[HN Gopher] The secret joke at the heart of the Harvard affirmat...
___________________________________________________________________
The secret joke at the heart of the Harvard affirmative-action case
Author : fortran77
Score : 110 points
Date : 2023-03-25 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| giantg2 wrote:
| Matches with all my personal experiences with judges - the truth
| is what I say it is.
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| Talk to Asian American parents like me about how we feel about
| this AA nonsense. No matter how you look at it, it penalizes our
| kids for being hard workers.
|
| At the startup I work at, the unwritten hiring rule is that the
| college major is important, while the college itself is not. A
| STEM degree from Chico State is worth a lot more than a history
| or anthropology degree from Harvard/Brown.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> No matter how you look at it, it penalizes our kids for
| being hard workers.
|
| Do you think that as a general group, AA students are being
| hard workers more than other groups of students?
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| Looking at GPAs, ECs, and test scores, I strongly think so. I
| suspect it's because of the family culture, and parents
| modeling correct behavior at home. It's not about AA vs.
| other ethnicities. My MBA class had a number of second
| generation Nigerian Americans, who had a similar culture with
| high expectations from kids.
| itronitron wrote:
| One could argue then that a student in another group that
| had similar or slightly lower GPA, EC, and test scores to
| those in the AA group achieved their scores by virtue of
| having a higher raw intelligence or personal drive since
| they weren't from a culture where parents set high
| expectations for their children.
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| In other words: penalize Asian American kids for being
| born into intact, hard-working families. Subtract 300
| points from their SATs and subjectivity give them low
| personality scores. Aim for equality of outcomes instead
| of equal opportunities.
| dmix wrote:
| While I agree with you, the type of people looking to get into
| Harvard aren't just looking for a STEM job at a startup. They
| are looking to become CEOs, judges, politicians, etc. That sort
| of thing usually tends to value where you went. Not only for
| the credibility of the paper but the social networks you gain.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > They are looking to become CEOs, judges, politicians, etc.
|
| Yeah, and their degrees don't matter to get those jobs
| either. I mean of course it matters, but it's still the same
| degree they could get elsewhere.
|
| The network of well connected powerful people they meet at
| Harvard is what enables them to become CEOs, judges,
| politicians, etc.
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| I wasn't talking about coding jobs. Even jobs in marketing or
| program management go to STEM students from "lesser" schools.
| I don't even look at sociology or language degrees anymore.
| rayiner wrote:
| > She found that "the majority of the disparity" in the personal
| ratings was "more likely caused by race-affected inputs to the
| admissions process" (such as high-school recommendation letters)
| or "underlying differences in the attributes" of Asian American
| and white applicants (meaning that the scores accurately
| reflected the groups' qualities). Her bottom line was that Asian
| Americans' low personal ratings were "not the result of
| intentional discrimination" by Harvard.
|
| I suspect this is true, but also shows why subjective evaluation
| is bad. I have no doubt that, on average, white applicants
| (socialized into American culture) are better able to persuade
| some college administrator that they care about something other
| than getting a job at McKinsey or Goldman than an Asian applicant
| (who is likely socialized into Asian culture even if born here).
|
| I'm reminded of Barbara Walter's awful speech at my brother's
| graduation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7llYZ2XqLX4. In my
| experience this is both a common way white Americans think and
| also bizarre to most Asians. We shouldn't force Asian kids to go
| along with this silliness just to get into school.
| chongli wrote:
| I'm not going to defend that commencement speech but I want to
| push back on your thesis.
|
| Why should Harvard be reduced to a job training program for
| McKinsey or Goldman? Why is it bizarre and silly for people to
| pursue happiness over money?
|
| From a societal standpoint, I believe we owe much to people who
| did just that. Scientists and mathematicians, yes, but also
| writers and actors and poets and musicians. Where would we be,
| as a society, if everyone focused 100% on the hustle, the
| grind, the drive to be a founder or a lawyer or a quant?
|
| We'd be a morally and culturally bankrupt desolation. And our
| schools would be 100% complicit.
| yibg wrote:
| For one, kids of poor families can't really afford to go to
| university to peruse happiness over money. They don't want to
| become poets and musicians because they have a family to
| support.
| occamrazor wrote:
| While I agree that culture and education are not just means
| to the end of getting a lucrative job, I think that GP's
| point is that it is easier for a white American, _even if
| they only care about money_, to appear as if they cared about
| other values.
|
| For many people grown and socialized in some Asian cultures
| (including Japanese, Korean and Chinese), a good job in a
| prestigious company is considered a worthwhile objective, not
| something that needs to be disguised.
