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Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

dailyprincetonian.com

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Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#71

Post by throwawayboise »

whimsicalism wrote: post #46
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> and mainly affluent politically connected blacks and latinos Where in the world do you get that idea? I challenge you to provide a good source for the claim that the AA students are either affluent OR politically connected.

It's not entirely inaccurate. There is a trend for top tier universities to pick Black students mostly from prep & private schools for some reason. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976894 Excerpt: "tiny fraction" of low-income black American teenagers who attend private schools "produces about half of low-income black students at Ivy League colleges." Anecdotally, looking at who attended Ivies wher…

I think the worry is more that kids from terrible urban public school districts will be woefully unprepared to do the academic work expected at an Ivy. Wealthy kids (regardless of skin color) who have attended private prep school are a much safer bet.

The mission of Harvard, Princeton, or any university is not to remediate the poor education some kid received in K-12.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#72

Post by thatfrenchguy »

adamhp wrote: post #42
dolni wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense to group people for education based on ability. If a low performer is in a class of high performers, one of two things will likely happen: * the low performer will be left behind, because the course moves too quickly or sets the bar beyond their abilities * the class will have to be dumbed down so that the low performer can participate, which means that the high performers haven't realized their full p…

> It makes sense to group people for education based on ability Ability to do what exactly? Your premise is based on this idea of "performance" as if it that is easily measurable or is some innate quality of a person. Performance is a function of the system itself though. Speaking from the perspective of someone in the United States: I didn't "perform well enough" in middle school and so got ignored by staff and coun…

Same here. It sounds to me like every test trying to measure "ability" ends up testing for a specific kind of ability instead of the presence of ability in general.

US college admissions today are basically a joke though, given universities mostly admit upper-middle class kids with perfect grades who can write an essay where they pretend that their life was hard.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#73

Post by bumby »

beforeolives wrote: post #36
endisneigh wrote: post #7

It's a shame that we're here in 2021 and the best we can do is basically just "selection bias." Basically all universities have no statistical proof that they can educate people beyond this. This is not to say that the schools are bad, but most of the education is simply due to the types of peers you have, not really due to the school itself. Princeton and Harvard admit, for the most part, people who already excelled…

> beyond a reasonable doubt the school itself has improved the persons educational prospects. How many people do genuinely care about this? People go to top schools in order to improve their life prospects, not necessarily to get the best education (but they get that too anyway).

I believe there’s research that shows elite schools do not improve ones life prospects, with the exception of those from lower income households. They looked at those who were accepted to elite schools and went to “lesser” schools. Those people did not have worse outcomes, indicating the elite schools are selecting those who would have done well regardless. I do think this makes an interesting case for admitting more lower income students for the networking effect.

(I’ll see if I can dig up the research later when I have more time and link to it).

Edit:

"we find that students who attended more selective colleges earned about the same as students of seemingly comparable ability who attended less selective schools. Children from low-income families, however, earned more if they attended selective colleges."

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/117/4/1491/187...

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#74

Post by dalbasal »

Admission rates may or may not be a long term indicator of anything, but it doesn't take an indicator to know that elite-exclusive college has been getting more exclusive. That aside, a lot is covid related.

On-campus education is a good that has been underproduced... this is excess demand. Maybe we'll be graduating fewer doctors, nurses, and such than expected over the coming decade

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#75

Post by dopu »

busyant wrote: post #48
purple_ferret wrote: post #21

Parsing through 37,601 (and accepting only 1500) applications without standardized testing sounds incredibly difficult. If I were a teenager trying to get into a top school these days, my anxiety would be through the roof. Can't imagine the extracurricular work you have to put in now.

> If I were a teenager trying to get into a top school these days, my anxiety would be through the roof. If I knew a teenager in this situation, I'd emphasize that there is a large "quasi-random" component to admission to these types of school. What I mean is that the number of incredibly talented applicants _rejected_ by Princeton and Harvard is probably as large as the number of admissions. I know someone who is _t…

Your comment illustrates another way in which these institutions maintain exclusivity -- they hire and admit people that are already in them. I did my undergraduate in a run-of-the-mill liberal arts college. I managed to get into a post-baccalaureate program at a HYPS-level institution, and I'm now doing my PhD at a HYPS. I find it extremely difficult to believe that I would've been evaluated the same way in grad school applications if I hadn't done the post-bac where I did.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#76

Post by nine_k »

adamhp wrote: post #42
dolni wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense to group people for education based on ability. If a low performer is in a class of high performers, one of two things will likely happen: * the low performer will be left behind, because the course moves too quickly or sets the bar beyond their abilities * the class will have to be dumbed down so that the low performer can participate, which means that the high performers haven't realized their full p…

> It makes sense to group people for education based on ability Ability to do what exactly? Your premise is based on this idea of "performance" as if it that is easily measurable or is some innate quality of a person. Performance is a function of the system itself though. Speaking from the perspective of someone in the United States: I didn't "perform well enough" in middle school and so got ignored by staff and coun…

Ability (not innate, but current) to learn a particular set of things. How well you are prepared, motivated, and maybe even have some innate bonus points.

This ability may vary wildly across subjects (maths vs biology vs history), and with time (acute cases of interest / commitment, or distracting factors like romance or gaming).

In any case, batching people by the level of current ability is helpful. This is a complete opposition to typical public schools, which batch kids by age and zip code. No wonder many of them dislike it and underachieve.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#77

Post by whimsicalism »

throwawayboise wrote: post #71
whimsicalism wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entirely inaccurate. There is a trend for top tier universities to pick Black students mostly from prep & private schools for some reason. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976894 Excerpt: "tiny fraction" of low-income black American teenagers who attend private schools "produces about half of low-income black students at Ivy League colleges." Anecdotally, looking at who attended Ivies wher…

I think the worry is more that kids from terrible urban public school districts will be woefully unprepared to do the academic work expected at an Ivy. Wealthy kids (regardless of skin color) who have attended private prep school are a much safer bet. The mission of Harvard, Princeton, or any university is not to remediate the poor education some kid received in K-12.

Yeah, as someone who went to one of these "terrible urban public school districts" in a 50% black school - it's a bullshit, racist fear.

I went from my shitty ass physics class to taking one of the hardest freshman physics classes in the country. It is manageable, they are just afraid of cultural inhomogeneity.

There were at least 10 Black kids at my school who could have succeeded at Harvard.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#78

Post by will4274 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #46
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> and mainly affluent politically connected blacks and latinos Where in the world do you get that idea? I challenge you to provide a good source for the claim that the AA students are either affluent OR politically connected.

It's not entirely inaccurate. There is a trend for top tier universities to pick Black students mostly from prep & private schools for some reason. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976894 Excerpt: "tiny fraction" of low-income black American teenagers who attend private schools "produces about half of low-income black students at Ivy League colleges." Anecdotally, looking at who attended Ivies wher…

> for some reason.

Because it makes their racial stats sound good to affirmative action advocates without actually requiring the effort of educating somebody who is underprivileged? I don't think the reason is a mystery at all.

Re: Princeton admits record-low 3.98% of applicants

#79

Post by wnevets »

mewse-hn wrote: post #67
wnevets wrote: post #61

Am I the only one who hates it when headlines use the phrase "X admits Y"? It always frames the story in a certain way regardless of the actually context.

Headline is referring to university admissions not factual admissions

I'm an idiot.
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