<p>If people mix up treatment effect and selection effect one more time on CC, I will scream. </p>
<p>Here’s SOME data supporting my statement that very high IQ people are much more likely to become billionaires than merely bright or average people. Thus, the selection effect of very high IQ people by HYP/MIT/Duke/Stanford/etc.:</p>
<p><a href=“The Scary Smart Are The Scary Rich: Examining Tech's Richest On The Forbes 400”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/09/24/the-scary-smart-have-become-the-scary-rich-examining-techs-richest-on-the-forbes-400/</a></p>
<p>“From an early age, billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos showed spatial-mechanical talent. After getting his hands on a screwdriver, he tried to take apart his crib—as a toddler. Later in life he didn’t want his siblings in his bedroom, so he devised an alarm system to keep them out. Given his early intellectual trajectory, the fact that he is now building a 10,000-year clock in an eastern Nevada mountainside kind of makes sense.”</p>
<p>“At 14, Jack Dorsey became fascinated with dispatch routing and wrote open source software that is still used by many taxi companies today. Then there’s the precocious Michael Dell, who at 8, applied to take a high school equivalency exam and learned to program in junior high school. Dorsey and Dell were a bit slow compared to Sean Parker, who was crunching code on computers by 7. All three now have 10-figure fortunes.”</p>
<p>"As FORBES’ publisher Richard Karlgaard puts it: “[The scary smart] have inherited the world. The surest way to become a billionaire today is to be born with a 150-plus IQ and 800 math SAT skills. This would describe… most of the whizbangs in Internet, biotechnology and algorithmic finance.”</p>
<p>There’s a lot of talk today about the cognitive capabilities of the top 1% in wealth, a group that seems to intersect heavily with the top 1% in brains. We know that Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sergey Brin are—and Steve Jobs was—in the top 1% in intellectual ability."</p>
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<p>How about folks like Paris Hilton, Elizabeth Paige Laurie of USC cheating fame, W, etc…</p>
<p>“Here’s SOME data supporting my statement that very high IQ people are much more likely to become billionaires than merely bright or average people. Thus, the selection effect of very high IQ people by HYP/MIT/Duke/Stanford/etc.”</p>
<p>So what, though? Why would “becoming a billionaire” be anyone’s goal in life? I get the idea of “I want to transform (xxx area),” which might result in riches – but becoming a billionaire just for the sake of becoming a billionaire? Spare me. </p>
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If Janet Rapelye said they hold in high esteem “such things as motivation, creativity, independent thought, intellectual curiosity, and perseverance”; yet they are producing investment bankers and consultants like there is no tomorrow, I see a problem with admission.
If you are hinting that being provincial and money hungry is a “hereditary” condition among most of the admits, I tend to agree. It is not logical to blames the elites for making them so because philosophically, something can not come from nothing. Whatever the opinion, there is still a problem with admission, no?<br>
The only other possibility is that they are simply not telling us the truth. Either way, I think their “mission statement” is in serious need of a rewrite.</p>
<p>I think Pizzagirl is making the simple point that most college students, whatever their background and interests, find that as the end of college is approaching, they must make some decisions about the future that have practical implications. If they find that the career prospects in academia are doubtful, while at the same time there are recruiters from consulting firms offering them large sums of money right out of college, it is hardly surprising that many of them will decide in favor of financial security. It seems to me that the only way to avoid this would be for the elite schools to recruit more students who are already rich.</p>
<p>“Whatever the opinion, there is still a problem with admission, no?”</p>
<p>At any moment, Harvard could prohibit Goldman Sachs et al from recruiting on campus. But they don’t. So I guess they don’t have the problem with it that you do. The great thing is if you don’t like Harvard’s admission policies, you don’t have to apply there or have your kid apply there. It’s not like it’s a great loss to anyone one way or the other. Harvard’s admission policies don’t impact your life in any way, so I fail to see why it’s a “problem” for you that they admit the way they do. Just because they don’t get the exact-same-class you would if you were in charge doesn’t make it a “problem.”</p>
<p>And yes, Hunt, thank you - you’ve articulated it well. </p>
<p>The real problem some of you have is that academia is desirable to YOU and you wish it were desirable to more young people. Well, it’s not. Maybe some of it is money, maybe some of it is that it’s just not desirable. Oh well. It doesn’t reflect on you in any way. I don’t get worked up that not everyone wants to be in my particular field. Different strokes for different folks. </p>
<p>“It seems to me that the only way to avoid this would be for the elite schools to recruit more students who are already rich.”</p>
<p>Hunt has made this point several times and no one’s picked up on it, but I think it’s a very important one.
