Colorado becomes first state to ban legacy college admissions
text.npr.org
text.npr.org
The linked research shows nothing of the sort.
"Furthermore, our data indicated that high school GPA had a stronger correlation with college success for Non- Submitters than the ACT/SAT (for the 27% of Non-Submitters for whom we had test scores) -- both in terms of college cumulative GPA and graduation rate. While test scores had a generally stronger relationship with college GPAs for the Submitters, for the Non-Submitters they tended to show a weaker relationship, essentially under- predicting the college GPA. The test scores continued to most strongly correlate with family income."
So they may be right or may be wrong, and the research may be good or it may be crap, but NPR does not appear to be misrepresenting its own sources.
The problem is, is high school GPA measured the same way across different states and schools?
> The test scores continued to most strongly correlate with family income.
I have no doubts about this. But I'm pretty sure you would get the same result by looking at family stability and parent's educational achievements.
Imagine the pressure on highschools to inflate their students' grades if parents selected highschools based on this.
I wonder if that's at least partially due to non-submitters choosing not to submit because they did worse than expected on the test, compared to how they did on practice tests. Even assuming no exogenous events like a bad night's sleep, test anxiety, etc, your SAT score is still an estimate of your "true" score, with some variance. If you have an expected score due to taking practice tests, and your measured score is significantly lower just because you happened to fall on the left part of your own personal score distribution for the real test, maybe you decide not to submit your score. If that happens systematically, but SAT score really is correlated with success, you would expect nonsubmitters to outperform their score.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/restriction-of-range-wh...
The correlation with income and test results is quite possibly conflated with preparedness, since money provides more opportunities to succeed in school.
Still isn't that the same thing? Folks who didn't have pre-college study opportunities might test less well. It doesn't mean they can't succeed in college. That's the point I think; we have to stop weighing environmental factors so highly, since they skew admissions toward wealthy applicants. Which is widely perceived as unfair.
It is quite possible, of course, and even quite likely, that higher income families will do better in college (since that likely means better education throughout childhood, as well as less likely to need a job or take on debt to attend, so less distraction, and in the event of struggle more ability to hire tutors and things), but the point is that to admit that "we're selecting for rich people" is to say the quiet part out loud; and colleges of course don't want to do that.
(Also, tracking what happens to each group might result in some interesting data.)
That doesn't make me feel comfortable. Luck is a factor in life but we want people to work to give them the best chances.
Perhaps a lottery where each positive attribute gives a greater chance of winning.
Rich families want legacy admissions. Asian prefer grades and tests because they generally excel in those areas. Under-represented groups want to do away with both because neither legacy or tests benefits them.
The system is far from perfect: only a teeny tiny fraction of students who make it are from poor/underprivileged backgrounds (some do). Yes it is infinitely easier to prepare for these exams in a middle class family than in a ghetto.
Yet it still seems an order of magnitude MORE FAIR then checking whether daddy is a big donor to the school. Or having SATs that are so ridiculously easy that we're gonna have to fallback on whether you were a member of the theater club.
Legacy checkbox reflects absolutely nothing other then nepotism.
Some children will have AP credits and some wont. Some children will have completed calculus and others won't have started. By this time, years of advantage and disadvantage have already accumulated. These differences in student profile will interest both in-state and out-of-state colleges.
zulu314 is pointing out that tests can be meaningfully designed for predictive value, and I would additionally wonder whether universities all around the world will follow suit by diminishing test importance?
That doesn't seem equitable at all, it seems to encourage admission based on social status and parent's wealth.
This insane unfairness has to end.
Note that never at any point did I claim that _only_ money could lead to success on these tests. It's then irrelevant that a group of children from specific socio-economic and cultural circumstances and backgrounds happen to succeed on them. It doesn't matter—I didn't say it couldn't happen.
