<story><title>Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/opinion/college-bribery-admissions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jonny_eh</author><text>How is a school prestigious by allowing undeserving[1] rich kids in?&lt;p&gt;[1] In the sense that they&amp;#x27;re not academically or athletically at the top of the heap.</text></item><item><author>LanceH</author><text>These universities don&amp;#x27;t have the prestige without the legacy admissions (and alumni donors).&lt;p&gt;There are tons of universities, but it&amp;#x27;s hard to say anyone &amp;quot;deserves&amp;quot; a spot over someone&amp;#x27;s family who helped build it.</text></item><item><author>40acres</author><text>This is why, to me, the entire debate about affirmative action at elite colleges is a complete red herring. The amount of kids, regardless of race, who can be considered &amp;quot;deserving&amp;quot; of a spot has been reduced more so by legacy admissions and these bribes than by any effort of individual institutions to even out racial or gender demographics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sverige</author><text>I have to confess that I have never understood why athletics is considered necessary at academic institutions, so it is even less understandable why athletics is considered during admissions.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bribes to Get into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/opinion/college-bribery-admissions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jonny_eh</author><text>How is a school prestigious by allowing undeserving[1] rich kids in?&lt;p&gt;[1] In the sense that they&amp;#x27;re not academically or athletically at the top of the heap.</text></item><item><author>LanceH</author><text>These universities don&amp;#x27;t have the prestige without the legacy admissions (and alumni donors).&lt;p&gt;There are tons of universities, but it&amp;#x27;s hard to say anyone &amp;quot;deserves&amp;quot; a spot over someone&amp;#x27;s family who helped build it.</text></item><item><author>40acres</author><text>This is why, to me, the entire debate about affirmative action at elite colleges is a complete red herring. The amount of kids, regardless of race, who can be considered &amp;quot;deserving&amp;quot; of a spot has been reduced more so by legacy admissions and these bribes than by any effort of individual institutions to even out racial or gender demographics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mLuby</author><text>Because riches and prestige are often found in the same family, so a school or company with an aggregation of such families&amp;#x27; progeny is able to reflect some of their shine.&lt;p&gt;Not saying it&amp;#x27;s a morally correct, but that&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x27;s how (American) society works. We aren&amp;#x27;t good at predicting a child&amp;#x27;s success so we fall back on historical (familial) data.</text></comment>