4 ms·

Good, should set an example for everyone else. YOU got into MIT, not the color of your skin, nor whose parents you had. I have a half dozen 1st generation frie

by tekla 3y ago

Good, should set an example for everyone else. YOU got into MIT, not the color of your skin, nor whose parents you had. I have a half dozen 1st generation friends who worked their asses off in inner city schools to get full ride scholarships to get into top schools, and are now part of the professional class in a single generation.

sanitycheck 3y ago
Eh. It's mostly genetics that determine academic ability (and everything else), so reaching an end goal of "total equality" would in fact make admissions all about who your parents are.
- abirch 3y ago
  I think it's 60-70% of academic achievement can be explained by genes. If you know kids from a big family, their academic success can vary significantly although they have the same parents.
  - sanitycheck 3y ago
    Sure, and they may not all have the same colour eyes - variation is expected. But still, we have nature (genes, 60-70%) and nurture (hey, parents again). What else is there?
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Luck (excluding controllable factors by wealthy parents)
    - abirch 3y ago
      I'd say opportunities. When there are fewer kids matriculating into college it's easier to get into a better school (see Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers) Professors and Teachers, the variability of them is huge. Friends can have a huge impact as well. Is the norm to skip classes to go work on a startup or focusing on getting good grades? Resources such as the Numberblocks which make math more visual and accessible. My pre-K kid was doing multiplication because of that show.
  - chongli 3y ago
    Yes, and identical twins raised apart show extremely similar academic achievement, far more similar than non-identical siblings raised in the same household. This strongly indicates that academic achievement is highly explained by genes but that recombination [1] causes enough scrambling to result in large variance among non-identical siblings. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  Which is why only pure-blood Germans must be allowed to the higher education unlike Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other such Untermenschen. sigh Genetics don't determine that much as some would like to believe, seriously.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    You’re implying that the beliefs here must be racially consistent, which is a straw man.
  - sanitycheck 3y ago
    I'd thought HN was above calling people Nazis? I've said nothing about race. If we want a meritocracy we have to be comfortable with genetics playing a role in outcomes. Personally I've realised that a meritocracy would not be "fair" in the way that a lot of people assume.
    - Joker_vD 3y ago
      Alright, let's talk about eugenics then? After all, it's not just Nazis that had eugenics programs in the newest history: the USA had forced sterilization well into the seventies, so it can't be all that bad.
  - chongli 3y ago
    The evidence would suggest otherwise [1]. Race is a very bad proxy for intelligence, but that doesn't mean intelligence isn't genetic. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid...
    - willis936 3y ago
      A heritable trait is not inherently genetic.
      - chongli 3y ago
ramraj07 3y ago
No matter how much you try you never get into any top school just by your own hard work. It's necessary but not sufficient. For example, admission to most top grad schools in biomedical sciences is only possible without quota if you have publications. Guess who gets published in their undergrad more often than others? Children of professors. In the end the reality is pretty much everyone of socio-economic privilege gets one boost or another that's not available to other groups of people. That's why I don't get mad if some underprivileged classes get "unfair" quotas as alleged by the US supreme court. I didn't get mad that rich kids can get into Harvard without too much work, why would I get mad that an underprivileged kids can do that now?
- userabchn 3y ago
  > Children of professors This is like people claiming that because a higher percentage of children of high earning parents become high earners, that they got an unfair advantage because their parents could pay for them to go to good schools, etc. That might be part of it, but having parents who are intelligent enough and have the attitudes and habits to get a high earning job means that you will most likely be more intelligent than average and have absorbed those attitudes and habits as well.
  - ramraj07 3y ago
    It's not the intelligence of the parents or the kids that gets them published. It's "hey, friend, could you let my son join your lab and work on a project that'll get his name on a paper?" That gets them a paper. I could do everything right, join as many labs as possible and work my ass off for every year of my undergrad and still not get a single paper without such a recommendation. I know because that's what happened to me.
    - filoleg 3y ago
      How common is this at all? Asking because I went to one of the fairly prominent public research schools in the US (Georgia Tech), have tons of friends who got published during their undergrad (almost did myself too, but priorities changed, and I quit research in that lab before we got to the point of draft submissions), and not a single one of those friends had academia-affiliated parents. None of them were donors to the school either. I don't doubt that those scenarios you describe happen, but I strongly doubt it happens at top research schools in any capacity that would be noticeable or affect anything. In fact, professors running the labs that I've encountered couldn't care any less about who you are, and way more about what you can bring to the table in terms of getting things done and published.
mbesto 3y ago
> YOU got into MIT, not the color of your skin, nor whose parents you had. Or you get into MIT because of your zip code, which is basically true of all elite schools: https://www.admissionsmadness.com/blog/your-zip-code-is-the-most-important-admissions-factor https://www.admissionsmadness.com/blog/your-zip-code-is-the-... your half dozen friends are anecdotes.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  This article cites a survey that claims alumni, not admits, all live in the same zip code. The study is also not about MIT. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that good schools have better admission rates to good universities.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    >It shouldn’t surprise anyone that good schools have better admission rates to good universities. The actual answer is probably "it's complicated." MIT also doesn't want to filled with Stuyvesant and Bronx School of Science grads. (Though last time I saw the numbers they did admit a fair number anyway.) 5% of my small high school graduating class ended up at MIT but that was a long time ago and I assume that wouldn't happen today.

