Who cares about the Ivy League? | Hacker News Reader

Who cares about the Ivy League?

noahpinion.substack.com

55 pointsjonas_kgomo114 comments

I recall a Supreme Court justice saying that the best law clerks they ever got were NOT from the Ivy schools – but regardless, because the Ivy schools tended to weed out incompetent clerks (helping ease the screening process and provide a veritable "double check" on someone's competence) they would only pick Ivy credentialed clerks in the future. Stakes were to high not to.

I wonder if the same can generally be said for employers and gov (it's just easier to screen from a pool that has be whittled down to a more manageable size already).

Unfair? Probably. Rational? I think so.

This is why it's a good idea for people from non-top tier colleges to run away from prestige. You'll never be able to compete on merit at a place like McKinsey, a top law firm or an IB. You'll be undervalued due to lack of pedigree. Better pick something more meritocratic and less focused on signalling value of your CV. I know this is an ideal that doesn't truly exist anywhere, but there's certainly degrees to which it's true and that varies between industries.

No, you earn your way in. Nobody asks where the CTO of an acquired company went to school (or didn't). Elite school degrees are just a shortcut for signal various attributes for young people. It means less and less the further you get from college. And you can "credential" yourself via other accomplishments. Witness Perelman and arxiv, or Bill Gates, noted Harvard dropout.

Right, but a lack of pedigree is more of a handicap at McKinsey than it is at Facebook, and it's more of a handicap at Facebook than your own startup. It's possible to earn your way in to McKinsey after going to a tier-3 college, but it's just way harder all else equal (and why would anyone bother without the boost of pedigree at a place that highly values it, we will be at a disadvantage from day one).

I can't speak for McKinsey at all. I will take your word for it. My limited experience has not been positive.

McKinsey is in the business of convincing governments and other entities into parting with massive sums of cash for relatively simple research and recommendations. They get by mostly on the appearance of prestige rather than any legitimate value add, thus their focus on hiring based on school prestige.

Investors certainly care about pedigree and having McKinsey on your resume (or Google or Facebook if you will), not to mention the experience and connections, are going to help when you're trying to raise money for your startup. There's no escaping from signaling simply because of the impossibility of evaluating every single person on merit (as you can see from discussions on hiring here), so it doesn't hurt to play the game when the opportunity arises.

And generally speaking, lack of pedigree is much less of an issue once you're in and once you have prestigious employers on your resume, where you went to college becomes a lot less important to prospective employers.

I think you two are basically agreeing. GP is saying that such credentials are [edit]not a strong proxy for merit (true) but a good proxy, along with a few other things, for network value and social standing, etc. So if you don't have that credential but want to compete with people who do, the worst thing to do is do it on their home field, as it were (e.g. Mckinsey). Instead, prove yourself somewhere else and if you do it well enough you'll be on an even footing (or better) later on.

No, that is not accurate. I disagree. I think ivy league degrees are a great proxy for intelligence and work ethic. Ivy league grads I've worked with are fantastic. If you have to hire a bunch of college graduates, it's a fine strategy. If you are hiring on the open market, though, you don't have to rely on it, you can rely on someone's professional accomplishments which is a truer proxy of the values you are hiring for.

I think it's also a good proxy for quality as well. The average IQ of people in Ivies is over 130, compared to about 110 in regular colleges. I just think that a 140 IQ graduate from a regular college should self-select out of areas that specifically value prestige (such as an IB), since they're likely to be undervalued.

I suspect we mostly agree (although I don't have much faith in IQ as a useful predictor except at the margins) but there is a semantic issue; what do you mean by "quality"?

I find "went to an Ivy" a really good predictor for "above average performer", but I find it a weak predictor for "top rate performer", at least without a bunch of extra information. I also think the number top performing people who did not go to an elite college handily outweighs the number who did - but this is the nature of elite unless the selection criteria are very rigorous and targeted at something measurable.

Your comment about people in institutions that highly value this is on target, I think.

Rereading, I overstated: "poor" should have been "not strong". The Ivy grads I've known worked with have ranged from perfectly ok, to really good. But that doesn't differentiate them from many other non-Ivy sources, in my experience. Which isn't to say all sources are equivalent - far from true.

As a hiring strategy it works ok, but you are leaving out far more talented people that you can possibly include. It's a small pool after all.

GP's point I thought was more that if you end up without such credentials at a place that values them highly, you'll have a hard time even if you are more talented than many of your peers. This seems true in my limited experience.

I do think you have a point somewhere that if your bar isn't too high and you know what you are getting, picking from the same small pool (doesn't have to be Ivy, maybe you mostly hire Stanford or whatever) is a safe strategy, in that it reduces your variance. You are giving up something for that safety, but that's life.

