Ben Espen blogs:
I did a quick plot of the top 50 schools on the Payscale list versus the 25th percentile SAT scores of incoming students, and some schools definitely do better than others. I also resorted the list by annualized rate of return, and plotted the top 50 again, and the public schools do much better on rate of return than on 30 year net return.
The same schools stand out on both lists:
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Virginia (UVA)
Brigham Young University (BYU)
Colorado School of Mines
College of William and Mary
University of California, Berkeley
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)
University of Michigan
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)
University of Florida (UF)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNCH)
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (CalPoly)
All public schools with strong engineering and science programs, except for BYU, but they produce good engineers too. These schools are probably good options if you live in state, especially since there are often incentive programs to keep academically talented students at state universities. And they are a lot cheaper than the top private schools on the list
By the way, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo didn't have affirmative action last time I checked because it's in the second-tier Cal State system. Proposition 209 outlawed racial preferences in California in 1996, so the top tier University of California colleges responded by imposing "holistic admissions" where you submit an essay about how The Man Has Been Keeping You Down so the admissions officer can guess your ethnicity. But the Cal State system can't afford too many admissions staffers, so they just use the same system UC used to use: GPA and test scores. Nobody much cares about the other Cal State schools, but Cal Poly SLO is worth caring about so MALDEF sued it for not discriminating.
Posts
67 comments:
URUGUAY!!!!
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNCH)... All public schools with strong engineering and science programs, except for BYU, but they produce good engineers too.
UNC-CH doesn't have [classical] engineering.
Back circa the 1940s, a deal was made [in the General Assembly] to move the School of Engineering from UNC-CH to NCSU, so that UNC-CH could get a School of Medicine, which graduated its first true class in 1954.
The weird thing is that if you go into the Math-Physics library at UNC, and look at some of the older volumes, then you can still see them stamped with "Property of UNC School of Engineering".
The lack of a true [classical] School of Engineering at UNC-CH [as opposed to trendier fluff like "bio-medical engineering"] has tilted the student body strongly female for about 25 years now [see this recent iSteve thread], to the point that the Trustees have become very worried that they won't be getting much in the way of endowment gifts in the future [men are much better alumni donors than are women].
BTW, Princeton started to see the same thing in the 1980s [incoming freshman classes trending strongly female], and for the same reason [fear that the endowment would take a big hit] placed added emphasis on SAT Math scores so as to keep a healthy portion of males in the undergraduate student body.
[Nowadays that would probably be grounds for a discrimination suit.]
BYU is a private school, but the LDS church has pegged its tuition to be close to that of the University of Utah.
(LDS members pay lower tuition at BYU, just like Utah residents pay lower tuition at the University of Utah.)
Steve,
In the white survivalist blog-o-sphere we keep hearing from ultra-high-iq whites who are working in low paying jobs. A typical comment is the below one from David
____
David said...
>I fail to believe that large numbers of white supremacists are forced to work as janitors when they really have the IQ to be radiologists. I mean, there is some level of unfairness and gaming of the system here in America, but the degree of complaint is way out of proportion<
Not from where I sit. It's later than you think.
_______
Steve, it is pretty well known that a few of the ivies have a policy that anyone, no matter what their race, gets a complete free ride if their parents make less than $75k per year.
So whites that get in to these ivies whose parents make less than $75k are just fine.
but what about the ones that don't make the ivy cut? Is there a tier of colleges below the ivies that will also give all students whose parents make less than $75k a free ride? Seems like if they exist these are a good choice for people live "David"
1. I'm not sure ROI is the right metric for the decision making. NPV might make more sense. For instance, let's say you could pay 2 cents and get 100 dollars for going to bubblegum U. ROI would be off the scale high, but NPV measely.
2. Wonder how the Service Academies do (say in NPV, as ROI would be undefined.)
As a calpoly Alum, I am surprised to hear calpoly doesn't practice AA. From my time there, there where definitely a lot of minority students who should not have been there. Math majors taking remedial college algebra, EE majors a full year from their first calculus class etc ...
...about how The Man Has Been Keeping You Down so the admissions officer can guess your ethnicity
Despite his posturing affectations, the admissions officer is the very embodiment of The Man. What does he get out of the subterfuge? He gets to pretend he isn't The Man.
I'm sure on the whole, graduates from technical schools make more money.
But still, it seems like gender differences might hurt liberal arts schools. And that goes beyond just job preference. If there was a top all women's technical school and a top men's technical school, the men's grads would likely make more money for various reasons.
Also, not counting grad students might hurt liberal arts schools more than technical schools (most of the top students at liberal arts colleges go to grad school, while that's less likely at technical schools).
Steve, not Calpoly. I know a number of engineers from Calpoly and they are not the greatest.
