A war on meritocracy?

[rjnwmill]

A short story video by Victor Davis Hanson examining admissions at Stanford. Like a fine restaurant, at the end, it’s all about the quality of the ingredients.

Fortunately, undergrads are only 50% of the student body. Anyone know if the disease has infected admissions decisions for graduate programs?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CwTJS8cul1D/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Here's a toast with one last pour, may it last forever and a minute more;
Good fortune seems to you have sung, to live and love way past long

[Cornfed]

This is true.  We’ve got bigger problems than how badly our football team sucks.

[Mick1]

I hate to say it, but this policy isn’t new.

I believe that some of you are aware that, fifteen years ago, my sister graduated from SUSE (Stanford University School of Education). She’s a Stanford PhD. She’s also one of the worst people I know.

Here’s her background: she reacted particularly badly to my parents’ divorce. She failed to graduate from high school, having been kicked out of my mother’s house, my father’s house and her high school. She was a thief and a druggie. She got her GED, and headed to the Army, where she got hooked on amphetamines. Once she got out, she committed workmen’s comp fraud, credit card fraud. She spent time in jail. Everyone in our family knows not to lend her money — or anything else — because you’ll never see it again. For a brief period, she was a muckraking journalist. And, she almost got me killed by one of her fellow psychopath friends.

All of this, before she applied to Stanford. She finished her undergrad at UCSC, and has a mail-order masters degree. She didn’t want to get her PhD at either San Jose State or UCSC. She applied at Stanford and scored in the 99th percentile on the reading and writing portions of the CBEST, but scored in the 48th percentile on the math section. She figured she had no chance. I told her “You’re a gay, civil servant, committed leftist. I’d be shocked if you didn’t get in.” The dept. Chair asked to meet with her, they discussed the math score, sis explained that she never took high school math, given her failure to finish HS. Excuse accepted.

Presto. She gets admitted. And now she’s a Stanford PhD.

And maybe it’s karma but…when she was in eighth grade in San Francisco, she applied to Lowell HS, the academic magnet, then and now. She was turned down, and the rejection letter noted specifically that she would have qualified for a minority set-aside, but given her alarming lack of skin pigment, she failed to qualify for the minority program. Or words to that effect.

Audaces fortuna iuvat

[Legend]

Yikes.  But not surprising, Mick.

 

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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)

[Author]

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