6 ms·

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque fro

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or if you don't have a full scholarship, Harvard tuition is not worth the degree and student loans you end up with.

defen 6y ago
Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. If you can't afford Harvard tuition it's free - e.g. if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. So yes, it's actually massively worth it if you can get in, because you graduate with no debt and have a name-brand diploma and access to an extremely well-connected group of people. It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier institutions and take on massive debt who should reconsider college, not the ones going to Harvard. https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet
- L_Rahman 6y ago
  As someone who was accepted and got to see their financial aid package, I have to mention that it's extremely generous as well. They don't just cover room and board and tuition, there's an understanding that you're poorer than your peers at the university so there's general spending money, money to buy winter clothes, money to fly home 2x-3x a year. This is a rounding error for Harvard, but I didn't realize how limiting not having that would be at the school I ended up going to (which only covered tuition and most of room and board).
  - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
    So where was better than Harvard for you?
    - tarboreus 6y ago
      Hogwarts, obviously.
    - CamelCaseName 6y ago
      Johns Hopkins as per his profile. (He studied Biomedical Engineering)
    - L_Rahman 6y ago
      I went to Hopkins to study bioengineering. This ended up being a tactical mistake - the media hype around the field gave me unrealistic expectations, the life of an underpaid academic no longer seemed appealing, coursework was incredibly difficult and graded on a harsh curve. But it was incredibly useful because it took me off the default track. Had I gone to Harvard and enjoyed its attendant grade inflation and reputation advantages, I'd probably be floating around McKinsey and feeling self important right now. Instead, I had to ask myself some difficult questions about what is important to me and how to make it happen in my life.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. OK, but there are other places that provide scholarships. >if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. That's awesome for students from low-income families. I support it 100%! But let's be clear here, a family with a household income of $66k/year (up to, I don't know, $200k/year) cannot afford $85k/year tuition without the student going into massive debt. Those students shouldn't even look at Harvard. It's not worth it. >It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier institutions and take on massive debt who should reconsider college, not the ones going to Harvard. What are we arguing here? If a student ends up with massive debt from Harvard, that's not worth it either - right?
  - defen 6y ago
    > But let's be clear here, a family with a household income of $66k/year (up to, I don't know, $200k/year) cannot afford $85k/year tuition without the student going into massive debt. Click the link - "Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0-10% of their income, and those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10%, based on their individual circumstances" Essentially nobody graduates from Harvard with a significant amount of debt.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >Essentially nobody graduates from Harvard with a significant amount of debt. That's great! No argument from me. If Harvard structures their tuition in such a way that students aren't graduating with a massive student loan debt, awesome!
      - juletide 6y ago
        Why exactly were you arguing so vociferously when all this information was available just one click away, at the link the other user provided? This kind of comment (being unwilling to do even the most basic research before pontificating on something one doesn't know about) makes HN discussion poorer overall, imho.
- RNCTX 6y ago
  At last check, Harvard has produced far more world class scumbags than my second/third tier state university alma mater. There's Larry Summers, who presided over their lame attempt to monopolize Russian ACH clearing after the Soviet party fell apart, which landed some professors in federal fraud charges. Then there's Tom Cotton who recently cheered on the idea of soldiers shooting at peaceful protestors at the behest of the NY Times, which fits with their hiring of noted NY Times managing plagiarist Jill Abramson, who had the nerve to say she wasn't paid enough to copy and paste other people's words. And considering Cotton Mather, Tom Cotton is only arguably the second worst Cotton to come from Harvard. And we haven't even gotten to the MK Ultra participants, both willing in terms of the faculty and unwilling in the case of the Unabomber, have we? The bad are so bad that they overshadow the everyday grifters, such as the William Empsons of the world who preached rugged individualism attained conveniently after suing their dead wife's family for a comfortable amount of money to live on while not needing anything from anyone else in a purely literary sense, I suppose.
