12 ms·

The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.

jacobsenscott 3y ago
[flagged]
- legolas2412 3y ago
  History also definitely shows that nepotistic or race-centered systems really did not work out fine. In fact the malinged systems made by rich white people were nepotistic and race-centered. What history does show us is that systems that reward effort, and not just someone's heritage are the ones that have led to best outcomes.
- ahtihn 3y ago
  Does history show things working out better when other groups make rules?
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    I don't think that was the point of the person you are resounding to. I think the point was that no single group should make all the rules.
- nancyhn 3y ago
  Racism is bad and you should feel bad that you judge people based on their skin color.
ubermonkey 3y ago
Only one of these is a good thing.
- loeg 3y ago
  I don’t think discrimination against asians was a good thing!
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    There was an interesting piece in a NPR podcast on the effects on the more "elite" students: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/16/1182630192/the-indicator-from-planet-money-how-ending-affirmative-action-changed-california https://www.npr.org/2023/06/16/1182630192/the-indicator-from... Basically, when the top students couldn't enter the more selective schools, they'd go to private or a bit less competitive schools and compensate the difference in education/networking in other ways, making it a wash when looking at their income years later. In contract students who benefited affirmative action where getting a way better deal at the exit and saw more significant salary difference compared to those who couldn't attend the more selective schools.
- gbasin 3y ago
  and it's probably not the one you think
mlyle 3y ago
At the same time, we're getting rid of testing in admissions decisions. So instead we're in an era of squishy, difficult-to-judge metrics... and of course, the places where one could stand out-- interesting stories on one's transcript or essay-- are increasingly being evaluated by AI.
- el_nahual 3y ago
  The cynical(?) explanation is that it is precisely because of the dismantling of standardized testing that getting rid of legacy admissions tenable...because it means schools can still proxy for class in admissions decisions (except veiled as extracurriculars, or "oh, this student knows calculus" in boston/sf). If Harvard or USC were on the list I'd wager this to be the case, but MIT, Mellon & Pitt are serious schools so I believe them when I say it's in favor of increased rigor.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Some schools probably have a higher academic floor. The other thing that happens is that a fair number of good but not spectacular students who nonetheless want to get into the best school they can will put somewhere like Harvard on their list even though they know it's a long shot. If they have so-so SATs (especially in math) they won't even try for MIT--and probably wouldn't like it anyway.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    I'm not sure it's deliberate, but I broadly agree with you that getting rid of tests favors class (despite the reasons purportedly being for equity). While you can buy small improvements in test scores, most things that have replaced tests in admissions decisions are easier to buy. > MIT, Mellon & Pitt MIT still requires SAT scores, so it's a non-factor there.
- elteto 3y ago
  It's because schools want to retain a measure of control over who they let in. A true merit based admissions system (say min SAT score + lottery after that) is uncheatable and therefore schools have _zero_ control on who they have to accept. The only reason why Harvard has kept its mythos of being the incubator of the next ruling class is because, well, they accept the children of the current one. Those are most likely to become part of the next ruling class by virtue of having been born into it. It's an old boys club. There's no intrinsic property of Harvard that turns them into this incubator. And from the other side you have the brain dead equity idiots who are also against true merit systems, for equally twisted, but different reasons.
abirch 3y ago
You're assuming that everyone is on an equal starting point. Wealthy people will be able to favor their kids.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dotancohen 3y ago
  That is exactly my motivation to become wealthy. I don't need a nice number with lots of zeros. I need to secure my children's future, including their prospects for higher education. I see no problem with those who have amassed significant resources, being afforded use of those resources to their childrens' advantage.
  - abirch 3y ago
    I'm not disagreeing with you and I'm actively doing the same; however, I wouldn't say that our children gaining advantages would be considered "Merit-Based"
Anechoic 3y ago
pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach For the right definitions of "merit", yes. I'm not confident we've figured that part out yet.
- abirch 3y ago
  We can't even define the purpose of college. E.g., is it only graduating and Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, ..., Mark Zuckerberg are all failures? Meritocracy works best if you have something to measure against.
lisper 3y ago
I hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure merit? Because [EDIT] many measures of "merit" (was: standardized testing) can be (and often are) biased by race, cultural background, and economic status. For example: Student 1 has built a fully automated chip manufacturing line in his basement. Student 2 has build a robot that solves a maze in fifteen minutes (against the current state of the art which is a few seconds). Which one would you admit? Student 1 is the child of billionaires, and it's not clear how much of the work was actually done by him/her and how much was done by employees hired by the kid's parents. Student 2 lives in Sudan and built their robot out of locally available materials, in the process inventing a new kind of motor built out of coconut fronds. Now which one would you admit?
- endtime 3y ago
  How is that an example of standardized testing?
  - lisper 3y ago
    Good point. I've edited my comment.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  Student 1. He has the resources needed to move ahead. And unless my university can provide self help to the motivated, student 2 may not work out well here.
