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Legacy is better than people think. The undergrad academics at T10 universities really aren't anything special. People want to go because of the connections wit

by rr808 1y ago

Legacy is better than people think. The undergrad academics at T10 universities really aren't anything special. People want to go because of the connections with wealthy & well-connected students, but then complain when wealthy well-connected students get a easier ride. You fill Harvard of Stanford with only people with 1600 SATs will turn them into places you dont really want to go to.

ethan_smith 1y ago
Research from Opportunity Insights shows legacy preferences reduce social mobility while multiple studies find no evidence legacy admits enhance campus culture or alumni giving beyond what could be achieved through need-blind admissions.
- yieldcrv 1y ago
  Top universities don’t exist for social mobility, that is merely happenstance that the people that want to pay have gatekept access to the purse by having attended university.
- WillPostForFood 1y ago
  The same Opportunity Insights found that legacies were more qualified than typical applicants.
kappi 1y ago
Stanford has become legacy + LGBTQ only for undergrads. Even their math departments are filled with only them!
yieldcrv 1y ago
Exactly, that Austrian woman that tried to get rid of all her wealth found out that its impossible because even if she’s at £0 she knows too many people that will support her ideas, drive too much publicity to her causes, and food, shelter, board seats, academia, and everything else is always accessible. The path doesn’t have to be forged. Universities were always finishing schools for the elite, for like 1,000 years its been that way, and the best ones in the US are here for that since before the country was incorporated, here since almost half a millennia ago! The last 80 odd years of dealing with the lower class and proletariat at all is a footnote and will be an experiment of folly deep in a university archive for the next 1,000 years as they merely revert to the mean. Every problem that universities have go away when they go back to their roots. Its the corporate and public sector that tied access to having a degree from these places, that’s not the university’s problem. And to your point, correct, if the proletariat were only surrounded by themselves they would not want to be there.
- xmonkee 1y ago
  This is such a bizarre and gross take. Yes our history is a history of class struggle. But history does progress. For thousands of years we were supposed to be property of kings so shall we mean revert to that? I went to an “elite” public university in India which has a sub 1% acceptance rate. It was mostly extremely smart and driven middle class kids from incredibly diverse social backgrounds. Everyone had the time of their lives. And almost everyone now (20 years later) is doing incredibly well in life. They are doing startups, public policy, research, tech leadership etc. There is zero legacy admissions. And yes there is a network effect, of course. You can count on the friends you made at uni, but not because they inherited the influence. You don’t have to lick boots to have a good life.
  - jjmarr 1y ago
    IIT is arguably better than a lot of "elite" American universities.
  - rr808 1y ago
    > They are doing startups, public policy, research, tech leadership etc. This is very high level technical success, or tech elite probably upper middle or lower upper class. It isn't true elite - where did the regular company CEOs and Politicians study? Those are the truly elite universities I'm talking about.
    - xmonkee 1y ago
      A lot of the CEOs in the US currently come from this uni. It's called IIT, in case you're curious. There's also IIMs which are based on the same model but for business studies. Also no legacy admissions. Also produce a metric ton of CEOs and execs. There are none more elite than these, at least in India. The politicians in my country are rarely highly educated, otoh.
      - rr808 1y ago
        Thanks yes I have worked with a bunch of people from IITs. > The politicians in my country are rarely highly educated, This is what I'm getting at. Most countries are like this, the truly wealthy and powerful aren't technical geniuses, they're good at networking and politics.
bumbledraven 1y ago
> You fill Harvard of Stanford with only people with 1600 SATs will turn them into places you dont really want to go to. Isn’t that basically Caltech? They had a 3% acceptance rate in 2023, the lowest in the nation. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-accepta...
- rr808 1y ago
  Yes sure there will be some elite purely academic places, but Caltech so small its a blip, most high schools are larger.
jfengel 1y ago
When you prefer legacy students, you perpetuate the kind of discrimination in effect when their parents and grandparents were admitted. Perhaps this is better for the school as a whole. But when that argument was made to help students who were previously discriminated against, people swore that didn't matter, because all discrimination is bad. Legacy students are the easiest way to see that discrimination is not over yet. There are many others but this one is really transparent. There are many potential ways to deal with it, but "end discrimination for them but not for me" isn't a good one.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Yes. Imagine if you could get an elite Wall Street or Consulting job based significantly on who your dad is. That would be unfair, discriminatory, and otherwise pretty terrible, except for the already elite and wealthy. Oh, wait...that already happens, and it's indeed terrible in all the ways you would predict. This really needs to be cracked down on, but the rich and powerful will always support it.
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    The rich having their way is the blueprint for a third-world country.
- musicale 1y ago
  > When you prefer legacy students, you perpetuate the kind of discrimination in effect when their parents and grandparents were admitted. Universities will likely claim that legacy and (especially) donor admits bring more money into the university, which in theory allows them to increase overall economic diversity (and likely social and demographic diversity as well) of the student body by admitting a larger number of qualified students under a need-blind admission policy.
  - jfengel 1y ago
    Many of these universities have vast investment funds. Expanding would indeed allow them to provide more education, but that does not appear to be their goal.
perfmode 1y ago
Everyone at Stanford and Harvard has 1600s. even the legacies
lo_zamoyski 1y ago
> The undergrad academics at T10 universities really aren't anything special. People want to go because of the connections with wealthy & well-connected students, but then complain when wealthy well-connected students get a easier ride. Indeed. And the irony is that even when poorer students do attend, they find that the expensive habits of the richer students exclude them from mingling with them in many cases. (Fun fact: one reason for uniforms in Catholic schools was to eliminate wealth from the picture.)
- PeterStuer 1y ago
  Which was always absurd as there's no less vestimentary affluence signaling in uniform high schools than in any other. The signs may be more subtle and sublimized to a careless outsider, but in the schools those signals are obvious and stand out just as blatent as anywhere else.
CrazyStat 1y ago
> The undergrad academics at T10 universities really aren't anything special. This surprised me when I went from my decent but not great-by-ranking (generally ranked in the 50-70 range) undergrad university to a top 10 ranked university for grad school. The undergrad students weren’t noticeably smarter, nor did they work harder on average. They were more ambitious and more entitled. Cheating was rampant (pre-LLMs, I expect it’s even worse now) and professors mostly just didn’t care. The median household income at the top 10 school was more than double what it was at my undergrad school. That was an enlightening experience.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Ambition and a sense of entitlement (manifest destiny) built America.
- kelipso 1y ago
  Definitely has the opposite experience going from an around 100 ranked university to an around 20 ranked university. Maybe it depends on the department but I noticed a massive difference in the students, difficulty of classes, how well the professors taught in multiple classes in multiple departments. There were exceptions but there was definitely a general trend.
IncreasePosts 1y ago
You couldn't even do that - only about 500 people get a perfect SAT score per year.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  It sounds hyperbolic and they probably mean high school students with 1500+ SAT-I, 5 AP everything, and other community leadership achievements. Meanwhile, there's the ultra-talented people IIT turns away every year. Maybe the smart thing would be to also pick up international students as second-chance admits rather than chase away tourists, students, researchers, and workers?
  - PeterStuer 1y ago
    US universities have always thrived on full price paying foreigners, especially at the graduate level. They also make for very cheap and docile TA's
burnt-resistor 1y ago
People with 1600 SATs tend to be ultra-productive, down-to-Earth individuals. (My high school had dozens of them.) Legacy creates an closed, self-reinforcing, entitled aristocracy. What kind of society do you want?
BobaFloutist 1y ago
They'll turn into Cal, where people absolutely want to go.