| chongli wrote:
| _For many people grown and socialized in some Asian
| cultures (including Japanese, Korean and Chinese), a good
| job in a prestigious company is considered a worthwhile
| objective, not something that needs to be disguised._
|
| I think that's more a trait of emigrant subcultures than it
| is a trait of those cultures as a whole. Parents who take
| big personal, financial, and social risks to move to
| another country tend to want to protect their investment.
| When it comes to their children's choice of career, they
| can get very offended if the child chooses to pursue
| theatre or fine arts instead of medicine or law.
|
| If, on the other hand, you travel to Japan, Korea, or China
| (or indeed India, Thailand, Vietnam, or any other country
| in Asia where people emigrate to come to the US) and
| actually visit people living in the countryside, in small
| towns and farming villages, you'll see a radically
| different picture. People practicing their culture and
| living a traditional way of life.
|
| The difficulty of immigration and setting down roots in a
| new place, far from the support of extended family social
| networks, serves as a natural (and artificial, due to
| various immigration laws) barrier which tends to select for
| families where the parents have this sort of drive.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| > "underlying differences in the attributes" of Asian Americans
|
| But doesn't this mean that AAs were on average less interesting
| people, or whatever the personal score is trying to judge?
|
| How can that be true?
|
| It seems so much more likely to me that admissions officers
| understood that if AAs got similar personal scores to other
| groups then AAs would be overrepresented, and so the admissions
| officers (implicitly or explicitly) scored more them more
| harshly.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| How can it be true that AAs are less interesting people on
| average? Isn't the usual answer of why they are so successful
| on standardized tests that it comes down to their culture?
| Why shouldn't their charisma also be cultural?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Instead of just linking to a 24 min video can you share what
| part was awful?
| duxup wrote:
| I'm the kind of person who generally approaches everyone as "What
| do I really know about this person?". And the answer is almost
| always "not much".
|
| I don't understand how these admissions folks work and it kind of
| makes me suspicious about someone who really wants to do that.
| itronitron wrote:
| Back in 2021 I was listening to some NPR podcast about college
| admissions during the Covid pandemic and they had some college
| admissions people as guests. One of them, after talking about
| how thoughtful and seriously they take their process of making
| decisions, said that he just wanted applicants to stop writing
| essays about how their lives were impacted by the Covid
| pandemic.
|
| I knew instantly that it was all bullshit, and none of my
| children have applied to colleges that include essays as part
| of the application process.
| duxup wrote:
| I can't help but think of those people who REALLY want to be
| a forum moderator or on those bizzaro world campus justice
| systems... and often seem to be the worst people to do the
| job.
| lunaru wrote:
| The real joke is that we as a society still give weight to
| institutions like Harvard. We as a whole are much more educated
| now and the idea that legacy institutions should serve as
| gatekeepers of education or validation thereof based on
| reputation alone seems outdated. These schools should be judged
| by the rigor and quality of their curriculum rather than the
| reputations of their past. And I say this as someone who
| graduated from one of these top schools.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Those schools are also where most of cutting edge research
| happens. And that's why the folks who go there have such strong
| networks and an in-crowd mentality.
|
| I am trying my hand at networking and I find that I get ghosted
| like 80% of the time when people I talk to from these
| backgrounds find out I'm not as qualified on paper.
| sounds wrote:
| To discriminate, whether by race or by alma mater, is innate;
| even if it is illegal it will still happen. Meritocracy is
| hard, and wounded when we characterize a flaw in a
| meritocracy as if that were judgment day.
|
| Should we all abandon Harvard now? Nah, this battle is
| everywhere.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Keep this comment top of mind when you next are involved in
| hiring.
| golemotron wrote:
| It remains a Schelling Point. That's what keeps many
| institutions going.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| _In game theory, a focal point (or Schelling point) is a
| solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence
| of communication._
| lapcat wrote:
| Harvard is private social club, a glorified country club posing
| as a school. The entire purpose of the institution is to
| perpetuate the disparity of wealth and power in society. The
| selectivity and exclusiveness is essential, the raison d'etre
| of Harvard. This is the only thing we need to understand about
| it.
| koolba wrote:
| More importantly while there's nothing wrong with operating a
| private social club, doing it with public tax dollars and
| claiming it's anything but a private social club is
| ridiculous.
| [deleted]
| HyperSane wrote:
| And one that rich people can just buy there children access
| to. Jared Kushner's dad donated $2 million to get his son
| into Harvard.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This made the scandal where celebrities were photoshopping
| photos of their kids doing prep school sports a little
| awkward. The rarely reported detail was that they were
| paying $200k bribes because they weren't actually rich
| enough to make $2M bribes directly to the schools.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The price has gone up a lot since then. I hear it's now
| over $10 million for a seat, possibly as high as $50
| million.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| And they like to keep the club exclusive...