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  It’s as if you’re trying to make perfect the enemy of good. Standardized tests aren’t perfect but they give less privileged kids the best choice at attending a good college. The kids of the upper class and the rich will always have an upper hand compared to the poor. However, standardized tests limit how wide the upper hand is. An upper class kid still has to study and pass the test, and the poor kid can also do that. If admissions become “holistic”, poor kids would have little chances. Good luck to that poor kid competing subjectively with kids whose parents send them on impressive charity trips and get them unpaid internships at the most prestigious companies.
noobermin 3y ago
I fundamentally do not understand why merit is something you should focus on when it comes to admission into a university. The entire point of an education is to learn, may be you need the bare minimum to enroll but universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least. Just because thats how it should work in some people's heads as the ideal doesn't mean it makes any actual sense if you really interrogate the idea. Meritocracy makes sense after you have an education, it doesn't make sense before it.
- CrampusDestrus 3y ago
  Resources are finite. If college courses were recorded lessons or they just gave you a theory book and an exercises book, then of course we could automate everything. Just sign up, pay your fee and take the exams and once you're done you get the degree, even full remote. Your taxes will go towards professors and a fuck ton of TAs for questions and exercises and to keep the infrastructure running. But we're not there yet
- nostromo 3y ago
  Perhaps it’s politically incorrect to say, but students learn best when they’re around students that are of similar intelligence and motivation to succeed. Taking a brilliant kid and putting them around underachievers doesn’t do anyone any good.
  - OO000oo 3y ago
    Students learn best when they have a quiet home to study in, 3 quality meals a day, parents who aren't working 3 jobs they can ask questions to, parents who aren't fighting about paying the bills that month, good school supplies, etc.
    - nostromo 3y ago
      Agreed. So let's go solve those problems directly and stop pretending the solution is to put underachieving kids into top schools to make ourselves feel better.
nashashmi 3y ago
I doubt merit based approach is the only way of conducting admissions. Merits don’t count for as much as people think they do. A narrow pool of candidates come because of merit. A more reasonable selection system wouldn’t just rely on the individual but also the support network. For example, I often hear “it takes a village to raise a _____ doctor”. And that truth speaks volumes.
onetimeusename 3y ago
We're not, we're heading towards tribalism. The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white more so than anything else. With limited data on other schools, Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits.[1] That didn't stop people who wanted an alleged merit based admissions policy from continuing to call it a racist backdoor. Carnegie Mellon did not publish any stats on their legacy admits however. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, universities have promised to continue to look at race as a factor that still complies with the SC ruling which means a backdoor for race. FWIW white students are the most underrepresented on elite campuses so it would be hard to argue that there are admissions policies favoring them. [1]: https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/academics-narrative/ https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/academi... [2]: https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/30/stanford-to-expand-outreach-efforts-as-supreme-court-strikes-affirmative-action/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/30/stanford-to-expand-outr...
- nova22033 3y ago
  actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits Is the SAT score the only measure of merit? The non-legacies are going to miss on the chance to make social connections with legacy admits who have a lot of connections...and access to a lot of resources..
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Yeah how often does that actually happen. Did Tommy Lee Jones’ acting career really benefit from him being roommates with the son of Albert Gore, Sr.?
  - kelipso 3y ago
    The legacy admits will just go to some other college where some other suckerfish can hop on to get access to a lot of resources..so what's the big difference socially.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  > The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white Disproportionally rich is my problem with legacy admissions.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
There are plenty of choices for higher edu. What's the benefit of forcing a one-size-fits-all business model on all of them? Why should small out of the way esoteric college - or any other for that matter - have to follow Carnegie Mellon or similar? This isn't being inclusive or diverse, it's assimilation at the institution/industry level. Yeah, ironic.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
> merit-based approach. There are still issues with this. Food insecurity being a primary one. But apparently universal school lunches is not as important to people as having a HUGE military budget. What kind of beast doesn't want to feed kids!? Edit: Apparently plenty even on HN. Wow. Color me shocked.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I agree with you that the end of legacy and race-based admissions is a good thing. I think it's dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes when there is huge inequality. This best analogy I can give is the "sports stars" analogy. Professional sports is probably the most even playing field I can imagine - there is such a huge incentive to win games that pretty much all else besides skills on the playing field is ignored. But what it results in is a teeny tiny elite making millions, and nearly everyone else barely making enough to get by. So if the rest of the economy was like the sports stars world (and more and more of it is leaning that way), what reason do the rest of the 99.99% have to support this meritocracy? Sure, you can say it's an improvement that the best people are in charge, but if it's clear my genetic talents will prevent me from ever being a star, my incentive is really to tear the whole system down if none of those benefits ever make it my way. I think one contributing factor you see behind so much increasing social strife, the resurgent interest in unions, etc. is the belief that unless you make it to a top job after a top school, you'll barely be scraping by your whole life. Pure meritocracy in a "winner take all/most" economy leads to a very unstable society.