"As a hiring strategy it works ok"

From an employer's perspective, I think an elite college-only hiring strategy can work fine if the employer itself is prestigious or there's a clear unique value proposition there. For others, they're going to incur a negative selection penalty that may outweigh the signalling value that pedigree provides.

Let's play devil's advocate: you have limited and messy data about the qualifications of a hundred 20 year old candidates. You have one qualification that shows they worked quite hard for the majority of their life and a sustained and high level. You should value that data point almost as much as you value hiring the best candidate. There is not likely to be any other data point as valuable at that point in the applicants' lives.

It's a Bayesian problem all the way through and you can probably quantify the value of the signal provided. However, and most importantly, it's just a signal. I personally prefer hiring interns, completely irregardless of school, and developing and hiring them, any time. At that point, there isn't signal, it's just measured performance that is de-risked.

Now, people that use it as credentialing are morons. I mean that bluntly and literally. Randomly picking on CFOs: "I want a CFO with a Harvard degree" is stupid thing to say, on its face. The person saying something like that has literally inverted the real point, which should be, "I want an excellent CFO, and a Harvard degree is a signal of some properties correlated with that outcome". Once you invert that, it's just another data point in a meritocratic decision, and a relatively minor one.

Sorry to post/write so much on this. Startups are the ultimate meritocracy in some ways, and having something posted here that's populist and almost anti-intellectual bothers me. Ycombinator has no problem pulling from Stanford. And Stanford, MIT, and Duke (and many others) are as elitist as any Ivy on any day that ends in y. That's leaving out the really class conscious "small liberal arts" colleges out there, and ignores the differences between ivy league schools in this regard, which is large.

"You have one qualification that shows they worked quite hard"

"It's a Bayesian problem"

This we agree on. But we have to factor in adverse selection. If you're a prestigious employer, adverse selection is going to be small to non existent. The Harvard grads joining Dropbox are going to be all excellent. If you're a tier-2 employer with no particular unique value proposition, a Harvard grad that is willing to join you isn't the same thing as a randomly selected Harvard grad (unless there's a compelling reason why they would want to join), let alone the same thing as a Harvard grad entering Dropbox. There are selection effects working against you as an employer.

I've seen this personally, working at a little known company in a traditional industry without much to offer, we hired a Princeton grad who we eventually found out was fired from a few places and turned out to be worse than useless. We got adversely selected. They only wanted to join us (instead of a "better" company) because they were the bottom 10 percent of their cohort (not necessarily in terms of GPA, but in terms of ability to make themselves useful).

Useless people from Ivies are rare, but they do exist, and if you're an employer facing adverse selection you become much more likely to end up with one of those.

(Actually, I've worked with useless people from Cambridge, Tsinghua, and a few other elite colleges, many of whom we had to fire. The common theme was that they couldn't get into a better company, and so they joined us)

> This is why it's a good idea for people from non-top tier colleges to run away from prestige. You'll never be able to compete on merit at a place like McKinsey, a top law firm or an IB

It certainly won’t be as easy as folks from Ivies might have it, but folks from state schools can make it big time.

Tim Cook is an Auburn grad, for example.

A friend of mine is a Michigan State grad. He worked his way up the chain in NYC by providing tremendous value. He retired in his 40s with a mid-eight figure net worth after being a partner in a hedge fund that ran its course (raised money, made money, closed down).

If someone is ambitious and talented, their degree won’t stop them.

I would argue the opposite. That it's harder to weed out incompetent people from Ivy schools because so many of the people there are there based on their wealth and not their merit.

This really isn't true. There are very few actually incompetent people going through Ivy's.

You have some really talented people (especially on full rides), and you have a bunch of average to slightly above average talent with a) a 1st class education from birth and b) good networks.

Both of those things have real world value, you can't dismiss out of hand. Yes, it's privilege - that's how it works.

Depends on what role you're hiring for, because a good network does not help you write code (for instance).

That doesn't make someone incompetent; it may make them a bad fit for a particular job.

No, it makes them incompetent. They lack the competence required to do the job. Semantics aside, my point is that being from an ivy league is not a strong signal for being a good developer (and many other things).

Your characterization is not realistic. Sure if you hire an ivy league grad with a degree in french literature they may not be much of a programmer. If you hire one with a CS degree they will probably be decent - at least at the higher end of US colleges.

The idea that the ivy league is swimming with under-performing people who are only there because of wealth and connections just isn't true.

What is closer to truth - there are lots of people there who are a bit above average capability, very good preparation, and also have family money and/or connections.