Money plays a role because of the nature of the test. It's an unescapable reality that children who would otherwise score much lower scores highly simply because their parents can afford a tutor to hammer questions into their child and resolve doubts every day. They don't learn many life skills, true mathematical appreciation, scientific knowledge, or real literary analysis skill from the 'tutoring'—the test, then, is purely a reflection of the tutoring money they spent and not their actual college readiness.
I didn’t say that “Asians are outliers”. I said that the fact that some people don’t pay to excel at a test doesn’t make the test inherently fair.
You also never mentioned what exactly your social status or wealth was then. Were you living in poverty when you got those scores?
You're basically saying your material conditions didn't matter, which is just untrue for most things.
Somethings I just don't volunteer as they are private, but since you asked in this very public forum:
>Did you worry about food or housing situations
yes
>have to take care of the household and siblings cause parent's were working
yes
>deal with substance abuse of parents
luckily, no. but abuse from parent, yes. parents with undiagnosed medical conditions, yes.
>or any number of things that are common experiences among poor families
yes
>You're basically saying your material conditions didn't matter, which is just untrue for most things.
To quote the Dude, "that's like, your opinion, man". There were definite obstacles to overcome. I was able to, others are not. I'm not judging anyone for not being able to as situations are different, yet you seem to be wanting to judge me. My economic situation changed as did the economy dictated the earning ability of parent's jobs. I was taught how to talk to people that came to the door looking for the "adults" or called on the phone (before we finally went without a phone all through my high school years). Did I live in the ghetto? No. One of the better financial decisions my parents made and were able to do was built their own house. Not paid a builder, my dad and grandfather cut the wood, swung the hammers.
What was your situation like?
I didn't go to college until I was 26, mostly because it never seemed like an option. Now that I've been through it and have a job and career and have been able to work through the mental damage from my childhood, I feel a huge amount of empathy for kids who are coming from similar situations.
Anyway, didn't mean to be judgmental, so apologies for that. I just feel strongly about the topic.
I think one needs to be careful of survivorship bias here -- "the system worked for me, so it is fine".
The issue with banning SAT/ACTs, etc. is that is the system they're using in its place with actually better?
However, many well off parents will feel like they worked hard to move up, and provide their kids with best educational opportunities... but now the rules are changing. It is definitely a hard problem to try to equalize for wealth and at the same time not overly penalizing somewhat wealthy parents that also care about kids' education.
This is true of pretty much every single thing they can use to measure students, though. Test scores, classwork scores, sports, extracurricular activities, social interactions; all of these things are easier for children in wealthier families.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/03/rich-students-get-better-sat...
If if just getting a better education gives you a better score on the SAT then that is a "problem" impossible to fix. However, teaching kids tips and tricks to do better on the SAT would have minimal effect on their actual intelligence. That right there is the main problem: Preparing for the SAT has no substantial increase in intelligence but does make it seem like you do.
I don't have much time when I'm writing this so if your confused by something just ask
Do you have a citation for the causation that you seem to strongly imply?
More importantly, why use the SAT when your highschool grades are more accurate? This is what I'm really annoyed about! Why put everyone though a stressful test when your grades are more accurate?
https://edpolicyinca.org/publications/predicting-college-suc...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/06/11/what-...
I expect a lot of people will anyway, if the test scores are good.
No, just that's a marginal side effect. The whole point of standardized testing is the "standardized" part - to provide a common metric upon which to base large scale institutional decisions.
The edge cases (and also the large biases in the system) are handled by other criteria, like weighing other aspects of a candidate's background against their academic performance.
In contrast, holistic measures like looking at extracurriculars are much more correlated to wealth and social status.
"Once scholars control for all these factors as best they can, they find that coaching has a positive but small effect: Perhaps 10 or 20 points in total on the SAT, mostly on the math section, according to careful work by Derek Briggs of the University of Colorado Boulder and Ben Domingue of Stanford University.
...a 20-point improvement to a score in this range would have no practical meaning for students who are trying to get into more selective schools. Even when it comes to less selective schools, just 20 percent of the counselors said a boost from 430 to 450 would make a difference. In other words, research has debunked the myth that pricey test prep gives a major bump to students’ scores, but it’s also hinted that whatever modest bumps they do provide are more likely to help the people who are already at the top."
https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the...
