I'm fairly convinced a big part of clearing the barrier to entry of these elite institutions is having a deep understanding of exactly the things you need to do to succeed given the structure of the system and the nature of the competition. Students at "non-elite" institutions are more likely to come from backgrounds where even if you DO have a disability, maybe nobody ever tells you that you can go to the doctor for it, or that something like "accommodations" exist to help you.

- At some universities, registering as having certain disabilities gives students priority access in the housing queue, so anyone who isn't registered with the disability office gets to choose after those who are.

- Certain disabilities qualified people for a lottery for single dorm rooms. They have a limited number of single rooms for students with disabilities, so now that 30-40% of the student body is registering for them it's just another lottery.

- Some universities allow students to record lectures only if they're registered with the disability office. If you're not, you can't record.

- I remember one comment saying that people were doing it just to get newer dorms with hardwood floors, which were reserved for students with disabilities

- Having certain disabilities qualified people to get out of the required meal plan. So if someone didn't want to buy a meal plan for whatever reason (including to save money) their only option was to claim certain disabilities. At other universities it was enough to claim you were following a Jain diet which objected to root vegetables and other things, which the meal plans couldn't provide for. If you don't claim a disability or Jain, you have to buy the meal plan.

Adding to this: Even back when I was in college (not that long ago) it became known that registering as having ADHD qualified you for extra time on exams. A lot of parents were pushing their kids to get registered as ADHD purely for academic advantage. A few people I knew did it and were blown away at how easy it was to get a diagnosis (they just memorized the ADHD inventory questions and went to the laziest doctor they could find) and then walk that down to the disability office and suddenly they were exempt from a lot of the test taking requirements every else had. I remember someone bragging that they got to take their tests in a special location with proctors that had to be scheduled later, so they were taking every test a day or two after everyone else. They used that time to quiz all of their friends on the test content. I doubt (or hope) this level of manipulation is still common though.

A hobby growing in popularity seems to be perusing the internet on the lookout for something to be "outraged" by, no matter how mundane.

As someone who played hockey for years, this always felt like such a contrast from my experience where the norm was to conceal an injury and power through so you could keep playing.

If you were bleeding and unphased, you were the envy of your teammates. If a guy was limping off the ice after blocking a shot, you did not want to see the bruise he had underneath.

What I will be interested in seeing is, as students graduate into the job market, how the feigning victimhood approach fits into getting a well paying job. For all I know, it may pay off. Only time will tell I guess.

Not trying to be dismissive or reductive, but when 15-50% of honors students at elite universities are a part of this it deserves way more scrutiny that it gets. Same is true in a lot of elite private sector spaces.

At my university most kids I knew cheated. Having done the work honestly - lots of classmates would ask if they could glimpse my answers during exams.

In my naivety I believed that there would be somewhat of a comeuppance but no they’re just as successful (and some even more!) than I. When the outcomes are extreme, people will do anything to stay ahead.

Most Americans are honest hard working people. Don’t be them is the hard lesson I’ve learned.

In practice, the easiest lever professors can pull to reduce test scores is to decrease the time limit. Generally, that relatively benefits people that can think, read, and write faster, who happen to be the most knowledgeable.

But now, your exams are a glorified IQ or handwriting speed test.

That's where accomodations fail, because it's a free bonus that helps everyone instead of only benefitting the disabled.

I have a disability where I physically can't handwrite without pain, so I have to type everything. I also chose computer engineering, which requires creating matrices and circuit diagrams.

I physically, no matter how hard I try, draw a circuit diagram in Microsoft Paint as fast as you can draw one with your hand. I can not type and debug Microsoft Word's equation editor's rendering of a matrix faster than a normal person can draw it. So I get more time to do those things.

Generally, in most of my exams, the extra time wouldn't benefit a normal person in my situation. If I do not know the equations for a pn junction I'm not going to magically reinvent the avalanche effect.

In some exams, I can finish early because I deeply know the concepts. But oftentimes I'm spending a third of the exam futzing with the equation editor or using the line tool to get a zigzag trying to meet a deadline.

But the thing is, I also don't attend an elite university. I attended a mid-tier one called Toronto Metropolitan University where most students struggled with the concepts and the professors could test knowledge. Rarely did my peers do practice problems or show up to lectures. Time was almost never a constraint because my professors could differentiate on learning.

At a school like the University of Toronto, almost every student has studied past exams. They attend every lecture session including the ones they're not enrolled in. They learn everything and grind until 11 pm on practice problems.

