as for the rest of you ivy league motherfuckers -- WHY SHOULD US PLEBES LET YOU LIVE? ;-)

"Only 3 percent of the students at these highly selective schools come from the bottom 25 percent of the socioeconomic scale."

- from another thread.

Since that includes maybe 40-50+ state schools, I can only imagine the situation is worse in the Ivy League.

Truly, you have found the ultimate in indefensibility.

or is this just so much bullshit (like how rutgers cons its students by telling 'em that outside of NJ rutgers = ivy league?)

I just was in an academic copetitoion for Catholic schools across SF. I had the Science portion and represented my school. I got 2nd place. Whoohoo! First time doing that. I probly would have gotten first if I was agianst another 7th grader instead of that one 8th grader that got 1st.

I don't even know what high school I'll go to. Why must parents plane so far ahead! It bothers me. What if I don't get in? Then what?

No. I'm my mom's. Why didn't she just stay in Maryland?

defend williams: it's so fun and i really like it and it keeps me from having to do work that actually involves supporting myself financially.

How dare you mention Berkeley!! And you totally omit STANFURD!! BIZARRE. OMG WTF LOL

No. I'm my mom's.

That Johns Hopkins, he's such a masher!

i also exempt maria from extermination :-)

james, this is SO yer thread!! shall we also add Emory to the shitlist?

FUCK THE IVY LEAGUE

CONDI RICE

There, I met people who were really fucking rich and people who were way poorer than my family ever was--even my mom's family, and she grew up in the Mission Projects in San Francisco with gangs and shit. At Harvard I met people who didn't look like me or talk like me for pretty much the first time, and danced and drank with them and kissed them when they let me. We protested for living wages and we got Harvard to divest from South Africa by building a shantytown in the middle of the yard and inviting Jesse Jackson to come rip it up in front of the dean. I worked my ass off there, too, and met a lot of good friends, and married one of them. And we don't sit around swilling cognac and sneering at anyone else's diplomas; ours are in the basement or something, unframed, just pieces of paper.

I don't think that going to Harvard was the greatest damned thing I ever did in this world, and I know people who are doing a shitload better than I ever will who did NOT go to a big fancy-sounding school. And yeah, the shit ain't perfect. But come on.

shortest, gladdest, most expensive years of life...

Ah, the advantage is to watch silly little "plebes" start whole threads discussing how much they shouldn't care about it.

no, the purpose was to discuss why us "silly little plebes" should not BURN DOWN every ivy league school and exterminate every ivy leaguer (except for those specifically allowed to live).

they don't already?

I think you are forgetting "other Ivy League undergraduates". DO NOT SLEEP ON THE INTERSCHOOL RIVALRIES.

Hail to thee old ivy league
Poison ivy league
The ra-ra boys are sitting round the table tonight
The ra-ra boys have lots of plans in view
They're gonna have panty raids
And make their own lemonade
They'll live it up just like the big boys do

Poison ivy league, boys in that ivy league
Give me an itch, those sons of the rich
That poison ivy league

The ra-ra boys will go to bed so early tonight
Before exams they need a lot of rest
They gotta make good for dad
They gotta make good so bad
They'll even pay someone to take that test

Poison ivy league, boys in that ivy league
How can they flunk, they're so full of bunk
That poison ivy league

The ra-ra boys are being groomed for business some day
For better things to college they were sent
And you can bet they'll be the head of the company
As long as dear old daddy's president

Poison ivy league, boys in that ivy league
So loaded with cash, they give me a rash
That poison ivy league

So let it be told
I won't touch them with a ten foot pole
That poison Ivy league

Hahahaha... er.. that's almost true.

Nobody hates Ivy League undergrads more than Ivy League grad students who applied to, but couldn't get intoafford, Ivy League schools as undergraduates.

I love how Tad thinks my wife and I should die. That's so adorable!

"Oh, do you play football?"
"No, I just think it's important."

Thank god for the ivy league.

--you there! Yes, you! Bomb Iraq again, and make it snappy.

--where's my drink?

As for SATs - exactly where did I say that they mattered. The issue was UT's status as an elite university (to be kept in with the Ivies) - and it's not. One measure is the average SAT score. Avg. Hah-vud score - like 1450-1500. Avg. UT score - 1200 or less. Doesn't necessarily mean anything (other than Hah-vud kids could afford test prep), but that's one of the indications.

How that becomes "dissing low SAT scores" (uh, 1200 is like 200 points above-average), Lord only knows.

Don't be the guy with the one gay friend who isn't going to Hell. Either it's bad or it isn't.

Okay...

Maybe Dartmouth is like that, except it's more country than club, or Princeton or something, I dunno, I only did one road trip my whole four years. But this painting with a broad brush thing, I dunno.

And what the fuck parties did YOU get to go to? Our parties were fueled by beer from kegs and music by Prince. I didn't see anyone doing any coke in four years (my roommate saw that once I think)...shit, I must have been the wrong kind of Ivy Leaguer, a.k.a. Not The Straw Man.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

One of the funniest things I heard recently was a HS friend who went to Penn bitterly complaining about her lack of progress in the face of the 'Carleton mafia'. I reckon the grass is always greener...

Kerry, people from all over the world come to study architecture at the Bartlett School in London which is headed by Peter Cook from Archigram. As to concerns about elitism and that, fuck it, because you just have to remember that they get to meet YOU and besides you should endeavour to go somewhere really international in student intake (this is especially worthwhile in an Arch. course). Or you could apply to do architecture at the Cooper Union which is similar but free, right?

No, it's: Nobody hates Ivy League undergrads more than students who applied to, but couldn't afford, Ivy League schools as undergraduates, but who went anyway and now have no job and massive student loans.

I couldn't believe how smug my classmates were about money at Yale. The financial aid office told me that my parents should sell their house to pay my tuition. So when I graduated I had loans to the bank, to the government, to relatives. Like a mortgage with no house.

The Estimated Cost of Attendance
Tuition and fees: $28,400
Room and Board: $8,600
Books and personal expenses: $2,620
Cost for one academic year: $39,620

The one time I made an argument for class-based affirmative action in a class, I got called a racist, so maybe I should shut up.

I got nearly a full ride, but I can't imagine getting a grant that size now - it would have to be nearly three times what I got then.

Not 100% true. Brown only recently instituted a need-blind policy. It starts actually taking effect in 2007. The current undegrads are rather.. fortunate.

yeah, yer lucky trife hasn't found this thread ... (and i happen to agree with you on this issue).

Also, I realize what a great library it had - journals from 1890! Another good thing about non-state/private schools - the variety of students from all over the place, countries, cultural backgrounds, etc is great - most of my classmates were interesting and intense people. I liked being in a city having access to amazing professors.

This is actually several shades of bullshit. There were a bunch of rich kids in my class of 1600, but there were also a LARGE number of middle-class/lower-class kids as well; in fact, one of my roommates paid something like $4000 for his entire college education thanks to financial aid. Actually, something like 85% of the undergraduate population receives financial aid at one level or another (one of the benefits to having an endowment the size of a small country's GNP).

So now I'm Ivy League? I already feel snootier!