In a truly broad, merit only based admissions process most of these people wouldn't make the cut. But it's not because they are weak students, rather because the number of slots in ivy is a small number compared to the total number of strong potential students in the country if you looked really hard.

> If you hire one with a CS degree they will probably be decent.

I'm saying from experience, this is not the case. I've found ivy league CS students to consistently under perform. School in general is not a strong signal, but for whatever reason the ivys consistently produce people who struggle to ship.

My original point is that OSS contribution is a strong signal and what people should look at if they want strong developers. I'm sure other industries have other work oriented methods for determining aptitude.

> I'm saying from experience, this is not the case

And I'm saying from experience this is the case - so I guess we're at an impasse due to selection bias. Maybe I've just had better luck in picking them.

Agree there are other better signals sometimes available. For what it's worth "has a CS degree" isn't a great indicator for a developer at all in my experience, with a very few programs excepted (e.g. CMU, Waterloo). But this has nothing to do with ivy vs. non-ivy.

The idea that ivy's are awash with people having little talent is still just silly though.

> Agree there are other better signals sometimes available. For what it's worth "has a CS degree" isn't a great indicator for a developer at all in my experience

Totally agree.

> The idea that ivy's are awash with people having little talent is still just silly though.

I would say it's more that they are average but the degree tends to float them to the top of a stack of cvs, so there's a premium you pay in terms of attention (and money if you hire them) that in my experience, is not worth it.

The ones who are there because of wealth and connections aren't going to be applying for jobs on the open market, they're going to get jobs directly thru connections.

I think you're likely running into what hntrader mentioned here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26242516

> This we agree on. But we have to factor in adverse selection. If you're a prestigious employer, adverse selection is going to be small to non existent. The Harvard grads joining Dropbox are going to be all excellent. If you're a tier-2 employer with no particular unique value proposition, a Harvard grad that is willing to join you isn't the same thing as a randomly selected Harvard grad (unless there's a compelling reason why they would want to join), let alone the same thing as a Harvard grad entering Dropbox. There are selection effects working against you as an employer.

Edit:

I'll add that if you're hiring in tech, you're fairly unlikely to run into ivy league grads who got in primarily on the basis of their wealth. Computer Science attracts upwardly mobile types who got into these schools because they were nerdy overachievers and tends not to attract people born into wealth (they typically have better options and coding isn't really that prestigious at this level).

> Computer Science attracts upwardly mobile types who got into these schools because they were nerdy overachievers and tends not to attract people born into wealth (they typically have better options and coding isn't really that prestigious at this level).

This has not been my experience at all. There are plenty of wealthy ivy CS students. Most non-wealthy CS people go to a more "normal" university known for CS like UW or CMU.

From this, I think one thing we can deduce is that Ivy League schools select for the same criteria as SCOTUS clerks. We can probably say this is true in other fields, as well.

After all, we see how successful some Ivy dropouts are: Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Matt Damon, Cole Porter, Buckminster Fuller, etc., are just examples from Harvard. It's not the Harvard education that makes one successful, but being the type of person that gets into Harvard in the first place (a person with, i.e., that same combination among old money, connections, a parent who went to Harvard, dumb luck, etc. that they look for in SCOTUS clerks).

I'm not sure we have a list of people who were accepted into an Ivy and decided not to go, but I'm sure those people would be just as likely to be successful.

We all apparently care, because we're commenting and talking about it.

The purpose of Ivy league schools is to keep the institution alive. Self preservation. There is nothing fair or even sensible about who gets in and why. It's supposed to be a mystery; a dream you can either achieve through insanely hard work or get in with the right social status or deep pockets. How is this different than anything else in life, or throughout the history of time? If someone's dad can donate a new library and to their jerk off son in, why wouldn't an institution do that? They're private!

Their success lies in a combination of insanely smart students, alumni admissions, "rich kids," and that applicant who's uncle had an affair with so and so and is a personal favor. Education isn't about being "fair" or discourse or any of that. It's to buy a career, into a network (Ivies have large private equity / money ties), or to get a license that is regulated (engineering, nursing, teaching, etc.)

I went to engineering school. I did summer school at my hometown college ("better") than my Alma mater. And guess what? They were both ABET accredited. Same in difficulty. The only difference was the zip code. People went to the prestigious school to get a better job and into a better alumni network, better job placement, etc. That's why you go to Stanford instead of State U Engineering School.

We have to stop kidding ourselves that education is about actually learning. If it was, then we would get rid of college football teams and send everyone and their mother to community college or a trade program. The point of college (in the USA) is to in-debt 18 year olds, dangle carrots in front of them (new houses, cars) and make them slave 9-5 for the rest of eternity.

