If it’s harder then ever to get into top colleges, why do professors complain students now are bad?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college? If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else. And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility. Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation? Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant? Why can't this happen over several generations? Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income? Why? Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.

Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.

It is true that many disadvantaged kids enter college academically behind those kids that have had more opportunity. (It is hard to take Calc if your school doesn't offer it.) Once admitted, however, kids from low-income first-gen backgrounds are just as likely to graduate from selective schools as their wealthier and more robustly-prepared peers.This is despite any initial skills gap. Further, lifetime outcomes for FGLI kids graduating from top schools are vastly better than those of peers who attended less-selective schools. While it is true that lifetime earnings slightly lag those of privileged grads, much of this is influenced by debt, familial obligations, and lack of generational wealth buffering or transfer.

It depends.

Based on a study of UC graduates, going to better schools helped the income of hispanics but not blacks.

That isn't what that study said, though. Rather, it confirmed that educational prospects were lowered for both groups when shunted from selective to non-selective UC's. Further, the reason that incomes did not decline amongst black students in the cohort shunted from selective to non-selective UC's was because more opted not enroll there, but to attend Ivy leagues instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college? If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else. And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility. Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation? Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant? Why can't this happen over several generations? Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income? Why? Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.

Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.

Once again, please read the privileged poor. You don’t know where these kids are coming from. They’re not just random low income students chosen out of a hat. Most are nowhere near inner city youth either. Please stop assuming you know everything about a population based off of a few statistics. You need to actually research into the class of poor students that are evaluated and chosen to enter Ivy League institutions and the like.

Please enlighten us...

Well for starters, many come from top magnets and boarding schools. They’re educationally privileged.

At least these kids are qualified and can do the work. It sucks for the non FGLI kid who performed better yet got rejected but this is no different than getting bumped for a donor kid.

It used to be that athletes were the only unqualified kids being admitted. There weren’t that many and many schools offered special classes for them. Most major donor kids had access to private schools and tutors. While they got in over higher IQ middle class kids, they weren’t really dragging down the classes. The unqualified FGLI kids are dragging down the quality.

Athletes were never unqualified, they just have skills that your little grinder will never have and you resent that. Some of them may not be at the top of the distribution but they are well qualified at any Ivy, Patriot, UAA, NESCAC, etc.

I don't get athletic families' obsession with the idea that they are special. We all have worked in a team, failed, and won. That isn't some unique experience to throwing a ball.

There is a difference when you are competing at a very high level. It's not the same experience as sports at lower levels or the high school science bowl team.
The stakes are high so there is more pressure and yet at the same time, you have to display good character because there a pretty bad consequences for displays of poor character.
You have to take chances and you have to be OK with failing and the uncertainty that comes with that failure. "After that loss, am I sure I was ever any good?"

And you can't fake athletic achievement like you can with a contrived non-profit (not that all non-profits are contrived) or pay for play research (not that all research is pay for play).

I KNOW my kid would have had better academics if she didn't have 20+ hours a week practice and so many days off to attend international events.
Your child had the luxury of maximizing academics and fitting in whatever else they can with their spare time. My girl didn't.
You can't point at differences in academics and assume your kid is a better student than mine.
I disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top 1% income students take 20% seats of top colleges, top 20%(-1%) income take 50+% seats. While bottom 50% is less than 14%.
Are people here mostly bottom 50%? what kind students professors complained about? only FGLI?

Top 1%, top 20% or bottom 50%, they are test optional and admitted on holistic factors.

Not enough merit.

So blame on holistic view admission? or take out some BS from holistic view?

Worst is UC system, UCB has 65% enrolls have perfect 4.0 GPA, while 20% to 30% of all first-semester calculus students at UC Berkeley enter the classroom with "severe preparation deficits",instructors are routinely forced to pause university-level lectures to reteach middle school-level arithmetic—such as manipulating fractions, decimals, basic exponents, and foundational geometric logic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a prof. The problem (generally speaking) isn't the first gen kids (a few, yes, but this is a much, much broader problem). Nor generally is it the athletes (honestly, in my school the athletes in certain sports end up at the low end of the grade distribution but this has always been true). If these were the issues, profs wouldn't make general statements about "students today."