- commandlinefan 3y ago
  > dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes People who argue against meritocracy seem to forget that it's the only proposed alternative to the "birthright"-ocracy that civilization has been trying to pry itself from the jaws of for centuries.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Not really. Countries that are consistently at the top of world happiness rankings are ones that (a) both support a dynamic economy through meritocracy and (b) have high taxes and a broad social safety net that limits inequality. To put it another way, I'm not arguing against meritocracy; I'm arguing that it alone does not lead to good outcomes - i.e. I think it's necessary but not sufficient. It's like when people thought "bringing democracy" to all these countries without democratic institutions would be a good thing. Democracy is generally better than the alternative, but only if there are broad protections like equality under the law for minority groups, otherwise it's just the "2 wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner" issue. Meritocracy is similar. It's generally a good thing but not if it results in a very small number of people hoarding all the spoils while everyone else barely scrapes by.
mitchdoogle 3y ago
The problem with merit is that it's impossible to determine because the circumstances of people around the world are so vastly different. If you have, say, 1500 spots for a new class, it's going to be impossible to select the best 1500 students. Some elite universities you may even have more than 1500 valedictorians. So what to do? I say you just set a qualifying point to be considered and publicize it (as standardized as you can get, i.e SAT score or similar) and then put every qualifier in a hat and select at random until you fill your spots. Nothing else should matter. Of course this assumes that merit is actually the only thing universities care about, and I'd say that it's not.
zuzu89 3y ago
this decision is not motivated by merit, it's entirely motivated by race. and they have no intentions of using a merit based approach for applicants because that would result in an even more white and asian dominant student pool. without the legacy pool they now have more wiggle room to juice their "merit-based" approach so that they can admit more blacks without getting busted for illegal affirmative action.
honkycat 3y ago
Merit isn't enough. I went to a po-dunk school in rural Missouri. I would never be able to I compete with kids from a rich Chicago/NY school. In the same way a black kid from a poor inner city wouldn't be able to. This is part of the problem. The world isn't egalitarian. The poor will continue to get poorer, the rich will get richer. Solution? Lottery? Don't have a great one.
- criddell 3y ago
  I agree with you. Saying something is merit based is only half of an answer. What exactly is and isn’t meritorious? I’m not convinced that scoring well on tests beyond some point is a particularly good way of deciding if a student deserves a spot or not.
bluepod4 3y ago
“Merit-based” is such a loaded term. What do you mean by that exactly? What are you envisioning? EDIT: Wow, a downvote. For this comment? Yikes! EDIT 2: Oh, I see. I was using the phrase “loaded term” incorrectly. I only meant that “merit-based” is a phrase that can mean a lot of different things. However, thinking about this more, I do still think it’s a loaded term. Politicians and the adjacents have visibly been using it to push an agenda. (I’m not saying this agenda is right or not. But it’s still clearly an agenda. I mean, that’s what their jobs are: to literally have agendas lol.)
thebradbain 3y ago
Except for, you know, Letters of Recommendation, which at top schools are often the deciding factor. All else being near-equal (or not), a letter from a Kennedy is going to get you into Brown versus say, a regular high school teacher that many of comfortable-but-not-connected suburban students applying to college will be using. Maybe a local lawyer, if you’re special. Those are who families who scream “meritocracy” should be directing their ire at, not the applicants (usually with more impressive results and stories considering the background they grew up in, compared to—sorry!—a hum-drum suburban also-ran) _think_ they’re better than, which ultimately is what a meritocracy boils down to. Ultimately the only answer that will give you, or your kids, peace is accepting the fact that schools will curate the student body they want. They’ve admittedly done a good job at it! Complain all you want about Harvard tilting the scales, they’ve done an amazing job maintaining their reputation and exclusivity. If they don’t accept you, they don’t want you. If they do, they do. It’s that simple.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  I want to get rid of letters of recommendation as well. I would personally like to go off of only a single nationwide standardized test.
  - TurkishPoptart 3y ago
    Nope, these are "racist" now. I'm not going to explain why at the risk of getting downvoted.
  - thebradbain 3y ago
    I personally could not think of a more boring way to curate a student body, but even more so than that, I think that’s completely unfair to the many, many way-more interesting people who make up top schools’ student bodies: why does Jimmy Also-Ran with the perfect score on a single test and nothing else get to go to college while track-star Olympiad with a 4.0 doesn’t?
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      Aren’t plenty of PISA high-ranking nations from the East Asian countries to Germany highly reliant upon placement examinations in student educational destinations? It might not feel very American, but it’s widely practiced.
LatteLazy 3y ago
Now we just need widely agreed, easily measurable, non game-able definition of "merit". :)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

