Universities Really Are Messed Up (says Yale

[Anonymous]

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

I would not be so sure.

“When selective admissions seem so inexplicable — or, worse, tilted in ways that benefit the already advantaged — it should come as no surprise that many Americans do not trust the process,” the committee wrote.

I just don’t see how you can ever have an explicable process for undergraduate admissions and an admissions rate under 5%. 17 year olds are just not that fully formed yet. And if they were, college would be pointless.

I can point to half a dozen countries where they do this every year.

But none of them achieve what you think that it does. Cram school privilege is even worse in Asia than privilege here, you are delusional if you believe otherwise. Public school kids in the UK get huge advantages over private school kids because of the former huge admissions imbalances. What you dream of doesn't exist. In some countries testing schemes exist which do not achieve what you believe that they do.

I try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. single test admissions is better than "holistic" admissions that allow admissions officers to limit the number of jews to admit or give some races preferences over others or give preferences to country club sports or people who claim to have a burning passion for medieval literature.

Holistic admissions is far superior because none of these schools are or ever have been optimizing for 'peak' academics. They are building a class which fits your priorities, they are not optimizing the training or another crop of engineers which is what the Asian systems you so admire are set up to do. Also, they are private entities and have every right to build a class as they see fit. Public schools admitting based on exam is something that I am perfectly fine with even if it diminishes the rigor of private schools over time. People don't want these schools because of the training, they are looking for prestige.

People in the west overlook all the downsides to Asia’s various education systems- which is surprising, because they’re visibly poor ideas of how to run one. Even china, which is loved on this forum for whatever reason, has such a utilitarian admission policy, because its government is run by and formed by engineers. Engineers have a certain management strategy that reflects well in the modern Chinese government; meanwhile, the US prefers (usually, not including Trump) pretty privileged, highly educated legally trained professionals in government.

People not from the west but living in the west overlook the downsides and advocate for a system that they understand how to navigate vs one that they do not understand. There is much less angst from the native born. This isn’t unique to the top privates, it applies equally to the top UC schools given that many of these families live in CA. Our system of private universities is unique and the fact that they aren’t focused on peak academics but rather a high baseline then other factors is also pretty unique.

They want to attend these schools because if their prestige but at the same want to change them in ways that would reduce their prestige longer term.

Aside from donors none of the other preferences are instrumental to long term reputation.

In your opinion.

[Anonymous]

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.

The pool of truly highly qualified applicants is much smaller than the number who appear highly qualified on paper. grade inflation, test optional, superscoring, score choice, fake ECs all make it highly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, turns college admissions into a cynical game of PR and marketing.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yale committee concludes that colleges and universities have completely lost the plot:

“High costs, murky admissions practices, uneven academic standards and fears about free speech on campuses, the committee said, are among the reasons for widening discontent over higher education’s worthiness.

The findings reflect misgivings that Americans have described across years of polling and interviews. But the report, from a 10-professor panel at one of the nation’s most renowned universities, amounts to a damning depiction of academia’s role in cultivating the political and cultural forces that are reshaping higher education’s place in American life.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/us/yale-report-colleges-unversities-trust.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bVA._ebw.-PVgolGZ4r5r&smid=url-share

Your landscaper could have told you this.

Any FOX viewer could have told you this.

Hopefully they’re not patting themselves on the back about these conclusions.

You don't have to be either one of those things to see the issues.

What are the solutions? Seems like the fox viewers decided that destroying funding for scientific research was the solution and instead spending it on bombing a country to result in sky high energy prices that suck lots and lots and lots of money out of all of our wallets . Great job Fox viewers.

Sometimes you have to cause a ruckus
if you want to fight injustice.

A ruckus? An economy headed for a recession. A job market in the toilet for yale graduates and every other graduate. Inflation going up prospects for our kids futures going down That's not a ruckus to fight it justice that is cutting off your nose, lips, ears, eyes, cheeks and chin to spite your face

Just take yale and get the f*** if that's what it takes to get rid of you. You sound like such a genius! You'll be able Make Yale so much better.

I am willing to make those sacrifices to burn the wokeness out of colleges and universities. They brought it on themselves.

Wreak havoc on the country and the world is worth it because you don't like college admissions policies. That is just stupid.

Anyway the backlash is coming. The good for nobody GOP is losing badly in so many recent contests and rightly so. Cant happen soon enough. Reforms to college admissions can happen without burning down the place you fools

No it can't, they don't take you seriously unless you burn the place down. This is the same reason black people riot, nobody takes their concerns seriously until they start burning shit down. A year's worth of rioting 5 years ago and how much police brutality have we had since then? A lot less.
They could have fixed that shit a long time ago, we had the technology to hold cops accountable. But now that people realize that bad things can happen when you let cops kill young black men without much in the way of consequences, we started seeing consequences and with those consequences, we saw fewer bad shootings.

