Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

https://triblive.com/news/children-relatives-of-alumni-no-longer-have-admissions-edge-at-carnegie-mellon-pitt/

by Geekette • 3 years ago

603 754 3 years ago

triblive.com

causi• 3 years ago

I'm amazed it was ever legal in the first place. It's open nepotism.

pitaj• 3 years ago

Nepotism has never been illegal.

reaperducer2• 3 years ago

In the private sector.

In many governments, it is quite illegal.

joezydeco• 3 years ago

As long as you keep it in the family.

nerdo2• 3 years ago

Nepotism is how groups function everywhere. The race-based admissions was a weird new thing, from a hyper-focused conspiracy that appears to be losing its grip.

pessimizer2• 3 years ago

Race-based admissions was a pretend way to remediate slavery and Jim Crow without spending any money or focusing on the harms done to the descendants of slaves. Almost everybody who thinks that the racism of Affirmative Action was a terrible thing also thinks compensating the descendants of slaves for the unpaid work and legal segregation that their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents (and so on, 10-20 times) endured would be 100x worse.

The reason for AA was because you couldn't get anything that specifically calculated and addressed the harms of slavery and Jim Crow past the advocates of "meritocracy." Was the literal pricing of slaves not the ultimate capitalist proof of merit?

Y_Y• 3 years ago

I don't think this is nepotism, strictly speaking. The applicants aren't related or necessarily personally known to the people making the decision, they're merely related to prior graduates.

It may be reflective of corruption and produce inequitable and undesirable outcomes, but nepotism is something else.

drewcoo• 3 years ago

If nepotism were illegal, we would have a 100% inheritance tax across the board.

There tend to be more laws pro-family than anti- for some reason . . .

zenbane• 3 years ago

Why would "anti-family" laws make sense? People who come from stable families are statistically much much more likely to be happy, successful and contribute to society.

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

There's no need to be antisemitic, but I get what you're saying.

sebmellen• 3 years ago

For much of their history, legacy admissions were a tool to keep out less desirable Jewish/Catholic/non-WASP applicants [0][1]

[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/23055549

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/us/legacy-admissions-coll...

nancyhn4• 3 years ago

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

ubermonkey• 3 years ago

Only one of these is a good thing.

loeg2• 3 years ago

I don’t think discrimination against asians was a good thing!

gbasin• 3 years ago

and it's probably not the one you think

mlyle4• 3 years ago

At the same time, we're getting rid of testing in admissions decisions.

So instead we're in an era of squishy, difficult-to-judge metrics... and of course, the places where one could stand out-- interesting stories on one's transcript or essay-- are increasingly being evaluated by AI.

el_nahual• 3 years ago

The cynical(?) explanation is that it is precisely because of the dismantling of standardized testing that getting rid of legacy admissions tenable...because it means schools can still proxy for class in admissions decisions (except veiled as extracurriculars, or "oh, this student knows calculus" in boston/sf).

If Harvard or USC were on the list I'd wager this to be the case, but MIT, Mellon & Pitt are serious schools so I believe them when I say it's in favor of increased rigor.

elteto3• 3 years ago

It's because schools want to retain a measure of control over who they let in. A true merit based admissions system (say min SAT score + lottery after that) is uncheatable and therefore schools have _zero_ control on who they have to accept.

The only reason why Harvard has kept its mythos of being the incubator of the next ruling class is because, well, they accept the children of the current one. Those are most likely to become part of the next ruling class by virtue of having been born into it. It's an old boys club. There's no intrinsic property of Harvard that turns them into this incubator.

And from the other side you have the brain dead equity idiots who are also against true merit systems, for equally twisted, but different reasons.

abirch3• 3 years ago

You're assuming that everyone is on an equal starting point. Wealthy people will be able to favor their kids.

dotancohen2• 3 years ago

That is exactly my motivation to become wealthy. I don't need a nice number with lots of zeros. I need to secure my children's future, including their prospects for higher education.

I see no problem with those who have amassed significant resources, being afforded use of those resources to their childrens' advantage.

Anechoic• 3 years ago

pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach

For the right definitions of "merit", yes. I'm not confident we've figured that part out yet.

abirch3• 3 years ago

We can't even define the purpose of college. E.g., is it only graduating and Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, ..., Mark Zuckerberg are all failures?

Meritocracy works best if you have something to measure against.

lisper4• 3 years ago

I hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure merit? Because [EDIT] many measures of "merit" (was: standardized testing) can be (and often are) biased by race, cultural background, and economic status. For example:

Student 1 has built a fully automated chip manufacturing line in his basement.

Student 2 has build a robot that solves a maze in fifteen minutes (against the current state of the art which is a few seconds).

Which one would you admit?

Student 1 is the child of billionaires, and it's not clear how much of the work was actually done by him/her and how much was done by employees hired by the kid's parents.

Student 2 lives in Sudan and built their robot out of locally available materials, in the process inventing a new kind of motor built out of coconut fronds.

Now which one would you admit?

endtime• 3 years ago

How is that an example of standardized testing?

nashashmi3• 3 years ago

Student 1. He has the resources needed to move ahead. And unless my university can provide self help to the motivated, student 2 may not work out well here.

boeingUH602• 3 years ago

It’s as if you’re trying to make perfect the enemy of good. Standardized tests aren’t perfect but they give less privileged kids the best choice at attending a good college.

The kids of the upper class and the rich will always have an upper hand compared to the poor. However, standardized tests limit how wide the upper hand is. An upper class kid still has to study and pass the test, and the poor kid can also do that.

If admissions become “holistic”, poor kids would have little chances. Good luck to that poor kid competing subjectively with kids whose parents send them on impressive charity trips and get them unpaid internships at the most prestigious companies.

coding123• 3 years ago

S1 definitely.

hn_throwaway_996• 3 years ago

Now which one would you admit?

Why not both? I think a lot of the debate over college admissions misses the fact that so much of this is artificial scarcity. Some of the big schools like Harvard/Yale/Princeton etc. could easily increase the size of their incoming classes many times, and still have them only be filled with highly qualified candidates.

Top schools exist not just to educate, but to ensure that the social hierarchy is maintained. If it were purely to educate or to ensure diverse learning environments, the top Ivies could solve this easily by quadrupling the size of their classes, but then this would of course dilute the exclusivity that is the primary reason for these institutions in the first place.

dfadsadsf3• 3 years ago

Magic that happens in top universities in US is combining money (kids of billionaires) with smarts (kids with 1600 SAT) in one place. Both bring different skills to the table and result is disproportionate share of top scientist, business and political leaders produced by those universities (from both classes of people). Removing either group from university will just lead to university stopping being elite. Considering that number of billionaires is measured in hundreds (so only a dozen or so kids of billionaires enter universities every year), university may just admit that one kid.

On Student 2 who build something in Sudan from stick and rocks. Unless he is from elite family he most likely did not get proper school education and won't be able to keep up with rigors of studying in top university even if he is very smart. Harvard is not really in a business of providing remedial education. With that if he is really smart and resourceful, he had a very good chance of doing very well for himself in Sudan (becoming entrepreneour, building soemthing local, become warlord, etc) and then his kids will be fully equipped to go to top university.

Brusco_RF10• 3 years ago

Yeah I see this take all the time. Admissions offices are allowed to take a student's means into account! So in deciding between two students with equal SAT scores, one from a Greenwich private school and one from South Tucson, the one from Tucson is the more impressive student.

Affirmative action was misguided because it assumed that because one student was Korean and the other Mexican, the Mexican kid must be disadvantaged. Besides the fact that there's an inherently racist worldview baked into that, Newsflash! There are tons of poor Korean kids and rich Mexicans!

moduspol• 3 years ago

We'll never have a perfect way to measure merit, but that doesn't justify the status quo. It would likely reject both students for a third student that checks the right intersectional boxes, even if coming from a more privileged upbringing than the other two students.

We should be constantly improving our ways of measuring merit, not throwing up our hands and pretending it's meaningless to try.

anon291• 3 years ago

I'm confused here. Both facts are salient (what was built and under which circumstances was it built) to any discussion of merit. The main complaint I see here is that admissions committees should use as much information as possible, which I doubt anyone disagrees with. What is racist is someone saying 'Oh, student 2 is black, thus without any further information, I'm going to assume he's poor and from Sudan'.

Case in point, we had a very wealthy black student in my college. This woman was not disadvantaged in any way, yet she played the race card all the time in order to claim a disadvantaged background. I'm talking about a family that would take their kids to France and England to summer. That level of wealth, yet framing all her accomplishments as if she came from the inner city. That's disingenuous, yet the (now-gone) affirmative action camp would have gladly taken her checking the 'African-American/Black' checkbox as a sign that all her accomplishments should be judged on a poor disadvantaged upbringing. How is that not racist?

bluepod44• 3 years ago

I believe that GP would admit the child of billionaires. People who promote the meritocracy myth have an agenda and are sticking to it. Do you really think you can change GP’s mind with logic?

hnburnsy• 3 years ago

Is this a need-blind or need-aware institution?

If need-aware, does the admitting class have enough full pay to cover the costs of those needing scholarships (wouldn't want to actually tap into that tax-free endowment)? If they need more full pay, then S1, if there are already enough full pay, then S2.

jononomo2• 3 years ago

standardized tests are not biased.

rcme• 3 years ago

I hate these types of arguments that create an extremely contrived example. If we’re making a choice between these two students, then you can’t really go wrong. But that’s not the choice being made.

Apocryphon9• 3 years ago

What kind of child, even that of billionaires, wants to build an automated chip manufacturing line? Maybe in Minecraft. Or in Roblox.

noobermin2• 3 years ago

I fundamentally do not understand why merit is something you should focus on when it comes to admission into a university. The entire point of an education is to learn, may be you need the bare minimum to enroll but universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least.

Just because thats how it should work in some people's heads as the ideal doesn't mean it makes any actual sense if you really interrogate the idea. Meritocracy makes sense after you have an education, it doesn't make sense before it.

CrampusDestrus• 3 years ago

Resources are finite. If college courses were recorded lessons or they just gave you a theory book and an exercises book, then of course we could automate everything. Just sign up, pay your fee and take the exams and once you're done you get the degree, even full remote. Your taxes will go towards professors and a fuck ton of TAs for questions and exercises and to keep the infrastructure running.

But we're not there yet

nostromo2• 3 years ago

Perhaps it’s politically incorrect to say, but students learn best when they’re around students that are of similar intelligence and motivation to succeed.

Taking a brilliant kid and putting them around underachievers doesn’t do anyone any good.

indymike2• 3 years ago

Meritocracy makes sense after you have an education, it doesn't make sense before it.

This is really a truth. There really is no meritocracy if you gate who is allowed to have merit before you measure it. Regulating opportunity to control outcomes is the exact opposite of what should be done to have a true meritocracy.

worrycue• 3 years ago

universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least.

Or it can be seen as give education to the students that will make the best use of it maximizing value to society.

nashashmi3• 3 years ago

I doubt merit based approach is the only way of conducting admissions. Merits don’t count for as much as people think they do. A narrow pool of candidates come because of merit.