What happened to UCSD? UC Irvine?
I agree about UCLA. It has a terrific EE (electrical engineering program, by the way.)
I agree about the other schools on your list.
Chapel Hill is terrific across many disciplines and is an affordable locale for a student to attend school.
Do think about some of the up and coming schools in Biotech. This is an emerging field which might not come up on the usually radar screen. University of Washington biotech programs comes to mind. Also, McGill in Quebec (no SAT required.)
What about the University of Pennsylvania? Columbia? Carnegie Mellon?
Berkeley Engineering programs really are great. EE ranks ahead of Stanford and just behind MIT.
If you're interested in MIT, you should know that they do not want to see SAT scores. They want to see that an applicant has done well on advanced placement classes.
Several Canadian engineering schools are world class and do not require the SAT. University of Toronto is superlative.
pd in sf
what about going abroad, say to a Canadian school?
What about setting up a private school in Mexico over the border from San Diego-- would it be much cheaper to operate?
"All public schools with strong engineering and science programs"
Interesting list, good post.
William and Mary has no engineering and few pure science students. It IS a serious school that turns out lots of connected lawyers and political types: it probably has as high a percentage of its graduates in DC as any school outside of DC. That may explain its ROI.
Speaking of education, 44% of non-white Americans do not know from which country the United States achieved independence.
My daughter is a senior at Cal Poly and loves it. She really has to work hard, because the competition is very tough. But it is worth it once she graduates. It is a highly respected school. I read a brief summary of Cal Poly by a liberal group: White, Christian and Republican. Works for me, although it is pretty diverse, almost 1/3 minority. Great rodeo team. It could pass for a Texas school, and almost as friendly.
My daughter is a senior at Cal Poly and loves it. Very competitive but worth it in the end. A liberal group characterized Cal Poly as "White, Christian and Republican" which works for me. Glad she went there. Actually, it is more diverse than that but still a great group of kids, almost as friendly as Texas A&M students. Great rodeo team.
Steve, it is pretty well known that a few of the ivies have a policy that anyone, no matter what their race, gets a complete free ride if their parents make less than $75k per year.
So whites that get in to these ivies whose parents make less than $75k are just fine.
To be sure, my Ivy League alma mater had a relatively small endowment, but in the early 1980's it had no such policy, nor did any of the others. If Harvard, Yale, or Princeton had had such a policy, I assure you, that's where I would have gone.
As it happened, this middle-class white boy got a *negative* scholarship; i.e., the various small scholarships I had won independently (Tri-County Scholar-Athlete of the Year etc.) were confiscated and put in the general financial aid pot. Maybe things have changed drastically, but I find it more likely that you are lying.
Care to prove me wrong?
Ben Tillman. Just google "harvard offers free tuition to low income students". You will find plenty of articles on this policy
College of W&M is a liberal arts college with no engineering program. It is a state school which most people don't seem to know since there is no state in its name.
Gee, thanks for bringing the subject up, Steve.
Maybe I can fish for info from your readers.
OK here's my problem. I'm a white dude married to a fascinatingly geeky/artistic black database programmer/classical musician/bookworm/graphic artist. We have a 145 IQ (at age 9) "light, bright, almost white" daughter with "good hair".
Daughter is a bit lazy, as was I, but well adjusted and (thank God) no Black Chip on her shoulder. No tats, no BET, no Souljah Boy humping and pumping on the dance floor ["Soopaman dat ho!"], none of that crap.
She likes white music, white books, white culture, just like her mom's family, who were entrepreneurial even when slaves. They have no tolerance for ig'nant @ss niggaz.
The problem is that my daughter doesn't pass as black in person, in photos, in conversation, or in tastes.
I fear that unless she lays a big "sullen black bitch" or "professional Negro" rap on her admissions essay, colleges are going to consider her "white" and she will be treated like a generic white kid and shat upon as far as grants and scholarships.
In short, as a "black" she might could get a full boat Ivy League scholarship, but as a "white" she will get nada, zippo, bupkis.
I need to know how to [ahem] package my daughter as "black" without having to force feed her all of that sick "victim" crap in order to Raise Her Consciousness and get her to write a good "black" college admissions essay.
But I damn sure don't want to go overboard. The last thing I need is a sulking, sullen, thumb-sucking Professional Negro daughter with a hard-on towards white folks like Michelle Obama.
So how much ideology and racial solidarity nonsense must she spew back in her college admissions application to be considered a For-Real Negro as far as the college admissions committees are concerned? Must she join the NAACP? Jack and Jill? Volunteer at some ghetto agency? We can darken her up a bit, sure, but her lips and hair will still look white.