by tekla 3y ago

sanitycheck 3y ago

Eh. It's mostly genetics that determine academic ability (and everything else), so reaching an end goal of "total equality" would in fact make admissions all about who your parents are.

abirch 3y ago
I think it's 60-70% of academic achievement can be explained by genes. If you know kids from a big family, their academic success can vary significantly although they have the same parents.
- sanitycheck 3y ago
  Sure, and they may not all have the same colour eyes - variation is expected. But still, we have nature (genes, 60-70%) and nurture (hey, parents again). What else is there?
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Luck (excluding controllable factors by wealthy parents)
  - abirch 3y ago
    I'd say opportunities. When there are fewer kids matriculating into college it's easier to get into a better school (see Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers) Professors and Teachers, the variability of them is huge. Friends can have a huge impact as well. Is the norm to skip classes to go work on a startup or focusing on getting good grades? Resources such as the Numberblocks which make math more visual and accessible. My pre-K kid was doing multiplication because of that show.
- chongli 3y ago
  Yes, and identical twins raised apart show extremely similar academic achievement, far more similar than non-identical siblings raised in the same household. This strongly indicates that academic achievement is highly explained by genes but that recombination [1] causes enough scrambling to result in large variance among non-identical siblings. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination
Joker_vD 3y ago
Which is why only pure-blood Germans must be allowed to the higher education unlike Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other such Untermenschen. sigh Genetics don't determine that much as some would like to believe, seriously.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  You’re implying that the beliefs here must be racially consistent, which is a straw man.
- sanitycheck 3y ago
  I'd thought HN was above calling people Nazis? I've said nothing about race. If we want a meritocracy we have to be comfortable with genetics playing a role in outcomes. Personally I've realised that a meritocracy would not be "fair" in the way that a lot of people assume.
  - Joker_vD 3y ago
    Alright, let's talk about eugenics then? After all, it's not just Nazis that had eugenics programs in the newest history: the USA had forced sterilization well into the seventies, so it can't be all that bad.
- chongli 3y ago
  The evidence would suggest otherwise [1]. Race is a very bad proxy for intelligence, but that doesn't mean intelligence isn't genetic. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid...
  - willis936 3y ago
    A heritable trait is not inherently genetic.
    - chongli 3y ago

ramraj07 3y ago

No matter how much you try you never get into any top school just by your own hard work. It's necessary but not sufficient. For example, admission to most top grad schools in biomedical sciences is only possible without quota if you have publications. Guess who gets published in their undergrad more often than others? Children of professors. In the end the reality is pretty much everyone of socio-economic privilege gets one boost or another that's not available to other groups of people. That's why I don't get mad if some underprivileged classes get "unfair" quotas as alleged by the US supreme court. I didn't get mad that rich kids can get into Harvard without too much work, why would I get mad that an underprivileged kids can do that now?

userabchn 3y ago
> Children of professors This is like people claiming that because a higher percentage of children of high earning parents become high earners, that they got an unfair advantage because their parents could pay for them to go to good schools, etc. That might be part of it, but having parents who are intelligent enough and have the attitudes and habits to get a high earning job means that you will most likely be more intelligent than average and have absorbed those attitudes and habits as well.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  It's not the intelligence of the parents or the kids that gets them published. It's "hey, friend, could you let my son join your lab and work on a project that'll get his name on a paper?" That gets them a paper. I could do everything right, join as many labs as possible and work my ass off for every year of my undergrad and still not get a single paper without such a recommendation. I know because that's what happened to me.
  - filoleg 3y ago
    How common is this at all? Asking because I went to one of the fairly prominent public research schools in the US (Georgia Tech), have tons of friends who got published during their undergrad (almost did myself too, but priorities changed, and I quit research in that lab before we got to the point of draft submissions), and not a single one of those friends had academia-affiliated parents. None of them were donors to the school either. I don't doubt that those scenarios you describe happen, but I strongly doubt it happens at top research schools in any capacity that would be noticeable or affect anything. In fact, professors running the labs that I've encountered couldn't care any less about who you are, and way more about what you can bring to the table in terms of getting things done and published.

mbesto 3y ago

> YOU got into MIT, not the color of your skin, nor whose parents you had. Or you get into MIT because of your zip code, which is basically true of all elite schools: https://www.admissionsmadness.com/blog/your-zip-code-is-the-most-important-admissions-factor https://www.admissionsmadness.com/blog/your-zip-code-is-the-... your half dozen friends are anecdotes.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jncfhnb 3y ago
This article cites a survey that claims alumni, not admits, all live in the same zip code. The study is also not about MIT. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that good schools have better admission rates to good universities.
- ghaff 3y ago
  >It shouldn’t surprise anyone that good schools have better admission rates to good universities. The actual answer is probably "it's complicated." MIT also doesn't want to filled with Stuyvesant and Bronx School of Science grads. (Though last time I saw the numbers they did admit a fair number anyway.) 5% of my small high school graduating class ended up at MIT but that was a long time ago and I assume that wouldn't happen today.