The problem is that kids coming out of HS are far less prepared than they were a decade ago. Hallway conversations are often about how entitled kids don't even seem to recognize they are asking for unusual accommodations (test retakes, "study guides" that tell them exactly what material from the class lectures/readings is going to be on the test). They complain that there is too much material even though everyone I know is teaching less content than we did when I started my career. They don't have good study skills (they often prepare for a test by simply reading the slides posted online [bold]rather than making flashcards/documents that will enable them to memorize or quiz themselves[/bold]).

My guess is that this is a combination of lax school policies and universities having trouble identifying the best students for admission. For instance, a) some universities are still test optional; b) so many kids get extra time on standardized testing that a disproportionally larger set of kids with the highest SAT scores are not necessarily the best students from that HS, and c) grade inflation makes it difficult for universities to differentiate the best students.

We have spent years telling people that memorizing is anathema to learning.

[Anonymous]

The entire education system should not be dumbed down to accommodate those less qualified by college entry age. The problem is that there is no investment since birth, at home, or in failing schools. If someone gets to college age and cannot pass middle school math, but is pushed along to graduate, that is a problem of a failing school system. Complain to the teacher's union, not here,we didn't educate (or NOT educate) these kids properly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college? If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else. And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility. Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation? Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant? Why can't this happen over several generations? Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income? Why? Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.

Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.

Once again, please read the privileged poor. You don’t know where these kids are coming from. They’re not just random low income students chosen out of a hat. Most are nowhere near inner city youth either. Please stop assuming you know everything about a population based off of a few statistics. You need to actually research into the class of poor students that are evaluated and chosen to enter Ivy League institutions and the like.

Please enlighten us...

Well for starters, many come from top magnets and boarding schools. They’re educationally privileged.

At least these kids are qualified and can do the work. It sucks for the non FGLI kid who performed better yet got rejected but this is no different than getting bumped for a donor kid.

It used to be that athletes were the only unqualified kids being admitted. There weren’t that many and many schools offered special classes for them. Most major donor kids had access to private schools and tutors. While they got in over higher IQ middle class kids, they weren’t really dragging down the classes. The unqualified FGLI kids are dragging down the quality.

Athletes were never unqualified, they just have skills that your little grinder will never have and you resent that. Some of them may not be at the top of the distribution but they are well qualified at any Ivy, Patriot, UAA, NESCAC, etc.

I don't know a single recruited athlete that is not a grinder. Competition forces the grinding.

You are absolutely correct. I fixed it below.

Athletes were never unqualified, they just have additional skills that your little solely academic grinder will never have and you resent that. Some of them may not be at the top of the academic distribution (many are) but they are well qualified at any Ivy, Patriot, UAA, NESCAC, etc.

They're never going to understand how hard it is.
It's just different skillsets.
I don't think my athlete is ever going to be able to crack quantum computing or cold fusion but the ones that do are going to want someone like my girl on their team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HS is not as rigorous as it used to be. Students have UW 4.0 GPAs but the courses were watered down, they were given retakes and were allowed to reschedule tests if they were overwhelmed for any reason. Or they cheated and never really learned how to study.

Either way, many even with the highest rigor and perfect transcripts to into college unprepared because they were coddled.

This is the right answer. Massive grade inflation because boomers kids had to be perfect and it only got worse from there.

Uh, boomer kids would be Gen X. You know, the latchkey kids left entirely alone to do their thing until the sun went down. Television used to have little reminders at midnight - Do you know where your children are. Because boomers would forget about their children and needed gentle reminders. For Gen X, grades and tests were still hard but no one cared. Because, whatever, nevermind. Can't blame grade inflation and this rat race on boomer parents. They could not have cared less.

But the millennials have a lot to answer for.

I thought the boomer's kids were millenials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college? If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else. And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility. Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation? Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant? Why can't this happen over several generations? Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income? Why? Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.

Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.

Once again, please read the privileged poor. You don’t know where these kids are coming from. They’re not just random low income students chosen out of a hat. Most are nowhere near inner city youth either. Please stop assuming you know everything about a population based off of a few statistics. You need to actually research into the class of poor students that are evaluated and chosen to enter Ivy League institutions and the like.

Please enlighten us...

Well for starters, many come from top magnets and boarding schools. They’re educationally privileged.

At least these kids are qualified and can do the work. It sucks for the non FGLI kid who performed better yet got rejected but this is no different than getting bumped for a donor kid.