Maybe going to crappy high schools give you a disadvantage on the test, but that certainly didn't keep several people I knew who went to public schools in Florida, Arkansas or central DC schools from scoring very well and going to good Universities.

I would imagine so. In my experience, the dumbest kids at school were the richest ones - they didn't have to work to compete - they got legacies, or their daddies gave lots of money to the school. Those were the ones who sat around their dorms all day getting drunk or snorting coke.

Also, I hate to say it, but I always looked down on those kids whose parents spent all that money on test prep courses. If you're paying attention in school, you shouldn't need that stuff. I worked for admissions one year, and I saw first hand that they look for well-rounded, articulate, interesting students.

Really? Not in my experience. Being rich might make you a lot of things, but no more likely to be dumb than poor (dumb) people. I knew a lot of really smart people in college who were maddeningly rich too. In fact, almost all the people I knew at college were really smart. It was hard to find a dumb person. My roommate was a chemical abusing depressive grateful dead listening to jerk sometimes, but he also had read the Odyssey in Greek before coming to college. And he was from the South. And now is a PhD prof. at a biz school. But not rich then. It was a struggle for me to get through college, financially. But it was worth it.

And I did know a number of really dull people at college - they usually ended up in certain programs that were neither sciences nor humanities (I won't say for fear of offending anyone here who may have come out of similar programs).

It's no secret that the standards are lowered for legacy-type kids.

That tells me that the education system and admissions process are geared toward the wealthy/ier among us. Which goes back to - what's the 'good' of a need-blind admissions process?

It's better than a system that denies admission to people who come from a poor background, yes. (But isn't that system the status quo, with the emphasis on test scores and extracurriculars, etc.?) But any system that gives 3% of the spots to the bottom quarter of incomes needs to be fixed.

I'd be interested to see an SAT/ACT breakdown by class, but I don't remember their paperwork asking about family income.

I'd rather get rid of the politics that favor degrees from certain universities, but as long as they exist, I do think that these schools should admit a certain number of working-class students, so that all of Tomorrow's Leaders don't all come from the same class.

It may be that some of the people you didn't like at school, Kerry, were dull, rich, and lazy. In my experience the generalization didn't apply across the board.

You may have been sensing an affectation, a pose, that was certainly common at Yale. People who grade-grubbed and made a big fuss about how hard they worked were considered very uncool. A lot of people worked really hard, but acted rather nonchalant about their effort.

Yes, they were. It's called 'entitlement'.

I'm totally on-board with the just-as-good-an-education elsewhere, but that only goes so far. We give over so much capital to Ivy graduates. Every other 'first-time novelist' paperback I pick up at Border's has a Harvard-educated author, half the new film directors spent time at an Ivy, et al. - I don't believe that has anything to do with the Ivies having such a high percentage of great writers or talented artists (or businesspeople, politicians, anything else), and everything to do with their socio-economic status and the name on their degree.

I worry that we're limiting opportunities for the vast quantity of creative, talented, intelligent people out there who didn't go to an Ivy. Their educations and skill levels might be just as good, but they're being shuffled off into obscurity (or middle management suburbia) because they don't have the connections.

The sole reason that wealthy people have better grades is that they don't have jobs? Do you have any figures on how many high school students at different income percentiles have jobs and/or extracurricular activities (do you really believe that admissions committees don't consider a job one of the higher forms of 'extracurricular activity' and don't give greater weight to applicants who had to work while in school?). Maybe the quality of the school they attended had something to do with it too?

And is SAT test prep the sole reason that wealthier students do better than poorer students? My parents easily could have afforded a class, or years of classes. I never took one.

The current admissions criteria at such schools - including consideration of factors such as race, athletic participation, "legacy" status, etc. - produces a student body in which 10% of students are "low income," according to the study by The Century Foundation, referred to in milo's first post here. According to that study, if factors other than grades and test scores are eliminated from consideration, the percentage of "low income" students rises to 12%, the graduation rate also rises slightly, and the student population of African Americans and Latinos drops from 12% to 4%. The authors conclude that race-based admissions should be continued and expanded to increase racial and income diversity simultaneously.

I wonder how milo proposes to conduct an admissions process without reference to grades and test scores.

I never wanted to go to an Ivy (though I had a junior-high infatuation with Duke/Duke basketball - too bad I don't have any depth perception!), so my resentment (if it is that), has more to do with the cultural status of them

Haha. Have you ever been to the East Coast?

One way to measure the low income population of student bodies is to look at the percent eligible for Pell Grants, i.e. with family incomes less than $30K. In 2001, UCLA's undergrad student body contained more such students than any other highly selective institution, at 36%, higher than the national average of 22.6%. Ivies Columbia and Cornell* are not far off the national average, at about 17%. The rest of the Ivies are closer to 10%, with, of course, Princeton down below 8, but even then this reveals that most of the Ivy schools have at worst half as many low income students as other colleges do.

Another note - in all of these statistics, we're looking at the percentage of low income students who attend these schools, not the percentage of such students that are admitted. I wonder how many of those admitted attend.

*admittedly, Cornell contains several undergrad colleges, of which only one is an Ivy

(I don't remember seeing applications that asked about work experience, for that matter.)

The Duke article pretty much reiterates exactly what has been said - the Ivies are not the intellectual powerhouses they're cooked up to be. But that doesn't deal with the cultural perception.

I found the CF report - it's not purely based on income (as I read the original)

"There is even less socioeconomic diversity than racial or ethnic diversity at the most selective colleges (see Table 1.1, page 69). We find that 74 percent of the students at the top 146 highly selective colleges came from families in the top quarter of the SES scale (as measured by combining family income and the education and occupations of the parents), just 3 percent came
from the bottom SES quartile, and roughly 10 percent came from the bottom half of the SES scale."

FWIW, at least. (Even going by income - if the Ivies are at 10%, that's still too few)

As to your last one - aren't those linked? Can you have more "low income" students without leaving out "high income" students?

Did you say you went to an Ivy?

*starts go-go dancing*

chop it as well

Well, Harvard does. I'm sure the rest of the Ivies do too.

The Duke article pretty much reiterates exactly what has been said - the Ivies are not the intellectual powerhouses they're cooked up to be. But that doesn't deal with the cultural perception.

No, the article is quite clear that Duke is not up to the standards of the 20 serious academic institutions he posits, which includes, I'm sure, at least 4 Ivies, if not all of them.

FWIW, at least. (Even going by income - if the Ivies are at 10%, that's still too few)

Those numbers refer to the 146 institutions posited as the nation's highly selective universities. If you match them with my Pell Grant numbers, it's clear that all of the Ivies have a higher percentage of low income students than the average of those 146 institutions. So, in fact, the situation is better in the Ivy League.

'[Your] Pell Grant numbers' don't match up to those, being based primarily on income. The report goes into why it chose not to go on income. In addition, the $35k upper limit on family income for a Pell Grant takes it out of the lowest quintile and quartile of family incomes.

While we're at it - the concept of 'Ivies' was expanded early on in this thread, so harping on the Ivies v. Duke is rather irrelevant when they're both in the 'elite' club.

I don't really get your point here, other than "yeah, the Ivies are still totally geared toward the well-off, but it's not that bad."

