
“I Tested into Stanford Through My Own Hard Work.” JK, Her Parents Paid $6.5M - paulpauper
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/zmp4m8/i-tested-into-stanford-through-my-own-hard-work-just-kidding-her-billionaire-parents-paid-dollar65m
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wallace_f
Every elite higher ed institute gets more qualified candidates than they are
willing to accept. I don't see why open curriculum _and_ testing/credentials
are not a thing.

Of course Comcast is going to try to setup barriers to entry to protect itself
from competition. That's why we have institutions such as the FTC. But Non-
profits or government-funded educational organizations doing the same is just
evil, in my opinion.

If I can self-study for even the MCAT and earn an elite score, should I not be
allowed to take the required lab credits and then be eligible for great med
school programs? Why should things like donations, private schools... Or
conversely bad schools, having an abusive childhood, have any say in
qualifying or disqualifying me? Is that not evil that it does?

In a broader sense, shouldn't the goal be to extend a Stanford education
opportunity to as many as possible? Not to limit it for reasons of maintaining
prestige?

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TheOtherHobbes
Of course that should be the goal.

But of course that isn't the goal - the goal is maintaining privilege and
prestige, and enforcing economic segregation.

There is no sense in which any of this is about genuine meritocracy, or is
likely to be about meritocracy any time soon - because genuine meritocracy
would be incredibly threatening politically, culturally, and financially.

~~~
geezerjay
> But of course that isn't the goal - the goal is maintaining privilege and
> prestige, and enforcing economic segregation.

I disagree. The "enforcing economic segregation" baseless assertion makes no
sense at all.

Those who invest so much time and effort and even money into a chance of
enrolling in one of these institutions are, quite obviously, not motivated to
oppressed the masses. They in fact share the same motivation as everyone in
the world: increase the chances that their offspring has a good,successful
life.

> There is no sense in which any of this is about genuine meritocracy, or is
> likely to be about meritocracy any time soon

This is another baseless assertion that makes no sense at all. Meritocracy is
the core reason why enrolling in these institutions is such a competitive
activity, and also why there is so much criticism targetting these back-door
enrollments. Those who were admitted want their efforts and personal
investment to mean something, and those who aspire to be admitted want to have
a fair shot at it.

~~~
wallace_f
Getting straight A's in high school is just about doing your homework. The SAT
is I guess better, but still. I mean come on, the verbal section is just vocab
memorization in the form of analogies.

Extracurriculars, private schools, math tutors, legacy admissions... This all
mostly comes from parents.

If they want education and competition they'd open up their program to
everyone. Instead, the competition is at the barrier to entry into the
program.

~~~
SeanAppleby
I'd recommend reading Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education.

He argues that getting a high quality education is a good investment on
average, but mostly not because it actually makes you better at anything,
rather explicitly because it acts as a socioeconomic filter and subsequent
signal.

Evidence for this:

\- In college you learn things roughly linearly, taking in roughly the same
amount of information each semester. There is a large effect on average income
if you get a degree. If you go for seven semesters and then leave without a
degree, there's no significant effect on earnings over having never gone at
all. Surely you must have learned _something_ while you were there, and if
that information was valuable, it should have affected your earnings
_somehow_.

\- If you test people on the information they learned in school they don't
test much better on it than people that never took it, indicating both that
they don't use it and don't have that skill anymore, despite still cashing in
on the degree somehow in the way of earnings.

\- In scenarios where an education system has all at once added or subtracted
a year from a degree program for everyone, the subsequent effect on degree
holders was an order of magnitude smaller on the percent change in earnings of
the degree receivers than it was on the percent change on time learning. (~2%
change in earnings / 25% change in time in school)

Basically, it seems that the labor market has to filter down resumes per
application to a high-demand job _somehow_ , and that we have very few actual
high quality signals to do so, so we lean on signals for academic pedigree.
This results in people with academic pedigree being disproportionately
successful, which reinforces the impression that academic pedigree is a signal
for someone who will be successful, and is further reinforced by biases
towards hiring people like them.

It might actually be that scaling our existing education system isn't very
useful, and would just force the labor market to pick another, maybe even less
meritocratic, signal to filter candidates on. If that's true, we might be
better off targeting the problem of finding better signals for the labor
market to filter on.

It definitely has an ideological bent, but if you get past that the arguments
are actually pretty compelling, and at least to me (as someone who works with
the education system) look like the strongest arguments for the role education
plays in our economic system.

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wallace_f
I agree education is a good investment. I was criticizing what I see to be
injustice in our education system.

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rb808
If I was going to Stanford I've love people like this in the class. These
prestigious universities are a great place to work with wealthy and well
connected people. You don't go to Stanford/Harvard/IvyX to learn from secret
books - the course is pretty much the same as your local state college. Its
the mix of people that makes it special.

~~~
blueboo
And by precisely the same token, those people would loathe every minute spent
with you.

I'm not being flip. The super-rich and the plebs mostly don't mix at elite
schools

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etrautmann
That doesn't at all align with my experiences (Dartmouth and Stanford). While
I understand where the sentiment comes from, in reality, there are individuals
from fantastically wealthy families who are wonderful and kind people looking
for friendship in exactly the way that everyone else does.

