,,,and all the children are above average

[bae]

Either standards have slipped over the last few decades, or people are getting smarter.

My impression is that standards for incoming students are *much* higher than they were in my day, at least at Princeton. So I'm not surprised they do well. I have been doing admissions interviews for Princeton and a few other schools since Covid, and the quality of the applicants is extraordinary. And from my daughter's more recent experience there, her graduating class is "better" than my class was, the previous generation.

The other school I am familiar with is the engineering program at UW, and the students are very very good, for the most part.

It's a different world from the "legacy applicant cruising along with a gentleman's C" approach.

[bae]

Is the hard part actually just getting into Ivy League schools and other highly selective schools rather than staying in.

The admission rate for Princeton for the class entering in 2025 was 4.4%. The year I applied in 1981 the admission rate was 19.8%. I believe most of the other Ivy League institutions are in the same ballpark.

Even in 1981, almost every single applicant was very well qualified, except for some of the legacy candidates. Top-notch GPAs, SATs, extracurriculars, and so on. Even then, the University was able to pick-and-choose from the pool to select a well-balanced entering class. I remember distinctly during Freshman Week they had an all-class gathering, and at one point asked people to raise their hands if they were varsity athletes in high school, or school newspaper editors, or accomplished musicians, or spoke multiple languages, or ...., or .... The purpose of this I think was to make everyone realize that every single person in that room had been "a big fish in a little pond" before they arrived, but here, we were all just "average".

The admissions department constructs incoming classes more as an art than a science at this point, since almost every applicant is top-tier, and would do well.

[littlebittybobby]

okay---i tell you what---and read it, so you'll learn. But yeah----being a druggist is not something that really requires super-high intelligence. It requires a good amount of recall, just as playing Trivia Crack does, and someone who is conscientious and of good character. Lots of jobs require that. But yeah---the scholastic bar is so high that we pay salaries in excess of $100k a year, to take pills from one bottle, count them, and put them in another bottle and stick a label on it! It's absurd, that's what our system is. See? And any more, pharmacy techs with a juco diploma at most, do the actual work. So why go ta Hahvaahd to be a pill-pusher? It's not rocket science. Yup. So, anyway-----If the goal is to end class distinction, there's got to be a better way. Now you know. Thankk mee.

[iris lilies]

okay---i tell you what---and read it, so you'll learn. But yeah----being a druggist is not something that really requires super-high intelligence. It requires a good amount of recall, just as playing Trivia Crack does, and someone who is conscientious and of good character. Lots of jobs require that. But yeah---the scholastic bar is so high that we pay salaries in excess of $100k a year, to take pills from one bottle, count them, and put them in another bottle and stick a label on it! It's absurd, that's what our system is. See? And any more, pharmacy techs with a juco diploma at most, do the actual work. So why go ta Hahvaahd to be a pill-pusher? It's not rocket science. Yup. So, anyway-----If the goal is to end class distinction, there's got to be a better way. Now you know. Thankk mee.

this is ridiculous. Pharmacists need to know so much about the human body, how drugs work on them, how drugs interact with each other, etc. Pharmacists know more than doctors about this subject because it is their specialty.

Pharmacists are charged with the responsibility of denying service to patients if they believe a doctor’s script is harmful.

[LDAHL]

I have wondered about that too, given the quality education of prep schools. That’s a pipeline for those Ivys and those applying must be pretty well prepared and groomed for success so grading on a curve might not be important.

my friend whose family went to the important East Coast universities is very achievement oriented, and some of her family is quite accomplished, but not all of them.

One side of my family went to the Ivy school of the Midwest and they also are very achievement oriented but have regular job jobs or no jobs except for a couple important scientists.

A good friend of mine is a proud graduate of Washington University. He likes to boast that it is our nation’s most prestigious safety school.

While I would like to believe our fashionable and not so fashionable schools have have been flooded with academic ubermenschen, I have to think that much of the grade inflation can be attributed to a woke terror of enforcing uniform standards with no regard to surface characteristics and the bizarre practice of taking student evaluations seriously.

[iris lilies]

A good friend of mine is a proud graduate of Washington University. He likes to boast that it is our nation’s most prestigious safety school.

While I would like to believe our fashionable and not so fashionable schools have have been flooded with academic ubermenschen, I have to think that much of the grade inflation can be attributed to a woke terror of enforcing uniform standards with no regard to surface characteristics and the bizarre practice of taking student evaluations seriously.

Wash U is rated number 20 in its class and my family alma mater is rated number 13 in its class. But, one is a fairly large University with some research responsibilities and with satellite med and law schools and the other one is just a liberal arts college. I didn’t go to the family institution because I thought it was pokey and probably I couldn’t have gotten in anyway. my branch of the family is not relentlessly aspirational.

I know people who apply to Wash U and don’t get in so it’s not easy.

[littlebittybobby]

this is ridiculous. Pharmacists need to know so much about the human body, how drugs work on them, how drugs interact with each other, etc. Pharmacists know more than doctors about this subject because it is their specialty.

Pharmacists are charged with the responsibility of denying service to patients if they believe a doctor’s script is harmful.

okay---credentials, schmedentials! Faux, how DARE you try and refute my brilliant statements??? But yeah----it doesn't take an advanced DEGREE to become a best-selling novelist (see photo), but apparently it DOES ta set them books on a shelf in a pubballick lirrrarrarry? Ha gotcha. Nipped your faulty reasoning in the Bud. Yup.2025-11-04 (2).jpg