tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post146678001037834045..comments2024-03-28T16:22:14.888-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: The elite firm-elite college connectionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-14460109105011160742011-02-07T05:18:00.369-08:002011-02-07T05:18:00.369-08:00The value of an ivy league education is often said...The value of an ivy league education is often said to lie in the network of contacts you make while there. Presumably, hedge funds, big banks, consulting companies, etc., hire at the ivies partly to buy access to those networks.none of the abovenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-54426321162990225402011-02-04T18:56:07.591-08:002011-02-04T18:56:07.591-08:00Why don't firms that hire 22-year-olds ask col...<i>Why don't firms that hire 22-year-olds ask college seniors to take the GMAT or GRE or LSAT and have those scores sent to them?</i><br /><br />The Supreme Court case <i>Griggs v. Duke Power</i>, that's why.John Thackerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15269867695937765049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-88627574233846363032011-02-04T12:18:49.478-08:002011-02-04T12:18:49.478-08:00Since the Ivies are elite gateway institutions tha...<i>Since the Ivies are elite gateway institutions that are tax exempt and the recipients of government largess,<br />a case can be made for more bias not less. They need student bodies that reflect the full geographic and ethnic diversity of America, which is far from the case currently. Affirmative action for all would make a good slogan. A student body of the best and the brightes, by all means, but one that looks like America because it is drawn from a cross-section of the American people.<br /><br />Personally I am in favor of flash mobbing the homes and offices of Ivy League presidents to insist on these reforms.</i><br /><br />I tend to agree. Let's force them to keep doubling down. "Affirmative Action For All!" indeed. AA broken down by religion and ethnicity (and language/dialect?), as well as sex and race. AA is good. AA is justice. Who has ever been harmed by "more justice," or "more good"? More good and more justice is always the right choice. AA should divvy everything up much more carefully. We have computers now. :)Svigorhttp://majorityrights.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53431034536557365802011-02-04T12:13:11.176-08:002011-02-04T12:13:11.176-08:00Svigor, if you're old enough to have lived thr...<i>Svigor, if you're old enough to have lived through it, what were relations like between blacks and whites in the pre civil-rights South? How'd whites treat and view blacks? I've heard pretty good from some, but the general consensus is that things were oppressive. Hearing the perspective of a conservative southerner would be interesting.</i><br /><br />My father was nursed by a black woman, mostly raised by black maids, etc. Upper middle class southern standards, maybe? I'm no authority on where to put whom on that scale (don't get me started on the American-British differences).<br /><br />I don't really have any lore about what it was like back then. I do know my dad's relationship/attitude toward blacks was HBD-aware, but a touch paternalistic, too. He was gregarious and got along well with blacks AFAIK. He did way more laughing at black antics than he did cussing them for anything. Like most southerners, he could talk in a way that non-southerners take as "ebonics" but really is more of a shared dialect (or overlapping dialects) between southern blacks and whites. I was fairly close with his father growing up, and I can't recall ever hearing anything on racial subjects from him.<br /><br />For whatever that's worth...<br /><br /><i>I'd also be interested to know if race relations varied among the states (ie was Mississippi better than Georgia) and between rural and urban.</i><br /><br />Hell if I know anything empirical. I do know that population density and social harmony are inversely correlated. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts blacks and whites get along better in rural areas than urban, ceteris paribus.<br /><br />P.S., I'm not a conservative. I'm politically eclectic, but I'm closer to a founding liberal than a modern conservative. Biological survival & freedom for all flavors (but particularly my own) of man is my core tenet.Svigorhttp://majorityrights.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-20842865370238751152011-02-02T22:12:43.368-08:002011-02-02T22:12:43.368-08:00"You don't seem to understand what "..."You don't seem to understand what "chance" means."<br /><br />I think that's you. Soros, Buffet, Peter Lynch and all the others with long track records aren't impossible according to the random walk model, but nothing is impossible according to the random walk model. The empirical distribution of returns of money managers simply doesn't fit the distribution predicted by the random walk model.