- rococode 6y ago
  The big takeaway I have from reading this thread is how many people think of the top Ivies as rich kid schools where most students are paying exorbitant amounts of money to attend. Probably a stereotype perpetuated by movies and TV shows... There are certainly a lot of upper middle class students at Harvard (55% are getting aid and it's vaguely implied the cutoff for aid is around 200k, so around half of families make more than that), but that's not because poorer families can't afford to go to Harvard, it's a more systemic issue with wealthier families having more time and money to invest in their kids' education - good schools and neighborhoods, time for clubs and competitions, money for tutors and pricier extracurriculars, etc.
  - treis 6y ago
    > top Ivies as rich kid schools They're definitely that as well. Everyone that gets into Harvard is very talented, but the general groups of differentiation on top of that I see is: (1) Rich kids who's parents can buy them opportunity, bribe the school with donations, and legacies. (2) White/Asians from modest backgrounds that are "holy shit" levels of exceptional. (3) Other minorities that are exceptional but more on the level of being a really good student. Harvard and the other ivies aren't exactly transparent so I don't really know how accurate my perception is but that's what it seems like to me.
    - rococode 6y ago
      Fair enough, that breakdown sounds about right to me. Though it's important to note that "rich kids" here means really super rich. I recall once hearing some admissions person half-jokingly say that they don't even notice donations under $10m. Which kind of raises the question, if the kid's family is contributing that much to the school, and part of the value for regular folks going to these schools is the opportunity to network with people with exceptional backgrounds, perhaps the occasional "my mom paid for this building" or "my dad is a world leader" student is OK?
      - somethoughts 6y ago
        Yes using those numbers, Harvard legacy admissions is basically a "Buy One Give One Hundred" concept similar to Tom's Shoes concept of "Buy One Give One"[1] but applied to experiential goods. With a $10M donation and tuition at ~$100,000, the super donor is essentially buying 1 admission for their student and giving 100 students free admission. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/beyond-buy-one-give-one-retail https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/beyond-buy-one-g...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- affyboi 6y ago
  Most of the Ivies are pretty generous when it comes to financial aid
csa 6y ago
> if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or if you don't have a full scholarship, Harvard tuition is not worth the degree and student loans you end up with. Ivy League schools are famously generous with financial aid. If the tuition cost is an issue for your family, odds are that you won’t be paying sticker price. It would not be uncommon for a typical “middle class” family (not upper middle class, definitely not FAANG programmer) to pay no tuition, and loans, grants, work study, and family contributions go towards room, board, and miscellaneous expenses.
- devxpy 6y ago
  Please, some data to back this claim?
- camelNotation 6y ago
  The point still stands that what you are paying for in college is a network and credentials. Harvard offers the best of both, but success is still a thousand inputs and statistical probabilities, no guarantees. I've worked with several Ivy League grads, including some from Harvard. Some succeed, some still fail miserably. A good education improves your chances of success, but it isn't necessary. So unless you are getting that free tuition or come from a wealthy background, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go through the effort required for a school like that.
  - rococode 6y ago
    > unless you are getting that free tuition or come from a wealthy background The point that's being made is that your "unless" covers effectively every single student at Harvard (and the other need-blind schools). If you get in, you're either well-off and don't care about tuition, or the price tag is going to be low enough that you can justify paying it to go to Harvard instead of taking whatever other scholarships you may have received (and it may even be overall cheaper than other schools). These top schools know their students are getting full scholarships from other schools. They accepted them because they want them, and a couple thousand dollars a year's difference is a low price for them to pay to ensure the student chooses their school. I think the only valid "unless" is "unless you're wealthy but not super-wealthy". There's certainly a range of income where they won't give you aid but you aren't that rich (maybe your parents are FAANG SWEs). If your family makes $800k a year, you probably won't get any financial aid but you may still balk at a $250k tuition.
