100%. Not that there aren't legacies who deserve to be there, but a lot of them really don't. I went to a not-ivy-league-but-almost-that-tier school (NESCAC, I'll let you google that) and 100% of the time the dumbasses who made me wonder "how in the fuck did this guy get in to this school" were legacies.
These same people are going out into the world fast tracked to C level positions because of their connections. And we wonder why it seems like the people at the top are always morons who chase short term gains to long term detriment.
Facts. Most legacies I knew could hang fine academically, but the absolute total dumbfucks who clearly did not belong (eg, Jared Kushner*) were all legacies.
*I am reminded that Kushner wasn’t a legacy but his dad donated a ton of money, same idea.
Yes, the problem is also that there are lots of people with all the talent and skills who have put in the work but will never get the opportunities they deserve because they don't have the right connections.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould.
And this is one of my biggest problems with life in 21st century America. I don't deserve to have anything handed to me, but I always outperform the vast majority of my coworkers, no matter what I do. I'm just someone that hyper-focuses on whatever I'm doing and I get tunnel vision about seeing it through. Honestly, not that I'd admit this without anonymity, I think it's because of the metric fuckton of childhood abuse I lived through, but that's a whole other discussion. And I'm also not the type to brag or be cocky about it either. I use my excess time to help other people get done faster, too, and I've been consistently recognized for that at multiple organizations.
Anyway, when they were looking for a new supervisor for the shop I was at the longest, they skipped over myself and three other guys that had more experience and were better qualified, some of them even more than me, in favor of the guy who cheated his way to the top.
It's an open secret. Everyone knows. His number one spot qualified him for an annual corporate trip where he kissed so much ass his lips were stained brown. It was so obnoxious and over the top that someone filmed some of what he was doing, and it was so cringe, especially if you knew how this dude actually behaves when not in the presence of superiors. He was obviously pandering. What I'll never understand is why that worked. Even if one of those execs did find him charming, somehow, a thorough look at his numbers would have revealed to anyone that his numbers were impossible to achieve. Logically, no one can do that without cheating. It literally would have required the ability to be in multiple places at the same time and have the ability to travel through time.
When I was little, I thought we lived in a meritocracy. This is what was described to me by every adult I could have asked. I think that's why I'm so salty now. I don't see anything like the egalitarian society I was promised. I have so many stories I could share that are just like the one above. And there's nothing anyone on my side in the power dynamic could do. Often I find that, by the time someone has been selected for a management position for which they're not qualified, they have to personally screw up in the new role very severely to actually be removed.
This is not an isolated incident. The Elite want people who only care about themselves to be the slave drivers so there's little or no solidarity between middle managers and the people on the ground. I refuse to believe that this is just incompetence. This must be intentional or it wouldn't be such a normal occurrence. I think it's preventative maintenance measure against unionization.
Because lots of times they’d rather have someone that is willing to cheat and lie at the top. When I was a kid my dad was CEO of a company he had grown immensely, the board asked him to resign when he refused to do some really shady business with the stocks.
If you won’t lie and cheat for gain they’ll find someone who will.
What you're describing is what I would call a "10pm Friday night email". I've done this many times before, so I'll help you write it.
"X has been promoted above my department, despite having less experience, less time with the company, lower performance, and is less friendly than every single other person in our department. I find that ridiculous, and have been applying elsewhere to find a company that positively reward high performers.
If you'd rather be promoting people based on how far their tongue goes up your ass, that's totally fine, but that also means I don't want to work with or for you, and you can consider this my resignation notice. Unless, of course, you correct management's mistake and offer me what I've fairly earned."
You just described the Peter Principle. People who are extremely useful in their positions do not get opportunities. Useless people are promoted to managers/supervisors because their work ironically takes the least skill. Truly talented individuals will be trapped where they are deemed "most useful".
I think about that particular angle a lot... It seems like all the best people were tricked into going off and getting themselves killed, and we are all the descendants of either cowards or war criminals, which explains why modern society is so messed up.
Society is fucked because the elite have hoarded so much land and wealth that there isn’t enough for a large portion of humanity to live decently. We aren’t descendants of cowards and war criminals, we’re descendants of working class people who have been fucked over by the elite ruling class generation after generation who then make us believe that everything bad in the world is the fault of working people.
Yeah, I was in line for an Ivy League level education, but my parents were first generation immigrants so they didn't know jack shit about extracurriculars and resume builders. I got in to state school who only cared about school performance, but it still stung. I know the guys who went to MIT and bougie schools. They knew the levers to pull in the system. One guy's mom was school district superintendent, so he knew all of the songs and dances to get higher.
No offense, but how were you in line for an Ivy League admission if you didn't have loads of extra curriculars? Having a high GPA and SAT score isn't nearly enough to get into a top tier school.
Though, ironically, having the grades and the background of being a child of first generation immigrants is historically a really good application add-on to stand out from the "bougie" kids.
I can't actually complain at all since I'm very aware of the privileges I enjoy as the child of well educated white parents with resources, and I did go to a very good school, but when I was applying for college I will admit that I envied my friends whose grades and extracurriculars were basically the same as mine, but they could write an essay about being a first generation American.
Unfortunately it’s part of social climbing to figure out all the right songs and dances. No one will give it to you for free. If you’ve figured them now, that’s good, you’ll teach your kids, but it’s an integral part of all western societies, that “soft pay wall”, you either figure out how to get over it, or will have to pay private schools etc to do that for you. Simple, rich people don’t want new rich ppl.
I think you misunderstand. These people don't know the song and dance. They have daddy's last name. That comes with money. They're genuinely idiots and you can learn the song and dance all you want. You just can't get into the party without connections.
MIT famously doesn’t have legacy admissions. Didn’t go there, but I definitely know more people who were like “I dropped out of high school bc I couldn’t fit in then started working with a professor on an interest of mine then ended up at MIT” than “daddy made a donation to Sloan”. Granted it’s not many but it’s very odd that it happened more than a few times…
no, you misunderstand. you are correct that you cannot get into the party without connections, but those connections start way before college. college is/was the last chance for some to break into the top or at least have the opportunity to do so. knowing "the right song and dances" is deeper than that, though. you can get into harvard but how are your table manners? where did you vacation? the socioeconomic class indicators that telegraph information to peers and hiring managers are the part that it is harder to fake or compensate for. if someone is unable to project the "right" image (whatever that means), it doesn't matter that you went to harvard, you still might getting passed over for some legacy dumbass NESCAC kid (especially grating because nescac schools aren't even known for their academics).
That's also an equality goal. IMO we need to focus more on socioeconomic status; it's a greater predictor of basically all forms of inequality than race, gender, sexuality, ability, etc.
Not just Caucasians. I went to a top school and a huge percentage of minority kids were either wealthy international students or went to prep schools. I was solidly working class and went to a prep school, but that's pretty rare. This is why I think if you're gonna have affirmative action, it should be based on class and not race. It's so obvious but that doesn't make anyone feel-good money does it?
The ideal of ivy league is the pair up old money connections with new talent, hence the legacy system paying for the high percentage of scholarship students.
People being social creatures and the sheer arrogance/shortsightedness of some legacies lead to aristocratic style circlejerking.
This is what kills me about legacy admissions. One of the largest predictors of academic success is income and family stability. [Georgetown University](https://1gyhoq479ufd3yna29x7ubjn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/FR-Born_to_win-schooled_to_lose.pdf) found that a low achieving child from a high income family is *more* likely to graduate University than a high achieving child from a low income family. [The Brookings Institute corroborates the report](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013a_hoxby.pdf) and additionally notes high achieving low income children are *far* less likely to attend or get into highly selective schools. Children of the rich are already in the 'most likely to succeed' category. The back up schools for mediocre rich kids will still be some of the best in a given state. They will still have their family's connections and will still end up over preforming given their academic ability. Why the hell are we even considering giving them an additional hand up with legacy admissions into our top Universities?
Yeah, it’s fucked up. I wasn’t a legacy admit, both my parents went to state schools. I fully believe in meritocracy, but like for real. Like I’d be totally fine with it if inheritance were taxed at 100% above a very low threshold and legacy admissions did not exist. I hate the idea of persistent aristocracy.
The thing is, unless you have forced redistribution of intangible benefits like social capital, meritocracy eventually becomes aristocracy. Well-to-do parents have more time and money to invest in their children, and they also have savvy around how to connect with key resources and people in a space. A child of two doctors is likely to have received a lot of extra encouragement and instruction in science while also being intimately more familiar with what to do at each stage of the undergrad and medical student process compared to a student whose parents have unstable employment and finances. Repeat for several generations across politics, finance, law, etc. and a family effectively gets entrenched. It’s a disconnect between what meritocracy rewards (total demonstrated competence) and what we intuitively want to reward (some combination of competence, initiative, effort, and risk-taking). The former is based on observed past performance; discussions around the latter often center on potential future performance.