Tell me, what's a poor sap like me who couldn't get into a good school to do if these conversations ultimately devolve into how hopeless it is if you don't get into a top institution?

It either matters enough that I'm screwed for life, or it doesn't really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. Which is it?

It's not hopeless. I went to a no name state school and have a tremendous life. An institution doesn't brand you. You make your own luck in this life.

That sort of seems contradictory to why people go to top schools though!

It definitely is. It's not what we're told growing up.

"Everyone seems to care a whole lot about the Ivy League. When a bunch of Ivies (and a few other schools) were found to have sold spots to a few rich kids back in 2019"

A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world and this is what these schools want. I once (10 years ago?) read an article about exactly this. The comparison were some US elite high school that strictly select on IQ and alumni were much less successful than expected (yet, more happy in live). George W went to Yale as far as I remember. I doubt that he scored super high in any IQ test. But he was undoubtedly very successful in live.

"Ivies really wanted to promote social justice, they would let in more poor kids"

This is not their main priority.

As a side note: The Economist MBA rankings 2021 have raised eyebrows because European schools rankings increased so much: https://whichmba.economist.com/ranking/full-time-mba

"A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world and this is what these schools want. I once (10 years ago?) read an article about exactly this. The comparison were some US elite high school that strictly select on IQ and alumni were much less successful than expected (yet, more happy in live). George W went to Yale as far as I remember. I doubt that he scored super high in any IQ test. But he was undoubtedly very successful in live. "

That's the self fulfilling prophecy that modern democracies are/should be trying to avoid. Otherwise we are on the track of building up a new aristocracy where only the rich and powerful get the opportunity of making a difference.

Why do you doubt he had a high IQ? Depends what we mean by "high", but I would think any president (certainly in modern history) must have a pretty high IQ to manage so many people and issues at once. I would wager someone capable of doing that is capable is getting into Yale on merit, especially when they're younger and in their mental prime. Nothing to do with politics anyone might personally agree or disagree with: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump, Biden.

For liberals (not saying you) who think Bush is dumb: is it because his policies disagree with you? Maybe people who come to different conclusions to you aren't dumber, but just have different values. Do we really think all of our political beliefs are based on intellect only? That's very arrogant imo.

> George W went to Yale as far as I remember. I doubt that he scored super high in any IQ test.

What exactly do you base your doubt on? Publicly he can be quite inarticulate, but there's accounts of him being highly intelligent.[1]

[1] https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/

I was about to say. Bush is a bad public speaker, and you can disagree with all of his politics, but his professors found him intelligent. That being said, legacy admissions is still completely irresponsible, and people should be way more outraged by that.

Irresponsible by what measure? Genetics and family wealth still have a huge influence on "future impact," and that's what these schools are selecting for. It sounds like legacy admissions are doing exactly what they're intended to do.

> Genetics and family wealth still have a huge influence on "future impact,"

In what way would genetics have a huge influence on future impact? That sounds like eugenics.

How is it "like eugenics" to state that children inherit genes from their parents, and are often similar in many ways to their parents? That just sounds like biology.

It's not helpful to trivialize terms like "eugenics".

Genetics have no predictive power on future impact to society. Take one of those wealthy children and put them in an orphanage, see if they do the same as their siblings.

> Genetics and family wealth

I suspect by "genetics" here you really mean something like "network you are born into", no?

I'm pretty sure they mean that if two parents are of above average intelligence then they're more likely to produce children of above average intelligence.

Really I just meant "who your parents happen to be" which is closer to the GP's point but admittedly I worded it awkwardly.

Agree that has far more predictive power than anything passed on genetically.

Irresponsible to society is what people are saying. You're making an "is" argument - the ivies optimizing for this "future impact" metric - where others are making an "ought" argument, that ivies ought to be focused on a different more societally beneficial metric.

Because it's a terrible measure that is short sighted? It goes against everything affirmative action stands for? If we're going to pretend like diversity matters, then why try to justify legacy.

> his professors found him intelligent

He had a 77% average in college, which made him a C student. He even characterized himself as an average student, which is accurate. The idea that he was a secret genius is patently ludicrous and is only proffered by political hacks.

What's more, is that a "C" at most ivies is equivalent to an "F" at any other school. You don't get big donations by failing out the mediocre children of presidents and senators.

I don't think that's exclusive to the Ivy League. People are paying money for college everywhere, and a lot of them can barely afford it. Thus, professors are hesitant to outright fail students. I say this as a former lecturer and teaching assistant at a non-Ivy.

Good point, I do suppose that's a growing issue everywhere, not just in the Ivy League.

Fair enough. I don't know Bush's GPA. But the idea that he was objectively unintelligent and the average critic is smarter and more qualified to be president always rubs me the wrong way.