hintymad 6y ago
Harvard started the institutionalization of "hollistic admission": https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in. According to the article, it was not about being fair, it was about limiting the admission of a specific group of people. In general, the more complex a system is, the easier it is for people to game the system, and therefore the easier it is to hide inequality. It's hard to believe that Harvard does not know this, but I guess I'm dead wrong here as our progressives always ask for a more complex system to battle inequality. In contrast, look at China. Their National College Entrance Examination is widely considered the most equal system in the country. Is it perfect? Of course not. However, students from poor country-side have a shot to get into elite universities. All they need are good teachers and well designed problem sets and text books . The cost of the books cost less than few Burger King's double cheese burgers. In the meantime, the government invested heavily on teachers. The result is that the best teachers are always in public schools. The inequality really lies in the fact that fewer and fewer quality teachers are willing to go to the poor areas nowadays. But hey, it's not like our government are focusing on raising teacher quality in the US either, right? What about the fact that tests themselves can be gamed, we may ask, like students cramming for exams? The problem turns out to be relatively "easy" to solve: make tests differentiable. Just take a look at a problem set from India's JEE, China's NCEE, Korea's CSAT, or Japan's entrance exams from different universities. You'll see how hard it is to cram or to "tutor" for an exam. If we use math as an example, the only patterns one sees in a problem will be mathematical patterns. If one can cram for that, well congratulations, the person just learned good math.
- cycrutchfield 6y ago
  Imagine looking at China and its massively wasteful system of cram schools and rote learning and thinking that's a system you would like to emulate.
  - hintymad 6y ago
    Whether exams, which solely focus on academics, are effective for selecting talents is definitely up to challenge. That's a whole different topic from which system is less likely to be biased or gamed, though. Just to fact check one thing: cram schools and rote learning for elementary students are rampant because of cut-throat competition for students to get into middle schools, but it's not that much in high school. Sooner or later you just can't rote learning any more. It's like one can probably rote learn James' Calculus, but good luck with Stein's or Rudin's Analysis. Besides, remember most of the good teachers are in public schools? The quality of cram schools was pathetic compared with what's offered by public schools, so the cram schools don't make much of a dent.
dheera 6y ago
> What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard Unfortunately, the standard is a bad standard and I'm fully in support of abolishing the SAT as a requirement. For engineers, the SAT math section basically amounts to measuring how many mistakes you make doing stupid easy math under 90 minutes of stress. The SAT verbal section basically measures how well you memorize word lists. Let's not BS ourselves -- I memorized word lists in high school and I almost never use any of those words. For liberal arts, vocabulary knowledge is rarely the bottleneck in their ability to succeed, and the math is largely unimportant. Neither part of the test is a good indicator of one's preparedness to receive a high quality university education, and much less an indicator of the type of education most people look for at Harvard. Someone who wants to major in East Asian studies, for example, really doesn't need to know what "obstreperous" means, let alone an engineer or scientist. Harvard doesn't need standards. They need a bunch of unique, bright people that are prepared to make change in the world in their own unique ways. I went to "the other school" down the street from Harvard and from what I remember the application was heavily focused on extracurricular activities. I think that's a much better qualitative indicator of one's motivation and ability to go beyond courses and exams in their desire to learn and make impact.
- dheera 6y ago
  Based on the downvotes, I guess HN is a bunch of adamant test-loving folks. I guess this kind of open discussion isn't welcome here.

