If you came this far perhaps you’ll go a bit farther and buy Freddie’s book “The Cult of Smart”. Not sure he would plug his book but I will because the answers you’re asking about are there. And he deserves another sale.
I agree schools have little incentive to let students fail, yet fail they do, and fairly regularly. Interestingly, very few drop out of, say, Harvard, but non-Ivies have a much larger dropout rate. My school's graduation rate is 80% (Harvard's is something like 97%).
Our 'Open Borders' policy with Mexico and Central America has severely reduced the wages of those whose talents don't include reading, writing, or test taking. This benefits the comfortable upper classes. And being against 'Open Borders' is anti 'anti-racist', a fundamental, central pillar of the Democratic Party.
Not sure what you mean by "keeps track of this" but I remember my SAT score. Though it wasn't all that impressive, I don't feel any animosity towards the SAT. I don't have any real emotion towards the score.
I do remember my score, but only as a random ephemeron that happened to lodge. I don't remember my high school or college GPA's or any other similar specifics, really. That said, I can think of people I went to high school or college with who probably remember all of it brightly.
Who keeps track? The type-A kids of hard-charging parents -- kids who weren't actually all that smart, but who were ruthlessly ambitious and try-hard, and who passionately hated the kids who were intelligent or funny or cool without all that excess effort. The ones who thought that head-pats and gold stars and admiration were fundamentally *their* due, and theirs alone. You know, the kind of kids who become sneering, Twitter-addled elite "journalists", for example. The ones who hate the likes of Freddie and similarly gifted peers because nothing causes them to see red like being confronted with the existence of people who have novel insights, real talent, and the courage to say anything interesting.
I'd bet good money those kids still have their score letter filed neatly in the cabinet. (If, indeed, they were ever able to bring themselves to take down its wall plaque in first place.)
I remember my ACT score. It was 2-7 points lower than my top-academic-tier friends (the ones who went to ivies and ivy adjacents; one friend got a perfect score). So I did test prep and took it again. Same score.
Honest to goodness, I think 99.9% of people in the U.S. never give Harvard a single thought. We know it's where rich people go, but it's kind of like Saint-Tropez or Vichyssoise. Each state has a land-grant university, and as Hubert Horatio Humphrey used to say, "we are pleased as punch" about that. (HHH a grad. of University of Minnesota).
I read an interesting analysis recently, can't remember where, that basically posited that the liberal/progressive/urban elites push their kids toward the Harvards, etc., while the conservative/rural elites tend to be much more positive toward state schools (where a smart kid can often get a full ride). I don't know what to make of that (if true), except I would imagine over time you might see an actual split in the credential value of various schools. What school you went to might signal your tribe, and therefore give you access to one or the other set of power levers, but perhaps not both?
"I’ve spent my entire adult life (including of course my entire parenting life) living in either deep-blue or deep-red regions of the United States, and I can tell you that the parenting cultures are substantially different. To go back to the questions above, in my experience the upper-middle-class families in deep-blue America are extremely focused on accessing prestige education. In some small way they understand the obsessions of the Varsity Blues parents, and they look at high test scores primarily as an opportunity to gain access to elite schools.
"Where I live, however, the Varsity Blues parents might as well live on a different planet, and tremendous test scores are much more often viewed as the ticket to free tuition. College prestige is much less important than the overall college experience. Parents and kids set their sights on, say, the University of Alabama, and the difference between a 1200 SAT and a 1500 SAT lies in the cost, not the choice of school. And in fact in 2018-2019, more National Merit Scholars joined the Crimson Tide than enrolled in Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Michigan the University of Chicago, and virtually every other top university in the land.
"What’s one school that beat Alabama? The University of Florida. So the Gators can occasionally beat ‘Bama in something.
"Parents (rightly) understand that graduating from Alabama or Florida not only is no impediment to prosperity, in Southern communities it can bond you to your peers for life. Indeed, this can be a healthy way to approach college. The prestige of your school is hardly make-or-break, and placing that level of stress on your children can make them anxious and unhappy.
"But here’s the catch—while you can do very, very well coming from, say, an SEC school, there is still an Ivy or Ivy-equivalent hiring preference in many of the nation’s top institutions. Choices always involve tradeoffs."
My cousins cared more about the football teams than anything else. College football is a lifelong obsession for them, so choosing a school is a huge commitment.
Interesting thought about possible futures - but Goldman & McKinsey certainly look, now, at "where" you were admitted. Now I'm wondering if high SAT plus state school, and low debt, graduates will start getting higher first salary offers.
First salary after college has a HUGE influence on your lifetime earnings.
And then there's STEM vs ... indoctrination? Already there's a tech based move towards higher and higher STEM salaries, as well as lower standards in STEM college courses. The lowering standards because of ... reasons (racism).
There's a fantastic book by a sociologist called "Pedigree" that illustrates the degree to which these consulting/i-banking firms rely almost entirely on rather sloppy school prestige-based shortcuts for recruitment. Academia also loves the concept of "pedigree" as well and still commonly employs it in graduate admissions/job offers, which would seemingly contradict a lot of their rhetoric about DEI. Unfortunately, for some careers, it really does matter where you go to school.
Fortunately, tech and business more broadly seems to be a bit more open to people from a variety of schools, but you do have to be more of a self-starter in many ways to get on board compared to just getting the sheepskin and learning the comedy of manners for certain elite jobs.
Also, keep in mind many people who go to state schools for undergrad may go to more prestigious schools (especially med/law schools that go by test scores so much--for now, though watch that change continue to happen there to keep the state school rif-raff out) later.
For STEM grad school, the elite schools want the best possible students. And they are on the lookout for under-the-radar people (because they face less competition from peer schools to recruit them). There is heavy affirmative action of the good kind: look for people who may be great but went to a lower-tier school or were otherwise disadvantaged. The key is great letters of rec: "This is the best student I have taught at Lower Middleberry State in 20 years, and she is absolutely deserving of admission to a top-level grad program."
I think there's a good bit of truth behind that. The Ivy League and similar institutions are the tickets to cultural cachet in NYC-based arts/publishing/writing as well as the consulting/I-banking world (on the West Coast it's a bit different, though Stanford/the UCs are good roads into tech). The state schools are better if you want to be involved in your family's business, your state's main business, the local law/medicine world, etc.
