NYTs: if affirmative action goes, say buy-bye to legacy, EA/ED, and most athletic preferences

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile ACB’s daughter goes to Notre Dame as a legacy after graduating from a “People of Praise” secondary school.

And Ketanji Brown Jackson’s daughter goes to Harvard as a legacy. Realistically, don’t you think their kids would be getting into any college they want because their parents are on the Supreme Court?

Site but her daughter also went to an outstanding secondary school where that’s not unusual. People of Praise, however…

Are you saying that smart kids can’t come from lesser ranked schools? Do you have the same prejudices against students from underperforming schools in the inner city?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t get rid of athletic preferences or they won’t be able to field a team. It makes no sense.

I still don’t see how colleges won’t be able to still keep doing it with.holistic admissions . The whole process is such a random crapshoot anyway,

Maybe sports really shouldn't be that important to colleges. Much better things to spend the money on.

The reason that large state universities in the B10 and SEC can be as generous as they are with aid and instate tuition is because of the revenue they get from sports.

B10 and SEC are not generous with aid at all. And the merit scholarships that they do have are funded by alumni donors, not by sports.

[Anonymous]

Nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t get rid of athletic preferences or they won’t be able to field a team. It makes no sense.

I still don’t see how colleges won’t be able to still keep doing it with.holistic admissions . The whole process is such a random crapshoot anyway,

Maybe sports really shouldn't be that important to colleges. Much better things to spend the money on.

Maybe people should learn that colleges (especially elite colleges) are seeking students who have leadership potential, and that sports are an outstanding way to develop and demonstrate leadership.

How, exactly, do sports develop and demonstrate leadership potential?

Take football, for example. The calls are made by the coach/coordinators. The QB is the captain and has some decision making for the team. The linemen meanwhile are nothing more than meatbags. Wide receivers and running backs follow the path laid out by the play decided on by the coach. Where's the leadership? The athletes are low-level pawns, not leaders.

And what about individual sports like swimming, track, etc.? Who exactly are the athletes leading, themselves?

The only purpose of sports is physical activity, which is good for both mental and physical health. But that shouldn't require the 12+ years of highly expensive training that the applicants to these top schools go through. It's nothing more than a filter for wealth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can’t get rid of athletic preferences or they won’t be able to field a team. It makes no sense.

I still don’t see how colleges won’t be able to still keep doing it with.holistic admissions . The whole process is such a random crapshoot anyway,

Maybe sports really shouldn't be that important to colleges. Much better things to spend the money on.

Maybe people should learn that colleges (especially elite colleges) are seeking students who have leadership potential, and that sports are an outstanding way to develop and demonstrate leadership.

How, exactly, do sports develop and demonstrate leadership potential?

Take football, for example. The calls are made by the coach/coordinators. The QB is the captain and has some decision making for the team. The linemen meanwhile are nothing more than meatbags. Wide receivers and running backs follow the path laid out by the play decided on by the coach. Where's the leadership? The athletes are low-level pawns, not leaders.

And what about individual sports like swimming, track, etc.? Who exactly are the athletes leading, themselves?

The only purpose of sports is physical activity, which is good for both mental and physical health. But that shouldn't require the 12+ years of highly expensive training that the applicants to these top schools go through. It's nothing more than a filter for wealth.

Tell me that you never played team sports without saying you haven't played team sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What you’ll also see happen is colleges become much more dependent on in-person interviews for holistic admissions. A kid who scores a 1450 on his SAT but has a very outgoing personality with a unique ability to “sell himself” will be more attractive to Harvard than the kid with perfect stats who is social awkward. I bet you see more intangibles become more important.

Lol no, Harvard would not even look at the 1450 SAT kid unless they are URM or a Senator's son. Because the choice for Harvard isn't between a kid with 1450 SAT and outgoing personality vs. a 1600 SAT nerd.

It's between a 1600 SAT with an outgoing personality and a 1600 SAT with academic research done in high school, math olympiad, international programming competitions, etc.

And Harvard would choose the latter every time, because kids with outgoing personalities are a dime a dozen and easily developed. Genuine intelligence is rare and impossible to develop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What you’ll also see happen is colleges become much more dependent on in-person interviews for holistic admissions. A kid who scores a 1450 on his SAT but has a very outgoing personality with a unique ability to “sell himself” will be more attractive to Harvard than the kid with perfect stats who is social awkward. I bet you see more intangibles become more important.

Lol no, Harvard would not even look at the 1450 SAT kid unless they are URM or a Senator's son. Because the choice for Harvard isn't between a kid with 1450 SAT and outgoing personality vs. a 1600 SAT nerd.

It's between a 1600 SAT with an outgoing personality and a 1600 SAT with academic research done in high school, math olympiad, international programming competitions, etc.

And Harvard would choose the latter every time, because kids with outgoing personalities are a dime a dozen and easily developed. Genuine intelligence is rare and impossible to develop.