I really don't understand how this statement is even remotely true.
The only thing I can think of is that "coaching" is too broad--ie. includes both students who spend 100+ hours and students who spent an hour at a talk by the guidance counselor.
Doing nothing other than taking a couple sample tests has to net you a bunch of points because you don't have to waste time reading the directions.
Simply drilling basic mathematics so I could do "1+1" and come up with 2 regularly netted me almost 250 points in Math (standardized tests like the SAT are really nasty about having answers that match the common mistakes).
Going through 6000 vocabulary words pulled my verbal up almost 250 points (and had a dramatic effect on my writing). But that's far beyond "coaching" ... that's a multi-year commitment.
- Access to unlimited test prep material (from College Board, Princeton Review, Kaplan, others). Each book was $100+, and I must have easily spent a few thousands on books, sample tests, vocabulary lists and other material.
- A laptop and stable internet connection.
- My own quiet and comfortable room to study in.
- No other real responsibilities taking up my time. I didn't have to cook or take care of younger siblings. Didn't have to work part time jobs after school and late into the evening/night.
- Access to private counselors through my school which was in an expensive and well-funded school district.
All of this made a huge different to my test score, and I don't see how anyone can argue that someone in a worse financial condition won't be adversely affected.
1. number of AP/IB classes student took (mostly dependent on how rich the school and how attentive and educated their parents are)
2. participation in extra-curriculars (again, participation in things Model United Nations are highly highly correlated with wealth)
3. volunteer experience or other outside of school experience (again highly correlated with wealth, students working pizza delivery at 16 don't have time for volunteering)
I'm not saying the SAT/ACT is perfect, but at least everyone can easily get free or very cheap study materials and practice exams online and from libraries.
Life, on a macro level, is not fair.
If we accept all that, the question becomes this: if you were a poor but talented kid, which metric would you like them to focus on? I was a poor immigrant raised by a single parent, and to me the answer is that I want them to focus on the SAT.
We could never afford the prep courses, but the prep books were cheap at the local bookstore and free at my high school library. I took advantage of that. Now there are even more options, such as the Khan Academy's free prep course. There's even some data suggesting the free course produces outcomes that rival the paid courses[1].
Bottom line, the SAT gave people like me a fair shot. It can be gamed a little, but I worry that replacing it with a "holistic approach" will just become a proxy for social/class status that will penalize people like me.
[1] https://newsroom.collegeboard.org/new-data-links-20-hours-pe...
Interviews by alumni honestly seems like a pretty good evaluation metric - it is quite susceptible to legacy favorship though.
I'm willing to bet poorer people don't do so well on those.
Applying data from other complex systems besides our own might not be easy, but surely other countries have some studies we could compare with our own. I'm going to go look. Hope you're having a nice day.
The drive to eliminate standardised testing is insane, and it can only hurt minorities and the already-disadvantaged, to the benefit of the elite. But then that's the whole point.
We’re optimizing for the wrong problems (selective admissions for limited slots), versus working towards universal access to high quality instruction regardless of location.
Existing colleges do not have incentives to do this. They are incentivized to protect the value of their brand and their institution, and to preserve scarcity and gated access to credentials.
Why not? A lottery could still have the most basic requirements for entry but beyond that what makes you think anyone's qualification system would beat random chance?
While I won't get into whether the SATs also "discriminate" in some way against students who are disadvantaged by poverty, etc., eliminating the SAT won't solve the problem. It will just make things worse! They are, for all their problems, a great equalizer.
Probably less of a factor at (most) state schools, though.
