Universities Really Are Messed Up (says Yale

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Interesting.

"The committee offered dozens of recommendations, like expanding financial aid, reducing admissions preferences, zealously protecting free speech and adjusting grading policies."

So, they have identified the things that make it messed up and the want to recommend doing more of those? Ok.

Expanding financial aid is going to make it more messed up? Reducing admissions preferences is going to make it more messed up?

Preferences for who or why? More international? More unqualified? If it was working why are universities “really messed up?” Seems like they’d be saying it’s never been better.

Preferences for advantaged people which probably mostly translates to financially advantaged.

How can they have been doing that at the same time as having a preference for FGLI? Clearly that preference comes at the expense of the other preferences. 50-60% are already on financial aid. Do you think it should be 100%?

Wake up. Places like yale are hardly infested with fgli students. There are some not a lot. And do you even know the sticker price? Yes, most families would need financial assistance to be able to send students to a place that expensive. The fact that 40% don't need aid is exactly part of the problem.

I can't keep DCUM straight. Either Yale is all private school kids or all FGLI

It's not really difficult. Assuming a quick Google search is more or less correct, It's 37% private school kids and 19% fgli. That is from a population where 10% of high school seniors are from private schools and over 50% are from fgli homes. If those stats are correct, you can see why people think things are fancy private universities are tilted towards advantaged kids.

what else that costs 400k *isn't* tilted towards the advantaged.

fancy private schools are not a right. who cares. we'd be better off putting them in the category of country clubs and stop wringing our hands over this. it reeks of envy. and I send my kids to state schools.

So, no more research grants, Pell grants, or tax breaks? I think a lot of Americans would be fine with that result, but surely you can understand why Yale is trying to avoid it.

Okay, I would love to talk about who should be getting tax advantages in this country. Could we see all the tax returns of all of our most powerful leaders before we start crapping on Yale and other institutions of higher learning?

Until Trump, presidential candidates used to release their tax returns.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This sounds like an attempt by Yale to conflate Yale’s weaknesses with challenges being faced by other institutions. Yale is solely responsible for squandering its advantages and diminishing its reputation.

PP: What made you conclude that Yale has squandered its advantages and diminished its reputation? Could you expand on the evidence? Am genuinely curious as Yale seems to have maintained its prestige as well as a nurturing school for students. Just asking so I could be more informed.

There used to be no question about Yale's academic standing relative to Harvard. Now it is barely hanging on as 5th and only because HYPSM needs a vowel.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Unless Yale plans to dramatically increase in size, the only way to end the “murky admissions practices” is to be open about conducting a lottery for everyone over a certain benchmark. There is no fair way to pick a mere 2% from a pool of highly-qualified 17 year olds.

I think one of the suggestions in the report would be a small, meaningful improvement: put in testing minimums. Would reduce apps and thus increase admissions rate, but would go a long way to getting rid of the lowest performing, "murky" admits from the Legacy, Athlete, Donor, FGLI buckets

But do they actually want to get rid of the lowest-performing scions of mega-donors?

It won't be a huge reach. Legacy admits tend to have higher average stats than the rest of the class at6 Harvard and I would expect it to be the same at any Ivy. Plenty of well trained legacies to choose from.

Legacies have higher than average stats compared to other APPLICANTS, not students. The average legacy student has lower stats. At least at Harvard.

[Anonymous]

Twist yourself into knots justifying legacy admissions, but if you receive government funding legacy admissions should be abolished.

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Anonymous wrote:The most overrepresented student at Yale is the private school graduate. By far. That will NEVER change.

64% of matriculants came from public high schools.
36% of matriculants came from independent day, boarding, and religious schools.

when you say "by far" what does that mean?

Only 10% of American kids go to private high schools. Filling over a third of your incoming class with them is very disproportionate.

Lets be honest, private school kids for the most part are far better trained than the average public school kid. Easy to defend, just blame the k-12 system because that is where the issue lies.

if that is true why doesn't MIT take a higher share of private school students? Or why don't Ivy League school take more kids from Stuyvesant and Hunter? the answer is because Ivy League schools have non-academic criteria that favor the rich and connected.

Hunter is the UMC magnet school. It's a lot closer to TJ than Stuyvesant.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Unless Yale plans to dramatically increase in size, the only way to end the “murky admissions practices” is to be open about conducting a lottery for everyone over a certain benchmark. There is no fair way to pick a mere 2% from a pool of highly-qualified 17 year olds.

I think one of the suggestions in the report would be a small, meaningful improvement: put in testing minimums. Would reduce apps and thus increase admissions rate, but would go a long way to getting rid of the lowest performing, "murky" admits from the Legacy, Athlete, Donor, FGLI buckets

But do they actually want to get rid of the lowest-performing scions of mega-donors?

It won't be a huge reach. Legacy admits tend to have higher average stats than the rest of the class at6 Harvard and I would expect it to be the same at any Ivy. Plenty of well trained legacies to choose from.

Legacies have higher than average stats compared to other APPLICANTS, not students. The average legacy student has lower stats. At least at Harvard.

This is only meaningful if we compare the average stats of all the special interest groups, as compared to other preference groups.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Unless Yale plans to dramatically increase in size, the only way to end the “murky admissions practices” is to be open about conducting a lottery for everyone over a certain benchmark. There is no fair way to pick a mere 2% from a pool of highly-qualified 17 year olds.

