
What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education - qiqing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/19/how-harvard-helps-its-richest-and-most-arrogant-students-get-ahead/
======
rdlecler1
I was a TA at Yale when I did my PhD there and I contrast that experience to
when I was a TA at University of Calgary. Whether it’s a higher sense of
entitlement or just grinding it out to maximize your official grade the
contrast between these two schools was striking. At Yale you’d better think
twice about honest grading because if you did there would be an army at your
door with pitchforks ready. You then have to spend hours explaining why they
didn’t deserve a higher grade. At the end of the day you’re worn down and
there’s very little incentive to grade honestly as you get pain nearly nothing
and you’re really there to finish your PhD.

~~~
thomasahle
The problem is when the grades given on assignments influence what goes on
your final exam papers.

At a university, only the final exam should count. This way you can give
honest feedback, and the student doesn't feel obligated to point out every
little mistake to try to make you change your decision. It also allows them to
misunderstand things at first, but then 'get' it later.

Of course universities don't like this, since they don't consider students
mature enough that they do the homework if it doesn't "count".

~~~
ahelwer
Really? Spreading grades out among various assignments and tests is how I
managed to pass university (I coincidentally also attended the University of
Calgary, hi rdlecler1!). I would have imploded if it all came down to a single
giant exam. Why the heck would you want academic achievement to come down to a
handful of hours of actual performance? What goal does that serve? University
isn't the Olympics.

~~~
katastic
The true answer is: No grades should matter except the final exam and _you
should be able to take the final exam as many times as you want._ (With a
reasonable minimum period between retakes, possibly increasing each time.)

If you take AC motors, and fail, and study your ass off and six months later
can pass it with 100%, shouldn't that really be... your actual grade? Isn't a
grade supposed to represent your ability and understanding of a topic?

And then almost magically: health problems, study problems, (most) test
anxiety, and other problems no longer actually matter.

~~~
ahelwer
A grade is supposed to represent your ability and understanding of a topic,
but that's only half the equation. Are exams an adequate proxy for ability and
understanding of a topic? They aren't for me. When I want to understand
something, I create something which requires and demonstrates that
understanding - this could be a Wikipedia article, a piece of software, or a
lecture. Nothing of value is demonstrated by sitting down for a few hours
under extreme pressure and regurgitating my "understanding".

~~~
WalterBright
I've never understood how someone could master a topic yet could not answer
questions about it. I know from my own personal experience that when I bombed
an exam, it's because I simply did not understand the material. When I did
well on an exam, I had corresponding confidence that I understood it.

~~~
ahelwer
It is the difference between knowing "given a task in this knowledge area, I
can accomplish it" and uselessly loading up on all that information to perform
in a purely artificial situation the likes of which is never seen again.

~~~
axedwool
So, good preparation for how interviews work, then?

------
NumberSix
The article ends with:

It’s a system that polishes privilege, its byproduct a contempt for earned
authority. Many of the people who started with this attitude had it ratified
and encouraged by perhaps the most prestigious university in the world — and
_now_ they’re running the whole show.

Emphasis on _now_ added.

Who in their right mind thinks people who attend Harvard and a handful of
other elite universities and prep schools haven't been running the whole show
since before the American Revolution?

See for example:

[https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/11/obama-
joins-l...](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/11/obama-joins-list-
of-seven-presidents-with-harvard-degrees/)

~~~
irrational
Is Harvard really considered more prestigious than Oxford or Cambridge? That
doesn't follow my perception.

~~~
maksimum
Oxbridge have an average acceptance rate of 18% for undergrads. Harvard is 6%.
Assuming similar applicant pools, many who got rejected by Harvard would have
been accepted at Oxbridge.

Obviously that's only one measure of prestige.

~~~
drharby
That's a major assumption. Another major assumption overlooked is that those
capable of admission don't want to attend these schools.

Low hanging fruit would be diehard applicants to MIT, Caltech, or the Service
Academies

------
alttab
Here's a working link:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/19/how-
harvard-helps-its-richest-and-most-arrogant-students-get-ahead/)

The article is short, and only uses an anecdote to support its claim. While I
can generally agree that places like Harvard work more in connections,
networks, and money than intellectual rigor, the article is too short and
missing enough detail to fall flat.

~~~
tomtheelder
As a former undergrad, the points about grade inflation are 100% correct, and
everything else is garbage.

> Many of the better-off young people at Harvard appeared to require intense
> favoritism to reassure them, perhaps because of the less-moneyed achievement
> and potential that loomed all around. Though some of the anointed developed
> their capabilities to the full, the institutional imperative to establish a
> hierarchy between them and us took precedence.

This is just utter nonsense. There are a _lot_ of very legitimate ways that
the school favors its privileged students (self selecting social clubs with
dues, the disaster that is on campus dining, not subsidizing a whole lot of
expenses that they ought to, forcing students on financial aid to work for the
school, etc.) but the insinuation that the professors and other teachers at
the school systematically favor privileged students in some sort of effort to
reaffirm social hierarchy is totally unsubstantiated, and, quite frankly, a
disgusting and slanderous accusation. I didn't like all (or even necessarily
most) my professors/advisers/TAs that much, but I am honestly outraged on
their behalf after reading this.