Totally disagree. Equal scores, they take the outgoing kid hands down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What you’ll also see happen is colleges become much more dependent on in-person interviews for holistic admissions. A kid who scores a 1450 on his SAT but has a very outgoing personality with a unique ability to “sell himself” will be more attractive to Harvard than the kid with perfect stats who is social awkward. I bet you see more intangibles become more important.

Lol no, Harvard would not even look at the 1450 SAT kid unless they are URM or a Senator's son. Because the choice for Harvard isn't between a kid with 1450 SAT and outgoing personality vs. a 1600 SAT nerd.

It's between a 1600 SAT with an outgoing personality and a 1600 SAT with academic research done in high school, math olympiad, international programming competitions, etc.

And Harvard would choose the latter every time, because kids with outgoing personalities are a dime a dozen and easily developed. Genuine intelligence is rare and impossible to develop.

The kid with the 1600 and the personality has intelligence, because no amount of prep is getting someone without intelligence a 1600

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most fair way is to have comprehensive tests on each subjects, and give every kid a chance to show his/her knowledge (achievement in HS) and learning aptitude (potential). All the soft and subjective criteria result in unfairness.

But soft skills are really important in the workplace. I’d rather hire a slightly less academically inclined person who has a strong EQ. Ability to work with others, integrity, and grit matter a lot in life. I think that is why you see many high performers and CEOs that were not top of their class. Intelligence and academic achievement are not the whole picture.

Academic success is a strong indicator of integrity, grit and the ability to work with others. To claim otherwise is laughable. The top students make study groups, tutor, become teaching assistants, etc. Just because they aren't also playing lacrosse, dancing ballroom, and holding positions in meaningless clubs doesn't mean that they don't have soft skills.

As for CEOs, look at the academic credentials of the top tech company CEOs. The time where being in the same fraternity and having a firm handshake is long gone, something that women should be very happy about ironically.

Bezos - public magnet high school valedictorian, national merit scholar, took STEM programs at University of Florida as a high schooler, summa cum laude with 4.2 GPA at Princeton in electrical engineering and computer science

Zuckerberg - Phillips Exeter with honors, Harvard

Gates - Lakeside Prep, wrote first programs as a 13 year old in the late 1960's, Harvard

The fact is that social skills is very common and easy to develop if you grow up in a healthy environment, because humans are naturally social. Academic skills are not.

What about CEOs outside of tech? Do a Google search. I think you would be surprised. It’s easy to cherry pick the tech CEOs, but there are many other industries.

Engineering is the most common major for Fortune 500 CEOs, the major most stereotyped as having no soft skills. Also the major that is most representative of "hard skills".

Do you think completing an engineering degree doesn't require grit, integrity, and working with others?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am fine with that. College admissions needs a massive overhaul.

Depending on what the Supreme Court says, one of the biggest changes will be elimination of any sort of “Women in STEM” outreach programs, preferences, or scholarships.

Be careful what you (ignorantly) wish for.

On the flip side, overall admission is harder for women because they tend to do much better in high school than boys. Women in tech may go away, but so will the higher bars to get into colleges in general

Conservatives are going to hate it if a side effect is that schools are even more heavily female than they are now.

But aren’t schools going to strive for coed institutions being as close to 50/50 as possible? It is in the best interest of the students enrolled…

They are, but if racial discrimination is banned, gender discrimination will be too. Something that benefits current students doesn't necessarily benefit applicants the same way.

What’s your thought process? Race is subject to strict scrutiny. Sex is not.

That's irrelevant. Tech companies today have initiatives specifically to hire women or URM. If the initiatives for URM are discriminatory, the same holds true for women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:


I want universities to be blind to everything except academic, and academic-adjacent, achievement. No legacy, athletics, development, family or ethnic background considerations.

If that happens schools like Harvard will cease to be Harvard. What gives the elite schools, especially Ivy League, cultural and social capital in the US is all that you seek to eliminate. I don’t personally care but I recognize the world we live in.

That’s bs. The lure of places like Harvard was the claim that it attracted the best and brightest around the world, and that the US was the top country to migrate to. Now with “holistic” admissions people can see that is not the case, coupled with the US in general decaying. Replacing an emphasis on academic achievement would actually reenergize Harvard.

What you describe is more recent history. The Ivy League brand was not built on the best and the brightest.

Forgot to add: consider Caltech and MIT. Full of smart kids but don’t have the cultural capital of Harvard.

+1000 Who wants to go to an Ivy League with a bunch of kids selected solely for their test scores and grades? The allure and social capital is attending with the people whose families rule the world — Kennedys, Hollywood kids, CEO kids, Supreme Court Justice’s kids, Presidents kids or grandkids, famous musicians kids, etc.

Freshman year the dean of admissions told our class that he could have filled every seat with valedictorians had he wanted to -- and he didn't.

Obviously, there's more than 1500 high schools in the country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most fair way is to have comprehensive tests on each subjects, and give every kid a chance to show his/her knowledge (achievement in HS) and learning aptitude (potential). All the soft and subjective criteria result in unfairness.

