are influenced by tangibles like salary, accomodations, etc.

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

#693

Post by ves »

tekknik wrote: post #690
tptacek wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an interesting defense of racial preferences a mutual acquaintance wrote on HN some years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758529

> It has to do with correcting specific and massive historical wrongs in which our government was complicit, not lifting up disadvantaged people generally. And I tuned out. I’m not paying for the sins of our fathers.

You’re definitely happily collecting the proceeds of those sins, though, I’m sure.

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

#694

Post by vacuity »

tptacek wrote: post #646
rayiner wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does legacy admissions being bad justify racial preferences? Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Here's an interesting defense of racial preferences a mutual acquaintance wrote on HN some years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758529

Aside from my thoughts on discrimination in general, which I'm willing to concede isn't a strong argument here, I think describing affirmative action as necessary is naive. Ensuring that disadvantaged groups grow up with quality schooling, healthcare, and whatnot should be the top priority. Creating/improving colleges (because Ivy Leagues aren't the end all be all, even if the social networking is better), reducing tuitions, perhaps providing money on the basis of poverty (which is, I daresay, objective more correct than the basis of race) in the communities and for college are secondary measures. Affirmative action is comparatively simple, convenient, and utterly propagandized policy. If money is the bottleneck, I daresay it's more due to the lack of political will to distribute money cough massive wealth disparity cough.

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

#695

Post by onetimeusename »

wpietri wrote: post #612
xp84 wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really thought-provoking reply. I appreciate it. The thing it makes me wonder, though: Isn't this unmerited dominance of Ivy Leaguers in our society the real problem that both AA and the discussion about legacies, is purporting to "solve" or "improve"? It seems like every society has elites, and we're trying to put a thumb on the scale (or remove other thumbs on the scale really) in hopes we can propel the…

Consider two extremes: positions in the next generation's "elite" are randomly selected vs auctioned off. In the latter case, you quickly develop the problem of a parasitic elite who uses that elite power to extract wealth to buy places for their kids in the next generation. The essential reason America exists was we said "hell no" to a parasitic, hereditary elite, the British "nobility". So I think it's very in keep…

> The essential reason America exists was we said "hell no" to a parasitic, hereditary elite,

Is it avoidable having a hereditary elite? It seems like every society develops one. It even happened in the supposedly classless USSR and they had a name for it the nomenklatura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura. Even in the US there has existed groups with hereditary and elite status but there has been a lot of social change over the past 100 years. The American problem is deciding who that elite should be now. I think a lot of the conflict and turmoil we are having is caused by different groups fighting to establish themselves as the hereditary elite.

Peter Turchin's theory about elite overproduction might have merit applied in our context. We have too many people vying for too few elite seats and the losers seek vengeance. Admissions into elite schools appears to have become a battleground.

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

#696

Post by tptacek »

vacuity wrote: post #694
tptacek wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an interesting defense of racial preferences a mutual acquaintance wrote on HN some years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758529

Aside from my thoughts on discrimination in general, which I'm willing to concede isn't a strong argument here, I think describing affirmative action as necessary is naive. Ensuring that disadvantaged groups grow up with quality schooling, healthcare, and whatnot should be the top priority. Creating/improving colleges (because Ivy Leagues aren't the end all be all, even if the social networking is better), reducing t…

If only we could track down the author of this take and ask what they think about it.

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

#697

Post by vacuity »

jchw wrote: post #443
yannyu wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we might as well admit that "merit" is heavily influenced by starting conditions instead of pretending that everyone has "equal opportunity". 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 that people have been c…

I think the debate regarding affirmative action is very simple and not unexpected at all. Here's how I view it. To start, in America I believe that most of us believe that the "default" behavior should be to avoid unfair discrimination, especially for protected classes. I think most people would agree to at least this, it's a pretty generic and obvious statement. Therefore, when we deviate from this for some reason,…

What baffles me is that so many people argue solely about affirmative action, as if it's the only possible maybe-solution. I wrote more details here[0], but I think affirmative action can't be effective because it's so narrow, and the alternative should be lifting up poorer communities to an acceptable baseline. A strong foundation provides an opportunity for a strong house, after all. This would have an outsized impact on disadvantaged minorities but is more generally just correct: it doesn't violate equality of opportunity and it actually helps out minorities.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36796543

To go on a bit of a rant unrelated to your comment, but I think what I'm proposing will be very effective, assuming that the focus on education is held in poorer communities. Culture is a touchy subject. Anyways, education has been shown to be an empowering force, and what better way to eradicate racism to the fringes of society than to bring everyone to the same level? Intentional or not, the feasibility of racism would become less as the prevalence of undeniably qualified minorities grows. Affirmative action gets the goal right but not the method. Even if what I'm proposing is somewhat incomplete, it would be a lot better as a starting point of discussion. Surely there must be other people who have thought similarly.

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

#698

Post by kweingar »

rank0 wrote: post #547
kweingar wrote: post #284

Ultimately the existence of elite universities is the root of the problem. Most colleges take a huge majority of the students who apply, so neither legacy students nor affirmative action make too much a difference for them. Universities should be more like this and less like incubators for the ruling class. All of the drama recently revolves around wealthy students being denied their rubber stamps or underprivileged…

Is your argument that we should not have elite universities in the US? Seriously?

Yes

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

#699

Post by bpye »

gizmo wrote: post #109

I recently came across a somewhat provocative defense of legacy admissions. The argument is that the iveys are great because they bring together the children of the rich and powerful (legacy admissions with connections) with really smart and hungry students (children of the middle class, mostly). It's arguably a good deal for both. Smart kids get access to wealth and power and they get to learn how the world works. T…

I'm sorry, but I don't think the argument holds water. Why is the US special here? The easiest counterexamples are Oxford and Cambridge in the UK. Neither have 'legacy' admissions.
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