>Roughly a quarter of the admissions advantage stems from athlete recruitment: Other studies reveal that athletes tend to hail from high-income families. Years of access to private lessons, club sports, better facilities, and niche teams (water polo, golf, squash, fencing) make a bigger difference than most people realize. The final 31 percent of the very-rich advantage comes from colleges judging these children to be stronger in nonacademic categories. That makes sense since they have greater access to extracurricular activities and leadership opportunities
On one hand using anything other than final, school leaving, standardized at country-level exams that are fair and transparent
feels like wanting to introduce shitton of bias and lack of fairness and transparency
but on the other hand pure academic capability/output isn't perfect proxy for success and it seems like fancy higher edu institutions want to 'create' successful people, right?
ehh, while im standing behind #1 option, then #2 aint stupid
____________
>Marie currently attends a university that did not make the U.S. News & World Report list of top-50 public schools. Amanda tells me, “She’s happy but often says, ‘Mom, I just wish I hadn’t studied. I would have gotten into the exact same schools.’” And Marie is probably right.
This is fucking sad, imo.
She didnt teach her the purpose of eduction, of studying, what the hell.
You don't study to get better grades, to get better scores, to get to better school.
> The final 31 percent of the very-rich advantage comes from colleges judging these children to be stronger in nonacademic categories. That makes sense since they have greater access to extracurricular activities and leadership opportunities
This is very true imo. In my country medical school admissions are extremely competitive, and takes into account many of these factors, since there are many more ace students than slots. The results definitely favor wealthy students though, they're the ones with extra time for activities, or parents to fund groups for them to lead. Personally I think being a part-time burger flipper is better for your character than spending all your free time volunteering at a shelter to cynically maximize your resume.
But i don't want my kids going to ivy League. I want them to study what they need to know, have fun, and explore. We aren't rich, and they know that, and that level of stuffy education would be better in graduate or post grad, when they pay you to study there.
That was my conclusion as teen too. I went to in-state to a Big-10 school with one of the automatic merit scholarships based on ACT/SAT scores. Still got a great job out of college and moved out west to work at a FAANG (they recruited at my university). Pretty much a top outcome money wise I would've gotten at MIT (where I did get in).
This is classic survivorship bias. For every student that did make it out of those schools and did make it to FAANG, there are many many many more. A much higher % of university recruiting happens at MIT/Berkeley/CMU and as you mentioned, many of the in-state schools barely get recruited.
It definitely makes things easier IF you get in and IF you use the resources of the school to their full potential. Lot of ifs, but let's not discount the objective value of those schools in making the next set of decisions easier just because they didn't benefit you.
I think this is definitely the case for certain classes of jobs but I am skeptical about the value of those jobs.
For example, I think that consulting firm McKinsey does some kind of recruitment and job interview on campus during spring and then they announce who they are hiring for the next summer internship in Autumn. A lot of people try to get in and then there is kind of a weird thing on campus where people talk about who made it in. (I never applied so idk all the specifics just observed this.)
So is working at McKinsey or being a Google director or whatever, working at the other big consulting firms/Goldman Sachs really worth it? I don't know. It seems like they pay higher but I don't feel like there is a big value play for these firms. So really you just have people who play every trick in the book to make themselves appear impressive to get in to the school, then use that to get a job at McKinsey, then they do nothing useful there but at least they can say they were in a special club?? Is this really what's considered desirable? It just feels very artificial all the way down.
On the other hand if you didn't go to an Ivy+ I think there isn't really a barrier to doing interesting and useful things which aren't involved in this weird status game. That's not to say all students at those schools are like that but the places where degree matters the most seem questionable to me. I don't like speaking in generalities either but I think it's worth questioning this economic system we have set up with admissions and the job availability after graduation.
Culture was another reason I chose state school over MIT (and didn't even consider any other fancy schools). I don't really have a good word for it, but I got a bad smell and haven't regretted it.
I bet on myself and it wasn't an uneducated bet. I figured I would end up in the same place regardless because I had been reading about research on college outcomes. I read that intelligent people tend to end up with the same level of success in life regardless of university. Made sense to me.
Given where my career has taken me since, I'm especially confident I would be in the same sort of place. If anything, going to the state school I went to is both what introduced me to my career focus (professional FP & Haskell) and first job (got a referral from a friend for FAANG. He was pretty savvy - had an older brother in SV tech - and told me tips such as job hopping for a raise every 2y or so).
> 58% of full-time undergraduates received an MIT Scholarship during the 2022–2023 academic year. Among those, the median family contribution after student term-time work was $9,926.
1. My contribution was even lower. No need to take out a single loan.
2. I (and my parents) actually did dig into the real cost. It was more than that. It was doable but with loans and/or my parents dipping into funds well beyond their college savings for me.
Not sure I would've gone even if the costs were closer tbh. Culture fit is important.