by rr808 1y ago

ethan_smith 1y ago

Research from Opportunity Insights shows legacy preferences reduce social mobility while multiple studies find no evidence legacy admits enhance campus culture or alumni giving beyond what could be achieved through need-blind admissions.

yieldcrv 1y ago
Top universities don’t exist for social mobility, that is merely happenstance that the people that want to pay have gatekept access to the purse by having attended university.
WillPostForFood 1y ago
The same Opportunity Insights found that legacies were more qualified than typical applicants.

kappi 1y ago

Stanford has become legacy + LGBTQ only for undergrads. Even their math departments are filled with only them!

yieldcrv 1y ago

Exactly, that Austrian woman that tried to get rid of all her wealth found out that its impossible because even if she’s at £0 she knows too many people that will support her ideas, drive too much publicity to her causes, and food, shelter, board seats, academia, and everything else is always accessible. The path doesn’t have to be forged. Universities were always finishing schools for the elite, for like 1,000 years its been that way, and the best ones in the US are here for that since before the country was incorporated, here since almost half a millennia ago! The last 80 odd years of dealing with the lower class and proletariat at all is a footnote and will be an experiment of folly deep in a university archive for the next 1,000 years as they merely revert to the mean. Every problem that universities have go away when they go back to their roots. Its the corporate and public sector that tied access to having a degree from these places, that’s not the university’s problem. And to your point, correct, if the proletariat were only surrounded by themselves they would not want to be there.

xmonkee 1y ago
This is such a bizarre and gross take. Yes our history is a history of class struggle. But history does progress. For thousands of years we were supposed to be property of kings so shall we mean revert to that? I went to an “elite” public university in India which has a sub 1% acceptance rate. It was mostly extremely smart and driven middle class kids from incredibly diverse social backgrounds. Everyone had the time of their lives. And almost everyone now (20 years later) is doing incredibly well in life. They are doing startups, public policy, research, tech leadership etc. There is zero legacy admissions. And yes there is a network effect, of course. You can count on the friends you made at uni, but not because they inherited the influence. You don’t have to lick boots to have a good life.
- jjmarr 1y ago
  IIT is arguably better than a lot of "elite" American universities.
- rr808 1y ago
  > They are doing startups, public policy, research, tech leadership etc. This is very high level technical success, or tech elite probably upper middle or lower upper class. It isn't true elite - where did the regular company CEOs and Politicians study? Those are the truly elite universities I'm talking about.
  - xmonkee 1y ago
    A lot of the CEOs in the US currently come from this uni. It's called IIT, in case you're curious. There's also IIMs which are based on the same model but for business studies. Also no legacy admissions. Also produce a metric ton of CEOs and execs. There are none more elite than these, at least in India. The politicians in my country are rarely highly educated, otoh.
    - rr808 1y ago
      Thanks yes I have worked with a bunch of people from IITs. > The politicians in my country are rarely highly educated, This is what I'm getting at. Most countries are like this, the truly wealthy and powerful aren't technical geniuses, they're good at networking and politics.

