> his professors found him intelligent

He had a 77% average in college, which made him a C student. He even characterized himself as an average student, which is accurate. The idea that he was a secret genius is patently ludicrous and is only proffered by political hacks.

Fair enough. I don't know Bush's GPA. But the idea that he was objectively unintelligent and the average critic is smarter and more qualified to be president always rubs me the wrong way.

IQ is what you measure in a test. It does not measure creativity, ambition, empathy etc. In fact I have met people that were extraordinary good in university tests but this seemed to be their only ability. Even applying this knowledge in a laboratory or project was difficult for them. Also if you have attention deficit or something it will kill you in a test.

But take kim kardashian or Paris Hilton. Without envy you have to agree that they are very successful entrepreneurs. Yet they likely were not top 5% in SAT scores.

Cannot comment on Kim Kardashian, but as far as I remember from watching a bunch of random documentaries and such, Paris Hilton's "dumb blonde" public persona is just an act, and she indeed scored pretty high on SAT.

Cannot find any sources at the moment other than tabloids and blog posts, but I recommend checking out a fairly recent documentary on Netflix (either 2020 or 2019, I forgot) that talks about "influencers" and such. Paris Hilton got a giant segment dedicated to her on it, and she indeed was extremely articulate in her description of that whole "dumb blonde" public persona schtick. After watching it, I had zero doubt that she was indeed a very intelligent person, despite me having zero interest in her as an entertainer or a public persona.

What's more, is that a "C" at most ivies is equivalent to an "F" at any other school. You don't get big donations by failing out the mediocre children of presidents and senators.

I don't think that's exclusive to the Ivy League. People are paying money for college everywhere, and a lot of them can barely afford it. Thus, professors are hesitant to outright fail students. I say this as a former lecturer and teaching assistant at a non-Ivy.

Good point, I do suppose that's a growing issue everywhere, not just in the Ivy League.

Why are legacy admissions irresponsible? The author points out the schools have every incentive to maximize profit centers, and legacy admissions are a great way to do that. You admit four of five generations of a family, you'd better believe that they're going to pony up every year come donation time.

Ivy League Universities have always existed to provide a finishing school for the elite, rather than providing some sort of public good. While I don't think that's a particularly noble endeavor, it's not an especially malicious one either given the abundance of top-notch (and lower cost) public universities in the U.S.

If some rich parent wants to spend an order of magnitude more money on an ivy league school to give their kid more or less the same education they could have gotten at a state school, what's the big deal?

Then just end affirmative action. If that's the logic that's being used, these two things are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Irresponsible by what measure? Genetics and family wealth still have a huge influence on "future impact," and that's what these schools are selecting for. It sounds like legacy admissions are doing exactly what they're intended to do.

Irresponsible to society is what people are saying. You're making an "is" argument - the ivies optimizing for this "future impact" metric - where others are making an "ought" argument, that ivies ought to be focused on a different more societally beneficial metric.

> Genetics and family wealth

I suspect by "genetics" here you really mean something like "network you are born into", no?

I'm pretty sure they mean that if two parents are of above average intelligence then they're more likely to produce children of above average intelligence.

Really I just meant "who your parents happen to be" which is closer to the GP's point but admittedly I worded it awkwardly.

Agree that has far more predictive power than anything passed on genetically.

Because it's a terrible measure that is short sighted? It goes against everything affirmative action stands for? If we're going to pretend like diversity matters, then why try to justify legacy.

> Genetics and family wealth still have a huge influence on "future impact,"

In what way would genetics have a huge influence on future impact? That sounds like eugenics.

How is it "like eugenics" to state that children inherit genes from their parents, and are often similar in many ways to their parents? That just sounds like biology.

It's not helpful to trivialize terms like "eugenics".

Genetics have no predictive power on future impact to society. Take one of those wealthy children and put them in an orphanage, see if they do the same as their siblings.

Why should people be enraged at legacy admissions? Especially to a private school?