So what makes one a Certified For-Real Full Boat Scholarship Negro as far as colleges are concerned?
And, No, we are not going to change her from her black grandmother's good old-fashioned Anglo Saxon name to "TawanalamaDingDong".
Ben Tillman. Just google "harvard offers free tuition to low income students". You will find plenty of articles on this policy.
I googled it and found an article that stated Harvard was offering free tuition to students with incomes of $40,000 or less until 2008, when the figure was raised to $60,000. A few points:
1. Harvard is not "a few" Ivy League schools.
2. There is a difference between $60,000 and $75,000.
3. Free tuition is not a free ride. Room, board, and books also cost money.
4. The policy began in 2004, so it is consistent with a claim that whites (and especially middle-class whites) endured decades of anti-white discrimination in admissions and financial aid policies before the adoption of this policy.
5. Harvard's admissions office discriminates against whites in general, and there's no
reason to think that this policy is race-blind.
"Anonymous said...
Ben Tillman. Just google "harvard offers free tuition to low income students". You will find plenty of articles on this policy"
Three to be exact. One of them quotes "Harvard President Larry Summers" who hasn't been Harvard President since 2006. And anyway, even if YOU are not lying, HARVARD might be lying. Sure, they'll give you a free ride - if you're poor,......and if in your application essay you write that the man has been keepin' you down. It's entirely at their discretion, and nobody will bother to call them on it, if they only use this funding vehicle to "increase diversity".
The White-Aggrievement in this thread is very strong.
I fear that unless she lays a big "sullen black bitch" or "professional Negro" rap on her admissions essay, colleges are going to consider her "white" and she will be treated like a generic white kid and shat upon as far as grants and scholarships.
Why not have your daughter apply as a white girl?
Then she would get to experience the satisfaction of knowing that she was judged by the content of her character, not by the color of her skin...
Nobody much cares about the other Cal State schools,...
In what sense? Whether they 'discriminate' in admissions or not, or just in general, i.e. because of the quality -- or lack of it -- of the education you can get there?
...but Cal Poly SLO is worth caring about so MALDEF sued it for not discriminating.
Why is that? I suppose I would agree that, in general, had you asked, it would have been rather highly regarded, if not held in the highest regard, among CSU schools by anyone who knew enough to have an opinion.
Anyway, I attended both UC Berkeley and a CSU school (other than CSU-SLO) and felt they compared pretty well in terms of the quality of undergraduate education I got.
Of course if you want to do serious graduate work you should go to a 'research university', e.g. a UC campus rather than to one of the CSU schools.
Forcing kids with parents who aren't poor to shoulder huge debt burdens, while letting others get out of school debt free, is an interesting way to lower societal IQ in a jiffy. Big debt=later home ownership = fewer kids.
"I attended both UC Berkeley and a CSU school (other than CSU-SLO) and felt they compared pretty well in terms of the quality of undergraduate education I got."
Right, a friend of mine started at Cal State Northridge, transferred to UC San Diego, then graduated from UC Berkeley. He said the quality of teaching declined with each move up the prestige ladder.
"he likes white music, white books, white culture, just like her mom's family, who were entrepreneurial even when slaves. They have no tolerance for ig'nant @ss niggaz."
Congrats, Buddy; it looks like you've married "the magical negro"(TM). Kind of like a female Morgan freeman; does she narrate a soundtrack over your life and miraculously appear with sage advice every time you are in a jam too?
"5. Harvard's admissions office discriminates against whites in general, and there's no
reason to think that this policy is race-blind."
Actually, no. Harvard discriminates against Asians, Jews and East Indians in general, and sometimes against, and sometimes in favor of, whites.
Truth is correct. At the very very top level there is discrimination for whites against those higher than whites on the bell curve.
At my level (alumni U of Mich) there was no doubt discrimination against white males in admission and university funded jobs.
What about setting up a private school in Mexico over the border from San Diego-- would it be much cheaper to operate?
And the ROTC kids could get realtime experience!
Today in HBD news, a Williams sister won Wimbledon for the 9th year out of 11.
A more interesting exercise might be using the current graduate salaries and 1980 historical college costs to determine the trailing 30-year ROI, instead of forecasting the future 30-year ROI. Use the 4.3% wage deflator to put current salaries in 1980 dollars, then do the math.
I would expect to see huge trailing 30-year ROIs due to the stagnation of high school graduate wages from 1980-2010 and tech bubble / credit bubble wage benefits to college graduates. But I could be surprised.
Whether one should go for the Harvard or state-school engineering route depends on how well one can play the social game for advancement. Perhaps the reason Harvard admission is significantly based on “fluff” factors rather than pure test score/academic (combined with athletics) numerical criteria is because the advantage of Harvard goes to those that can schmooze. If you’re not already in the elite (and are a boring middle class type), the point of Harvard is networking with your more elite classmates.
