• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Legacy admissions - more favoritism than racial quotas, but no social benefits

TurtleDude said:
When I was in college, I remember having a discussion with our most prominent professor of political Science-Robert Dahl (RIP) who was a well known socialist. He surprised me by saying he completely supported legacy admission preferences. He noted

1) Legacy admissions at Yale actually had higher GPAs than non-legacy admissions
2) because of Legacies, he could afford to work at Yale (he held an endowed professorship) rather than at places like the Rand corporation which paid far more than a top professor at many state schools
3) it builds a sense of continuity that works both ways in that many kids who could have gone to other top schools applied only to Yale knowing they would get in early

racial quotas violate title VII in state schools

based on the information I get from Yale in terms of alumni giving, legacies in my class are more likely to give
Click to expand...

as if Yale needs more ****ing $. Its endowment is larger than many countries. That is seriously the most pathetic excuse i've heard, for a school that wants to be taken seriously

Why don't you explain to us why CalTech, Chicago, UCLA, and Berkeley all dropped legacies. Are they all bitter too, or maybe they're onto something?
 
TurtleDude said:
this shows a tremendous amount of bitterness and a complete bankruptcy of facts

I never had any private tutors. Spoiled-you are assuming anyone who has parents that went to top schools are somehow spoiled. what stupid rot
Click to expand...

Anyone who gets on the Z List at Harvard most definitely has wealthy parents, and over 70% of legacies are from the 1% economically. So yes, if they are 160 points behind on the SAT, they were not only less qualified than the kids from poor background, but were very likely doing so with private tutors and certainly better classroom instruction. That is seriously unimpressive

At my school, only 4% of undergrads are first gen students. It's gotten to the point you don't want to admit you're from a small town or poor background and they even have a support group. Not that others don't figure it out when you keep making excuses for not going on a spring break cruise or spending like mad everywhere you go. This problem of economic inequality infects more than just legacy admissions, but at a place where almost *half* of the students are the kid of a wealthy alum? I can't imagine
 
chromium said:
as if Yale needs more ****ing $. Its endowment is larger than many countries. That is seriously the most pathetic excuse i've heard, for a school that wants to be taken seriously

Why don't you explain to us why CalTech, Chicago, UCLA, and Berkeley all dropped legacies. Are they all bitter too, or maybe they're onto something?
Click to expand...

Two of those schools are public schools. not relevant to yale

the other schools-being private-can do what they want as long as it doesn't violate the law

again why are you so upset? the only possible reason it appears-is that you are arguing you should have been accepted into some school that turned you down and you figure you were more deserving than some legacy or you ASSUME if you had the additions to your scores that you THINK Yale or Harvard gives to legacies you would have been accepted.

but I don't see you whining about blacks or latinos getting even bigger breaks.

I believe that kids who have a connection to a school based on the fact that their parents or brothers or sisters attended do more for that school than admitting kids merely because they fill a racial quota.
 
TurtleDude said:
So what-every kid accepted at Harvard Law School couldn't have gone to say Cornell law school because Cornell only has 175 seats per class and Harvard has 550. Harvard is generally ranked 2-3 and Cornell 7-10.

if your school is so damn exclusive why so much bitterness about Yale and Harvard
Click to expand...

OMG dude, 75% of the public opposes legacy admissions. A huge number of them never went to college and never wanted to. Are they all bitter? You're so blinded you can't see there's a rational and not at all personal reason for opposing these policies from schools that hypocritically and deceptively take pride in accepting only the best of the best
 
chromium said:
you don't think +160 is substantial as well? After being so spoiled and with all the tutors they want all thru high school, the reverse should be the policy frankly, because they *should* do much better than other applicants
Click to expand...

Unless you believe that the purpose of college is righting social wrongs, then the most qualified should be the ones selected. However, the academic world is not perfect. I see +80 as giving someone a leg up based on other than academics.

As you say, the legacy kids, which are not all rich brats, in general have a better foundation for college. Why should that be penalized?
 