Time and time again, I was only aware of my friends' affluent backgrounds
years after knowing them well.

~~~
wallace_f
I'm curious what course you majored in?

We are inclined to see the best in our allies. Have you considered in this
case your value as a connection, and characteristics as a person, may
influence how others treat you? You may have had a different experience from a
different perspective.

My observations were that most people are nice, but there are certainly
cliques, and even some pretty bad bullying, at a different elite school.

~~~
etrautmann
The cliques point is a good one. Certainly there was stratification, and I'd
be misrepresenting myself if I didn't identify as comfortable middle class
(with all of the associated guilt for priviledge/etc). I was aware that I knew
very few work/study students from lower income families and was aware that
there are some unseen forces causing some degree of self-sorting to occur.

I was an engineer. It's not obvious to me why in undergrad anyone would have
viewed me as an important connection, although it's impossible to have the
perspective to reflect on that without some bias.

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lopmotr
> a drug company that specializes in traditional Chinese medicines to fight
> cardiovascular disease

A bit off topic but that's such strangely positive wording for an industry
that's a complete fraud. You wouldn't describe homeopathy or faith healing as
"fighting" a disease. But TCM is endemic in China. Normal doctors in normal
hospitals prescribe it alongside modern medicine. They also get a cut of the
profit from sales. It's institutionalized ripping off of desperate people by
giving them false hope.

~~~
daniel-cussen
So the problem is that they don't provide false hope in a scientifically
rigorous way?

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totalZero

      Huffman and Loughlin both pleaded not guilty to charges
      of conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit
      money laundering, charges punishable by up to 20 years
      in prison each.
    

Didn't Huffman plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud?

[https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/16/us/felicity-huffman-
sente...](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/16/us/felicity-huffman-
sentencing/index.html)

    
    
      Huffman was among 13 parents who agreed to plead guilty
      last week to a charge of conspiracy to commit fraud.

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Simulacra
I wanna know how bad of a student do you have to be that it cost 6.5 million?

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madengr
So what’s the GPA of these students that bribed their way in? If it’s normal,
then that says the curriculum of these schools is nothing special.

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jshowa3
This is why all college should be subsidized by taxes. There should be no
"elite schools". It should be first come, first serve taking into account
admissions criteria.

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strikelaserclaw
More like we should remove holistic admissions and put entrance exams for the
top schools. This is the closest we can come to enforcing a "merit" based
system. We should extend this to people of any age so as to not fall into the
Asian trap of "what school you go to determines your path in life".

~~~
Macross8299
You forget that there is a significant and very vocal segment in education and
academia opposed to such standardized exams as the exams are perceived to
undermine equity and social justice.

Which may very well be a valid point, given the explosion of the SAT prep
cottage industry.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
Most people who go to ivy league are already from the top 1%. From statistics
i read a while ago, like 30-40% of ivy league students have household income
300,000 +. There will never be a world in which a child of a single mother
working a minimum wage job will ever have a fair competition against a double
household of both doctors as parents but with exams this unfairness is
slightly reduced. At the very least, unqualified people with rich parents
won't get a free ride. The whole elite school MO of admitting a couple under-
qualified poor kids is just lip service so people don't question the real
injustice going on.

~~~
tzs
> Most people who go to ivy league are already from the top 1%

That's way off. Harvard is 15% from the top 1% [1], and that's typical for Ivy
League.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-
mobilit...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-
mobility/harvard-university)

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Mc_Big_G
I like how an official donation is an acceptable way to get your kid into a
school but a backdoor bribe is not. What is the effective difference? I'll
answer my own question. The school and government get their share. So, it's
not about what's right or wrong, it's just about the money, like always.

~~~
xvector
> I like how an official donation is an acceptable way to get your kid into a
> school but a backdoor bribe is not.

I don't think that's ever been acceptable. I mean, people do it, but it's not
acceptable in the least.

I feel pretty bad for the kids too. They will forever know that they aren't a
'real' student.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm not sure about that. What is money for, if not to live a better life? Some
things may/should be beyond money, but I'm not at all sure that a slot at a
college is one of them.

~~~
Retra
Money is for engaging in economic transactions? Just because you would use it
to better your own life doesn't mean that's its only possible purpose. If
you're spending it, surely someone else's life should be improved as well, and
you still should be able to justify why you're selecting the improvements you
are.

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mlrtime
If these are private institutions, why does it matter if people can pay their
way in. You might think it would be a problem if only rich people can attend
these schools, but the schools want the diversity as well. They should be able
to allow whomever they want (and lose any public financing).

edit: spelling

~~~
Jabbles
In this particular scandal, the accused are not paying the institution for a
place. Instead they are defrauding the institution by bribing coaches and
other personnel to falsify records and gain admission.

~~~
smacktoward
Exactly. The problem isn’t that they bribed someone, it’s that they bribed the
_wrong_ someone.

Parents: don’t cheap out on your kid’s future! If you want to get them a slot
at an elite school, do it the honorable way and buy the school a new building.

