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Notes -
Nothing is more Lindy then universities.
The list of top universities in 1960 is substantially the same as it is today.
Lots of places have tried to improve their rankings but it doesn't seem to work. Back in ancient times, I'm pretty sure Nebraska or some random school offered me a full ride based on my PSAT score. This strategy to recruit high-IQ students clearly didn't move the needle for them.
It’s because HYPS and the tier below schools always make sure to take the absolute best even as they also make sure to take donors’/board members’ kids and the requisite diversity intake.
So if normally the top 0.3% of graduating high schoolers would go to that tier of college under a purely meritocratic system, now only the top 0.1% go (math and physics olympiad winners etc) and so do those other groups. But because IQ has a very long tail, skimming off only the top 0.1% instead of 0.3% still means they get most of the best people - even if the system isn’t ‘fair’.
IQ is fit to a normal distribution
I wrote something retarded but meant to say tail effects.
It's not tail effects either.
I know what you are trying to say, there's just no phrase for it.
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That would work if their product was education. I don't think a Harvard education is worth 200K more than free education. Now the signaling value (even if you get fired from every job you subsequently get for incompetence) and "I went to Harvard" card that you have for the rest of your life, 200K is probably a deal for that.
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