TurtleDude said:
Two of those schools are public schools. not relevant to yale

the other schools-being private-can do what they want as long as it doesn't violate the law

again why are you so upset? the only possible reason it appears-is that you are arguing you should have been accepted into some school that turned you down and you figure you were more deserving than some legacy or you ASSUME if you had the additions to your scores that you THINK Yale or Harvard gives to legacies you would have been accepted.

but I don't see you whining about blacks or latinos getting even bigger breaks.

I believe that kids who have a connection to a school based on the fact that their parents or brothers or sisters attended do more for that school than admitting kids merely because they fill a racial quota.
Click to expand...

Public schools want more $ all the time, trust me, and nothing is stopping them from using legacies. Publics like UM and Virginia have legacies. The difference is when challenged in court over the racial quotas, they had to reveal the edge they gave - about 6 points on a 100 scale

I am not whining about blacks or hispanics because that subject has been covered to death, although i did say they graduate at much lower rates and so it doesn't benefit the people it's intended to help either. Nor does the diversity, which i consider only one of many kinds of diversity, help the campus environment. In fact, it seems very toxic. I'm sure at Yale there's a lot of skepticism towards minorities and no one wants to work with them on group projects. I just feel the same way about legacy kids. Suppose your niece would earn her way in anyway. Why on earth wouldn't you prefer that? If there weren't a legacy policy, a 160 point bonus on average, no one would question her presence there. Instead what frequently happens is those kids just hang out with their uncle's kids and the others they knew from high school and the other one percenters. That is *not* what college should be about.

I should also point out Europe doesn't allow this basically at all, re: your socialist friend's comments. Again, maybe they're onto something
 
Last edited:
chromium said:
OMG dude, 75% of the public opposes legacy admissions. A huge number of them never went to college and never wanted to. Are they all bitter? You're so blinded you can't see there's a rational and not at all personal reason for opposing these policies from schools that hypocritically and deceptively take pride in accepting only the best of the best
Click to expand...

who gives a damn what 75% opposes. What is curious is those who fail to get into a school they think they should have been accepted into are the ones whining the most about it.

Don't you think its the school and its alumni who ought to decide admissions policies-not people who have nothing to do with the school.

Some in my class and my yale community are upset with athletic preferences. Or other admissions where someone was really really good at something but didn't have top grades. One of my senior suite mates was not a 4.0 HS student like most of us were. He was more alike a 3.3. he did have perfect boards. Why were his grades so low? because in 6 years (7-12th) he was the national HS chess champion. he came to yale with a 2400 or so rating and came within "one norm" of being a Grand Master by the time he was 20. Now Yale looked at his grades, his SAT scores and the fact that when he was 18 he beat Britain's #1 GM at Lone Pines (a tournament so strong that you had to be an IM to even get into it and by 1980 it was GM only), and figured this guy was brilliant and while his grades weren't awesome his intellect certainly was. So they let him in

he had a mediocre average but helped Yale become the most dominant college chess program in history and he went on to be a brilliant computer program designer.

Yale tried to get a well rounded class meaning diverse excellence in all sorts of endeavors-be it chess, dance, music, and yeah me-I was a world class shooter who won a national title at 19 etc-and was awarded four full varsity letters in what was a club varsity sport because Yale had a provision for doing that for student-athletes who excelled nationally. I remember my interview with the associate Dean of Admissions-the boy who had the interview before me cancelled and we were there early and we talked about sports and chess and interestingly enough table tennis and I was the city jr champion and this guy found this really interesting and said something like the "ping pong team" hasn't beat Harvard in a few years. Well we did and I was #1 singles for almost all my time there. SO being good at stuff not conventional helps at schools like that
 
chromium said:
Public schools want more $ all the time, trust me, and nothing is stopping them from using legacies. Publics like UM and Virginia have legacies. The difference is when challenged in court over the racial quotas, they had to reveal the edge they gave - about 6 points on a 100 scale