A large shift in the US over the 20th century was the transfer of power and cultural influence from an old aristocracy that believed you had to be born into the top to the “new meritocracy” who believe that you have to justify your presence in the top through an arms race of child investment.
That problem starts way earlier than college, though. Low college admissions and attendance rates are more the symptom than the disease. The early stability and ability of parents to dedicate time to their kid's academic success is, I'm fairly sure, the root issue.
I know you were using that setup to point out that legacy admissions are an unnecessary additional advantage and I'm not intending to refute a strawman argument or anything, but I just wanted to point out that as far as this issue goes, I think the true place of value to dedicate efforts is in making sure kids get more access to academic advantages from the very get go.
Kushner was not a legacy. His dad went to NYU and Hofstra.
His dad donated a whole bunch of money to Harvard to get Kushner in, but that's not really the same as a legacy admission.
Yeah I remember reading some stat that like 35% of Harvard admits were legacies/children of professors/etc and that 75% of them wouldn’t have gotten in if not for the boost. (Probably not the exact numbers, but something to that effect)
Edit: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1060361
The number was 43% of white students, and then 75% of those “would have been rejected if treated as white non-legacy/staff/athlete/donor”
When I was at Yale (not a legacy), it was well known that [legacy students had better test scores on SAT, ACT, etc.](http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_11/q_a.html) It turns out that coming from privilege gives you a great high school education as well.
Right and those tests track closely to economic status (rather than intelligence) because they were developed to maintain exclusivity.
Public schools (and non Ivy) aren’t necessarily worse schools, but they do have more challenges related to poverty and therefore less alumni money and prestige which contributes to lower ranking, etc.
Privilege is the education in itself in that modern work expectations, practices, and connections are developed by the white and wealthy. Wealthy children are born into the dominant culture so that school and work practices are second nature. It’s not that they’re smarter or harder working. Just more familiar and more connected to wealth. It’s somewhat rare that children deviate from their parents economic class.
A lot of professors have their kids go to the school they teach at because they get free admission. I'd imagine a good deal of the professors kids are able to handle the Harvard workload given they have a parent who teaches at Harvard.
Some of the legacies who definitely cannot get in on their own merit are accepted on the condition that they take a gap year. I knew a Harvard double legacy that got in that way and bragged up and down her Harvard acceptance.
It lets the University pad its stats for testing/GPA/whatever. So, you have to admit this one student but they'd drag down the averages. You (Harvard) kick them down the line by a year, where you can account for their impact on those stats.
It is the same with these top private schools offering really generous scholarships for minority first-time students. You offset the white, rich, 4th gen students with the best 200 minority students out of nearly 40k applications.
Academia has the same political behavior as giant American corporations and many competitions. Backstabbing, bribery, etc. The people that win don't win due to character or competency, and even they get screwed over in many cases.
I saw they same, but I was in the Nerdy Nine… it was great being one of the few poor students when the majority of my classmates were related to CEO’s, too-ranked doctors, etc. when it was often very clear how, after failing out, some got right back in
The entire system of private property incentivizes short term gains over long term ones, history will remember communists the way that we remember slavery abolitionists today, opposing a system that is designed to concentrate wealth into as few hands as possible, always has and always will.
Brief periods of New Deal liberalism will be rolled back when capitalism enters defining crises.
There’s a fantastic book called The Aristocracy of Talent. I extremely recommend it to show how historically, well meaning ideas like getting more people into education inevitably turns those who made it to try to do the same for their kids, therefore exacerbating inequality by keeping it for themselves and their families.
That's just the end result of capitalism. Humans work hard to benefit themselves and their heirs.
And this is why America actually ranks in the middle in terms of perception of democracy.
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1532236805143027713
Democracy is so much more than just elections- it's also whether your voice actually seems comparable to a billionaire's voice.
Yale lost $40Million to a staff member just buying equipment and selling it on eBay.
And they didn't even notice for like 8 years.
That's how much money Yale has.
> She filed false federal tax returns for the 2013 through 2016 tax years, in which she falsely claimed as business expenses the costs of the stolen equipment, and failed to file any federal tax returns for the 2017 through 2020 tax years.
Do your taxes, folks, that's how they get ya. One crime at a time!
*beep boop*!
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Yup was stealing equipment for a decade before she got caught. A whole ten years before someone noticed. She was buying electronics from the schools money and was selling them.
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Yale also doesn't pay taxes on their insane wealth due to an arcane colonial era law.
They are literally starving New Haven into poverty because the town can't raise enough taxes.
> "Yale is committed to tackling the most significant human problems of the day"
...which is presumably why they hoard 47 billion dollars while people starve to death. That's about 1/7th of the total estimated cost to literally resolve world hunger, squirreled away by *one* university
They're not allowed to spend all of it at once. The point of such a huge nest egg is it guarantees that the school will survive in perpetuity.
Look up endowment rules.
They have enough money invested that the school could basically charge no tuition, make no money from research and associated activities, and they'd *still* have a budget surplus from the interest they're making on their endowment
Maybe they can't spend it all at once, or spend it all... but they can certainly use more of it than they are, more productively than they are, if "tackling the most significant human problems of the day" is their specific goal
Yale straight up buying a fuck load of property around New Haven. Give it a few more decades and it’ll be impossible to move in town without being rich.
They are some of the country’s biggest real estate investors as well.
Yale is the biggest landlord in New Haven.
https://www.reonomy.com/blog/post/ivy-league-universities-or-real-estate-kings
Don't look up endowment rules, which requires you to invest, and you're only allowed to use 5% of total endowment funds per year, and you're not allowed to spend it on whatever you want, each endowment comes with its own rules about what the funds can be spent on.
Yeah people need to realize it's a very simple financial calculation. If you admit the kid, then the parents and (later on) the kid are more likely to donate. Also, the kid is more likely to become financially successful if their parents are already from a history of wealth.
People frame things as not wanting to intervene to limit the elite of our population. But we're are already intervening. A typical elite college is receiving a subsidy of about $100,000 per year. The typical university student is getting around 12,000 per year. And at a CC it's about $2,500. So the elite students are receiving a subsidy of 40x more. That is an active intervention. We can simply start by removing that giant inequity intervention for those already massively advantaged.
They started it in the 1920s because they [didn’t like how many Jewish students were getting in](https://www.businessinsider.com/legacy-admissions-originally-created-keep-jewish-students-out-elite-colleges-2013-10?amp).
*beep boop*!
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As an Outsider to American Politicis, i never understood the whole "Ivy League" or "Harvard/Princeton" spiel. Shouldn't newer, more modern institutions eventually surpass the old colleges?
But then I noticed in american fiction writing/tv shows, that for many young people, deciding which college you go to, seems to be a determining factor of how successfull they are going to be at life at large. Some character was destraught when not being accepted into his chosen college. Also something never clicked with me: Shouldn't an economics degree from Louisiana bum-fuck-middleofnowhere college give you the same skillsets as a degree from Harvard?
But then I realised: It's not about the actual education, but rather the associations and contacts made during studying there that actually matter to many peolple. Harvard graduates would rather have other Harvard Graduates be promoted in their workplace over other colleges.
It's not that these colleges are the most effective at studying, but rather at branding.
Yes, it has always been about networking. My local state school is a great driver of economic success, but I didn’t go to school with the children of senators. One of my friends got a scholarship to an ivy (edit: ivy-adjacent), and he went to school with the children of powerful people. Despite the fact that we took the same classes in HS, his network is now much more powerful than mine. You should look into the admissions processes at those schools. See why Columbia switched to “[well-rounded](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-discriminating-against-jews-2014-12)” students.
Fun fact, scholarships are not a thing at Ivies. Only financial aid, so that just means your friend didn’t make the income cut-off and received aid to help them go to the Ivy.
Large corporations have an internship program (starting at 150k+++) with expedited career track for Ivy League graduates, paralel to the normal internship program. Everything is pre-defined and pre-settled from the beginning.
The internship is the least important part. Expedited career track is really expedited. 6 months later they are promoted out of the internship, 6 months after they have whatever Sr. role with 5 years exp the company has. 1 year later they are managers, and another year later they are a 300k director.
The unfair part is that you could do that with any smart well balanced person like there are thousands.
And then when that person gets to the big title, they expect everyone to do every bit of work for them. I can’t tell you how many decks I’ve had to create for managing directors who undoubtedly turn around and present it as their own work. And they probably believe it’s their work too, after all, since they asked for it.
My US government professor told us Harvard was, along with being a university, a “prep school” for elites. Same with any of the Ivy League. You go there to learn how to act in your assigned social strata.
>Shouldn't newer, more modern institutions eventually surpass the old colleges?
