I do know about the latter. Knew some folks that taught there.

Few courses are taught by tenured faculty at the Ivies. Junior faculty have to justify final grades, PhD students and sessional have to justify any grades lower than B- on any assignment.

Coupling that with the ‘legacy admissions’ where children of alumni have a lower bar to admission, anyone with a B- average has a questionable degree.

No matter how good their programs are, for the lowers tier of students, they’re just institutions of transmitted privilege. Which is why the complaints about DEI mechanisms to balance that are so suspect.

I wasn’t aware whether UPenn was on the same system but it’s a huge thing for private universities reliant on tuition fees and big alumni donations.

It’s interesting how California is shutting down the practice of legacy admissions, and Stanford and USC are feeling the sting.