A more reasonable selection system wouldn’t just rely on the individual but also the support network. For example, I often hear “it takes a village to raise a _____ doctor”. And that truth speaks volumes.

onetimeusename9• 3 years ago

We're not, we're heading towards tribalism. The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white more so than anything else. With limited data on other schools, Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits.[1] That didn't stop people who wanted an alleged merit based admissions policy from continuing to call it a racist backdoor. Carnegie Mellon did not publish any stats on their legacy admits however.

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, universities have promised to continue to look at race as a factor that still complies with the SC ruling which means a backdoor for race. FWIW white students are the most underrepresented on elite campuses so it would be hard to argue that there are admissions policies favoring them.

[1] https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/academi...

[2] https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/30/stanford-to-expand-outr...

nova22033• 3 years ago

actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits

Is the SAT score the only measure of merit?

The non-legacies are going to miss on the chance to make social connections with legacy admits who have a lot of connections...and access to a lot of resources..

JKCalhoun2• 3 years ago

The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white

Disproportionally rich is my problem with legacy admissions.

kevinventullo4• 3 years ago

Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits…

So you agree that Harvard shouldn’t need to factor in legacy status and instead use fairer metrics like SAT scores?

ceejayoz• 3 years ago

Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits.

This likely indicates wealthy people can afford SAT preparation tutors.

dirtyid3• 3 years ago

reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits

About 30 points higher than non-legacy students whose average is brought down by affirmative action. VS Asian Americans who need to score 50-100+ points higher for comparable consideration, they're underperforming based on SAT merit.

HumblyTossed• 3 years ago

merit-based approach.

There are still issues with this. Food insecurity being a primary one. But apparently universal school lunches is not as important to people as having a HUGE military budget. What kind of beast doesn't want to feed kids!?

Edit: Apparently plenty even on HN. Wow. Color me shocked.

chiefalchemist• 3 years ago

There are plenty of choices for higher edu. What's the benefit of forcing a one-size-fits-all business model on all of them? Why should small out of the way esoteric college - or any other for that matter - have to follow Carnegie Mellon or similar?

This isn't being inclusive or diverse, it's assimilation at the institution/industry level. Yeah, ironic.

hn_throwaway_996• 3 years ago

I agree with you that the end of legacy and race-based admissions is a good thing. I think it's dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes when there is huge inequality. This best analogy I can give is the "sports stars" analogy. Professional sports is probably the most even playing field I can imagine - there is such a huge incentive to win games that pretty much all else besides skills on the playing field is ignored. But what it results in is a teeny tiny elite making millions, and nearly everyone else barely making enough to get by. So if the rest of the economy was like the sports stars world (and more and more of it is leaning that way), what reason do the rest of the 99.99% have to support this meritocracy? Sure, you can say it's an improvement that the best people are in charge, but if it's clear my genetic talents will prevent me from ever being a star, my incentive is really to tear the whole system down if none of those benefits ever make it my way.

I think one contributing factor you see behind so much increasing social strife, the resurgent interest in unions, etc. is the belief that unless you make it to a top job after a top school, you'll barely be scraping by your whole life.

Pure meritocracy in a "winner take all/most" economy leads to a very unstable society.

commandlinefan• 3 years ago

dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes

People who argue against meritocracy seem to forget that it's the only proposed alternative to the "birthright"-ocracy that civilization has been trying to pry itself from the jaws of for centuries.

lotsofpulp5• 3 years ago

Why are the reward ratios in professional sports relevant to other occupations in society?

But what it results in is a teeny tiny elite making millions, and nearly everyone else barely making enough to get by.

That is because a very small number of people can satiate the demand for almost all of the world’s people for entertainment from watching sports. Simple supply and demand.

It has nothing to do with meritocracy or how meritocracy distributed rewards. Making sure doctors/lawyers/engineers are appropriately qualified is not going to result in only a few getting the rewards, because their work does not scale as much (for the most part).

jcranmer2• 3 years ago

Professional sports is probably the most even playing field I can imagine - there is such a huge incentive to win games that pretty much all else besides skills on the playing field is ignored.

Match fixing has been a perennial problem in sports.

michaelt• 3 years ago

So if the rest of the economy was like the sports stars world (and more and more of it is leaning that way), what reason do the rest of the 99.99% have to support this meritocracy?

Pretty sure a big fraction of that 99.99% love the top sports stars.

For example, major league baseball games have higher attendance than Single-A games.

mitchdoogle• 3 years ago

The problem with merit is that it's impossible to determine because the circumstances of people around the world are so vastly different. If you have, say, 1500 spots for a new class, it's going to be impossible to select the best 1500 students. Some elite universities you may even have more than 1500 valedictorians. So what to do? I say you just set a qualifying point to be considered and publicize it (as standardized as you can get, i.e SAT score or similar) and then put every qualifier in a hat and select at random until you fill your spots. Nothing else should matter.

Of course this assumes that merit is actually the only thing universities care about, and I'd say that it's not.

zuzu892• 3 years ago

this decision is not motivated by merit, it's entirely motivated by race.

and they have no intentions of using a merit based approach for applicants because that would result in an even more white and asian dominant student pool.

without the legacy pool they now have more wiggle room to juice their "merit-based" approach so that they can admit more blacks without getting busted for illegal affirmative action.

honkycat• 3 years ago

Merit isn't enough.

I went to a po-dunk school in rural Missouri. I would never be able to I compete with kids from a rich Chicago/NY school. In the same way a black kid from a poor inner city wouldn't be able to.

This is part of the problem. The world isn't egalitarian. The poor will continue to get poorer, the rich will get richer.

Solution? Lottery? Don't have a great one.

criddell4• 3 years ago

I agree with you. Saying something is merit based is only half of an answer. What exactly is and isn’t meritorious?

I’m not convinced that scoring well on tests beyond some point is a particularly good way of deciding if a student deserves a spot or not.

bluepod44• 3 years ago

“Merit-based” is such a loaded term.

What do you mean by that exactly? What are you envisioning?

EDIT: Wow, a downvote. For this comment? Yikes!

EDIT 2: Oh, I see. I was using the phrase “loaded term” incorrectly. I only meant that “merit-based” is a phrase that can mean a lot of different things.

However, thinking about this more, I do still think it’s a loaded term. Politicians and the adjacents have visibly been using it to push an agenda. (I’m not saying this agenda is right or not. But it’s still clearly an agenda. I mean, that’s what their jobs are: to literally have agendas lol.)

thebradbain7• 3 years ago

Except for, you know, Letters of Recommendation, which at top schools are often the deciding factor. All else being near-equal (or not), a letter from a Kennedy is going to get you into Brown versus say, a regular high school teacher that many of comfortable-but-not-connected suburban students applying to college will be using. Maybe a local lawyer, if you’re special.

Those are who families who scream “meritocracy” should be directing their ire at, not the applicants (usually with more impressive results and stories considering the background they grew up in, compared to—sorry!—a hum-drum suburban also-ran) _think_ they’re better than, which ultimately is what a meritocracy boils down to.

Ultimately the only answer that will give you, or your kids, peace is accepting the fact that schools will curate the student body they want. They’ve admittedly done a good job at it! Complain all you want about Harvard tilting the scales, they’ve done an amazing job maintaining their reputation and exclusivity. If they don’t accept you, they don’t want you. If they do, they do. It’s that simple.

ecshafer3• 3 years ago

I want to get rid of letters of recommendation as well. I would personally like to go off of only a single nationwide standardized test.

Apocryphon9• 3 years ago

Not to detract from your larger point, but these days, it might depend on the Kennedy.

underlipton10• 3 years ago

The answer has always been to close the delta between the value of a Harvard degree and wherever else your kid can actually get into. The unspoken (or uncomfortable) aspect of that is that Harvard et al. receive outsize prestige because they're associated with outsize wealth, and access to that wealth through the personal and professional connections one can garner there.

Wealth concentration in society is the fundamental issue. When median wealth is higher and the range smaller, influential families will have less with which to "bid up" a spot at Harvard. They might choose another institution, that "wherever else" we mentioned earlier. So now your kids are friends. Or maybe not (it's not such a big deal, since they're not THAT much wealthier than you are). This becomes the dominant paradigm.

Decentralize education, as it were.

LatteLazy2• 3 years ago

Now we just need widely agreed, easily measurable, non game-able definition of "merit". :)

fritzo• 3 years ago

“I do think there was a time when perhaps legacies needed a boost” -Dean Emeritus of Admission Mike Steidel

Is there any way of charitably interpreting Mike Steidel's words? I have a tough time reading anything here but classist bigotry preserving the status quo :-/

mlyle4• 3 years ago

Yes, there are charitable ways.

You make an institution stronger (in fundraising, in love for the institution, in traditions, etc) by creating multigenerational relationships. When you're asked for money, it may be "eh, whatever it was my college" or it could be "Yes-- it's where my grandpa, pop, and I all went."

But there's a lot of negative consequences, too.

its_ethan• 3 years ago

I mean he's speaking about the past - so he's saying perhaps sometime in the past it was maybe needed, but he's saying that it's not needed anymore.

It's just a way to not have to specifically say something negative about the college, even if it's about the college's past. He's not preserving bigotry, he's just trying to not tarnish the brand.

unethical_ban• 3 years ago

Status quo, maybe, not not explicitly bigoted. Building a culture through generations, a sense of loyalty to an institution and a lifelong interest in seeing that institution flourish (and be funded) is a reasonable goal of a University.

DominikPeters• 3 years ago

His comments more broadly make no sense to me.

“Over time, the quality of the applicant pool increased to the point where we really didn’t have [give legacies a boost]” - how does that work? If the applicant pool gets better, then if anything privileged groups need a stronger boost.

"Steidel said the tipping point came perhaps three or four years ago as standardized testing became optional at many institutions, including Carnegie Mellon" - is this supposed to mean that they can now boost preferred groups more easily because they don't have to overcome the testing differential, so they actually might have stronger legacy preferences than before, but better hidden?

boeingUH602• 3 years ago

Very good decision. Let’s see if them Ivy Leagues with enormous endowments would follow…likely not because that’ll cause a big drop in gifts and donations.

kypro2• 3 years ago

likely not because that’ll cause a big drop in gifts and donations.

This is a topic that I haven't had much interest in so sorry if I'm being dumb here, but I struggle to see how this could be a good thing?

I guess the way I'm seeing this is that if you're too not smart enough to get into these universities but are lucky enough to have parents with lots of money, you can basically bribe your way in.

While this seems unfair on the surface, and I suppose it is from certain lenses, it is surely also in effect acting as a "stupid rich person" tax for higher education?

I mean to your point here, if Ivy League universities receive a big drop in donations wouldn't that practically guarantee they'll either need to charge higher tuition fees to those less fortunate who get in on merit, or they'll need to lower the quality of their education?

Could someone help me out here? I'm aware I'm saying something stupid. I don't see how this could possibly be a good thing for those less well off who get in on merit? Are they not in favour of their education costs being partly offset by large donation from wealthy people?

_cenw• 3 years ago

or we could just… tax the rich instead? the not stupid ones too?

CSMastermind• 3 years ago

Don't legacy admissions often mean that their parents have donated significantly to the University?

In a sense wouldn't that just mean that those students are essentially paying a very high premium to attend there and subsidizing the education of all the other students?