This is also reflected later on in where each side chooses to focus in politics: conservatives tend to be much more interested in state-level politics while NYTimes/WashPost-reading liberals focus on DC. It also leads to the concentration of liberals around the national-level cultural/job centers, so you get more of them leaving more conservative areas while conservatives are more willing to stay around their home areas (and thus fill the role of the "gentry" as someone else labeled them not too long ago).
I didn't know any conservative elite as my world was unions and construction workers but the only private schools in play for anyone at my mw h.s. were Catholic universities--expensive not like a Harvard.
I'm glad you got that off your chest, and I agree with every last word.
My wife has had a long career working at community colleges. The CC's accept everyone who applies. That, to me, represents something really good about education in the U.S.
I did my MA thesis on community college libraries. They are wonderful institutions that gave many of us an opportunity to begin higher education free or at a price where you could work your way and then, if we chose, to move to additional studies. THB always thought Harvard, etc. were for kids that went to private high schools and whose fathers wore monocles. I was about 20 until I realized the little New Yorker cartoon guy wasn't the Harvard mascot.
It's true, and I'm a fan of community colleges. But they benefit financially from just about every student who enrolls, so there is no incentive to keep people out. Non-selective schools just need as many students as possible who can pay and/or get federal financial aid.
I've always felt that the ivy league schools geared more towards people who are more interested in status and competition than in thinking, learning, and exploring. That is entirely uncharitable of me, and I'd bet there are quite a few examples of people from the ivies who are great thinkers and creators. But that's always how it felt to me.
I find status-seeking extremely unpalatable, especially at those levels. I’m not against wanting stuff; I like my TV and all my books and my cozy house. I really enjoy the thoughtful dialogue on books and politics etc the likes of which FdB hosts. What I find repulsive is the excessive desire to be (or appear) financially elite.
I don't begrudge someone their desire to join the elite, nor ambition in general; these can be helpful attributes even to society. However, I didn't have a lot of interest in going to school with them.
Its possible to be very into thinking, learning, and exploring and also into status.
People that don't go to Ivies often like to tell themselves stories that "Ivy School kids are rich kids that aren't that smart" or "they are only there for the money or status" or whatever it is to devalue them.
I guess there isn't anything I can say to particularly back this us, but Ivy school kids are smart and incredibly hard working. They are formidable.
You know what's a really fascinating untold story? They way Ivies will pick children from particular families. School applications include lists of your entire family, including siblings, or they can ask about your family in interviews, and will do so, especially in the case that you are a legacy. People are known to get passed up if the college wants to wait for the younger child/children, who are smarter or more successful. Imagine competing with your brothers and sisters for a spot at Harvard. At least, that's the story on campus.
"Its possible to be very into thinking, learning, and exploring and also into status."
You are completely right. I'm abashed by my post. Reflecting on this, I think I have a negative emotional reaction to status-seeking behavior because of inadequacies I find in myself. My apologies to everyone who attended the ivy league schools for suggesting they were somehow less likely to be inquisitive and creative. It was thoughtless.
Status-seeking behavior is unpleasant, no need to apologize for not liking it. And surely there are plenty of status-seekers/maintainers at Ivies, though I do believe they are a minority of students there. If you care about status, doing the schoolwork at an Ivy (or really any college) is just too much effort, and takes away from your real work of social promotion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Jade
To me, I don’t doubt the excellence of the education people get at ivies. What I dislike is what you described re: admissions and legacy families. The Succession-style internecine dysfunction in the name of maintaining that elite status. If my middle-class kid who’s great at STEM somehow managed to get in on a scholarship, I’d be delighted. I would sincerely hope the gross WASPy stuff wouldn’t affect him.
When we were in college (private small liberal arts) my husband briefly had a roommate who came from extreme though precarious wealth. The guy said to him “rich people don’t necessarily have more money, they just have bigger bills.” Because the status game captured not only any financial security they might’ve enjoyed, but also their sense of self worth. Inescapable. Ugh.
There's a book related to that tendency among high earners called "The Millionaire Next Door." Its primary thesis is that your typical millionaire is someone who makes a relatively modest salary but who lives significantly below their means. I don't know to what extent it can be trusted (I've never looked into the research backing it), but the argument itself seems persuasive.
Read the links he posted at the beginning. Freddie’s owned this corner for some time and presented all of these arguments much more dispassionately before. Today was a pristine and cathartic rant, and he’s entitled to it.
Great rant, Freddie. Too bad for those hard-working Asian kids if their parents ain't got the dough. Not racist AT ALL. Thanks Harvard for policing our aristocracy!
Core point: " You can’t make Harvard 'fair!' You can’t make it 'equal!' Thinking otherwise is absolutely bonkers to me. Harvard exists to make sure our society is not equal. That is Harvard’s function."
Regardless of the degree to which admissions is corrupt... I mean, that's actually kind of a secondary problem, right? Harvard's admissions committee could be a cabal of pure-hearted monks dedicated to finding only the very best and smartest and kindest and prettiest students in the world. It could be a computer that ONLY looks at SAT scores. It wouldn't change the fact that the function of elite universities in our society is to award credentialing that provides (a significant boost to) access to wealth, power, influence, professional attainment, and so on. I suppose you could argue that isn't even always a bad thing -- why should society be entirely equal? and Harvard is somewhat more meritocratic that pure aristocracy -- but social stratification is indeed the end result and primary function. (They also fund some research, I believe.)
Who is at the top matters much less than the quality of the middling institutions beneath them and the people who staff them. Just like the brilliance of an army's general is limited by the quality of the junior officers and NCOs putting them into practice.