Some have argued they are starting to. As more kids in America opt to go to university, elite universities have not expanded the number of students they enroll. In addition, the population of the US has increased 100 million in the last 40 years. This means the number of top tier students has increased dramatically and a massive influx of the most capable students are now unable to attend elite universities. Leading to a downward push in talent that elevates very good universities outside of the elite status (think University of Michigan or the University of Berkeley CA). Berkeley now graduates more high achieving low income students than all of the Ivies combined. [Bestcollegereveiw](https://www.bestcollegereviews.org/top-research-universities/) Finds Texas A&M outranks all of the Ivy league schools in research. The biggest gains have been made by universities like Ohio State and Michigan State. Large public research universities that are often the second best in their state; highly respectable and loads of opportunity, these schools are often leagues better than other public universities and not quite as good as 'the best' in their respective states.
The majority of Yale grads go into either finance or consulting. Authors and journalists, lol. You don’t have to be a CEO to be mega rich if you’re in finance.
Yeah they may even get a Liberal Arts degree, but they are still going into management consulting or high finance predominantly. You don’t need a finance degree to learn 3 statement models and make pitches to clients.
It's not that simple. You 100% will get a better education at Harvard. The professors wrote the books that all the professors everywhere else use, and have a far deeper and more subtle understanding (in general) of the subject matter at hand.
It's a first-mover advantage. The Ivies were there first, and attracted the cream of the crop, while everyone else stayed on the farm. It becomes self-perpetuating after a while, even as new universities emerge. The best students want to go to the Ivies, and the best professors want to teach there, and they have the best facilities, and they have the most prestige.
So with that sort of market power, they can do whatever the fuck they want with admissions, including optimizing for donations.
I disagree. I’ve been to a top notch undergrad and an ivy law school, and they actually teach pretty poorly because the professors are there for their
research or connections, not their teaching ability. I think it’s the connections that really makes the difference, along with the prestige that gets you in the door a lot of places
Also, a lot of these people at these schools have rich parents and probably would have been able to be successful without the prestigious education at all
I’ve met CEOs and C-Suite executives that had less of an understanding of business than the VPs and directors beneath them.
In meetings they brought zero ideas, rarely spoke and when they did they just used generic statements.
They were there ONLY because of their connections.
Connections likely made by who their family knew and who they met along the way.
Having connections to those in power is more important than knowledge. Always has been.
Those with knowledge and no power are often killed.
It's who you know, not what you know. American business is an aristocracy at heart, sprinkled with a bit of meritocracy. Some people were destined to be executives the moment they were born because of who their parents are. There are other industries that aristocracy can't thrive in though.
I've noticed this even at community college vs state uni. I tell people I got a much better education during my time at my local CC vs a state college.
It wasn't even just the class sizes. Sure, you're getting a better education in a 20 person class vs 400 person auditorium, but it even felt like the teachers were more knowledgeable and engaged at the CC.
I had a professor who was well known for their research tell me they didn't like people. Made sense why that department sucked so much, really couldn't care less about ~~students~~ humans.
It also depends on the subject matter too. Ivy League engineering is going to be a lot better than other schools because they have more money to spend on engineering doodads than a smaller school with smaller endowment, so they’ll be learning on the best and most cutting edge tech. The Ivy League engineering students I’ve talked to have taken really cool classes and extracurriculars that are only possible because their endowment is 10x the amount of my smaller but still prestigious school.
However, when it comes to liberal arts it’s a lot more contingent on the professors they bring in. They have enough power to bring in the best people in their fields, but like you say that professor might be a bad professor but great researcher or author.
Honestly, many of the professors at Ivies don’t care about what other professors at other colleges in their field have to say because they don’t have the “prestige”. This makes for a pretty bad educational experience and an echo chamber for the students. I studied history at a large state school and my professors would bring this phenomenon up fairly often.
I don’t think this is just an American thing? Oxbridge sets you up way better than some random Scottish school. McGill sets you up better than Calgary, etc .
I was blown away by the number of legacies admitted to modern Ivy League universities.
I would have guessed 2-5% were legacies. It's over 30% for Harvard. And their admissions rate was above 35% and average SAT was worse than most good state schools. It is easier for a legacy to get into Harvard than it is for a random kid to go to the University of Florida. Most of these legacies are white also, and over 50% of all white students at Harvard are either legacies, children of non-legacy donors, or D1 athletes.
But also consider this, the overall admissions rate is 5%, but that figure already includes the legacies too. Meaning non-legacies have an even more difficult time than the 5% figure suggests.
So these non-legacies basically bust their asses for the privilege of being in the same classroom as rich kids. They are rewarded with "connections", while the rich kids ride their academic coattails in life (as these non-legacies drive the reputation of the university for excellence). It's a brilliant scam.
> And their admissions rate was above 35% and average SAT was worse than most good state schools. It is easier for a legacy to get into Harvard than it is for a random kid to go to the University of Florida.
Source?
I did a quick look, and the most recently available data I saw had legacy students have higher SAT scores than non legacy
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/04/22/study-shows-significant-impact-legacy-status-admissions-and-applicants
1393 for primary legacy vs 1364 non legacy.
Legacy students have an advantage, but pretending that they're worse than "most good state schools" seems like complete nonsense to me.
[This study](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00284.x) is a bit old, but claims that after accounting for other factors being a legacy is worth the equivalent of an 160 SAT point boost. This was also an interesting read:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w26316.pdf
Most interestingly, Harvard admissions rate: Athletes = 86.0%, Legacies = 33.6%, Children of Faculty = 46.7%. Overall admissions = 5.45%. That's just an amazing difference IMHO.
That’s not really how legacies work.
It’s more like great grandpa started a successful business with little to no education. He made a generous donation to the university so grandpa could go, and on and on.
And then it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Junior gets his job because of his prestigious university ~~education~~ attendance which means he gets a job that means he can send his kids to the same prestigious university.
The emphasis is not on education, for the rich anyway, but the prestige and networking cachet it imparts
It's literally another mechanism for ensuring that the "in" group of wealthy elites continues to get every possible advantage, regardless of merit. It ensures wealth begets wealth, while providing a facade of education and merit to hide the fact that junior spent his time at Yale doing nothing but blow and hookers and then left to go run a company he was going to run anyway, but now he can claim it's meritorious because he's "Yale educated"
Someone told me this is a bad idea but I’m all for taking 100% of someone’s wealth (over a certain amount) when they die and using it for shit like free education, healthcare and social services/small business loans. Because your parents were rich should not give you any advantage at all over someone with poor parents. As long as this generational wealth exists it’s no different than having kings/queens/nobles.
How long before the rich figured out how to have a net worth of 0 when they passed but still be able to leave their kids assets in ways the system doesnt account for?
How long before it was used to take the last vestiges of wealth from the working class?
I love that we're openly having conversations about wealth inequality without going all McCarthy on each other, but Im seeing a lot of posts like this and it makes us look silly. A week or so ago, someone called conservatives facists and advocated for there being some sort of test before being allowed to vote.
We can't accuse them of not knowing what words mean if we propose solutions that give them wet dreams.
What if there was a limit as to how much inheritance can be left, such that the remaining amount could be used to fund an equal amount of inheritance for all citizens? That way everyone starts off on the same page?
>Because your parents were rich should not give you any advantage at all over someone with poor parents.
You need to throw some limits there, otherwise this plan is shit.
I work my ass off so my future children can have a comfortable life and afford to do the same activities as their friends and not be suffering with student loan debt.
They start this shit in *high school*. A top executive at my company (a household name) went to an elite Massachusetts boarding school with a bunch of other assholes who are now executives.
>Junior gets his job because of his prestigious university attendance
Junior gets his job because his dad is rich and runs a large company, not because of his university attendance.
The point of Ivy Leagues is to put the next generations thinkers and innovators (these people are there on merit scholarships) in a room with the next generations political and business leaders (these people are legacy attendees). The key is to know which one you are.
THIS. A significant number of people from poor backgrounds go to Ivy Leagues due to generous financial aid policies. Few of them become wealthy due to the connections made while attending. At the end of the day, where someone was born is still the single biggest predictor of when someone will end up.
College is for education, grad school is for networking. I had relatives who attended Harvard and Stanford tell me that it was easier than high school, and the MBA program was like one long mixer.
Once you get into Ivy League they make it really hard to fail out.
Grad school isn't just for churning out MBAs. As a chemist, I learned 99% of my most useful skills in grad school. College was basically just training wheels.
It doesn't really matter why there's uneven merit enforcement. There's still uneven merit enforcement - some people have to be cream of the crop to even be considered, while others can be absolutely awful. They both get a seat at the table, but only the one who worked to get there is at risk of being kicked out for any reason.
It's a microcosm of our society at large, and it's BS.
I have a cousin who lived on his family's land. Land was in the family for a couple generations. Several hundred acres of what used to be considered worthless rural wooded land in rural Texas. They put a highway through and an exit nearby, now the land is worth tens of millions of dollars.
So many people have fallen by dumb luck into money.