If it was not a fit, why did you apply to MIT? 99% of people who apply to MIT are people who are absolutely hungry to get into MIT. I never heard about anyone accepted at MIT and turning it down because they realized it was not a good cultural fit for them.
What exactly was the cultural issue that you didn't like? People being rich? The MIT crowd is not rich. If you travel the one mile or so from MIT to Harvard, you'll immediately see the contrast between MIT kids and Harvard kids. MIT is definitely a place for hard working people from all backgrounds, and if anything, the rich are underrepresented.
I want my kids to go where they want to go. If that happens to be Ivy, so be it. If that happens to be MIT/Caltech/Stanford, so be it.
When parents lament or worry about their kids not being able to get into Ivy League schools, I think it's less about those specific eight institutions and more about whatever selective college they might want to attend.
In my culture—which I think is right on this—individuals are subordinate to the family. I want my kids to go to an Ivy (or in the case of my eldest son, a service academy) because those are important to success in business and politics, and that’s what I want my kids to pursue—for the success of the family unit. That doesn’t mean I want to go to one, or regret not having gone to one—what I want for my kids is quite independent of what I want myself.
Ivy leagues have never been about finding the highest performers or potential; they’ve always been about giving rich kids the opportunity to network with other rich kids. The new twist is adding just enough diversity to make them feel better without being threatening. The sooner us normies stop playing their game and despise those institutions appropriately, the better off we’ll be.
Ivy league schools need some high performers, in the sense that they mix admits for intelligence, wealth, diversity, athletic ability, and other factors. Clearly, many smart students attend Harvard. But so do donor kids. When you hire a Harvard grad, you can't tell which graduate you are hiring! That's a huge part of the value proposition for the wealthy. Harvard needs to admit enough truly smart students.
Interesting point. Couldn’t this be solved for by Linked In and Google now? Find the candidates’ parents and then you have your answer. ( Of course, your company may choose to hire a legacy candidate for some of the same political benefits the college accepted them. )
> Amanda’s daughter Marie attended private school, speaks Mandarin, had an unweighted GPA of 4.1, and earned a 1560 on the SAT… Marie currently attends a university that did not make the U.S. News & World Report list of top-50 public schools
How is it possible not to get into a state flagship with a 1500+ SAT? If I was white or Asian with college aged kids I’d move to Texas or Georgia.
Texas and Georgia are states huge numbers of people would never consider moving too because of their horrific politics - a rather direct reflection of the average.
> Texas and Georgia both have massive immigration from other states. People vote with their feet.
The technical term for this is "race to the bottom," abetted by short-term thinking on the part of "customers." It's similar to how people complain bitterly about the quality of air travel, but then go for the lowest-possible air fare.
(OK, the actual technical term is "revealed preference vs. expressed [or stated] preference.")
Yes, there are a handful of policy areas where the politics really do matter -- if you need it, did the state sign up for Medicaid expansion? If abortion may sadly be necessary, is it legal there? -- but I think in most areas, day to day life is no more oppressive in those states, and frequently the demographics are no less diverse (they are often more so).
We need to keep in mind the magnitude of coercion, or even of oppression, that arises simply from economic forces -- and these generally squeeze harder in the blue states. If the states with the "good politics" can't supply housing at a reasonable price, and if their affordable universities won't let your kids in, then what good are they? A red state with "bad politics" may be sufficiently cheap that the freedom it offers from wage-slavery may outweigh whatever oppressive laws are on the books there. The same goes for other countries. Suppose a country nominally has an authoritarian ruler, but he leaves ordinary apolitical people alone, and prices for medical care are reasonable. Maybe that's still a perfectly nice place to live? Maybe it's better than struggling to pay rent in the "good place"?
As for Texas and Georgia, local politics also matter. Some of the cities are blue islands. So you can't judge a county based only on what state it's in.
But if people are so blinkered that it's literally worth their entire life's wages just to own a house in the "good place", then I guess that's their problem.
That's my issue. The sheer amounts of money we're talking about are staggering. And you have to survive within an abusive corporate structure to get the money. Why tolerate that?
How can you have an emancipatory politics on the one hand, and sign up for lifelong debt on the other? It is good to try to free others, but if you can, shouldn't you try to free yourself first? Then, how can you free yourself in one of the places where money-power is strongest?
Honestly, for abortion, if it's that important to you and you have the capacity to get a professional job there, you have the capacity to book a flight to California etc. to get an abortion, or even just get abortion pills mailed to you from a Silk Road-like site.
On the plus side, for the rest of your life, including especially if you actually want to raise a child, red states are much better in most ways unless you have a very high salary in a coastal blue state (or your income is low enough to get benefits from the blue states, but your income won't be low enough if you're a professional).