But soft skills are really important in the workplace. I’d rather hire a slightly less academically inclined person who has a strong EQ. Ability to work with others, integrity, and grit matter a lot in life. I think that is why you see many high performers and CEOs that were not top of their class. Intelligence and academic achievement are not the whole picture.

Academic success is a strong indicator of integrity, grit and the ability to work with others. To claim otherwise is laughable. The top students make study groups, tutor, become teaching assistants, etc. Just because they aren't also playing lacrosse, dancing ballroom, and holding positions in meaningless clubs doesn't mean that they don't have soft skills.

As for CEOs, look at the academic credentials of the top tech company CEOs. The time where being in the same fraternity and having a firm handshake is long gone, something that women should be very happy about ironically.

Bezos - public magnet high school valedictorian, national merit scholar, took STEM programs at University of Florida as a high schooler, summa cum laude with 4.2 GPA at Princeton in electrical engineering and computer science

Zuckerberg - Phillips Exeter with honors, Harvard

Gates - Lakeside Prep, wrote first programs as a 13 year old in the late 1960's, Harvard

The fact is that social skills is very common and easy to develop if you grow up in a healthy environment, because humans are naturally social. Academic skills are not.

What about CEOs outside of tech? Do a Google search. I think you would be surprised. It’s easy to cherry pick the tech CEOs, but there are many other industries.

Engineering is the most common major for Fortune 500 CEOs, the major most stereotyped as having no soft skills. Also the major that is most representative of "hard skills".

Do you think completing an engineering degree doesn't require grit, integrity, and working with others?

This is fun. If your basing your major on the likelihood of being a fortune 500 CEO, then the best course of action would be to start training for a sport because former athletes make up a higher percentage of CEOs than any major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am fine with that. College admissions needs a massive overhaul.

Depending on what the Supreme Court says, one of the biggest changes will be elimination of any sort of “Women in STEM” outreach programs, preferences, or scholarships.

Be careful what you (ignorantly) wish for.

I am against those.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most fair way is to have comprehensive tests on each subjects, and give every kid a chance to show his/her knowledge (achievement in HS) and learning aptitude (potential). All the soft and subjective criteria result in unfairness.

But soft skills are really important in the workplace. I’d rather hire a slightly less academically inclined person who has a strong EQ. Ability to work with others, integrity, and grit matter a lot in life. I think that is why you see many high performers and CEOs that were not top of their class. Intelligence and academic achievement are not the whole picture.

Academic success is a strong indicator of integrity, grit and the ability to work with others. To claim otherwise is laughable. The top students make study groups, tutor, become teaching assistants, etc. Just because they aren't also playing lacrosse, dancing ballroom, and holding positions in meaningless clubs doesn't mean that they don't have soft skills.

As for CEOs, look at the academic credentials of the top tech company CEOs. The time where being in the same fraternity and having a firm handshake is long gone, something that women should be very happy about ironically.

Bezos - public magnet high school valedictorian, national merit scholar, took STEM programs at University of Florida as a high schooler, summa cum laude with 4.2 GPA at Princeton in electrical engineering and computer science

Zuckerberg - Phillips Exeter with honors, Harvard

Gates - Lakeside Prep, wrote first programs as a 13 year old in the late 1960's, Harvard

The fact is that social skills is very common and easy to develop if you grow up in a healthy environment, because humans are naturally social. Academic skills are not.

What about CEOs outside of tech? Do a Google search. I think you would be surprised. It’s easy to cherry pick the tech CEOs, but there are many other industries.

Engineering is the most common major for Fortune 500 CEOs, the major most stereotyped as having no soft skills. Also the major that is most representative of "hard skills".

Do you think completing an engineering degree doesn't require grit, integrity, and working with others?

This is fun. If your basing your major on the likelihood of being a fortune 500 CEO, then the best course of action would be to start training for a sport because former athletes make up a higher percentage of CEOs than any major.

What counts as athlete in this case? Because everyone and their mom has played a sport at some point. And you certainly aren't talking about professional athletics because then the statistics definitely isn't true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What you’ll also see happen is colleges become much more dependent on in-person interviews for holistic admissions. A kid who scores a 1450 on his SAT but has a very outgoing personality with a unique ability to “sell himself” will be more attractive to Harvard than the kid with perfect stats who is social awkward. I bet you see more intangibles become more important.

Lol no, Harvard would not even look at the 1450 SAT kid unless they are URM or a Senator's son. Because the choice for Harvard isn't between a kid with 1450 SAT and outgoing personality vs. a 1600 SAT nerd.

It's between a 1600 SAT with an outgoing personality and a 1600 SAT with academic research done in high school, math olympiad, international programming competitions, etc.

And Harvard would choose the latter every time, because kids with outgoing personalities are a dime a dozen and easily developed. Genuine intelligence is rare and impossible to develop.

The kid with the 1600 and the personality has intelligence, because no amount of prep is getting someone without intelligence a 1600

Not today, getting a 1600 is more common today as the SAT has been made easier.

The point isn't that the outgoing kid isn't intelligent, it's that they aren't as intelligent as a kid with the same scores + host of academic extracurriculars because the latter shows demonstrated academic interest.