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Water Flows Downhill
Years ago, I interviewed a brilliant high school student who asked me a simple question: Why should I go to Princeton when a third of the student body are athletes?
I admitted that he had a point: a third of my class at Princeton was not very bright because of preferential policies for one reason or another. And it was a damn shame. What I did not realize was that I was part of the problem, looking for “intangibles” as part of the admissions process.
A diploma from a prestigious school is valuable, both economically and socially. The admissions process is highly subjective and not transparent. There are carve-outs for athletes, minorities, legacies, and those deemed more desirable for other, non-objective reasons. These carve-outs can constitute as much as 50 to 70 percent of an entering class.
There is certainty that there will be corruption. There has been corruption since the first donation to Ug’s Cave-Academy. To me, the only surprising feature about this latest “scandal” is that the schools themselves were bypassed and did not directly reap the winnings. Oh, the horror!
The best we can and should do is to point out that without transparent and clear criteria, corruption is a certainty.
Edit: There are schools that admit every candidate above a certain cutoff point, basically defined by those likely to be able to do the work. Included in this category are some state schools. That would be much better — but for the Ivy League to do the same, they would need to make the school much more academically difficult than it is.
Published in General
Not that the schools aren’t guilty, but the parents had other options for getting their kids a decent education.
Sheesh. University of Dallas would probably be a better education than a good many Ivy League degrees.
The funny thing is that an Ivy League “education” does not help dumb kids out that much. Alumni tend to sort other alumni out pretty quickly. And going to a school too much above your capabilities does more harm than good. Plenty of studies on Affirmative Action have come to this conclusion.
This is how it works :
Way back when, my brother (Merit Scholar) had a perfect SAT math score. We visited Princeton, his first choice, but was rejected (he went to MIT). One of his classmates, a football player, was admitted.
Later, MIT rejected his son but accepted his daughter.
Yes.
I’m pretty sure that a decent pre-school in Dallas would be a better education than a good many Ivy League degrees.
There really isn’t much difference between the “elite” schools and the state schools when it comes to engineering. If you can’t handle Differential Equations at MIT, chances are you won’t be able to do it at Podunk State either.
Nicer labs, though.
With respect, how much do you know about this? Because the above response indicates that the answer is likely “not very much.”
I know next to nothing. The story broke this morning, and for those (like me) who learned about it by watching the news, I suspect that nobody knows more than next to nothing. But I do know something about how corruption works. So, if you do know all about the underlying facts, why don’t you share?
The tag-line of my fathering philosophy: I do not negotiate with terrorists.
Dunno. I went to West Point. 100% of the student body were athletes. Academic standards seemed…rigorous and rigorously enforced.
Gotta admit though: The cadet major of geology was nicknamed Rocks for Jocks. But every student passed the derivative and integral calculus.
At Princeton I got a gentleman’s C in Calculus. More specifically, a C-.
There are at least two threads here about the particulars, and I’ll stand by my comments in those threads without repeating them. Let’s just say that your focus on the schools is misplaced.
That said, I’m left to wonder about the enmity shown here to some rather excellent educational institutions (I’m not speaking of the O/P, BTW). Sure, they are often at the heart of the liberal establishment, but does that excuse snarky comments–even in jest– about the quality of the education in schools that house a considerable number of amazing professors (see, e.g., Harvey Mansfield), great libraries, and a learning experience for many that far exceeds alternatives. Just because we’re supposed to perceive them as “elitist”? Really?
Vent over and out.
Well, Being an athlete likely helped me being admitted to Dartmouth and I ended up being much more successful, intellectually curious, smarter, more well read and a much better person than 80% of the “scholars”.
Is that Ok?
To be fair, many of them are hard workers. The problem is that they are not paid to teach so much as to do research and apply for grants.
Is there something to be said for government money going to universities? Sure. It got me some Augustine books to read and to write about. And I get paid better than I probably would otherwise.
But it does mean we have too much work. The bureaucrats can track prestigious publications and successful grant applications much more easily than they can track good teaching.And they give us money, so when they want tracking we have to give it to them. So we have to give them trackable results.
So we have too much work, and more pressure to research. Naturally, we complain that we need more teaching relief. I wish there was a way of complaining for research relief that didn’t lead to hiring more full-time, no-research teachers at lower salaries.
And 75% of recruited athletes don’t receive a “likely letter”, it’s utility is for those that would have no chance of being admitted otherwise. Perhaps that’s not “fair” but the vast majority of athletes deserve to be there as much as anyone else. Frankly, they represent Princeton much better in their professional lives that non-athletes.