jacobsenscott 3y ago

[flagged]

legolas2412 3y ago
History also definitely shows that nepotistic or race-centered systems really did not work out fine. In fact the malinged systems made by rich white people were nepotistic and race-centered. What history does show us is that systems that reward effort, and not just someone's heritage are the ones that have led to best outcomes.
ahtihn 3y ago
Does history show things working out better when other groups make rules?
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  I don't think that was the point of the person you are resounding to. I think the point was that no single group should make all the rules.
nancyhn 3y ago
Racism is bad and you should feel bad that you judge people based on their skin color.

ubermonkey 3y ago

Only one of these is a good thing.

loeg 3y ago
I don’t think discrimination against asians was a good thing!
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  There was an interesting piece in a NPR podcast on the effects on the more "elite" students: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/16/1182630192/the-indicator-from-planet-money-how-ending-affirmative-action-changed-california https://www.npr.org/2023/06/16/1182630192/the-indicator-from... Basically, when the top students couldn't enter the more selective schools, they'd go to private or a bit less competitive schools and compensate the difference in education/networking in other ways, making it a wash when looking at their income years later. In contract students who benefited affirmative action where getting a way better deal at the exit and saw more significant salary difference compared to those who couldn't attend the more selective schools.
gbasin 3y ago
and it's probably not the one you think

mlyle 3y ago

At the same time, we're getting rid of testing in admissions decisions. So instead we're in an era of squishy, difficult-to-judge metrics... and of course, the places where one could stand out-- interesting stories on one's transcript or essay-- are increasingly being evaluated by AI.