Yes, and that's one (of the many) reasons that is making this thread pointless. If your list includes all selective colleges, what are you really talking about? Esp. when that list includes state colleges that have to take most anyone in state even if they can be more selective with out-of-state applicants. If standardized tests are biased (a pretty big if) and high school grades aren't comparabile from school to school (and they aren't) what selection criteria should there be?

You can be sure their 2d book isn't published if no one buys it. This thread is a conspiracy theorist's dream: It turns out the country is controlled by graduates of the top 750 colleges! Er, yeah, it does look that way.

What's pointless about this thread, other than you don't like to see people speak ill of the Ivies and 'elite' schools?

The anti-ivy rhetoric is unclear. The point of this thread is unclear too.

The Century Foundation report does go on income. Just not income alone. It adds information about parental education and occupation. The reason it doesn't go on income alone is that the income figures relied upon are reported by the student and subject to mistake. I assume that income for purposes of receiving a Pell grant is not merely reported by the student and must be verified. And adding parental education arguably skews their results wildly - I would imagine that college graduates, especially those of highly selective schools, are far more likely to send their kids to highly selective schools than others, regardless of income.

In addition, the $35k upper limit on family income for a Pell Grant takes it out of the lowest quintile and quartile of family incomes.

You're arguing that the Ivies are evil because only 10% of students at 146 schools come from the bottom two quartiles. The Pell grant information reveals that at every Ivy but Princeton 10% or more come from an even lower-income sample.

While we're at it - the concept of 'Ivies' was expanded early on in this thread, so harping on the Ivies v. Duke is rather irrelevant when they're both in the 'elite' club.

Well us elitist Ivy graduates don't accept such schools in our precious little club. *turns up nose* Actually, I see it the way the author of the Duke article does - some schools that are 'elite' are not especially rigorous; thus, their elite status may have more to do with socioeconomic status than does the status of rigorous schools, and this may be borne out in their admissions policies. If you accept that most, perhaps all, of the Ivies are rigorous (I think so, though I think that there are non-Ivies that are equally if not more rigorous), then the argument that the elite status of highly selective schools derives from the socioeconomic status of the student body is less applicable to the Ivies than to the non-Ivies.

And then the, frankly, hysterical notion that ivy league grads' books are published just because they went to certain schools. . . omg.

really

Consider Howard Dean, John Kerry, G.H.W. Bush, G.W. Bush, Al Gore. All have similar backgrounds. Didn't all turn out the same way, nor do they think the same way.

%s of varying income groups admitted/attending. What is the "correct" proportion of each group? Why is that proportion desirable.

Are family connections limited to people from ivy schools?

The problem of self selection. In my experience, the people I went to school with as undergrads were almost uniformly motivated, prepared, and talented. This is not the case with my grad school class. If you're motivated enough to get to a certain school, you may be motivated enough to get a certain job, get your book published, whatever.

Of course people get jobs they don't deserve. Happens all the time. Wish it would happen to me some.

My point is that you used a study of the nation's 146 most selective schools to illustrate how awful the Ivies are, when in fact the Ivies are better than those in the study. Who else are you going to compare the Ivies to? At what level of selectivity does a comparison stop being relevant?

Nearly 20% of undergrads at Columbia come from families making less than $35K a year, as do nearly 10% of undergrads at the rest of the Ivies. The problem is?

Also, everyone's ignoring the elephant in the room - if the Ivies were not geared towards those who can afford them, they would cease to exist.

I think that's an unfortunate comparison. It's probably pointless even to participate in this kind of discussion because if you went to one of the schools in question, you automatically look like T. Howell III if you defend the schools. Anyway, Thurston thought Yale men were the most primitive on the planet, fwiw.

Also, forgive my hypersensitivity, but even in making the comment above, you're implying (and I'm inferring) an indirect charge of racism. And I don't think that's warranted.

The other argument, which I think is specious, is an anger at people at certain schools because they're rich. And a presumption that because they're rich, they're also unqualified, lazy, stupid, whatever. That certainly wasn't my experience, and I don't think it holds up statistically, as if such a thing could ever be empirically measured. Even the ivies can't afford to admit too many stupid rich people. They don't need to. They're are plenty of smart rich legacies to admit.

We have our ways.

"Not income alone" = what I said. That's where the difference is. The numbers I cited to start with aren't tied solely to income, and income is only one factor. What's your argument here? By their numbers 3%, based on income-only 10% - in either case, still putting the lower incomes at a disadvantage.

You're arguing that the Ivies are evil because only 10% of students at 146 schools come from the bottom two quartiles. The Pell grant information reveals that at every Ivy but Princeton 10% or more come from an even lower-income sample.
No, I didn't argue that. I cited a study, which you seem to have read, that states that 3% come from the bottom quartile (not quartiles), not based solely on income.

Once more, the Pell Grant isn't applicable. It has nothing to do with the SES stats this was written with. And, at $35k in the upper-limit, goes beyond the lowest 20-25% of family incomes.

But, just to cover this once more -

By the study cited, 3% come from the bottom quarter.
By your argument, choosing to limit it solely to Ivies, 10% come from the bottom ~35%.

Meaning - drumroll please - the Ivies (or the 146 most prestigious, either one), still place the worse off among us at a disadvantage. The extent of your disagreement is "well, it's not that bad." It's still a disadvantage.

(several x-posts)
Bullshit, Skottie, that had nothing to do with insinuations of racism. It's about the question being asked. "Well, the Ivies are bad here, BUT SO ARE THESE SCHOOLS." That's the same argument as "Well, yes, whites are racist, BUT SO ARE BLACK PEOPLE."

No one disagrees that there are black racists, but they aren't an issue. There's no widespread disadvantage for whites because of black racism.

Likewise, Ohio State's legacy admissions really don't mean anything - it's a 35k+ campus that isn't limited in socioeconomic status, and on top of that carries no special cachet as a name. Pretending the 'elite' schools are just like any other requires a lot of dancing around.

Gabbneb, once more, why do you continue to conflate the study with Pell Grant numbers? You can't make them analgous, because the Pell Grants don't take any other factors into consideration.

If you're motivated enough to get to a certain school, you may be motivated enough to get a certain job, get your book published, whatever.

Wow, you're a big believer in 'meritocracy', aren't you? I better get off this thread, because frankly, you're confirming a lot of stereotypes.

Gabbneb, I'm well-aware that the colleges would not survive if they didn't let people in who could afford the full tuition. My only point is that not everyone is there because of 'merit' - it doesn't stop people from being impressed because so-and-so went to an 'elite' school.

Consider Howard Dean, John Kerry, G.H.W. Bush, G.W. Bush, Al Gore. All have similar backgrounds. Didn't all turn out the same way,

Oh my god, you can't be serious!

How can someone come out of Yale and not be able to understand someone else's argument?

This failure to 'understand' is exactly what pissed me off when I was in college. It is not about money. It is about people with enormous educational privileges who take them for granted.

I already told you once that I don't assume that all 'rich' people are unqualified. Just keep on misrepresenting my arguments.

How ironic that the same crap that annoyed me in college is annoying me on this very thread. I need to log off now and watch 'American Idol'.