I tested out of derivative calculus on entry, so I went straight into integral. Oft times the instructor would say (verbatim, I’m scarred, man) “I didn’t derive equation B from equation A because just looking at them it should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer how that resolves.”
Yeah, I had all these genius geek prodigies sitting around me nodding in an “ah, got it” kind of way whilst I sat there thinking “I’m so screwed.”
Hoyacon-I don’t know. We now have even liberals like Phila. U.’s Prof. Camille Paglia saying “When I meet young people who have recently graduated from elite universities they don’t know anything, but their heads are filled with ideology.
Or leftist Harvard Prof. of Psychology Stephen Pinker who said “The left has turned America’s universities into a laughingstock.”
Iow, at the risk of being too categorical, we may be underestimating the damage done to higher education by the Postmodern left.
Also, water can flow uphill if that’s how it identifies. Stop imposing your cismalewhite conception of gravity on all the water.
You accused me of speaking from ignorance, and I freely admit that I am ignorant because the only source I have is the news, and I don’t trust the news. Since you won’t identify your sources I can only assume that you are no less ignorant than I. But I invite you again to explain how a school could possibly admit an applicant with the express condition that they will be on, say, the track team, and then not notice that they never participated on the track team. How could the admissions office or the athletic director be unaware of this? Please do tell.
Yeah, really. And it’s not just because they are elitist. It’s because they are less educational institutions than they are indoctrination centers – bullying their “students” (and professors) into professing fealty to the most toxic ideology since Stalinism. Most of these schools ruthlessly suppress free speech and free thought, and systematically exclude anyone who admits to believing the things that I believe. So when I denigrate them I am not being “snarky.” I am being dead serious. And I don’t care how many books they have in their libraries.
Likely Letters are a means to lock in high school athletes so the college can be sure that the athlete is coming. Students who need a likely letter to get in absolutely embody corruption of the institution for the sake of athletics. (How do you know it is 75%? I know that in my (admittedly Lacrosse-heavy) state up to HALF of all admitted students in a year were likely letter recipients!!!!)
This is no different than affirmative action, or other preferential policies.
I don’t mind the favoritism or even the corruption itself: what ticks me off is that universities absolutely lie about both, and they do so with sneering condescension for those of us too simple to understand that the process is actually wonderful and just.
I was chair for an entire state for 10 years for all alumni interviews. And when I pushed on the hypocrisy, I was disinvited to be part of the process going forward.
The whole admissions process is done in bad faith.
Yale accepts about 1950 applicants each year. Only 200-300 Likely letters are issued.
So 60% of admitted students go, but virtually all Likelies do. So that is 300 likely letters for 1000 students!!!! 1/3rd of the student body, RIGHT THERE, are academically out of their league. Not counting minorities, Questbridge, Legacies…. this is how a student body gets thoroughly contaminated.
Water can run uphill if it is at an elevation that is a local maximum but the source of the flow is at a higher elevation and the friction losses in the flow are small enough to still allow it to run uphill. The Romans used this principle. Here’s a video.
And there’s also hydraulic jump.
I always had trouble with triple integrals.
I can do that. Schools are terrible at closing the loop internally. Admissions never really checks to see how their decisions 5 years ago worked out. Coaches are heads of fiefdoms, and they jealously guard their borders.
They are quite like government legislators in this respect. Nobody ever goes back to see how that last great new idea actually worked out, before proposing the next great new idea.
Don’t get me wrong: I loved Princeton. Many people are very smart, indeed.
But I was there for a weekend just last month, and the kids I spoke with were afraid to speak their minds. That was not so even 5 years ago.
I know it is 75% because I’m involved in how the process works at Dartmouth in regards to “likely letters”. Again, I understand your issues with their use, and I agree with you to some extent, the likely letters are not the norm for admitted student athletes.
And I don’t think you understand that the purpose of them is an element of de-risking for the school and prospective student athlete. It tends to be used for high level student athletes that may have full athletic scholarship opportunities at a Big Ten or SEC school.
I expect that all of that is true. But we’re not talking about going back in time to check how things worked out. We’re talking about a school admitting more students for the track team than there are spots on the track team. Right now, in real time. This could not escape the attention of the athletic director or the admissions office. To apply your legislator metaphor, it would be like no one noticing that 104 people had been “elected” to the Senate.
It means there is limited room for the fudge.
Every year admitted athletes decide not to play – they cannot be compelled. And others walk on. It is normal enough.
The Yale quote was a much bigger number: 300 likelies with 2000 offered admissions overall!!!! That means 30% of the class as Likely Letter athletes.
It varies from between sports and schools, but 2/3 to 3/4 of the varsity athletes in the Ivy League are Likely Letter recruits.