~~~
seattleeng
I've heard first hand stories from friends who did their undergrad at Harvard
that spoke to favoritism. One is: while playing rugby, a friend tackles
another student. The coach pulls my friend aside and tells him to stop
"hitting so hard" (my friend is an average to below average sized guy).
Puzzled, my friend asks why, to which the coach replies, "think about the
kid's name."

He was a Kennedy.

~~~
kbenson
Interestingly, I think that story can be interpreted different ways. One
interpretation is that the coach knew that if he actually caused an injury, it
might come back at him in interesting ways. You can either interpret it as the
coach protecting the elite, or the coach protecting the non-elite, depending
on your view.

------
Animats
Harvard's graduation rate is 97.5%. Yale 97%. Princeton 96.9%. It's _hard_ to
flunk out of the Ivy League.

Non Ivy League highly selective schools: Caltech 92.3%. Stanford 93%. MIT
92.2%. UC Berkeley: 90.9%. Low 90% success rate is normal there.

~~~
nnfy
It could also be at least partly related to higher selectivity and more
financial aid, and/or rich parents, that make school easier.

But I dont actually know what goes on in ivy and off ivy league elite schools.

Also consider that these may just be better run schools which also provide
more and more useful assistance to students.

Edit: I would like to add I think this article title is extremely clickbaity,
and plays on the recently resurgent class warfare phenomenon. It pains me that
articles like this, from sources like this, are becoming normalized and even
acceptable on HN. There's no merit to this biased pile of shit. And I'm not an
ivy league graduate having a security crisis. Journalism should be objective.

~~~
kafkaesq
_There 's no merit to this biased pile of shit._

You may no particularly like the author's point of view -- but you looked
carefully, you might have noticed it was placed in he "Perspective" section,
which as the name implies, is dedicated to expressing what are commonly known
as "points of view" \-- otherwise known as "biases". Which, forming the very
core of our cognitive processes as they do, are very far from _flaws_ \-- an
in fact, when used properly, not just useful, but absolutely crucial to one's
survival in this murky, deeply ambiguous and ambivalent world of ours.

And at least the author gave _some_ supporting observations to back up their
(clearly labeled as such) point of view. OTOH the sentence you're offering
above provides no insights or justifications; it is, quite literally, a pure
expletive.

 _Journalism should be objective._

Should it, now?

 _“So much for Objective Journalism. Don 't bother to look for it here--not
under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible
exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market
tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself
is a pompous contradiction in terms.”_

\-- Hunter S Thompson

~~~
nnfy
The fact that journalists are inherently biased as humans does not imply that
we should not strive toward the opposite.

I dont care either way for the author's point of view. I am bothered by the
fact that a news source publishes so much in opinion, and that people end up
more polarized after the article, not because of its factual content, but
because of its vitriol.

I believe it irresponsible to create and publish content like this, because it
amounts to propaganda - I dont care side of our false dichotomy you are on,
huff post is up there with breibart.

Opinion pieces should not affect our beliefs as much as they do, but let's be
real, communities feed off of opinion pieces. We all do, and I come to HN
specifically to minimize my exposure to feel good emotional reinforcement that
leads to irrational thinking.

Sorry for the rant.

Edit: your choice of quote may be more effective than you realize, I am a big
fan of Thompson's persona. Ironic, I know.

~~~
kafkaesq
I think I get where you're coming from. But I didn't see the piece as
'vitriol', and I don't see HuffPo (while often annoying) as being anything
like Breitbart (which puts out nothing but pure drivel and propaganda). Or the
WaPo as comparable to either of those two.

 _Sorry for the rant._

Nothing to be sorry for; you're just being honest (both intellectually and in
your opinions). And HST himself would probably agree that that's all that
matters.

------
ryandrake
The silliness, of course, is that if you are among the "elite" and
"privileged" going to an Ivy League school, nobody is going to give a shit
about your grades anyway. Your career and success is already pre-ordained. Why
on earth would you bother arguing with your professor that your "A-" should be
an "A"? You're going to go to work at your daddy's investment bank after you
graduate either way! You think big name banks and consulting firms are going
to say "Gee.. he's a Kennedy, but his grades are so bad! We can't bring him
in." Just party and get C's and D's--you're already set for life.