But the elite classmates know this and are on the lookout for mere grubby social climbing, so you’d have to be pretty good at the schmooze, ala the talented Mr. Ripley (as demonstrated by being slick enough to have the right recommendations, club positions and esoteric “I spent a year in Bangladesh teaching underwater basket weaving” contributions in your mid-teens). The state school engineering route, on the other hand, is less about skilled politicking and more about acquiring productive skills/tools.
Given that arguably the social politics game is even more competitive than the nerdy merit game (as the rewards are greater, and more glamorous – and the skills less able to be learned through sheer high-IQ effort alone), there’s more ROI for most smart people on the state school engineering path.
On the other hand - if we’re headed to a more socialist future -in which economic rewards are doled out from the top, and it’s increasingly important to be in the nomenklatura, the importance of Harvard moves up greatly.
On a related note, if one of the right blogosphere in-crowd had written: “Room at the Top: How Fiscal Conservatives/Libertarians/The Right Can Win” (linked at my username above), you’d be declaring him a literary genius.
Check it out Steve and friends – and any lefty commissars reading this, please don’t be alarmed. You know these guys won’t try any of my slightly evil-minded strategies (like “Room at the Top”, or “Ms Pelosi, Tear Down These Chains”) – beware their strongly worded e-zine articles though :)
-Escapist
The webpage had an error when I first submitted this, so am retrying:
Whether one should go for the Harvard or state-school engineering route depends on how well one can play the social game for advancement. Perhaps the reason Harvard admission is significantly based on “fluff” factors rather than pure test score/academic (combined with athletics) numerical criteria is because the advantage of Harvard goes to those that can schmooze.
If you’re not already in the elite (and are a boring middle class type), the point of Harvard is networking with your more elite classmates. But the elite classmates know this and are on the lookout for mere grubby social climbing, so you’d have to be pretty good at the schmooze, ala the talented Mr. Ripley (as demonstrated by being slick enough to have the right recommendations, club positions and esoteric “I spent a year in Bangladesh teaching underwater basket weaving” contributions in your mid-teens).
The state school engineering route, on the other hand, is less about skilled politicking and more about acquiring productive skills/tools. Given that arguably the social politics game is even more competitive than the nerdy merit game (as the rewards are greater, and more glamorous – and the skills less able to be learned through sheer high-IQ effort alone), there’s more ROI for most smart people on the state school engineering path.
On the other hand - if we’re headed to a more socialist future - in which economic rewards are doled out from the top, and it’s increasingly important to be in the nomenklatura, the importance of Harvard moves up greatly.
On a related note, if one of the right blogosphere in-crowd had written: “Room at the Top: How Fiscal Conservatives/Libertarians/The Right Can Win” (linked at my username above), you’d be declaring him a literary genius. Check it out Steve and friends – and any lefty commissars reading this, please don’t be alarmed. You know these guys won’t try any of my slightly evil-minded strategies (like “Room at the Top”, or “Ms Pelosi, Tear Down These Chains”) – beware their strongly worded e-zine articles though :)
-Escapist
With the Germans and the Dutch in the World Cup semifinals, how long before Steve suddenly discovers the beauty of the game?
I fear that unless she lays a big "sullen black bitch" or "professional Negro" rap on her admissions essay, colleges are going to consider her "white" and she will be treated like a generic white kid and shat upon as far as grants and scholarships....But I damn sure don't want to go overboard. The last thing I need is a sulking, sullen, thumb-sucking Professional Negro daughter with a hard-on towards white folks like Michelle Obama.
Are you out of your mind? First of all, your daughter is an *ideal* affirmative action candidate right now. Don't change a thing. The admissions ideal is a kid who is half or more black but is smart, geeky, and well behaved.
For an essay, you can just have her write about how she resents racist white people who stereotype blacks as sullen racist bitches when neither her, her mother, or her mother's family are like that at all. It sounds like you could give her some inspiration on that.
@ everyone who posts as Anonymous:
Please use a name; any name will do. It's easier to reply to you.
Congrats, Buddy; it looks like you've married "the magical negro"(TM). Kind of like a female Morgan freeman; does she narrate a soundtrack over your life and miraculously appear with sage advice every time you are in a jam too?
Applause, Truth. That was rich! This gentleman has to qualify her blackness so as to justify his reasons for treacherously marrying a black lady. Otherwise, he would assuredly fall into disrepute with many of his fellow posters. What sane person would want to incur their wrath? I surely don’t.
The three Virginia schools on the list benefit from their proximity to the federal government. Government employees tend to send their kids in-state because they can't afford private schools, yet their kids appear to be competent in ways that test scores don't fully capture.