el_nahual 3y ago
The cynical(?) explanation is that it is precisely because of the dismantling of standardized testing that getting rid of legacy admissions tenable...because it means schools can still proxy for class in admissions decisions (except veiled as extracurriculars, or "oh, this student knows calculus" in boston/sf). If Harvard or USC were on the list I'd wager this to be the case, but MIT, Mellon & Pitt are serious schools so I believe them when I say it's in favor of increased rigor.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Some schools probably have a higher academic floor. The other thing that happens is that a fair number of good but not spectacular students who nonetheless want to get into the best school they can will put somewhere like Harvard on their list even though they know it's a long shot. If they have so-so SATs (especially in math) they won't even try for MIT--and probably wouldn't like it anyway.
- mlyle 3y ago
  I'm not sure it's deliberate, but I broadly agree with you that getting rid of tests favors class (despite the reasons purportedly being for equity). While you can buy small improvements in test scores, most things that have replaced tests in admissions decisions are easier to buy. > MIT, Mellon & Pitt MIT still requires SAT scores, so it's a non-factor there.
elteto 3y ago
It's because schools want to retain a measure of control over who they let in. A true merit based admissions system (say min SAT score + lottery after that) is uncheatable and therefore schools have _zero_ control on who they have to accept. The only reason why Harvard has kept its mythos of being the incubator of the next ruling class is because, well, they accept the children of the current one. Those are most likely to become part of the next ruling class by virtue of having been born into it. It's an old boys club. There's no intrinsic property of Harvard that turns them into this incubator. And from the other side you have the brain dead equity idiots who are also against true merit systems, for equally twisted, but different reasons.

abirch 3y ago

You're assuming that everyone is on an equal starting point. Wealthy people will be able to favor their kids.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dotancohen 3y ago
That is exactly my motivation to become wealthy. I don't need a nice number with lots of zeros. I need to secure my children's future, including their prospects for higher education. I see no problem with those who have amassed significant resources, being afforded use of those resources to their childrens' advantage.
- abirch 3y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you and I'm actively doing the same; however, I wouldn't say that our children gaining advantages would be considered "Merit-Based"

Anechoic 3y ago

pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach For the right definitions of "merit", yes. I'm not confident we've figured that part out yet.

abirch 3y ago
We can't even define the purpose of college. E.g., is it only graduating and Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, ..., Mark Zuckerberg are all failures? Meritocracy works best if you have something to measure against.

lisper 3y ago

I hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure merit? Because [EDIT] many measures of "merit" (was: standardized testing) can be (and often are) biased by race, cultural background, and economic status. For example: Student 1 has built a fully automated chip manufacturing line in his basement. Student 2 has build a robot that solves a maze in fifteen minutes (against the current state of the art which is a few seconds). Which one would you admit? Student 1 is the child of billionaires, and it's not clear how much of the work was actually done by him/her and how much was done by employees hired by the kid's parents. Student 2 lives in Sudan and built their robot out of locally available materials, in the process inventing a new kind of motor built out of coconut fronds. Now which one would you admit?

endtime 3y ago
How is that an example of standardized testing?
- lisper 3y ago
  Good point. I've edited my comment.
nashashmi 3y ago
Student 1. He has the resources needed to move ahead. And unless my university can provide self help to the motivated, student 2 may not work out well here.
boeingUH60 3y ago
It’s as if you’re trying to make perfect the enemy of good. Standardized tests aren’t perfect but they give less privileged kids the best choice at attending a good college. The kids of the upper class and the rich will always have an upper hand compared to the poor. However, standardized tests limit how wide the upper hand is. An upper class kid still has to study and pass the test, and the poor kid can also do that. If admissions become “holistic”, poor kids would have little chances. Good luck to that poor kid competing subjectively with kids whose parents send them on impressive charity trips and get them unpaid internships at the most prestigious companies.

noobermin 3y ago

I fundamentally do not understand why merit is something you should focus on when it comes to admission into a university. The entire point of an education is to learn, may be you need the bare minimum to enroll but universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least. Just because thats how it should work in some people's heads as the ideal doesn't mean it makes any actual sense if you really interrogate the idea. Meritocracy makes sense after you have an education, it doesn't make sense before it.