|
| >In the 16 years since, although the number of applicants to
| the College has more than doubled, the size of Harvard's
| undergraduate population has remained relatively constant.
| This year, the College admitted 2,037 students to the Class
| of 2020; in comparison, 2,035 students were admitted to the
| Class of 2004.
|
| IMO when your non taxable endowment gets large but your
| undergrad population stays the same maybe part of the
| endowment should become taxable.
| [deleted]
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Also IMO stop taking Pell Grants, Federal aid, and pay
| taxes on their endowments and these schools can admit
| whoever they please.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| You realize they're in the middle of Cambridge, MA, right?
| It's not like there's a bunch of empty land around the
| campus to just make the school bigger.
|
| Acquiring non-Harvard land in Allston met with some
| backlash owing to how they went about it (sneakily, to
| avoid getting put over a barrel on price).
|
| Building up rather than out would require knocking down
| buildings that range from historic to merely very old.
|
| Suggesting that Harvard should just take more students as
| the number of applicants grows sort of ignores the
| constraints they operate under.
|
| Non-affiliated former Boston resident.
| cabalamat wrote:
| They could very easily set up a new campus a few miles
| away.
|
| Also I doubt there are any truly "historic" buildings at
| Harvard -- universities that really have historic
| buildings predate the USA by multiple centuries.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| It's not going away, because school choice continues to be a
| valuable signal of how capable someone is, and graduates of
| "top" schools continue to have disproportionately higher
| impacts on society.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > graduates of "top" schools continue to have
| disproportionately higher impacts on society.
|
| you offer no data to differentiate between this being caused
| by their abilities, or their greater access to the networks
| that place people in high impact positions.
| paxys wrote:
| At some point it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The
| smartest people in the world want the Harvard brand. They
| graduate and do great things. Their success gets attributed
| back to Harvard. So how does one measure what specifically
| the university is bringing to the table?
| dmreedy wrote:
| I would posit you might be conflating "capability" and
| "impact" in a manner that elides the many distinctions.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "and graduates of "top" schools continue to have
| disproportionately higher impacts on society."
|
| Source? There are many individuals who went to state schools
| or didn't go to college at all that have turned into
| billionaires, Nobel prize winners, etc.
|
| Not to mention there's no evidence that the people who went
| to an elite school would have less of an impact if elite
| schools didn't exist.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| It's common sense, it's just a numbers game. Harvard has
| like 8000 undergrads or whatever, while your typical state
| school has ~60000. All I'm saying is that if you take a
| random student from both these populations, the Harvard
| student is statistically more likely to be some uber-
| successful wunderkind. In no way am I trying to say that
| people from non-elite schools are inherently less capable.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| A higher number of those billionaires, Nobel prize winners,
| and political leaders in the US went to elite schools like
| Harvard and Yale.
|
| They undoubtedly have higher impacts on society, not
| because they are the smartest, but because having an elite
| school degree unlocks opportunities that are not available
| to average person...for all our talks about meritocracy,
| humans still pay more attention to signaling, branding, and
| marketing...and the elite schools know how to milk that for
| money and power.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "A higher number of those billionaires, Nobel prize
| winners, and political leaders in the US went to elite
| schools like Harvard and Yale."
|
| Again, any numbers on that?
|
| "not because they are the smartest, but because having an
| elite school degree unlocks opportunities"
|
| Or did they go to an elite school because they already
| came from money, which is the true source of those
| opportunities.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| I thought the theory was people are dumber than ever thanks to
| smartphones, social media, decreased attention spans, etc. I
| would take a bet that the average person is not even close to
| as smart as the average Harvard grad.
| Shatnerz wrote:
| Something like 35% of the US has graduated university[1]. I
| suppose the average university graduate is smarter than the
| average person regardless of the school they attended.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_t
| he_...
| stainablesteel wrote:
| i'd rather they get judged by the students they output rather
| than using only an input, ie curriculum
|
| this better allows for competition to flourish imo
| credit_guy wrote:
| > The real joke is that we as a society still give weight to
| institutions like Harvard.
|
| Indeed. I don't understand the fascination with Harvard when
| you can go to MIT.
| ghaff wrote:
| I generally agree :-) Though many of the same dynamics apply
| to MIT even if some of the specifics differ. MIT isn't
| admitting students purely on the basis of test scores.
|
| I knew a long ago admissions director at MIT. At least at the
| time, they basically had an x-y chart with quantitative on
| one axis and qualitative on the other. There was a
| quantitative lower-bound cutoff but, beyond that, the two
| factors could balance each other out. (e.g. decent but not
| not fantastic SATs could be balanced out by really eye-
| catching qualitative factors and vice versa.)
| dehrmann wrote:
| At least MIT says that if you can't do well on the SAT,
| you're not going to pass your calc final.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Funny, I constantly think how much more educated the educated
| people were in the past than today. The minimum IQ required to
| graduate college (and even some masters degrees) with decent
| grades can't be much more than 100 at this point, but was
| certainly more like 115 or even 120 in the 1950s. I would argue
| that the vast majority of graduating college students are
| almost entirely unable to write a half decent essay. I'm not
| saying that it's a bad thing that more people get to go to
| college, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking the
| average person is so highly educated!
| Rimintil wrote:
| > The minimum IQ required to graduate college (and even some
| masters degrees) with decent grades can't be much more than
| 100 at this point, but was certainly more like 115 or even
| 120 in the 1950s
|
| Where's your data to back this up?