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-82207254874737106022011-02-02T11:33:32.379-08:002011-02-02T11:33:32.379-08:00On the one thing that you got right, I'm rathe...On the one thing that you got right, I'm rather surprised that your computer guy thought that was a good idea. Computer guys would build their own for two reasons, in the past: put together a neat machine that wasn't possible off-the-shelf, and avoid the 'Microsoft tax' by running bootleg software.<br /><br />Avoiding that 'tax' is what makes homebrew systems cheaper for home. (Even without the Microsoft tax, the nightmare of supporting homebrew in a business environment makes them prohibitively expensive).Evil Sandmichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06094558583013380137noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-5238936427665720552011-02-02T09:05:57.902-08:002011-02-02T09:05:57.902-08:00Since the Ivies are elite gateway institutions tha...Since the Ivies are elite gateway institutions that are tax exempt and the recipients of government largess,<br />a case can be made for more bias not less. They need student bodies that reflect the full geographic and ethnic diversity of America, which is far from the case currently. Affirmative action for all would make a good slogan. A student body of the best and the brightes, by all means, but one that looks like America because it is drawn from a cross-section of the American people.<br /><br />Personally I am in favor of flash mobbing the homes and offices of Ivy League presidents to insist on these reforms.Luke Leahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11290760894780619646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-20947124623113002082011-02-02T07:56:34.904-08:002011-02-02T07:56:34.904-08:00Hedge funds generally select for ability.
...
Th...<i> Hedge funds generally select for ability. <br />...<br /><br />The hardest part of running a hedge fund is getting people to give you their investment money.</i><br /><br />My suspicion is that hedge funds and some law firms like to hire people who have wealthy and/or well-connected relatives.<br /><br />In other words, the hiring process is also a customer recruiting process.David Davenportnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-8522938312450120582011-02-02T07:28:13.661-08:002011-02-02T07:28:13.661-08:00For their streaks to appear by chance would requir...<i>For their streaks to appear by chance would require trillions of people trying at least.</i><br /><br />Their streaks could appear by chance even if they were the only ones who ever tried. You don't seem to understand what "chance" means. You're conflating it with "probability" and what we should expect based on the laws of probability.<br /><br />For heads to come up 40 times in a row is not probable unless there are more than a trillion instances of people flipping a coin 40 times. However, it could happen by chance the very first time someone tries it.ben tillmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-73674613355376178342011-02-02T00:20:52.630-08:002011-02-02T00:20:52.630-08:00For their streaks to appear by chance would requir...For their streaks to appear by chance would require trillions of people trying at least.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-40529270895705201882011-02-01T13:08:37.653-08:002011-02-01T13:08:37.653-08:00Buffett and Soros cannot be explained as lucky
Wh...<i>Buffett and Soros cannot be explained as lucky</i><br /><br />Why? With so many trying, few have got to get lucky.Nanonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-43532493704164898082011-02-01T02:55:19.410-08:002011-02-01T02:55:19.410-08:00Half Sigma is right about hedge funds. With the ex...Half Sigma is right about hedge funds. With the exception of some (but not all) quant funds, hedge fund managers are salesmen first and oracles second if at all. <br /><br />Buffett and Soros cannot be explained as lucky, and there are a few more like them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-75017988822367087912011-01-31T18:43:21.640-08:002011-01-31T18:43:21.640-08:00There was a great 60 minutes piece on Willie Gary,...There was a great 60 minutes piece on Willie Gary, the richest tort lawyer in America (black) a few years ago. Mr. Gary attended Shaw University (an HSBC in Raleigh, NC) then got his JD from UNC.<br /><br />During the interview, Ed Bradley asked Gary "how do you feel about Ivy League lawyers who look down upon you"? He responded "I LOVE Ivy league lawyers, I've hired plenty of them."Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-1627005242969884072011-01-31T18:36:39.837-08:002011-01-31T18:36:39.837-08:00"Come now Truth, I am more manly, athletic, a..."Come now Truth, I am more manly, athletic, and good looking than my ivy league peers of high school, and better at speaking and physics too. And music. How can I countenance a culture that nurtures them over me?"<br /><br />By performing like it.Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-12202934119548947752011-01-31T17:52:05.089-08:002011-01-31T17:52:05.089-08:00Great post but some perspective:
Those who overlo...Great post but some perspective:<br /><br />Those who overlook the state schools are being short-sighted. First, SAT+GPA required to get into Berkeley are off the charts, especially post-209. Second, people seem not to understand the difference in difficulty between Berkeley undergrad and HPYS.<br /><br />Anecdotal: I entered Cal in 1987. I had not applied to Stanford (was rejected by HYP). I certainly would not get into Cal today with the same HS GPA and SAT scores.<br /><br />Be that as it may, I had a few friends and family members who went to Stanford. Being only ~40 minutes away, I went down there a lot, and they came to visit me a lot. I was overcome by a sense of profound envy. Nobody at Stanford undergrad had to work hard at all. OK, maybe in the hard sciences. But I didn't know any of those people. (I knew lots of them at Cal however, and they worked like slaves. It was incredible.)<br /><br />I was in humanities (history, English, Philosophy) and I got worked to death too. Plus they graded really, really hard. At Stanford, a B+ was functionally an F. Formally, there was no F. That's right, they didn't even confer F as a grade. It had been scrubbed from Stanford's books.<br /><br />(My mother worked with a Stanford grad who had been a star athlete in the '70s, very handsome, not so bright. I told here, indigantly, about the F. She needled him once saying "Did you know they got rid of the F at Stanford?" And he replied, "They're calling it Stanord?" True story.)<br /><br />All this is to say nothing of the absurdly low unit requirement per quarter (we were on the semester system), the paucity of requirements overall, the ability to drop classes 24 hours before the final, and on and on. At Cal, you had to drop OUT OF SCHOOL if you were having a tough time. Forget about dropping one class at the last second.<br /><br />Then there were the lines ... the interminal lines! Every lower division class (frosh/soph) was horribly oversubscribed. To just get enrolled in many REQUIRED courses, you had to sleep outside on Sproul in a bag in a line to have any shot.<br /><br />I'm sure there were many reasons for this, but the biggest I think was the California Master Plan for Higher Education. The brainchild of Clark Kerr and Pat Brown, one element of this plan decreed that those who put in two years at a junior college were guaranteed admission to a UC campus. Moreover, it linked specific junior colleges to specific UC campuses. This link no longer exists, but the element of the plan which guarantees a jc student a place at a UC does.<br /><br />So how do they find the space? Simple! By making it brutally hard for undergrads in the lower division. The point of the curriculm, the grading, everything, is to flunk out or just drive to despaire hoards of kids who will simply ... leave, opening up spots for the guaranteed transfers. Brilliant!<br /><br />I concluded quite early that I was foolish for not trying harder for a private college. They coddle you. They give you As for showing up. (If you doubt this, Google "grade inflation" and "Harvey Mansfield.") They want your money. They will go to great lengths to keep you there and keep you (and more importantly, your parents) happy.<br /><br />Cal on the other had was a brutally Darwinian enviornment. Kids who can survive that have something going for them beyond mere brain power, which most of them also have.<br /><br />Then again, back then Cal cost literally $1,400/year in-state (not including dorms, etc.).<br /><br />I have heard similar stories--at the time and later--about UCLA, UVA, Ann Arbor and Chapel Hill, which were the four other public schools that we at Cal respected as our peers, or not quite, but at least worthy of being discussed in the same breath.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-31954191842258770762011-01-31T16:32:27.763-08:002011-01-31T16:32:27.763-08:00If a hedge fund selects a high beta during the mar...If a hedge fund selects a high beta during the market run up, it can show strong gains.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-91296420611209829412011-01-31T16:29:22.522-08:002011-01-31T16:29:22.522-08:00Come now Truth, I am more manly, athletic, and goo...Come now Truth, I am more manly, athletic, and good looking than my ivy league peers of high school, and better at speaking and physics too. And music. How can I countenance a culture that nurtures them over me?Difference makernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-54307553636231626982011-01-31T15:51:07.643-08:002011-01-31T15:51:07.643-08:00Svigor, if you're old enough to have lived thr...Svigor, if you're old enough to have lived through it, what were relations like between blacks and whites in the pre civil-rights South? How'd whites treat and view blacks? I've heard pretty good from some, but the general consensus is that things were oppressive. Hearing the perspective of a conservative southerner would be interesting. <br /><br />I'd also be interested to know if race relations varied among the states (ie was Mississippi better than Georgia) and between rural and urban.