I feel like I just got out of the moshpit at a Slipknot concert after reading this. I'm ready to storm the ramparts and tear shit down. I like my music angry and evidently my essays angry as well.
not only funny but brilliant and totally cuts to the point. The powerful will NEVER support the common people. Ever. Places like Harvard will NEVER support the common people. The 1960s were a time when power to the people did in fact have a real impact. Did it last. No. Why? Because the powerful and rich looked at everything that happened and figured out how to short circuit it ever happening again. And the one major thing they did was to make sure that the common people who went to college would be forced into indentured servitude to do so. Why do you think that one of the few things you can't get out of through bankruptcy is student loans? The last thing they need is a bunch of liberally educated young people who have time on their hands to make their lives miserable. So, yeah, Harvard sucks but more than that it is evil in the true sense of the word. It is NOT a democratic institution, it will never be. The only way to win the game is not to play. So . . . instead of Harvard get the cheapest degree you can, start with community college and then go to the cheapest 4 year college for the last two years. Then find the cheapest Ph.D. program in the country if you want to go that far and get your degree there. No one cares where a degree comes from except the rich and powerful. But just remember that no matter where you go to college, whether you get a Ph.D. or not, most graduates now are stuck as adjunct teachers, or as gig workers, or can find no job at all. The game is not worth the candle. Period.
"Is it not obvious that the whole scheme of fixing our racial inequalities by starting at the top by selecting some tiny number of Black overachievers and hoping the good times trickle down has failed, over and over again, since the start of desegregation? You can’t make Harvard “fair!” You can’t make it “equal!”"
But there IS a way Fed policy can influence them to admit more of whatever group is desired - tax code changes. You know that Harvard is non-profit hedge fund, with a college front, as you state "reap insane profits from the interest on their endowments alone, "
Limit not-for-profit status to those colleges with no more than 1% from the top 1%, no more than 10% from the top 10%, and at least 50% from those at the 50% or lower after tax rankings from the IRS. All of the elite colleges are too full of elite kids and "obviously future elite" kids. That's what admissions is mostly about.
The real purpose of scrapping SAT scores is to allow elite colleges to discriminate against poor & middle class Asian who are more highly qualified than Blacks or Hispanics, so it's less objectively obvious they are discriminating.
You don't quite mention how Harvard skimming off the cream of Blacks, so as to fill the bottom ranks of the classes they take, is like an intellectual castration. Instead of being one of the Biggest Fish in a smaller Black pond, like at Howard, they are the butt of "Low IQ Black affirmative action charity case" jokes & thoughts by the far more academically qualified other students.
Still, they get very high paying token Black jobs in lots of corporations who, too, are looking for the "best Blacks" available for their real but non-explicit Black quotas.
I'm now still a supporter of "colorblind", but am seriously wondering if maybe "separate but equitable" isn't possibly better.
Changing the tax code doesn't seem like the worst idea, but fat fucking chance of getting congress to do it, given where they and their kids tend to have gone to school.
> You understand that what Harvard and its feckless peers would like is to admit fewer students whose Korean parents clear $40,000 a year from their convenience stores, right?
THANK YOU for spelling this out. The entire post was cathartic. (And thanks for an extra weekend post! They are always an unexpected treat.)
I don’t know if my Asian kid will be interested in schools like Harvard one day. I certainly don’t plan to encourage it (state school worked out fine for me). But I’m sick of these elite institutions doing everything they can to reduce the number of Asian students while dressing it up as social justice. The hypocrisy is nauseating.
US NAEP test results indicate the vast majority of US Black and Hispanic 12 graders are not proficient at high school mathematics (Black 92.5%, not proficient and Hispanic 88%, not proficient). Without fundamental mathematics skills they will perform poorly even at the community college level. And to expect their wages to reach parity in a technological society with Europeans and Asians is a fantasy.
What is known as "wokeness" (let me know if you have a better word) is a way for social/economic class to obscure itself.
But it's also something else: a relentless dumbing down of quality. Can anyone give an example where the imposition of woke principles has led to greater rigor, instead of resentment of achievement?
Whether it's classical music, forensic anthropology, history, medical schools, comedy and on and on, "wokeness" is the kiss of death. And my question to friends is always, How does a hyper-first world nation with high standards of living retain those standards of living as it circles the quality toilet bowl?
FYI....I am a naturalized American citizen and English is not my first language. The United States is a first world nation, which is why so many people want to come here.
It may be devolving into something else, but the standards of living are among the highest in the world. Especially for a country this size. So no comparisons to Finland or Switzerland which have populations of what, 8 people?
I sometimes wonder if these anti-Asian student policies would be less popular among liberals if the US had a far-right group that was explicitly anti-Asian and celebrated these policies. Imagine if Tucker Carlson was decrying the “yellowing of America’s intellectual elite” and he became a champion for eliminating objective academic admission criteria in which Asian students outperform such as the SATs. I would hope Harvard and other parts of the US’s academic industrial complex would forgo such policies if their anti-Asian racism was made explicit through such far-right advocacy.
> Jimbo and Ned then go to a nighttime meeting of the Klan members, disguised as members themselves, and tells the leader that they ought to switch sides and fight to have the flag changed. They then explain that the people already on that side will probably work to keep the flag the way it is, knowing that the KKK is in favor of changing it.
Pretty much the tone I adapt when anyone gives me shit about my alma mater, Stuyvesant H.S., and the paucity of African-Americans in incoming classes. Basically, just listening to lectures from people who never went to Stuyvesant and how somehow the admissions process is so fucked up, when Stuyvesant is not the problem in NYC; clearly the issue is inequality in K-8 that becomes manifest in the NYC HS testing system.
Basically, the Clueless Do Gooders would like to eliminate testing as the entry requirement for very successful NYC public HS. . . a school that--ironically-- requires testing almost every day during the school year. How will that work out for those who can't take tests?
As someone who’s been somewhat forced to teach ACT/SAT prep to high schoolers, it’s just plain true that the best way to do well on the language section of these tests is to be an awesome, fluent reader by reading an absolute shitton of books for 12 years before taking the test. It’s what I did, and got a perfect score on the language section of both tests without any test prep. Now, did it help that my parents spoke with a high level of vocabulary and used complex syntax, that both of them had masters degrees? Sure. But I have met kids whose parents didn’t finish high school who just love reading, and who got great SAT scores but have mediocre GPAs because their high school classes are boring and below their reading level, and those kids should be able to go to the flagship state school college for free, and if state schools start doing what Harvard does because it’s Harvard (like the California system) then we should really be ashamed of ourselves.