A few years disruption of scientific research is horrible, but worth it. People will die because of delayed scientific discovery, economic growth will be delayed, the consequences are bad for everyone but nobody was taking admissions reform seriously, colleges weren't really obeying SFFA, we had to burn the place down.
If colleges had not lost the plot like they did, this would never have been an issue.
Trump is chemotherapy, the poison that you use to burn out the more deadly disease.
And we are already seeing the changes in admissions and the self reflection by the ivory towers in the OP.

Not following SFFA is not worse than the complete destruction of global US hegemony. Not for Americans, anyway.

[Anonymous]

“
People not from the west but living in the west overlook the downsides and advocate for a system that they understand how to navigate vs one that they do not understand. There is much less angst from the native born. This isn’t unique to the top privates, it applies equally to the top UC schools given that many of these families live in CA. Our system of private universities is unique and the fact that they aren’t focused on peak academics but rather a high baseline then other factors is also pretty unique.

They want to attend these schools because if their prestige but at the same want to change them in ways that would reduce their prestige longer term.”

+1
Well put.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“
People not from the west but living in the west overlook the downsides and advocate for a system that they understand how to navigate vs one that they do not understand. There is much less angst from the native born. This isn’t unique to the top privates, it applies equally to the top UC schools given that many of these families live in CA. Our system of private universities is unique and the fact that they aren’t focused on peak academics but rather a high baseline then other factors is also pretty unique.

They want to attend these schools because if their prestige but at the same want to change them in ways that would reduce their prestige longer term.”

+1
Well put.

+2

[Anonymous]

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.

The pool of truly highly qualified applicants is much smaller than the number who appear highly qualified on paper. grade inflation, test optional, superscoring, score choice, fake ECs all make it highly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, turns college admissions into a cynical game of PR and marketing.

These colleges want to have orchestras and ballet performances and basketball games in addition to academic performances. For every person wanting a lottery there is another that argues to stop letting in high scoring geeks and let is attractive "socially adept' football fan types.

There is no consensus on what our top colleges should be. Overall, the Yale report seems to say that the process needs to dispense with admission preferences that skew everything to rich people. It says nothing about a lottery.

[Anonymous]

A lottery would still favor wealthy students. All the resources would go to manic zillion dollar test prep cram schools to make sure a kid gets the correct lottery test score.

[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.

The pool of truly highly qualified applicants is much smaller than the number who appear highly qualified on paper. grade inflation, test optional, superscoring, score choice, fake ECs all make it highly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, turns college admissions into a cynical game of PR and marketing.

Not really. There are infinitely more qualified students than real test scores (no cheating, no test prep, no grade inflation) show.

[Anonymous]

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.

The pool of truly highly qualified applicants is much smaller than the number who appear highly qualified on paper. grade inflation, test optional, superscoring, score choice, fake ECs all make it highly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, turns college admissions into a cynical game of PR and marketing.

It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that Yale and its peers have no ability to reverse grade inflation or eliminate the cynical game of PR and marketing, and their admissions offices have no ability to distinguish between the truly qualified and those who only look qualified on paper. Picking the 2% who are truly qualified from a very large pool of people who appear to be truly qualified is impossible.

[Anonymous]

Where universities have lost the pot is that they don’t teach. They have these super ego inflated professors who care more about research and their classes are afterthought..

[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.

The pool of truly highly qualified applicants is much smaller than the number who appear highly qualified on paper. grade inflation, test optional, superscoring, score choice, fake ECs all make it highly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, turns college admissions into a cynical game of PR and marketing.

It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that Yale and its peers have no ability to reverse grade inflation or eliminate the cynical game of PR and marketing, and their admissions offices have no ability to distinguish between the truly qualified and those who only look qualified on paper. Picking the 2% who are truly qualified from a very large pool of people who appear to be truly qualified is impossible.

Qualified for what? Yale needs to have biochem majors and math majors and history majors and drama students and hockey players on and on. You don't get that with a lottery. They can change to a lottery but it fundamentally changes lots of things about current American colleges.

And what good is freeing up science research dollars because you instituted a lottery and ending up without the students interested in pursuing the research? That makes no sense.

I see nothing in this report that indicates a lottery system is going to be used by American universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where universities have lost the pot is that they don’t teach. They have these super ego inflated professors who care more about research and their classes are afterthought..

That is nonsense. Some professors are excellent teachers and have a really good reputation around that. The students absolutely try to get into classes with top professors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

The pool of truly highly qualified applicants is much smaller than the number who appear highly qualified on paper. grade inflation, test optional, superscoring, score choice, fake ECs all make it highly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, turns college admissions into a cynical game of PR and marketing.

