How Harvard helps its richest and most arrogant students get ahead

previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15288168

I'm very happy that there are people out there calling this stuff out and fighting the good fight because that's how progress is made.

It makes me especially happy because practically speaking, day to day, I really don't care. At all. And I'm not being sarcastic or cynical, it's just an approach to daily life.

Stress about the stuff you can control. Luck, privilege, timing; some people have them some people don't. All you can do is work hard. Keep taking shots and hope for the best.

As a HYP alum (don't want to be more specific than that), this jives with my own experiences, both at college and in high school (where some students kept their heads down and worked for their grades, and others worked but also had the temerity/privilege to go ahead and ask for a better grade).

In some sense, you can't really blame the students for asking. The system allows for it (may even encourage it), so from a game-theory perspective, the better strategy is to exploit all the advantages you can.

The unfairness comes from the way such things are handled unevenly. Student A who's richer/better connected/more famous/etc. will get better outcomes from asking, compared to student B who's maybe just a regular smart person who went to public school and managed to squeeze past admissions but isn't connected to anybody important. Just regular old privilege, pure and simple.

For the record, I graduated with a 3.2 GPA that probably would've been lower at somewhere that somehow magically didn't have "grade inflation" problems... and that was after my school went through implementing a controversial "grade deflation" policy. I feel like I benefitted from being part of a system that was afraid to harshly grade its students, but I also never asked any professors directly to revise my grade higher.

I did receive indirect/unsolicited help, such as a dean who showed concern after I failed some midterms the semester I broke my ankle and missed weeks of class and became depressed and unable to socialize, or a professor who graded a senior project much more generously than I felt the work deserved (a B+ for something I crammed together in the last 4 weeks, when my roommate who did something much more involved and much better researched, also got the same B+).

This is why grade inflation should be curbed at an institutional level. When you compare schools like Harvard and Stanford, where As are very common, to schools like Princeton and MIT, that have some sort of deflation in place, it becomes clear that the latter do not "help" their richest and most arrogant students.

That said, schools like that probably have other informal systems in place that ensure the powerful have their kids stay ahead.

I don't think this is unique to Harvard or privileged students. The idea that the student is a "customer" and should be treated as such, including being indulged by professors and administrators, has been gaining significant traction over the last decade everywhere. You can also see it in how administrators bend to the demands of activist student groups asking for some of the most absurd accommodations, punishment of their enemies, restrictions on allowed speech and events, etc.

It is incredible to see that prestigious academic institutions have to bend over instead of promote true meritrocacy. Not only this further the notion that the well offs are getting an edge in everything but also, adding insult to injury, no matter how hard you work, there is no way you can win this game by meritocratic means.