Additionally, you presume all people whose first language is not English is an international student. If that was the case, American public schools would not have ESL courses. Then there are natural born American students whose first language is English but with ethnic or regional variations. Those students may have a much more comprehensive lexicon from Urban Dictionary than the SAT developers, but the SAT developers cannot avoid projecting the set of vocabulary from their own middle-class upbringing thru academia. It would be to entertaining to see the SAT include "deadass" on the vocabulary item when every New Yorker knows the term and, with the help of meme culture, youth on the West Coast knows it too. To the point of academia, the ethnic distribution of academia is not representative of the general population. Finally, this expectation of English and normalized American cultural knowledge involves the forced assimilation and white-washing of indigenous Americans.
I am one of those immigrant children who was born in the US and speaks English as a second language, I was in ESL until the 4th grade until my parents thought that I was at minimum decent enough at English to figure out a way to ask for help if I got lost.
We were not rich, we had very little money
I grew up in my formative years in the inner city with mainly immigrant families.
In high school, i had many acquaintances who were studying for TOEFL. I don't really need someone explaining to me what taking these exams are like.
I studied for the SATs since the moment I could express ideas in English, and had nothing else to do at home because my parents were working, and in the 7th grade got a 1160/1600 on the SATs.
I have multiple friends who got into university through the TOEFL.
It is absolutely infuriating that the woke left wants to remove agency from experiences like mine and assume we are all stupid and unable to figure out how to succeed in a system.
I dont understand how the woke left thinks its appropriate to treat people like they don't have intelligence and agency and merely sit around waiting for the white man to help.
To be clear, I am the opposite of the left. I also share all those same personal background with you. Ultimately, I do not believe immigrants are waiting for white man to help. In fact, when I'm pointing out privilege and entitlement, I am ironically using the left's weapon of choice against them. The loudest woke people are highly educated, privileged, white and Asian liberals.
If we're having oppression olympics, I grew up in Section-8 housing of the inner city. I have friends who are serving life terms in prison and dozens other dead in gang violence. I've had a gun pointed at me twice. If my parent's weren't working all the time, they were gambling the rest. I didn't even know the SATs existed until I was 16, and when I finally took the SATs, my dad told my mom "he's taking the exam, but he's not going to do well".
We can call it even because you also assumed I was a woke white social justice warrior.
> I have multiple friends who got into university through the TOEFL.
And they don't have to take the SATs?
My original assumption is that the TOEFL is complimentary to but not a substitute for the SAT. To return to your original comment, your point is that in the presence of the TOEFL universities put zero weight on the SAT reading/writing section?
Vietnamese Americans that have much lower educational attainment rates than whites?
Or international students from China that in recent decades comprise primarily of multi-millionaire families? If you're genuinely concerned about effect sizes, China has a billion people. If you had any cultural awareness about international students from Asia, Chinese students who attend undergrad in America did not score well enough to get into an elite university in China.
> If you had any cultural awareness about international students from Asia, Chinese students who attend undergrad in America did not score well enough to get into an elite university in China.
Are you trying to ballpark the effect size of wealth, and are you arguing that wealth is the explanation for why Asians do well despite linguistic differences?
https://www.brookings.edu/research/race-gaps-in-sat-scores-h...
I mean, I notice you're not talking about linguistic differences anymore, and just about (1) wealth and (2) the fact that Chinese students coming to the US are rejects from Chinese elite universities.
Also, are we talking about race or nationality? "Asian" is a racial classification, as is "black" or "Hispanic". And then you're comparing Vietnamese to whites? What kind of argument do you think you're building here?
What kind of international clarity do you think you have with regards to Asian Americans?
What we see from SAT results may be results. What's not obvious is whether the students had to study more to attain the same results. In Asia, grade school students spend much more time doing academic work than in the states. Sure, the international Asian student can read about Benjamin Franklin and other American cultural elements to be on the same playing field with an American, while the American can go hangout with their friends during this same time. Does that mean that the SAT is fair if these students receive the same score?
> Also, are you trying to ballpark the effect size of wealth, and saying that wealth is the explanation for why Asians do well despite linguistic differences?