I am not whining about blacks or hispanics because that subject has been covered to death, although i did say they graduate at much lower rates and so it doesn't benefit the people it's intended to help either. Nor does the diversity, which i consider only one of many kinds of diversity, help the campus environment. In fact, it seems very toxic. I'm sure at Yale there's a lot of skepticism towards minorities and no one wants to work with them on group projects. I just feel the same way about legacy kids. Suppose your niece would earn her way in anyway. Why on earth wouldn't you prefer that? If there weren't a legacy policy, a 160 point bonus on average, no one would question her presence there. Instead what frequently happens is those kids just hang out with their uncle's kids and the others they knew from high school and the other one percenters. That is *not* what college should be about.

I should also point out Europe doesn't allow this basically at all, re: your socialist friend's comments. Again, maybe they're onto something
Click to expand...

If places like Harvard and Yale didn't do squat for legacies, they wouldn't have the endowments they have now. And as the late and truly great Dr Dahl noted, a few rich kids were the reason why a once poor guy like him could get the degrees he got without being in debt the rest of his life
 
chromium said:
Public schools want more $ all the time, trust me, and nothing is stopping them from using legacies. Publics like UM and Virginia have legacies. The difference is when challenged in court over the racial quotas, they had to reveal the edge they gave - about 6 points on a 100 scale

I am not whining about blacks or hispanics because that subject has been covered to death, although i did say they graduate at much lower rates and so it doesn't benefit the people it's intended to help either. Nor does the diversity, which i consider only one of many kinds of diversity, help the campus environment. In fact, it seems very toxic. I'm sure at Yale there's a lot of skepticism towards minorities and no one wants to work with them on group projects. I just feel the same way about legacy kids. Suppose your niece would earn her way in anyway. Why on earth wouldn't you prefer that? If there weren't a legacy policy, a 160 point bonus on average, no one would question her presence there. Instead what frequently happens is those kids just hang out with their uncle's kids and the others they knew from high school and the other one percenters. That is *not* what college should be about.

I should also point out Europe doesn't allow this basically at all, re: your socialist friend's comments. Again, maybe they're onto something
Click to expand...

Based on your posts one has to wonder what you think college should be about.
 
TurtleDude said:
who gives a damn what 75% opposes. What is curious is those who fail to get into a school they think they should have been accepted into are the ones whining the most about it.

Don't you think its the school and its alumni who ought to decide admissions policies-not people who have nothing to do with the school.

Some in my class and my yale community are upset with athletic preferences. Or other admissions where someone was really really good at something but didn't have top grades. One of my senior suite mates was not a 4.0 HS student like most of us were. He was more alike a 3.3. he did have perfect boards. Why were his grades so low? because in 6 years (7-12th) he was the national HS chess champion. he came to yale with a 2400 or so rating and came within "one norm" of being a Grand Master by the time he was 20. Now Yale looked at his grades, his SAT scores and the fact that when he was 18 he beat Britain's #1 GM at Lone Pines (a tournament so strong that you had to be an IM to even get into it and by 1980 it was GM only), and figured this guy was brilliant and while his grades weren't awesome his intellect certainly was. So they let him in

he had a mediocre average but helped Yale become the most dominant college chess program in history and he went on to be a brilliant computer program designer.

Yale tried to get a well rounded class meaning diverse excellence in all sorts of endeavors-be it chess, dance, music, and yeah me-I was a world class shooter who won a national title at 19 etc-and was awarded four full varsity letters in what was a club varsity sport because Yale had a provision for doing that for student-athletes who excelled nationally. I remember my interview with the associate Dean of Admissions-the boy who had the interview before me cancelled and we were there early and we talked about sports and chess and interestingly enough table tennis and I was the city jr champion and this guy found this really interesting and said something like the "ping pong team" hasn't beat Harvard in a few years. Well we did and I was #1 singles for almost all my time there. SO being good at stuff not conventional helps at schools like that
Click to expand...