>”On the plus side, for the rest of your life, including especially if you actually want to raise a child, red states are much better in most ways…”
Well unless your a woman with pregnancy complications that are life threatening. Then your out of luck. Hopefully you can catch a flight to California in time before you go into septic shock.
There are 50 states, and a lot of private universities are on the top 50 list, and several states have more than one state university on the list (hi, California), so most states have zero. University of Connecticut seems to be #58.
Not that the US News ranking is particularly meaningful.
Probably because these colleges have 5,000 Maries to choose from. The article says Marie is perfect on paper and "checks all the boxes", but that's honestly not very inspiring and I'd guess that applicants/parents are optimizing for the wrong things.
> “She’s happy but often says, ‘Mom, I just wish I hadn’t studied. I would have gotten into the exact same schools.’” And Marie is probably right. Admissions scarcity is concentrated at the top of the rankings list; there are hundreds of four-year colleges that readily admit B and C students.
My experience is that they actually would have gotten into more / better schools
UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, UC Davis UC Irvine have insane freshmen profile and it's possible that she went to school that might not be nationally ranked but is a good school on its own right (i.e. Cal Poly).
I don’t know, I’m asking. Have state flagships become that competitive? I got into UIUC, Perdue, and GT (all top 50) with a similar SAT and much worse GPA. But that was 22 years ago. I think GT had a 60% acceptance rate my year. But University of Maryland, which wasn’t even on my radar back then, somehow has an SAT median of 1450 now. That used to near-Ivy range back when I was applying.
Madison, Illinois, and Michigan are competitive, but I don't think any of them are competitive to the point where top tier grades and test scores aren't getting you in anymore.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, affirmative action was a red herring meant to distract from the real barrier to multigenerational economic-growth. It’s always been about money/class. Diversity matters, but would politicians have voted against the interests of their own progeny? I think not.
Affirmative action also serves as a zero-sum wedge issue amongst the working class, which is great for reinforcing existing political lines and demographics.
I'm not so cynical. Affirmative Action is generally a policy with good intentions behind it (addressing historical inequity) but is limited because institutions are not willing to take steps that address the full breadth of inequity. I do not believe that Affirmative Action was some sort of cover to get institutions out of the spotlight.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadhttps://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/college-acceptance-r...
On one hand using anything other than final, school leaving, standardized at country-level exams that are fair and transparent
feels like wanting to introduce shitton of bias and lack of fairness and transparency
but on the other hand pure academic capability/output isn't perfect proxy for success and it seems like fancy higher edu institutions want to 'create' successful people, right?
ehh, while im standing behind #1 option, then #2 aint stupid
____________
>Marie currently attends a university that did not make the U.S. News & World Report list of top-50 public schools. Amanda tells me, “She’s happy but often says, ‘Mom, I just wish I hadn’t studied. I would have gotten into the exact same schools.’” And Marie is probably right.
This is fucking sad, imo.
She didnt teach her the purpose of eduction, of studying, what the hell.
You don't study to get better grades, to get better scores, to get to better school.
That's just a means to an end
This is very true imo. In my country medical school admissions are extremely competitive, and takes into account many of these factors, since there are many more ace students than slots. The results definitely favor wealthy students though, they're the ones with extra time for activities, or parents to fund groups for them to lead. Personally I think being a part-time burger flipper is better for your character than spending all your free time volunteering at a shelter to cynically maximize your resume.
It definitely makes things easier IF you get in and IF you use the resources of the school to their full potential. Lot of ifs, but let's not discount the objective value of those schools in making the next set of decisions easier just because they didn't benefit you.
For example, I think that consulting firm McKinsey does some kind of recruitment and job interview on campus during spring and then they announce who they are hiring for the next summer internship in Autumn. A lot of people try to get in and then there is kind of a weird thing on campus where people talk about who made it in. (I never applied so idk all the specifics just observed this.)
So is working at McKinsey or being a Google director or whatever, working at the other big consulting firms/Goldman Sachs really worth it? I don't know. It seems like they pay higher but I don't feel like there is a big value play for these firms. So really you just have people who play every trick in the book to make themselves appear impressive to get in to the school, then use that to get a job at McKinsey, then they do nothing useful there but at least they can say they were in a special club?? Is this really what's considered desirable? It just feels very artificial all the way down.
On the other hand if you didn't go to an Ivy+ I think there isn't really a barrier to doing interesting and useful things which aren't involved in this weird status game. That's not to say all students at those schools are like that but the places where degree matters the most seem questionable to me. I don't like speaking in generalities either but I think it's worth questioning this economic system we have set up with admissions and the job availability after graduation.
Culture was another reason I chose state school over MIT (and didn't even consider any other fancy schools). I don't really have a good word for it, but I got a bad smell and haven't regretted it.
I bet on myself and it wasn't an uneducated bet. I figured I would end up in the same place regardless because I had been reading about research on college outcomes. I read that intelligent people tend to end up with the same level of success in life regardless of university. Made sense to me.