bumbledraven 1y ago

> You fill Harvard of Stanford with only people with 1600 SATs will turn them into places you dont really want to go to. Isn’t that basically Caltech? They had a 3% acceptance rate in 2023, the lowest in the nation. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-accepta...

rr808 1y ago
Yes sure there will be some elite purely academic places, but Caltech so small its a blip, most high schools are larger.

jfengel 1y ago

When you prefer legacy students, you perpetuate the kind of discrimination in effect when their parents and grandparents were admitted. Perhaps this is better for the school as a whole. But when that argument was made to help students who were previously discriminated against, people swore that didn't matter, because all discrimination is bad. Legacy students are the easiest way to see that discrimination is not over yet. There are many others but this one is really transparent. There are many potential ways to deal with it, but "end discrimination for them but not for me" isn't a good one.

ryandrake 1y ago
Yes. Imagine if you could get an elite Wall Street or Consulting job based significantly on who your dad is. That would be unfair, discriminatory, and otherwise pretty terrible, except for the already elite and wealthy. Oh, wait...that already happens, and it's indeed terrible in all the ways you would predict. This really needs to be cracked down on, but the rich and powerful will always support it.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  The rich having their way is the blueprint for a third-world country.
musicale 1y ago
> When you prefer legacy students, you perpetuate the kind of discrimination in effect when their parents and grandparents were admitted. Universities will likely claim that legacy and (especially) donor admits bring more money into the university, which in theory allows them to increase overall economic diversity (and likely social and demographic diversity as well) of the student body by admitting a larger number of qualified students under a need-blind admission policy.
- jfengel 1y ago
  Many of these universities have vast investment funds. Expanding would indeed allow them to provide more education, but that does not appear to be their goal.

perfmode 1y ago

Everyone at Stanford and Harvard has 1600s. even the legacies

lo_zamoyski 1y ago

> The undergrad academics at T10 universities really aren't anything special. People want to go because of the connections with wealthy & well-connected students, but then complain when wealthy well-connected students get a easier ride. Indeed. And the irony is that even when poorer students do attend, they find that the expensive habits of the richer students exclude them from mingling with them in many cases. (Fun fact: one reason for uniforms in Catholic schools was to eliminate wealth from the picture.)

PeterStuer 1y ago
Which was always absurd as there's no less vestimentary affluence signaling in uniform high schools than in any other. The signs may be more subtle and sublimized to a careless outsider, but in the schools those signals are obvious and stand out just as blatent as anywhere else.

CrazyStat 1y ago

> The undergrad academics at T10 universities really aren't anything special. This surprised me when I went from my decent but not great-by-ranking (generally ranked in the 50-70 range) undergrad university to a top 10 ranked university for grad school. The undergrad students weren’t noticeably smarter, nor did they work harder on average. They were more ambitious and more entitled. Cheating was rampant (pre-LLMs, I expect it’s even worse now) and professors mostly just didn’t care. The median household income at the top 10 school was more than double what it was at my undergrad school. That was an enlightening experience.

SoftTalker 1y ago
Ambition and a sense of entitlement (manifest destiny) built America.
kelipso 1y ago
Definitely has the opposite experience going from an around 100 ranked university to an around 20 ranked university. Maybe it depends on the department but I noticed a massive difference in the students, difficulty of classes, how well the professors taught in multiple classes in multiple departments. There were exceptions but there was definitely a general trend.

IncreasePosts 1y ago

You couldn't even do that - only about 500 people get a perfect SAT score per year.

burnt-resistor 1y ago
It sounds hyperbolic and they probably mean high school students with 1500+ SAT-I, 5 AP everything, and other community leadership achievements. Meanwhile, there's the ultra-talented people IIT turns away every year. Maybe the smart thing would be to also pick up international students as second-chance admits rather than chase away tourists, students, researchers, and workers?
- PeterStuer 1y ago
  US universities have always thrived on full price paying foreigners, especially at the graduate level. They also make for very cheap and docile TA's

burnt-resistor 1y ago

People with 1600 SATs tend to be ultra-productive, down-to-Earth individuals. (My high school had dozens of them.) Legacy creates an closed, self-reinforcing, entitled aristocracy. What kind of society do you want?

BobaFloutist 1y ago

They'll turn into Cal, where people absolutely want to go.