I'm not against abolishing them but I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.

noobermin2• 3 years ago

Honestly, relying on donations doesn't seem tenable without discrimination. The only way out is to treat it as a public good and fund it as one.

pirate787• 3 years ago

Carnegie Mellon is a private university, and obviously there's already a strong public commitment to college education through subsidizing the student directly.

lisper4• 3 years ago

So... get rid of private universities entirely?

I'm sympathetic to your position, but that doesn't quite seem like the wisest course of action to me.

mason55• 3 years ago

I think the question is whether the donations create more resources than what is used up by a legacy admission.

For example, imagine I donate $1B to the university, with two stipulations. First, they admit my child to the CS program. Second, they use the money to perpetually expand the size of every incoming CS class by 10 students.

In that respect, the legacy admission is a net good. Yes, for four years there's a spot that's used up by my kid, but even during those four years there are 10 additional people got into the program who wouldn't have otherwise.

I realize it's not that easy, it doesn't work like that, and the size of classes at places like Harvard are not limited by the how much money Harvard has. But it seems like there could be ways to keep some kind of legacy admission program which also create a net good.

Maybe every legacy admission should be required to fund a perpetual scholarship for one financially disadvantaged student? That's both expensive enough to be rare and beneficial enough to be hard to argue with.

justapassenger• 3 years ago

They’re more contributing towards enormous endowments than subsidizing others education.

kolbe• 3 years ago

Princeton can and does do this because of their donors:

https://admission.princeton.edu/how-princetons-aid-program-w...

banana_feather4• 3 years ago

I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.

Wonder not. "[T]here is no statistically significant evidence that legacy preferences impact total alumni giving."

https://production-tcf.imgix.net/app/uploads/2016/03/0820191...

dotancohen2• 3 years ago

Lack of evidence is hardly evidence of lacking.

savanaly• 3 years ago

That doesn't answer the question though, does it?

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

vhold• 3 years ago

    "Prior to controlling for wealth, however, the results indicate that schools with legacy preference policies indeed have much higher alumni giving. These combined results suggest that higher alumni giving at top institutions that employ legacy preferences is not a result of the preference policy exerting influence on alumni giving behavior, but rather that the policy allows elite schools to over-select from their own wealthy alumni. In other words, the preference policy effectively allows elite schools essentially to discriminate based on socioeconomic status by accepting their own wealthy alumni families rather than basing admissions on merit alone."

So it's likely that if fewer people from wealthy families become alumni then alumni giving will go down.

nashashmi3• 3 years ago

They do not have an outsized impact to admissions. What has an outsized impact is the connections a person has with the university. And those connections can come from significant contributions.

waswaswas• 3 years ago

It doesn't even have to be large sums, but the existence of legacy admissions creates goodwill between the university and its alums that broadly motivates consistent, modest donations.

Legacy admissions are also a way to increase yield (percentage of students enrolled versus accepted) which is one of the many ranking-driven stat games.

kradroy• 3 years ago

In the article: > “The pros are certainly fundraising development. I think people like to think that if they give a lot of money to a university, their children will get special preference,” he said. “I can sort of understand the other side saying it’s unfair to other applicants.”

The quoted person doesn't deny it helps, but people like to think it helps.

Also, please don't donate to your university. You paid them for an education, food and housing. You don't owe them anything else. Compound interest on their takings is your contribution.

HeavenFox• 3 years ago

AFAIK, legacy admission and donations are two separate "tracks", if you will.

Donations are when the "donation office" giving a list to the admissions office.

Legacy admission is when the student ticks a box on the application.

The former is to recognize past contributions, where the latter is more for future contribution (if your whole family went to Harvard, presumably you will be more likely to give money to Harvard)

tough3• 3 years ago

The former is to recognize past contributions, where the latter is more for future contribution (if your whole family went to Harvard, presumably you will be more likely to give money to Harvard)

So it's just a checkbox to say you're already on the sect

ahi• 3 years ago

Large alumni donations can and often do increase the cost of education of all the other students. They frequently lead to large capital investments that then have uncovered operational costs. I used to work for one of the wealthiest universities with 100s of millions in capital improvements annually that couldn't provide functional HVAC and a fresh coat of paint to the buildings it had.

1234letshaveatw2• 3 years ago

What about smaller, recurring donations? Does that increase the cost?

LegitShady5• 3 years ago

This is a little bit ridiculous. There is no connection between alumni donations and capital investments except decisions that university leadership chooses to make. The issue isn't the donations, its the university leadership thats choosing to make large capital expenditures. The donations could go to other things and do go to other things. Any blame you're putting on the donations actually belongs to the people running the university. Blaming unwise spending on donations without mentioning who is making those decisions as the root of the issue is ridiculous.

darth_avocado• 3 years ago

That’s because the money goes to everything except education. The “admin” is a curse to everything it gets involved with. I went to a public university and I remember our CS classes over subscribed because the UnI wouldn’t fund two additional TAs, meanwhile our Chancellor got a 300k fence to prevent protesters from getting close to his university funded house protesting “his mismanagement of funds and corruption”.

melvinmelih• 3 years ago

They frequently lead to large capital investments that then have uncovered operational costs

The problem is not the high amounts, but most donations can only be used for a specific purpose, so even though the endowments are high, the actual working capital will be a lot lower.

ARandumGuy• 3 years ago

Most universities have really messy financials. A lot of money gets spent on projects and programs that don't directly benefit the education students receive, or the research output of the university. Things like sports investments, ballooning administration staff, or flashy construction projects. At the same time, TAs, grad students, adjunct professors, and other staff are frequently underpaid and overworked.

There's a lot of room to debate on what colleges should spend their money on, and what they should be providing. But American universities are not strapped for cash, and should be spending more of it on things that directly benefit students and researchers.

enkid• 3 years ago

People don't want to donate to fixing something old, they want to donate to making something new, even when fixing something old is way more effective.

balderdash2• 3 years ago

Isn’t that more of an indictment of the administration than of alumni donors?

r0m4n0• 3 years ago

This might be partially true but I think the bigger implication is that the donations do lead to overall more investment overall which leads to better universities. This is true with literally donations to anything…

I battle our elected officials with similar arguments. We want some safety improvements to our neighborhood roads. We ask them to work on a fix. They say there isn’t money for them. We show them there are federal grants to pay for them. They say they need staff to “manage” the grant money. End of the day, now nothing happens and we still have unsafe roads.

You can’t argue no money is better than some money. It takes a little more to see change but you go much further

haroldp• 3 years ago

This is the way many public universities without legacy admissions actually function as well. They have a high published tuition, but if you are a half decent student, there are many discounts and scholarships that can reduce it significantly. Only less qualified students pay full price.

LanceH• 3 years ago

They love to tell this story. It's absolutely laughable how limited scholarships are for actual academic performance.

geodel• 3 years ago

Well they've gotten enough money now to appear virtuous onwards.

lozenge• 3 years ago

What's the point of the donations to maintain an institution, if the institution's effect is to further entrench the advantages held by the already well-off and well-connected legacy admissions?

1234letshaveatw2• 3 years ago

Please do tell- which institutions effect is as you describe?

stcroixx• 3 years ago

Yes, but as it’s a finite resource, it’s also taking a spot of someone deserving on merit. Schools will have learn to operate without free money.

hnboredhn2• 3 years ago

I'd actually love to see more data on this. My cynical take is that now people donate to schools they didn't even go to - and are concentrated anyways in a few big donations a year. So banning legacies could still just allow wealthier people to buy their in, even if not their own former college.

strikelaserclaw2• 3 years ago

Most of these universities are already rich as hell, with their small class sizes they can easily support the current structure just off the interest on their endowments. Really, i think the current structure actually benefits rich legacies more than it does their much more talented poorer counter parts since the poorer counter parts can get VC funding much easier in todays climate if they demonstrate they have a great idea but this won't happen because most of the systems in America are rigged to make money flow upward.

IG_Semmelweiss• 3 years ago

Its a valid point, but its one the government does not care about.

If you are a public funded institution, you charge the same for admission to all students.

The moment the university stop taking public funds, you can have your wealthy students subsidize the less well off classmates.

azernik• 3 years ago

That's a separate category of admissions advantage - "dean's list" or "donor" is usually what it's called. "Legacy" is just children of alumni regardless of whether they've donated, and "staff" or "faculty" is relatives of workers.

koheripbal• 3 years ago

Exactly, this will likely increase donations.

laiejtli2• 3 years ago

I went to a second-tier public school that never had legacy admissions. Is it really a big deal? Or is this largely symbolic? Do you see kids in your classes who are rich and visibly a level below everyone else intellectually or emotionally? (I did meet a few students who were born rich and enrolled in my second-tier university after failing out of first-tier universities, so that might be my exposure to the practice)

ghaff12• 3 years ago

Is it really a big deal?

Probably not in general. At least outside of a relatively small number of schools. IMO, what you're seeing is a bunch of schools that really don't take legacies much into account (if at all) all coming out of the woodwork to put themselves on the side of the angels without having to actually change any of their policies.

laidoffamazon• 3 years ago

This is exactly what bothers me. This talk about Legacies and even AA for top schools is downright insulting to people like me that worked hard at second-tier institutions and are just ignored afterward as a result. We make up the vast majority of college graduates, why don't we get even a fraction of the support or attention?

OkayPhysicist7• 3 years ago

Do you see kids in your classes who are rich and visibly a level below everyone else intellectually or emotionally?

Not at all. The purpose of legacy admissions is predominantly to get students who could go to plenty of universities at your tier to go to your university, based on the fact that their parents are alumni. You do end up with a minority-within-a-minority population of rich students who are only there because they share a last name with a building, but frankly those students are also valuable to the rest of the student body from a networking perspective.

I'm opposed to the change. The value in a university education is not just from "going to school". You have the prestige of the university (helped by attracting noteworthy alumni), networking opportunity (helped by having current students with connections through their parents), academic quality of the student body (having the rich kids subsidize merit-based scholarships boosts this, too).

On the whole, legacy admissions (and preferential admission of rich kids in general) benefits the student body as a whole. It's the raison d'etre of private schools, and eliminating it maybe lets in another say ~1-5% of your student body's worth of students who wouldn't have gotten in otherwise, in exchange for lowering the value of getting in for everybody.

philip12092• 3 years ago

Next step: Ending use of athletic ability in admissions.

OkayPhysicist7• 3 years ago

Sports programs at university pay for themselves. They pay for themselves because people buy tickets to games, which they do to see exceptional athletes.

ghaff12• 3 years ago

Maybe at schools with big football/basketball programs. At a school like MIT which was being discussed yesterday, sports certainly do not directly pay for themselves.

ZoomerCretin• 3 years ago

Do legacy admissions not pay for themselves?

paxys• 3 years ago

Sports programs at the top ~20 universities pay for themselves (and that too just the top sports). The rest are a money sink.

jcranmer2• 3 years ago

Football and (men's) basketball pay for themselves. The other sports do not. At many smaller universities, not even football and basketball can achieve net revenue for sports.

Source: look at databases like https://www.sportico.com/business/commerce/2021/college-spor...

Brusco_RF10• 3 years ago

I get that. I just never really understood why higher education and semi-pro athletics are so deeply linked together. They are totally different things!

hn_throwaway_996• 3 years ago

Sports programs at university pay for themselves.