IQ is what you measure in a test. It does not measure creativity, ambition, empathy etc. In fact I have met people that were extraordinary good in university tests but this seemed to be their only ability. Even applying this knowledge in a laboratory or project was difficult for them. Also if you have attention deficit or something it will kill you in a test.

But take kim kardashian or Paris Hilton. Without envy you have to agree that they are very successful entrepreneurs. Yet they likely were not top 5% in SAT scores.

Cannot comment on Kim Kardashian, but as far as I remember from watching a bunch of random documentaries and such, Paris Hilton's "dumb blonde" public persona is just an act, and she indeed scored pretty high on SAT.

Cannot find any sources at the moment other than tabloids and blog posts, but I recommend checking out a fairly recent documentary on Netflix (either 2020 or 2019, I forgot) that talks about "influencers" and such. Paris Hilton got a giant segment dedicated to her on it, and she indeed was extremely articulate in her description of that whole "dumb blonde" public persona schtick. After watching it, I had zero doubt that she was indeed a very intelligent person, despite me having zero interest in her as an entertainer or a public persona.

Why are legacy admissions irresponsible? The author points out the schools have every incentive to maximize profit centers, and legacy admissions are a great way to do that. You admit four of five generations of a family, you'd better believe that they're going to pony up every year come donation time.

Ivy League Universities have always existed to provide a finishing school for the elite, rather than providing some sort of public good. While I don't think that's a particularly noble endeavor, it's not an especially malicious one either given the abundance of top-notch (and lower cost) public universities in the U.S.

If some rich parent wants to spend an order of magnitude more money on an ivy league school to give their kid more or less the same education they could have gotten at a state school, what's the big deal?

Then just end affirmative action. If that's the logic that's being used, these two things are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Why should people be enraged at legacy admissions? Especially to a private school?

Googeled it. Not very impressive http://www.insidepolitics.org/heard/heard32300.html

Yale University/Typical SAT scores 2019–20 Reading and Writing 720-770, Math 740-800

Of cause there could be an inflation.

and

"Bush had scored only 25 percent on a "pilot aptitude" test, the lowest acceptable grade. But his father was then a congressman from Houston, and the commanders of the Texas Guard clearly had an appreciation of politics."

> A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world

A rich person is subsidized by society. Why should we optimize fiscal policy to enable them and let them leave an outsized impact on the world?

Especially when the outsized impact of the rich is inequality, anti-democratic political norms, and environmental destruction?

They have no skills, or information advantage. Just a network effect advantage through monopoly of a shared value store. I see little difference with this system compared to monarchy or theology rule, which were also hierarchical, with ones power based on closeness to power, and monopoly of value store and public time economy.

To clarify, I mean wealthy non-doers. Hedge funds, old wealth, etc.

Doctors, engineers, etc., sure let us give them our ear. Unskilled rich are a drain on public agency.

> To clarify, I mean wealthy non-doers. Hedge funds, old wealth, etc.

What does this mean? How are hedge funds unskilled or non-doers in the manner that heirs are? I'd say the average hedge fund analyst is probably as accomplished/skilled/hard working as the average doctor or engineer.

Certainly more-so than the average [software] engineer. There's no 6-week bootcamp for hedge funds and there's no "typing JavaScript into a computer" equivalent. We can argue all day about whether hedge funds are good, bad, or useful, and reasonable people will disagree on the answer, but you'd be hard-pressed to make a cogent argument that the average software engineer works even nearly as hard as the average hedge fund analyst.

The value they claim to unlock is completely made up.

People need logistics to move materials to enable people to do stuff.

Not speculative emotional guidance on ephemeral value stores.

Most of them are, or are funded by, inherited wealth to service fiscal policy memes.

Speaking as someone who worked in private equity, our Principal had generational wealth- literally he was an Italian count and his family money came from the Crusades.

The people who made the investments and ran the fund came from State University of New York at Buffalo. The count had a team of three assistants and one's entire job was to coordinate shipping cases of wine from his vanity winery to everyone their kids encountered to lubricate the wheels of their success in life. Elite squash trainer might take on the son? Case of wine to the wife. College tour? Case of wine to the tour leader. I was an analyst reporting directly to the CFO and wasn't an assistant but would routinely get asked to do lifestyle chores like help the count's uncle hook up their ipod to their Range Rover's bluetooth.

Hence why I left finance and went into medicine which is more of a meritocracy.

Wow, the wine shipping is an incredible way to influence people. I should try that more often. So far I've only been sending small gifts over to people, or hand written letters. I know in sales this sort of stuff works very well but it also works well in day to day life.

