Universities Really Are Messed Up (says Yale

[Anonymous]

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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.

They voted to take a wrecking ball to the ivy league with all of its sports and research and everything else. Is that worthy of the absolute disaster we are all going through right now? Absolutely not but it happened.

Absolute disaster? So dramatic.

I guess your not going to the gas station and your kids aren't out looking for jobs.

You’re losing focus. Stay on topic. The admitted class of 2030 doesn’t think it was an absolute disaster. Just sounds like sour grapes for you and your unathletic family. Hope you all applied to plenty of schools that were a better fit.

It is a disaster. A recession is crappy whether you go to Yale or somewhere else. Sure, lots of rich yalie families are going to be able to weather it better than most, but it negatively affects almost everyone.

[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.

The smart, rich ones aren't. They are lining up squash lessons for their kids.

[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.

Then you should be fine with the Ivy League because they are D1.

But if you are fine with D1 why not D2 or D3? I'm guessing that you really don't know much about the differences between the divisions.

[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.

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.

It makes complete sense if they are important to the schools which you want to attend. These schools should not have to align to your priorities, that is a ridiculous level of entitlement. Just remember, the school with the largest D3 atjhletics program is.....MIT. Virtually all of the schools which people on here want to attend are serious about athletics. You might want to ask yourself "what do they know that I don't?"

The fencing team is not the draw for harvard applicants that you think it is. It does almost nothing for its reputation.

[Anonymous]

These conversations are getting really tiresome.

The college admissions process in this country is not solely based on academic achievement. Never was. Wealth, Legacy, religious preference, race and gender discrimination have always been a part of the process.

Learn the game and play the game. Stop complaining.

[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.

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?

So no research money for Alabama right? What about Cal? UCLA? Pitt, Michigan, etc.? Can you see the flaw in your thinking?

Face it, you are just hunting prestige.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The whole attraction of yale etc is that they are full of elite rich people who net work with each other and occasionally with a smart climber who manages to get in with the net work - it has nothing to do with the actual academics - if you went to a lottery system it would just be another version of top public schools - getting rid of the network through getting rid of legacies donors etc. is missing the whole point of these sorting hats for the ultra connected and rich - which alot of our children wouldn't get the benefit of even if they got in

Yale etc. work pretty hard to obscure this fact, though. They want you to believe that the kids they admit are smart and talented and intellectually driven, not just rich kids born on third base.

[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.

MAGA doesn't care about athletic recruiting. They care about "heritage Americans". Some of those yelling loudly right now aren't going to be happy because they will become the next target.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

The research function (research and training grad students via what is effectively an apprenticeship) and the undergraduate education function are mostly separate functions which is one of the reasons that all of the funding cuts were just stupid. Destroy our research machine fighting about something that the researchers have no real interest in. The grad programs would cut the undergrad programs free in a heartbeat if they could, they just aren't relevant to their work.

This is why top SLACs are the single best place for undergraduate education in traditional subjects outside of engineering and CS.

And yet it seems to be working.
Punishing the graduate programs seems to be making the undergrad admissions offices aware that discrimination has consequences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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?

So no research money for Alabama right? What about Cal? UCLA? Pitt, Michigan, etc.? Can you see the flaw in your thinking?

Face it, you are just hunting prestige.

I guess you think every research institution is created equal. The researchers compete for research dollars in theory based on the metrics that they use to award the research money. It's not a lottery. They take it away from certain research projects because of politics and they're not just giving it to Alabama. They are eliminating the budget .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

If the sacrifice for getting back research dollars is sports, drop the sports. Turn it into an extracurricular with normal extracurricular weighting like being a musician or artist.

Won't happen. They only need to stall and delay for a little bit longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

The research function (research and training grad students via what is effectively an apprenticeship) and the undergraduate education function are mostly separate functions which is one of the reasons that all of the funding cuts were just stupid. Destroy our research machine fighting about something that the researchers have no real interest in. The grad programs would cut the undergrad programs free in a heartbeat if they could, they just aren't relevant to their work.

This is why top SLACs are the single best place for undergraduate education in traditional subjects outside of engineering and CS.

And yet it seems to be working.
Punishing the graduate programs seems to be making the undergrad admissions offices aware that discrimination has consequences.

The consequences are that research dollars are now politicized and if you have the right politics you can get some. Who cares if you figure out a treatment for breast cancer that is not of any importance.

[Anonymous]

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.

You could eliminate all of those sports and guess what, your kid still isn't getting in. As long as the prestige whores keep chasing these schools admissions will be driven by the denominator not preferences. I am all for things like SAT minimums and academic minimums for ALDC candidates which could even be set higher but the idea that these schools cannot have institutional priorities and generally admit whom they want is offensive. Just one example; any top professor who a school really wanted and pursued would be stupid to not insist on admissions preference for their children if it was something important to them.

Admissions preferences for the children of professors is pretty rare. Tuition discounts are a bit more common but admissions preferences do not exist at oxford, tsinghua, Tokyo, seoul, singapore or eth afaict.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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?

So no research money for Alabama right? What about Cal? UCLA? Pitt, Michigan, etc.? Can you see the flaw in your thinking?

Face it, you are just hunting prestige.

I guess you think every research institution is created equal. The researchers compete for research dollars in theory based on the metrics that they use to award the research money. It's not a lottery. They take it away from certain research projects because of politics and they're not just giving it to Alabama. They are eliminating the budget .

All of the named schools receive huge research dollars including Alabama. If eliminating sports recruiting is a requirement for one group to get money it will need to apply to all.

Certain groups here are delighted at the idea of eliminating athletics recruiting at the Ivies but it won't happen because they can't be singled out in the long run (which is why the nonsense going on will end) and requiring it would have an unacceptable blast radius. The best that they can hope for is a higher floor which still isn't helping them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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?

So no research money for Alabama right? What about Cal? UCLA? Pitt, Michigan, etc.? Can you see the flaw in your thinking?

Face it, you are just hunting prestige.

I guess you think every research institution is created equal. The researchers compete for research dollars in theory based on the metrics that they use to award the research money. It's not a lottery. They take it away from certain research projects because of politics and they're not just giving it to Alabama. They are eliminating the budget .

All of the named schools receive huge research dollars including Alabama. If eliminating sports recruiting is a requirement for one group to get money it will need to apply to all.

Certain groups here are delighted at the idea of eliminating athletics recruiting at the Ivies but it won't happen because they can't be singled out in the long run (which is why the nonsense going on will end) and requiring it would have an unacceptable blast radius. The best that they can hope for is a higher floor which still isn't helping them.

I don't think you're paying any attention at all. Of course you can single out the ivies. You can single out whoever you want. That is exactly what is happening right now. In fact, Yale has been singled out less than some others, but they were the ones that did this report.