It used to be that athletes were the only unqualified kids being admitted. There weren’t that many and many schools offered special classes for them. Most major donor kids had access to private schools and tutors. While they got in over higher IQ middle class kids, they weren’t really dragging down the classes. The unqualified FGLI kids are dragging down the quality.

Athletes were never unqualified, they just have skills that your little grinder will never have and you resent that. Some of them may not be at the top of the distribution but they are well qualified at any Ivy, Patriot, UAA, NESCAC, etc.

I don't get athletic families' obsession with the idea that they are special. We all have worked in a team, failed, and won. That isn't some unique experience to throwing a ball.

There is a difference when you are competing at a very high level. It's not the same experience as sports at lower levels or the high school science bowl team.
The stakes are high so there is more pressure and yet at the same time, you have to display good character because there a pretty bad consequences for displays of poor character.
You have to take chances and you have to be OK with failing and the uncertainty that comes with that failure. "After that loss, am I sure I was ever any good?"

And you can't fake athletic achievement like you can with a contrived non-profit (not that all non-profits are contrived) or pay for play research (not that all research is pay for play).

I KNOW my kid would have had better academics if she didn't have 20+ hours a week practice and so many days off to attend international events.
Your child had the luxury of maximizing academics and fitting in whatever else they can with their spare time. My girl didn't.
You can't point at differences in academics and assume your kid is a better student than mine.
I disagree.

This is a poor argument. Most academic kids would be better athletes if they didn't spend 20+ hours a week studying instead with no days off, enjoying the luxury of maximizing sports. By your logic, you can't point at differences in athletic achievement and assume that your kid is a better athlete than they are. Which is ridiculous. Those kids are better students because they worked to be. Just like your kid is a better athlete because they worked to be. And I say this as someone whose DC straddled that divide for a long time, and knows the cost intimately.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even at places like Harvard or Stanford, professors complain students are not prepared for college. In Purdue, which isn’t easy to get into for engineering and CS, professors complain that most of their class are using AI and not learning the material. These colleges regularly turn away straight A students, so what is going on?

Because two things can be true at once. A large number of students with highly inflated GPAs are competing against one another for relatively few slots at “top colleges”. Because these students generally have benefitted from grade inflation and may be over reliant on technology aids they are not as well prepared academically or from a resiliency standpoint as kids were a generation or two ago.

So colleges and professors have to provide remedial instruction or classes to get many “top kids” ready for traditional college level work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college? If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else. And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility. Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation? Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant? Why can't this happen over several generations? Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income? Why? Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.

Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.

It is true that many disadvantaged kids enter college academically behind those kids that have had more opportunity. (It is hard to take Calc if your school doesn't offer it.) Once admitted, however, kids from low-income first-gen backgrounds are just as likely to graduate from selective schools as their wealthier and more robustly-prepared peers.This is despite any initial skills gap. Further, lifetime outcomes for FGLI kids graduating from top schools are vastly better than those of peers who attended less-selective schools. While it is true that lifetime earnings slightly lag those of privileged grads, much of this is influenced by debt, familial obligations, and lack of generational wealth buffering or transfer.

It depends.

Based on a study of UC graduates, going to better schools helped the income of hispanics but not blacks.

That isn't what that study said, though. Rather, it confirmed that educational prospects were lowered for both groups when shunted from selective to non-selective UC's. Further, the reason that incomes did not decline amongst black students in the cohort shunted from selective to non-selective UC's was because more opted not enroll there, but to attend Ivy leagues instead.

I am looking at the bleemer paper now now. Can you point to the page where the black kids that didn't get into UCLA ended up going to ivy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college? If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else. And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility. Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation? Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant? Why can't this happen over several generations? Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income? Why? Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.

Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.

Once again, please read the privileged poor. You don’t know where these kids are coming from. They’re not just random low income students chosen out of a hat. Most are nowhere near inner city youth either. Please stop assuming you know everything about a population based off of a few statistics. You need to actually research into the class of poor students that are evaluated and chosen to enter Ivy League institutions and the like.

Please enlighten us...

Well for starters, many come from top magnets and boarding schools. They’re educationally privileged.

At least these kids are qualified and can do the work. It sucks for the non FGLI kid who performed better yet got rejected but this is no different than getting bumped for a donor kid.