Consider Howard Dean, John Kerry, G.H.W. Bush, G.W. Bush, Al Gore. All have similar backgrounds. Didn't all turn out the same way,

Oh my god, you can't be serious!

Got me. You're right. I'm not serious about that. I do think they turned out surprisingly similarly.

There's no widespread disadvantage for whites because of black racism.

Likewise, Ohio State's legacy admissions really don't mean anything -
Yes, yes, I understand that. I'm sorry. That was directed to the "second line of discussion. To wit: I would imagine so. In my experience, the dumbest kids at school were the richest ones - they didn't have to work to compete - they got legacies, or their daddies gave lots of money to the school. Those were the ones who sat around their dorms all day getting drunk or snorting coke.

Sorry. I don't mean to. I will stop.

Zey laughed at me at zee university, but zey'll see ven I perform my song on American Idol!!! AAAAaaahhh hhaaaaaaa haaaaaa!

http://www.theage.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1063268554051_2003/09/12/Psych,0.jpg

Pell grants and the study's SES-based statistics are not analgous, in any way, shape or form.

http://www.clairedanes.net/imgs/misc4.jpg

And such early promise

http://clairedanes.gmxhome.de/wanted/francaise.jpg

http://www.bryanspage.com/Lauryn.jpg

http://www.delos.fantascienza.com/delos57/img/duchovny/duchovny.jpg

http://www.capitalcentury.com/youngfitz.gif

http://www.rockcritics.com/christgau2small.jpg

http://incolor.inebraska.com/sumaree/beatles/images/dryoko_a.jpg

http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/movie/sunshine_state/angela_bassett_01.jpg

http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/faulkner_william/hollywood.jpg

http://www28.brinkster.com/1082/images/episodios/308.jpg

http://www.heavenlycelebrities.com/Pics/Julia%20Stiles/Album/julia266.jpg

http://www.onlygoodmovies.net/celebrities/n_portman/images/nat_07_jpg.jpg

This obviously doesn't actually prove the worth of the Ivy Leagues but quite honestly most of the people I've met at Columbia are no brighter than a box of nails so this is the best defense I have to offer.

http://my.netian.com/~t2man/soundtrack/80s/Flashdance.jpg

(I got Brown.)

http://www.raquenel.com/different/bonet1b.jpg

x-post

http://www.raptiye.com/images/Christopher-Reeve.jpg

http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/pino22/immaginicelebries/bTF%20Superman%20Dean%20Cain.jpg

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V115/N13/chomsky.gif

and first one who posts river cuomo gets xferred to SUNY-purchase or rutgers-camden.

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/r/pics/robeson-paul.jpg

http://www.toughpigs.com/extraweezer15.jpg

http://www.toontracker.com/magoo/magoo-1.gif

http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9804/22/bitch.wurtzel/cover.bitch.jpg

http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~yskim/prince/brooke11.jpg

Correct me if I am wrong, though, but don't most of these schools--like, um, most schools in general--base most of their financial awards system off of the FAFSA? This is not including purely merit-based scholarships, obviously. It seems to me, as it always seems, that unless that system gets substantially reformed, people who are not relatively upper-middle/upper class are not going to be able to afford to go to any "quality" university. I mean, Columbia is trying to help me petition my FAFSA results so that I do meet more qualifications, but at current my "expected family contribution" equals half of my earnings for last year. This wouldn't be different if I went to CUNY instead, and I wouldn't be able to get any financial assistance there, either (actually, by logic of the government "awarding" you the difference between your EFC and the tuition cost, I actually get more aid, ie some, at Columbia than I would get, ie none, at a CUNY school). Since I can't actually afford either tuition, I decided to just take out the higher loan and get my degree from a school that is going to have more immediate "results", fair or not as that distinction might be.

I mean, what percentage of low-income people are in any university, period, Ivy League or not Ivy League? How many people apply to an Ivy League from that economic bracket? It's kind of unfair to pin numbers like that on any of these schools when from the get go people just assume they aren't going to make it in or they cannot afford it and just don't bother (as mentioned in teeny's article).

Nellie McKay is written off - http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/08/nellie_mckay_calls_columbias_p.html

She should go back to being a redhead.

I presume it is possible to learn something at an ivy league school such as might, in part, justify the huge expense in time, money and effort. Learning is good. Therefore the ivy league is defensible on the grounds that they are capable of facilitating something good.

which is completely outweighed by rich white kids learning nothing and assuming shell positions that drain our nation of its competitiveness in a global marketplace. and the fact that the rest just get burdened with debt and/or wind up working for some ridiculous freegan hippie junk parade like the media or congress.

(splutters) But...but...hey! That's not a very good defense at all!

Man, I love that Nellie McKay. More people need to use insults like "goofus" or (as I say) "jerkface" or "hilarious-head."

My single-mom family was in the lower economic bracket (qualified for large blocks of free cheese in the early eighties and got free school lunch, etc.) but my brother went to Harvard and my sister went to Yale. My mom always impressed on us that we had to get good grades to get scholarships to good schools. She moved us from DC to Montana when my older siblings were starting junior high specifically because the chances of getting into good Northeastern schools improved coming from bumfuck (and also cuz she was a hippie who wanted to garden topless in the mountains amongst the bears and rednecks). I'm sure being from Montana helped me get into Wesleyan. We all got full rides (but lots of debt upon graduation). Thank god for need-blind admissions! Got me the hell out of Montana!

Now they're both raking it in, buy the whey.

maria you consistently amaze me with your posts. you are awesome.

i got into wesleyan, too -- but i was too stupid to get a scholarship sufficient to pay the lion's share of expenses there & my parents refused to make up the difference ;__;

actually, i only ;__;'d way back then -- now, i know that my parents were right to hold the line.

he moved us from DC to Montana when my older siblings were starting junior high specifically because the chances of getting into good Northeastern schools improved coming from bumfuck (and also cuz she was a hippie who wanted to garden topless in the mountains amongst the bears and rednecks). I'm sure being from Montana helped me get into Wesleyan. We all got full rides (but lots of debt upon graduation).

My friend's Dad did the exact same thing, except from Jersey to Wyoming. Also, he made sure that they had no net income (they ran a B&B). I went to school with one of 'em (smallest Ivy), and the other one went to Princeton. Princeton, fwiw, forgives ALL LOANS, and she basically graduated paying about $10k total for her education.

not entirely sure why I capitalized "dad" there.

My friend's Dad did the exact same thing, except from Jersey to Wyoming. Also, he made sure that they had no net income (they ran a B&B)

this is totally what i am doing. oh wait, i'm not having any kids. well, i'll do it anyway.

thanks, stence! i'm blushing.

My friend's Dad did the exact same thing, except from Jersey to Wyoming. Also, he made sure that they had no net income (they ran a B&B). I went to school with one of 'em (smallest Ivy), and the other one went to Princeton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hogue

indie cabaret sensationindie cabaret sensationindie cabaret sensationindie cabaret sensationindie cabaret sensationindie cabaret sensationindie cabaret sensationvv

oops, that was from the nellie mckay article
also "kookily eclectic"

it's true that Jersey=D.C. and Wyoming=Montana, although I think I got the better deal.

no need to blush just keep on' postin'!

it's like... reverse economic racism!

j/k

But there's another side to that: I was told to my face in an admissions interview that if I didn't get into that school it would be because I did not have an alumni relation. On the one hand, this might not have happened if my grades/math SAT/I dunno something had been a little better. On the other hand, it still kinda sucks to be told that.

