Does he attribute that to admission/selection effects (i.e. that how they admit students results in people not suitable for his hiring needs) or treatment effects (i.e. something about how students are educated and/or socialized there makes them not suitable for his hiring needs)?
If admission/selection effects, does he attribute it to specific factors like legacy or athlete preferences (which certainly are not new)?
Your brother has a right to his opinion, but I suspect that he’s in the minority. If hordes of others were in agreement, then Ivy graduates would find it difficult to get a good job, and the schools would have a hard time filling their classes with top students. I know plenty of recent Harvard grads who have been hired at big name tech companies and start ups.
Regardless of whether or not athletes make good students, the reality is that the Ivy League has decided to be Division I in sports, and having lower academic standards for athletes then becomes a necessity.
Coaches drive themselves nuts simply trying to find and recruit players who can meet the lower standards established for athletes (which are high by the standards of almost every other school in the country). The schools couldn’t field Division III caliber teams without recruiting, let alone Division I teams that would be competitive.
NESCAC is Division III and those schools have a lower bar for athletes as well.
Whether being Division I is the right path for the Ivy League can be debated for eons. But that’s what the schools have decided.
Question: I have a post graduate certificate from
Harvard. Super cheesy, I know. But they say I am an “alumni” and I get the magazine and requests for cash etc. would this help my kids get in at all? Are they considered “legacy”?
No. One has to have attended Harvard College/Radcliffe College for their children to be considered legacy.
I can definitely speak to this. My school is on the list of harvard’s seven “feeder schools” (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/13/making-harvard-feeder-schools/). It’s astonishing, sometimes, to watch who does and does not get admitted. We usually send 5-12 kids to harvard each year, but last year (2018-2019 admissions cycle), it was 19. Every single one was either a legacy or a recruited athlete, while many better-qualified but unconnected students were waitlisted or denied. I’ve seen kids with GPAs as low as 2.9 or ACT scores as low as 22 get admitted; we’ve also watched parents donate as much as $100M in an effort to get their kids admitted (though this particular kid was actually denied!). IMO, harvard is corrupt and overrated. The work is not super tough once you get there; the tough part is beating out all of the well-connected kids who have been born and bred to get into harvard. If you’re looking to get a quality education surrounded by smart, deserving classmates, go to Yale.