The demographic of East Asians who come to America are from wealthier and more affluent background. When you're looking at averages, it does not include the general Chinese population. Additionally, to attain a visa and stay in America, salary data selects for people in professional fields. If you want to point to income as a measure of "succeeding", you have to drill-down into demographics and whether they are filled with high-skilled workers versus other labor.
> I mean, I notice you're not talking about linguistic differences anymore, and just about (1) wealth and (2) the fact that Chinese students coming to the US are rejects from Chinese elite universities.
I am saying the say Chinese international students in America are from a very specific socioeconomic background and educational attainment. This is wildly different from certain Asian American groups. This is not relevant to my original argument, but I pointed this out because you bucketed all Asian people together. It's toxic and ignorant, that is why I am educating you.
> What kind of international clarity do you think you have with regards to Asian Americans?
What does "international clarity" even mean ? I don't know what you're looking for.
You're offering your cultural awareness about international students, and implying that I might not have any. I suppose this prose issues from your conversational instincts.
I offer data to anchor discussion for effect sizes, and so far you're building your own pet theory from scratch, as if the discussion just began here! And you're building your own little causal story (with implied effect sizes) about why metrics collected in the US look the way they do.
I'm putting Asians into a bucket because that's how bureaucratic data collection works in the US! If available data sources do not offer reliable drill-downs into the demographics, then you are making up your own fantasy version of data.
Meanwhile you are making awful, awful accusations about whether I am supporting "model minority" arguments, and whether I'm being toxic by grouping Asians together.
Yes. When you start out with "What about Asians?" alluding to the fact that Asians as a whole fare better on the SATs. I am aware of that, what I am questioning is whether given an native-English speaking American vs anyone with English as their second language, where if they work the same amount, would achieve the same results on the SAT.
> I'm putting Asians into a bucket because that's how bureaucratic data collection works in the US! If available data sources do not offer reliable drill-downs into the demographics, then you are making up your own fantasy version of data.
We are talking about the SAT's language and cultural biases here. That is independent of whether the SAT wants to group people as Asian or Not. Then there is college application process which is a separate conversion. My question is whether a minority has to work harder to attain the same results as an native-English speaking American. Whether certain buckets as defined by bureaucratic data collection processes score better and why that is the case is not my original point
> If available data sources do not offer reliable drill-downs into the demographics, then you are making up your own fantasy version of data.
Yes, official sources do not because there are political agendas and initiatives to bucket people into races. The fact that you think I am making up fantasy data about the "model minority" MYTH is exactly why I took a tangent from my original argument
> Yes, official sources do not because there is a political convenience to group all Asians together.
Really, the arrogance and rudeness is outstanding here, I have to wonder whether you are talking about your own toxicity and ignorance.
Your concept of illumination is to offer pet analysis and pet causal theories, and imaginary drill-downs into the data which don't exist! You are engaging in theory-crafting as if the conversation just began here, today.
American data collection culture, including academia and government, groups Asians together. You are making your own fantasy data, and making awful accusations based on your personal fantasies of what people are doing.
I'm talking about effect sizes, and not from the basis of my own self-proclaimed international awareness.
Observe for yourself how many replies this thread can go before you offer any semblance of something that isn't your own pet analysis.
And that can't be challenged?
In some dictatorships, the government can claim 95% of the election votes went to the incumbent.
The US unemployment rate published by the Bureau of Labor does not reflect the true unemployment rate.
The Three-fifths Compromise considered certain people only worth 3/5th of a person. Government defined metrics aren't a scientific / objective measure of the physical or moral world.
> pet analysis and pet causal theories, and imaginary drill-downs into the data which don't exist! ... You are making your own fantasy data
Let me know if you get a 404 error
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/chart/educational-...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/these-groups-of-asian...
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/04/19/524571669...
SAT scores are strongly correlated to your parent’s income level.
