Listen to Tucker Carlson. https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/32837-study-with-merit-based-college-admissions-53-of-incoming-students-would-be-replaced
What a crock! The study being discussed relates to the 200 most selective colleges as a group. Not “the Ivies” or any other more “elite” set. It’s a fairly simple, clumsy paper that essentially says if you compare the entering freshman student bodies at the 200 most selective colleges with a hypothetical entering class consisting of the same number of people ranked solely by SAT or ACT scores, just over half of the actual students at those 200 colleges wouldn’t make the cut. They would be replaced by substitutes who were a lot whiter and slightly more wealthy than the excluded group. White admissions would come at the expense of Black, Hispanic, and, yes, Asian students. (How irrelevant to CC is the study? The percentage of ethnically Asian students at the 200-college group is currently 11%, and if test scores were used as the only admissions criterion that percentage would drop to 10%.)
It’s no surprise that when I clicked on the OP’s link, the “article” was accompanied by an ad for the John Birch Society. The study itself had absolutely nothing to say about “Ivies,” except to the extent that the Ivies almost certainly represented 4% of the colleges in the study (but probably a little less than 4% of the students). The study really had nothing to say regarding what the article’s author and Tucker Carlson were ranting about – children of Democratic politicians getting admitted to Harvard. (News flash: Children of Republican politicians go to Harvard, too.)
I have to agree with Tucker Carlson’s conclusion: elite colleges should make their admission process open and transparent. However, his argument would have been so much stronger, if he didn’t only lambasting the Democratic politicians. As we all know, scions of politicians of all parties have an easy access to elite colleges, for generations! Al Gore only submitted to one college application back in his days, and Bush 43 would never have been a Yalie without his last name.
Some should know better.
Harvard and MIT and others are happy to admit they could fill the class x times over. But they are not looking for the flat metric of rack and stack. How does one get through CC without realizing…?
Al Gore is how many decades ago? You think things haven’t evolved?
And as for transparent, sheesh, people can’t seem to get the hang of reading what the colleges DO say and show. Some prefer hearsay, supposition, and 2nd hand guesses.
What never ceases to amaze me is the number of people who obsess about Harvard because of its perceived quality and prestige, and perhaps because of its unprecedented financial strength, yet are absolutely certain that they know better than all of Harvard’s trustees, presidents, and admissions deans over the past 80-100 years who have largely been responsible for building that quality, prestige, and financial strength. If you have that much regard for the university, how about some respect for how it got that way and how it maintains its edge?
Meanwhile, the world – even the English-speaking world – has any number of high-quality colleges and universities with different admissions systems, some completely transparent, some less so. Practically all of them give more weight to academics alone than Harvard does, and many of them use to criterion other than the scoring on a single-take high-risk test. If that’s the sort of college you prefer, go there.
@JHS
Harvard’s prestige is just another excellent example of how power begets power, money begets money. Nothing new since time immemorial.
@makemesmart That significantly understates what Harvard as an institution has accomplished over the past 150 years, and over the past 60 years or so. Harvard is much, much stronger today relative to other universities, in the U.S. and around the world (excepting perhaps Stanford), than it was at any time in the past. And while we are on the topic, how about Stanford? 130 years ago it barely existed. It was the folly of a wealthy patron, but there were any number of other fine universities that could say the same thing. A few generations later one can make a case that it’s the greatest university in the world, really rivaled only by Harvard. That didn’t just happen because power begets power and money begets money. At both institutions, people were making a lot of good decisions.
Tucker is toxic but it’s a good point though it applies to politicians on both sides of the aisle and all other powerful players as well. Bottom line is that don’t assume that everyone who makes it to elite colleges, gets in because he/she is intelligent or talented. A significant number gets in on complimentary tickets and pushes genuinely deserving applicants off of the list.
