Have colleges totally lost their value as a signal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just because your kid got rejected doesn’t mean the colleges are slipping or losing value. The world doesn’t revolve around you.

Way to completely miss the point of the discussion.

Hardly. This discussion is a coping mechanism. All those kids getting into schools are inferior to mine so those schools are slipping and the ones that admitted my kid are rising.

FWIW, I don't think OP is saying the latter, just the former. "It's unfair I can't afford for my kids to attend my legacy and the students who are there, moreover, are nowhere near as smart as when I attended."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP- it’s interesting how much reading into the post and psychoanalysis has taken place. The thrust of the post is that compared with a generation ago, it’s not as reasonable to make assumptions about someone with a degree from a very top school versus another good school. There is simply more parity. I attributed it to demographics and dei policies that de-emphasize common sense markers of academic achievement/ability. The post was simply attempting to make an objective observation.

The key word is "attempting." The post attempted to make an objective observation, but wasn't successful as there are decades and decades of examples of the Ivies not being meritocracies.

Attempted but failed.

OP: There are two attacks being made against me that seem incompatible. One, the assertion that Ivies were NEVER a meritocracy and therefore never had “better” students and never had value as a signal. Two, my DC does not attend an Ivy, but rather a lower ranked school, and I’m rationalizing it because in fact Ivies are a meritocracy, do have “better” students and do have signal value. I don’t see how both criticisms can be correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP- it’s interesting how much reading into the post and psychoanalysis has taken place. The thrust of the post is that compared with a generation ago, it’s not as reasonable to make assumptions about someone with a degree from a very top school versus another good school. There is simply more parity. I attributed it to demographics and dei policies that de-emphasize common sense markers of academic achievement/ability. The post was simply attempting to make an objective observation.

This is not remotely an objective observation. It is sour grapes from someone who seems determined to remain completely clueless about the disparities and inequities - both racial/ethnic/gender and financial - that existed in previous generations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP- it’s interesting how much reading into the post and psychoanalysis has taken place. The thrust of the post is that compared with a generation ago, it’s not as reasonable to make assumptions about someone with a degree from a very top school versus another good school. There is simply more parity. I attributed it to demographics and dei policies that de-emphasize common sense markers of academic achievement/ability. The post was simply attempting to make an objective observation.

Your objective observation is not supported by facts. I guess you believe that legacy practices are meritocratic. The 1990s had more legacy admits than today. The Ivy League used legacy to limit the percentage of Asian American students in the 1990s (sources: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-asian-quota-in-the-ivy-league/legacy-admissions-favor-wealth-over-merit; https://tcf.org/content/book/affirmative-action-for-the-rich/)

Legacy admits odds of admission in the 90s were 3.13 times those of non-legacy (source: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00284.x)

[Anonymous]

People pointing out what the Ivies were like pre 1960s are effectively saying practicing two wrongs are ok despite the old saying two wrongs don't make it right.

Regardless of what the Ivies were like in in the 1920s or whatever, they made a conscious decision after WWII to practice a much more meritocratic approach to recruiting the students and the kind of student body they wanted to have. The ended the unofficial discrimination against Jewish students, for example. It was not perfect, but it did result in a school that was far more meritocratic than the previous generation and far more in the spirit of post-war egalitarianism.

The social engineering practiced by the adcomms these days is just another version of the social engineering practiced in the 1920s, swapping social class for racial identities. Is this right? Or wrong? But your answer does suggest much about you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People pointing out what the Ivies were like pre 1960s are effectively saying practicing two wrongs are ok despite the old saying two wrongs don't make it right.

Regardless of what the Ivies were like in in the 1920s or whatever, they made a conscious decision after WWII to practice a much more meritocratic approach to recruiting the students and the kind of student body they wanted to have. The ended the unofficial discrimination against Jewish students, for example. It was not perfect, but it did result in a school that was far more meritocratic than the previous generation and far more in the spirit of post-war egalitarianism.

The social engineering practiced by the adcomms these days is just another version of the social engineering practiced in the 1920s, swapping social class for racial identities. Is this right? Or wrong? But your answer does suggest much about you.

Many of the posters, including myself, are pushing back at the argument that 1990s was a period of meritocracy and that the elite schools have now lost their way. I'm not arguing that what is happening now is good or ideal. My point is that the Ivy League+ have never been meritocratic institutions. The status quo shifts and changes and the institutions go along with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People pointing out what the Ivies were like pre 1960s are effectively saying practicing two wrongs are ok despite the old saying two wrongs don't make it right.

