There’s a larger point about institutionalized unfairness, though. Sure, it may have been an isolated incident of some students pretending to be athletes, but the larger question is why are athletes being given preferential admission to Harvard in the first place?
And whatever the answer to that question is, it’s going to require a bloated admissions department to make it happen.
> I feel like one is a cultural problem and one was an isolated incident.
I don't know you, but I'm going to guess the cultural problem is a problem of a culture not your own, and what happens in your culture is the series of isolated incidents.
what? US has legalized cheating in so many ways (athletes, college preps, dean's lists, legacies...). People with enough resources and/or enough motivation will always find a way to get what they want. US gives them a paved road while in the East, they have to cheat. When they can't find a paved road, they cheat in the West as well.
I just want to say, and I hate that saying this makes me come off as racist because I don't want to speak about a whole country.
I go to a pretty good American school which has a lot of foreigners going on visas, the majority being Indian and Chinese students. The group of Indian students in my under grad got caught cheating all together. They were just hanging out in discord giving each other answers.
In a lot of other countries it's seen as an "Us vs The Man" mentality. So if you are cheating or figure out how to take advantage of a system you are seen as beating "The Man or The System" and you are smarter than it. In a lot of Western counties, that is not the case.
While you might be right on some of this. I think the colleges are looking for people not based on standardized tests alone. Most standardized tests are just rote learning and memorization.
I would challenge that these schools are looking for people who think better than most people. Yes they need to be smart when it comes to doing school work, but they need to be more than that to attend an elite university.
The people that go to these schools go on to be the upper-crust of society. They can think outside of the box and push the envelope of human knowledge.
Can other people do that without going to these schools? Sure. But these schools are looking for those people.
The issue with the essay system is coming up with an evaluation criteria that isn't completely biased and prone to manipulation.
The essay system favors people who hire admissions consultants to write them, or who study the online guides about what types of essays get into Harvard. They also tend to chase sensational sob stories - the claims within those stories are never verified by admissions officers.
I can't find the study at the moment on google, but I recall some work asking to end essays in admissions packages since it discriminates against Black and Hispanic applicants who do not have the background resources to write appropriate admissions essays.
You are right, it is not. I totally get that and I think we should work to remove bias out of the process.
Maybe removing names and genders from the essays or similar entry requirements. There are ways to reduce bias without resorting to some kind of standardized test which only shows that they can pass a test.
Elite Universities are looking for people of character, that could be anyone from any walk of life. But it is self-serving, they are looking for people who will end up bringing money, recognition, and fame back to the school. They are looking for people who want to go there, who will go far in life and talk about how X university is where it all started.
I get that this is a difficult topic, and I want everyone in the world to be a lifelong learner, reader, and more.
But not everyone is built the same, that doesn't mean they won't go far in life. And I don't think recognizing that difference is racist or discriminatory. Not everyone will become a Harvard grad, the president, CEO of a company, etc. Some people are dealt a shittier hands in life and get less draws from the deck, we should work to fix that, but we shouldn't lump everyone into one basket.
Remove names, gender, race from admissions. Have a selection board base their decisions solely on a combination of transcripts and essays.
I think standardized testing is gaming the system, what you cannot game are transcripts of life long learners who value their education. If you remove all gendered language, names, mentions of race from essays you will hopefully be able to make your group decisions with less bias. The group should be diverse enough on multiple metrics.
Will it be perfect, no. But I think it's a better start than what we currently have.
It's more like "gave a fuck about high school", so not really. The people that won that game weren't the smartest but rather the best at conforming to expectations. Although perhaps this has changed now that the dreaded Permanent Record has become our reality.
If somebody manages to don't give a fuck (maybe s/he's doing something cool on the side), and yet still manages to top on the exams, then why would it be relevant?
> The people that go to these schools go on to be the upper-crust of society. They can think outside of the box and push the envelope of human knowledge.
Yeah, kind of like SBF
> I would challenge that these schools are looking for people who think better than most people. Yes they need to be smart when it comes to doing school work, but they need to be more than that to attend an elite university.