It used to be that athletes were the only unqualified kids being admitted. There weren’t that many and many schools offered special classes for them. Most major donor kids had access to private schools and tutors. While they got in over higher IQ middle class kids, they weren’t really dragging down the classes. The unqualified FGLI kids are dragging down the quality.

Athletes were never unqualified, they just have skills that your little grinder will never have and you resent that. Some of them may not be at the top of the distribution but they are well qualified at any Ivy, Patriot, UAA, NESCAC, etc.

I don't get athletic families' obsession with the idea that they are special. We all have worked in a team, failed, and won. That isn't some unique experience to throwing a ball.

There is a difference when you are competing at a very high level. It's not the same experience as sports at lower levels or the high school science bowl team.
The stakes are high so there is more pressure and yet at the same time, you have to display good character because there a pretty bad consequences for displays of poor character.
You have to take chances and you have to be OK with failing and the uncertainty that comes with that failure. "After that loss, am I sure I was ever any good?"

And you can't fake athletic achievement like you can with a contrived non-profit (not that all non-profits are contrived) or pay for play research (not that all research is pay for play).

I KNOW my kid would have had better academics if she didn't have 20+ hours a week practice and so many days off to attend international events.
Your child had the luxury of maximizing academics and fitting in whatever else they can with their spare time. My girl didn't.
You can't point at differences in academics and assume your kid is a better student than mine.
I disagree.

This is a poor argument. Most academic kids would be better athletes if they didn't spend 20+ hours a week studying instead with no days off, enjoying the luxury of maximizing sports. By your logic, you can't point at differences in athletic achievement and assume that your kid is a better athlete than they are. Which is ridiculous. Those kids are better students because they worked to be. Just like your kid is a better athlete because they worked to be. And I say this as someone whose DC straddled that divide for a long time, and knows the cost intimately.

If my kid spent those 20 hours focusing on academics, she could have been every bit as academically successful as those academic kids.
If those academic kids had spent 20+ hours a week on sports, they could not have been as athletically successful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

Unfortunately, all true. An AO recently said at an in-person conference that they(an elite/ivy) are "all fighting to get the rural kids." In a post-supreme court SFFA ruling, they are finding diversity without directly seeking race. AO goals are not the same as what professors would choose. At some elites professors sit on admission committees and many will share frustrations with what the process has become.
We have two currently at two different ivies and another attended a similar elite non-ivy, and I know many students and professors across ivy/elite and UVA and others. Many are not ready at all. The unhooked kids almost always are the top part of the curves, get invited to TA, get the departmental awards. Sure, it may not matter for some career goals but GPA matters for many next steps. The unhooked students appreciate the fairly easy path to being above average. The unprepared students not only often change majors to something that gives easy A, they are a large mental health risk. Professors will tell you the top students are overall more impressive, more intelligent than a decade ago but the bottom quartile is much worse and it started before the pandemic, then got dramatically worse with TO beginning fall 2021(college grads 2025). TO is over but the high school grade inflation, the gaps from the pandemic years, the culture of re-taking tests and poor study habits in high school, exams in high school only worth 25% of the grade when they are 80-100% of the grade in college and no re-takes.

DO you have any actual evidence for this? I'll answer for you. No, you don't.

Complete blithering fiction.

I wasn't even going to weigh in, but then I saw your post. So ridiculous to blame rural or truly economically disadvantaged kids, as they are by far the smallest population at any Ivy +. If the overall standards of a school are slipping, it is down to the 80% who are not only wealthy but ultra-wealthy. What is "fracturing long-standing institutions" is the total disregard for the middle class, same as in our wider political system. This is the reason everyone has turned into a cheating slacker: the one group that isn't either too disenfranchised to work or too entitled is the group with least clout in the admissions process.

This is a story as old as time.....people are jealous when they see someone getting something that they feel that they deserve. No different than the race card being played by the republican party to lure in uneducated whites.

Maybe the best solution for all is for the top private schools (most top schools in the US are private) to go back to what they have historically been at the undergraduate level. Historically they were a training ground for Upper and almost Upper class families of wealth and other families of power and influence. The MC and lower UMC as a whole has never been actually wanted or welcome as undergraduates at these institutions. The top schools can dismiss the idea of helping the less well off in the name of 'fairness' to the MC and UMC families which covet admission but constantly cry about cost or access. Redirecting all of these kids to the public system will help everyone by providing more and better students to the public schools.