I don't see why this even matters (besides the fact that it's not really true except for the biggest sports at some of the biggest sport schools).

The debate is over whether it's fair that some students get the benefits that come with being an Ivy League grad without having the academic prowess to otherwise be admitted. Whether or not they are able to cover their costs is immaterial to that discussion.

I actually heard someone else make a similar argument for children of big donors, i.e. that schools rely on those big donors for their missions. And I'm like "You're just arguing that you're cool with nearly all forms of corruption and bribery as long as the money is put to a good use."

makeitdouble2• 3 years ago

Arguably a lot of categories would pay for themselves, but I'm assuming you don't have a Youtuber or pro gamer program at Carnegie Mellon for instance.

_blz2• 3 years ago

what business is the university in? Education or selling sports tickets?

vkou6• 3 years ago

Sports programs at university pay for themselves.

Then spin them out as a sports club, owned by the university. Don't waste the athlete's times with classes, and don't waste class space with athletes that can't cut it.

(The reason that doesn't happen is because the athletes will actually start asking for a share of the billions of dollars earned by the club.)

wrp2• 3 years ago

Sports programs used to be a net income source, but I think that ended with Title IX, because schools became forced to spend on non-income-producing programs.

However, athletic programs are still given tremendous emphasis by schools because success in sports is effective in attracting donors. Whatever administrators say, college athletics is not at all about building character. It's about drawing money.

ghaff12• 3 years ago

Why should athletics be uniquely disadvantaged among activities that aren't exclusively academic? Perhaps you think that a test result is all that should count though in which case we'll have to agree to disagree.

DaSHacka• 3 years ago

I'd assume it's because academic ability and knowledge makes more sense for determining admissions in an academic context, and has a higher chance of being relevant after the student graduates. This is unlike athletics where unless you go pro, the skill becomes functionally useless once you enter the workforce.

nluken2• 3 years ago

I go back and forth on this. Athletics definitely have outsize influence on college admissions that should be diminished, but surely it should still count for something, right? Most people wouldn’t argue against considering artists’ portfolios and musicians’ performances in admissions. What makes athletics a less important pursuit?

msla2• 3 years ago

Most people wouldn’t argue against considering artists’ portfolios and musicians’ performances in admissions.

I would, unless it was an arts college.

The point is, schools are institutions with a purpose. For most of them, that purpose is education, not playing games. Therefore, being able to play games shouldn't have any relevance in whether you're admitted to those schools.

collinc7772• 3 years ago

Culturally, the separation of athletics and education is going to be extremely difficult to accomplish.

Although not everyone is a fan, Football is the cornerstone of American culture.

motohagiography2• 3 years ago

People against athletic admissions have zero clue about what excellence requires and means. It's an attitude I can only describe as disgusting because it creates a prejudice against people who have actually worked at something and taken risks to succeed. It is equivalent to banning music scholarships.

Who benefits from removing those who actually develop a physical competence and commit to training and competition?

msla2• 3 years ago

Who benefits from removing those who actually develop a physical competence and commit to training and competition?

The people who are there for academics, as opposed to being there to play a game.

There are only so many places in a class. Reserve them for people who go to a school to learn.

kelipso5• 3 years ago

If you want to play sports, go join a league and practice excellence or whatever..

philip12092• 3 years ago

The federal funding going to these universities is to subsidize education, not athletics.

janalsncm9• 3 years ago

Would you say the same in reverse? Should baseball teams also not discriminate based on athletic ability? Academic excellence requires dedication and commitment as well, perhaps we should reserve a few spots on the team for strong students.

TrackerFF• 3 years ago

Some of us come from parts of the world where these things simply do not exist. So it is a very, very foreign concept.

So you're good at sports, or some instrument, or whatever. That's nice - but why should it give you an edge over other people when it comes to school admission?

rank019• 3 years ago

The people receiving athletic scholarships to elite universities have accomplished something amazing. It requires extreme dedication, teamwork, sacrifice, and an understanding of competition/iterative improvement.

Applicants who are equally successful in other pursuits also get credit as they should. An elite artist/musician, community leader, or committed activists are valuable to society and universities should be free to encourage extracurricular excellence in their student body. They are also free to not hold those values and admit purely on test scores + gpa if they like.

mupuff1234• 3 years ago

Wesleyan as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/us/wesleyan-university-en...

I'm guessing ivy leagues won't let go that easily.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

They WERE, essentially, letting people buy their kid's admission. Maybe not directly, but if you're a rich alumnus, you have to suspect that your donation history will figure into your kid's admission or not.

Even if the school says it doesn't, they could be lying.

kyleblarson• 3 years ago

Yeah right. Just as schools are already working around affirmative action rulings to continue to effect actual institutional racism, they will find a way to continue to give legacies a leg up in the admissions process. With the size of endowments of top schools these days they effectively operate as for-profit hedge funds that happen to have educational institutions attached. Does anyone seriously think a school would say "thanks for that library you donated but your grand kid only has a 3.8 gpa so maybe look at state schools."

OkayPhysicist7• 3 years ago

They didn't say they're eliminating open "donations for admissions" systems. They said they're eliminating legacy admissions, i.e. "Your parents went here so you can get in, too". It effects multi-generation middle class families more than the really rich ones.

numbers_guy2• 3 years ago

I was just watching a podcast interview in which a British-German professor employed at an Ivy League university in the US, was talking about the elite universities in the US, and how there is no equivalent in Germany. [1] The interview is in German, but what he is basically saying is that the American attitude is to very openly and purposefully create and maintain this system of elitism and everyone is openly in competition with each other. All of this is alien to us here in Germany.

At first glance it seems like we got the better deal. But then you think more about it more. All the German elite send their kids to study in the US instead of studying in Germany, because there they get to network with the elite kids from all over the world. But this is not a very good thing for Germany. First of all, we have less say in how he next generation of elite in our country think. Secondly all the smart and talented people in Germany who cannot afford to emigrate get no chance to mingle with these elite kids.

So if we had a system of elite unis here in Germany it might on some level be better.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4Y9SomH9Nc

Apocryphon9• 3 years ago

Elites all around the world send their kids to schools to study in the U.S., or places like Oxford. Presumably more countries besides the U.S. or the U.K. have systems of elite universities. Even if Germany had such schools, you think your elites would be content with them? The problem isn't with educational egalitarianism, it's with global hegemony and your country's elites trying to sidle up with the facilities of the hegemon. Don't get rid of your egalitarianism to cater to the fickle whims of your elites.

alephnerd2• 3 years ago

A buddy of mine at Stanford invited me to one of their CS/Eng Grad Student Socials a couple years ago.

There was a pretty large clique of Germans there. Over drinks, I came to find out all those Germans attended the same university (TU Munich), and more specifically, attended the same handful of elite private Gymnasiums.

Even though they all attended a public university which doesn't have legacy admissions, these children of the elite still networked and knew each other since grade school.

The same thing happens in the UK (did you attend an independent or comprehensive school?) as well, and even Canada to a certain extent though a lot of this was also driven by housing prices.

The US is probably going to revert to this kind of elite signaling.

P.S. all those Germans were blonde and blue eyed except for one Turkish German who was clearly uncomfortable and was chatting with us Americans and Asians instead.

elteto3• 3 years ago

You obviously got it wrong. The parent commenter explained that there is no elitism in Germany, because a professor said it in an interview, in German. Don't you know that Germany is the sacred, holy land, unique amongst all other lands on Earth, where elitism doesn't exist? You must have confused them with Austrians.

dsiegel2275• 3 years ago

It is a bit surreal to see this headline hit the top of HN, as I sit in a CMU owned office building, looking out the window at Univ of Pittsburgh buildings.

lacrimacida• 3 years ago

Legacy admissions can be gamed too with modest donations just enough to make the system gameable. With large donors it’s a different story though, those do help the universities and the number of students who enter this way is a pretty low ratio.

Racing0461• 3 years ago

Did they also end discrimination against asian and white men?

qwertyuiop_• 3 years ago

Does this mean they won’t take a call from well connected politicians and billionaires ?

gizmo• 3 years ago

I recently came across a somewhat provocative defense of legacy admissions. The argument is that the iveys are great because they bring together the children of the rich and powerful (legacy admissions with connections) with really smart and hungry students (children of the middle class, mostly).

It's arguably a good deal for both. Smart kids get access to wealth and power and they get to learn how the world works. This is the one thing they can't get anywhere else. And the legacy students get the prestige and credibility of having gone to a top school, as well as access to hungry students who are eager to take advantage of the opportunities that come their way.

When Harvard becomes an institution of merit will it still be worth the price of admission? I'm not so sure.

curiousllama• 3 years ago

will it still be worth the price of admission?

Definitely. Will it still be the same value you're getting? Perhaps not.

Notably, some schools like MIT already don't consider legacy, and are still worth the price.

ars• 3 years ago

Because MIT is more of a technically school, not a networking school. Networking schools are more likely to be business schools.

ecshafer3• 3 years ago

I doubt that the mixture of rich and smart kids actually happens that much. I didn’t go to an ivy, so I can only speculate. But I imagine the rich kids hang out with each other and the poor smart kids hang out with each other.

hot_gril3• 3 years ago

Not an Ivy, but at Stanford, they seem to mix.

pop12121• 3 years ago

I think the argument is worth considering. At the same time, it seems easier in the age of internet for kids of merit to attract sources of funding, and I expect funding will still find their way towards massive untapped concentrations of merit.

hot_gril3• 3 years ago

I agree with that assessment and have always considered the criticism of donor/legacy admissions as simple jealousy. Nothing wrong with taking some donors who are going to open up opportunity for regular students, even though I personally wouldn't want to be one of those kids with rich donor parents.

The bigger flaws with Ivies and Stanford (but imo not MIT or CMU) are in how they don't really pick the regular students based on merit either. I went to a top high school and saw many classmates go to those; most of them were about average but managed to pad their resumes or play some diversity card, while most of the real gems went elsewhere. I really thrived going to UC Berkeley and think that had to do with the genuinely good students around me. Still, it was obvious how the neighboring Stanford uni had way more money and connections floating around for the number of students, meaning less need to fight over resources (on the flip side, Cal taught me how to fight when needed, which was more important for me).

pcurve• 3 years ago

I don't have problem with private institutions like Harvard giving preferential treatments to its legacy. However, I think they should give up some portion of their tax advantaged status as the result.

bumby9• 3 years ago

There is at least one interesting study that tried to test this. They took students who were admitted to prestigious universities. They tracked those who attended as well as those who attended "lesser" schools instead. They found no real difference in success later in life, so it may be confusing cause and effect. People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school. In other words, prestigious schools are good at selecting for people who would be 'successful' regardless.

The one caveat that did get a benefit were low socio-economic students, who did see a measurable difference in success. That's a class you didn't mention in your post. The thought is that it's precisely due to the network effects.

Infinitesimus• 3 years ago

Can you link to the study?

I'd be curious about how success is defined here. Career is a pretty narrow lens to define it by so I'd hope for something more expansive.

Many of the benefits of having friends in high places are outside of traditional career ladder. The expedited (insert annoying process here), the vacation you're invited on, the unintentional influence you have on some big thing because you happen to be an ear to the decider, etc etc.

ghaff12• 3 years ago

People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school.