“ have mediocre GPAs because their high school classes are boring and below their reading level”
Then how are they going to do at Goldman spending 16 hours a day as a spreadsheet jockey? The point is to sort those who can apply themselves, no matter how boring the subject, from those who can’t.
Corporate America doesn’t want the smart and easily bored. They rely on elite schools to do their HR sorting for them.
Right. Also, for those of us who have spent time in a corporate environment, ability is real. I also think there's more to that: some people really just are a bad culture fit and can perform much better in a different role. But I've just seen some people do great work with non-linear tasks while others struggle with simple mechanical ones.
My point was simply that the SAT or similar tests can cut through the bullshit of school and get down to the brass tacks of willingness to learn when presented with difficult material, and GPA doesn’t do that as well, because GPAs are always more of a function of power, and SATs are sometimes a function of power, but also a function of tangible skills. The McKinseys and Harvards of the world wanted perfect GPAs and perfect test scores unless you’re part of the many identity categories that Freddie helpfully points out, so I don’t think they ever wanted the kids who just sucked at school because they thought it was bullshit. Even Freddie is getting hung up on the hardworking immigrant kids and not the lazy immigrant kids who love learning for its own sake and really need standardized testing to let the UCs of the world know that they will do well if they just get let in.
GPA is also inflated to hell. In my high school graduating class there were like 20+ people with a GPA over 4. And people who refuse to take interesting courses because it could hurt their GPA, whereas people would go out of their way to take AP stats for the easy 5.
This has always frustrated me about the way we calculate GPA. Would love to have some kind of "challenge index" next to the GPA to indicate the average level of difficulty of the classes that went into that GPA. It definitely did influence me away from taking hard-interesting (in favor of easy-interesting, mostly softer humanities) classes, and that's regrettable given that hard-interesting can be really helpful for job skills.
I'm still not sold on some of the GRE language questions. Even when presented with the allegedly correct answer, it's not clear to be that it's better than the alternatives. Can't remember the SAT though.
The biggest advantage of just loving reading when you’re 16 is that you can spend a lot of time going back over the questions because you read and understood the text so quickly the first time. A lot of kids barely have time to read all the questions, let alone consider which ones are close and which ones are far off, and choose 50/50 between the two close answers. This doesn’t come into play with GREs or LSAT because the test is built assuming that everyone can read the passages, paragraphs, or sentences quickly and understand the relationships between the parts and the whole.
I mean I sat there on some of the practice questions with 15 minutes comparing the correct answer to the answer I chose and didn't see how it was superior. Granted, 1) this was only one question on every practice test and 2) I might just be dumb.
It's absolutely possible to be a "false positive" and train and train and train and train and train and train to get a higher score. You have to have a certain baseline intellect (probably 600 each) to do it, but it's possible.
In short, there are ordinary kids with 1600 SAT scores, and a lot of them have Korean and Chinese parents who clear 40K from their store.
I dunno. I hadn't taken biology for 3 years by the time I was applying for schools, and the majority of what was on the Bio SAT II was not taught to me, but I picked up an exam prep book and got over a 600 on my BIO SAT II. Believe me, I am not that smart. (I took it only because a couple schools I applied to required SAT II scores.)
You're clearly super p*ssed about this, and you make some good points, but what I don't understand is, what do you see as the solution? If you were God Emperor of the United States, would you:
1. Force Harvard & Co. to accept all applicants; watch the value of a Harvard degree plummet;
2. Accept that not everyone can/will/should get a degree from Harvard; reorganize society so that non-Harvard-degreed people can have a secure, prosperous life (this is a wonderful goal, but how would you accomplish it? Universal basic income? Funded/distributed how? How to avoid the inevitable Law of Unintended Consequences? This could be a whole series of posts by itself);
3. Start a Marxist revolution, abolish Harvard as a symbol of vile capitalist depravity, let the people seize the means of production (new and improved, this time with 100% less totalitarianism/purges/starvation);
4. Something else?
I'm not trying to troll you; I sincerely would like to know.
Your number Three shows the internal contradictions of the Marxist ideology. Less totalitarianism/purges/starvation >=< but have purge for Harvard.
The real way out of that problem, is to name every school Harvard.
Where did you graduate from DrSopholist? "Harvard of course."
But the elites will still have another method of self identification, so you might as well let them have their space.
The downside of this whole topic, is that it took vital seconds off of our lives to even visit here. It apparently takes weeks or years off of Freddie's life to dwell on it. Instead of doing something constructive, like loving his wife, he's steamed up about something he can't change; probably couldn't change; and any steam built up and expended probably makes the problem worse anyhow.
How about "5. Give everyone the test and just accept everyone in the top 3%"? No fuzzy and vague hardship scores, no character analyses, just a hard cut off based on test scores.
If you came this far perhaps you’ll go a bit farther and buy Freddie’s book “The Cult of Smart”. Not sure he would plug his book but I will because the answers you’re asking about are there. And he deserves another sale.
I'd say because if they are ill-prepared for college, they are less likely to finish school, and when they drop out, owe debts still.
Far too many industries require a college degree.
I agree schools have little incentive to let students fail, yet fail they do, and fairly regularly. Interestingly, very few drop out of, say, Harvard, but non-Ivies have a much larger dropout rate. My school's graduation rate is 80% (Harvard's is something like 97%).
Like Germany?
With a fifteen year apprenticeship for One Roof Type?
Good pay tho'
And the roofs must be awesome!
Our 'Open Borders' policy with Mexico and Central America has severely reduced the wages of those whose talents don't include reading, writing, or test taking. This benefits the comfortable upper classes. And being against 'Open Borders' is anti 'anti-racist', a fundamental, central pillar of the Democratic Party.
You might wanna edit out that phone # and send it to Freddie by email. (Click the 3 dots to the right of "delete" to bring up the edit button.)
Don't say that!
I need a girlfriend <|;-)
People who think they were owed a spot at Harvard or at least a lesser ivy like Cornell and didn't get spots at either.
Not sure what you mean by "keeps track of this" but I remember my SAT score. Though it wasn't all that impressive, I don't feel any animosity towards the SAT. I don't have any real emotion towards the score.