~~~
buchanaf
While I didn't go to an Ivy, that's clearly not true. Do you honestly think
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Goldman, law schools, medical schools, etc., are
going to accept you if you have poor grades? Not everyone can count on
"daddy".

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Yes, at least for the tech companies. Grades are irrelevant at FB/MS/Google.

~~~
buchanaf
Again, I have no anecdotal experience, but I have a hard time believing that
the new hires for those 3 companies are anything but students from top-tier
colleges with near perfect grades. To be fair, I'm sure a couple of years of
work experience and they probably don't care as much.

~~~
dgacmu
You might be surprised. Don't take my word for it, take Laszlo's:
[http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/09/technology/google-people-
las...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/09/technology/google-people-laszlo-
bock/index.html)

------
boredom_boredom
Full Disclosure: I work at an Ivy League institution, but not with undergrads,
nor is teaching my primary job.

I also went to another Ivy League school, many years ago. I wasn't well off,
but I wasn't struggling to pay for school, either. I can tell you for a fact
that the pandering to student complaints described in the article wasn't the
case when I was in school, but that was many years ago.

I TA'd while in grad school last century, at the University of Michigan, and
I've TA'd recently at my Ivy League university's extension school, where
endowments aren't a consideration. I can tell you that we get FAR more
requests for grade adjustments now then we got we got decades ago. That seems
to me to be as much a function of the change in the students over time as the
change in institutional finance. What's surprising to me, though, is that even
in an extension school, instructors STILL entertain and indulge what I would
consider frivolous student regrade requests, as described in the article -
even without the monetary drivers the article's author ascribes to the Harvard
instructors.

So, why do professors pander to students' regrading requests, even if there is
no apparent monetary motive? I believe that the cause is the rise in
"instructor review" websites, and the easy communication between students. If
an instructor is rated poorly by students, his class enrollments drop. If an
instructor's enrollments drop too far, and they aren't tenured, they may be
asked to find employment elsewhere.

So, while the monetary motive may be there, there is also the "popularity"
motive. Word about poor or overly strict instructors travels very quickly
among a student body. If students don't have to take a class from an
instructor they feel is too strict or a poor lecturer, they won't. It's the
economics of the instructor market, not the university endowment, that I feel
is often the motivating factor behind pandering to students

------
killjoywashere
Cultivating this attitude in future leaders does in fact seem to help them
gain power. I think it ties in with the need for A) impeccable credentials and
B) the ability to cavalierly invite the CEO, world leader, whomever, to play
golf.

In some people we call it charisma, in others we call it entitlement. I'm
starting to wonder if it's not only the person we describe, but also our own
position and personal knowledge of them that influence the decision on which
one to call it.

~~~
Animats
_the ability to cavalierly invite the CEO, world leader, whomever, to play
golf._

"There is no door in this entire country that cannot be opened by a Choate
graduate." \- Choate fund-raising director.[1]

[1]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=Fw4nkhf_6lMC&pg=PA109&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=Fw4nkhf_6lMC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109)

------
Bretts89
I'm working on an edtech startup and with it I've been spending a lot of time
at Princeton University. From my experience with Princeton, Ivy League school
are VERY overt about promoting elitism within their communities. I understand
the thought behind it but a lot of these students are in for a rude awakening
when they go work for an investment bank and find out that their Ivy League
elitism means nothing if they can't produce in the workplace.

~~~
wfo
Well, I think what's more likely is these people will be fine since most jobs
are obtained primarily based on prestige and connections, and keeping an elite
job once you have it just requires minimal competence. The more elite your
job, the less you are punished when you fail (CEOs, for example, get bonuses
when they fail). The people who are in for a rude awakening are those that
think working hard and being very smart at a decent school will get them
anything close to what C students from ivies waltz into without trying once
they hit the working world. Remember, the C business students are the boss, A
engineering students are the employees is the general rule of thumb.

~~~
taysic
I agree with you to an extent. It's my experience in engineering that you can
start a company alone based on your specialized skills. I'm not sure you can
do that on business skills alone. I suppose it depends on what path you want
to take.

~~~
wfo
Agreed -- though for many businesses you need capital. Engineering students by
and large are far less likely to have it, students rarely go to engineering
school and work that hard if they know they will inherit wealth or a business.
Software is something of an exception to that rule, though not completely.

------
positivity89
Do enough people really have a subscription to the Washington Post? Or is this
trending purely because a lot of people agree with the opinionated title?

~~~
paulgb
I canceled mine because they use outbrain but it hasn't expired yet.

~~~
Something1234
What's out brain and what's wrong with it?

~~~
ben1040
Outbrain is the source of the "from around the web" advertising links at the
bottom of news articles. They're generally just ads for diet pills and the
like, disguised as other news stories.

Other similar vendors of the same kind of service are Taboola and Lockerdome.

------
bllguo
I had a different experience at an Ivy, but I'm not rich. Wouldn't say
arrogant either, although I should probably leave that up to others to judge.

My point is that "rich" and "arrogant" are key words here. Such people tend to
get preferential treatment in our society, at Harvard and elsewhere. It's
hardly specific to Harvard.

------
cpr
This calls to mind the amusing Harvey Mansfield, who used to be the only
"conservative" (arguable) professor in the government dept. (I missed him in
my time there epochs ago.)

He gave two grades, the official, inflated, career-preserving grade, and the
real (his true assessment) grade. You could come ask him for the real grade if
you wanted to know the awful truth. ;-)

------
pcurve
Cornell wasn't like this... (at least in the 90s).

3.2 would get you on dean's list.

There were freshman weed-out courses to winnow out dumb and lazies.

I remember getting D+ on a paper that nearly gave me a stroke, and professor
stood by it. Asked TA to re-grade it and gave me the same grade.

Some guy in my dorm got a letter from school with threat of expulsion if he
didn't improve his 1.7 GPA, after just 1 tough semester.

I once made the mistake of taking a comp sci course as an elective where most
of the students were comp sci majors and already new the materials. Never went
to so many TA office hours in my life, just to get B+.

------
grzm
Likely the intended URL is:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/19/how-
harvard-helps-its-richest-and-most-arrogant-students-get-ahead/)

Also important to note is that it's apparently an opinion piece.

------
boredom_boredom
Full Disclosure: I work at an Ivy League institution, but not with undergrads,
nor is teaching my primary job.

I also went to another Ivy League school, many years ago. I wasn't well off,
but I wasn't struggling to pay for school, either. I can tell you for a fact
that the pandering to student complaints described in the article wasn't the
case when I was in school, but that was many years ago.

I TA'd while in grad school last century, at the University of Michigan, and
I've TA'd recently at my Ivy League university's extension school, where
endowments aren't a consideration. I can tell you that we get FAR more
requests for grade adjustments now then we got we got decades ago. That seems
to me to be as much a function of the change in the students over time as the
change in institutional finance. What's surprising to me, though, is that even
in an extension school, instructors STILL entertain and indulge what I would
consider frivolous student regrade requests, as described in the article -
even without the monetary drivers the article's author ascribes to the Harvard
instructors.

So, why do professors pander to students' regrading requests, even if there is
no apparent monetary motive? I believe that the cause is the rise in
"instructor review" websites, and the easy communication between students. If
an instructor is rated poorly by students, his class enrollments drop. If an
instructor's enrollments drop too far, and they aren't tenured, they may be
asked to find employment elsewhere.

So, while the monetary motive may be there, there is also the "popularity"
motive. Word about poor or overly strict instructors travels very quickly
among a student body. If students don't have to take a class from an
instructor they feel is too strict or a poor lecturer, they won't. It's the
economics of the instructor market, not the university endowment, that I feel
is often the motivating factor behind pandering to students.

~~~
wolf550e
dupe

------
adamvalve
Link had a bad char at the end:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/19/how-
harvard-helps-its-richest-and-most-arrogant-students-get-ahead)

------
11thEarlOfMar
There is a recurring theme of incentives becoming out of alignment with
purpose. This happens in business, medicine, government...

It's become a real focus for me, and CEOs should consider this very carefully.
What are the company's goals, really, and are the incentives offered, all the
way from the janitors up to their own compensation, in alignment with those
goals?

The professor stated blatantly: The students are paying too much for us to
fail them. Said another way: The students bought their grades.

Does anyone have knowledge of incentive structures at universities that they'd
defend as being in strong alignment with the goal of turning out the best
educated students? What was that incentive structure?

------
kafkaesq
The original title was way better. It may have sounded a bit splashy - it
wasn't out of line with the overall narrative of the article.

And there's certainly no need to soft-peddle Harvard's moral and intellectual
cowardice, as revealed in this episode.

------
jtraffic
It's an interesting _anecdote_ , but makes conclusions about the _aggregate_.
Give me almost any university, and with time I could probably find at least
one story like this.

I'm not saying it isn't true, just that this evidence is weak.

------
arx1422
I didn't go to Harvard and I'll freely admit that when I come across Harvard
people, they are as a general pool, stunningly impressive in whatever
discipline they are in.

~~~
chrismealy
A Harvard MBA once told me that going from zero to ten is a 1000% increase. I
was not impressed.

Also, George W Bush.

------
jforman
This article has very little basis in reality based on my experience at
Harvard as an undergrad and at Princeton as a grad student and TA.

Yes, students are arrogant and push for grades quite a bit. But I saw zero
evidence of systemic catering to them as a whole or to any specific sub-
population. I imagine the Development Office (the folks who would cater to the
ultra powerful) _may_ get involved in extreme cases? But it would be a huge
to-do among the faculty (tenured faculty at Harvard and most elite
institutions are incredibly powerful) and I never heard of it happening.

As an undergrad, I pressed for grade changes twice and was denied, reasonably,
both times. As a TA at Princeton I was often pressed for grade changes and all
were denied.

What almost certainly happened in this person's case is that the Professors
either a) weren't tenured and couldn't bother with student push-back given a
sea of work and anxiety (or mistakenly thought student perceptions matter), or
b) were tenured and didn't care to deal with student push-back.

~~~
tptacek
When you say "very little basis in reality", you mean "disagrees with my own
experience". The difference between those two phrases isn't subtle. The author
is relating their own actual experience teaching at Harvard, and the directly
related experiences of other teachers.

~~~
WillPostForFood
The parent is relating their own actual experience to you. Which you chose to
believe is more a product of confirmation bias than reality. The author of the
article, so I'll be generous and suggest she liberally is using poetic license
with the truth to make a point. Do you really believe this is how the supposed
incident happened? "Then, in front of the student, he pressed me to explain
the reason for my poor teaching."

~~~
taysic
If the student was well-connected, and the professor was worried about their
position (nontenured) and did not find arguing worth the hassle - then yes,
why not? Doesn't sound that surprising.

------
atriches
First world problems...

------
csa
That was an... interesting read. Some comments:

1\. I imagine the author just became a PNG in terms of faculty hiring at any
elite university. There's no way I would hire her due to what I consider her
tone deaf response to her experiences.

2\. The only potentially misleading part was the professor talking about grade
inflation. Most people know that declarations like this are largely a
formality -- grading hard creates nothing but trouble for no benefit but
plenty of potential loss. Lost time dealing with complaints, fewer enrolled
students/majors, lower ratings, etc.

3\. Most of the real insiders know that a "Harvard A" means nothing. Back it
up with a good recommendation, and it starts to mean something. Note that
there is a code in recommendation letters so that professors never need to be
negative and expose themselves to lawsuits and/or criticism. "[student] took
my class [class name] and got an A. All work was completed on time and met the
high standards for an A that are set in my classes." translates to "OMG, stay
away." On the other hand, the above with added specific examples about how the
student exceled or showed exceptional promise are the premium recommendations.

4\. IMHO, fighting grade inflation is something best done in required courses
or lower level courses. Grades for third year classes should err on the high
side. I have seen this system work a lot. I have seen systems that did not do
this founder frequently.

5\. This has nothing to do with privileged students -- they don't need great
grades for jobs or grad school. Seriously. This probably does have more to do
with arrogant students. My thought? So what? Educating arrogant students is
collateral damage for (usually) having great peers and having access to great
resources.

6\. There actually _are_ students at Harvard who are smart, humble, and work
hard. In fact, there are quite a few of them. I personally would not let a few
bad apples rain on my party.

7\. As far as passing someone who scored "in the teens" on a final, the so-
called gentlemen's C is a real thing (especially in weeder courses). The best
part of said C is that it usually keeps the student out of other courses
(e.g., pre-med), so the pain of their presence usually stops there.

8 Lastly, not all students at elite schools are comparable to Guggenheim
Fellows like the author. In fact, I usually say that only 20-30% of most
students at elite schools would be widely considered impressive, "really
smart", or "interesting" (my subjective view, but it is shared by many of my
peers). Students at elite schools are not gods. A random individual from an
elite school is not likely to be the smartest person you know -- not even
close. I strongly suggest that people not kiss the asses of elite school
students, and do due diligence just like they do with everyone else. That
elite school degree may mean that there is a higher chance that the holder is
exceptional, but it is nowhere near a guarantee.

Just my 2 cents....

------
wand3r
Page not found.