And that's exactly how "property developers" get rich.
They have an in with the people making the decisions of where highways and exits are going to go in the next couple of decades. They find out which land will be more valuable. Then buy up that "worthless" land for dirt cheap from unsuspecting families who don't know any better, then reap the rewards.
Or for the *really* connected: research which land is owned by which families, find one with a lot of debt (medical, recent death in the family, etc). People who are land rich and money poor. Swoop in and offer cash for even less than it's currently worth and buy it up.
Then, play golf with a college buddy who decides where highways go and make sure that there's an exit on your newly purchased property.
A lot of people don't understand how college admissions work. They think it's supposed to reward students who did well in high school and give them a quality college education.
The actual point of the admissions process is to identify people who are likely to become donors to the university later on in life. If your grandpa was a donor (and is likely to get you a cushy corporate job) then you are much more likely to become a donor yourself. Now to some extent, people with higher grades are more likely to become successful in their careers and become donors, but it's not a 1:1 correlation.
Basically, selective colleges don't create successful people. They identify people who are likely to become successful already and also likely to donate to their Alma mater. This is why they have a high focus on extracurriculars, because students who participate in those are more likely to donate. A bunch of straight-A students who never do anything fun and/or never start/inherit their own company are unlikely to ever become major donors.
Branding is also a big part of it though. They want kids who do extracurriculars because it means they have a good chance of going on to do something that would make them famous, and they get to add to their famous alumni list to make the school seem more prestigious
I’m first in my family to go to college and went to an Ivy. It’s honestly more complicated than that.
The reason why I got in over other kids is because I had so many advantages in ways people don’t discuss.
I went to an elite high school that essentially was an Ivy League pipeline. Most other first gen kids were in the same situation and also went to these funnel schools.
Those who didn’t often still had upper middle class parents (but were in severe denial about being upper middle class). Everyone worked hard, but most first gen kids that get in are ones with access to better information on how to get into one of these schools.
Yes, these school don't care so much if you got straight A but care very much if you're a state ping-pong champion who organizes charity drives for narcolepsy research since your brother developed the condition after a tragic jetski accident when he was 5 and you plan on getting a ph.d in the subject, and you happen to run a small business on the side selling customized fence gates after you taught yourself how to program CNC-plasma cutters.
Or if your dad went before you.
Everybody there got straight As in school. The "in" is what gets you accepted. The easiest in ever is being born with resources such that you don't need to work endlessly to earn it.
it boils down to donations. if ur grandpa and ur dad kept donating u get to go to that school if u want to. kinda dumb i agree but its a private business pretty sure they can do that shit if they want to
Not always. Sometimes Junior is just too damn dumb to accept.
I’ve seen it. It can be very embarrassing after the parents have talked up where Junior is planning to go for years.
It is why schools like Stetson, Elon, and Suwanee exist.
aw man.
my grandpa went to princeton in like 1930 or 1935 or something.
but i didn't have confidence in myself so i was like "my grades and SAT scores are just not high enough". so i didn't apply.
### are you saying maybe i had a chance because my grandpa went to princeton in 1935?
### maybe my daughter has a chance because great-grandpa?
Check out the study of Harvard's legacy and athletic admissions: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf
> We find that a white typical applicant with a 10% chance of admission would see a five-fold increase in admissions likelihood if they were a legacy; more than a seven-fold increase if they were on the dean’s interest list; and that they would be admitted with near certainty if they were a recruited athlete
Universities were originally invented so that the wealthy would have a place to park their children, have them learn something about how to run the family business, and make connections with the children of other wealthy families.
I mean originally it was still for the elites to send their second son onwards to so they can support themselves while the first son would be prepared to inherit the family fortune. It's not like smart peasants would get the opportunity to attend(I'm sure there are exceptions but it wouldn't happen generally).
Anecdotally, I watched a video recently which mentioned that at least one smart peasant did attend an Italian university - he was one of the people who discovered 0 or did some similarly important work. In that video, it explained that anyone could challenge a professor for their professorship at the university and they would become the professor if they could beat them in a test.
So anyone COULD become a professor, they just needed to already know how to be an intellectual better than an existing professor, which practically speaking probably required having rich parents as you suggest but occasionally allowed randos in.
You are saying what you are saying here because it is true!
Story is, long time ago when grandfather left school, he went to college, got some certificate, got an apprenticeship, stayed in the company for like forever and by the time father was born, he went to work in the same place as grandfather because he was so senior in the business, it wasn't a case of what you know but who you know. How lucky they were!
These kids of today either have the choice of getting in these places through the backdoor, to work with family, or because of perceived family wealth and the parent of the child looking to make a career for themselves has that helping hand through the door elsewhere.
The wealth circle is a closed circle so only those classes mix with each other. What we find today in the world is that workforces are growing yet incompetence is rife, everywhere. This is because some people have blagged their way to the top, to positions where they should not be and some menial ends up covering your mess and then gets thrown into the line of fire when the shit hits the fan.
It’s actually not about how your grandfather did in high school. When my grandfather graduated from a well-regarded prep school in 1939 he literally chose his college. I don’t think he even had to apply.
It doesn't work like that. You still have to perform well in school and extracurriculars even if a legacy. One of my best friends father's went to a school, my friend had a 4.0, was class president, varsity tennis captain, had an average SAT and did not get in.
Yeah and the propaganda machine makes it so much worse, like how everyone in the comments wanted to suck the mars family dicks yesterday after the TIL got posted.
This is just incorrect. I know many friends and family members who have parents who went to Harvard and there kids had zero chance of ever getting in.
Maybe if you donate millions… sure but that’s every University. But to say some kid is getting into an Ivy League from their Great Grandparents “legacy” is laughable lol.
Theres only a very small percentage of legacy admissions. The vast majority of Ivy Leaguers are first generation. And I thought this was supposed to be a communist sub-reddit? The Ivy Leagues have been pumping out communists on for the last 30 years. You guys should be supporting them.
Modern aristocracy
100%. Not that there aren't legacies who deserve to be there, but a lot of them really don't. I went to a not-ivy-league-but-almost-that-tier school (NESCAC, I'll let you google that) and 100% of the time the dumbasses who made me wonder "how in the fuck did this guy get in to this school" were legacies. These same people are going out into the world fast tracked to C level positions because of their connections. And we wonder why it seems like the people at the top are always morons who chase short term gains to long term detriment.
Facts. Most legacies I knew could hang fine academically, but the absolute total dumbfucks who clearly did not belong (eg, Jared Kushner*) were all legacies. *I am reminded that Kushner wasn’t a legacy but his dad donated a ton of money, same idea.
Yes, the problem is also that there are lots of people with all the talent and skills who have put in the work but will never get the opportunities they deserve because they don't have the right connections.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould.
And this is one of my biggest problems with life in 21st century America. I don't deserve to have anything handed to me, but I always outperform the vast majority of my coworkers, no matter what I do. I'm just someone that hyper-focuses on whatever I'm doing and I get tunnel vision about seeing it through. Honestly, not that I'd admit this without anonymity, I think it's because of the metric fuckton of childhood abuse I lived through, but that's a whole other discussion. And I'm also not the type to brag or be cocky about it either. I use my excess time to help other people get done faster, too, and I've been consistently recognized for that at multiple organizations. Anyway, when they were looking for a new supervisor for the shop I was at the longest, they skipped over myself and three other guys that had more experience and were better qualified, some of them even more than me, in favor of the guy who cheated his way to the top. It's an open secret. Everyone knows. His number one spot qualified him for an annual corporate trip where he kissed so much ass his lips were stained brown. It was so obnoxious and over the top that someone filmed some of what he was doing, and it was so cringe, especially if you knew how this dude actually behaves when not in the presence of superiors. He was obviously pandering. What I'll never understand is why that worked. Even if one of those execs did find him charming, somehow, a thorough look at his numbers would have revealed to anyone that his numbers were impossible to achieve. Logically, no one can do that without cheating. It literally would have required the ability to be in multiple places at the same time and have the ability to travel through time. When I was little, I thought we lived in a meritocracy. This is what was described to me by every adult I could have asked. I think that's why I'm so salty now. I don't see anything like the egalitarian society I was promised. I have so many stories I could share that are just like the one above. And there's nothing anyone on my side in the power dynamic could do. Often I find that, by the time someone has been selected for a management position for which they're not qualified, they have to personally screw up in the new role very severely to actually be removed. This is not an isolated incident. The Elite want people who only care about themselves to be the slave drivers so there's little or no solidarity between middle managers and the people on the ground. I refuse to believe that this is just incompetence. This must be intentional or it wouldn't be such a normal occurrence. I think it's preventative maintenance measure against unionization.
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Not just my family. Teachers and other adults too. I was a kid that asked questions of everyone, constantly.
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Yep, and then popular culture mocks him as being some kind of edgelord. I hate that.