I do remember my score, but only as a random ephemeron that happened to lodge. I don't remember my high school or college GPA's or any other similar specifics, really. That said, I can think of people I went to high school or college with who probably remember all of it brightly.
Who keeps track? The type-A kids of hard-charging parents -- kids who weren't actually all that smart, but who were ruthlessly ambitious and try-hard, and who passionately hated the kids who were intelligent or funny or cool without all that excess effort. The ones who thought that head-pats and gold stars and admiration were fundamentally *their* due, and theirs alone. You know, the kind of kids who become sneering, Twitter-addled elite "journalists", for example. The ones who hate the likes of Freddie and similarly gifted peers because nothing causes them to see red like being confronted with the existence of people who have novel insights, real talent, and the courage to say anything interesting.
I'd bet good money those kids still have their score letter filed neatly in the cabinet. (If, indeed, they were ever able to bring themselves to take down its wall plaque in first place.)
I remember my ACT score. It was 2-7 points lower than my top-academic-tier friends (the ones who went to ivies and ivy adjacents; one friend got a perfect score). So I did test prep and took it again. Same score.
Honest to goodness, I think 99.9% of people in the U.S. never give Harvard a single thought. We know it's where rich people go, but it's kind of like Saint-Tropez or Vichyssoise. Each state has a land-grant university, and as Hubert Horatio Humphrey used to say, "we are pleased as punch" about that. (HHH a grad. of University of Minnesota).
I read an interesting analysis recently, can't remember where, that basically posited that the liberal/progressive/urban elites push their kids toward the Harvards, etc., while the conservative/rural elites tend to be much more positive toward state schools (where a smart kid can often get a full ride). I don't know what to make of that (if true), except I would imagine over time you might see an actual split in the credential value of various schools. What school you went to might signal your tribe, and therefore give you access to one or the other set of power levers, but perhaps not both?
Found it! It was David French.
https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/american-higher-education-ideologically
Here's the key part, in case that's paywalled:
"I’ve spent my entire adult life (including of course my entire parenting life) living in either deep-blue or deep-red regions of the United States, and I can tell you that the parenting cultures are substantially different. To go back to the questions above, in my experience the upper-middle-class families in deep-blue America are extremely focused on accessing prestige education. In some small way they understand the obsessions of the Varsity Blues parents, and they look at high test scores primarily as an opportunity to gain access to elite schools.
"Where I live, however, the Varsity Blues parents might as well live on a different planet, and tremendous test scores are much more often viewed as the ticket to free tuition. College prestige is much less important than the overall college experience. Parents and kids set their sights on, say, the University of Alabama, and the difference between a 1200 SAT and a 1500 SAT lies in the cost, not the choice of school. And in fact in 2018-2019, more National Merit Scholars joined the Crimson Tide than enrolled in Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Michigan the University of Chicago, and virtually every other top university in the land.
"What’s one school that beat Alabama? The University of Florida. So the Gators can occasionally beat ‘Bama in something.
"Parents (rightly) understand that graduating from Alabama or Florida not only is no impediment to prosperity, in Southern communities it can bond you to your peers for life. Indeed, this can be a healthy way to approach college. The prestige of your school is hardly make-or-break, and placing that level of stress on your children can make them anxious and unhappy.
"But here’s the catch—while you can do very, very well coming from, say, an SEC school, there is still an Ivy or Ivy-equivalent hiring preference in many of the nation’s top institutions. Choices always involve tradeoffs."
My cousins cared more about the football teams than anything else. College football is a lifelong obsession for them, so choosing a school is a huge commitment.
Interesting thought about possible futures - but Goldman & McKinsey certainly look, now, at "where" you were admitted. Now I'm wondering if high SAT plus state school, and low debt, graduates will start getting higher first salary offers.
First salary after college has a HUGE influence on your lifetime earnings.
And then there's STEM vs ... indoctrination? Already there's a tech based move towards higher and higher STEM salaries, as well as lower standards in STEM college courses. The lowering standards because of ... reasons (racism).
There's a fantastic book by a sociologist called "Pedigree" that illustrates the degree to which these consulting/i-banking firms rely almost entirely on rather sloppy school prestige-based shortcuts for recruitment. Academia also loves the concept of "pedigree" as well and still commonly employs it in graduate admissions/job offers, which would seemingly contradict a lot of their rhetoric about DEI. Unfortunately, for some careers, it really does matter where you go to school.
Fortunately, tech and business more broadly seems to be a bit more open to people from a variety of schools, but you do have to be more of a self-starter in many ways to get on board compared to just getting the sheepskin and learning the comedy of manners for certain elite jobs.
Also, keep in mind many people who go to state schools for undergrad may go to more prestigious schools (especially med/law schools that go by test scores so much--for now, though watch that change continue to happen there to keep the state school rif-raff out) later.
For STEM grad school, the elite schools want the best possible students. And they are on the lookout for under-the-radar people (because they face less competition from peer schools to recruit them). There is heavy affirmative action of the good kind: look for people who may be great but went to a lower-tier school or were otherwise disadvantaged. The key is great letters of rec: "This is the best student I have taught at Lower Middleberry State in 20 years, and she is absolutely deserving of admission to a top-level grad program."
I think there's a good bit of truth behind that. The Ivy League and similar institutions are the tickets to cultural cachet in NYC-based arts/publishing/writing as well as the consulting/I-banking world (on the West Coast it's a bit different, though Stanford/the UCs are good roads into tech). The state schools are better if you want to be involved in your family's business, your state's main business, the local law/medicine world, etc.
This is also reflected later on in where each side chooses to focus in politics: conservatives tend to be much more interested in state-level politics while NYTimes/WashPost-reading liberals focus on DC. It also leads to the concentration of liberals around the national-level cultural/job centers, so you get more of them leaving more conservative areas while conservatives are more willing to stay around their home areas (and thus fill the role of the "gentry" as someone else labeled them not too long ago).
I didn't know any conservative elite as my world was unions and construction workers but the only private schools in play for anyone at my mw h.s. were Catholic universities--expensive not like a Harvard.
I'm glad you got that off your chest, and I agree with every last word.
