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almost all the undergrad students at elite schools are elite students. That is not at all true of second tier schools. That doesn't mean you can't find and esta

almost all the undergrad students at elite schools are elite students. That is not at all true of second tier schools. That doesn't mean you can't find and establish a cohort with great students at a lower tier school, and the professors at lower tier schools are often excellent, but it's simply not true that you can move down the bell curve of board scores and not notice; though a friend of mine was fond of saying, "you need to live in a tall building to be able to see everybody else who lives in a tall building." Why are people so willing to accept that from childhood leagues to professional, in basketball, football, soccer, etc. society scours and finds all the best players, and nobody is out to prove that it's not true, but that somehow we as a society are incapable doing it in intellectual fields? Does that mean that no player who didn't make it as a pro wasn't close, or that every pro player works out? No, but within the stochastic variance, sure.

CrazyStat 4y ago
> almost all the undergrad students at elite schools are elite students. Based on my own experience at an elite school (as a graduate student, teaching undergrads), this is definitely false. > Why are people so willing to accept that from childhood leagues to professional, in basketball, football, soccer, etc. society scours and finds all the best players, and nobody is out to prove that it's not true, but that somehow we as a society are incapable doing it in intellectual fields? Because athletic performance can be objectively and reasonably easily measured along many (not all) dimensions. Intellectual performance is (1) much harder to measure objectively and (2) much less socially acceptable to use such measurements. Good grades can indicate high intellectual performance, or they can indicate grade inflation. A high SAT score can indicate high intellectual ability, or it can indicate that your parents paid $4000 for SAT prep courses and 1-on-1 tutoring. Basing college acceptance on a battery of psychological tests might be somewhat better than current methods at selecting elite students, but (1) those tests would immediately become the subjects of a new test-prep industry and (2) it's not socially acceptable to do that.

CrazyStat 4y ago

> almost all the undergrad students at elite schools are elite students. Based on my own experience at an elite school (as a graduate student, teaching undergrads), this is definitely false. > Why are people so willing to accept that from childhood leagues to professional, in basketball, football, soccer, etc. society scours and finds all the best players, and nobody is out to prove that it's not true, but that somehow we as a society are incapable doing it in intellectual fields? Because athletic performance can be objectively and reasonably easily measured along many (not all) dimensions. Intellectual performance is (1) much harder to measure objectively and (2) much less socially acceptable to use such measurements. Good grades can indicate high intellectual performance, or they can indicate grade inflation. A high SAT score can indicate high intellectual ability, or it can indicate that your parents paid $4000 for SAT prep courses and 1-on-1 tutoring. Basing college acceptance on a battery of psychological tests might be somewhat better than current methods at selecting elite students, but (1) those tests would immediately become the subjects of a new test-prep industry and (2) it's not socially acceptable to do that.