The federal government also creates employment opportunities in Virginia which college graduates exploit. Compared to employment opportunities in other states, over the past twenty or thirty years Virginia has been a leader. Industrial jobs go overseas, but the federal government keeps adding employees.
I think the stats used in the Payscale listings don't tell the whole story. The arithmetic mean is OK but you also need some measure of distribution or inequality - perhaps a Gini Index.
When I got out of graduate school I went to a consulting firm. This "beltway bandit" was indeed right on the Capitol Beltway in southern Maryland. It was a spin off of Booze Allen Public Administration.. It had its public policy side and its engineering side. All the public policy types were hired for their math skills but had MBAs or MPAs rather than engineering degrees.
It was believed by everyone there that while the real engineers got higher salaries immediately after graduation, these guys would never get the high paying positions later on. All the top spots in management or consulting were seen to be the province of the generalist especially the math savvy generalist.
I don't know if this is actually true but there is some other suggestive lines of evidence.
I once posted a comment here that the government pays better than private industry. I was hammered for that posting as I remember. That's very false if you measure by the number of millionaires but is very true if you take the arithmetic mean. For example the suburbs of Washington DC have the highest incomes in the nation. Civil servants don't get rich but the great bulk do quite well.
I think it may be that the same thing is true in comparing tech schools with non-tech schools. Engineers usually do well in the job market but few get really rich. Accountants, lawyers and business majors do less well on the average but they are more likely to get those few but very lucrative top corporate officer spots.
I guess that the top leadership positions in business and government are disproportionately filled from the elite mostly private schools.
BTW it is well known that alumni contributions flow disproportionately from the rich alumni. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these tech schools have trouble soliciting alumni funds.
Albertosaurus
White Dude:
What's wrong with her applying based on her actual life experiences? Yes, there are some preferences given to minorities, but it's not exactly impossible for a qualified white student to get into a top institution.
In any case, you have at least six or seven years before she'll be applying to colleges. Any advice you get now may not be relevant.
Right, a friend of mine started at Cal State Northridge, transferred to UC San Diego, then graduated from UC Berkeley. He said the quality of teaching declined with each move up the prestige ladder.
I thought everyone knew that but I suppose that non-Californians might be surprised.
The California system has (or had) three levels the two year community colleges, the four year "state colleges", and the Universities with their graduate schools and degrees. I came to California for the free education but I was scared away from UC Berkeley by all the stories of abuse of undergraduate students. Giant auditorium classrooms at Berkeley were taught by TAs. Professors were seldom seen even in graduate seminars - they were too busy publishing. The facilities at Berkeley were magnificent but undergraduate students were very definitely the oppressed under class.
Years later when I first taught computer science in a California community college, I saw much the same thing. I had 250 students in a two story auditorium. I was tasked with flunking out as many as possible so as to "protect" the COBOL classes. They had no entrance requirements, everyone irrespective of their preparation got in. So my class which was a prerequisite for all other classes operated as means by which to disabuse the great unwashed of their dreams of academic glory. My job was to let no more than about fifty through. Easy enough as it happened.
I too was a victim of this system. I wanted a better paying job teaching computer science in private schools but I was told I had to first teach a public ComSci class at least once. Never again.
The sweet spot in the California education hierarchy was in the middle. San Francisco State was close to paradise compared with the UC Berkeley above and SF City College below. Most classes were small and students sought out the best teachers. The campus was filled with gorgeous young women, there were free concerts and movies everyday, and the degrees had no language requirements. The sun shone in the winter and the fog cooled us in summer. I knew most of my professors personally and some socially.
As I later found out a degree from SF State wasn't worth much but it was maybe the best time of my life.
Albertosaurus
FWIW, re this Ivy scholarship issue, I went to Harvard in the 80s, coming from a white working-class family with mid-to-low income. Harvard put up enough financial aid so that I could in fact attend, but it wasn't "free." I maxed out on student loans, worked 20 hours or so a week, and my family had to pay a certain amount, what it was determined they could reasonably manage.
I thought that even that package was pretty sporting of them, and I didn't have a problem with it because a) after all they didn't have to take me, and b) at the time I had my pick of other schools making attractive offers, so it was a situation I got into willingly.
Didn't regret it. Harvard does some things well and some things poorly, but the things it does well, it does really well.
But maybe the policies have changed, I haven't followed the issue.
And just as an amusing data point: my essay was about certain behavioral patterns I'd noticed in the interplay between serious artistic practice and social class. It was funny because it was drawn from life; but you can bet your bippy that I harped on my working-class roots, albeit in a subtle and minor-themed way. Good investment though. But banging on about The Man right up front doesn't strike me as the best course; for purposes of sheer coldblooded manipulation, (I told them I was an artist after all)that sort of thing is best served as a side dish.