My wife has had a long career working at community colleges. The CC's accept everyone who applies. That, to me, represents something really good about education in the U.S.
To borrow your colorful metaphor, Fuck Harvard.
I did my MA thesis on community college libraries. They are wonderful institutions that gave many of us an opportunity to begin higher education free or at a price where you could work your way and then, if we chose, to move to additional studies. THB always thought Harvard, etc. were for kids that went to private high schools and whose fathers wore monocles. I was about 20 until I realized the little New Yorker cartoon guy wasn't the Harvard mascot.
It's true, and I'm a fan of community colleges. But they benefit financially from just about every student who enrolls, so there is no incentive to keep people out. Non-selective schools just need as many students as possible who can pay and/or get federal financial aid.
It’s hard for a certain contingent to imagine, but there’s a sizable population that doesn’t care to covet what Harvard is selling. Me among them.
I've always felt that the ivy league schools geared more towards people who are more interested in status and competition than in thinking, learning, and exploring. That is entirely uncharitable of me, and I'd bet there are quite a few examples of people from the ivies who are great thinkers and creators. But that's always how it felt to me.
I find status-seeking extremely unpalatable, especially at those levels. I’m not against wanting stuff; I like my TV and all my books and my cozy house. I really enjoy the thoughtful dialogue on books and politics etc the likes of which FdB hosts. What I find repulsive is the excessive desire to be (or appear) financially elite.
I don't begrudge someone their desire to join the elite, nor ambition in general; these can be helpful attributes even to society. However, I didn't have a lot of interest in going to school with them.
This is wrong, at least for the STEM kids. The vast majority are truly awesome at all the elite schools.
That's an excellent point; most of my experience is with social sciences and humanities.
That's not true.
Its possible to be very into thinking, learning, and exploring and also into status.
People that don't go to Ivies often like to tell themselves stories that "Ivy School kids are rich kids that aren't that smart" or "they are only there for the money or status" or whatever it is to devalue them.
I guess there isn't anything I can say to particularly back this us, but Ivy school kids are smart and incredibly hard working. They are formidable.
You know what's a really fascinating untold story? They way Ivies will pick children from particular families. School applications include lists of your entire family, including siblings, or they can ask about your family in interviews, and will do so, especially in the case that you are a legacy. People are known to get passed up if the college wants to wait for the younger child/children, who are smarter or more successful. Imagine competing with your brothers and sisters for a spot at Harvard. At least, that's the story on campus.
"Its possible to be very into thinking, learning, and exploring and also into status."
You are completely right. I'm abashed by my post. Reflecting on this, I think I have a negative emotional reaction to status-seeking behavior because of inadequacies I find in myself. My apologies to everyone who attended the ivy league schools for suggesting they were somehow less likely to be inquisitive and creative. It was thoughtless.
well, its fine dude. Don't worry about it.
Status-seeking behavior is unpleasant, no need to apologize for not liking it. And surely there are plenty of status-seekers/maintainers at Ivies, though I do believe they are a minority of students there. If you care about status, doing the schoolwork at an Ivy (or really any college) is just too much effort, and takes away from your real work of social promotion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Jade
To me, I don’t doubt the excellence of the education people get at ivies. What I dislike is what you described re: admissions and legacy families. The Succession-style internecine dysfunction in the name of maintaining that elite status. If my middle-class kid who’s great at STEM somehow managed to get in on a scholarship, I’d be delighted. I would sincerely hope the gross WASPy stuff wouldn’t affect him.
When we were in college (private small liberal arts) my husband briefly had a roommate who came from extreme though precarious wealth. The guy said to him “rich people don’t necessarily have more money, they just have bigger bills.” Because the status game captured not only any financial security they might’ve enjoyed, but also their sense of self worth. Inescapable. Ugh.
There's a book related to that tendency among high earners called "The Millionaire Next Door." Its primary thesis is that your typical millionaire is someone who makes a relatively modest salary but who lives significantly below their means. I don't know to what extent it can be trusted (I've never looked into the research backing it), but the argument itself seems persuasive.
This is beautiful, and I agree with every last word. "Harvard exists to ensure society is not equal. that is it's function." is pure gold.
That being said, the rhetoric here is a good deal more passionate and perhaps heated
than your baseline. If that's intentional, it's awesome, and do more like it. If it wasn't entirely intentional, someone needed to tell you that.
Read the links he posted at the beginning. Freddie’s owned this corner for some time and presented all of these arguments much more dispassionately before. Today was a pristine and cathartic rant, and he’s entitled to it.
Great rant, Freddie. Too bad for those hard-working Asian kids if their parents ain't got the dough. Not racist AT ALL. Thanks Harvard for policing our aristocracy!
Getting rid of the SAT reduces legibility, so it's easier to brush off the kids of the Korean grocers.
Core point: " You can’t make Harvard 'fair!' You can’t make it 'equal!' Thinking otherwise is absolutely bonkers to me. Harvard exists to make sure our society is not equal. That is Harvard’s function."
Regardless of the degree to which admissions is corrupt... I mean, that's actually kind of a secondary problem, right? Harvard's admissions committee could be a cabal of pure-hearted monks dedicated to finding only the very best and smartest and kindest and prettiest students in the world. It could be a computer that ONLY looks at SAT scores. It wouldn't change the fact that the function of elite universities in our society is to award credentialing that provides (a significant boost to) access to wealth, power, influence, professional attainment, and so on. I suppose you could argue that isn't even always a bad thing -- why should society be entirely equal? and Harvard is somewhat more meritocratic that pure aristocracy -- but social stratification is indeed the end result and primary function. (They also fund some research, I believe.)
Am I ill?
My shit don't float.
Never took the SAT.
Aced the Florida State High School Exit Exam, though.
Opted out of that college crap, and am glad.
YMMV. Freddie Rules!
Who is at the top matters much less than the quality of the middling institutions beneath them and the people who staff them. Just like the brilliance of an army's general is limited by the quality of the junior officers and NCOs putting them into practice.
I feel like I just got out of the moshpit at a Slipknot concert after reading this. I'm ready to storm the ramparts and tear shit down. I like my music angry and evidently my essays angry as well.