"Socioeconomic status (SES) and SAT scores are positively correlated: Students from higher income backgrounds generally achieve higher scores, and “21.2% of variance in SAT scores is shared with SES, as measured here as a composite of mother’s education, father’s education, and parental income.” The researchers note that the “source of the SAT-SES relationship is likely due to some combination of educational opportunity, school quality, peer effects and other social factors.”
https://journalistsresource.org/economics/ses-socioeconomic-...
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/16/books/what-is-intelligenc...
https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/1994/10/16/books/what-is-...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/neu.10160
* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/
* https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S183242741...
From that wiki article:
Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73% with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%. IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood.
Those are the only claims I made, and no, I don't have citations for them. Mostly just intuition that the requirements existed to ensure merit rather than nepotism carried the day, so undoing those requirements is likely to have the inverse effect.
> Anecdotal but where I grew up it was never much work for students to get high SAT scores, most people I knew scored relatively high even before preparing.
"Getting into prestigious schools" high? If you're doing that effortlessly then you should bottle your local water and sell it, because there's something in it. :)
Yeah, I think it's pretty standard for certain Bay Area public high schools. If I remember correctly the school average was around 1470/1600 (though after prep). For reference Google says the average at Harvard is 1510. Probably has to do more with the parents than the water though.
To tease that apart you'd need a counterfactual universe where those same Bay Area people weren't wealthy but still had kids. So, uh, good luck finding that...
One datapoint that at least gestures in "correlates" but doesn't "beget" is that half of the students at Stuyvesant High School, the most prestigious math/science school in New York with an admission based on a test akin to the SAT, are economically disadvantaged[0]. If wealth truly "begot" high scores on these tests, you'd probably not see that.
(It also demonstrates that Stuyvesant does a great job making the test accessible: there's free study materials, test times on weekdays and weekends, free shuttles to test site, etc. I wish that was the takeaway here with the SAT discussion: help low income folks prep for and take the test, don't eliminate the test altogether.)
[0] https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.php?year=2018&instid=80000...
Parent's attitude toward education is also extremely important.
Is it normal to read books for fun? Is using "big words" acceptable at the dinner table? Is asking questions encouraged?
My wife once taught a kid whose father kept brusquely "correcting" them any time they they used saw, as in the simple past tense of to see, correctly. The father insisted on seen, and not in a "that's how we talk here" way, but in a "that's how you talk period" way. I'm sure that wasn't the only way he was harming (or trying to harm, anyway) his kid's prospects.
Of course they were poor, too. :-(
Yes and socioeconomic status and being able to write a good essay, come accross as charming in an interview, etc. are even more correlated, which means that people with a high socioeconomic status still benefit from removing SAT scores.
1. Pulling up the drawbridge for smart kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, thus making room for less talented children of the wealthy.
2. Getting rid of objective, falsifiable assessments so they can select instead for ideology and party loyalty.
Already being done, but not yet at the student level: https://reason.com/2020/02/03/university-of-california-diver...
Not officially, at least. The kind of organization that requires a political pledge as condition of employment, was not bias-free the day before the requirement became official.
That's quite the accusation. Citation needed.
> it's always upper middle class people bitching about the SAT's
in the first place. This is a mainstream reddit tier comment.
1. https://www.brookings.edu/research/race-gaps-in-sat-scores-h...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...
For public colleges only. I'm actually quite surprised it existed for public institutions in the first place.
Both are private schools.
And maybe the Air Force Academy is the hardest to get in to? Although that's neither state nor private.
Are there not other ways of evaluating a students aptitude? Like... their grades?
In my country, we do not have standardized testing. We have world renowned universities. Students are evaluated by their grades, often an application essay, and possibly any extracurricular or volunteer work (but I know of no anecdotal evidence of this making any difference).
Here, wealthy students usually pay full tuition (usually under 10k USD a semester) and the less fortunate get heavy subsidies. My partner's parents had low income, and combined with bursaries and grants, she paid next to nothing.
The traditional solution has been standardized tests (SAT, ACT, AP, IB are all fairly common nationally, PLUS most states have their own tests by subject). The qualms people have is that, short of these tests, universities are forced to make subjective judgements about high school quality, extracurriculars, etc that are often skewed rich.