How has the transition been?

"A rich kid is much more likely to leave an impact on the world"

I quoted this as a neutral fact. That things might or could be better otherwise is a total different question.

Qualify it as such in the original post.

Some search engine can come along in N days, weeks, months, and provide that snippet out of the context you intended.

Social media is not a friends backyard fire pit. The information peddled here isn’t necessarily lost to memory the next day.

I don’t know you so none of this should be considered a personal attack. I’m just taking information and expanding on it.

"Qualify it as such in the original post."

It is unfortunate that people seem not to be able to distinguish between a neutral fact and an endorsement. Just recently I posted something I consider a fact and since I was afraid if could be controversial, added that this is not meant in a judgmental way. The bulletin board owner took this to a meta level and argued that it was exactly this add-on that showed that it was meant in a judgmental way and banned me.

It’s been shown that words mean different things given geographical region.

One brain is not composed of the same experiential model, and as a result, neurological model, as others.

Physics > chemistry -> biology -> humans -> metaphor and analogy. Kind of my mental road map for information hierarchy.

If it’s not physically quantifiable it probably falls into some category like “relative metaphor and analogy”.

This seems unnecessary, since it's obvious from context. Endless caveats are death in writing and readability. We have modal verbs like "should" for a reason, and OP chose not to use them, making the communication clear.

"unskilled risk are a drain on public agency" what does this mean? How are they a drain?

There are a lot of assumptions baked into this statement. For example what does unskilled mean? Who gets to decide it? Would you consider an artist or a musician unskilled? A diplomat? Those people don’t code or perform surgery but most people would consider them skilled and those careers positive contributions to society.

Someone who is wealthy may not have skills as you describe it, but if they are investing their wealth in the stock market for example, it could be argued they have a much more outsized positive impact on society than the average person.

It could be argued but it’s a large assumption on its own.

Stock markets are recent inventions; some hand wavy way of saying “this is exactly the right way to store value!”

Why must that ideal be externalized onto others? Why do I have to believe some hedge fund is indeed worth N dollars?

Mendacity of the elderly is not a good enough justification for belief.

Correctly engineering a road, medicine, or making art does not at all rely on such belief.

> A rich person is subsidized by society.

What?

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...

Hmm.. regarding the economist rankings —- wasn’t this solely because so many top US schools refused to participate, so they just excluded entirely?

> As a side note: The Economist MBA rankings 2021 have raised eyebrows because European schools rankings increased so much: https://whichmba.economist.com/ranking/full-time-mba

Notably this list is missing most top-tier MBA schools like Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Wharton, Northwestern, U of Chicago, MIT, UC and others.

If you want to say some of these schools are overrated, fine, but if none of them made the top 90 you've got a weird rankings methodology that isn't gonna be useful to most people.

Many of these lists aggressively weight cost meaning any substantially expensive school self-eliminates regardless of quality of education.

Most (all?) of the schools you list declined to participate (or were ineligible) in the Economist's ranking system this year it seems. Note that the last time they did participate, many of them were top tier. Harvard (2 in 2019), Stanford (8 in 2019), Columbia (15 in 2019), Wharton (5 in 2019), NW (4 in 2019), Chicago (1 in 2019), etc. etc.

https://whichmba.economist.com/ranking/full-time-mba/2021/me...

> "Ivies really wanted to promote social justice, they would let in more poor kids"

> This is not their main priority.

I think you're right to say that this is not their main priority, but I think they actually do quite good letting in more more poor kids (at least better than most people expect).

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/09/th...

> The Economist MBA rankings 2021 have raised eyebrows because European schools rankings increased so much

Many schools did not participate:

- Harvard

- Wharton

- Yale

- Columbia

- Chicago

- Berkeley

- Stanford

These ratings have limited utility if you leave out the top schools.

Those are 7 American universities. Am sure hundreds of other non-American universities also didn't participate.

Either way, those 7 would make minor difference to the list.

Maybe.

Those were just 7 examples.

I will go out on a limb and say that those seven would be at or near the top of the rankings and would set the rating curve.

I personally think it would make a big difference in this list.

And IVY (Oxbridge and ENA as well) Grads are massively massively over represented in high status and positions of power.

I dont think that article is written in good faith its more like it has been written to keep the poor's and the "enthics" in their place

Right, Ivies may only have 0.5% of students, but 30% of all US Presidents had a degree from one. Of the past six, only one hasn't had an Ivy League degree.

Of nine Supreme Court justices, only one didn't go to Harvard or Yale.

They are only a tiny portion of students, but they have a huge impact on who holds power in society.

Correct, and that should end. One of the many reasons I was overjoyed to vote for a non-Ivy ticket last November.