FdB: slipknot for middle aged people who can’t risk the mosh pit back injuries.
Slipdisc.
not only funny but brilliant and totally cuts to the point. The powerful will NEVER support the common people. Ever. Places like Harvard will NEVER support the common people. The 1960s were a time when power to the people did in fact have a real impact. Did it last. No. Why? Because the powerful and rich looked at everything that happened and figured out how to short circuit it ever happening again. And the one major thing they did was to make sure that the common people who went to college would be forced into indentured servitude to do so. Why do you think that one of the few things you can't get out of through bankruptcy is student loans? The last thing they need is a bunch of liberally educated young people who have time on their hands to make their lives miserable. So, yeah, Harvard sucks but more than that it is evil in the true sense of the word. It is NOT a democratic institution, it will never be. The only way to win the game is not to play. So . . . instead of Harvard get the cheapest degree you can, start with community college and then go to the cheapest 4 year college for the last two years. Then find the cheapest Ph.D. program in the country if you want to go that far and get your degree there. No one cares where a degree comes from except the rich and powerful. But just remember that no matter where you go to college, whether you get a Ph.D. or not, most graduates now are stuck as adjunct teachers, or as gig workers, or can find no job at all. The game is not worth the candle. Period.
What passionate truth!
"Is it not obvious that the whole scheme of fixing our racial inequalities by starting at the top by selecting some tiny number of Black overachievers and hoping the good times trickle down has failed, over and over again, since the start of desegregation? You can’t make Harvard “fair!” You can’t make it “equal!”"
But there IS a way Fed policy can influence them to admit more of whatever group is desired - tax code changes. You know that Harvard is non-profit hedge fund, with a college front, as you state "reap insane profits from the interest on their endowments alone, "
Limit not-for-profit status to those colleges with no more than 1% from the top 1%, no more than 10% from the top 10%, and at least 50% from those at the 50% or lower after tax rankings from the IRS. All of the elite colleges are too full of elite kids and "obviously future elite" kids. That's what admissions is mostly about.
The real purpose of scrapping SAT scores is to allow elite colleges to discriminate against poor & middle class Asian who are more highly qualified than Blacks or Hispanics, so it's less objectively obvious they are discriminating.
You don't quite mention how Harvard skimming off the cream of Blacks, so as to fill the bottom ranks of the classes they take, is like an intellectual castration. Instead of being one of the Biggest Fish in a smaller Black pond, like at Howard, they are the butt of "Low IQ Black affirmative action charity case" jokes & thoughts by the far more academically qualified other students.
Still, they get very high paying token Black jobs in lots of corporations who, too, are looking for the "best Blacks" available for their real but non-explicit Black quotas.
I'm now still a supporter of "colorblind", but am seriously wondering if maybe "separate but equitable" isn't possibly better.
Changing the tax code doesn't seem like the worst idea, but fat fucking chance of getting congress to do it, given where they and their kids tend to have gone to school.
[Deleted and reposted to edit for clarity.]
> You understand that what Harvard and its feckless peers would like is to admit fewer students whose Korean parents clear $40,000 a year from their convenience stores, right?
THANK YOU for spelling this out. The entire post was cathartic. (And thanks for an extra weekend post! They are always an unexpected treat.)
I don’t know if my Asian kid will be interested in schools like Harvard one day. I certainly don’t plan to encourage it (state school worked out fine for me). But I’m sick of these elite institutions doing everything they can to reduce the number of Asian students while dressing it up as social justice. The hypocrisy is nauseating.
Haven’t you heard? I think the Asian kids have received the equitable amount of justice already. 🙄
US NAEP test results indicate the vast majority of US Black and Hispanic 12 graders are not proficient at high school mathematics (Black 92.5%, not proficient and Hispanic 88%, not proficient). Without fundamental mathematics skills they will perform poorly even at the community college level. And to expect their wages to reach parity in a technological society with Europeans and Asians is a fantasy.
I think Maryland had a White + Asian racial category
What is known as "wokeness" (let me know if you have a better word) is a way for social/economic class to obscure itself.
But it's also something else: a relentless dumbing down of quality. Can anyone give an example where the imposition of woke principles has led to greater rigor, instead of resentment of achievement?
Whether it's classical music, forensic anthropology, history, medical schools, comedy and on and on, "wokeness" is the kiss of death. And my question to friends is always, How does a hyper-first world nation with high standards of living retain those standards of living as it circles the quality toilet bowl?
We are a first world nation in name only...you must be joking with the hyper part.
FYI....I am a naturalized American citizen and English is not my first language. The United States is a first world nation, which is why so many people want to come here.
It may be devolving into something else, but the standards of living are among the highest in the world. Especially for a country this size. So no comparisons to Finland or Switzerland which have populations of what, 8 people?
The United States is not a first world nation. All the real ones have universal healthcare. Even ones with large populations.
The United States has health care available to all. It's just not the one-size-fits-all behemoth some want.
Your response was fine. You were just dealing with someone who posts "America sucks" boo-lights compulsively.
I sometimes wonder if these anti-Asian student policies would be less popular among liberals if the US had a far-right group that was explicitly anti-Asian and celebrated these policies. Imagine if Tucker Carlson was decrying the “yellowing of America’s intellectual elite” and he became a champion for eliminating objective academic admission criteria in which Asian students outperform such as the SATs. I would hope Harvard and other parts of the US’s academic industrial complex would forgo such policies if their anti-Asian racism was made explicit through such far-right advocacy.
South Park had an episode about this
> Jimbo and Ned then go to a nighttime meeting of the Klan members, disguised as members themselves, and tells the leader that they ought to switch sides and fight to have the flag changed. They then explain that the people already on that side will probably work to keep the flag the way it is, knowing that the KKK is in favor of changing it.
Pretty much the tone I adapt when anyone gives me shit about my alma mater, Stuyvesant H.S., and the paucity of African-Americans in incoming classes. Basically, just listening to lectures from people who never went to Stuyvesant and how somehow the admissions process is so fucked up, when Stuyvesant is not the problem in NYC; clearly the issue is inequality in K-8 that becomes manifest in the NYC HS testing system.