You want more academics? Recruit more rich kids, who have trust funds to fall back on if the only job that comes through is at Southwest North Dakota State U for a pittance. </p>
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<p>To be fair, I bet if the CEO of McKinsey listed the qualities his firm is looking for in new hires, it would be nearly an identical list. Same with Goldman Sachs, or Blackstone. The character qualities that elite colleges value – including both breadth of interest and the ability to focus one’s attention on a sustained basis on one area – line up very well with the character qualities that knowledge-based businesses value. </p>
<p>Money is a huge part of what those employers offer elite college graduates, but it’s far from the only thing in their value proposition. They offer a chance to do intellectually challenging work in a collegial environment with co-workers and mentors who are really smart and interesting (and, in the case of the mentors, with a lot of experience). They offer variety and travel. They offer entree into a valuable network of business contacts. They offer a chance to continue learning and growing, without necessarily tying oneself to a particular specialty just yet. It’s a lot like going to graduate school, but with a lot more material comfort, no grading undergraduates’ exams, and no pressure to come up with a thesis topic. Lots of kids with an academic cast of mind, but skepticism about the viability of an academic career, get hooked by that, and who can blame them?</p>
<p>"Money is a huge part of what those employers offer elite college graduates, but it’s far from the only thing in their value proposition. They offer a chance to do intellectually challenging work in a collegial environment with co-workers and mentors who are really smart and interesting (and, in the case of the mentors, with a lot of experience). They offer variety and travel. They offer entree into a valuable network of business contacts. They offer a chance to continue learning and growing, without necessarily tying oneself to a particular specialty just yet. "</p>
<p>Yes! I don’t know the world of i-banking, but I do know the world of management consulting (McKinsey in particular) and this is a very apt description. Claiming that it’s neither “intellectual” nor “creative” is silly. Plenty of very bright people, thinking some very complicated thoughts and doing some very complicated things. </p>
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<p>Maybe this is true of fields like art history, but in my experience the top echelon of academics rarely have people with large trust funds. I haven’t reviewed tax returns, of course, but most people at the top of my high school filed for financial aid and their parent’s occupations ranged from middle class to professional (e.g., doctor, engineer.) Most of the academic stars couldn’t afford to go to their top choices, since back then the financial aid wasn’t as generous as it is today. No one had enough money that they didn’t need to work at all.</p>
<h1>487, by PG: You apparently know a different group of academics than I do. I only know 2 “rich kids” who went into academics, and neither of their families are rich by hedge-fund-manager standards. I don’t think that people who were born rich tend to go into academics in the U.S., as a rule. I would be very surprised if it were the case.</h1>
<p>Thinking that Harvard should put more weight on academics (in my idealized version of its admissions policy) is not the same as thinking that everyone should go into academics. It’s just observing that a university is first and foremost an academic institution. A university that can recruit faculty from established scholars anywhere in the country has some claim to be at the academic peak in the US. Very high academic quality is a more important characteristic of a university for aspiring academics than it is for students to whom academics matter less–that is almost tautologous (though not quite). </p>
<p>I understand (more or less) why Harvard follows the admissions pattern that it does, but I think it is for reasons extrinsic to the creation, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge, which I view as the central role of a university. It seems to me that Harvard’s approach ensures large increases in the endowment from future donations, and it gives Harvard faculty and administrators access to the corridors of power. </p>
<p>We probably differ in our views of the central role of a university. Once I had a lengthy disagreement about the role of universities (like Harvard) that actually hinged on what the definition of “is” is–20 years before Bill Clinton. I thought (and think) that the purpose of a university “is” what its idealistically stated purpose is; while the person with a different opinion thought that the purpose of a university “is” the functional role that it plays in a pragmatic sense. </p>
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<p>I am certain there are people with mental health problems lining up to get treated by computers pretty soon. I will take your word for it.</p>
<p>“Recruit more rich kids, who have trust funds to fall back on if the only job that comes through is at Southwest North Dakota State U for a pittance.”</p>
<p>You see this in action a lot with law schools and their graduates. There are a lot of trust fund babies who go into save-the-world public interest jobs. Some donate their salary back to the organization, which of course makes them especially desirable hires. We’re talking about a brutally competitive market for jobs that pay graduates of Harvard Law and Yale Law $40k per year in places like NY, LA, and DC. These folks generally have fantastic qualifications and true devotion to the cause in addition to trust funds. They do a lot of great work. But there can definitely be tension between the public interest lawyers who need the job in order to make a modest living and those who are either trust fund babies or married to Wall Street partners.</p>