> There is no chance that changing the composition of the Ivy League student body will effect anything remotely resembling a broad-based change in American educational inequality, opportunity, or aggregate outcomes. Zero. None.

I think this misses the point of going to an ivy league. Would Obama have become president if he didn't have multiple ivy league schools in his pedigree? Maybe, but there's no doubt that the relationships he formed during those years drastically changed the trajectory of his life.

OP is arguing that the undergraduate population of ivy league schools is tiny, so even if they admitted 100% minority students, there would still be millions of minority students who are being left out of the "top tier" education that can be received. Sure, that's true, but the fact that 16/45 of our presidents are ivy league alumni can't be ignored. So when a minority student goes to Harvard and ends up becoming president, he/she can end up changing not only policy decisions to improve outcomes for minority constituents, but also changes the narrative when it comes to who can attain political office at the highest level.

So I would argue that there is absolutely a chance that changing the composition of ivy league student bodies can have an effect on American education inequality. Because some of those students will end up using that advantage to attain political office and affect change at a macro level.

Forget the Ivy League—judging from elections from 2000 on, one is incredibly unlikely to become a major party candidate for President, let alone win, without having attended some kind of private college prep school, rather than a public high school. As I recall, Hillary is the only candidate who didn't.

Sure, little Timmy, you can be anything you want, even President. Your parents are rich, right? No? Oh, uh, never mind.

Will changing the composition matter? Maybe, but I think the schools are puffing up their roles and society is going along with them.

Consider Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Did going to the Ivy League help them? They dropped out. A big reason they succeeded is because they came from stable families that supported their once crazy dreams.

I'm afraid the Ivy League is going to find out that their adjunct teachers aren't any better than the adjuncts at other schools. In 20-30 years, the great successes will come from other schools-- something that's already much more true today than it was 50 years ago.

I think this Ivy league mindset was started by MBA programs which uses marketing to lure students into paying for useless MBA degree. MBA is a total fraud IMO, in 2 year you can't learn any skill which help you in running a whole company. It's surprising to see people follow the same ivy league mindset for tech. Its really frustrating to see anybody having Stanford degree getting priority in hiring etc. I don't want to comment but look around.

I think for the most part, these days it boils down to branding, filtering, and networking.

It's easier to sell consultants (and similar) to clients, if you can show off their credentials.

Prestigious companies that get tens of thousands of applicants can easily filter out most, by simply keeping students from top 20 schools. At that point, you're going be left with a lot of fantastic candidates. Remember, not every HYPS student lands a job at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, most don't make the cut. But it's easier to pick from the pool of those HYPS candidates, than from 500 different colleges and universities.

So, in short, companies can offload a lot of preliminary screening and due-diligence work onto the schools. If a candidate is good enough for Harvard, they're probably good enough to take a look at...

And then there's the networking aspect. Like it or not, a lot of powerful people in both business and politics have gone to the same few prestigious schools, and being in the same "club" makes networking easier. For some people, it's a big deal - for others, it's a triviality - but it doesn't really hurt. Networks go a long way, both for individuals and companies.

I literally couldn't finish the article. It is garbage and unresearched, and plays on lazy stereotypes and resentment.

It's an athletic league, first. I know it has a common language meaning, but it's just an athletic league like the PAC 12 or SEC.

And scandals aside, they are highly competitive for teachers and students. There is a network effect here at undergrad through faculty recruitment, and it's inevitable: the best students want to go where the best teachers are. The best graduate students want to go where the best research is. The best researchers want to go where the best facilities and chance at grants are.

Currently it is the Ivy League, but if that disappeared something like it would reappear. Stratification is a fact of the human condition, and where stratification exists concentration will occur. It's the obligation of society limit things it can, like ensuring social mobility and equitable access and distribution of wealth.

edit: The reason people so rightfully annoyed at admission scandals (particularly alumni/students) is because it's a free rider scenario. Ultra-wealthy cheat to get their students into elite schools because they free ride the reputation of the rest of kids that sacrifice part of their youths to rack up the accomplishments necessary for admission. You can see this, because it isn't just Ivies; the last scandal included Stanford.

My opinion is that it seems counterintuitive for an elite school to care about social equity. Just run your school, stop being so meta about it, let other schools fill in the gaps. It’s OK to have a school for elites.

This is exactly my feeling.

I didn't go to an Ivy League school. But it doesn't bother me at all that children of rich people go to elite schools, get degrees in Russian Literature, Art History, Political Science, play lacrosse, get jobs in white-shoe law firms, sit on boards, etc.

It doesn't affect me or hurt me at all. Let them have their club. So what?