SAT is a better indicator of exceptional intelligence than grades obviously. That is why i used SAT scores to demonstrate how unqualified legacy admits are! I do think they have the right to decide who is admitted, but i also have the right to criticize their decisions and question the value of these schools to society and therefore their inclusion in federal financial aid. On the whole they seem to just perpetuate the status quo and transfer of power, and even their medical research has not done much to overcome big pharma for instance

It's also funny you mention extracurriculars, as Yale has cut down greatly on admits for their sports teams, like Chicago and CalTech did long ago. I guess in 2016 your alma mater just doesn't share the same values
 
TurtleDude said:
If places like Harvard and Yale didn't do squat for legacies, they wouldn't have the endowments they have now. And as the late and truly great Dr Dahl noted, a few rich kids were the reason why a once poor guy like him could get the degrees he got without being in debt the rest of his life
Click to expand...

Or we could just do free college, taxing those rich ****s, like much of the rest of the world and there goes that argument. Of course, once Hillary is in office, i certainly hope they have the common sense to condition this tuition free program on *zero* legacy admissions. If Harvard's going to save $150 mil on grants to their few poor students, they should have to drop the legacy admits that supposedly enable those grants. They won't of course because $150 mil out of $40 billion only proves that the grants are not remotely the reason for those legacies. I also strongly believe that without legacies they'd get a ton of donations just the same. A degree from there opens doors to well paying jobs. It's just too bad that access is so cut off from almost everyone not already incredibly spoiled
 
Last edited:
chromium said:
SAT is a better indicator of exceptional intelligence than grades obviously. That is why i used SAT scores to demonstrate how unqualified legacy admits are! I do think they have the right to decide who is admitted, but i also have the right to criticize their decisions and question the value of these schools to society and therefore their inclusion in federal financial aid. On the whole they seem to just perpetuate the status quo and transfer of power, and even their medical research has not done much to overcome big pharma for instance

It's also funny you mention extracurriculars, as Yale has cut down greatly on admits for their sports teams, like Chicago and CalTech did long ago. I guess in 2016 your alma mater just doesn't share the same values
Click to expand...

Lots of us believe that is a mistake. I met with a friend of mine-Head squash Coach Dave Talbott in may and he noted Yale winning the men's national championship for 2016 might be the last since schools like Trinity, St Lawrence, Drexel etc can get top flight foreign players that Yale cannot even recruit and will not admit. I think that is a mistake and I found that some of the top athletes were among the most interesting people at Yale. Again, excellence comes in many forms and its not confined to some grind who makes top grades but has not much else to talk about
 
chromium said:
Or we could just do free college, taxing those rich ****s, like much of the rest of the world and there goes that argument. Of course, once Hillary is in office, i certainly hope they have the common sense to condition this tuition free program on *zero* legacy admissions
Click to expand...

no one should be forced to pay for the education of ungrateful public teat sucklers. Hillary was an affirmative action entry at Yale Law School BTW. I support public HS and I support public vocational schools. I don't support "free college" because way too many people go to college and end up in fields that college had no relevance to.

this entire thread is littered with what appears to be your bitterness over what appears to be an admission decision(s) you didn't like.
 
TurtleDude said:
who gives a damn what 75% opposes. What is curious is those who fail to get into a school they think they should have been accepted into are the ones whining the most about it.

Don't you think its the school and its alumni who ought to decide admissions policies-not people who have nothing to do with the school.

Some in my class and my yale community are upset with athletic preferences. Or other admissions where someone was really really good at something but didn't have top grades. One of my senior suite mates was not a 4.0 HS student like most of us were. He was more alike a 3.3. he did have perfect boards. Why were his grades so low? because in 6 years (7-12th) he was the national HS chess champion. he came to yale with a 2400 or so rating and came within "one norm" of being a Grand Master by the time he was 20. Now Yale looked at his grades, his SAT scores and the fact that when he was 18 he beat Britain's #1 GM at Lone Pines (a tournament so strong that you had to be an IM to even get into it and by 1980 it was GM only), and figured this guy was brilliant and while his grades weren't awesome his intellect certainly was. So they let him in

he had a mediocre average but helped Yale become the most dominant college chess program in history and he went on to be a brilliant computer program designer.

