Universities Really Are Messed Up (says Yale

[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.

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.

Do as much of that as you like but it has nothing to do with pursuing higher education. Makes no sense.

The school values sports. You don’t. Find a school that aliwoth your priorities.

The Yale report indicates that that ship is sailing. Has nothing to do with me. They want to get rid of things like recruiting for sailing that is angering the country. Yale probably needs research dollars more than it needs a sailing team.

People are angry about sailing?

Asians are angry about sports.

Some are. Some are not. Some do not care either way. "Asians" are not monolithic in their beliefs.

I am angry about athletic recruiting and I am a WASP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I was born here and I remember a time when the SATs counted for a hell of a lot more than it does now.

Holistic admissions was created to keep Jews out of Harvard. Literally created to give admissions officers enough discretion to discriminate.

SATs were supposed to be a tool find a diamond in the rough, not become a money generating company that makes money off the fear of parents.

[Anonymous]

I'm a white person who lives in NYC and I'm very much against athletic recruiting at any college that isn't D1. Agree that these events have more kids on the field than in the stands. What is the point. in addition to the recruiting, it's the money for fields, coaches, staff serving the already overserved. Get rid of all of it.

[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.

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.

Do as much of that as you like but it has nothing to do with pursuing higher education. Makes no sense.

The school values sports. You don’t. Find a school that aliwoth your priorities.

The Yale report indicates that that ship is sailing. Has nothing to do with me. They want to get rid of things like recruiting for sailing that is angering the country. Yale probably needs research dollars more than it needs a sailing team.

People are angry about sailing?

Asians are angry about sports.

Some are. Some are not. Some do not care either way. "Asians" are not monolithic in their beliefs.

Not all Asians just like not all men

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a white person who lives in NYC and I'm very much against athletic recruiting at any college that isn't D1. Agree that these events have more kids on the field than in the stands. What is the point. in addition to the recruiting, it's the money for fields, coaches, staff serving the already overserved. Get rid of all of it.

They generate money, even though you can’t figure out how they do that.

Also, God help me if we have a bunch of colleges that are just kids who are good at taking tests.

We need students with lots of talents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair to Yale, I do know a very wealthy legacy kid from one of the top high schools in the country, whose grandfather made a huge donation to Yale's sailing team (grandson tried to get recruited for sailing), and was rejected. He ended up at Princeton, where he was also a legacy.
At the same time, I know an athlete there right now who got a 1200 on the SAT.

They had that Olympic gold medal figure skater at Yale. But the hard truth is in the current environment that all needs to get blown up to own the libs. And honestly, I would rather have scientific research in this country than sailing teams and figure skating medals. So I vote for the research.

That is nonsensical. None of it needs to get blown up to "own the libs". DEI which is misguided needs to get blown up.

[Anonymous]

No matter which way they do admissions, some group is going to wind up being pissed off.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:These are private institutions with their own priorities which they have every right to. The idea that admissions is somehow hierarchical in terms of scores and grades needs to just go away. Elite schools want an interesting mix of interests and talents. They are assembling a class. The fact that a kid might have better admissions chances from having collected rare western wildflowers and being able to have a discussion on them or played violin at an incredible level, or being a top volleyball player while keeping high grades than someone at the top of their class in high school with high test scores is fine. Actually, it is more than fine.

Maybe we need to separate the undergraduate portions of these schools from the graduate portions. The grant money is actually for the grad schools and their research anyway so why pretend. Admissions to the grad schools is pretty straightforward and subject based which makes sense for them as well. The undergraduate schools could make sure that they aren't admitting a disproportionate number of their grad students from their undergraduates and the undergraduate schools can do as they please.

But they don't have a right to tax exempt status.
They don't have a right to any federal funding.
They don't have a right to any research grants.

If their private status takes away our ability to control our dollars, we should only be funding state schools. Let the private colleges fund their own research and their own student aid and their own donation incentives.

We could do that and give up the greatest basic research apparatus in the history of mankind.

Or, you could quit conflating the graduate side of the universities with the undergraduate side.

I conflate the two because they are the same. You are making an artificial distinction.

Do you intend to hold all republicans responsible for trump? Why? Can't you make the distinction between trump and the rest of the party?

The distinction isn’t artificial, it just isn’t something that you want to contemplate because it doesn’t fit your narrative. Same goes for your republican comment. I was a republican for 35 years. Anyone that voted for that POS deserves whatever shame they get. They enabled the the grifter. The backlash will be hard.

The backlash will be temporary. It always is, but the free political points from bashing DEI at colleges is permanent for the foreseeable future.

Why can't ALL the research at Harvard be done at state schools? If ALL the funding goes there, you don't think the researchers will follow?

They might and that would be fine. My issue is with demanding that institutions drop their priorities for what another group believes to be the "correct" priorities. It's just fundamentally wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

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.

You are fine with it, so what. The Ivies have been recruiting for athletics for 125 years, it's important to them and they have every right to it. They shouldn't have to give one inch on sports recruiting until every other school does. Why should they disadvantage themselves relative to Alabama any more than they already do by not offering scholarships??