It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that Yale and its peers have no ability to reverse grade inflation or eliminate the cynical game of PR and marketing, and their admissions offices have no ability to distinguish between the truly qualified and those who only look qualified on paper. Picking the 2% who are truly qualified from a very large pool of people who appear to be truly qualified is impossible.

Qualified for what? Yale needs to have biochem majors and math majors and history majors and drama students and hockey players on and on. You don't get that with a lottery. They can change to a lottery but it fundamentally changes lots of things about current American colleges.

And what good is freeing up science research dollars because you instituted a lottery and ending up without the students interested in pursuing the research? That makes no sense.

I see nothing in this report that indicates a lottery system is going to be used by American universities.

I could do without Hockey players.

You know what would be popular - if the ivy League together got rid of 20% of their sports. Hockey is popular, I get it. But how about moving the following from varsity/recruited sports to club sports:


Mens sailing
Women sailing
Mens skiing
Womens skiing
mens water polo
womens water polo
mens squash
womens squash
mens fencing
womens fencing
I'd also get rid of mens field hockey and women's wrestling but maybe that's too controversial

if you have sports that dont bring in 30 spectators at home, it's a club sport. treat it like one.

get rid of legacy at the same time.

get rid of the Z list.

and put in place SAT minimums.

announce it all at once.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

The pool of truly highly qualified applicants is much smaller than the number who appear highly qualified on paper. grade inflation, test optional, superscoring, score choice, fake ECs all make it highly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, turns college admissions into a cynical game of PR and marketing.

It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that Yale and its peers have no ability to reverse grade inflation or eliminate the cynical game of PR and marketing, and their admissions offices have no ability to distinguish between the truly qualified and those who only look qualified on paper. Picking the 2% who are truly qualified from a very large pool of people who appear to be truly qualified is impossible.

Qualified for what? Yale needs to have biochem majors and math majors and history majors and drama students and hockey players on and on. You don't get that with a lottery. They can change to a lottery but it fundamentally changes lots of things about current American colleges.

And what good is freeing up science research dollars because you instituted a lottery and ending up without the students interested in pursuing the research? That makes no sense.

I see nothing in this report that indicates a lottery system is going to be used by American universities.

I could do without Hockey players.

You know what would be popular - if the ivy League together got rid of 20% of their sports. Hockey is popular, I get it. But how about moving the following from varsity/recruited sports to club sports:


Mens sailing
Women sailing
Mens skiing
Womens skiing
mens water polo
womens water polo
mens squash
womens squash
mens fencing
womens fencing
I'd also get rid of mens field hockey and women's wrestling but maybe that's too controversial

if you have sports that dont bring in 30 spectators at home, it's a club sport. treat it like one.

get rid of legacy at the same time.

get rid of the Z list.

and put in place SAT minimums.

announce it all at once.

Wouldn't it just be easier to have your kid play by the existing rules rather than trying to reshape it in your image? Get your kid into sailing, squash, water polo and fencing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

The pool of truly highly qualified applicants is much smaller than the number who appear highly qualified on paper. grade inflation, test optional, superscoring, score choice, fake ECs all make it highly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, turns college admissions into a cynical game of PR and marketing.

It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that Yale and its peers have no ability to reverse grade inflation or eliminate the cynical game of PR and marketing, and their admissions offices have no ability to distinguish between the truly qualified and those who only look qualified on paper. Picking the 2% who are truly qualified from a very large pool of people who appear to be truly qualified is impossible.

Qualified for what? Yale needs to have biochem majors and math majors and history majors and drama students and hockey players on and on. You don't get that with a lottery. They can change to a lottery but it fundamentally changes lots of things about current American colleges.

And what good is freeing up science research dollars because you instituted a lottery and ending up without the students interested in pursuing the research? That makes no sense.

I see nothing in this report that indicates a lottery system is going to be used by American universities.

I could do without Hockey players.

You know what would be popular - if the ivy League together got rid of 20% of their sports. Hockey is popular, I get it. But how about moving the following from varsity/recruited sports to club sports:


Mens sailing
Women sailing
Mens skiing
Womens skiing
mens water polo
womens water polo
mens squash
womens squash
mens fencing
womens fencing
I'd also get rid of mens field hockey and women's wrestling but maybe that's too controversial

if you have sports that dont bring in 30 spectators at home, it's a club sport. treat it like one.

get rid of legacy at the same time.

get rid of the Z list.

and put in place SAT minimums.

announce it all at once.

I am fine with giving up sports recruiting. It favors wealthy kids like most other things but has no academic purpose.