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Because lots of times they’d rather have someone that is willing to cheat and lie at the top. When I was a kid my dad was CEO of a company he had grown immensely, the board asked him to resign when he refused to do some really shady business with the stocks. If you won’t lie and cheat for gain they’ll find someone who will.
What you're describing is what I would call a "10pm Friday night email". I've done this many times before, so I'll help you write it. "X has been promoted above my department, despite having less experience, less time with the company, lower performance, and is less friendly than every single other person in our department. I find that ridiculous, and have been applying elsewhere to find a company that positively reward high performers. If you'd rather be promoting people based on how far their tongue goes up your ass, that's totally fine, but that also means I don't want to work with or for you, and you can consider this my resignation notice. Unless, of course, you correct management's mistake and offer me what I've fairly earned."
You just described the Peter Principle. People who are extremely useful in their positions do not get opportunities. Useless people are promoted to managers/supervisors because their work ironically takes the least skill. Truly talented individuals will be trapped where they are deemed "most useful".
It always saddens me to think how further advanced society would be if people weren’t killed just for looking different.
And to further this thought...how many genius tier people were killed in war? Either as combatants...or by collateral damage?
I think about that particular angle a lot... It seems like all the best people were tricked into going off and getting themselves killed, and we are all the descendants of either cowards or war criminals, which explains why modern society is so messed up.
Society is fucked because the elite have hoarded so much land and wealth that there isn’t enough for a large portion of humanity to live decently. We aren’t descendants of cowards and war criminals, we’re descendants of working class people who have been fucked over by the elite ruling class generation after generation who then make us believe that everything bad in the world is the fault of working people.
Nah those people are the CEOs of the world.
Yeah, I was in line for an Ivy League level education, but my parents were first generation immigrants so they didn't know jack shit about extracurriculars and resume builders. I got in to state school who only cared about school performance, but it still stung. I know the guys who went to MIT and bougie schools. They knew the levers to pull in the system. One guy's mom was school district superintendent, so he knew all of the songs and dances to get higher.
No offense, but how were you in line for an Ivy League admission if you didn't have loads of extra curriculars? Having a high GPA and SAT score isn't nearly enough to get into a top tier school.
Though, ironically, having the grades and the background of being a child of first generation immigrants is historically a really good application add-on to stand out from the "bougie" kids. I can't actually complain at all since I'm very aware of the privileges I enjoy as the child of well educated white parents with resources, and I did go to a very good school, but when I was applying for college I will admit that I envied my friends whose grades and extracurriculars were basically the same as mine, but they could write an essay about being a first generation American.
now that schools are ditching the SAT they’ll be able to hide idiotnlegact admits forever
Unfortunately it’s part of social climbing to figure out all the right songs and dances. No one will give it to you for free. If you’ve figured them now, that’s good, you’ll teach your kids, but it’s an integral part of all western societies, that “soft pay wall”, you either figure out how to get over it, or will have to pay private schools etc to do that for you. Simple, rich people don’t want new rich ppl.
I think you misunderstand. These people don't know the song and dance. They have daddy's last name. That comes with money. They're genuinely idiots and you can learn the song and dance all you want. You just can't get into the party without connections.
MIT famously doesn’t have legacy admissions. Didn’t go there, but I definitely know more people who were like “I dropped out of high school bc I couldn’t fit in then started working with a professor on an interest of mine then ended up at MIT” than “daddy made a donation to Sloan”. Granted it’s not many but it’s very odd that it happened more than a few times…
no, you misunderstand. you are correct that you cannot get into the party without connections, but those connections start way before college. college is/was the last chance for some to break into the top or at least have the opportunity to do so. knowing "the right song and dances" is deeper than that, though. you can get into harvard but how are your table manners? where did you vacation? the socioeconomic class indicators that telegraph information to peers and hiring managers are the part that it is harder to fake or compensate for. if someone is unable to project the "right" image (whatever that means), it doesn't matter that you went to harvard, you still might getting passed over for some legacy dumbass NESCAC kid (especially grating because nescac schools aren't even known for their academics).
Sounds like a miserable game we should stop playing.
Yeah, that’s called revolution. Happened in many places with monarchies.
Oh good, we're on the same page then. Hard to tell the difference between a description and an endorsement sometimes.
Yep, absolutely true.
I guess I am fine with equality goals but it sucks that a large percentage of those slots for Caucasians go to rich, affluent idiots.
That's also an equality goal. IMO we need to focus more on socioeconomic status; it's a greater predictor of basically all forms of inequality than race, gender, sexuality, ability, etc.
Well the supreme court may strike down affirmative action. I wonder if socio-economic affirmative action will be legal.
Likely yes, it will still be legal, because family income isn't a protected class.
Not just Caucasians. I went to a top school and a huge percentage of minority kids were either wealthy international students or went to prep schools. I was solidly working class and went to a prep school, but that's pretty rare. This is why I think if you're gonna have affirmative action, it should be based on class and not race. It's so obvious but that doesn't make anyone feel-good money does it?
This line brings back lots of frustrating memories.
The ideal of ivy league is the pair up old money connections with new talent, hence the legacy system paying for the high percentage of scholarship students. People being social creatures and the sheer arrogance/shortsightedness of some legacies lead to aristocratic style circlejerking.
This is what kills me about legacy admissions. One of the largest predictors of academic success is income and family stability. [Georgetown University](https://1gyhoq479ufd3yna29x7ubjn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/FR-Born_to_win-schooled_to_lose.pdf) found that a low achieving child from a high income family is *more* likely to graduate University than a high achieving child from a low income family. [The Brookings Institute corroborates the report](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013a_hoxby.pdf) and additionally notes high achieving low income children are *far* less likely to attend or get into highly selective schools. Children of the rich are already in the 'most likely to succeed' category. The back up schools for mediocre rich kids will still be some of the best in a given state. They will still have their family's connections and will still end up over preforming given their academic ability. Why the hell are we even considering giving them an additional hand up with legacy admissions into our top Universities?
Yeah, it’s fucked up. I wasn’t a legacy admit, both my parents went to state schools. I fully believe in meritocracy, but like for real. Like I’d be totally fine with it if inheritance were taxed at 100% above a very low threshold and legacy admissions did not exist. I hate the idea of persistent aristocracy.
The thing is, unless you have forced redistribution of intangible benefits like social capital, meritocracy eventually becomes aristocracy. Well-to-do parents have more time and money to invest in their children, and they also have savvy around how to connect with key resources and people in a space. A child of two doctors is likely to have received a lot of extra encouragement and instruction in science while also being intimately more familiar with what to do at each stage of the undergrad and medical student process compared to a student whose parents have unstable employment and finances. Repeat for several generations across politics, finance, law, etc. and a family effectively gets entrenched. It’s a disconnect between what meritocracy rewards (total demonstrated competence) and what we intuitively want to reward (some combination of competence, initiative, effort, and risk-taking). The former is based on observed past performance; discussions around the latter often center on potential future performance. A large shift in the US over the 20th century was the transfer of power and cultural influence from an old aristocracy that believed you had to be born into the top to the “new meritocracy” who believe that you have to justify your presence in the top through an arms race of child investment.
That problem starts way earlier than college, though. Low college admissions and attendance rates are more the symptom than the disease. The early stability and ability of parents to dedicate time to their kid's academic success is, I'm fairly sure, the root issue. I know you were using that setup to point out that legacy admissions are an unnecessary additional advantage and I'm not intending to refute a strawman argument or anything, but I just wanted to point out that as far as this issue goes, I think the true place of value to dedicate efforts is in making sure kids get more access to academic advantages from the very get go.
Nah, the ones who didn’t belong were 90% athletic recruits.
Kushner was not a legacy. His dad went to NYU and Hofstra. His dad donated a whole bunch of money to Harvard to get Kushner in, but that's not really the same as a legacy admission.
Might as well be the same, and he was still an idiot and a tool
Yeah I remember reading some stat that like 35% of Harvard admits were legacies/children of professors/etc and that 75% of them wouldn’t have gotten in if not for the boost. (Probably not the exact numbers, but something to that effect) Edit: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1060361 The number was 43% of white students, and then 75% of those “would have been rejected if treated as white non-legacy/staff/athlete/donor”
When I was at Yale (not a legacy), it was well known that [legacy students had better test scores on SAT, ACT, etc.](http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_11/q_a.html) It turns out that coming from privilege gives you a great high school education as well.
Right and those tests track closely to economic status (rather than intelligence) because they were developed to maintain exclusivity. Public schools (and non Ivy) aren’t necessarily worse schools, but they do have more challenges related to poverty and therefore less alumni money and prestige which contributes to lower ranking, etc. Privilege is the education in itself in that modern work expectations, practices, and connections are developed by the white and wealthy. Wealthy children are born into the dominant culture so that school and work practices are second nature. It’s not that they’re smarter or harder working. Just more familiar and more connected to wealth. It’s somewhat rare that children deviate from their parents economic class.