BUT I am still one of those lucky people who is going to school for about a tenth of what the actual cost is. Being poor is awesome sometimes!

omg hilarious-head xp so good

I was told to my face in an admissions interview that if I didn't get into that school it would be because I did not have an alumni relation.

i have a legacy at princeton going back 3+ generations on both sides of my family (if youve ever met anyone who went to princeton youll know that this is not bragging) and they rejected the shit out of me. the sense i got was mostly just that they didnt care about pleasing my parents or grandparents because none of them ever donated any $$.

so, the legacy thing only works if your relatives are pledging ca$h

it's amazing the lengths that parents go to to get their kids into fancy schools! moving across the country, etc. my boss has kids going into 6th and 7th grade and endlessesly obsesses over which middle and high schools to send them to (the application processes sound very college-like) and already has contacted private college guidance counsellors.

this is the kind of shit that makes me never want to have kids.

esp if u live in a particular town, it gets evil. junior year is scary shit. u don't wanna run into a mom whose daughter just got rejected from Cornell.

i remember hunting the mailman down in his mail vehicle on my block in anticipation of my letters. when he handed me to fat ones, i just started screaming. was in the best friend's beemer. oh LONG ISLAND I MISS YOU MUCH

this is the kind of shit that makes me never want to have kids.

we moved to Montana and attended PUBLIC schools. It's not like every waking hour was focused on the pursuit of college. Shit, we were the only students in the whole high school who went east to college and had to inform our guidance counselors about the schools. I was one of two kids in my class to take the SATs and had to travel 60 miles to do them. Didn't occur to me to have another try at them. I'm sure that if I'd said I didn't want to go to college at all, my mom would have accepted it. For her, it was about giving kids from a low-income family good chances. Good college does really improve your life. I agree that it's possible to get an excellent educatin at less expensive colleges and I agree that parents often go overboard about it. Nonetheless, trying really hard to give your kids good chances is not something to be unconditionally scorned.

ha ha i got an educatin

oh i'm not scorning it, the entire process just kind of terrifies me.

but so do many other things about child-rearing.
i think it is just perhaps best that i never reproduce.

cuz of the money alone surely

i only had to go about five minutes away to take the sat, and once was enough for me.

I would like to spawn in bozeman, I think

Livingston is much prettier, and just over the pass.

Bozeman's pop. is like 45k right now and is expected to hit 100k+ in about 15 years. Bozeangels, LOL.

Seriously, it's beautiful here, but the development is atrocious. Mixed what?

Yeah, I should just go found my own town in WY
who wants to move in?

Ooh, actually, just move to Lander, WY!

I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of ILX all picking up and founding a remote western settlement. Probable collapse within in 3 weeks though.

Can we rename Lander to Villa Del Tomboto y/n

move to idaho, start a polygamous commune, spawn hundreds of children and send them all to ivy league schools!

I think you will hacve to take that up with Lander, TOMBOT

Ilx Barre

Etna, Wyo., is a wonderful town of pop. 300 or so. You could work doing cryptology shit for the Freedom Arms Gun Company hq, located in that town. There's also a crazy bison preserve there. It's in a beautiful valley and you can buy "illegal fireworks" such as firecrackers & bottle rockets all year round. Plus cigs (ie Camels) are on avg. $3/pack. GO FOR IT.

a strong temptation

There seem to be a few semi-ghost towns in the west where you could move in your family and a few friends and elect yourself Mayor/Dictator for Life.

There's a polygamous community about a mile from my old house. We could all move in there. My mom still owns the house. We could live in my old house (10 acres, a pond, room for more outbuildings) and commute to the polygamous community down the road. Except I would never want to live there again. But you guys maybe could. Hamilton. It's beeeeyoootifully located in the foothills of the bitterroot mountains. My town has been turned into a big kmart.

Bone, Idaho goes up for sale periodically. Yes, the entire town. Hilariously enough, Southeast Idaho rumors claim Vin Diesel lives there.

Oh wait, sorry, that article is hella stupid and sentimental and barely about Bone at all. Pretty much the only representation of the town I can find is here (big image. That is he bar/general store, the other is an RV someone uses as a house. "BONE - POPULATION 2"

http://www.boneville.com/wp-content/uploads/BONE%20OVE%20Poster.jpg

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/yale-harvard-law-taking-over-supreme-court/

I know this isn't 'news' but this image is o_O

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/07/15/business/economy/economix-15scotusto1950/economix-15scotusto1950-custom2.jpg

one more one more one more one more

meh. even if they stopped giving new SC appointments to Harvard or Yale Law grads, it isn't as if they're going to start appointing, oh i dunno, Rutgers or Brooklyn or Temple Law grads to the Court (even if the nominee was valedictorian). look at the shit that Harriet Myers caught simply because she "only" went to Southern Methodist (well, there were other [more important] reasons why she was unsuitable to be on the Supreme Court -- but the fact that she didn't go to an Ivy law school wasn't one of them in my mind anyway).

i mean, CJ Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor were both Stanford grads -- and Stanford might just as well be Harvard or Yale as far as the über-elitist in the lawyer world care.

but that's the thing - the fact that even the Stanford/Chicago/Columbia/etc. elite aren't represented is why this has become...well, strange? but yeah I think a lot of it has to do with how the nomination process has changed over time.

Harvard/Yale is - maybe more than ever? - the gold standard when it comes to American credentialism. Obama's Harvard degree got more attention than his Columbia one, I think.

college/grad school pedigree not as important for prez candidates generally

hasn't been a non-harvard/yale pres since the 80s or even nominee since...bob dole?

guess we should all be happy that palin is getting the nom then

I'm voting for her just to break the streak

oh wait I forgot about mccain oops

vietnam prison was his harvard

http://rachelmarsden.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/bush_rugby.jpg

http://www.quickanded.com/2010/11/why-not-yale.html

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/8/30/academic-dishonesty-ad-board/

yeah I have been boggling at that on Facebook

the most intersting comment was "was this rampant cheating or a really terrible teacher creating confusion" and the sad thing is that I could easily see either or some combination of both being true

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/elite-colleges-are-as-foreign-as-mars.html

Until then, is it any wonder that students in Pahrump and throughout rural America are more likely to end up in Afghanistan than at N.Y.U.?

you are less likely to end up dead at nyu but it's def ruined some lives

For deans of admissions brainstorming what they can do to remedy this, might I suggest: anything.

niiice

Most parents like mine, who had never gone to college, were either intimidated or oblivious (and sometimes outright hostile) to the intricacies of college admissions and financial aid.

I didn't even know how to go about financial aid or where to start - my school expected parents to step in and offer guidance, I suppose.

OTOH, I don't think the problem is "rural kids underserved by Harvard and Stanford," I think the problem is that Directional State U is treated as little more than a waystation for handing out Bachelors of Business Administration by society/the state/etc..

http://gawker.com/this-personal-essay-will-get-you-into-columbia-478217730

Is there anything that I can do, a lot of young people have written to ask me, to avoid becoming an out-of-touch, entitled little shit?

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere

Counterpoint: http://doctorcleveland.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/snobs-vs-ivy-league-or-question-of-bill.html?m=1

That counterpoint seemed a bit wide of the mark to me. I didn't get the impression that the piece was really suggesting that underprivileged youth who are lucky enough to win the lottery and get into an Ivy should turn it down for a state school where they'd have to struggle. That would be crazy. Also, I doubt the author wrote the title himself. Seems like it was cooked up by an editor angling for page-views.

Here's another take:

Mr. Deriesiewicz seems shocked, shocked to discover that 250+-year-old institutions charging rack rates north of $60,000 per year to convey some tangled Latin prose on sheepskin to spotty youngsters at the end of four or more years--institutions for which the combined endowments exceed the gross national products of several small countries--should be complicit in the perpetuation and justification of entrenched socioeconomic power structures. Whence, exactly, did Mr. D think these universities' wealth, status, and prestige come from? Whence the demand for their services? From whom?

http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.ae/2014/07/improve-yourself.html

https://tvline.com/2019/03/12/felicity-huffman-indicted-lori-loughlin-ivy-league-bribe/

Desperate Housewives vet Felicity Huffman and Fuller House‘s Lori Loughlin have been indicted for allegedly taking part in a large scheme involving parents who paid bribes of up to $6 million to get their kids into elite colleges, including Harvard and Yale, ABC News is reporting.

The indictment was filed by the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts; the documents were unsealed early Tuesday.

More: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/feds-uncover-massive-college-entrance-exam-cheating-plot-n982136

US Attorney re the Huffman/Loughlin (among others) college scam: "We're not talking about donating a building...we're talking about fraud."

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 12, 2019

As Gabriel Malor said in response: "Ew, new money. How gauche."

As someone who grew up near San Diego, this is easily the funniest detail so far:

Feds dunking on USD pic.twitter.com/45RbCKy8sx

— Jon Sarlin (@jonsarlin) March 12, 2019

Hoo boy

Here you can see Lori Laughlin's daughter's "college dorm room tour," in which she says pretty much everything in the room was comped by Amazon (presumably so she'd mention that repeatedly to the 1.1 million people who've watched the video) https://t.co/YlWrIUa0PW

— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) March 12, 2019

The good thing about William H. Macy being involved in a scandal is that his middle initial is readily available for me to express my astonished disappointment in him.

Oh, this is illegal?

Per the indictment, Huffman and husband William H. Macy (who is not referenced by name) paid $15,000 to have someone take the SAT in place of their older daughter, which ultimately resulted in a 1420 SAT score for her. They also allegedly pursued doing the same for their younger daughter, but eventually decided against repeating their involvement in the scheme.

Loughlin and Giannulli allegedly paid a total of $500,000 so that their two daughters would be designated as recruits to the USC crew team. Neither girl participated in the sport. Athletic recruits have a much better chance of admission than students who are not recruited.

damn

i was under the impression that donating was more common than
they're making it sound. i'm assuming what's not common is
having another person take the SAT exam in your place. it seems
like a clumsy way to try to get into a college, though.

also, while ucla has a couple of pretty good programs, for the most
part, the main reason it's "highly selective" is because they have
over 110,000 applicants a year.

there are transfer programs at community colleges that can pretty
much guarantee your admission to ucla and berkeley.

I see that maybe they "donated" the stupid way.

legit shitty parenting

Oh here's something fun.

What are your best “hacks” for the back-to-school season?

— Felicity Huffman (@FelicityHuffman) August 25, 2016

I think I'd want a higher score for $15,000.

la times article, which doesn't provide a whole
lot of details:
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions-scale-elite-schools-20190312-story.html

so apparently it's north of 40 people and this was since 2011.
growing up, i definitely met a few people and parents that did
this. it's weird that all of a sudden they're busting people for it.

it's not that weird. this isn't the "donating to the school" thing, it's a fraudulent scheme

yeah they paid off athletic staff and coaches to accept their students as athletes when they weren't. This is above and beyond donating money. It's complete fraud and bribery. Fuck these people.

there were two options in the scheme. it was always some
type of "purchase." i'm sure they had to change it up
a bit from time to time (i'm talking in the past 20 years)
to avoid anyone not in on it to discover what was
going on.

Until then could you focus on your finals!😜 https://t.co/CtrtdIGR9f

— Lori Loughlin (@LoriLoughlin) May 13, 2015

The above was a lot cheaper than the legal 2.5mil that Kushner's criminal dad donated to Harvard before his acceptance.

This thread!

In March 2008, @brianstelter wrote a story for @nytimes about how young people were getting news online. It's a pretty straightforward story — but there's one quote in it that still has an impact on debates about digital journalism today. 1/x https://t.co/3iQoWNHEzf

— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) March 12, 2019

Whoops!

Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy's bribe to the guy who fixed their daughter's SAT scores was disguised as a charitable donation for "educational programs [for] disadvantaged youth." Charming. pic.twitter.com/HVJYnwqGRU

— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) March 12, 2019

I think I'd want a higher score for $15,000.

― jmm, Tuesday, March 12, 2019 9:49 AM (twenty-four minutes ago)

hahaha considering this is the Ivy League thread ... I mean, I got that score when I took the test when I was 13. ... I could definitely use $15,000 rn, they should contact me

haha that's how you do a humblebrag, well played.

c'mon, this is the Ivy League thread ... it would be like going on a thread for "defending rich people" and saying your family had a yacht when you were a kid

and then another poster who is also "defending rich ppl" would say, "yes! my family also had a yacht! did you vacation in the hamptons or on martha's vineyard?"

i'm assuming what's not common is
having another person take the SAT exam in your place.

I’m not sure why this wouldn’t be common when you can make $15k a time and there is barely anything to stop you.

because it is easier to get caught? this type of
corruption has been going on since i was a kid.

if you get higher than a specific score (not a high,
though), but the board sees potential in you, they
can interview you and re-assess your qualifications
based on other factors. the problem is the board
changes every year or so, i believe?

I’m assuming this will lead to a crackdown on SAT administrators and low-level admissions staff at universities, and not on the upper echelons of university executives who have known about stuff like this going on for centuries

Like, Donald Trump got into the Wharton school at UPenn and did “very very well” even though though he’s clearly one of the dumbest people in North America

Ivy League = elaborate scam to make Dartmouth, Cornell and Brown seem like impressive places to have gone to school

yeah, there was talk of this when george w. bush was
elected president.

I’m not sure it is that easy to get caught if you know what you’re doing, tbh. The College Board aiui has two main security mechanisms - ID check on the day and access to test-taker photographs in the event of any post-test query about identity. They’re both easily circumvented if you just find someone who looks sufficiently similar to you. Xps

hahaha considering this is the Ivy League thread ...

ha, sorry, I wasn't being serious. ftr, I didn't take the SAT or go to a fancy school.

According to his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, Trump threatened to sue Wharton and UPenn if they released his grades, so "very very well" rests upon the word of a serial liar. However, I am willing to believe Trump is regressing and is measurably dumber now than when he was a young man.

Okay so here's a good story on the goon who founded/ran this whole scam:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article227457069.html

Among other things:

Singer in 1988 was fired as boys basketball coach of Encina High School, with a district spokesman at the time only referring to it as a“personnel matter.” The Bee reported at the time that parents said Singer had an abusive nature toward referees.

In the early 90s, Sacramento Bee archives show Singer was an assistant coach for Sacramento State’s men’s basketball team.

And of course though he's from Sacramento the scam was based out of Newport Beach. Why WOULDN'T it be based out of Newport Beach?

Also, the dude looks like this:

https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/n6py9w/picture227458594/alternates/FREE_768/Rick-Singer.jpg

He looks like sherbet.

burt bacharach, no!

This is extremely depressing. The kid wants to keep testing until she scores well, but the mom is like ‘let’s cheat so I don’t have to deal with that.' pic.twitter.com/CqxT4BrdRT

— Barry Petchesky (@barry) March 12, 2019

Lol. Here we don't have SATs nor entrance exams. So you enroll and prove your worth. (Which I did not do: college dropout. Lol)

Is it bad that my takeaway from this whole thing is "lol Yale"?

"lol Yale" would be a more defensible takeaway if you had not gone to Harvard.

harvard alumni can definitely say "lol Yale". they just need to 'power pose' and accept a useless heart stem cell injection while they say it.

itt Aimless fundamentally misunderstands school rivalries

I went to Berkeley and even I know Yale is the school of celebrities and rich kids and Harvard is a real university.

here's my quick ranking of the ivy leagues from most to least comprehensively objectionable

Yale
Princeton
Harvard
Dartmouth
Penn
Columbia
Cornell
Brown

caveat is if I lived in Providence I would probably object to Brown a whole lot

my main reaction was being afraid this was done for me on my behalf and I didn't actually earn the scores on the SAT I thought I did; it would certainly explain a lot

A true winner today:

If only there was a succinct turn of phrase these kids could have used to inform their parents they were not desirous of their life path... https://t.co/cxOTDI5J1B

— James Van Der Beek (@vanderjames) March 12, 2019

itt Aimless fundamentally misunderstands school rivalries

nah. you arrived at "lol Yale" decades before this story broke, so your professed "takeaway" was not taken from, but brought to the whole thing.

here's my quick ranking of the ivy leagues from most to least comprehensively objectionable

Yale
Princeton
Harvard
Dartmouth
Penn
Columbia
Cornell
Brown

― moose; squirrel (silby), Tuesday, March 12, 2019 1:28 PM (four hours ago

lol so proud to be an alumna of the least objectionable Ivy

ty for using 'alumna' correctly. even the ivy league schools' branded and trademarked gift shop items (bumper stickers, sweatshirts, etc.) tend to use "alumnus" for both men and women and for both singular and plural.

If you still have to learn Latin, then what's the point of paying someone off?

The whole story is so nuts to me. They didn't buy degrees; they just bought admission, which doesn't seem like it guarantees much. Presumably, they would keep paying that kind of money for good grades? And to what end? The kids of millionaire celebrities and businessmen are not lacking for money and connections. Just to be able to say your kid got into Yale? That's worth six to seven figures?

"Just to be able to say your kid got into Yale? That's worth six to seven figures?"

I mean, yeah, the root of this is vanity more than anything

Also, if you're a well-connected person at a school like Yale, you are going to have the opportunity to ride the coattails of other well-connected people into ventures with a possible upside of well over six to seven figures.

For sure. Plus, what this scam/ruse lays bare is that the bar to get into some of these schools is much higher than the bar to graduation. You basically need to be an A student to get in, but you don't need to do A-grade work to graduate.

this is what i was getting at yesterday:
https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/college-cheating-scandal-an-admissions-officer-speaks-out.html

Not infrequently, I would pull up a student’s file, see my “Defer” or “Deny” recommendation, and then a second reviewer recommending the same thing, and then a high-ranking admissions staff member would flip the decision to admit. Usually, the justification would be a brief couple of sentences with purposefully vague language, like “Student has struggled with math sequence but should be fine with on campus tutoring resources, ADMIT.” I saw these decisions flipped frequently for students from affluent backgrounds, and rarely for students who’d applied for financial aid. Once, I saw a student who fell far below our clearly outlined admissions requirements admitted — this student was heir to a popular processed-meat company’s fortune.

Although our school advertised our “holistic” review process, our director typically used test scores to screen applicants. His rationale was that these were “riskier” students. The only time he didn’t? If the student could pay full price to attend our institution, or a “full pay” student. He was not coy about this fact, and would frequently make comments about how students from Silicon Valley could “afford” to come here. When I planned my recruitment trip in California, I was given an Excel spreadsheet that listed high schools by average household income.

processed meat scion tyler hormel

yeah, another article I was reading was saying that full pay, white men were highly sought after since demographics of colleges had been skewing more female.

Eh, full pay, full stop more like. Up until maybe very recently University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign had something like 6000 Chinese students, over 10% of the student body, because reportedly students from China were more likely to pay full price.

Isn't Tucker Carlson literally an heir to a processed meat fortune?

It means nothing but the difference between Laughlin and Luke Perry struck me. They were both on foolish programs but Laughlin seemed content to cash the check while Perry wanted to be an actor.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) March 13, 2019

my other main thought about this is that people are still shocked that the millennial generation is having fewer children. having children means subjecting them to this shit

(well, not *always*, but for people who want their children to attend college)

i thought it was because millenials have an absurd amount of student loan debt compared to the relative value of their college educations

like, if you compare the inflation of college tuition to the housing market 10 yrs ago, and how the subprime mortgage industry contributed to it ... you can't just abandon your college degree for the bank to take back, or even, refi your student loan debt based on the increased value of your degree ... I feel like it's in this context -- average adults with 6 figures of education debt -- that rich people paying tens of thousands of dollars so that they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for their kids' college education is grotesque

but back to defending the Ivy League -- the main reason I went to an Ivy League school is that they had the money to give me a scholarship for 1/3 - 1/2 of the tuition whereas my 1st choice school waitlisted me for financial aid.

Can't help but hear Brett Kavanaugh's voice ringing out -- "When I got into Yale College, got into Yale Law School. I've worked my a... tail off"

I do kind of wonder just how widespread this sort of out and out bribery is. I never assumed merit, but I usually assumed it was more "playing the game the right way" that got affluent kids into these schools -- juicing up your extracurriculars with stuff that you were half-hearted about, getting an essay coach to heavily edit your essay, tons of SAT tutoring, subject tutoring to get grades up etc. I didn't imagine merit but I imagined there was still some degree of effort and shrewdness involved, not just your parents literally writing a check (outside of a handful of ultra-wealthy donors like Jared Kushner's dad).