> that children of rich people go to elite schools, get degrees in Russian Literature, Art History, Political Science, play lacrosse, get jobs in white-shoe law firms, sit on boards, etc.

I’ve got news for you. Children of rich people who don’t go to Ivies do this, too.

The common thread isn’t “went to Ivy”, rather “children of rich people”. Their network is their value.

Only if that club has an outsized impact on your world, a club you are completely excluded from.

As an above commenter mentioned, it can be akin to an aristocracy.

I've seen way too many people in the tech said that they would only hire Ivy League, or even if they don't say it, based on who they hire it's not hard to find out that's what they do. During CVOID, you see students need to study from home, but yet the price of Ivy League school never drops a cent. It's pretty much like GUCCI or Chanel would rather destroy the products don't sell than selling them cheaply to destroy the artificial scarcity.

The problem is never why we shouldn't get more people into Ivy League, nor why don't we get more poor kids into Ivy League, or even just bring them into college. The problem is, in the era you can learn literally pretty much almost anything online, the cost of learning is very cheap, and yet people are arguing education is human right, so government should just wipe out student loans? I think the real solution is to look at how education works now and solve the problem with new technology. However, it would be very hard to do and may take very long time, given the Ivy League folks are pretty much the same group of people in power, none of them would like to make their degree looks cheap, and the irony is they often claim that they support social justice. If people truly care about social justice, it's time for people to think about the college requirement for a job and Ivy League only hiring policy.

That is a lazy explanation. It is incumbent on a few expensive colleges to fix a society-wide problem of equitable access to education, nutrition, experiences, and so on?

Elite universities are the tip of a massive iceberg and they already have programs to offer full free rides to otherwise eligible students that can't afford it. The problem starts based on leisure time to parents when their kid is 1 year old and being able to read to them (and having access/time to get to libraries or buy books). It then comes in from having money to buy houses in places with good school districts (which are usually funded by property taxes, so those are inextricably linked in the current setup). Then it comes paying for extracurriculars, summer programs, test prep, and in some cases private schools with better academics and student:teacher ratios. After 20 years that adds up and you see inequity (across the board, to be clear, at private college levels, not just the ivies) at college admission levels. You can't throw a bandaid at the top of the problem and wipe your hands of it, and a microscopic manifestation of the problem can only do so much to fix it.

Ivy Leagues don't sit around worrying about their brand, they already have the best students in the whole world applying and they only admit a few percent of them. And you can easily pay more for a degree: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-expensive-colle... so it's not an issue of cost.

I wonder what it means to claim that "education is a human right." Maybe it means different things to different people.

> However, it would be very hard to do and may take very long time, given the Ivy League folks are pretty much the same group of people in power, none of them would like to make their degree looks cheap, and the irony is they often claim that they support social justice.

Yea, this is spot on.

They love the exclusivity, status and authority. Authority and social justice go hand-in-hand.

It's an end-justifies-the-means movement, so they'll use whatever blunt object they can find to bludgeon people.

> Ask yourself if changing the composition of that half percent is going to change educational outcomes for the vast majority of Americans.

For sure, because what, >70% of our lawmakers are going to come from 0.5% of undergraduates when they grow up.

Seems like most of the government and top level executives do. Most people in those positions are from Ivy leagues, and in this world those are the positions it really matters to be in.

Noah seems to digress from the pros of going to an Ivy League. Either these schools have to diversify their admissions or the executive positions in companies have to start hiring from regular Universities. US Digital Service Academy[1] is working to launch a university that would rival Stanford and MIT and funnel tech workers into government work, seems to be overall a good thing for society.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23909604

Peter Thiel covers this question deeply here: https://youtu.be/IXG2F0a6I28?t=996

I don’t see why you should be downvoted for linking to the thoughts of an undeniably brilliant, if controversial, public figure and leader in technology.

A huge amount of ivies power comes from being full of rich students. The most important thing you get from college is networking opportunities unless you're studying stem. The best people to network with are generally the most powerful. The most powerful are generally rich, or got their power by networking with the rich. People generally network with the communities they're familiar with. This all leads to surrounding yourself with rich people being the most important factor you can control when it comes to obtaining power which is why ivies admit so many rich people. It makes the school better for all the students.

Ivy Leagues aren't special in what they teach or that they have the most exceptional students, and others have none.

I've taught across the spectrum, from community colleges to an Ivy League school. The difference is that there is a much higher concentration of smart and motivated students at a private Ivy-League class school compared to State U.

Put simply, the centralization of talent/resources due to a harder acceptance filter creates all sorts of opportunities.

A lot of 'luck' is simply being in the right room at the right time. An elite university makes it a lot easier to put yourself in the right room.

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