CrampusDestrus 3y ago
Resources are finite. If college courses were recorded lessons or they just gave you a theory book and an exercises book, then of course we could automate everything. Just sign up, pay your fee and take the exams and once you're done you get the degree, even full remote. Your taxes will go towards professors and a fuck ton of TAs for questions and exercises and to keep the infrastructure running. But we're not there yet
nostromo 3y ago
Perhaps it’s politically incorrect to say, but students learn best when they’re around students that are of similar intelligence and motivation to succeed. Taking a brilliant kid and putting them around underachievers doesn’t do anyone any good.
- OO000oo 3y ago
  Students learn best when they have a quiet home to study in, 3 quality meals a day, parents who aren't working 3 jobs they can ask questions to, parents who aren't fighting about paying the bills that month, good school supplies, etc.
  - nostromo 3y ago
    Agreed. So let's go solve those problems directly and stop pretending the solution is to put underachieving kids into top schools to make ourselves feel better.

nashashmi 3y ago

I doubt merit based approach is the only way of conducting admissions. Merits don’t count for as much as people think they do. A narrow pool of candidates come because of merit. A more reasonable selection system wouldn’t just rely on the individual but also the support network. For example, I often hear “it takes a village to raise a _____ doctor”. And that truth speaks volumes.

onetimeusename 3y ago

We're not, we're heading towards tribalism. The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white more so than anything else. With limited data on other schools, Harvard recently reported that legacies actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits.[1] That didn't stop people who wanted an alleged merit based admissions policy from continuing to call it a racist backdoor. Carnegie Mellon did not publish any stats on their legacy admits however. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, universities have promised to continue to look at race as a factor that still complies with the SC ruling which means a backdoor for race. FWIW white students are the most underrepresented on elite campuses so it would be hard to argue that there are admissions policies favoring them. [1]: https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/academics-narrative/ https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/academi... [2]: https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/30/stanford-to-expand-outreach-efforts-as-supreme-court-strikes-affirmative-action/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/30/stanford-to-expand-outr...

nova22033 3y ago
actually had higher SAT scores than non-legacy admits Is the SAT score the only measure of merit? The non-legacies are going to miss on the chance to make social connections with legacy admits who have a lot of connections...and access to a lot of resources..
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Yeah how often does that actually happen. Did Tommy Lee Jones’ acting career really benefit from him being roommates with the son of Albert Gore, Sr.?
- kelipso 3y ago
  The legacy admits will just go to some other college where some other suckerfish can hop on to get access to a lot of resources..so what's the big difference socially.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
> The concern about legacy admissions is more that the legacies may be disproportionately white Disproportionally rich is my problem with legacy admissions.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

There are plenty of choices for higher edu. What's the benefit of forcing a one-size-fits-all business model on all of them? Why should small out of the way esoteric college - or any other for that matter - have to follow Carnegie Mellon or similar? This isn't being inclusive or diverse, it's assimilation at the institution/industry level. Yeah, ironic.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> merit-based approach. There are still issues with this. Food insecurity being a primary one. But apparently universal school lunches is not as important to people as having a HUGE military budget. What kind of beast doesn't want to feed kids!? Edit: Apparently plenty even on HN. Wow. Color me shocked.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I agree with you that the end of legacy and race-based admissions is a good thing. I think it's dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes when there is huge inequality. This best analogy I can give is the "sports stars" analogy. Professional sports is probably the most even playing field I can imagine - there is such a huge incentive to win games that pretty much all else besides skills on the playing field is ignored. But what it results in is a teeny tiny elite making millions, and nearly everyone else barely making enough to get by. So if the rest of the economy was like the sports stars world (and more and more of it is leaning that way), what reason do the rest of the 99.99% have to support this meritocracy? Sure, you can say it's an improvement that the best people are in charge, but if it's clear my genetic talents will prevent me from ever being a star, my incentive is really to tear the whole system down if none of those benefits ever make it my way. I think one contributing factor you see behind so much increasing social strife, the resurgent interest in unions, etc. is the belief that unless you make it to a top job after a top school, you'll barely be scraping by your whole life. Pure meritocracy in a "winner take all/most" economy leads to a very unstable society.

commandlinefan 3y ago
> dangerous to think that a meritocracy always leads to good outcomes People who argue against meritocracy seem to forget that it's the only proposed alternative to the "birthright"-ocracy that civilization has been trying to pry itself from the jaws of for centuries.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Not really. Countries that are consistently at the top of world happiness rankings are ones that (a) both support a dynamic economy through meritocracy and (b) have high taxes and a broad social safety net that limits inequality. To put it another way, I'm not arguing against meritocracy; I'm arguing that it alone does not lead to good outcomes - i.e. I think it's necessary but not sufficient. It's like when people thought "bringing democracy" to all these countries without democratic institutions would be a good thing. Democracy is generally better than the alternative, but only if there are broad protections like equality under the law for minority groups, otherwise it's just the "2 wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner" issue. Meritocracy is similar. It's generally a good thing but not if it results in a very small number of people hoarding all the spoils while everyone else barely scrapes by.

