<p>Using one-dimensional labels for race and class (even though he doesn’t do that all that much) is still different from thinking that one’s position on the issue falls on a neat left-right spectrum. You seem to think that anyone who is against affirmative action for the Frists and Gores is for affirmative action for African Americans and women. I disagree. I might be naive, but I think it is possible to favor meritocracy without plutocracy. You seem to think it’s not.</p>
<p>Your views, I suspect, would moderate the moment you found any group with which you might be associated to be on the losing side of any program for preferences in admission. </p>
<p>Lucky you, however … you’re already into MIT, and can’t be “preferenced” out to make room for someone else - whether someone you like, or someone you don’t like! </p>
<p>I love how you set up the yin yang between “merit” and “plutocracy.” Very PC!</p>
<p>Byerly dearest – you seem not to realize that I am a big pusher of Caltech’s “pure merit” process even over the processes of the great and beloved MIT.</p>
<p>And don’t be cute – you understand what I’m saying. The choices are not:</p>
<p>(a) affirmative action for blacks and girls; soak the rich
(b) stroke the rich; kick the poor and underprivileged</p>
<p>Those are the positions taken by the left and the right, but there are other options, too. You act like anyone who is against benefits for the rich must be a rabid liberal pusher of underqualified blacks and women.</p>
<p>Don’t patronize me, kid, or put words in my mouth.</p>
<p>What I am suggesting is that your own delf-proclaimed altruism is of the easy and convenient sort - where you need sacrifice nothing and are free to excoriate others for being less high-minded than yourself.</p>
<p>Where is my altruism to begin with? I’m against preferences for the rich and for minorities – both groups to which I don’t belong. Actually, my position here is of the purely self-interested sort, which in this case happens to coincide with justice and truth, etc.</p>
<p>Exactly what I said; the sort of easy altruism of favoring “equality” when it benefits you and yours, and theoretically opposing “unfair prefences” that benefit others - although not, thankfully, at your own expense, so far.</p>
<p>One thing you might like to consider, with your conviction that everybody is so mercenary. Golden has a kid applying to college. Surely, now he is anathema to many Directors of Admissions. Doesn’t that take some guts?</p>
<p>Yeah, finale, I can see why YOU have no problem with the rich buying their way into school. Aren’t you going to Harvard on a full scholarship from Quest?</p>
<p>I think you are confused, Ben. Didn’t Golden’s kid just turn 14?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/05/admit[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/05/admit</a></p>
<p>Sorry, my mistake. Soon enough, anyway! The kid’s chances at a top 10 school – even Harvard itself – surely didn’t improve. Golden is an altruistic man of the people if I ever saw one.</p>
<p>Byerly, considering you make several Anti-Yale posts every week, it’s hardly reasonable that you have any ill feelings about a biased columnist. You seem to make it your mission to tell everyone how inferior Yale and the other ivy league schools are to Harvard. In the real world, going to one versus the other isnt much of a difference education-wise.</p>
<p>It is very reasonable! Byerly’s in the bias business.</p>
<p>Yale is one of the world’s great universities and I have never made an “anti-Yale” post … that is absurd. </p>
<p>I have indeed poked fun at the indefatigable Yale propagandist, "“Poster X”, and have called attention to Yale’s recent record-breaking losing streak in “The Game”, but I have the utmost respect for Yale as an academic institution.</p>
<p>That’s the funniest post I’ve read yet from Byerly. Whew, talk about one hell of a joke.</p>
<p>Indeed, I think Yale should be given great credit for maintaining an institution of such quality - given the challenge posed by the New Haven setting - wouldn’t you agree, bulldog?</p>
<p>see, even when when you compliment the school you still insult it. And by the way, poking fun is just a bad euphemism.</p>
<p>I stopped reading after: “a well-reported critique of what amounts to affirmative action for rich people . . . The best-known examples are ``legacy” admissions for alumni children"</p>
<p>I forgot only rich people go to Harvard.</p>
<p>hollermahler: Not quite. I don’t think Harvard is connected in any way to Quest Bridge…at least from I can remember. One location of the Quest Scholars program is at Harvard, if you’re referring to that.</p>
<p>Not anymore. Quest Scholars has been effectively replaced with the Crimson Summer Academy.</p>
<p>regarding the topic of posts 27, 29, and 30:</p>
<p>[Time interviewer:] YOU’VE GOT A SON IN HIGH SCHOOL. WILL HIS LEGACY STATUS HELP HIM GET INTO HARVARD?</p>
<p>[Golden:] No, he’s not applying to Harvard. Given this book and how colleges feel about me, I’m thinking of sending him to college in Canada.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1226164-2,00.html[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1226164-2,00.html</a></p>