Basically, the Clueless Do Gooders would like to eliminate testing as the entry requirement for very successful NYC public HS. . . a school that--ironically-- requires testing almost every day during the school year. How will that work out for those who can't take tests?
Very good. This post has converted me to a paying subscriber.
Same!
I do feel he should let it out a little more though. If only for his health — he’s bottling so much up.
As someone who’s been somewhat forced to teach ACT/SAT prep to high schoolers, it’s just plain true that the best way to do well on the language section of these tests is to be an awesome, fluent reader by reading an absolute shitton of books for 12 years before taking the test. It’s what I did, and got a perfect score on the language section of both tests without any test prep. Now, did it help that my parents spoke with a high level of vocabulary and used complex syntax, that both of them had masters degrees? Sure. But I have met kids whose parents didn’t finish high school who just love reading, and who got great SAT scores but have mediocre GPAs because their high school classes are boring and below their reading level, and those kids should be able to go to the flagship state school college for free, and if state schools start doing what Harvard does because it’s Harvard (like the California system) then we should really be ashamed of ourselves.
“ have mediocre GPAs because their high school classes are boring and below their reading level”
Then how are they going to do at Goldman spending 16 hours a day as a spreadsheet jockey? The point is to sort those who can apply themselves, no matter how boring the subject, from those who can’t.
Corporate America doesn’t want the smart and easily bored. They rely on elite schools to do their HR sorting for them.
Right. Also, for those of us who have spent time in a corporate environment, ability is real. I also think there's more to that: some people really just are a bad culture fit and can perform much better in a different role. But I've just seen some people do great work with non-linear tasks while others struggle with simple mechanical ones.
My point was simply that the SAT or similar tests can cut through the bullshit of school and get down to the brass tacks of willingness to learn when presented with difficult material, and GPA doesn’t do that as well, because GPAs are always more of a function of power, and SATs are sometimes a function of power, but also a function of tangible skills. The McKinseys and Harvards of the world wanted perfect GPAs and perfect test scores unless you’re part of the many identity categories that Freddie helpfully points out, so I don’t think they ever wanted the kids who just sucked at school because they thought it was bullshit. Even Freddie is getting hung up on the hardworking immigrant kids and not the lazy immigrant kids who love learning for its own sake and really need standardized testing to let the UCs of the world know that they will do well if they just get let in.
GPA is also inflated to hell. In my high school graduating class there were like 20+ people with a GPA over 4. And people who refuse to take interesting courses because it could hurt their GPA, whereas people would go out of their way to take AP stats for the easy 5.
This has always frustrated me about the way we calculate GPA. Would love to have some kind of "challenge index" next to the GPA to indicate the average level of difficulty of the classes that went into that GPA. It definitely did influence me away from taking hard-interesting (in favor of easy-interesting, mostly softer humanities) classes, and that's regrettable given that hard-interesting can be really helpful for job skills.
I'm still not sold on some of the GRE language questions. Even when presented with the allegedly correct answer, it's not clear to be that it's better than the alternatives. Can't remember the SAT though.
The biggest advantage of just loving reading when you’re 16 is that you can spend a lot of time going back over the questions because you read and understood the text so quickly the first time. A lot of kids barely have time to read all the questions, let alone consider which ones are close and which ones are far off, and choose 50/50 between the two close answers. This doesn’t come into play with GREs or LSAT because the test is built assuming that everyone can read the passages, paragraphs, or sentences quickly and understand the relationships between the parts and the whole.
I mean I sat there on some of the practice questions with 15 minutes comparing the correct answer to the answer I chose and didn't see how it was superior. Granted, 1) this was only one question on every practice test and 2) I might just be dumb.
It's absolutely possible to be a "false positive" and train and train and train and train and train and train to get a higher score. You have to have a certain baseline intellect (probably 600 each) to do it, but it's possible.
In short, there are ordinary kids with 1600 SAT scores, and a lot of them have Korean and Chinese parents who clear 40K from their store.
There is zero evidence for that. Zero.
I dunno. I hadn't taken biology for 3 years by the time I was applying for schools, and the majority of what was on the Bio SAT II was not taught to me, but I picked up an exam prep book and got over a 600 on my BIO SAT II. Believe me, I am not that smart. (I took it only because a couple schools I applied to required SAT II scores.)
Hi Freddie,
First time commenter here.
You're clearly super p*ssed about this, and you make some good points, but what I don't understand is, what do you see as the solution? If you were God Emperor of the United States, would you:
1. Force Harvard & Co. to accept all applicants; watch the value of a Harvard degree plummet;
2. Accept that not everyone can/will/should get a degree from Harvard; reorganize society so that non-Harvard-degreed people can have a secure, prosperous life (this is a wonderful goal, but how would you accomplish it? Universal basic income? Funded/distributed how? How to avoid the inevitable Law of Unintended Consequences? This could be a whole series of posts by itself);
3. Start a Marxist revolution, abolish Harvard as a symbol of vile capitalist depravity, let the people seize the means of production (new and improved, this time with 100% less totalitarianism/purges/starvation);
4. Something else?
I'm not trying to troll you; I sincerely would like to know.
From what I know of FdB, I see much more of him in option #2.
Hmmm ... I would bet on option #3 as Freddie's top choice, but that he'd settle for #2.
Your number Three shows the internal contradictions of the Marxist ideology. Less totalitarianism/purges/starvation >=< but have purge for Harvard.
The real way out of that problem, is to name every school Harvard.
Where did you graduate from DrSopholist? "Harvard of course."
But the elites will still have another method of self identification, so you might as well let them have their space.
The downside of this whole topic, is that it took vital seconds off of our lives to even visit here. It apparently takes weeks or years off of Freddie's life to dwell on it. Instead of doing something constructive, like loving his wife, he's steamed up about something he can't change; probably couldn't change; and any steam built up and expended probably makes the problem worse anyhow.
So: chill bro', let it be.
He actually wrote a book that sort of answers this.
I don’t know about accepting all applicants but if they took 5x as many students it would be a good start.
Who intends consequences, anyway?
How about "5. Give everyone the test and just accept everyone in the top 3%"? No fuzzy and vague hardship scores, no character analyses, just a hard cut off based on test scores.