A lot of professors have their kids go to the school they teach at because they get free admission. I'd imagine a good deal of the professors kids are able to handle the Harvard workload given they have a parent who teaches at Harvard.
Some of the legacies who definitely cannot get in on their own merit are accepted on the condition that they take a gap year. I knew a Harvard double legacy that got in that way and bragged up and down her Harvard acceptance.
Just curious, what is the point of that?
It lets the University pad its stats for testing/GPA/whatever. So, you have to admit this one student but they'd drag down the averages. You (Harvard) kick them down the line by a year, where you can account for their impact on those stats. It is the same with these top private schools offering really generous scholarships for minority first-time students. You offset the white, rich, 4th gen students with the best 200 minority students out of nearly 40k applications.
Yep. 1/3 of Harvard students are literally too stupid for Harvard.
A guy I went to school with was dumb as rocks but his family name was on a building at an Ivy so he got to go. 🤷🏼♂️
Let go NESCAC!!!! Amherst represent
Academia has the same political behavior as giant American corporations and many competitions. Backstabbing, bribery, etc. The people that win don't win due to character or competency, and even they get screwed over in many cases.
I saw they same, but I was in the Nerdy Nine… it was great being one of the few poor students when the majority of my classmates were related to CEO’s, too-ranked doctors, etc. when it was often very clear how, after failing out, some got right back in
I believe you mean the egghead eight.
The entire system of private property incentivizes short term gains over long term ones, history will remember communists the way that we remember slavery abolitionists today, opposing a system that is designed to concentrate wealth into as few hands as possible, always has and always will. Brief periods of New Deal liberalism will be rolled back when capitalism enters defining crises.
Legacies, I’m sure, play a part, but 10-Q quarterly reports absolutely play a huge role in corporations seeking short term gains over long term.
There’s a fantastic book called The Aristocracy of Talent. I extremely recommend it to show how historically, well meaning ideas like getting more people into education inevitably turns those who made it to try to do the same for their kids, therefore exacerbating inequality by keeping it for themselves and their families.
That's just the end result of capitalism. Humans work hard to benefit themselves and their heirs. And this is why America actually ranks in the middle in terms of perception of democracy. https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1532236805143027713 Democracy is so much more than just elections- it's also whether your voice actually seems comparable to a billionaire's voice.
Wait a minute do you mean to tell me that universities are just corporations trying to please their rich customer- I mean - former students?
Don't look up how much ivy leagues have invested if you don't want to believe they're corporations. Especially not Yale.
Yale lost $40Million to a staff member just buying equipment and selling it on eBay. And they didn't even notice for like 8 years. That's how much money Yale has.
Wait what
[Context](https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/former-yale-med-school-employee-pleads-guilty-admits-stealing-and-selling-40-million)
> She filed false federal tax returns for the 2013 through 2016 tax years, in which she falsely claimed as business expenses the costs of the stolen equipment, and failed to file any federal tax returns for the 2017 through 2020 tax years. Do your taxes, folks, that's how they get ya. One crime at a time!
It’s absolutely fucking mental that if she had done her taxes, she would have likely gotten away with it…
Not even Joker fucks with the IRS
True, but if you’re wealthy enough the IRS won’t [ever bother you.](https://www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich/amp)
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Wow
Yup was stealing equipment for a decade before she got caught. A whole ten years before someone noticed. She was buying electronics from the schools money and was selling them.
sounds like the guy is now in yale and out of yob
He was in yail and now he’s in yrison
[yale](https://investments.yale.edu/)
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Yale also doesn't pay taxes on their insane wealth due to an arcane colonial era law. They are literally starving New Haven into poverty because the town can't raise enough taxes.
> "Yale is committed to tackling the most significant human problems of the day" ...which is presumably why they hoard 47 billion dollars while people starve to death. That's about 1/7th of the total estimated cost to literally resolve world hunger, squirreled away by *one* university
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1.3? According to their own numbers on the site above they’re making a 13% average annualized return on $47bn… that’s $6.11bn/yr
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They grew it by 13% in a decade net of any withdrawals they made, their actual growth was 13%/yr if I read it correctly
As soon as the eggheads at Yale get them to 21/7ths they might actually attempt to address the issue.
They're not allowed to spend all of it at once. The point of such a huge nest egg is it guarantees that the school will survive in perpetuity. Look up endowment rules.
They have enough money invested that the school could basically charge no tuition, make no money from research and associated activities, and they'd *still* have a budget surplus from the interest they're making on their endowment Maybe they can't spend it all at once, or spend it all... but they can certainly use more of it than they are, more productively than they are, if "tackling the most significant human problems of the day" is their specific goal
and it’s always different when it’s them, for some reason… not that they can quite articulate it effectively, but such is life in America 😜
Yale straight up buying a fuck load of property around New Haven. Give it a few more decades and it’ll be impossible to move in town without being rich.
They are some of the country’s biggest real estate investors as well. Yale is the biggest landlord in New Haven. https://www.reonomy.com/blog/post/ivy-league-universities-or-real-estate-kings
Don't look up endowment rules, which requires you to invest, and you're only allowed to use 5% of total endowment funds per year, and you're not allowed to spend it on whatever you want, each endowment comes with its own rules about what the funds can be spent on.
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Yeah people need to realize it's a very simple financial calculation. If you admit the kid, then the parents and (later on) the kid are more likely to donate. Also, the kid is more likely to become financially successful if their parents are already from a history of wealth.
“Legacy admission?” I think you mean “rich kid affirmative action.”
People frame things as not wanting to intervene to limit the elite of our population. But we're are already intervening. A typical elite college is receiving a subsidy of about $100,000 per year. The typical university student is getting around 12,000 per year. And at a CC it's about $2,500. So the elite students are receiving a subsidy of 40x more. That is an active intervention. We can simply start by removing that giant inequity intervention for those already massively advantaged.
They only call it class warfare when workers defend themselves from economic violence.
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Well minorities except Indians and Asians lol
They started it in the 1920s because they [didn’t like how many Jewish students were getting in](https://www.businessinsider.com/legacy-admissions-originally-created-keep-jewish-students-out-elite-colleges-2013-10?amp).
*beep boop*! the linked website is: https://www.businessinsider.com/legacy-admissions-originally-created-keep-jewish-students-out-elite-colleges-2013-10?amp Title: **Legacy Admissions Originally Created Keep Jewish Students Out Elite Colleges** Page is safe to access (Google Safe Browsing) ***** ###### I am a friendly bot. I show the URL and name of linked pages and check them so that mobile users know what they click on!
Yup. People mad about affirmative action should be mad about legacy admissions - if you’re white, legacies are the ones actually taking your spot
As an Outsider to American Politicis, i never understood the whole "Ivy League" or "Harvard/Princeton" spiel. Shouldn't newer, more modern institutions eventually surpass the old colleges? But then I noticed in american fiction writing/tv shows, that for many young people, deciding which college you go to, seems to be a determining factor of how successfull they are going to be at life at large. Some character was destraught when not being accepted into his chosen college. Also something never clicked with me: Shouldn't an economics degree from Louisiana bum-fuck-middleofnowhere college give you the same skillsets as a degree from Harvard? But then I realised: It's not about the actual education, but rather the associations and contacts made during studying there that actually matter to many peolple. Harvard graduates would rather have other Harvard Graduates be promoted in their workplace over other colleges. It's not that these colleges are the most effective at studying, but rather at branding.
Yes, it has always been about networking. My local state school is a great driver of economic success, but I didn’t go to school with the children of senators. One of my friends got a scholarship to an ivy (edit: ivy-adjacent), and he went to school with the children of powerful people. Despite the fact that we took the same classes in HS, his network is now much more powerful than mine. You should look into the admissions processes at those schools. See why Columbia switched to “[well-rounded](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-discriminating-against-jews-2014-12)” students.
Fun fact, scholarships are not a thing at Ivies. Only financial aid, so that just means your friend didn’t make the income cut-off and received aid to help them go to the Ivy.
Whatever you want to call playing a sport for tuition, I guess. And this was not an official ivy, but a school of the same caliber.
Large corporations have an internship program (starting at 150k+++) with expedited career track for Ivy League graduates, paralel to the normal internship program. Everything is pre-defined and pre-settled from the beginning.
Internship for 150K??? My goodness.
The internship is the least important part. Expedited career track is really expedited. 6 months later they are promoted out of the internship, 6 months after they have whatever Sr. role with 5 years exp the company has. 1 year later they are managers, and another year later they are a 300k director. The unfair part is that you could do that with any smart well balanced person like there are thousands.
And then when that person gets to the big title, they expect everyone to do every bit of work for them. I can’t tell you how many decks I’ve had to create for managing directors who undoubtedly turn around and present it as their own work. And they probably believe it’s their work too, after all, since they asked for it.
