This is a flawed idea. It presumes, in the abstract and conclusion, that changing admissions preferences to artificially increase diversity would result in a more diverse group of leaders in the country, because elite colleges tend to produce leaders and high-income earners.

Fundamentally altering the admissions process will also fundamentally alter the institution and what graduates of it look like. If we alter selection for Navy SEALs -- because SEAL school graduates are known to be athletic, motivated, and team-oriented, and we want more people like that -- I have a feeling that we'd simply destroy the image of the SEALs rather than increasing the number of people with those personality traits.

Back to my point: It always starts with the notion of focusing on merit, but devolves into checkboxes and quotas and arbitrary preferences, because those are easier to measure than actual merit. The end result is an institution that still fails to reward merit, and no longer creates the generous benefits it did at the start of the exercise. It also creates a group of bitter, resentful people who feel wronged by the changes that will significantly reduce any prior public goodwill towards the institution.

To be even more explicit, a lot of the reason that these colleges are so strongly correlated with high incomes and high achievement is that they allow attendees to network with people whose parents and family members have already reached the upper echelon. Refactoring admissions to replace that will shred that benefit altogether. Colleges are not a totally isolated system; the value of a degree does not derive solely from the lectures the individual receives there, nor perhaps from the name-prestige of the university, but largely from the networking people are able to do there and the companies that visit and recruit from the school because of that network.

The problem for me, speaking from personal experience with a spouse, significant others, friends, colleagues, my own degrees, reading job posts here on HN, is that it is the case that there are those who filter on elite schools before even considering any actual qualifications otherwise. It happens too often. After seeing this repeatedly, I personally do not believe that the selection effects associated with these institutions, controlling for other factors, is mostly due to markers of attributes like "motivation and team orientation" or even intelligence or skill, at least relative to other institutions. My sense of reading about other things like Navy Seals is similar — that some of the selection criteria are performative and of very little real-world utility, or might even be detrimental to the functioning of the institution or its aims.

This isn't to say that there aren't exceedingly competent people going into these elite institutions, only that my personal experience is such that the "magic sauce" beyond all the life history, accomplishments, test scores, grades, and so forth, is often bias or distributed gatekeeping.

Looked at differently, let's say you have an institution that aims to be elite, but the information provided by your selection criteria hits a wall, and the number of actually qualified individuals by prediction exceeds your capacity. In that case you have to either (a) basically do a lottery, which is honest but weakens the rationale for your institution over others, or (b) create criteria that are essentially useless but have a false veneer of rigor.

I'm not sure I think diversity quotas and so forth are the way to go either, but I also believe we need to stop pretending that these selection criteria are perfect or even near perfect, and that there's no bias either. I feel as if these discussions always proceed the same, that questionable or even objectively harmful (to the institution) criteria are pointed out, and then there's some outcry that lowering them will decrease standards, even as alternatives are never tested.

Now fit legacies into this theory.

The wikipedia page on Legacy Preferences is illuminating. Note the Larry Summers quote:

Former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers has stated, "Legacy admissions are integral to the kind of community that any private educational institution is."

I see the value of companies visiting and recruiting from certain schools. But is the other networking you’re talking about valuable or even real? I feel like most students aren’t networking. Making friends, yes. But I haven’t seen a focus on networking in that professional sense. Is it prevalent in Ivy League schools or something?

first off; it seems to have worked in Britain. Have you seen the pool of leaders and politicians there compared to the US? Still dominated by the same elite schools, but much more diverse (ofc the diversity is literally skin deep but for the pure purposes of achieving this it does work)

secondly, have you ever heard of the Pygmalion effect? people aren't static. If you introduce somebody to a high performing environment and tell them they're meant to be there, many of them will rise to the challenge. Of course, there is room for natural aptitude -- but nobody is proposing the schools take entirely random people. They'd still be selecting the best of the cohort. People who were able to succeed dramatically enough to be noticed, just in different environments. Similarly, in your navy SEAL example, a lot is made out of the fact that soldiers like that aren't naturally born, they're made (through training, through the culture they have developed, the standards and professionalism they hold themselves to) Again, you'll want people with certain traits in the first place (low propensity for stress, high intelligence, high fitness, leadership), but to presume the current selection is perfectly meritocratic would be foolish, and its not like people are even suggesting that we don't try to select for such things, only to try and add another consideration to the mix.

Used a lot of words to agree with the paper that changing admissions would change things, then offered some flighty arguments to maintain status quo. You are just spouting conservatism wrapped up in hand-wavy philosophy and justification.

Why do the rest of us care if the minority these institutions benefit have chaos and uncertainty foisted on them? Oh well. I feel zero for some random Harvard grad who contributes nothing to my life and keeps themselves off the hook for my healthcare and well-being. I have no honorific obligation to coddled and co-dependent non-contributor families. They dodged the abortion is all.

  > If we alter selection for Navy SEALs

But also, I think you're ignoring some things. First, it is much easier to measure physical strength than it is to measure intelligence or someone's ability to succeed in college (two different things. Related, but not the same). There is also much more mental flexibility than there is physical, especially at the ages we're talking about.

Second, is that every one of those aspects is trained. They teach you to be athletic. They teach you tools to help motivate yourself (and provide external motivation). They teach you how to be team oriented. Hell, they teach you how to take power naps. Your genetics aren't the only thing at play here and the genetics defines your limit to things like physical strength, not you're ability to have physical strength. The whole point of military training is to tear you down and build you up to be somebody else. Sure, some people come in with a leg up and have genetic advantages but these aren't necessarily the most important factors.

My point is we're talking about... well... 18 year olds. Just like Navy recruits. The gap between a good high school student and an average high school student isn't that large. Even if it seems so at that time. But with university what matters is where somebody ends up, not where they start. Are those gaps able to be crossed? Usually, yes. That is why measuring high school performance is messy as well as why final college grades are weak measurements too. Everyone knows the whole problem of certain professors being better but giving lower grades, but there's also the fact that you aggregate over 4 years. Messing up Freshman and Sophomore year can fuck up your GPA and this metric won't tell anyone if you became the star student by graduation. I don't think we should throw out GPA but it helps to recognize it is noisy.

  > To be even more explicit, a lot of the reason that these colleges are so strongly correlated with high incomes and high achievement is that they allow attendees to network with people whose parents and family members have already reached the upper echelon.

I think the bigger problem is that conversations around university tend to be about meritocracy. I don't think admissions measure that. Nor do I think GPA does. They can correlate, but there's just a lot of noise. I just wish we would stop pretending. It would make conversations change a lot. Frankly, I think at the end of the day, even after a full undergrad education, the biggest difference from a kid from Standford and a kid from some Cal State is that one of these kids will talk about how they went to Standford. At best, it is a weak signal of skill. But it is a strong signal of one's network. But if we're concerned with merit, let's not confuse the two[1]. As long as we do I don't think we can even know what problem we're trying to solve, let alone solve it.

[0] Could be wrong. But high confidence not more than 2 top universities can meet that. Number of open positions is just very small. Even if I were 10x off, the effect could still occur without much time difference.

[1] Especially true considering how common it is for people to say that what you learned in college doesn't apply to the job. If that's true, then it only makes that merit correlation weaker, though it doesn't change the network one...

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