White Dude,
You don't have to do anything but check the black box on the application, at least for now. Hopefully, for the rest of us, by the time your daughter is ready to go to college AA will be rejected. However, that's unlikely. Your daughter is exactly why the system is ridiculous. She will grow up with all the privileges of any white kid, and be even less subject to the phantom "vestiges of slavery" than other black-descended kids. And yet she will get a big boost up. While that highlights the flaws to those of us who will see them, she is the kind of poster-child the left is looking for: the multiracial future of America. So, I doubt she will meet resistance from admissions. Have her learn something from African culture- dancing, basket making, etc. for her to highlight her blackity. You could go the route of the guy who said to have her apply as white, but that's very idealistic and not very pragmatic. The best thing you can do is teach about HBD and how ridiculous our system is. A good number of smart non-Jew white dudes can deal with the fact that our group averages below Jews and East Asians, I don't see why a black person couldn't deal with their group averaging below the rest. Of course you will have to teach her to not repeat any of what you are telling her, at least until an opportune time when she might make a difference.
"Truth said...
Actually, no. Harvard discriminates against Asians, Jews and East Indians in general, and sometimes against, and sometimes in favor of, whites."
Right. Harvard discriminates against jews. That's why about 25% of it's undergraduage student body are jews, and why Hillel ranks it as one of the top 20 universities for jewish enrollment:
http://www.hillel.org/HillelApps/JLOC/Campus.aspx?AgencyId=17431
Unsurprising though - assertively avered factoids are the stock-in-trade of the intellectually lazy and ill-informed poster known as "Truth".
Ben Tillman,
Students whose parents make under $60,000 aren't expected to contribute anything at all at Harvard, including room and board. Only students whose parents have incomes over $180,000 are expected to pay full price.
Most 1st tier colleges and universities have had a policy of "need-blind admissions" for at least the last 30 years. That means that they don't consider parental income in admissions decisions and also, supposedly, that any student admitted will be given enough financial aid to attend. Back in the early 90s I was given a free ride in regards to tuition but had to pay room and board, which was indeed enough to allow me to attend.
However, although in theory financial considerations shouldn't keep poor whites from attending elite schools, in reality there are very few such students at those schools. At my school probably fewer than 5% of the white students came from families below the 50th percentile in income.
Truth,
Jews only get discriminated against to the degree that they are considered white. They aren't separately considered as Jews. I couldn't find any hard figures, but the student body of Harvard seems to be composed of approximately one third minorities, including 7.2% blacks, one third jews, and one third non-jewish whites. Since non-jewish whites make up approximately 65% of the population (at least the legal population) that means they are being underrepresented by half. They are more underrepresented than blacks. Funny you never hear any pundits decrying this.
You can say that whites are just whining because they can't compete with jews and asians. You may be right to an extent, but it's grossly unfair to whites to have a meritocratic system on top favoring asians and jews and an affirmative action system on the bottom favoring blacks and hispanics. An argument can be made for either a completely meritocratic system or a completely quota-based system, but not the one we have now.
"Right, a friend of mine started at Cal State Northridge, transferred to UC San Diego, then graduated from UC Berkeley. He said the quality of teaching declined with each move up the prestige ladder."
I'd say that perhaps for the first two years of engineering, where they are teaching general principles, it's true that the quality of teaching may be better at some of the smaller schools.
However, it's in third and fourth year that the course work starts to be more specialized and take on an industry, cutting edge focus.
For instance, there are senior year classes at Berkeley that are directly focused on research areas that are being explored at companies like Dolby Labs, Genentech, Atheros and Solyndra.
Same for most of the UCs. There are more tied into cutting edge research.
It's a very competitive business climate out there and it pays to have employable skills coming straight out of school. Gone are the days where a company would be willing to invest five years to train and develop a junior engineer.
Other top notch engineering schools:
-Texas A&M
-University of Texas at Austin
-Oregon State University (very interesting initiative in wave energy)
pd in sf
And the ROTC kids could get realtime experience!
LOL'ed [literally].
Somebody's been watching Breaking Bad...
MQ is right about White Dude, but I suspect he's falling for a ruse. WD's story is suspect. Administrators would be falling all over themselves to sign her up.
The whole purpose of the psuedo Angry Black Man/Woman essay is for covert identification of desired ethnicities and, perhaps, ideological conformity, as well as the "holistic" hooey offered in place of merit.
If you're not pulling our leg, WD, you've got the female Barack Obama there and don't even know it.
Please use a name; any name will do. It's easier to reply to you.