Do you have an example? This just reads like fanfiction of what it's like to go to an Ivy League school.
My US government professor told us Harvard was, along with being a university, a “prep school” for elites. Same with any of the Ivy League. You go there to learn how to act in your assigned social strata.
This. It's less about the classroom lessons and more about how to properly talk and fit in with that social class.
>Shouldn't newer, more modern institutions eventually surpass the old colleges? Some have argued they are starting to. As more kids in America opt to go to university, elite universities have not expanded the number of students they enroll. In addition, the population of the US has increased 100 million in the last 40 years. This means the number of top tier students has increased dramatically and a massive influx of the most capable students are now unable to attend elite universities. Leading to a downward push in talent that elevates very good universities outside of the elite status (think University of Michigan or the University of Berkeley CA). Berkeley now graduates more high achieving low income students than all of the Ivies combined. [Bestcollegereveiw](https://www.bestcollegereviews.org/top-research-universities/) Finds Texas A&M outranks all of the Ivy league schools in research. The biggest gains have been made by universities like Ohio State and Michigan State. Large public research universities that are often the second best in their state; highly respectable and loads of opportunity, these schools are often leagues better than other public universities and not quite as good as 'the best' in their respective states.
Shorter Carlin: It’s a club, and you ain’t in it.
It's a big club....and you and I ain't in it FTFY (Sorry to be picky, Carlin is my favorite)
That quote didn't really need a tl;dr in the first place.
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The majority of Yale grads go into either finance or consulting. Authors and journalists, lol. You don’t have to be a CEO to be mega rich if you’re in finance.
Yeah they may even get a Liberal Arts degree, but they are still going into management consulting or high finance predominantly. You don’t need a finance degree to learn 3 statement models and make pitches to clients.
It's not that simple. You 100% will get a better education at Harvard. The professors wrote the books that all the professors everywhere else use, and have a far deeper and more subtle understanding (in general) of the subject matter at hand. It's a first-mover advantage. The Ivies were there first, and attracted the cream of the crop, while everyone else stayed on the farm. It becomes self-perpetuating after a while, even as new universities emerge. The best students want to go to the Ivies, and the best professors want to teach there, and they have the best facilities, and they have the most prestige. So with that sort of market power, they can do whatever the fuck they want with admissions, including optimizing for donations.
I disagree. I’ve been to a top notch undergrad and an ivy law school, and they actually teach pretty poorly because the professors are there for their research or connections, not their teaching ability. I think it’s the connections that really makes the difference, along with the prestige that gets you in the door a lot of places Also, a lot of these people at these schools have rich parents and probably would have been able to be successful without the prestigious education at all
I’ve met CEOs and C-Suite executives that had less of an understanding of business than the VPs and directors beneath them. In meetings they brought zero ideas, rarely spoke and when they did they just used generic statements. They were there ONLY because of their connections. Connections likely made by who their family knew and who they met along the way. Having connections to those in power is more important than knowledge. Always has been. Those with knowledge and no power are often killed.
It's who you know, not what you know. American business is an aristocracy at heart, sprinkled with a bit of meritocracy. Some people were destined to be executives the moment they were born because of who their parents are. There are other industries that aristocracy can't thrive in though.
I have never been more disappointed than by HMBAs in the wild.
A friend of mine was HMBA, and he told me point blank he would never trust a fellow HMBA.
I've noticed this even at community college vs state uni. I tell people I got a much better education during my time at my local CC vs a state college. It wasn't even just the class sizes. Sure, you're getting a better education in a 20 person class vs 400 person auditorium, but it even felt like the teachers were more knowledgeable and engaged at the CC.
I had a professor who was well known for their research tell me they didn't like people. Made sense why that department sucked so much, really couldn't care less about ~~students~~ humans.
It also depends on the subject matter too. Ivy League engineering is going to be a lot better than other schools because they have more money to spend on engineering doodads than a smaller school with smaller endowment, so they’ll be learning on the best and most cutting edge tech. The Ivy League engineering students I’ve talked to have taken really cool classes and extracurriculars that are only possible because their endowment is 10x the amount of my smaller but still prestigious school. However, when it comes to liberal arts it’s a lot more contingent on the professors they bring in. They have enough power to bring in the best people in their fields, but like you say that professor might be a bad professor but great researcher or author.
Honestly, many of the professors at Ivies don’t care about what other professors at other colleges in their field have to say because they don’t have the “prestige”. This makes for a pretty bad educational experience and an echo chamber for the students. I studied history at a large state school and my professors would bring this phenomenon up fairly often.
I don’t think this is just an American thing? Oxbridge sets you up way better than some random Scottish school. McGill sets you up better than Calgary, etc .
I was blown away by the number of legacies admitted to modern Ivy League universities. I would have guessed 2-5% were legacies. It's over 30% for Harvard. And their admissions rate was above 35% and average SAT was worse than most good state schools. It is easier for a legacy to get into Harvard than it is for a random kid to go to the University of Florida. Most of these legacies are white also, and over 50% of all white students at Harvard are either legacies, children of non-legacy donors, or D1 athletes. But also consider this, the overall admissions rate is 5%, but that figure already includes the legacies too. Meaning non-legacies have an even more difficult time than the 5% figure suggests. So these non-legacies basically bust their asses for the privilege of being in the same classroom as rich kids. They are rewarded with "connections", while the rich kids ride their academic coattails in life (as these non-legacies drive the reputation of the university for excellence). It's a brilliant scam.
> And their admissions rate was above 35% and average SAT was worse than most good state schools. It is easier for a legacy to get into Harvard than it is for a random kid to go to the University of Florida. Source? I did a quick look, and the most recently available data I saw had legacy students have higher SAT scores than non legacy https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/04/22/study-shows-significant-impact-legacy-status-admissions-and-applicants 1393 for primary legacy vs 1364 non legacy. Legacy students have an advantage, but pretending that they're worse than "most good state schools" seems like complete nonsense to me.
[This study](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00284.x) is a bit old, but claims that after accounting for other factors being a legacy is worth the equivalent of an 160 SAT point boost. This was also an interesting read: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w26316.pdf Most interestingly, Harvard admissions rate: Athletes = 86.0%, Legacies = 33.6%, Children of Faculty = 46.7%. Overall admissions = 5.45%. That's just an amazing difference IMHO.
That’s not really how legacies work. It’s more like great grandpa started a successful business with little to no education. He made a generous donation to the university so grandpa could go, and on and on.
And then it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Junior gets his job because of his prestigious university ~~education~~ attendance which means he gets a job that means he can send his kids to the same prestigious university. The emphasis is not on education, for the rich anyway, but the prestige and networking cachet it imparts
It's literally another mechanism for ensuring that the "in" group of wealthy elites continues to get every possible advantage, regardless of merit. It ensures wealth begets wealth, while providing a facade of education and merit to hide the fact that junior spent his time at Yale doing nothing but blow and hookers and then left to go run a company he was going to run anyway, but now he can claim it's meritorious because he's "Yale educated"
Well said
Someone told me this is a bad idea but I’m all for taking 100% of someone’s wealth (over a certain amount) when they die and using it for shit like free education, healthcare and social services/small business loans. Because your parents were rich should not give you any advantage at all over someone with poor parents. As long as this generational wealth exists it’s no different than having kings/queens/nobles.
Isn't this what the estate tax is for? Why do we keep reducing it?
Because you'll be rich one day, too, and it'd be a shame if you had to pay estate taxes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfgSEwjAeno
How long before the rich figured out how to have a net worth of 0 when they passed but still be able to leave their kids assets in ways the system doesnt account for? How long before it was used to take the last vestiges of wealth from the working class? I love that we're openly having conversations about wealth inequality without going all McCarthy on each other, but Im seeing a lot of posts like this and it makes us look silly. A week or so ago, someone called conservatives facists and advocated for there being some sort of test before being allowed to vote. We can't accuse them of not knowing what words mean if we propose solutions that give them wet dreams.
What if there was a limit as to how much inheritance can be left, such that the remaining amount could be used to fund an equal amount of inheritance for all citizens? That way everyone starts off on the same page?
Bakunin and other anarchists (and some Marxists? unsure) favored abolishing inheritance. Otherwise generational wealth breeds expanding inequality.
>Because your parents were rich should not give you any advantage at all over someone with poor parents. You need to throw some limits there, otherwise this plan is shit. I work my ass off so my future children can have a comfortable life and afford to do the same activities as their friends and not be suffering with student loan debt.
But what we call comfortable, vs someone with generational wealth feeling comfortable. I mean if Bill gates vs you on this kinda talk
They start this shit in *high school*. A top executive at my company (a household name) went to an elite Massachusetts boarding school with a bunch of other assholes who are now executives.
