Re:Throw Out the College Application System
by lisper on Sunday October 05, 2014 @08:56PM
(#8413933)
This proposal assumes that the goal of top-tier colleges is to find the best and the brightest and give them an exceptional education, which will enable them to become even bester and brighterer. But that's wrong. The goal of top-tier colleges is inculcate people into a particular social class. Ivy league grads run the world, not because they're so much better and brighter than everyone else, but because the people who run the world were indoctrinated to believe that only ivy-league grads are capable of running the world, and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. How do I know? Because people still care where you went to college even decades after you graduate. They stop caring about your GPA, but they never stop caring about your alma mater. If it were about achievement, then where you went to school should stop mattering after a decade or two or three, just like your GPA, but it doesn't. Once a Harvard man, always a Harvard man.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
For a fun NLP experiment, count the language usage of "When I was at <insert school>" vs. "When I was at College".
You'll find that the schools people casually drop in with that phrase are by and large tier-1 schools. While most people who went to school to learn just use the latter phrase. The lesson is that when you go to Harvard of Princeton or wherever, you didn't go to College, you went to some place that transcends mere college, you went to someplace with an important name, and because of that name, you too are important.
Hell: here it is off of the USNews list using google
"When I was at Princeton" - 16.3 million
"...Harvard" - 5.93m
Yale - 2.58m
Columbia - 3.53m
Stanford - 2.44m
University of Chicago - 6
MIT - 18.5m
Duke - 1.37m
University of Pennsylvania - 1.81m (without "the" - 2 results, "Upenn" 201,000, "Penn" - 13.3m)
California Institute of Technology - 1 ("CIT" - 6, "Caltech" 887,000)
Dartmouth - 691,000
Johns Hopkins - 6.14m
Northwestern - 6.64m
Here's the Tier-2
Ashland - 860,000
Barry - 843,000
Benedictine - 95,300
Bowie State - 2 (Just "Bowie" - 249k)
Cardinal Stritch - 4
Clark Atlanta - 6
Cleveland State - 6
East Carolina - 1.62m
East Tennessee State - 3 ("East Tennessee" - 3)
Florida A&M - 3
Florida Atlantic - 3
Florida International - 3
Georgia Southern - 877,000
Georgia State - 1.65m
Indiana State - 1.28m
Indiana University of Pennsylvania - 2 (Indiana University - 5.07m)
Jackson State - 466k
Lamar University - 0 ("Lamar" - 441,000)
Re:Throw Out the College Application System
by Blackthorn on Sunday October 05, 2014 @11:54PM
(#8414238)
University of Pennsylvania is often referred to as "penn", if you want to rerun that search (though make sure to avoid "penn state", a different school).
Re:Throw Out the College Application System
by dreamweapon on Tuesday October 07, 2014 @01:12PM
(#8422403)
Because people still care where you went to college even decades after you graduate.
Depends on who you hang out with, I guess. In my own crowd I find the subject of where you went to college (or even if you went) basically never comes up. But then again, there's that old joke:
"How do you know when you're talking to a Harvard man? He'll tell you."
Re:Throw Out the College Application System
by no_future on Monday October 06, 2014 @12:46AM
(#8414326)
The goal of top-tier colleges is to make as much money as possible, like every other business. Thats the reason they've come under fire for letting in students from China and the like that cheated on their SATs and rejecting tax paying US citizens, because they can charge the foreign students huge premiums.