At that level, it's hard to focus only on teaching new concepts. The few courses that do, like Harvard Math 55, are legendarily difficult for the professors and students. I know because I did really well in Waterloo's version before transferring due to autoimmune disease. Time wasn't an issue since every quiz was 1 question you instantly did or didn't understand. That exam tested for talent.

What's much easier, and what most elite schools do, is jam a ton of questions into every exam and write the IQ test.

Give extra benefits to certain groups and people will naturally take advantage of it.

This theory was mainly used for discrimination, but there might have been a small grain of truth. Some people will do the right thing because they see that society functions only if most people behave in the common interest. Some people only do the right thing because they fear consequences, and fear of God can be good enough for people who are firmly convinced they're too smart to be caught by anyone else. Perhaps a decline in religion has unfettered the inherently amoral. In reality, it may just have been that enough bankers started doing amoral things that the rest decided they had to as well in order to keep up.

We might be seeing something similar in U.S. colleges. Some students have no fear of the consequences of being caught in a lie, and many more are simply reacting to seeing obvious frauds being rewarded with real advantages. Prof's and TA's are probably quite aware of what's going on, but are afraid to call it out. If a prof denies a student's bogus disability entitlements they could be sued or fired.

So, how do you walk this back? Unlike finance scams, it's relatively easy to spot fake disabilities. Universities could do their own assessments instead of relying on whatever outside doctors students can get to say they have a disability. They could strongly support profs who take action against fakers. This may cost them donations from upset parents, but failure to reign the fakery in could tarnish the brand of elite colleges and, eventually, cost them even more. Then again, it may already be the case that an ivy league degree says more about connections than competence.

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Edit:

I just wanted to add that I really dislike the above theory and in no way endorse hiring religious people over non-religious people. In my experience, religious people are every bit as good as rationalizing immoral behaviour as everyone else, and are frequently even better at it.

The point I was trying to drive at is that some people act badly when there is no accountability. It's clear that both investment bankers and college kids need to be policed, but it's comparatively easy to catch college kids faking disabilities.

Kids would dream of growing up and "să dea țeapă" (give a stake = pull a con) or "să tragă un tun" (fire a cannon = pull off major con) and then never working for the rest of their lives.

if the religious part bothers you, substitute "willing to forgo benefits on principle rather than economic and utilitarian calculation, despite recognizing the prisoners dilemma of doing so"

not as snappy, but maybe less emotionally charged

Accomodation Nation

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/elite-universit...

The SCOTUS delayed many times in rendering a ruling on the Trump tariffs despite having clerks and other staff to write the statements and abundant time.

People have very high expectations placed on students for some reason, and then the opposite for jobs especially as prestige of the job goes up.

Reality has become exactly like in T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."

Do you want future moral leaders? Prosecute Trump, Epstein friends, Musk, Bovino, Thiel and investigate corruption om supreme court. Investigate cops murdering citizens too. Investigate wall street.

Also, article did not claimed they are getting advantages on tests, just that they claim disability. There were no data on test advantages.

The biggest issue seemed to be ability to claim food intolerance to avoid mandatory cantine eating - so they get cheaper food. Plus some dorm room allocation issue.

* widespread medical malpractice assigning disabilities to healthy individuals - extending to modification of the criteria for diagnosis - and 2 in 5 Stanford students are dishonest individuals

* or maybe these people have these conditions but they aren't disabling and are actually enabling

So one thing we could do is give neuro-typical people more accommodations so that they have are on a level playing field with neuro-divergent people. A similar enough ratio is what we see for left-handedness in sports, which leads to a lot of science looking into why left-handedness is an advantage. Maybe neuro-divergence is an advantage. In sport, we don't care about leveling the field, but here we do, so we should.

I think this is a stupid rule taught so that the privileged can game the systems but the vast majority of people don’t reap any benefits.

I have a rather contrarian view. If you have a symbiotic relationship (mostly friends and family) don’t game the system. If you have an adversarial relationship (employer, school, etc) where an entity has a lot more power over you than you have over them - feel free to game. People running these places treat you as a number. There is no shame in gaming it.

"I often think back to that conversation with my upperclassman friend. She wasn’t proud of gaming the system and she wasn’t ashamed either. She was simply rational. The university had created a set of incentives and she had simply responded to them.

That’s what strikes me most about the accommodation explosion at Stanford and similar schools. The students aren’t exactly cheating and if they are, can you blame them? Stanford has made gaming the system the logical choice. When accommodations mean the difference between a cramped triple and your own room, when extra test time can boost your grade point average, opting out feels like self-sabotage. Who would make their lives harder when the easiest option is just a 30-minute Zoom call away?"

1: https://archive.ph/RPegw#selection-1853.0-1857.496