People will cry 'they have our tax dollars, they must do what we demand'! No, they need not cater to you, they are private institutions. They do not need your tax dollars to fulfill their undergraduate mission (no more poor means no more Pell money and it's not needed anyway if most are full pay). If we are stupid enough as a country to shut down graduate research grants and damage the most efficient research machine in the world (and it looks like the current administration might just be that stupid) we as a country deserve the end result.

The overwhelming majority of R1 institutions are public schools.

We don't need private R1s. If the grants all go to the public schools so will the faculty.

Research money should generally go to the best proposals. Anything else is a poor use of resources.

At the undergraduate level the elite privates should just do away with performative pandering, acknowledge that they are a luxury good, and return to being finishing schools for the smartest of the wealthy. Everyone would be better off in the long run.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college? If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else. And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility. Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation? Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant? Why can't this happen over several generations? Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income? Why? Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.

Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.

Once again, please read the privileged poor. You don’t know where these kids are coming from. They’re not just random low income students chosen out of a hat. Most are nowhere near inner city youth either. Please stop assuming you know everything about a population based off of a few statistics. You need to actually research into the class of poor students that are evaluated and chosen to enter Ivy League institutions and the like.

Please enlighten us...

Well for starters, many come from top magnets and boarding schools. They’re educationally privileged.

At least these kids are qualified and can do the work. It sucks for the non FGLI kid who performed better yet got rejected but this is no different than getting bumped for a donor kid.

It used to be that athletes were the only unqualified kids being admitted. There weren’t that many and many schools offered special classes for them. Most major donor kids had access to private schools and tutors. While they got in over higher IQ middle class kids, they weren’t really dragging down the classes. The unqualified FGLI kids are dragging down the quality.

Athletes were never unqualified, they just have skills that your little grinder will never have and you resent that. Some of them may not be at the top of the distribution but they are well qualified at any Ivy, Patriot, UAA, NESCAC, etc.

I don't get athletic families' obsession with the idea that they are special. We all have worked in a team, failed, and won. That isn't some unique experience to throwing a ball.

There is a difference when you are competing at a very high level. It's not the same experience as sports at lower levels or the high school science bowl team.
The stakes are high so there is more pressure and yet at the same time, you have to display good character because there a pretty bad consequences for displays of poor character.
You have to take chances and you have to be OK with failing and the uncertainty that comes with that failure. "After that loss, am I sure I was ever any good?"

And you can't fake athletic achievement like you can with a contrived non-profit (not that all non-profits are contrived) or pay for play research (not that all research is pay for play).

I KNOW my kid would have had better academics if she didn't have 20+ hours a week practice and so many days off to attend international events.
Your child had the luxury of maximizing academics and fitting in whatever else they can with their spare time. My girl didn't.
You can't point at differences in academics and assume your kid is a better student than mine.
I disagree.

This is a poor argument. Most academic kids would be better athletes if they didn't spend 20+ hours a week studying instead with no days off, enjoying the luxury of maximizing sports. By your logic, you can't point at differences in athletic achievement and assume that your kid is a better athlete than they are. Which is ridiculous. Those kids are better students because they worked to be. Just like your kid is a better athlete because they worked to be. And I say this as someone whose DC straddled that divide for a long time, and knows the cost intimately.

If my kid spent those 20 hours focusing on academics, she could have been every bit as academically successful as those academic kids.
If those academic kids had spent 20+ hours a week on sports, they could not have been as athletically successful.

Except that it's impossible to prove this. There's a chance that at least some of those kids could have been as athletically successful. There's also a chance that your kid would not have been as academically successful. The higher the level of attainment in either endeavor, the lower the chance that a single individual will excel at both. Few people are outliers in all things. It's wrong to assume that athletics encompasses academics, and that an athletic superstar would have excelled at anything they had attempted whereas an academic kid would not have. In fact it's so wrong it even has a name: fundamental attribution bias.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college? If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else. And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility. Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation? Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant? Why can't this happen over several generations? Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income? Why? Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.

Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.

Once again, please read the privileged poor. You don’t know where these kids are coming from. They’re not just random low income students chosen out of a hat. Most are nowhere near inner city youth either. Please stop assuming you know everything about a population based off of a few statistics. You need to actually research into the class of poor students that are evaluated and chosen to enter Ivy League institutions and the like.