It also depends on what the "lesser" schools are. I expect that if someone missed out on the significantly random admissions lottery to get into Harvard but were admitted to Dartmouth, Cornell, or Williams (or even UMass Amherst) instead, I expect that if they'd have done well at Harvard they'll do just fine.

I expect for the lower socio-economic students, the delta is probably related to being among fellow students who maybe set a bit higher bar than other schools would.

lofatdairy• 3 years ago

It's arguably a good deal for both. Smart kids get access to wealth and power and they get to learn how the world works. This is the one thing they can't get anywhere else. And the legacy students get the prestige and credibility of having gone to a top school, as well as access to hungry students who are eager to take advantage of the opportunities that come their way.

I'm not 100% convinced by this argument, insofar as that kids with wealth and power will probably end up at Ivies anyways (and they tend to make up a large percentage of the students, legacy or not). They've had access to private tutors, went to private schools like Exeter or Andover (or usually at the very least a magnet), and grew up surrounded by other ambitious young people in major power centers like NYC, Boston, or DC.

The number of public school students you meet is just shocking low, even among non-legacies.

bamfly3• 3 years ago

Just look at who runs the government at the highest levels—elected, and appointees, both. Heavy representation of Ivies and other elite schools... sure, OK, not surprising, but you look farther back and more often than not, yep, expensive prep school, rich-parish catholic private schools, or (less commonly) a well-into-the-top-1% public high school (usually with selective admission—basically by definition, since you can't realistically do that well, as a school, without it). Notably, the latter option is simply absent if you don't live in the right places, which tend to be rich, expensive ones, near or in a handful of major cities.

If you're in a normal-ass public school—even a good, but not exceptionally good selective-admission one—when you're 16 because your parents couldn't afford the straight-up costs, or relocation & other maneuvers (e.g. résumé padding), to get you into a top secondary school, let alone university—many doors of possibility in your life have already begun to swing shut, whether you realize it or not. It's not impossible you'll get into those kinds of positions despite that, but... your odds are even worse than one might suppose, had one not noticed this tendency.

(of course, it's worse still for certain other pursuits—for some sports and musical instruments, if you're not already damn serious about it and receiving excellent [$$$] coaching/instruction by age 8 or so, then that's already effectively cut off for you as a possible future career. Decide at 14 that's your passion and give it your all? Too bad, you're already too far behind, learn to enjoy participating as a hobby on weekends.)

whimsicalism10• 3 years ago

The number of public school students you meet is just shocking low, even among non-legacies.

at least at Harvard, a substantial majority are from public schools - generally bougie suburban ones, yes, but still public

HDThoreaun9• 3 years ago

This is definitely true, but we can go a step deeper. You have to think about what Harvard's goals are. Maximizing academic success is not very high on the list. The real goals are maximizing career success, donations, and cultural cachet/prestige. When legacies are considered with these goals in mind they make a lot of sense. Legacies are likely to have successful careers due to their parents resources and power, they're likely to donate too because of all the resources they have.

So yes, legacies are the main value add at Harvard type institutions for the non legacy students, but even if they weren't, admitting them aligns with the universities goals. If we're considering the "fairness" of admissions we have to look through the perspective of what admissions is trying to accomplish. We can get into equity vs equality, but at the end of the day accepting legacies does probably maximize Harvards chances of achieving its goals, and many would say that makes the process fair.

janalsncm9• 3 years ago

Ok, then why have classes at all? Why have any tests? If college is just a country club for young adults, just auction off seats to the highest bidder and be done with it. You’ll get an elite mix of those with the most “potential”. It also has the benefit of full transparency. A seat at Harvard costs $4 million cash. Don’t have it? Too bad you wanted an education but Harvard has to look out for their own interests.

Well, Harvard is going to look out for Harvard but Americans have to look out for our own country. And what is best for the country is not to have a snobby elite club, but to develop the minds of kids to solve the most pressing issues of the 21st century.

tivert4• 3 years ago

This is definitely true, but we can go a step deeper. You have to think about what Harvard's goals are. Maximizing academic success is not very high on the list. The real goals are maximizing career success, donations, and cultural cachet/prestige.

Exactly. Harvard is about being the source of the next generation of elites. IIRC, they're far more likely to admit the captain of the high school football team over an otherwise similar nerd with better grades/test scores, because the captain is demonstrating leadership potential and is more likely to be some next-gen big shot.

dbish8• 3 years ago

Is MIT still worth the price of admission? I would certainly say so and they don't do legacy, and I would trust the Princeton/Harvard line on a resume a lot more if it was guaranteed they didn't get in because of non-academic reasons (like parents, sports, etc.)

philwelch6• 3 years ago

MIT and Harvard are almost completely different. The promise of MIT, as I understand it, is sort of a ruthless no-compromise academic excellence. The promise of Harvard or Yale is that you are going to be inducted into the American ruling class. These are different goals.

nemo44x• 3 years ago

MIT still has standards and you need to be able to play at a very high level there. Most everyone is too dumb to go there. The others not so much.

coryrc• 3 years ago

Won't more of them just go to state schools and mix with the smart kids there?

philwelch6• 3 years ago

The benefit of legacy admissions isn’t just that you can get into Harvard if your dad went to Harvard; it’s the promise that if you get into Harvard, your children will also have a better chance of getting into Harvard. If you’re not a legacy admit yourself, the practice of legacy admissions means that once your family has climbed high enough up the American class ladder to get you in, you’re going to be able to pass that down to your children. Which of course means that ending legacy admission sort of welches on the deal and takes us marginally closer to a low-trust society in which these sorts of implicit promises are worthless.

slackfan• 3 years ago

will it still be worth the price of admission? I'm not so sure. As an alum of the harvard-for-working-people extension school at the Ivy, I can say it already sure isn't. The education is mediocre, and the administration is more interested in growing admin budgets than any real education whatsoever.

Ve Ri Tas indeed.

eniotna• 3 years ago

What you're paying for is essentially to signal to employer that you've been able to make it into a very select club which is in turn acting as a proxy for intelligence/conscientiousness. As long as the seats are be limited, it will be worth the cost.

londons_explore• 3 years ago

True - but if some other place existed which said "We only let in 50% children of harvard students and 50% really smart people", would that place turn out to be more desirable to hire from?

I suspect so... Those connections are perhaps more valuable than great exam grades.

petesergeant• 3 years ago

I read the same argument, but that sounds like a much better argument for donation-led places (which is also a thing), rather than hoping for the knock-on effect of legacies.

MengerSponge• 3 years ago

Legacy is a weak proxy for rich, though. There's a separate entrance for rich-rich kids: donors are evaluated based on the size of their gifts and their ability to continue giving, and their kids are given preferential admission.

purpleblue• 3 years ago

This is an easy thing to quantify. MIT does not have legacy admissions, so you can do a comparison between Harvard and MIT to see the effects of legacy admissions on career growth.

sib2• 3 years ago

There are a lot more Fortune 100 CEOs and Supreme Court justices from Harvard than MIT, so it's an interesting opportunity to look at a correlation / causation question ;)

(Am personally an MIT alum...)

MisterBastahrd5• 3 years ago

People who are born at a level tend to stay at that level throughout their entire lives. This is just as true for the rich as it is for the poor. It doesn't mean that the rich are good and the poor are bad, it's that people tend to go through the lives they've had prepared before them.

Given that this is the case, legacy admissions should be relics of the past. People who are born with extraordinary access to capital don't need more help.

AbrahamParangi• 3 years ago

I think this may have been true in like, the 1920s, when it was very difficult to connect merit and capital but today it’s fairly easy and the justification doesn’t really make sense.

gitfan862• 3 years ago

This is correct. I have three friends that went to HBS and got very high paying careers. Being friends with the CEO's son was not why they got the jobs.

They administrators at these schools really tipped their hands when the Full House admission bribery scandal broke.

They were not upset that someone paid to get into a school. They were upset that someone didn't pay them to get into a school.

yodsanklai• 3 years ago

I think that even without legacy admissions, you'll still get many/mostly wealthy kids there. You can see that in elite institutions which are purely meritocratic.

bpye• 3 years ago

I'm sorry, but I don't think the argument holds water. Why is the US special here? The easiest counterexamples are Oxford and Cambridge in the UK. Neither have 'legacy' admissions.

ryzvonusef• 3 years ago

*(ceteris paribas; and assuming that the argument is valid...)

the problem is that ALL the powerful kids are concentrated in select few universities, mostly in the Ivy League, NorthEast US.

If Legacy admissions are eliminated, then the powerful kids will be spread about, IMHO, and the network effects will be spread about.

right now the NorthEast US unduly benefits heavily with the concentration of powerful kids, and the network thereof.

____

BTW, right across Harvard is MIT, and I believe they do not factor legacy admissions. Harvard's loss is MIT's gain, so I doubt there is anything to be unduly concerned about. (not to mention the 7 or so other world class research universities a stone's throw from Harvard Yard.)

Harvard will have to just pull itself together by its bootstraps.

tayo42• 3 years ago

Im kind of surprised how much media attention and outrage admissions to schools generates. one year of out school, the whole thing just is so irrelevant. Idk who really cares what these small subset of schools does. There are so many public schools that offer education and opportunities and even those are blown of proportion.

underlipton10• 3 years ago

It's funny to me how cynical and skeptical HN is about diversity-related admissions, but how quickly everyone jumps to point out the positives of legacy admissions.

These aren't people who are being objective. We are now mask-off with regard to how this is simply an emotional matter centered around what is most advantageous to whatever group. The least we could do is be open about the role of self-interest here.

JKCalhoun2• 3 years ago

Or people are less emotional about wealth. (Or people are wealthy.)

dublinben2• 3 years ago

Don't you think there's just as much self-interest behind the the primary argument of relying exclusively on "merit"? This is likely being promulgated by a demographic who over-indexes on this dimension and is lacking in any other that may be included in a holistic admissions process.

underlipton10• 3 years ago

Don't you think there's just as much self-interest behind the the primary argument of relying exclusively on "merit"?

Oh, absolutely.

az2262• 3 years ago

If they were admitting legacy students who were hundreds of points lower on the SATs and bad grades, then yeah, it’d be as bad as affirmative action. But in practice it’s only ever used to break ties.

If affirmative action was implemented the same way legacy admissions is, I doubt the lawsuit against Harvard would ever exist, and opposition essentially non-existent.

underlipton10• 3 years ago

If they were admitting legacy students who were hundreds of points lower on the SATs and bad grades

They are.

low_tech_punk• 3 years ago

Can we end education resource scarcity please. More open courses by schools and less credentialism by employers could make these debates irrelevant.

Apocryphon9• 3 years ago

Underrated point. Weird to see how in HN, the bastion of self-taught hackers, autodidact polymaths, and people who think secondary education is a waste of time and money, try to argue in favor of the entrenched credentialist power of universities.

rank019• 3 years ago

There’s not a scarcity of education. Anyone is free to attend community college with guaranteed transfer to a larger state university provided they meet their GPA requirements.