defen 6y ago

Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. If you can't afford Harvard tuition it's free - e.g. if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. So yes, it's actually massively worth it if you can get in, because you graduate with no debt and have a name-brand diploma and access to an extremely well-connected group of people. It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier institutions and take on massive debt who should reconsider college, not the ones going to Harvard. https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet

L_Rahman 6y ago
As someone who was accepted and got to see their financial aid package, I have to mention that it's extremely generous as well. They don't just cover room and board and tuition, there's an understanding that you're poorer than your peers at the university so there's general spending money, money to buy winter clothes, money to fly home 2x-3x a year. This is a rounding error for Harvard, but I didn't realize how limiting not having that would be at the school I ended up going to (which only covered tuition and most of room and board).
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  So where was better than Harvard for you?
  - tarboreus 6y ago
    Hogwarts, obviously.
  - CamelCaseName 6y ago
    Johns Hopkins as per his profile. (He studied Biomedical Engineering)
  - L_Rahman 6y ago
    I went to Hopkins to study bioengineering. This ended up being a tactical mistake - the media hype around the field gave me unrealistic expectations, the life of an underpaid academic no longer seemed appealing, coursework was incredibly difficult and graded on a harsh curve. But it was incredibly useful because it took me off the default track. Had I gone to Harvard and enjoyed its attendant grade inflation and reputation advantages, I'd probably be floating around McKinsey and feeling self important right now. Instead, I had to ask myself some difficult questions about what is important to me and how to make it happen in my life.
macspoofing 6y ago
>Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. OK, but there are other places that provide scholarships. >if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. That's awesome for students from low-income families. I support it 100%! But let's be clear here, a family with a household income of $66k/year (up to, I don't know, $200k/year) cannot afford $85k/year tuition without the student going into massive debt. Those students shouldn't even look at Harvard. It's not worth it. >It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier institutions and take on massive debt who should reconsider college, not the ones going to Harvard. What are we arguing here? If a student ends up with massive debt from Harvard, that's not worth it either - right?
- defen 6y ago
  > But let's be clear here, a family with a household income of $66k/year (up to, I don't know, $200k/year) cannot afford $85k/year tuition without the student going into massive debt. Click the link - "Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0-10% of their income, and those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10%, based on their individual circumstances" Essentially nobody graduates from Harvard with a significant amount of debt.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >Essentially nobody graduates from Harvard with a significant amount of debt. That's great! No argument from me. If Harvard structures their tuition in such a way that students aren't graduating with a massive student loan debt, awesome!
    - juletide 6y ago
      Why exactly were you arguing so vociferously when all this information was available just one click away, at the link the other user provided? This kind of comment (being unwilling to do even the most basic research before pontificating on something one doesn't know about) makes HN discussion poorer overall, imho.
RNCTX 6y ago
At last check, Harvard has produced far more world class scumbags than my second/third tier state university alma mater. There's Larry Summers, who presided over their lame attempt to monopolize Russian ACH clearing after the Soviet party fell apart, which landed some professors in federal fraud charges. Then there's Tom Cotton who recently cheered on the idea of soldiers shooting at peaceful protestors at the behest of the NY Times, which fits with their hiring of noted NY Times managing plagiarist Jill Abramson, who had the nerve to say she wasn't paid enough to copy and paste other people's words. And considering Cotton Mather, Tom Cotton is only arguably the second worst Cotton to come from Harvard. And we haven't even gotten to the MK Ultra participants, both willing in terms of the faculty and unwilling in the case of the Unabomber, have we? The bad are so bad that they overshadow the everyday grifters, such as the William Empsons of the world who preached rugged individualism attained conveniently after suing their dead wife's family for a comfortable amount of money to live on while not needing anything from anyone else in a purely literary sense, I suppose.
rococode 6y ago
The big takeaway I have from reading this thread is how many people think of the top Ivies as rich kid schools where most students are paying exorbitant amounts of money to attend. Probably a stereotype perpetuated by movies and TV shows... There are certainly a lot of upper middle class students at Harvard (55% are getting aid and it's vaguely implied the cutoff for aid is around 200k, so around half of families make more than that), but that's not because poorer families can't afford to go to Harvard, it's a more systemic issue with wealthier families having more time and money to invest in their kids' education - good schools and neighborhoods, time for clubs and competitions, money for tutors and pricier extracurriculars, etc.
- treis 6y ago
  > top Ivies as rich kid schools They're definitely that as well. Everyone that gets into Harvard is very talented, but the general groups of differentiation on top of that I see is: (1) Rich kids who's parents can buy them opportunity, bribe the school with donations, and legacies. (2) White/Asians from modest backgrounds that are "holy shit" levels of exceptional. (3) Other minorities that are exceptional but more on the level of being a really good student. Harvard and the other ivies aren't exactly transparent so I don't really know how accurate my perception is but that's what it seems like to me.
  - rococode 6y ago
    Fair enough, that breakdown sounds about right to me. Though it's important to note that "rich kids" here means really super rich. I recall once hearing some admissions person half-jokingly say that they don't even notice donations under $10m. Which kind of raises the question, if the kid's family is contributing that much to the school, and part of the value for regular folks going to these schools is the opportunity to network with people with exceptional backgrounds, perhaps the occasional "my mom paid for this building" or "my dad is a world leader" student is OK?
    - somethoughts 6y ago
      Yes using those numbers, Harvard legacy admissions is basically a "Buy One Give One Hundred" concept similar to Tom's Shoes concept of "Buy One Give One"[1] but applied to experiential goods. With a $10M donation and tuition at ~$100,000, the super donor is essentially buying 1 admission for their student and giving 100 students free admission. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/beyond-buy-one-give-one-retail https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/beyond-buy-one-g...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
affyboi 6y ago
Most of the Ivies are pretty generous when it comes to financial aid

csa 6y ago

> if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or if you don't have a full scholarship, Harvard tuition is not worth the degree and student loans you end up with. Ivy League schools are famously generous with financial aid. If the tuition cost is an issue for your family, odds are that you won’t be paying sticker price. It would not be uncommon for a typical “middle class” family (not upper middle class, definitely not FAANG programmer) to pay no tuition, and loans, grants, work study, and family contributions go towards room, board, and miscellaneous expenses.

devxpy 6y ago
Please, some data to back this claim?
camelNotation 6y ago
The point still stands that what you are paying for in college is a network and credentials. Harvard offers the best of both, but success is still a thousand inputs and statistical probabilities, no guarantees. I've worked with several Ivy League grads, including some from Harvard. Some succeed, some still fail miserably. A good education improves your chances of success, but it isn't necessary. So unless you are getting that free tuition or come from a wealthy background, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go through the effort required for a school like that.
- rococode 6y ago
  > unless you are getting that free tuition or come from a wealthy background The point that's being made is that your "unless" covers effectively every single student at Harvard (and the other need-blind schools). If you get in, you're either well-off and don't care about tuition, or the price tag is going to be low enough that you can justify paying it to go to Harvard instead of taking whatever other scholarships you may have received (and it may even be overall cheaper than other schools). These top schools know their students are getting full scholarships from other schools. They accepted them because they want them, and a couple thousand dollars a year's difference is a low price for them to pay to ensure the student chooses their school. I think the only valid "unless" is "unless you're wealthy but not super-wealthy". There's certainly a range of income where they won't give you aid but you aren't that rich (maybe your parents are FAANG SWEs). If your family makes $800k a year, you probably won't get any financial aid but you may still balk at a $250k tuition.

hintymad 6y ago

Harvard started the institutionalization of "hollistic admission": https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in. According to the article, it was not about being fair, it was about limiting the admission of a specific group of people. In general, the more complex a system is, the easier it is for people to game the system, and therefore the easier it is to hide inequality. It's hard to believe that Harvard does not know this, but I guess I'm dead wrong here as our progressives always ask for a more complex system to battle inequality. In contrast, look at China. Their National College Entrance Examination is widely considered the most equal system in the country. Is it perfect? Of course not. However, students from poor country-side have a shot to get into elite universities. All they need are good teachers and well designed problem sets and text books . The cost of the books cost less than few Burger King's double cheese burgers. In the meantime, the government invested heavily on teachers. The result is that the best teachers are always in public schools. The inequality really lies in the fact that fewer and fewer quality teachers are willing to go to the poor areas nowadays. But hey, it's not like our government are focusing on raising teacher quality in the US either, right? What about the fact that tests themselves can be gamed, we may ask, like students cramming for exams? The problem turns out to be relatively "easy" to solve: make tests differentiable. Just take a look at a problem set from India's JEE, China's NCEE, Korea's CSAT, or Japan's entrance exams from different universities. You'll see how hard it is to cram or to "tutor" for an exam. If we use math as an example, the only patterns one sees in a problem will be mathematical patterns. If one can cram for that, well congratulations, the person just learned good math.

cycrutchfield 6y ago
Imagine looking at China and its massively wasteful system of cram schools and rote learning and thinking that's a system you would like to emulate.
- hintymad 6y ago
  Whether exams, which solely focus on academics, are effective for selecting talents is definitely up to challenge. That's a whole different topic from which system is less likely to be biased or gamed, though. Just to fact check one thing: cram schools and rote learning for elementary students are rampant because of cut-throat competition for students to get into middle schools, but it's not that much in high school. Sooner or later you just can't rote learning any more. It's like one can probably rote learn James' Calculus, but good luck with Stein's or Rudin's Analysis. Besides, remember most of the good teachers are in public schools? The quality of cram schools was pathetic compared with what's offered by public schools, so the cram schools don't make much of a dent.

dheera 6y ago

> What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard Unfortunately, the standard is a bad standard and I'm fully in support of abolishing the SAT as a requirement. For engineers, the SAT math section basically amounts to measuring how many mistakes you make doing stupid easy math under 90 minutes of stress. The SAT verbal section basically measures how well you memorize word lists. Let's not BS ourselves -- I memorized word lists in high school and I almost never use any of those words. For liberal arts, vocabulary knowledge is rarely the bottleneck in their ability to succeed, and the math is largely unimportant. Neither part of the test is a good indicator of one's preparedness to receive a high quality university education, and much less an indicator of the type of education most people look for at Harvard. Someone who wants to major in East Asian studies, for example, really doesn't need to know what "obstreperous" means, let alone an engineer or scientist. Harvard doesn't need standards. They need a bunch of unique, bright people that are prepared to make change in the world in their own unique ways. I went to "the other school" down the street from Harvard and from what I remember the application was heavily focused on extracurricular activities. I think that's a much better qualitative indicator of one's motivation and ability to go beyond courses and exams in their desire to learn and make impact.

dheera 6y ago
Based on the downvotes, I guess HN is a bunch of adamant test-loving folks. I guess this kind of open discussion isn't welcome here.