I'd counter this and say the insistence on qualitative standards just opens the door for classist decision making. The second you allow people to introduce qualitative standards, it opens the door for discrimination
Training someone to pass a test to get in is not the same as finding the right person to go there. Does this open up the possibility of discrimination? Yes.
Tell me about how many people I know who went to a CISSP bootcamp, passed the test, and walk around not knowing shit? It's the same in a lot of universities too. Elite universities are looking for people who fit their image and who they believe are going somewhere in life. Universities, especially universities are looking for people that are going places. They are looking for people who will bring recognition, money, and fame back to the university.
> Tell me about how many people I know who went to a CISSP bootcamp, passed the test, and walk around not knowing shit? It's the same in a lot of universities too.
So because bootcamps are an insufficient means of testing, standardized testing in general is inadequate? And not just this specific test in particular?
> Training someone to pass a test to get in is not the same as finding the right person to go there.
Only if the test is insufficient. "finding the right person" is just a racist, classist dog whistle from a group of people that feel entitled to the right to discriminate
You want to see a living example of this entitlement? Listen to the audio from the recent Supreme court verbal argument regarding the Harvard case. Specifically the "oboe players" comment. Juxtapose this with the historical racist and antisemitic discrimination and ask yourself whether Harvard should be trusted to "find the right person" in this sort of way
Can the universities prove that whatever process they have now (or is trying to do) is better than a pure meritocracy? Obviously we would need to agree on what "better" means here (ie: what outcomes they are measuring).
The question to you is, how do you measure "needs to be more than that". If this isn't something that you can't quantify, it's just going to let administrators pick students to satisfy whatever the current cultural hot button issue is.
That is a good question. I think the university should decide on the "why" and base candidates off of that. And you are are right, much like picking a hire, a best friend, your spouse, there is a lot that isn't quantifiable.
4.0 student who you interview and they come off as a Jerk, they are smart as hell or a 3.93 student who is passionate about learning, wants to be there, and is a humble person. Which do you want affecting your school's culture?
You can make the tests harder. There can be IQ testing to estimate ability to handle out of box thinking. Fwiw - anyone able to fork out $52k/year for their child is wealthy enough so that the child has had enough flexibility for out of box thinking growing up.
A lot of out of box thinking is conditioning to the environment. If you are taught not to have constraints your ability to think out of the box is much better.
There is so much classism, elitism, and unsupported effect therefor cause reasoning in this comment I don't even know where to start with it.
Which is ironic, because I am also generally against the idea of colleges basing their admissions solely on standardized tests. Those tests have their roots in the eugenics movement, have been shown to be deeply problematic and biased, and have completely failed to predict future success when you remove confounding factors.
> I would challenge that these schools are looking for people who think better than most people. Yes they need to be smart when it comes to doing school work, but they need to be more than that to attend an elite university.
I would argue that far more people who "think better than most" people come out of public schools than the "elite" schools. What the elite schools do very well is laundering the mediocrity of the upper class. (See "legacy admissions")
> The people that go to these schools go on to be the upper-crust of society. They can think outside of the box and push the envelope of human knowledge.
> Our results offer some solace to the traditional recruiters. After controlling for age, gender, and the year of study, we found that graduates from higher-ranked universities performed better, but only nominally and only on some dimensions of performance. Specifically, the overall performance improved by only 1.9% for every 1,000 positions in the Webometrics global university rankings. When comparing the performance of candidates whose universities rank further apart — a graduate from a top university versus a “global average” university — the performance differential jumps to 19%.
> The 19% difference in performance between the top and the average seems significant, but keep in mind that this is for graduates from universities that are 10,000 university ranking positions apart. At a given organization, candidates are likely to be selected from within a much narrower pool, perhaps from universities whose rankings differ by a couple of hundred positions. In this more realistic case, the predicted difference in performance would be closer to 1%.
Keep in mind, this[1] is the ranking they are using. The top 10 includes public universities and omits several Ivy league "elite" universities.