EDIT: I do agree with you about employers overvaluing credentials though. Ultimately that’s not something you can unilaterally remove in a free society.

dehrmann• 3 years ago

I'm amazed at how schools with legacy and donation-based admissions can maintain high rankings when you never know if someone with a degree from there just got it because their parents donated $5M. Before someone says "the student still has to graduate," Harvard has a 97% graduation rate.

collinc7772• 3 years ago

The ranking systems are likely flawed and measure things outside of merit, or measure merit in a non-holistic way.

dbish8• 3 years ago

See also the massive grade inflation at these schools

HDThoreaun9• 3 years ago

The rankings effectively measure prestige. Someone with $5 million to give to a university will very likely have a prestigious career, even if they're completely incompetent.

strikelaserclaw2• 3 years ago

I mean it is just like the YC model, 1% of the companies will give outsized rewards which will more than justify investing in the 99%. Same way, Harvard is probably propped up by the 1% of kids who it takes in who do great things and the rest can just enjoy the privilege of being alumni of such a "great institution". These top institutions take in not only unworthy rich kids but also the cream of the crop in science, leadership etc...

screye• 3 years ago

Legacy admissions should not be legal in public universities. Massive public schools like UMass, Mich, StonyBrook, GATech, Minnesota, Penn State still take legacy admissions.

It's nice to see CMU follow in the footsteps of other top private tech schools like MIT & Caltech that claim to not use legacy status. It's no surprise that Ivies, Stanford and most private colleges all heavily favor legacy. Afterall, a large part of a prestige university's job is lend an appearance of competence to the not-as-competent kids of the elite.

source I used - https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/colleges-that-c...

rank019• 3 years ago

I have a hard time defining my own stance on this point.

For example, my alma mater GAtech allows for automatic admissions of my immediate relatives provided they reach some bar like 3.5 gpa + 1400 SAT (math+reading).

Do you think this should be illegal? It’s quite clearly an attempt to create an enduring GT community. It’s also clearly not the same as racially discriminatory admissions.

I do see the argument that it’s unfair…but should it be full blown illegal? “Non-legacy” isn’t a protected class in America unlike race,sex,religion, etc.

dbish8• 3 years ago

Yes, that should not be allowed. The best should get in, not a relative.

conjecTech• 3 years ago

I wish _all_ students with that profile were automatically accepted. I went to GT and while I guess it's nice in some ways that its now considered an elite university, I much preferred the persona of admitting everyone and weeding out people out so that they could give kids without stellar resumes a chance.

julienchastang• 3 years ago

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible.

"[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of white applicants admitted to Harvard between 2014-19 fell into one or more of these categories. Nearly three quarters of them would have been rejected if they had been subjected to the same standards as other white applicants."

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/end-college-legacy-preferences-...

twoodfin• 3 years ago

Opens a ton of slots for race-neutral preferences that can, say, pull in the top performing students from otherwise underperforming urban and rural districts.

xkcd-sucks• 3 years ago

It's kind of begging the question to assume multigenerational family ties to a university are "not merit" when a big part of a university's value proposition is social networking: One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc. Personally I didn't understand that at the time, would have rejected the notion on principle, and still don't really like it, but is definitely worth consideration

yannyu• 3 years ago

Then we might as well admit that "merit" is heavily influenced by starting conditions instead of pretending that everyone has "equal opportunity". How many times have I heard from people that the USA is about "equality of opportunity" and not "equality of outcome"? Legacy admissions is directly contrary to equality of opportunity, and undermines the idea of meritocracy in university admissions that people have been crowing about in anti-affirmative-action rhetoric.

importantbrian6• 3 years ago

Yeah, I think part of the problem is that people don't really understand this. I have taken classes at a community college, a directional state school, an R1 and my master's degree is from a highly selective school. My n=1 experience is that the coursework from any accredited program is largely the same. The professors at the state school were actually better than at any of the other schools from a pure teaching perspective. The biggest difference between them was the profile of my classmates. The entire value that Harvard et al. provide is the name brand and the alumni network. The education itself you can get anywhere.

bradleyjg3• 3 years ago

The public makes a huge investment in Harvard, both directly through grants and indirectly through waived taxes. Is subsidizing social networking with and among the privileged a good use of public dollars?

janalsncm9• 3 years ago

Being able to sit down for dinner with a college professor is already a huge advantage. Those kids don’t need an additional boost.

Looking back, my dad was a mechanical engineer and it definitely helped me. Especially in math and science. He showed me the math he was doing and as a kid seeing math done at a professional level helped me appreciate what actually mattered. As a result I really cared about those subjects and I did well.

spullara3• 3 years ago

It would be interesting to see if there is a reason to go to Harvard without legacy admissions. There certainly is a reason to go to MIT for example where they don't have it.

DiogenesKynikos3• 3 years ago

If Harvard wants to be a networking club for the rich, that's fine, but then it should be cut off from public funding.

Cutting off public funds would obliterate Harvard's research output overnight. NSF, NIH, NASA, DOE and other government agencies fund virtually all fundamental scientific research in the United States. Without government funding, most professors (at least in science and engineering) would immediately leave for places where they could access public funding.

Harvard should decide what's more important to it: networking or world-class research?

sterlind• 3 years ago

on the other hand, people go to MIT to interact with brilliant classmates and faculty. MIT's value proposition is that the smartest people are there, and funding will find those people (and vice versa) on the merits of their intellectual abilities.

On the other hand,

One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc

is correct about Harvard. Harvard is much more about elitism-qua-elitism. Sure it's academically selective (if you're not from a political dynasty), but that's just because the intellectual elite is only one of many kinds of elite they carry about.

I think this is a true insight about Harvard, and the other ivies that give a "Gentleman's C" to plutocrats' children, but I think it deserves to be destroyed. I'd prefer Lincoln Lab to the Skull and Bones.

michael19992• 3 years ago

The word "merit" is flexible, but not so flexible that it encompasses the mediocre children of well connected people. That's the entire point of "merit" based admission.

You are right that much of the value in Harvard is the network, but that's not the branding.

jchw2• 3 years ago

What that sounds like to me is that we give (/continued to give) national accreditation to elite clubs that care more about status than genuine merits.

Obviously organizations that want to do this should be free to in some form, but does it really have a place anywhere in the education system?

Not all universities seem to be this way. While any measure of merit will definitely be flawed in some way, there are certainly universities that live and die not on elite status but on elite results. In some ways, it's going to be a proxy, because people who are better off will naturally perform better. But on the other hand, at least selecting people literally based on how well they perform academically is more meaningful to the function of education than selecting people because they're related to someone of high status.

I never felt like university was for people like me anyways, but there are DEFINITELY some kinds of organizations that get a sort of special status, e.g. churches, universities, etc. where it feels like we should be scrutinizing them more.

Maybe I just don't understand, though. But, that's what it feels like to me.

analog31• 3 years ago

That could change, if there's no credible reason for society to support it. Democratizing education quality and access is inseparable from diminishing, or at least changing, the appeal of "elite" colleges.

kiba2• 3 years ago

We're still creating a meritocratic elite, based on capacity limit and price of admission. Not everybody get to have an elite education, or afford such an opportunity.

Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay.

l33t2333722• 3 years ago

Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it

It pretty much is. Hardvard undergraduate classes aren’t substantially higher quality than at many other state schools.

kneebonian3• 3 years ago

Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay.

We already have that for the most part, I can find courses from half a dozen of the worlds best universities online for free right now.

michael19992• 3 years ago

The word merit doesn't stretch so far as to include mediocre children of wealthy parents. You are welcome to call it an elite education. But the whole point of the word "merit" is to distinguish it from mere parental wealth and connections.

chmod6004• 3 years ago

“for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff“

Athletes have merit. Arguably more than some academic departments.

Larrikin2• 3 years ago

Why should a top high school baseball prospect take up a spot at a college instead of a spot on a local A league team?

anovikov• 3 years ago

Beware. On the next iteration, education will simply lose it's importance in providing any sort of edge in life. Just because well, elites are hereditary, it's only about particular methods of maintaining their hereditary status. Education seems to about to cease to be that method. Which means, we will see all the same people on the same commanding positions in the society - except they will be uneducated/much less educated. Because why bother.

A step like this increases the necessary level of violence applied to the society to keep the elites in their places and the masses in check. Because maintaining elites through educational attainment was the nicest avenue i can think of, all other methods will be uglier.

A good society should know how to let the elites stay in power without getting everyone else too angry.

hunson_abadeer3• 3 years ago

With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify.

I've heard this repeated nearly verbatim in a couple of places, and it's such a puzzling framing. Why was this practice any less ethically challenged prior to the SCOTUS decision?

chaostheory3• 3 years ago

Not sure why this wasn't mentioned more often but it's because of donor money. Donor money that funds things like new cafeterias and other facilities ultimately benefits everyone at school and helps keep tuition prices in check, also complicates the ethics ie if they didn't have enough donors, then tuition will go up and it'll be even less affordable

svachalek• 3 years ago

The idea is that affirmative action gave a non-merit advantage to minority students, while legacy admissions gave a non-merit advantage to white kids. (Left out of course, are the white kids from non-elite backgrounds.) People want it to be "fair" by removing more non-merit policies since one has fallen. But I think this thread brings up a good point, as to what it is that places like Harvard are actually selling.

dionidium4• 3 years ago

With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify.

I just don't see this. In our society we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, and that it therefore clears the very high bar required for limiting freedom of association. That is what is at issue in the case of affirmative action, the elimination of which was not a broad referendum on the right to form elite social clubs.

MisterBastahrd5• 3 years ago

We do not live in a perfect world.

Instead, we live in a world where a collection of individuals has had the fruits of their labor stolen from them for most of the past 400 years, served in wars where promises were made and not kept upon their return, and are still being discriminated against in representative democracy.

And when someone enumerates all the reasons that these people have been harmed, financially, spiritually, democratically, and physically... the people who are against attempts to rectify the situation given the tools available also have nothing but "fairness" to fall back on when attempting to justify their positions, because they'd rather sweep it under the rug and pretend like it's something that we should never address.

te_230349493• 3 years ago

Legacy admissions discriminate by class (if you are well off to be part of a donor family, you get a leg up) or by birth right (if you were a lucky enough sperm to be part of the family of a prior attendee, you get a leg up).

How is the principles of giving preference to a particular class or birth right any different than giving preference to race? All three fly in the face of meritocracy. Yet to not allow this means that one has to invoke government interference of private criteria.

So it seems logical that there are two reasonably argued sides. It seems that if you want to follow a more libertarian model and allow a private learning institution "the right to form elite social clubs" as you put it (surely there is more function to a university than networking!), you would likewise allow it to set other policies as they may, such as allowing preferences for race. Conversely, if meritocracy is the goal, enough to force a private university to change their criteria for admissions, then all three admission practices would be problematic.

The cherry-picked groupings don't make sense to me. Class and birth right favoritism is okay but race based favoritism is not? Why? On the surface, this smacks of protection of elitism and a class based society, which pretty much nulls all commentary from various peanut galleries arguing that ending affirmative action is about meritocracy.

elil172• 3 years ago

But favoring legacy status in admissions is a form of racial discrimination because non-white people are much, much less likely to have legacy at elite institutions.

s17n• 3 years ago

The point is that legacy admissions have always been an egregious injustice. One effect of affirmative action was to (partially and imperfectly) ameliorate the admissions situation. Now that's gone.