It means nothing but the difference between Laughlin and Luke Perry struck me. They were both on foolish programs but Laughlin seemed content to cash the check while Perry wanted to be an actor.
— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) March 13, 2019
― Let's have sensible centrist armageddon (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, March 13, 2019 12:52 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel dumber after having read that.

ya also i'm pretty sure Richard Nixon is dead

i thought it was because millenials have an absurd amount of student loan debt compared to the relative value of their college educations

― sarahell, Wednesday, March 13, 2019 1:31 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, yeah, there are a lot of factors (an oft-cited one is climate change) but this certainly does not help

could you link to a data supporting the climate change argument? that strikes me as unlikely

not sure how useful that data would be, i mean if you're relying on people to just tell you why they're not having kids i would imagine a certain percentage are going to default to the most noble/tragic explanation.

that's not to say some people don't genuinely feel that way, I just mean it's a good easy answer if the real answer (as it often is) is something much more complicated and personal.

it's a bit too early for there to be any actual studies, but it has been written about: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/climate/climate-change-children.html

AOC also mentioned it earlier this year: "Our planet is going to hit disaster if we don’t turn this ship around. There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question: Is it okay to still have children?"

I heard there were celebrity parents involved here, but turns out it was Lori Loughlin and Forgotten Whoozis.

if they had died you would still post about them (and the 70s film shorts they were in) in the obit thread

William H Macy also apparently involved though not named in the complaint.

typical Frank Gallagher

Also, if you're a well-connected person at a school like Yale, you are going to have the opportunity to ride the coattails of other well-connected people into ventures with a possible upside of well over six to seven figures.

fuck all these schools and their connections, burn them shits to the ground

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2017/04/12/subsidizing_the_ivy_league.html

lol

it's a bit too early for there to be any actual studies, but it has been written about: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/climate/climate-change-children.html

AOC also mentioned it earlier this year: "Our planet is going to hit disaster if we don’t turn this ship around. There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question: Is it okay to still have children?"

― theorizing your yells (katherine), Wednesday, March 13, 2019 3:21 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks. I’m not very convinced this has much to do with the trends we’ve been seeing over the past couple of decades, at least compared to things like widespread access to birth control, student loan debt, and people marrying later (which of course could be related to the above)
also as evol alludes to, philosophical opposition to having kids has a long history, and this may just be the latest reason for it

Uh

OMG: “My daughter and a group of students left for spring break prior to the government's announcement yesterday. Once we became aware of the investigation, the young woman decided it would be in her best interests to return home.” https://t.co/1GHMMlKABA

— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) March 13, 2019

sprang braaaaaaaaaake

if they had died you would still post about them (and the 70s film shorts they were in) in the obit thread

Given that Lori Loughlin's most prestigious credit was Full House, you may be lil bit off there mook

William H Macy also apparently involved though not named in the complaint.

That seems a very favorable reading of the evidence. But yeah they didn’t have enough to charge him.

when I was a TA at a uni famous for football I taught a class of football players & one guy who literally was "heir to a popular processed-meat company’s fortune" was in the class. he'd been given a football scholarship at this uni, & I don't think he ever played a down in his 4 years. always figured it was this kind of bullshit. one weekend during the class (it was during the summer) this guy flew the whole football team to his dad's mansion in arizona or whatever for a giant party. I think they ate a ton of canned chili.

one thing that's pretty fucked up is it seems like most of these kids had no idea what their parents were doing, so now they have to deal with the possibility that they'll be expelled from the schools they were accepted to, and the ones who aren't at least have to deal with public humiliation at having been accepted illegitimately. And they'll be labeled as cheaters even though with few exceptions they were not privy to the cheating done on their behalf. I do feel bad for most of them. Though not super bad for the Loughlin/Mossimo scion, tbh.

I do think the reporting around this has done a good job of painting the parents as the monsters over the students, with the glaring and well-deserved exception of Loughlin's daughter

well them and this guy:

Son defends parents caught in college admissions scandal while smoking blunt https://t.co/4zD4EdKM5q pic.twitter.com/rYC05uGRdt

— New York Post (@nypost) March 14, 2019

"no idea" is a stretch. many of the shady activities required the kids' participation.

to the extent that they'd have "no idea" that e.g. collaborating with friendly doctors to support a disability diagnosis allowing for extra time or unorthodox proctoring it's bc so many privileged families are doing this already but stopping sort of changing answers or submitting someone else's test.

"son, we need to have a talk. our family has been implicated in a massive college admissions cheating scandal the likes of which have not been publicized in decades, but one where it's theoretically possible the kids can mostly escape blame. so, what I need you to do is go out and be as unsympathetic as humanly possible. do you think you can do that for us?"

omg lol at that dude, wow

xp -- at least for the cases where the proctors changed the kids' scores, I've seen a couple of arguments along the lines of "of course the kids knew when they got a SAT score 400 points higher than the last one," which doesn't make sense to me at all. have people never taken an exam, walked out of the room being utterly convinced they flunked it, and then found out they got an A? or have people never just straight-up guessed on a multiple-choice test and found out they guessed correctly?

The toker, who sports a ponytail and raps under the name “Billa,” then shamelessly plugged his music. “Check out my CD, ‘Cheese and Crackers,’ ” he said of his 2018 five-track rec­ord that includes a song titled “If I Lost My Money.”

xp: Agreed, also some of these kids seem to have been actively studying for these tests, so an improvement in scores would have been interpreted by them as validation that their studying paid off.

Also, if you're a well-connected person at a school like Yale, you are going to have the opportunity to ride the coattails of other well-connected people into ventures with a possible upside of well over six to seven figures.

I will freely admit that I don't really understand the world of 'connections' but I was figuring that:

i) the kids of wealthy celebrities already have a lot of connections by virtue of being the children of celebrities and

ii) the kinds of Yale connections that would lead to starting up or being invited to join seven-figure ventures would still require you to be, idk, pretty good at what you were studying at Yale.

But yeah, clearly not a world I get.

Although now, when I put i) and ii) together, I realize you probably mean that competent go-getters at Ivies may well want to associate themselves with children of the rich and famous because of their names.

I think there are probably very few kids who were not in on it, and I am not going to feel bad about these Richie Riches when this will likely have exactly zero effect on their future life prospects.

xp: ding ding ding

I think they ate a ton of canned chili

thank you for this

i used this story in a class today to talk about financial fraud, it was wild, students have all kinds of shit to say about it

I do think the reporting around this has done a good job of painting the parents as the monsters over the students, with the glaring and well-deserved exception of Loughlin's daughter

j., you can become an influencer on ig --
"shit my students say"

Also had a girl in our shop. She was saying she just finished a year at Oxford. I asked which uni she attended in the US. She was sort of shy saying:"Oh Brown." I replied:"Don't be shy! You should be proud of it." She said she was trembling when she read ab the scam. Dunno if it was bec her parents bought her way into Brown. Lol.

or because she didn't know whether they did!!!

things that cause me to tremble: 1) pondering how they crucified my lord. 2) pondering how they laid him in a tomb. 3) pondering how admittance into Brown University isn't validation of one's life.

Apparently this investigation was kicked off by a finance dude who was under investigation by the SEC for pumping/dumping stock - when caught he flipped on the Yale woman's soccer coach who was taking bribes.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-yale-dad-who-set-off-the-college-admissions-scandal-11552588402

Harvard had $41 billion before the market crash. It would cost them almost nothing to keep paying workers. It should be socialized. https://t.co/Eh020XBbmi

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) March 22, 2020