Because they want to get research dollars from the government. What is it you are missing about this conversation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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

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

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

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

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

How do you think the SES profile at Tsinghua or Peking compares to Stanford or Harvard?

And is HYPSM the only ladder for social mobility?
Sometimes social mobility from the bottom to the top takes more than a single generation
Go describe our college admissions process in any other country, they will think you must be mistaken.

I am pretty sure that it doesn't look as you are implying. But, there might be less representation by China's 1% because they are all trying to get their money and kids out of the country and choosing to educate their kids abroad. What does that really say about their system?

There is less representation of the 1% in asian countries because you can't buy your way into those schools, they don't have legacy preferences and expensive extracurriculars don't matter.
The ones that come here are not "choosing" to come here. They are coming here because they can't get in anywhere good in their home country and they can afford to come here, they are here because our system is corrupt.

It is well known that the party elite get slots. I’m sure that it would be the same for the Ambani’s in India.

Do you have any evidence of this well known fact that party officials are getting slots at Tsinghua and Peking?
Fraud in college admissions is punishable by 7 years in prison in China.

Korea impeached and removed a president in part based on her exerting influence to get admissions for a friend's child at her alma mater.

These cultures take this stuff pretty seriously.

It's easy start with by typing "admissions advantages for the children of party elites into China's top universities" into google

There have also been publicized admissions scandals, again easy to find.

System looks a lot like ours under the covers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

Do as much of that as you like but it has nothing to do with pursuing higher education. Makes no sense.

The school values sports. You don’t. Find a school that aliwoth your priorities.

The Yale report indicates that that ship is sailing. Has nothing to do with me. They want to get rid of things like recruiting for sailing that is angering the country. Yale probably needs research dollars more than it needs a sailing team.

Athletic recruiting isn't angering the country. If you want to see the country get angry wait until the story changes to "flyover kids can no longer get into the Ivy league because they have to make room for more UMC immigrant kids". That will get large parts of the country angry.

The flyover conservative voters don't give a crap about Yale. Why in God's name would they want to send their kids off to Yale? Elite institutions do a lot of scientific research and this is the most anti-science administration we've had in a very long time . They want to destroy the ivy league and "own the libs". And one of the best ways to destroy research universities is to take away the research money. So here we are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No matter which way they do admissions, some group is going to wind up being pissed off.

Of course, but the group currently in power is the one that gets to make the rules. If you want to have sports recruiting and other admissions preferences don't be voting Maga.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think the lack of transparency is huge. They really need to switch to just having some basic paramaters (SATs/ACTs above X, top X% of graduating class) and then have a lottery for spots.

That sounds like a recipe for going back to when it was designed to admit even more advantaged students then the current system allows. That's certainly not going to help the Fox News viewers that someone was posting about on here.

But a lottery for students who meet certain clear academic thresholds would get rid of the admissions advantages for expensive sports or starting your own charity (that only your parents donate to - I have a friend whose kids used this to get into an Ivy) or getting an internship at your dad's friends company. With Khan academy a smart kid anywhere can study for the SATs and be in the top of their class if they have the drive.

lottery away for your next future crop of private equity vultures and corporate lawyers. Who cares? Maybe we could take a little more time and attention to find our future nuclear physicists and biochemists, etc. not sure I want my transplant surgeon to be the lottery winner.

THose jobs are not open to only people who went to Yale (or a top college). But if Yale said, there is no meaningful difference among students with SATs above 1550 who are in the top 5% of their graduating class so we will do a lottery I would take that over the current system. if they wanted to, they could run separate lotteries by state or to ensure a class that represents the U.S. by family income. But that takes power away from the school so it will never happen.

There is no meaningful difference between a 1500 and a 1550, where do you draw the line? Private institutions get their own priorities.

There is a big difference between a 1500 and a 1550. And a bigger difference between a 1550 and a 1600. Dartmouth themselves published that if the higher your SAT bucket the better your chance of admission.

The difference between a 1550 and a 1600 typically comes down to the individual exam and a careless mistake or two with zero difference in capabilities. Not sure about the digital SAT but a single careless mistake on the old one could result in a 7890 or a 800 depending on the particular exam. Two misses could be a 770 or a 790 depending on the exam. There is not difference. The GPA differences between admitted students at that level are measured in a few hundredths of a point. YOu could find more correlation in the time of day for a class or the professor than you could in an SAT score.

And yet there is a peer reviewed study saying that there is a statistically significant difference in the average performance of students that got a 1590 vs a 1600.

Please show us that little fiction which you speak of.

You are certainly arrogant in your ignorance

https://opportunityinsights.org/paper/test-scores/

That paper highlights your stupidity. I know that peper well and doesn't show what you think that it does. You might want to look at the scatterplots since they show the opposite of your assertion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It's not about HIS kid, it's about society.

All those sports you named are pretty expensive.

Don't kid yourself, it's about their kids. If they were water polo players they wouldn't be whining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No matter which way they do admissions, some group is going to wind up being pissed off.

Of course, but the group currently in power is the one that gets to make the rules. If you want to have sports recruiting and other admissions preferences don't be voting Maga.

It’s hilarious that you think these voters are the same people. Flyover maga voters don’t care about ivy sports one way or the other.