Given where my career has taken me since, I'm especially confident I would be in the same sort of place. If anything, going to the state school I went to is both what introduced me to my career focus (professional FP & Haskell) and first job (got a referral from a friend for FAANG. He was pretty savvy - had an older brother in SV tech - and told me tips such as job hopping for a raise every 2y or so).
Not sure I follow. You got admitted at MIT and decided to go to a Big-10 school? Is Big-10 the Big Ten Conference, with Ohio State and U Michigan?
You really did that?
Have you ever seen this ?
https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-atten...
2. I (and my parents) actually did dig into the real cost. It was more than that. It was doable but with loans and/or my parents dipping into funds well beyond their college savings for me.
Not sure I would've gone even if the costs were closer tbh. Culture fit is important.
If it was not a fit, why did you apply to MIT? 99% of people who apply to MIT are people who are absolutely hungry to get into MIT. I never heard about anyone accepted at MIT and turning it down because they realized it was not a good cultural fit for them.
What exactly was the cultural issue that you didn't like? People being rich? The MIT crowd is not rich. If you travel the one mile or so from MIT to Harvard, you'll immediately see the contrast between MIT kids and Harvard kids. MIT is definitely a place for hard working people from all backgrounds, and if anything, the rich are underrepresented.
When parents lament or worry about their kids not being able to get into Ivy League schools, I think it's less about those specific eight institutions and more about whatever selective college they might want to attend.
When my kid went to college the development office started shmoozing before said kid had even chosen his classes.
What about schools that don't do legacies, like MIT?
How is it possible not to get into a state flagship with a 1500+ SAT? If I was white or Asian with college aged kids I’d move to Texas or Georgia.
People vote with their feet.
The technical term for this is "race to the bottom," abetted by short-term thinking on the part of "customers." It's similar to how people complain bitterly about the quality of air travel, but then go for the lowest-possible air fare.
(OK, the actual technical term is "revealed preference vs. expressed [or stated] preference.")
The Bay Area has insane housing costs because of toxic zoning regulations.
Austin is a firmly blue city with extensive public services.
The parts Georgia Bay Area folks are moving to are similar politically and socially.
A better description is “people who value a well run city leave their poorly run city and move to a well run city.”
Corporations doing business in the country with the least environmental regulation is a race to the bottom.
Big corporations opening campuses in lightly populated suburbs is a race to the bottom.
Ships flying flages of convenience in third world countries is a race to the bottom.
People leaving a poorly run place to a well run place is not a race to the bottom.
When a person moves from the Dominican Republic to New York, that’s not a race to the bottom.
We need to keep in mind the magnitude of coercion, or even of oppression, that arises simply from economic forces -- and these generally squeeze harder in the blue states. If the states with the "good politics" can't supply housing at a reasonable price, and if their affordable universities won't let your kids in, then what good are they? A red state with "bad politics" may be sufficiently cheap that the freedom it offers from wage-slavery may outweigh whatever oppressive laws are on the books there. The same goes for other countries. Suppose a country nominally has an authoritarian ruler, but he leaves ordinary apolitical people alone, and prices for medical care are reasonable. Maybe that's still a perfectly nice place to live? Maybe it's better than struggling to pay rent in the "good place"?
As for Texas and Georgia, local politics also matter. Some of the cities are blue islands. So you can't judge a county based only on what state it's in.
But if people are so blinkered that it's literally worth their entire life's wages just to own a house in the "good place", then I guess that's their problem.
That's my issue. The sheer amounts of money we're talking about are staggering. And you have to survive within an abusive corporate structure to get the money. Why tolerate that?
How can you have an emancipatory politics on the one hand, and sign up for lifelong debt on the other? It is good to try to free others, but if you can, shouldn't you try to free yourself first? Then, how can you free yourself in one of the places where money-power is strongest?
On the plus side, for the rest of your life, including especially if you actually want to raise a child, red states are much better in most ways unless you have a very high salary in a coastal blue state (or your income is low enough to get benefits from the blue states, but your income won't be low enough if you're a professional).
Well unless your a woman with pregnancy complications that are life threatening. Then your out of luck. Hopefully you can catch a flight to California in time before you go into septic shock.
Not that the US News ranking is particularly meaningful.
> “She’s happy but often says, ‘Mom, I just wish I hadn’t studied. I would have gotten into the exact same schools.’” And Marie is probably right. Admissions scarcity is concentrated at the top of the rankings list; there are hundreds of four-year colleges that readily admit B and C students.
My experience is that they actually would have gotten into more / better schools
UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, UC Davis UC Irvine have insane freshmen profile and it's possible that she went to school that might not be nationally ranked but is a good school on its own right (i.e. Cal Poly).
America had so many hidden-gem colleges, this is really a stupid concern.