It may or may not be the ECs… but since HYPSM are need-blind for admissions and provide generous need-based financial aid, the fact that their undergraduate students are heavily skewed toward scions of wealth (about half without financial aid, meaning from the top 2-3% of the family income scale) indicates that the application process and/or the application reading criteria is that which favors those from wealth. Not directly, of course, but the process and criteria are those which applicants from wealth can much more easily meet, compared to those from lower, middle, and upper (excluding the top end) income families.
Down on ground level, it doesn’t favor scions. There are tremendous disparities in the areas where some high schools are. But they aren’t admitting zip codes. They’re looking for individuals. We’ve got to know, even from CC alone, that wealthy and privileged doesn’t guarantee a kid has it, can think out of his own box. There are a lot of great kids out there, from all circumstances. I was responding to the comment about ECs. HYPSM is not automatically more impressed by expensive pursuits. That’s the fallacy. And oft repeated.
No one is claiming that coming from wealth is a guarantee. But something, probably in the admissions process and reading criteria, is giving HYPSM undergraduates that are highly skewed toward scions of wealth.
Takes us right back to causation vs correlation. You’d have to look at more than a page about who’s full freight in the resulting class.
To be fair, I think that the higher rate of rich kids getting in may stem from things beyond HYPSM’s control. This may not be politically correct, but wealthier people tend to be more academically capable, and that’s usually passed down, not only through households but also genetically.
190 - CC posters can stay on topic and not argue about the # of fairies on the head of a pin
Definitely not my experience. Higher educational attainment, yes. More awards that often implicitly have a wealth component to them, absolutely. Higher level of aptitude, no not at all.
191 - SAT scores ONLY predict first year performance.
192- All majors are equally difficult.
193 All kids that get into _____ college are equally accomplished and just as capable of pursuing challenging paths.
Folks tend to gloss over that even top tier colleges have a bottom 20% of the class that have about zero chance of getting into medical school or a t14 law school, etc. With BAs now a dime a dozen, getting into a premier undergrad is just the beginning of the race.
Public U’s have the widest gap with bottom 20% being high drop out risks. Top 5-10% (honors college) isn’t in the same league as the bulk of their peers at the same university. Of course everyone affiliated with Public U focuses on those top kids as if they’re a reflection of all students there.
194 if I send my child to a R1 public university they will be only taught by lowly TAs. (Fact - "A" stands for assistant and TAs actually assist a professor, usually by grading or heading a discussion or lab section, not teaching the lecture section.)
195 A TA who has a bachelors degree, and is working on their master's or PhD in a specialized area can't possibly have anything to teach my child taking "whatever class 101". (Fact - they have a lot to offer.)
NeoDy your statements are totally false. Anecdotal experience does not hold up to rigorous scientific studies. There are stacks of papers and data that have proven beyond any doubt that a large component of Q is based on genetics. Are you really going to claim that in general people of higher intelligence aren’t more successful economically? Do you think bus drivers and airline pilots are randomly assigned to their jobs?
- Guidance counselors always know what they're talking about.
- University recruiters are very honest.
@jym626 I mean, we’re arguing about misconceptions, right? xD
@NeoDymium Outside of crapshoots like real estate and athletics, the highest paying professions are in medicine, Wall Street and Silicon Valley. I’m sorry if this sounds offensive, but yes, your average Google engineer is smarter than your average garbageman. There are more academic barriers to obtaining the job, which itself is more cognitively complex. A lot of these professions draw from high achieving students, who probably got higher SAT scores.
@Canuckguy I think it usually goes that SAT scores predict performance better in more difficult majors. If you just compare SAT scores and GPA, you might not get a really strong correlation because students with higher SAT scores tend to go into majors where it’s harder to get high GPAs.
@stressedmum1 People also love to conflate correlation and causation; they assume that getting into an ivy league automatically makes you successful, when at least a major component of the connection comes from ivy league students already being incredibly driven/smart.
Had a longer response to this, but it was deleted so I guess it isn’t considered on-topic. I guess it could all be summarized much more succinctly:
198. Correlation implies causation.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Nope, not even close. Post deleted. College Confidential is not a debate society and this thread should mainly focus on listing the fallacies.
So, just to clarify, since I’m not too sure about this: to what extent do you consider it reasonable to discuss posted fallacies? Do you see this thread as one that is just a list, a list with minor commentary, or a list with discussion about whether or not those fallacies are actually valid?
I agree that things go off-topic a lot, but it’s not clear what the boundaries are so I’d appreciate if you would specify in a bit more detail.
Yeah, honestly I don’t know what saying something is “not a debate society” means. Presumably you want to be able to discuss ideas, and if you do that, you’re naturally going to want ideas to hold to evidentiary and logical standards, and then it becomes a “debate”, which is hardly a dirty word.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Ideally, the thread would be only numeric fallacies, but let’s be real - this is the parent’s forum 
To that end, I give a bit of leeway. Understand that moderation is an art, not a science, so there is no black and white answer to the question. In general, User A lists a fallacy. User B comes along and says “I agree and here’s why.” User C comes along and says, “Well I disagree, and here’s why, IMO.” That part is all fine. However, once User B comes back and responds to User C to counterpoint, we start getting into debate territory.
Having said that, I’m not here 24/7, nor is any other moderator. So if overnight there’s a bit of back and forth but User D gets the thread back to topic, I’m probably not going to delete posts unless the overnight debate was too out of control or there were other ToS violations, like rudeness, being committed.
Ordinary life fallacy: that believing what you say is true makes it so. Or that finding someone who agrees with you makes something definitive and universal.
There is lots of contention, among those who devote their careers to educational metrics, about whether any one type or set of tests can prove something. I find it hard to say one’s job defines his intelligence in all matters or his success. Or that smarts and success are exclusive to high salary levels. Many of us have just done too much living to think that.
Following moderator recommendation, I’ll just say that my partial disagreement stems from the fact that we can still draw correlations and general rules from statistics, and that’s fine, so long as we understand the exceptions.
But one can’t understand a complex private process based on his own interpretations of what causes what- or taking something narrow another person studied and running with it, without applying some analytical thinking.