As far as the freedom of association goes, that's not an argument in favor of legacy admissions but it is possibly an argument that the government should stay out of it. Given the central role that universities play in our society, and the fact that they depend on government support, I think it's a complicated question. Ultimately I think it's also an uninteresting question - the important thing is building a societal consensus legacy admissions are wrong and should end.

nradov3• 3 years ago

From a purely legal standpoint, the affirmative action issue is really about government funding and has little to do with limiting freedom of association. Schools that take federal funding can't violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Private schools that wish to continue their affirmative action admission programs are free to do so provided they forgo government funding.

boplicity• 3 years ago

we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race.

If there is significant and lasting harm done on the basis of race, should there be significant and lasting action taken to correct that harm?

What if such harm continues today, as it does in our society?

rhaway84773• 3 years ago

I’m not in favor of affirmative action for a whole host of reasons.

However, if we consider discrimination against group A to be illegitimate and yet that discrimination and it’s negative effects to people of group A remain widespread, actions to remedy that discrimination, which in many cases will indeed require treating people of group A differently, is not automatically illegitimate.

Just like we consider violence to be illegitimate, but at the same time we draw a massive distinction between violence by an offender and violence done in self defense.

While that’s true in general, as far as affirmative action specifically is concerned, as the legacy removals in response to the ending of affirmative action indicates, affirmative action was essentially colleges paying lip service to reducing harm while using it to justify all sorts of inexcusable practices (like legacy).

luxuryballs• 3 years ago

“However, we will sabotage our own elite social clubs as part of compliance with the new ruling with the hope that they will associate the pain with the current Supreme Court and thus hate them as much as we do.”

underlipton10• 3 years ago

This is a straining of the issue with discrimination, which cannot be divorced from its history. Corrected:

It is illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race to the advantage of those previously, explicitly advantaged by their race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, because part of the country's attempt to uphold this prejudice lead to the single bloodiest war in the country's history.

Affirmative action was upheld for more than a half-century in recognition of these incontrovertible truths, and was only overturned with the rise of a Supreme Court whose partisanship would be unprecedented, if it had not been preceded by the courts that gave us Jim Crow. No one even voted this change in.

PaulDavisThe1st7• 3 years ago

The argument against affirmative actions was largely rooted in the concept that admission should be based on purely meritocratic considerations.

Legacy admissions are the opposite of meritocratic considerations, unless you believe that genetic inheritance is such an excellent predictor of cross-generational merit. Such a belief suffers from the same basic flaws as more clearly racist ideas.

kaitai• 3 years ago

Now let's back up a moment. In US society we have said for the last 60 years max that it's usually illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race, and before that it was legal and actually approved of to discriminate on the basis of race. Discrimination on basis of race is written into the founding documents of the land. That's what makes it the one of the deepest fractures in our society, the fact that it was legislated for the vast majority of the time the colonies and then country have existed.

It's also worth acknowledging that elite social clubs have always had the ability to pick who they want -- the pretty people, the rich people, the well-connected people. Given that racism is suddenly (last 60 years) less popular/legal than it used to be in the US, is it any wonder that the elite social club of Harvard wanted to pick the most attractive candidates coming from groups previously denied admission? Now the end of "affirmative action" says that Harvard can no longer curate the class it wants to have its favored racial mix. Since this end of affirmative action is a direct strike at Harvard's ability to pick its elite the way it wants to, how do we continue to justify legacy status, again? "You can't pick people with the experiences you want; you just have to pick rich kids/according to heredity, that's the only fair way to do things." Really? Why?

America hasn't always hated racism, but it has always hated a hereditary nobility.

MisterBastahrd5• 3 years ago

Harder to justify?

In an absolute vacuum, they were always the hardest to justify. There's absolutely no reason that they should have ever existed. I do still like the idea of employees of universities getting the benefit of their children attending for free, though... but then I also had no problem with affirmative action for many of the same reasons.

29athrowaway• 3 years ago

Then they will put their money into another pay-to-win system.

ericmcer• 3 years ago

Why did they lump athletes in with those other three groups. Athletics is the ultimate meritocracy. If athletes are a significant portion of that 43% it dilutes the whole argument.

If 10% were alumni/donors/faculty it would still be outrageous, no need to pump up the numbers.

xdennis3• 3 years ago

Athletics is the ultimate meritocracy

...but not in education.

The US system of making athletes waste time in university is quite unique and ridiculous.

mabbo• 3 years ago

Nearly three quarters of them would have been rejected if they had been subjected to the same standards as other white applicants.

That's kind of insane. Over 30% of white students at Harvard would have been rejected if not for those programs.

Scarblac• 3 years ago

But also, why is meritocracy so above any criticism? Why is it considered so great?

It would be fairer to just pick at random. Or even better, make sure everyone who wants a good education can get one.

koolba• 3 years ago

The rationale for meritocracy is that a limited resource should be allocated to the individual that will make most use of it. Demonstrating that you understand the prerequisites and are studious is a pretty good indicator that you’ll attend class and strive to learn more.

Randomly picking students with zero minimum qualification would be a massive waste of resources.

Randomly picking students above a given objective standard would be okay. Though arguably not as good as given the best of the best first dibs (depends on who you ask!).

CraigRo2• 3 years ago

This statement is a bit misleading, as the criteria get to be hair-splittingly narrow when you are talking about a school with a sub 5% acceptance rate -- you could fill the whole class with valedictorians. Nevertheless, my experience is that in terms of finding a 'better' candidate:

Legacy -- legacy preference is pitched as a tiebreaker. Most of the legacies are actually quite good, and many are exceptional, so perhaps 30-50% got in over some 'better' kid. But in many cases, those slots represent something like geographic diversity, or a legacy kid of a minority or a kid of some famous person, and they generally don't take dolts. So this is not a huge tip.

FacBrat -- The kids of professors tend to be extremely and sometimes extraordinarily good -- their parents are Harvard professors, and that tends to rub off. Staff members less so, but it is politically hard to reject them if you want to keep their parents. There are more in the second category than in the first. So perhaps 60% of the kids get in based on this tip.

Donor -- Not a lot of these that I know of. Even in the 1930s, the son of the President of IBM got rejected from Harvard and Princeton because he was a goof off. I seriously doubt that there are more than 10-20 kids/year who get in this way who wouldn't otherwise.

Athlete -- This is where very few of these kids would get in if they were in the general pool -- 10% max I'd guess. A lot of them are very good, but that level of dedication to sport tends to eat time that could have been used for academics or other worthwhile pursuits.

I've always been amazed that they recruit for Golf, Squash, Crew, Fencing, Diving, Tennis, Lax, and Water Polo... these sports are limited to prep schools and rich suburban districts ... not exactly equitable.

whimsicalism10• 3 years ago

Your comment is pretty spot on about the admission dynamics.

Legacy

I think it is more of a tip than you are making it out to be simply due to yield farming - the smart kid who has a Harvard parent is more likely to go to Harvard over Yale than a generic smart kid, so if you want to keep your admission rates as low as possible you tip legacy.

10-20 kids/year who get in this way who wouldn't otherwise.

They certainly exist, Harvard has the z-list.

agentofoblivion• 3 years ago

Headline in 5 years: “Endowments from alumni down 50% and no one knows why!”

bushbaba• 3 years ago

Which is why many have stated it’s hardest to get into university if you are a non wealthy, legacy white or Asian male. I totally see that’s institutions all issuing apologies for the past discrimination.

ellisv• 3 years ago

This is good, although I probably benefited from it because one of my recommendation letters was from an alumnus.

say_it_as_it_is• 3 years ago

I hope this continues. Then, we will see legislation pass to re-classify endowment funds as hedge funds. CMU has $3 Billion of assets in its endowment portfolio.

Endowments have been getting a free ride in terms of tax treatment, disclosure, and other activities that are regulated for hedge funds. Now that they're upsetting the elite class, the class will respond by re-classifying endowments as hedge funds.

Affirmative action isn't the only racist policy that universities have been practicing. They've also been racially discriminating tuition subsidization. With re-classification of endowments as hedge funds, their activities will become transparent. Scrutiny over subsidized tuition will become possible. Black students receiving a disproportionate amount of subsidy, for instance, will be an act of racial discrimination, and financially regulated entities like hedge funds cannot racially discriminate.

OkayPhysicist7• 3 years ago

Endowments let institutions weather out political mood swings and changes in enrollment. Any institution that serves a purpose besides "being a branch of the government" needs a war chest of some kind, and if they can use the proceeds to make student lives better, why not have a large endowment?

psychphysic• 3 years ago

It's weird to me that "stop being racist" some how has led to universities considering giving up legacies, "prestige"/donation based admissions and even athletic admissions.

If it's the case that affirmative action was being used to mask other unfair practices that will be utterly ghastly.

nkjnlknlk• 3 years ago

If it's the case that affirmative action was being used to mask other unfair practices that will be utterly ghastly.

That has actually been the case and stance many leftists took on AA. I think it was, at one point, recognized as a bandaid on a deep, bleeding wound. Neither a correct nor sufficient solution but it was the only one that could get through the door.

az2262• 3 years ago

It’s all about woke optics.

reso• 3 years ago

Hard to believe legacy admissions are legal anywhere. An obvious injustice--and efficiency drain--on society.

lo_zamoyski• 3 years ago

"'[Legacy] has never been a primary or ‘plus’ factor in Pitt admissions of undergraduates.' [...] Pitt declined to say how many legacies are part of its entering classes."

So this may not have been a radical move anyway, at least at Pitt. Call me when Harvard decides to do this.

thexumaker• 3 years ago

Good get rid of Affirmative Action, get rid of Legacy status.

Athlete's are fine. Having to go to a college with a bad football team always sucked personally so let's keep that pipeline up.

kweingar2• 3 years ago

Ultimately the existence of elite universities is the root of the problem. Most colleges take a huge majority of the students who apply, so neither legacy students nor affirmative action make too much a difference for them. Universities should be more like this and less like incubators for the ruling class.

All of the drama recently revolves around wealthy students being denied their rubber stamps or underprivileged students being denied their golden ticket. It’s bad that college performs these functions, so let’s work to fix that.

twixfel• 3 years ago

Exactly, the universities are extremely wealthy and could in principle choose to use that money to increase intake, but then it dilutes their status as a luxury brand, so they don't do it. But what business is it of the university to be a luxury brand anyway? They should be simply maximising the public good, and that means taking way more students with the huge endowments they have.

rank019• 3 years ago

Is your argument that we should not have elite universities in the US? Seriously?

kweingar2• 3 years ago

Yes

dang• 3 years ago

Recent and related:

We Don’t Do Legacy (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36774369 - July 2023 (106 comments)

AnnikaL• 3 years ago

The title on HN (currently "Children, alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt") is a little confusing; children and other relatives of alumni don't have an admissions edge. This isn't about some sort of early college program!

LarsDu88• 3 years ago

It's glad to hear that children will no longer have an admissions edge at these schools. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous how they were letting 8 year olds into college campuses.

balderdash2• 3 years ago

This is not going to have the effect people think. My experience is that legacy admissions are more or less a tie breaker. Legacy candidates that gain admission due to their legacy status are well qualified candidates (+ you often get the added benefit of a higher yield).