Yale tried to get a well rounded class meaning diverse excellence in all sorts of endeavors-be it chess, dance, music, and yeah me-I was a world class shooter who won a national title at 19 etc-and was awarded four full varsity letters in what was a club varsity sport because Yale had a provision for doing that for student-athletes who excelled nationally. I remember my interview with the associate Dean of Admissions-the boy who had the interview before me cancelled and we were there early and we talked about sports and chess and interestingly enough table tennis and I was the city jr champion and this guy found this really interesting and said something like the "ping pong team" hasn't beat Harvard in a few years. Well we did and I was #1 singles for almost all my time there. SO being good at stuff not conventional helps at schools like that
Click to expand...

I love your term "diversity of excellence". Beats the crap out of any other diversity goal.
 
jimbo said:
I love your term "diversity of excellence". Beats the crap out of any other diversity goal.
Click to expand...

well my brother was an adjunct admissions officer and that is what he was looking for.

I will close tonight with something I remember to this day -I believe I have stated this before

at Yale, our diplomas were given to us by the Dean (usually a tenure track younger professor who lived in one of the 12 residential "colleges") each college had about 120 or so seniors so the Dean-unlike the President of the College-was able to talk about each of the students. The diplomas at my residential dorm were done alphabetically IIRC. I was fairly early and the Dean mentioned I was the first guy (he had been appointed Dean when I was a sophomore) he had in his college that was the #1 in two club varsity sports and was the first student under him to be in the Olympic trials finals. He mentioned I had been top in my department and had other honors. Well a guy who I really didn't know that well-he was a classics major, never did any intramural sports or varsity stuff, not political at all-just a nice guy I didn't know well but he was sitting next to me. The dean noted this guy was Phi Beta Kappa (first election) summa cum laude, with distinction in 2 or three different majors and won several major awards in classics. Well I said DAMN Ben, I wish I had studied a bit harder, that's one hell of a resume there-and he looked at me (I never even knew he had any idea of what sports I had done) and he said to me, well Its cool to go to school with a guy who was a champion shooter and came close to the olympic team-I remember it raining sleet and seeing you walk over to the gym (where we took a van to the range 45 minutes away) with what was probably you shotgun in a case and said to myself-damn that guy is dedicated. that was said to me a bit more than 35 years ago and I remember as if it was yesterday. and I remember at our 25th I went up to Ben and recalled this discussion and he said-yeah isn't it great we can be so different (he was teaching at the LSE iirc) and yet we could appreciate that each of us was really good in something?
 
chromium said:
Or we could just do free college, taxing those rich ****s, like much of the rest of the world and there goes that argument. Of course, once Hillary is in office, i certainly hope they have the common sense to condition this tuition free program on *zero* legacy admissions. If Harvard's going to save $150 mil on grants to their few poor students, they should have to drop the legacy admits that supposedly enable those grants. They won't of course because $150 mil out of $40 billion only proves that the grants are not remotely the reason for those legacies. I also strongly believe that without legacies they'd get a ton of donations just the same. A degree from there opens doors to well paying jobs. It's just too bad that access is so cut off from almost everyone not already incredibly spoiled
Click to expand...

College is never free. What you propose is OPM funded college. I reject that proposal.

I don't get your objection to a few students being given a minor leg up to enable attendance at a school where your parents. I've got two grand children that went that route. Neither got any scholarship other than small accomplishment based scholarships. Both enjoyed the benefits of parents that cared enough to give them what they needed. Both are doing well. One graduated and had a $60 K + entry level job waiting. The other is a straight A sophomore. Why is that a bad thing? Especially when weighed against the academically unqualified that are there based solely on gender, income level or race. As you point out these groups often have far lower graduation rates.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom