Reply to Conservatives are now targeting legacy admission preference

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They don’t like the educated intellectual elites, so they are trying to break down the whole system of higher education. This is just part of that. [/quote]
Whatever the reason, you have to agree that legacy has to go. Get rid of ED next. Have a majority, democratic and republican (not politicians, but certainly voters) on both fronts.[/quote]

If you are getting rid of ED, then schools also need to get rid of preferences for athletes and their alternative admissions path[/quote]

Athletes are getting in based on merit. It may not be the “merit” that a lot of people here believe that it should be prioritized, but there is achievement required there that isn’t solely based on a characteristic from birth that cannot ever be changed. (If you want to argue that athletics are disproportionately going to favor wealthier families, you can also argue that for every single part of the entire American education system from disparities between public school systems to test scores to other non-athletic extracurricular activities.)

“Merit” at least for most people means a combo of GPA, test scores, and extracurricular activities (not just GPA and test scores alone) and athletics will fit into that last category.[/quote]

For most people merit probably means GPA and test scores alone. That's how most of the countries of the world do it. Universities are, after all, supposedly academic institutions.[/quote]

Understood that how most countries of the world use solely GPA and test scores or often only test scores alone.

However, from an American viewpoint, we do care about extracurriculars because most schools aren’t simply STEM factories. Schools want elite musicians, debate champions, national science contest winners, etc. Those are still merit-based achievements and very much distinguished from raced-based or legacy admissions that are solely based on birth and out of the control of the applicable student.

I think this is a massive problem with a lot of the debates on all of these issues. A lot of both sides seem to revert to definitions of “merit” being solely about GPA and test scores (either as a critique about how “schools that just look at numbers are just producing robots and not producing leaders” or as a panacea pointing to other countries), but I don’t think even Blum (someone I have a lot of personal critiques about) is trying to argue. Taking into account whether someone is an elite athlete or musician or debater or anything else IS about merit in a way that a race-based or legacy preference isn’t and I think people on both sides of the debate are doing themselves a disservice arguing otherwise.[/quote]

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