<p>I can agree with much of 491. But again, you’re talking of ideals, not the reality. Not the reality of who the average super smart kid who can get into a tippy top really is, as a human, and not the reality of the world that faces them, after graduation. Not everyone is some little bullet of constant intellectual nuclear energy. They don’t get distracted (use that loosely) or make poor decisions because the tippy tops chose them in error. They zig and zag because it’s human nature. No matter how many big names we can post who had some sort of promise as teens and went on to greatness. </p>
<p>Life happens. It strikes me that we’re describing some impressive folks in a very flat way- they did this, they achieved that. Most of us also know people who ended up on some path through a fluke. And many who are unhappy, who say things like, “I wanted to X, but then I got this offer…” or “I needed the money, so I went into corporate.” Or, “I didn’t get the jobs, I had to try something else.” Or, “I wanted family.” </p>
<p>Let’s add some reality. </p>
<p>Here is a zig-zag anecdote about academics (they do exist): One of the people I know had not intended to go to college at all, when he was a senior in high school. But his girlfriend was going to one of the University of Wisconsin campuses. So he did, too. When he got there, he became deeply absorbed in a subject, went to grad school, and is now on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, and in the National Academy of Sciences.</p>
<p>That is a rare story among academics, though. Most of the people I know followed a rather deliberate path. It is true that luck played some role, so that following a deliberate path doesn’t provide any guarantee. But on the other hand, I don’t know anyone in my field (aside from the one prof at UCB) who ended up in the field through a fluke. </p>
<p>“I only know 2 “rich kids” who went into academics, and neither of their families are rich by hedge-fund-manager standards. I don’t think that people who were born rich tend to go into academics in the U.S., as a rule. I would be very surprised if it were the case.”</p>
<p>“Rich” doesn’t have to be “rich by hedge-fund-manager standards.” Everything is always so exaggerated on CC!</p>
<p>“Thinking that Harvard should put more weight on academics (in my idealized version of its admissions policy) is not the same as thinking that everyone should go into academics. It’s just observing that a university is first and foremost an academic institution.”</p>
<p>If one uses test scores as an (admittedly imperfect) measure of academic power, it is pretty hard not to look at the scores and credentials for the incoming classes and think that Harvard is <em>not</em> already weighting academics VERY VERY heavily. What much more do you want? Does the 25-75 percentile need to be 2390-2400 for that to be true?</p>
<p>“I understand (more or less) why Harvard follows the admissions pattern that it does, but I think it is for reasons extrinsic to the creation, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge, which I view as the central role of a university. It seems to me that Harvard’s approach ensures large increases in the endowment from future donations, and it gives Harvard faculty and administrators access to the corridors of power.”</p>
<p>Quite rightly, because that in and of itself ensures longevity. Academic brainpower without the resources to hire the faculty, run the labs, etc. isn’t meaningful. </p>
<p>“We probably differ in our views of the central role of a university.”</p>
<p>I’m all over Platonic form discussions, but pragmatically speaking, Harvard needn’t have any role other than whatever they decide to so designate for themselves today, tomorrow or in the years. They do not owe “us” (by which I mean ordinary American citizens) any explanation or justification for their mission, so long as they are in compliance with appropriate laws governing their operation. </p>
<p>PG, I think you referred to having trust funds to fall back on (in case the student wound up as an academic at Southwestern North Dakota State–not precise, but close enough). From my standpoint, as an upper-middle-class academic who has no chance of setting up a trust fund for my offspring, that seems like “rich” to me. Perhaps I am underestimating how extremely rich hedge-fund managers are. </p>
<p>I would like “standardized” tests that could do a better job of differentiating near the top. </p>
<p>My point is that unless you have pretty substantial financial reserves, it’s a pretty gutsy move these days to go to grad school in English, or art history, or history, or any of a lot of other disciplines. You’re looking at years more schooling, followed by really lousy job prospects. It’s fanciful to think that many such students wouldn’t give a real serious consideration to a highly paid job, right now.</p>
<p>In my opinion, Harvard is already attracting the kind of students most likely to go into academics. The question, I guess, is whether Harvard is doing enough to encourage them to do so–and whether it even should, given the realities of the job market.</p>
<p>QuantMech, you stated,
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<p>Harvard College disagrees with you on this point. I found Harvard College’s mission statement, which is very well aligned with its admissions practices:</p>
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<a href=“http://www.harvard.edu/faqs/mission-statement[/url]”>http://www.harvard.edu/faqs/mission-statement</a></p>
<p>To interpret a bit, Harvard College’s mission is to educate Harvard students to their full potential, which is not limited to the classroom. The time spent devoted to group activities outside of class is not a distraction during their time at Harvard–it’s an intrinsic part of a Harvard education. </p>
<p>The admissions department is not being hoodwinked by Organization Kids; it looks for people able to take full advantage of the Harvard program, which is a program of personal development in which students work together to reach their full potential. </p>
<p>Likewise, every single person who claims that not admitting some applicant with a sterling academic profile is missing the point, especially if that applicant has been hothoused to the extent that he or she cannot lead in some fashion, or cannot take on some cooperative role in a college community. 10% (or 5%) could well still be reserved for the fraction of each year’s cohort admitted on the basis of the academic record alone. However, Harvard’s mission statement is not narrowly focused on producing professors.</p>