I think one of the suggestions in the report would be a small, meaningful improvement: put in testing minimums. Would reduce apps and thus increase admissions rate, but would go a long way to getting rid of the lowest performing, "murky" admits from the Legacy, Athlete, Donor, FGLI buckets

But do they actually want to get rid of the lowest-performing scions of mega-donors?

It won't be a huge reach. Legacy admits tend to have higher average stats than the rest of the class at6 Harvard and I would expect it to be the same at any Ivy. Plenty of well trained legacies to choose from.

Legacies have higher than average stats compared to other APPLICANTS, not students. The average legacy student has lower stats. At least at Harvard.

So they're prospects would improve then with 'merit' oriented changes, correct?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Twist yourself into knots justifying legacy admissions, but if you receive government funding legacy admissions should be abolished.

Ok, let's break it down then. Most govt funding is for grad school research. So keep legacy and keep research funding but give up Pell grants.

Most Ivies would be good with that I suspect. Going any further is social engineering and we should be against that.

[Anonymous]

Genuine question- why don’t colleges just make tuition free or ultra low cost? It’ll always come off as disastrously pretentious to have tuition rates as sky high as they are. I especially don’t understand how these tiny liberal arts college campuses with $4billion in endowment that put 1/4 of their class on full financial aid and 1/2 the students on some financial aid don’t just drop tuition to $5k or even lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Unless Yale plans to dramatically increase in size, the only way to end the “murky admissions practices” is to be open about conducting a lottery for everyone over a certain benchmark. There is no fair way to pick a mere 2% from a pool of highly-qualified 17 year olds.

I think one of the suggestions in the report would be a small, meaningful improvement: put in testing minimums. Would reduce apps and thus increase admissions rate, but would go a long way to getting rid of the lowest performing, "murky" admits from the Legacy, Athlete, Donor, FGLI buckets

But do they actually want to get rid of the lowest-performing scions of mega-donors?

It won't be a huge reach. Legacy admits tend to have higher average stats than the rest of the class at6 Harvard and I would expect it to be the same at any Ivy. Plenty of well trained legacies to choose from.

Legacies have higher than average stats compared to other APPLICANTS, not students. The average legacy student has lower stats. At least at Harvard.

So they're prospects would improve then with 'merit' oriented changes, correct?

^their

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Older Ivy grad here. So many younger graduates from my Alma mater just seem like hyper-sensitive useless deadbeats. All talk and no action. Whiny. Just yuck.

Sounds like they’ve been doing this a while. You are horrendously whiny and offer nothing of importance.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Unless Yale plans to dramatically increase in size, the only way to end the “murky admissions practices” is to be open about conducting a lottery for everyone over a certain benchmark. There is no fair way to pick a mere 2% from a pool of highly-qualified 17 year olds.

Or the colleges could start demanding more tail end differentiation between students on the SAT.

There are a thousand perfect SAT scores every year. That number used to be in the dozens.

Tsinghua and Beijing do not have trouble selecting the top 0.05% students among 13 million kids based on the Gaokao, which has never seen a perfect score in its history.

The disdain people would have for academia if we changed our system to mirror China’s would be immense.

Pretty much every poor student that doesn’t go to a prep school would be left behind and couldn’t attend an elite college. This would be a step backwards.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Twist yourself into knots justifying legacy admissions, but if you receive government funding legacy admissions should be abolished.

Ok, let's break it down then. Most govt funding is for grad school research. So keep legacy and keep research funding but give up Pell grants.

Most Ivies would be good with that I suspect. Going any further is social engineering and we should be against that.

You are talking about government funding. That is different from the tax benefits that colleges get (and that wealthy people get when they donate money to colleges).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless Yale plans to dramatically increase in size, the only way to end the “murky admissions practices” is to be open about conducting a lottery for everyone over a certain benchmark. There is no fair way to pick a mere 2% from a pool of highly-qualified 17 year olds.

Or the colleges could start demanding more tail end differentiation between students on the SAT.

There are a thousand perfect SAT scores every year. That number used to be in the dozens.

Tsinghua and Beijing do not have trouble selecting the top 0.05% students among 13 million kids based on the Gaokao, which has never seen a perfect score in its history.

They don't by any means achieve what you just said. A single test with a single sitting is guaranteed to not achieve what you asserted just due to normal variation.

On average they do.
When the tails are thin, there is less single sitting variation
They are free to take the test as many times as they like.
It doesn't usually change enough to make a difference.

It is certainly at least as reliable and just as one that relies on legacy status and extracurriculars.

Oddly enough, China does have racial preferences in college admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Genuine question- why don’t colleges just make tuition free or ultra low cost? It’ll always come off as disastrously pretentious to have tuition rates as sky high as they are. I especially don’t understand how these tiny liberal arts college campuses with $4billion in endowment that put 1/4 of their class on full financial aid and 1/2 the students on some financial aid don’t just drop tuition to $5k or even lower.

Yes, one asnswer is to get rid of all merit and need based aid and just move to the lower rate for everyone. But they do want full pay from the really wealthy and from international students. But no way you can get really wealthy to pay 90,000 when everyone else is paying 20,000. So they make the price 90,000 and then offer steep discounts to everyone else. I agree the discounts should as deep as possible for everyone and tehn let pell grants make up teh difference at the bottom side (and increase pell grants).