At some point, we have to start using a common yardstick to compare apples to apples that had at least the rudiments of an unbiased statistical sampling. The SAT does a decent job.
That is the Ozarks vs. Berkeley.
It's up to the university. Here's how the University of Waterloo looks at applicants from Bangladesh:
https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/admissions/admission-re...
> You're strongly encouraged to write the Euclid Mathematics Contest and/or the Canadian Senior Mathematics Contest. Results of the contests will be used in scholarship decisions and possibly admission decisions for programs in the Faculty of Mathematics.
also known as SAT/ACT.
The US does not have a government issued testing or grading system, so SAT/ACT and AP exams serve as grades. High school grades are known to be laughable inflated. For example, my high school grade point average was over the "highest" amount due to extra points being added to Advanced Placement classes.
The problem is it just so happens that being poorer is a disadvantage for basically everything, and being richer is an advantage for basically everything.
So instead of addressing the actual issue, which is the ever widening income/wealth gap, US society is engaging in these funny little acts of plausible deniability so they can say they tried to something, when in reality are avoiding doing the only thing that will address the actual issue (wealth transfer from rich to poor and narrowing the gap).
I am not a fan of rescinding admissions requirements just because they correlate with parental income/wealth.
What these measures are trying to do, however, is to mitigate the advantages that children of richer parents have and the disadvantages children of poorer parents have to overcome. And in that endeavor, there is simply no other solution than reducing the income/wealth gap between richer/poorer parents.
These other measures will not work, and simply lead to more games being played and more bureaucracy, and will further disadvantage the children of poorer parents, since the more opaque the game, the more resources you need to play it (or discover its rules).
It makes a great argument that, unfortunately, merit based admission to elite universities does nothing to increase equality of opportunity because the rich are so much better at training and educating their children.
The upside is that people are forced to earn their privilege with hard work and study, rather than having it handed to them at birth. The downside is that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, privilege begets more work, which begets more material wealth, which begets yet harder work / overachieving children.
Has anyone looked at whether family income is a good indicator of whether students get through college? I would bet it is.
https://www.the74million.org/article/alarming-statistics-tel...
I used Google for that. search term: income and college graduation rates
I think it's also worth mentioning that we both exceeded the minimum requirement for automatic admission, so the fact that we were legacy students didn't really mean anything in that regard, but now I wonder what it would have been like if we didn't meet that criteria - knowing this university, sadly it is almost definitely something that influences their decision, despite their large size. I don't know that I want them to do away with legacy benefits entirely, as by proxy it's a huge reason for who I am now, but I am 100% behind the idea to do away with using them in admissions settings, I really don't think that's fair. Truthfully, me still getting hefty kickback from it isn't really all too fair, and while getting residency in this state is not difficult, that's not the same either. It's tough to balance my appreciation for what the program does enable, and my distaste for the way it excludes many equally if not more deserving people.
It's not like lack of legacy admissions support is cutting them off at the knees.
I'm glad that they're ditching them, because of how much I hate the College Board, and those exams.
But as a matter of principle, college admissions must be on merit. It's easy to say it shouldn't be based on family ties... But what will replace exam scores?
I don't like this discussion on "equity", because it seems that the inevitable conclusion is that race will become a metric in deciding college admission.
This is exactly what some people want. Instead of a meritocracy and an individualist society where we judge each person by their individual merits, we're trending toward a society where we only see and treat a person by the categories they fall into.
Under communism, it was notorious that those that were connected to the party had preferred access to university even with terrible grades.
Who wants to go to a doctor that got a degree because Daddy's ideological loyalty.
It's as though nobody has asked what qualities policies like this optimize for. Equality is what you have when you remove distinguishing qualities, so that's not really the thing. Justice presumes a crime, which kids have not committed. To me it seems like a cynical gesture aimed at destroying wealth instead of creating opportunity.