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-39581410257898807022011-01-31T14:31:27.650-08:002011-01-31T14:31:27.650-08:00The investment-picking part of the hedge fund can ...<i>The investment-picking part of the hedge fund can be run by monkeys, because studies show that hedge funds, on average, don't outperform the S&P 500. You just need to convince people that there's some sort of "strategy" other than monkeys.</i><br /><br />That's only true over the long-term. In the short-run -- which can last years -- plenty of hedge funds totally whip the indexes. They're not engaged in "picking investments" (like a mutual fund), either. <br /><br />True enough, plenty of investors in hedge funds don't necessarily have a very good idea of what they're getting themselves into, but it's not overly difficult to sell them on the notion that they have a real shot at making some stupendous returns.Silvernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-46039228297910661392011-01-31T13:17:49.107-08:002011-01-31T13:17:49.107-08:00"There are a few ways to skin a cat. "
..."There are a few ways to skin a cat. "<br /><br />Sadly yes. A few of those brilliant Koreans and Chinese do so while it's alive. Something about the medicine they make being better for it.sadnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-39561798507713941922011-01-31T12:59:12.390-08:002011-01-31T12:59:12.390-08:00If the statistics on minority enrollment in the Iv...If the statistics on minority enrollment in the Ivies and hiring of Ivy grads as signifiers are true, then the Ivies may be headed for an interesting market niche: they graduate people destined to be window dressing. Rather than producing graduates for the top slots, they graduate certified diversity hires headed for middle management and glad-handing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-37043542651976383192011-01-31T12:47:25.787-08:002011-01-31T12:47:25.787-08:00The hardest part of running a hedge fund is gettin...<b>The hardest part of running a hedge fund is getting people to give you their investment money.<br /><br />The investment-picking part of the hedge fund can be run by monkeys, because studies show that hedge funds, on average, don't outperform the S&P 500. You just need to convince people that there's some sort of "strategy" other than monkeys.<br /></b><br /><br />Half Sigma, what do you think about quant hedge funds? Are they any better at using abitrage and high volume to make money? I would think so.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-27426784227375475802011-01-31T11:53:53.023-08:002011-01-31T11:53:53.023-08:00Truth:
"I understand that going to Oxford is ...Truth:<br />"I understand that going to Oxford is highly impressive"<br /><br />I worked hard to get in, because my parents wanted me to & because both my father & paternal grandfather had done so. And I was miserable for three years, I had no idea what to do when I got there.<br /><br />Getting my PhD (from a different University) felt like a much bigger achievement. That and winning the love of a good woman. :)Simon in Londonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-72329076611579788732011-01-31T11:48:54.124-08:002011-01-31T11:48:54.124-08:00Truth:
"The bottom line is that if your son i...Truth:<br />"The bottom line is that if your son is part of the top 2% in SAT score, outside activities, and GPA he is a viable candidate..."<br /><br />Well he's only 3. If he's like his parents I expect he'd be ok on 'top-2% SAT & GPA', but we're not pushy/upper-middle-class enough for what I understand is required by 'outside activities' these days. And as a white boy, my understanding is he wouldn't be eligible for financial aid.<br /><br />BTW are you sure Harvard count Asians as 'minority'? They get treated as whites for application purposes.<br /><br />...Y'know, I think I'm just arguing about the principle of the thing. I hated Oxford, and I don't really want my son to go to some poncy New England Ivy, anyway. Sorry about that. >:)Simon in Londonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-19873455479772826582011-01-31T11:38:49.579-08:002011-01-31T11:38:49.579-08:00Ben, please.
What exactly is an "inabillity ...Ben, please.<br /><br />What exactly is an "inabillity to distinguish the past from the future" concerning the link to the Harvard society of Italian-American students?<br /><br />I haven't posted examples of famous 'guido' and 'bubba' 25 year olds who attended Harvard because, by and large, 25 year olds AREN'T FAMOUS YET.<br /><br />And Ben, with all due respect, if you allowed your hallowed scholarships to be confiscated, that says more about you than it does about the Ivy league.Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.com