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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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.[/quote] 
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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]
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.[/quote]

Please enlighten us...[/quote]
Well for starters, many come from top magnets and boarding schools. They’re educationally privileged.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]
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.[/quote]

Because they are special which is why they are coveted in IB. It is why they have superior admissions success to med school other items held equal and also why they tend to perform better in med school as well. It is why Ken Griffin specifically said that they are who he prefers to hire at Citadel because they perform when things are tough.

Cry and whine all you want because deep down you are just resentful because you know that they are better.[/quote]

Well, not just Citadel.  All of finance likes them.  And the rest of corporate America.

They perform, on a schedule, with public scrutiny.  With their failures on display.  And then after a humiliating defeat, in front of family and friends they take a few hours, shake it off go back at it again.  Over and over for years.  The athletes are valuable to an organization because of the string of failures they faced before they could succeed.

Also, and this is what really pisses of the grinder set, the professors love the athletes too.  They are admired, because what they do is difficult. And they are more successful at life.

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/11/ivy-league-athletics-career-success-harvard-study[/quote]
Most of this is denial of the obvious: they’re mostly rich, from well connected backgrounds, and people help them a lot more than other students. At DD’s lac, athletes are mostly rich white students, a few Asian, and they all came from boarding schools and the like. Their parents are in the industry, and so are their parents’ friends. The athlete only alumni network fast track hires them and gives them everything they need. One kid has a 3.0, ppe major, and has very little remarkable going for him, except daddy works at a top firm and you can guess where he’ll be this summers. They then join organizations, create blocking of narrowly defined merit, and clash against others who aren’t like them- I’ve had personal experience rig a team like this at google, who absolutely refused to hire non athletes and borderline discriminated against non white applicants.

I don’t resent athletes. I recognize their very hard work and real talent, but many are essentially spoon fed and sell lies about merit when it’s really all about wealth.[/quote]

"Gompers allows that it remains unclear whether participation in athletics fosters valued human capital (is it, in economic terms, a treatment effect), or whether athletes succeed in the labor market and in sport because they already possess desirable characteristics (a selection effect). Are labor market outcomes different for athletes who participate in team versus individual sports? Because athletes enter business and finance careers at much higher rates than other students do, perhaps as a result of the influence of teammates, he also doesn’t discount altogether the possibility that their success in the workplace could be driven by ex-Ivy athletes in senior positions hiring peers or younger ex-Ivy athletes"

[/quote]

So.  Part of the paper is factual.  That the athletes outperform.  Not only that, but the outperformance doesn't really begin to take place until after 5 years out of school.  "A clear divergence in athletes’ career trajectories only begins to materialize 5 to 10 years after college graduation, yet the gap between athlete and non-athlete career achievement trajectories continues to widen at 20 and even 25 years post-college graduation."  Those are facts.  Then there is speculation in the paper, which is not backed by any actual data.  Namely the cope paragraph you sent.

If the athletes aren't better at business, then why does the success only manifest well into the career trajectory?  Wouldn't they wash out and the robotics competitors begin to outperform?  This isn't only in finance and other elite jobs, these results are across industry.

Just give your kids golf lessons instead of sending them to take CalcBC in the summer so they can grind an A the following year.
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