mitchdoogle 3y ago

The problem with merit is that it's impossible to determine because the circumstances of people around the world are so vastly different. If you have, say, 1500 spots for a new class, it's going to be impossible to select the best 1500 students. Some elite universities you may even have more than 1500 valedictorians. So what to do? I say you just set a qualifying point to be considered and publicize it (as standardized as you can get, i.e SAT score or similar) and then put every qualifier in a hat and select at random until you fill your spots. Nothing else should matter. Of course this assumes that merit is actually the only thing universities care about, and I'd say that it's not.

zuzu89 3y ago

this decision is not motivated by merit, it's entirely motivated by race. and they have no intentions of using a merit based approach for applicants because that would result in an even more white and asian dominant student pool. without the legacy pool they now have more wiggle room to juice their "merit-based" approach so that they can admit more blacks without getting busted for illegal affirmative action.

honkycat 3y ago

Merit isn't enough. I went to a po-dunk school in rural Missouri. I would never be able to I compete with kids from a rich Chicago/NY school. In the same way a black kid from a poor inner city wouldn't be able to. This is part of the problem. The world isn't egalitarian. The poor will continue to get poorer, the rich will get richer. Solution? Lottery? Don't have a great one.

criddell 3y ago
I agree with you. Saying something is merit based is only half of an answer. What exactly is and isn’t meritorious? I’m not convinced that scoring well on tests beyond some point is a particularly good way of deciding if a student deserves a spot or not.

bluepod4 3y ago

“Merit-based” is such a loaded term. What do you mean by that exactly? What are you envisioning? EDIT: Wow, a downvote. For this comment? Yikes! EDIT 2: Oh, I see. I was using the phrase “loaded term” incorrectly. I only meant that “merit-based” is a phrase that can mean a lot of different things. However, thinking about this more, I do still think it’s a loaded term. Politicians and the adjacents have visibly been using it to push an agenda. (I’m not saying this agenda is right or not. But it’s still clearly an agenda. I mean, that’s what their jobs are: to literally have agendas lol.)

thebradbain 3y ago

Except for, you know, Letters of Recommendation, which at top schools are often the deciding factor. All else being near-equal (or not), a letter from a Kennedy is going to get you into Brown versus say, a regular high school teacher that many of comfortable-but-not-connected suburban students applying to college will be using. Maybe a local lawyer, if you’re special. Those are who families who scream “meritocracy” should be directing their ire at, not the applicants (usually with more impressive results and stories considering the background they grew up in, compared to—sorry!—a hum-drum suburban also-ran) _think_ they’re better than, which ultimately is what a meritocracy boils down to. Ultimately the only answer that will give you, or your kids, peace is accepting the fact that schools will curate the student body they want. They’ve admittedly done a good job at it! Complain all you want about Harvard tilting the scales, they’ve done an amazing job maintaining their reputation and exclusivity. If they don’t accept you, they don’t want you. If they do, they do. It’s that simple.

ecshafer 3y ago
I want to get rid of letters of recommendation as well. I would personally like to go off of only a single nationwide standardized test.
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  Nope, these are "racist" now. I'm not going to explain why at the risk of getting downvoted.
- thebradbain 3y ago
  I personally could not think of a more boring way to curate a student body, but even more so than that, I think that’s completely unfair to the many, many way-more interesting people who make up top schools’ student bodies: why does Jimmy Also-Ran with the perfect score on a single test and nothing else get to go to college while track-star Olympiad with a 4.0 doesn’t?
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Aren’t plenty of PISA high-ranking nations from the East Asian countries to Germany highly reliant upon placement examinations in student educational destinations? It might not feel very American, but it’s widely practiced.

LatteLazy 3y ago

Now we just need widely agreed, easily measurable, non game-able definition of "merit". :)

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