Nah, the rejection rate is too high once you get a bad rep.
Harvard and a lot of the prestigious universities do discriminate against Asian-Americans in favor of whites. Mainly because they think of Asians as not being well rounded and leadership material, which makes it less likely they'll become captains of industry or masters of the universe. From the perspective of wanting to create rich alumni that come back and donate a few million or few hundred million, better to go with whites (especially Jewish whites) than Asians.
It's a waste of time to worry about the admissions process at a school like Harvard. This country has a Harvard obsession, for some reason.
MIT, by the way, does not consider race, religion, sex or financial ability in their admissions process.
Frankly, it's a waste of time to figure out how to game the system.
There are plenty of good schools out there in both Canada and the US that probably receive fewer applications than they would like for college prepared, motivated, science and engineering minded applicants.
We'd best encourage our kids to start cranking calculus, rather waste their time on gaming the admissions process.
-pd in sf
"Please use a name; any name will do. It's easier to reply to you. "
"Nah, the rejection rate is too high once you get a bad rep."
When you use a name, the others start arguing with the person and stop arguing with the ideas.
I prefer engaging nameless faceless ideas rather than people and all of their vagaries and perceptions.
"Unsurprising though - assertively avered factoids are the stock-in-trade of the intellectually lazy and ill-informed poster known as "Truth"."
Well hey, Sport, you guys are still talking about O.J.!
Who's to say it shouldn't be 45%? According to Steve they do have a full SD advantage over you beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed ubermenchen.
"Mainly because they think of Asians as not being well rounded and leadership material, which makes it less likely they'll become captains of industry or masters of the universe."
Just as I suspected! You guys are always living through your charisma, athleticism, extroversion, and room-brightening smiles.
The White-Aggrievement in this thread is very strong.
The White-Aggrievement in real life is very strong.
Mr. Anon said:Unsurprising though - assertively avered factoids are the stock-in-trade of the intellectually lazy and ill-informed poster known as "Truth".
That was a classic line!
"It's a waste of time to worry about the admissions process at a school like Harvard. This country has a Harvard obsession, for some reason."
I disagree. IIRC 2/3 of the Supreme Court is from Harvard, Yale, or Columbia. Three schools essentially dominate one branch of government, for better or for worse.
Their concentration of power will probably increase as the recession continues. The legal job market for people from 2nd and 3rd rate schools is not good, to say the least. In many cases you'll get nothing; in other cases, $15 - 20 - an - hour grunt work or nonprofit stuff. Employment prospects for grads from the top 10 are naturally better (despite admin offices' inflated statistics).
Whether you're planning on attending College/LS or just a citizen impacted by Harvard/Yale/Columbia grads' rulings, you can't help but be "obsessed" with brand names, even if you find it unseemly.
"I disagree. IIRC 2/3 of the Supreme Court is from Harvard, Yale, or Columbia. Three schools essentially dominate one branch of government, for better or for worse."
Yes, the problem is that we've become a nation led by attorneys and quants (tricky financial types). There are too many people clambering after those attorney and financial jobs. It didn't take a genius to figure out that we couldn't run the country that way.
That's probably why the economy is in the tank. Not enough technical and scientific leadership.
So, yeah, if you're hell bent on becoming an attorney, then Harvard is probably the ticket.
However, I'd say that that is Obama's main weakness. He lacks any kind of life exposure to science or technology.
That's why he can't deal appropriately with BP, why he can't come up with a viable energy policy, and why he is not good at estimating technical risk.
It could even be argued that he lacks an ability to grasp the mathematical treachery of the banks.
I'd say that there are still many more well paying medical, science and engineering jobs out there, especially in emerging fields, than attorney jobs. Unfortunately, Obama continues to be absolutely useless in terms of stimulating scientific endeavor. The banks get $100billion. Solar, not even the most promising clean energy technology, gets $2billion. And most of that will be for home installation construction jobs, not research.
On a different note, Happy Fourth!
pd in sf
I prefer engaging nameless faceless ideas rather than people and all of their vagaries and perceptions.
Well said sir!
I waste too much time arguing with our liberal friends on Facebook. Ive taken the trouble to construct an ID (other than my own) to do this.
I thought the meaning would be clear ie Im only here for one reason, to debate certain issues (issues well known on isteve). I thought that was honest.
Apparently not, several of my liberal opponents are much exercised by my 'fake' ID. That they only know its fake because I told them so doesnt seem to matter. It seems that because they dont 'know' who I am I cant be trusted in some way. Ive pointed out that arguments should stand or fall on their own merits, but thats not popular.
Ive tried dumbing this down to a level they can comprehend. eg If I state that 3 + 3 = 7 then it should be clear I'm wrong without them knowing my real name.