Please enlighten us...

Well for starters, many come from top magnets and boarding schools. They’re educationally privileged.

At least these kids are qualified and can do the work. It sucks for the non FGLI kid who performed better yet got rejected but this is no different than getting bumped for a donor kid.

It used to be that athletes were the only unqualified kids being admitted. There weren’t that many and many schools offered special classes for them. Most major donor kids had access to private schools and tutors. While they got in over higher IQ middle class kids, they weren’t really dragging down the classes. The unqualified FGLI kids are dragging down the quality.

Athletes were never unqualified, they just have skills that your little grinder will never have and you resent that. Some of them may not be at the top of the distribution but they are well qualified at any Ivy, Patriot, UAA, NESCAC, etc.

I don't get athletic families' obsession with the idea that they are special. We all have worked in a team, failed, and won. That isn't some unique experience to throwing a ball.

There is a difference when you are competing at a very high level. It's not the same experience as sports at lower levels or the high school science bowl team.
The stakes are high so there is more pressure and yet at the same time, you have to display good character because there a pretty bad consequences for displays of poor character.
You have to take chances and you have to be OK with failing and the uncertainty that comes with that failure. "After that loss, am I sure I was ever any good?"

And you can't fake athletic achievement like you can with a contrived non-profit (not that all non-profits are contrived) or pay for play research (not that all research is pay for play).

I KNOW my kid would have had better academics if she didn't have 20+ hours a week practice and so many days off to attend international events.
Your child had the luxury of maximizing academics and fitting in whatever else they can with their spare time. My girl didn't.
You can't point at differences in academics and assume your kid is a better student than mine.
I disagree.

This is a poor argument. Most academic kids would be better athletes if they didn't spend 20+ hours a week studying instead with no days off, enjoying the luxury of maximizing sports. By your logic, you can't point at differences in athletic achievement and assume that your kid is a better athlete than they are. Which is ridiculous. Those kids are better students because they worked to be. Just like your kid is a better athlete because they worked to be. And I say this as someone whose DC straddled that divide for a long time, and knows the cost intimately.

If my kid spent those 20 hours focusing on academics, she could have been every bit as academically successful as those academic kids.
If those academic kids had spent 20+ hours a week on sports, they could not have been as athletically successful.

Except that it's impossible to prove this. There's a chance that at least some of those kids could have been as athletically successful. There's also a chance that your kid would not have been as academically successful. The higher the level of attainment in either endeavor, the lower the chance that a single individual will excel at both. Few people are outliers in all things. It's wrong to assume that athletics encompasses academics, and that an athletic superstar would have excelled at anything they had attempted whereas an academic kid would not have. In fact it's so wrong it even has a name: fundamental attribution bias.

+1, can't be more true, it's completely different talent, it's not about how much time you devote, it's your talent determines your upper limit of achivement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids.

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college? If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else. And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility. Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation? Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant? Why can't this happen over several generations? Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income? Why? Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.

Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.

It is true that many disadvantaged kids enter college academically behind those kids that have had more opportunity. (It is hard to take Calc if your school doesn't offer it.) Once admitted, however, kids from low-income first-gen backgrounds are just as likely to graduate from selective schools as their wealthier and more robustly-prepared peers.This is despite any initial skills gap. Further, lifetime outcomes for FGLI kids graduating from top schools are vastly better than those of peers who attended less-selective schools. While it is true that lifetime earnings slightly lag those of privileged grads, much of this is influenced by debt, familial obligations, and lack of generational wealth buffering or transfer.

It depends.

Based on a study of UC graduates, going to better schools helped the income of hispanics but not blacks.

That isn't what that study said, though. Rather, it confirmed that educational prospects were lowered for both groups when shunted from selective to non-selective UC's. Further, the reason that incomes did not decline amongst black students in the cohort shunted from selective to non-selective UC's was because more opted not enroll there, but to attend Ivy leagues instead.

I am looking at the bleemer paper now now. Can you point to the page where the black kids that didn't get into UCLA ended up going to ivy?

Page 142, though I read it in an interview with the author where he was directly questioned about this result. The paper also mentions the small sample size of black UC applicants as problematic when generalizing about outcomes. Certainly you would not extrapolate these results to the US at large.