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Unfortunately these are a form of "achievement laundering". When I hear about some young person who won a national science fair I assume their parents are uppe

Unfortunately these are a form of "achievement laundering". When I hear about some young person who won a national science fair I assume their parents are upper-middle class or higher and had connections with a research lab. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01425-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01425-4 If the problem in that paper is not addressed, any kind of DEI in academia is hollow, e.g. "if you are black and your parents are professors you get 500 job offers." It is very hard to make any progress in this area because there is a lot of demand for status to be hereditary and the more strident anyone is about "meritocracy" the more concerned they are that people in powerful roles are perceived to be deserving of them and the less concerned that talented people find opportunity.

ModernMech 9mo ago
There's definitely a degree of that. When I was in the fairs, the winning kids were often the ones with the giant posters 3 stories tall working in a lab no on else had access to. I had to beg my school for a $100 robot controller to do my project, and my truck driver dad and SAHM didn't have access to a fancy lab where I could do experiments. Still, although it's hard to compete with the upper echelons, you can still get results that land you in schools you wouldn't have gotten into otherwise. 100% the reason I got into CMU was my science fair work. I personally never got 1st place at science fair, but I won awards (there's tons of special category awards) and was competitive, and others who didn't have access to a big research lab did get first place. So, yes, it's not exactly fair but at the same time it doesn't mean you're out of the competition if you don't have access to those privileges.
groundzeros2015 9mo ago
Having parents who work at a research lab does usually mean your family spends More time learning and talking about science. So the merit is often real. It’s just that the access to the opportunity was not.
- PaulHoule 9mo ago
  The really interesting thing I noticed in grad school was that the professor's kids were just the opposite. That is, I went to grad school because I had a hunger for knowledge, they went to grad school because they had a lack of imagination and couldn't imagine doing anything that wasn't the family business.
  - cindyllm 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
    Inputs talk, Outputs walk The version that I'm cribbing was spoken by "the Virginian" https://youtu.be/CFxcGqPc2ek https://youtu.be/CFxcGqPc2ek (Early Bond)

ModernMech 9mo ago

There's definitely a degree of that. When I was in the fairs, the winning kids were often the ones with the giant posters 3 stories tall working in a lab no on else had access to. I had to beg my school for a $100 robot controller to do my project, and my truck driver dad and SAHM didn't have access to a fancy lab where I could do experiments. Still, although it's hard to compete with the upper echelons, you can still get results that land you in schools you wouldn't have gotten into otherwise. 100% the reason I got into CMU was my science fair work. I personally never got 1st place at science fair, but I won awards (there's tons of special category awards) and was competitive, and others who didn't have access to a big research lab did get first place. So, yes, it's not exactly fair but at the same time it doesn't mean you're out of the competition if you don't have access to those privileges.

groundzeros2015 9mo ago

Having parents who work at a research lab does usually mean your family spends More time learning and talking about science. So the merit is often real. It’s just that the access to the opportunity was not.

PaulHoule 9mo ago
The really interesting thing I noticed in grad school was that the professor's kids were just the opposite. That is, I went to grad school because I had a hunger for knowledge, they went to grad school because they had a lack of imagination and couldn't imagine doing anything that wasn't the family business.
- cindyllm 9mo ago
  [dead]
- gsf_emergency_6 9mo ago
  Inputs talk, Outputs walk The version that I'm cribbing was spoken by "the Virginian" https://youtu.be/CFxcGqPc2ek https://youtu.be/CFxcGqPc2ek (Early Bond)