"How to Make an American Job Before It's too Late: Any Grove"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-01/
how-to-make-an-american-job-before-it-s-too-late-andy-grove.html
FYI: Andy Grove is a co-founder of Intel
From the Andy Grove article:
"Job-Centric Economy"
"How do we turn such Asian experience into intelligent action here and now? Long term, we need a job-centric economic theory -- and job-centric political leadership -- to guide our plans and actions. In the meantime, consider some basic thoughts from a onetime factory guy.
"Silicon Valley is a community with a strong tradition of engineering, and engineers are a peculiar breed. They are eager to solve whatever problems they encounter. If profit margins are the problem, we go to work on margins, with exquisite focus. Each company, ruggedly individualistic, does its best to expand efficiently and improve its own profitability. However, our pursuit of our individual businesses, which often involves transferring manufacturing and a great deal of engineering out of the country, has hindered our ability to bring innovations to scale at home. Without scaling, we don’t just lose jobs -- we lose our hold on new technologies. Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate."
Nine-of-Diamonds makes a really important point. The top schools serve both as places for the best and brightest to go study very hard subjects with lots of super smart classmates and teachers, and as places for the future ruling class and their hangers-on and syncophants to meet. One of the explicit motives for racial quotas in admissions to top schools is simply to ensure that there is a pool of blacks available for the ruling class--folks like (to take the obvious examples) Barack and Michelle Obama. I tend to think that legacy admissions exist for much the same reason--the Bushes and Gores are going to be part of the ruling class, and so they need to be educated in that system.
This is entirely outside the realm of academic/intellectual merit. Most of the ruling class isn't all *that* bright, after all. So worrying about SAT scores and such is kind-of missing the point.
Now, there's a different kind of goal of making sure bright kids with poor, poorly-educated, or otherwise unhelpful parents/backgrounds still get a good education. (You're trying to find the Sonia Sotomayors here, of all races.) But that goal isn't really consistent with basing it on race. In what universe are the Obamas' daughters disadvantaged and in need of help getting into a good school?
Anonymous:
No president could fix the BP spill. Obama could conceivably have tried to clean up the incestuous relationships between the regulators and oil companies, but once the spill had happened, I don't think there's anything much he could do different from what he's doing. It's not like BP lacks either access to the relevant expertise, funds to hire it, or incentive to fix the problem.
Is there any good source of statistics that shows how big the impact of AA is on whites? My impression is that it's relatively small, but I'll admit I don't know.
One important thing to notice is that getting into a school where you're on the left end of the intelligence or preparation or study habits distribution is a mixed blessing. If you graduate, you get the added oomph of a Wash U degree instead of a University of Missouri one, but you may not graduate, and if you do, it may very well be in some easier major. (I've often wondered if, in a world without AA, we wouldn't see more black engineers and scientists. Most guys bright enough to do a EE at Mizzou probably aren't bright enough to do one at Stanford, and the AA admissions boost for being black might let that solid Mizzou guy into Stanford, where he can flunk Diff EQ and end up with an English degree.
"none of the above said...
Anonymous:
No president could fix the BP spill. Obama could conceivably have tried to clean up the incestuous relationships between the regulators and oil companies, but once the spill had happened, I don't think there's anything much he could do different from what he's doing."
No President can sensibly reorder the entire health-care business either, but none-the-less Obama stuck his snout into that. What you say is true, but misses the point. The Democrats get elected on the platform that government can and should do just about everything. Consequently, they should be judged by their own impossible standards when they fail.
". The Democrats get elected on the platform that government can and should do just about everything.:
And the Republicans get elected on a platform of family values...
Baaaawwwww-haaaawwww-hee-hee-haaawww!
"No president could fix the BP spill."
Not two months before the spill, Obama went full speed ahead on offshore drilling. Why?
Because many of his pro-growth constituents demanded it, from the Hispanic vote to the Tea Party vote.
Do you think that the Deepwater Horizon BP manager would have been so gung ho reckless to move onto to the next drilling site if Obama had been less "in the pocket" with offshore drilling and BP?
There wouldn't have been a next site to move onto. BP was ultra motivated by Obama's pro-offshore drilling declaration to push the Deepwater Horizon operation past the limit.
Obama is responsible, 100%, for his unchecked and reckless policy on offshore drilling. I'm not letting him off the hook. He's just as much in bed with Big Oil as Bush was.
Also, his pathetic attempt to show support for Green Technology is absolutely that: pathetic.
But you're right, the Gulf is totally f'd. There is absolutely nothing to be done now.
-pd in sf
Obama scientists had warned about the risks of offshore drilling:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/obama-decried-used-bush-drilling-policies/
pd in sf
Post a Comment