Regardless of what the Ivies were like in in the 1920s or whatever, they made a conscious decision after WWII to practice a much more meritocratic approach to recruiting the students and the kind of student body they wanted to have. The ended the unofficial discrimination against Jewish students, for example. It was not perfect, but it did result in a school that was far more meritocratic than the previous generation and far more in the spirit of post-war egalitarianism.

The social engineering practiced by the adcomms these days is just another version of the social engineering practiced in the 1920s, swapping social class for racial identities. Is this right? Or wrong? But your answer does suggest much about you.

My father in law was a midwestern farm boy who went to Harvard in the 50s. He’s honestly one of the smartest and most intellectually curious people I’ve ever run into. I doubt he’d have a chance nowadays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People pointing out what the Ivies were like pre 1960s are effectively saying practicing two wrongs are ok despite the old saying two wrongs don't make it right.

Regardless of what the Ivies were like in in the 1920s or whatever, they made a conscious decision after WWII to practice a much more meritocratic approach to recruiting the students and the kind of student body they wanted to have. The ended the unofficial discrimination against Jewish students, for example. It was not perfect, but it did result in a school that was far more meritocratic than the previous generation and far more in the spirit of post-war egalitarianism.

The social engineering practiced by the adcomms these days is just another version of the social engineering practiced in the 1920s, swapping social class for racial identities. Is this right? Or wrong? But your answer does suggest much about you.

Many of the posters, including myself, are pushing back at the argument that 1990s was a period of meritocracy and that the elite schools have now lost their way. I'm not arguing that what is happening now is good or ideal. My point is that the Ivy League+ have never been meritocratic institutions. The status quo shifts and changes and the institutions go along with it.

They may not have been perfectly meritocratic, maybe not even in the 90s, and obviously skewed towards rich people, but rich people are often very smart, and the schools would be a kind of sorting mechanism for them and the non-rich people who they roped in via financial aid. Yale was more selective than Denison. Harvard was more selective than Michigan. This is still the case but my sense is, they are all a lot closer, and DEI has removed a lot of objectivity from the assessment. So the signal value is declining. This matters because many people feel the main benefit of a fancy degree- the whole reason for this obsession around rankings- is the signal value.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP- it’s interesting how much reading into the post and psychoanalysis has taken place. The thrust of the post is that compared with a generation ago, it’s not as reasonable to make assumptions about someone with a degree from a very top school versus another good school. There is simply more parity. I attributed it to demographics and dei policies that de-emphasize common sense markers of academic achievement/ability. The post was simply attempting to make an objective observation.

The key word is "attempting." The post attempted to make an objective observation, but wasn't successful as there are decades and decades of examples of the Ivies not being meritocracies.

Attempted but failed.

OP: There are two attacks being made against me that seem incompatible. One, the assertion that Ivies were NEVER a meritocracy and therefore never had “better” students and never had value as a signal. Two, my DC does not attend an Ivy, but rather a lower ranked school, and I’m rationalizing it because in fact Ivies are a meritocracy, do have “better” students and do have signal value. I don’t see how both criticisms can be correct.

They both could be correct if you believed the Ivies had better students. Doesn’t have to be true. You just have to have believed it, and to believe that others believed it.

[Anonymous]

Again, Id like to point out that rigid expectations for admissions that involve near perfect test scores and top grades does not make a class of creative innovators. It makes a class of brown-nosing drones.

I had a friend who taught at Yale recently say (we were talking about grade inflation), that the kids are all super smart, but it's boardroom smart. Salesman smart. They know how to convince you to buy a thing, but that doesn't mean they've picked up a lot of curiosity about how it was made, or why, or why making something else might make more sense. They're not risk takers, he said. Or if they are, they're too smart to show it in the classroom.

Some of you probably think that's great. I don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People pointing out what the Ivies were like pre 1960s are effectively saying practicing two wrongs are ok despite the old saying two wrongs don't make it right.

Regardless of what the Ivies were like in in the 1920s or whatever, they made a conscious decision after WWII to practice a much more meritocratic approach to recruiting the students and the kind of student body they wanted to have. The ended the unofficial discrimination against Jewish students, for example. It was not perfect, but it did result in a school that was far more meritocratic than the previous generation and far more in the spirit of post-war egalitarianism.