> have completely failed to predict future success when you remove confounding factors.
It seems to me that measuring/estimating the scholastic ability/preparedness of a prospective student has value independent of whether that preparedness is correlated with some other variables (wealth, neighborhood, childhood nutrition, other socioeconomic markers).
“Are they prepared/do they have the aptitude to succeed here?” matters much more than the underlying reasons why they might or might not be prepared.
I was under the impression that elite universities first switched to holistic criteria for admissions because too many Jewish students made it through on academics.
> Most standardized tests are just rote learning and memorization.
Most of the non-standardized test stuff is subjective and lends itself pretty directly to classist and racial prejudice. No one is arguing that standardized tests are the perfect way to test for aptitude, but the pro-standardized-test folks argue that the alternatives are significantly worse.
Harvard admissions are classist on purpose. They want to admit mostly upper class people because they want every single one of their graduates to become upper class, and the easiest way to do that is to start upper class.
Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America
I liked these two books together because they are two sides to the same coin and offers something I feel a lot of political books don't, a hope for a better America. Both books offer perspectives on this history of the political parties and how we have gotten to this point.
World
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How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future
Vaclav Smil is an amazing author, his latest book really covers a range of topics from energy to food and how solving these problems are not as simple as people think. If you like these types of books, his other book (more dense) Energy and Civilization: A History is something I would highly recommend.
Leadership
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To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Leadership has been a big topic for me recently to explore and out of the books I have read these three have opened my mind. I was in the Navy for severals years and so To Risk It All and Extreme Ownership really resonated with me. Execution is a great book as well and the three of them really cover the core of leadership, making hard choices, ownership, and execution based in reality.
Some of these books are new and a few of them are older, but these and several others are books I have read this year and have found them very enjoyable. I will also put out there if you like business an honorable mention of "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't" which also was a pretty good read about how some businesses have done well and beaten the market while other industry giants have not.
I just bought a new smart phone after 4 years. My old phone was running Android 9 and stopped receiving security updates in May, 2021. The battery was also shot and I had about 30-45 minutes of phone use before it would just shutdown. Did it feel snappy while using it, yes. If it had Android 12 and kept getting security updates would I have probably continued to use it? yes.
People have been saying time and time again for years that the race to have the slimmest X was stupid. There is no reason why phone companies cannot do a plastic phone back that pops on and off and lets the user upgrade their battery like the phones use to have. There is also no reason why we cannot have longer phone support, other than time and money.
There are some big upgrades that happen every 4-5 years or so that would probably make some people upgrade like 5G, AMOLED screens, 120hz, or 4k resolution.
I do find it personally funny that most people shell out money for the latest iPhone year after year for the most part, but will have some shitty macbook air from 5 years ago. But that is because we have attached status to phones and not computers.
In the end, it is up to the companies to make these changes, but having a longer lasting phone goes against the idea of selling more phones per year for more money. They would rather ditch chargers and the plastic wrappers and virtue signal they are environmentally friendly so people feed good instead of actually saving the environment by making a phone last 5+ years.
I cannot read the whole article because of the paywall, but I do find it ironic that "tech" consists of Meta, Twitter, Salesforce, Stripe, and some other companies while there are hundreds of smaller tech companies that seem to be doing ok.
Some of the above companies have become huge monoliths and this is the market adjusting itself. The companies growth has slowed and smaller, leaner, more agile companies are out maneuvering them.
It sucks to see people losing their jobs and getting laid off, but the recession and closing market space has triggered off more wartime CEO actions instead of peacetime CEO. Instead of expanding, these leaders realized their expansion is or has come to an end and instead they are cutting all the excess they can to stay afloat.
And while I do not like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, I think they are reading the market correctly on what is coming and what they can do to put their businesses in the right place for the future.
I agree. The other day someone commenting the layoffs of meta, noted that the company has still more employees than at the end of last year. These changes are bad for the people involved, but even if the numbers are big, their relative amount (percentage) seems to me more like a temporary swing.
I don't know, maybe talk to her more, therapist, something?