@JHS
Yes, I accept that my statement is a gross simplification, but I would say neither Harvard nor Stanford are the best universities in the country, let alone the world, they are the most well-known/hardest to get in, that didn’t make them into the best. It is impossible to say any given school is the best. Human ingenuity comes in many forms and the breakthroughs come from many fronts, fortunately.
For the last 150 years, most scientific breakthroughs didn’t come from Harvard. But we are digressing.
Elite colleges are so competitive, reflected by the “varsity blues” kind of scandals, as well as children of politicians’ and super riches (which often overlap, these days) are all clambering in. We discussed ad nauseam race and money’s roles in elite college admission, why not also discuss power’s role a little? Why it is perfectly ok to discuss affirmative action of race, but not the de facto affirmative action of power?
100 years ago, Harvard was all male, almost all white, and deeply concerned too many Jews were being admitted. Almost no one would consider the Harvard administration of 80-100 years as a good example of how a university should be run.
The basic point is: don’t be impressed that some influential or rich person’s kid got into an elite college. As the recent scandals have shown, the system is rigged. The reputations of the colleges that do this are tarnished.
@JHS @riversider was bringing up what Tucker Carlson was saying in his op ed piece, not what the article was about, which I agree was not well though out. To me it makes perfect sense what Tucker Carlson (not the author or the article) is saying; that it is important who your parents are, especially for HYP, they have, in fact strong connections to the political class, so why wouldn’t they favor their children. It has worked for them in the past and continues to work for them now. Simple enough and really not that hard too understand or believe. Both parties benefit but in todays climate I’d bet the Democrats kids do a little better, and that’s fine with me. The world has always been about who you know a little more than what you know and top colleges are no exception.
There might be some sense to that if Harvard were actually crowded with children of politicians, but it isn’t. At least I don’t think it is. In any class, there may be 4 or 5 out of ~1,650 students – not a big percentage. They are selective. Caroline Kennedy went to Harvard; John Kennedy, Jr., went to Brown. Xi Jinping’s daughter went to Harvard, as of course many years ago Zulifkar Ali Bhutto’s daughter Benazir.
Is someone going to tell me that Harvard college is less attractive because you may have to rub shoulders with Xi Jinping’s daughter, Malia Obama, or Benazir Bhutto?
It’s sad how most of us have no problem with this injustice, some even justify it. That’s why artificial class system exists. Who are we? Loyal subjects of elites?
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
As I have said before on this site: To quote Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest: “Ah, but nobody ever said life was fair, Tina.”
I’ll assume this is rhetorical. Since debate violates ToS, any responses would be deleted.
This is a recycling of the same old CC arguments that it’s all phony, not to be trusted, and other things one really doesn’t know. Remember that advice I raised my kids with:
Don’t fall prey to “I heard it somewhere, so it must be true.” Or it’s sister, “I read (or heard) it somewhere, so it is true.” You could dig deeper than that.
What’s there to dig? It’s all scattered on the surface. Admissions are not limited to what you know but extend to who you know.
Your choice, @Riversider.
But odd that you disbelieve what colleges do say and yet proclaim things like that it’s “who you know.” I don’t think you know that, with certainty.
@lookingforward there is no doubt in my mind that Harvard has lied or misled the public on admissions after reading excerpts from the lawsuit. The director of admissions at Harvard said to my face that legacy was a feather weight on the scale of admissions. That is a lie, it is much more than that. This is just one of many things Harvard has misled people on and I’m sure the other elites do the same although since they are not being sued I have no direct evidence. I don’t have a problem the admission office not saying anything about it or saying yes it counts considerably, but to lie, nope. Really no reason to, other than for the perception of fairness which it is so far from that as to be laughable. Disclaimer I don’t care how they do their admissions I just don’t want to be lied to.
It is only a lie if he also suggested that in comparison to much heavier objects, like the entire bird the feather came from.
But since most people associate feathers as being lighter than assumed other objects, that statement with no comparison objects for other criteria is highly misleading, like how politicians and others sometimes say something that is technically true but very misleading.