The social engineering practiced by the adcomms these days is just another version of the social engineering practiced in the 1920s, swapping social class for racial identities. Is this right? Or wrong? But your answer does suggest much about you.

Many of the posters, including myself, are pushing back at the argument that 1990s was a period of meritocracy and that the elite schools have now lost their way. I'm not arguing that what is happening now is good or ideal. My point is that the Ivy League+ have never been meritocratic institutions. The status quo shifts and changes and the institutions go along with it.

They may not have been perfectly meritocratic, maybe not even in the 90s, and obviously skewed towards rich people, but rich people are often very smart, and the schools would be a kind of sorting mechanism for them and the non-rich people who they roped in via financial aid. Yale was more selective than Denison. Harvard was more selective than Michigan. This is still the case but my sense is, they are all a lot closer, and DEI has removed a lot of objectivity from the assessment. So the signal value is declining. This matters because many people feel the main benefit of a fancy degree- the whole reason for this obsession around rankings- is the signal value.

Harvard and peers have been practicing holistic admissions/DEI since the 1980s and started to increase the practice in the 1990s. In the 1990s, 10-15% of the student body was URM, and now it's 20-30% at most elite schools (not including international students). The current focus has been increasing the number of DEI admits, low-income/1st gen students, and international students, which collectively decreased the percentage of UMC non-hooked students. So what was the tipping point for a decline in signal value? Doubling the number of URM students? So what happens post-affirmative action when the number of URM students is predicted to decline and go back to 1990s numbers? Does the signal value increase? Or does it continue to decrease because of the new focus on SES/1st gen/rural?

[Anonymous]

There is no dip in the signal value. The schools are extremely difficult to get in to creating even more of an aura around them. Colleges are looking for high potential individuals. The best first gen students and those from lower SES who have overcome a lot fit that bill well (every elite school is trying to get many of the same kids). Fewer middle class, UMC, and non-legacy rich kids from places like DC, NY, and CA don't hurt the signal at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no dip in the signal value. The schools are extremely difficult to get in to creating even more of an aura around them. Colleges are looking for high potential individuals. The best first gen students and those from lower SES who have overcome a lot fit that bill well (every elite school is trying to get many of the same kids). Fewer middle class, UMC, and non-legacy rich kids from places like DC, NY, and CA don't hurt the signal at all.

The signal for the schools in the 5-25 ranking range has gone up a lot. Schools like Vanderbilt, Chicago, WashU, Emory, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Duke, Cornell, and Hopkins are well known and are far closer to the Harvard and Stanford summit than they were.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People pointing out what the Ivies were like pre 1960s are effectively saying practicing two wrongs are ok despite the old saying two wrongs don't make it right.

Regardless of what the Ivies were like in in the 1920s or whatever, they made a conscious decision after WWII to practice a much more meritocratic approach to recruiting the students and the kind of student body they wanted to have. The ended the unofficial discrimination against Jewish students, for example. It was not perfect, but it did result in a school that was far more meritocratic than the previous generation and far more in the spirit of post-war egalitarianism.

The social engineering practiced by the adcomms these days is just another version of the social engineering practiced in the 1920s, swapping social class for racial identities. Is this right? Or wrong? But your answer does suggest much about you.

My father in law was a midwestern farm boy who went to Harvard in the 50s. He’s honestly one of the smartest and most intellectually curious people I’ve ever run into. I doubt he’d have a chance nowadays.

Do you not realize a Midwestern farm boy remains a hook today?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Again, Id like to point out that rigid expectations for admissions that involve near perfect test scores and top grades does not make a class of creative innovators. It makes a class of brown-nosing drones.

I had a friend who taught at Yale recently say (we were talking about grade inflation), that the kids are all super smart, but it's boardroom smart. Salesman smart. They know how to convince you to buy a thing, but that doesn't mean they've picked up a lot of curiosity about how it was made, or why, or why making something else might make more sense. They're not risk takers, he said. Or if they are, they're too smart to show it in the classroom.

Some of you probably think that's great. I don't.

It depends on the school. I'm pretty sure the students at MIT, Rice, and Stanford would want to know how the thing was made. A student at Chicago would want to know what is the purpose of this thing that was made. A student at Northwestern would want to know what else can we do with this thing that was made.

But to your friend's larger point, yes, a lot of Ivy students are not risk takers. Smart, sure. But they are checking boxes. Even the act of going to an ivy is the safe, risk-free thing to do.