HOWEVER, where less than qualified candidates do gain admission is when there is a significant donor involved (there is often a meaningful overlap with alumni for obvious reasons, but not necessarily). Getting rid of legacy admissions will not change this dynamic. So really the only people that are going to lose out are legacies that are “on the bubble” from a resume standpoint whose parents aren’t rich…

chmod6004• 3 years ago

I’d like to see more numbers for context. How many students were favored by legacy status, and approximately how much favoritism?

They often mix legacy numbers with athletes for some reason… I guess to make the numbers more dramatic? Or maybe because insecure intellectuals look down on athletes in general?

code_runner2• 3 years ago

What difference do the numbers make if the policy is better? If it changes 1 or 100 outcomes, in my mind this is absolutely the correct call.

Numbers would be great and they should definitely produce them, but I don’t think they would change my thinking they legacy admissions is negative.

chmod6004• 3 years ago

The news likes to stoke outrage and context (especially numerical context) helps moderate it.

Also, small problems often have different solutions than large problems. Solutions that don’t scale are fine if the numbers are small.

bsder• 3 years ago

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify.

Placing University of Pittsburgh, a public university which has almost a 67% acceptance rate, in the same conversation with private universities that have acceptance rates in or near the single digit percentages borders on journalistic fraud.

I would also say that Pitt, unlike a lot (most) of universities mentioned, had many programs attempting to help those from more humble backgrounds get into the university. It used to have a very strong night school. It also had many programs in the summer for students who were "on the edge" of getting in but needed to learn some extra skills (like how to study, how to use libraries, extra classwork learning how to write, etc.).

I don't know what kind of programs Pitt still has, though. So my information could be outdated.

gumby• 3 years ago

Curious how many selective schools don't have legacy admissions. Most schools will take anyone regardless.

I tried downloading the "common data set" mentioned in the article but for some reason their site only lets you download the submission form, not the database itself.

I couldn't have benefited personally as my parents' institutions were in different countries from the US and my university is a non-legacy one anyway.

efficax2• 3 years ago

Admission for the children of faculty and staff (esp. if tuition is waived) is such an incredible benefit for the people that work at these institutions that I hope that is not also being abandoned. Legacies/big donors/alums sure, I don't care, but I'd hate to see university workers lose one of the best benefits they get.

stainablesteel• 3 years ago

i'm ok with this seeing as professors don't exactly make a lot of money, or if they do its because they dedicate 120% of their time doing so

efficax2• 3 years ago

Right? my wife is tenured at a big college and I make more than double her salary as an SWE. we're not going to have children so the benefit doesn't apply to us but i've seen it used to, for example, get a janitors kids into a college they would normally never afford (jesuit colleges offer this for staff across a network of other jesuit colleges, so for example you could be at loyola and your kids could go to fordham so long as they meet some academic requirements)

dbish8• 3 years ago

They should get free tuition for their kids but that shouldn’t guarantee them a spot and take away a spot from someone more aligned to the school’s selectivity.

gnicholas• 3 years ago

Admissions rates for legacy students are much higher than for the general applicant pool, sometimes by an order of magnitude. But that raw comparison doesn’t shed much light on how much the legacy status actually helps, as opposed to the differences among legacy applicants and the general applicant pool.

Is there any data that shows how these students compare to other students who are comparable in terms of family income, high school type, GPA, SAT? I would assume that all of these variables could be significantly different for children of alumni (especially of elite institutions, where admissions is most competitive), so it would be helpful to know what these numbers look like after removing some obvious confounders.

whimsicalism10• 3 years ago

I've seen it before and IIRC the SAT for athletes is terrible and the SAT for legacy is not that worse than average white admission. Can't find that source right now, but here is another one showing identical SAT between legacy and non-legacy. [0]

I am biased to this hypothesis probably as a legacy who also had higher test scores than the average admit, went to a shitty public school, etc. Another underdiscussed motivation for legacy admissions is that schools view it as a signal that you are more likely to attend so if they admit you they can keep their admission percentages lower.

[0] https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-why-elite-colleges-...

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

Gonna hurt alumni contributions. Which matters more to schools with smaller endowments.

LatteLazy2• 3 years ago

At university (UK, nowhere amazing) I was admitted on merit as a straight A student. My tutor had been forced to be the admissions officer for the school of Physics that year against his will. So he decided to have some fun and admitted everyone. I was scandalised when he told us this, I'd worked like a dog to EARN my place.

But he simply said "Anyone who can pass year 1 should get to do year 2, the same for year 2 and year 3. And anyone who passes all of them should get their degree." and I found this logic hard to argue with.

The result was that we had admitted 10 people with no maths qualification to a Physics degree. 8 failed, transferred subject or otherwise left. But 2 passed and got their degrees.

2 People got a life changing experience, I was no worse off and neither was the university. And this taught me an important lesson about opportunity. Ever since, when I am applying a standard/requirement to deny someone an opportunity (say a job interview, a date, or anything else) I stop and think hard about whether it's really necessary or if I am just being prejudiced.

bluepod44• 3 years ago

“Merit-based” means many different things. Explain yourselves.

JoshTko3• 3 years ago

Private colleges fundamentally drive inequality. Access to elite university is essentially pay to play because all admission criteria advantage the wealthy.

dbish8• 3 years ago

Not the Iveys. They have very large scholarships if your family can’t afford it and you get in.

JoshTko3• 3 years ago

I'm referring to admission. Athletic achievement, high impact volunteer work, high impact internships, high SAT score, number of AP, essay writing, all of these require $$$ to be compete at the top level. A poor kid that has to work summers and part time during the school year cannot compete.

letrowekwel• 3 years ago

Admissions are easy to do right. Just give anyone with a valid educational background (like college/high school completed) a chance to participate in a strictly observed live exam, which is then graded anonymously. 100% fair, leaves no place for discrimination. This is how many countries do it in Europe and it just works.

But what about economically disadvantaged minority groups? That's easy to fix too. Just give schools in poorer areas lots of extra funding and resources, and their skills should improve, so that they do well in exams without any ridiculous "positive discrimination" based on skin color or ethnicity. As a bonus you also help poor people who may not belong to a disadvantaged ethnic minority, but still suffer from same lack of opportunities.

Of course all this requires money, which the 1% isn't willing to give. But from anyone else's perspective it's plain stupid that the system first fails to give people of poorer background proper education, and then tries to fix this by discriminating based on ethnicity, which only partially correlates with poverty and bad schooling.

elteto3• 3 years ago

We will never have this because neither side wants it:

Schools do not want it because they lose total control over who they accept. Harvard wants to accept the children of the current ruling class knowing that they will become the next one, and in doing so keeping alive the mythos of Harvard as ruling class incubator.

The other side, which we can call the affirmative action supporters, don't want it either because they see it as a racist by proxy system. And also because it turns out that Asians and Indians (and others too) would do exceedingly well with this system.

HDThoreaun9• 3 years ago

What do you put on the exam? Harvard isn't just looking for academic success. They're looking for the next generation of leaders. How do you test for that?

knelmatek• 3 years ago

IQ is a pretty good proxy for that.

In France, admission to the best higher education institutions, like Ecole Polytechnique, is done through an anonymously-marked written exam with questions about math, physics, etc. Admission is entirely based on how you scored on that exam, with the top N scores guaranteed admission (and the ones below that have to expect some people above to decline for whatever reason, which in the case of Polytechnique is rare, unless they got into something equally prestigious like Ecole Normale Superieure).

This system has produced three Nobel recipients (Becquerel in physics, Tirole and Allais in economics), many famous mathematicians and physicists (Carnot, Cholesky, Chasles, Coriolis, Fresnel, Mandelbrot, Navier, Poisson, Poincare, Thevenin, Lagrange, etc.), three French Presidents (Giscard d'Estaing most recently), many military leaders, astronauts, CEOs, etc. and indeed also Hacker News posterboy Fabrice Bellard (and that's just for one school, Ecole Polytechnique).

It works.

nickff• 3 years ago

"Just give schools in poorer areas lots of extra funding and resources, and their skills should improve, so that they do well in exams without any ridiculous "positive discrimination" based on skin color or ethnicity. As a bonus you also help poor people who may not belong to a disadvantaged ethnic minority, but still suffer from same lack of opportunities."

Many poorer areas already receive extra funding, but their SAT results are still well below those in richer areas with lower school funding. There are many examples of this, and a number of potential causes have been described (including selection bias, rich parents volunteering more, and others). One example of this is the District of Columbia.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/per-pupi...

bdastous• 3 years ago

I wonder whether this applies to actual donors.

diamondfist25• 3 years ago

Who needs these ivy leagues when u can get superhuman knowledge for $20 bucks!

firebirdn992• 3 years ago

The games been rigged for far too long.

r_singh• 3 years ago

Surprised that it's effectively the opposite in India. IITs (and other institutes in India) have reservations for schedule castes and tribes and I hope in the coming decades they will change this to reservations for lower income groups. Preference is even given to women with the same score/profile.

Does the US have something similar? Why/Why not?

grogenaut• 3 years ago

Carnagie is the worst. We beat them at football and others sports most of the time. They're not even cool enough to have the first nuclear pile like UoC even if chicago can barely field a team. Tho chicago does have a mean scavenger hunt.

anonu• 3 years ago

All this assumes that admissions is a formulaic process. The application probably still asks where your parents went to school. Admissions are still made of humans that may be subject to biases. Faced with two equivalent candidates, one legacy and one not, it should be a 50/50 decision on which to pick. But in reality some cognitive bias will tilt the process in favor of one. My guess is it would be the legacy candidate.

gyudin• 3 years ago

It’s kinda funny how Americans want to be praised for NOT doing some fucked up things again and again /facepalm

aryehof• 3 years ago

In my day, all high school students in my State in Australia took the same exams to determine eligibility for entrance into tertiary institution courses. These scores were the only thing known about the student and the only thing considered.

This was regardless of whether you went to an expensive private school, public school or any other factor.

Why is merit alone not the criteria everywhere? Is membership of some group as criteria to entry not discriminatory to others?

pfannkuchen2• 3 years ago

I think the main (only?) reason universities do this is because it drives donations from alumni with children, which is probably a large percent of donating alumni.

Has anyone done the analysis on how this is expected to impact overall university funding if it becomes widespread?

No skin in this game, just curious.

sparrowInHand• 3 years ago

Very good. Meritocracy for the win. Not skin, not sobstory, skill and talent.

Some worries though:

Reproducing learning is way over-evaluated, as it can be reliably tested. Its the most worthless skill though, ever since the internet was invented. The ability to recombine approaches and create novel solutions to novel problems, that adhere to engineering approaches and principles, thats were the money is. Hard to test for that and i guess the tiger-mum kids will have to learn TRIZ inside out.

Also i find the cohort timing pressure detrimental. In my opinion, the option to study (because you are bored and dissatisfied with your station in life) should be open to anyone at any time. Even if it does not work out, it creates the ability to move and propels the person on.

Finally, i would detach the political and not society survival relevant pieces of university from the other parts. Sports, sociology, arts go into one university, physics, math, machine building, biology, chemistry and agriculture go into another. Keep the whole bipartisanship from the science.

jeegsy• 3 years ago

It would have been great if the article made clear to what extent these "legacies" would not have otherwise qualified to be admitted to the university

Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

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