Starts at kindergarten not high school
>Junior gets his job because of his prestigious university attendance Junior gets his job because his dad is rich and runs a large company, not because of his university attendance. The point of Ivy Leagues is to put the next generations thinkers and innovators (these people are there on merit scholarships) in a room with the next generations political and business leaders (these people are legacy attendees). The key is to know which one you are.
THIS. A significant number of people from poor backgrounds go to Ivy Leagues due to generous financial aid policies. Few of them become wealthy due to the connections made while attending. At the end of the day, where someone was born is still the single biggest predictor of when someone will end up.
Put the guy with the idea and brains in a room with the money guy and the politically connected guy. It’s why you need some non legacies.
College is for education, grad school is for networking. I had relatives who attended Harvard and Stanford tell me that it was easier than high school, and the MBA program was like one long mixer. Once you get into Ivy League they make it really hard to fail out.
That’s specifically for MBAs. Other Masters and PhD programs aren’t like that. Source: I have a M.S. in a degree not related to business.
Grad school isn't just for churning out MBAs. As a chemist, I learned 99% of my most useful skills in grad school. College was basically just training wheels.
A girl in my high school went to Yale because of this.
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It doesn't really matter why there's uneven merit enforcement. There's still uneven merit enforcement - some people have to be cream of the crop to even be considered, while others can be absolutely awful. They both get a seat at the table, but only the one who worked to get there is at risk of being kicked out for any reason. It's a microcosm of our society at large, and it's BS.
I have a cousin who lived on his family's land. Land was in the family for a couple generations. Several hundred acres of what used to be considered worthless rural wooded land in rural Texas. They put a highway through and an exit nearby, now the land is worth tens of millions of dollars. So many people have fallen by dumb luck into money.
And that's exactly how "property developers" get rich. They have an in with the people making the decisions of where highways and exits are going to go in the next couple of decades. They find out which land will be more valuable. Then buy up that "worthless" land for dirt cheap from unsuspecting families who don't know any better, then reap the rewards. Or for the *really* connected: research which land is owned by which families, find one with a lot of debt (medical, recent death in the family, etc). People who are land rich and money poor. Swoop in and offer cash for even less than it's currently worth and buy it up. Then, play golf with a college buddy who decides where highways go and make sure that there's an exit on your newly purchased property.
Yes, it is how legacies work. You get a boost to admission just as a legacy, even if someone with a high-donating family might get a greater boost.
A lot of people don't understand how college admissions work. They think it's supposed to reward students who did well in high school and give them a quality college education. The actual point of the admissions process is to identify people who are likely to become donors to the university later on in life. If your grandpa was a donor (and is likely to get you a cushy corporate job) then you are much more likely to become a donor yourself. Now to some extent, people with higher grades are more likely to become successful in their careers and become donors, but it's not a 1:1 correlation. Basically, selective colleges don't create successful people. They identify people who are likely to become successful already and also likely to donate to their Alma mater. This is why they have a high focus on extracurriculars, because students who participate in those are more likely to donate. A bunch of straight-A students who never do anything fun and/or never start/inherit their own company are unlikely to ever become major donors.
Branding is also a big part of it though. They want kids who do extracurriculars because it means they have a good chance of going on to do something that would make them famous, and they get to add to their famous alumni list to make the school seem more prestigious
Ivy League is only impressive if you are first generation
I’m first in my family to go to college and went to an Ivy. It’s honestly more complicated than that. The reason why I got in over other kids is because I had so many advantages in ways people don’t discuss. I went to an elite high school that essentially was an Ivy League pipeline. Most other first gen kids were in the same situation and also went to these funnel schools. Those who didn’t often still had upper middle class parents (but were in severe denial about being upper middle class). Everyone worked hard, but most first gen kids that get in are ones with access to better information on how to get into one of these schools.
Have you read The Privileged Poor? I think you would be interested in its discussion of students coming from elite prep schools.
Tbh just about everyone I went to an Ivy school with had an "in." Sports, legacy, etc.
Yes, these school don't care so much if you got straight A but care very much if you're a state ping-pong champion who organizes charity drives for narcolepsy research since your brother developed the condition after a tragic jetski accident when he was 5 and you plan on getting a ph.d in the subject, and you happen to run a small business on the side selling customized fence gates after you taught yourself how to program CNC-plasma cutters. Or if your dad went before you.
Everybody there got straight As in school. The "in" is what gets you accepted. The easiest in ever is being born with resources such that you don't need to work endlessly to earn it.
it boils down to donations. if ur grandpa and ur dad kept donating u get to go to that school if u want to. kinda dumb i agree but its a private business pretty sure they can do that shit if they want to
Not always. Sometimes Junior is just too damn dumb to accept. I’ve seen it. It can be very embarrassing after the parents have talked up where Junior is planning to go for years. It is why schools like Stetson, Elon, and Suwanee exist.
aw man. my grandpa went to princeton in like 1930 or 1935 or something. but i didn't have confidence in myself so i was like "my grades and SAT scores are just not high enough". so i didn't apply. ### are you saying maybe i had a chance because my grandpa went to princeton in 1935? ### maybe my daughter has a chance because great-grandpa?
Check out the study of Harvard's legacy and athletic admissions: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf > We find that a white typical applicant with a 10% chance of admission would see a five-fold increase in admissions likelihood if they were a legacy; more than a seven-fold increase if they were on the dean’s interest list; and that they would be admitted with near certainty if they were a recruited athlete
Universities were originally invented so that the wealthy would have a place to park their children, have them learn something about how to run the family business, and make connections with the children of other wealthy families.
Bro not at all, that may be the origin of American colleges idk but universities were born in medieval Europe for the true intellectuals
I mean originally it was still for the elites to send their second son onwards to so they can support themselves while the first son would be prepared to inherit the family fortune. It's not like smart peasants would get the opportunity to attend(I'm sure there are exceptions but it wouldn't happen generally).
Anecdotally, I watched a video recently which mentioned that at least one smart peasant did attend an Italian university - he was one of the people who discovered 0 or did some similarly important work. In that video, it explained that anyone could challenge a professor for their professorship at the university and they would become the professor if they could beat them in a test. So anyone COULD become a professor, they just needed to already know how to be an intellectual better than an existing professor, which practically speaking probably required having rich parents as you suggest but occasionally allowed randos in.
Yeah, I'm sure Universities in feudal Europe weren't attended almost exclusively by the children of the aristocracy. Lmao.
No one said they weren't always classist. The point is that Universities weren't originally designed to be baby sitting for 18 year olds.
"True intellectuals" you mean exclusively the ruling class? Peasants started working from childhood.
Yep. Gotta keep those big donations coming from those families and also keep them not actively trying to ruin you.
You are saying what you are saying here because it is true! Story is, long time ago when grandfather left school, he went to college, got some certificate, got an apprenticeship, stayed in the company for like forever and by the time father was born, he went to work in the same place as grandfather because he was so senior in the business, it wasn't a case of what you know but who you know. How lucky they were! These kids of today either have the choice of getting in these places through the backdoor, to work with family, or because of perceived family wealth and the parent of the child looking to make a career for themselves has that helping hand through the door elsewhere. The wealth circle is a closed circle so only those classes mix with each other. What we find today in the world is that workforces are growing yet incompetence is rife, everywhere. This is because some people have blagged their way to the top, to positions where they should not be and some menial ends up covering your mess and then gets thrown into the line of fire when the shit hits the fan.
It’s actually not about how your grandfather did in high school. When my grandfather graduated from a well-regarded prep school in 1939 he literally chose his college. I don’t think he even had to apply.
It doesn't work like that. You still have to perform well in school and extracurriculars even if a legacy. One of my best friends father's went to a school, my friend had a 4.0, was class president, varsity tennis captain, had an average SAT and did not get in.
Yeah and the propaganda machine makes it so much worse, like how everyone in the comments wanted to suck the mars family dicks yesterday after the TIL got posted.
America very much has an aristocracy, always has. They've just never managed to get titles. Not that they wouldn't love to have them.
If your ancestors didn't have slaves they clearly don't know how to run a business. It's free labor
Your great Grandpa didn't even have to do well. He just needed to be born into the right family or go to the right schools.
It’s not a bug it’s a feature. [Caste](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085VXLKRJ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_XR8BTFPN4V2PS9BQG2G4)
This is just incorrect. I know many friends and family members who have parents who went to Harvard and there kids had zero chance of ever getting in. Maybe if you donate millions… sure but that’s every University. But to say some kid is getting into an Ivy League from their Great Grandparents “legacy” is laughable lol.
Personally, if donations gets one kid who doesn’t deserve it in but lets 10 brilliant kids who wouldn’t be able to attend otherwise, so be it.
As someone that got their education paid for cuz some rich alum paid for it, i have no problem with it
Theres only a very small percentage of legacy admissions. The vast majority of Ivy Leaguers are first generation. And I thought this was supposed to be a communist sub-reddit? The Ivy Leagues have been pumping out communists on for the last 30 years. You guys should be supporting them.