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Or perhaps, since IQ is relative to general population, the
| average person is a lot smarter due to better nutrition, less
| lead exposure, and access to information?
| groestl wrote:
| Education does not equal intelligence though. I know educated
| people who are not half as intelligent as my uncle, who
| really is not that educated.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> The minimum IQ required to graduate college (and even some
| masters degrees) with decent grades can't be much more than
| 100 at this point, but was certainly more like 115 or even
| 120 in the 1950s._
|
| Sounds like you're just making this up. Have any studies on
| this or something not anecdotal?
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Here is a chart I found in a minute of searching:
| https://imgur.com/a/MenAVtj
| ineedasername wrote:
| That image lacks an obvious source or any explanation for
| methods of how the data was gathered and I can find no
| record of a study or context that corresponds to this
| image.
|
| What I can find is a wikimedia entry with the image but
| no attribution except the "US Census" and no actual link
| to any publication put out by the Census Bureau. The
| archive link goes to a page that does not actually
| contain this graphic, or the data necessary to generate
| it, making it a bit suspect to begin with.
|
| The census also don't systematically collect IQ scores or
| themselves administer IQ tests, making the details, data,
| and methodology of any study they produce paramount to
| interpreting this barebones graph. The title of the graph
| itself is borderline ridiculous, awkwardly stated at best
| and downright deceptive:
|
| IQ tests are not a requirement for graduating college,
| and taking them at all is relatively uncommon these days.
|
| As it stands, this image is worthless without context,
| and that context is oddly elusive except for an anonymous
| wikimedia post that did not cite the source with any
| specificity required to authenticate it.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| IQ talk is funny like that. It's intended to give a
| science-y sounding veneer to whatever argument is being
| made but because actual studies are a lot of work, people
| just throw around numbers with nothing more than "common
| sense."
|
| Given that it's all "common sense" people ought to skip the
| veneer and just say "more intelligent", "less intelligent",
| "much more intelligent", and so on. That's more honest
| rhetoric.
| HyperSane wrote:
| IQ is a real thing, finding a linear negative
| relationship between lead levels in children and IQ was
| the smoking gun to prove that lead was harmful.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I don't claim it isn't real. What I claim is that people
| like to throw around random made up facts involving IQ to
| make their arguments seem science-y and that they ought
| not to.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'll go on the record to say that IQ is as real as any
| other social construct like money, God, or nationality.
| Depending on your predilection that can range from
| worthless to "party of the fabric of reality itself."
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > finding a linear negative relationship between lead
| levels in children and IQ was the smoking gun to prove
| that lead was harmful.
|
| Lead toxicity was identified more than 2000 years before
| the first IQ test, and was rather extensively studied
| during the Renaissance. The combination of blood lead and
| IQ tests was important in quantifying the existence and
| impacts of particular kinds and levels of environmental
| exposure that had been assumed to be forms of levels that
| would not be hazardous, but it was not important to
| identifying lead as a toxin.
| HyperSane wrote:
| I guess I should have said "proving leaded gasoline and
| paint" was harmful.
| cabalamat wrote:
| If you live in a society where most people go to
| university, and average IQ is 100 (by definition it was
| when it was normed) then you're going to get people with
| <100 IQs going to university, and some of them will
| graduate.
| Retric wrote:
| Plenty of dumb people graduated collage in the 1950's. The
| difference is we still value most of their skills while
| giving them a free pass for all the modern skills they don't
| have. Take all that time you spent learning computers and
| apply it to other stuff and you would be more capable of that
| stuff.
|
| So yes people on average where better at say mental math back
| then, but plenty of people still sucked at math etc.
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course, people did study engineering in 50s even though
| it mostly wasn't related to computers. (For that matter, I
| have an engineering degree from the late 70s and I barely
| touched--or mostly had access to--computers.)
| Retric wrote:
| Definitely, and many programs were highly selective,
| extremely rigorous, and had very high dropout rates. Some
| colleges just had vastly less demanding degrees and a
| reputation for wild parties, excessive drinking, etc.
|
| I am mostly referring to the idea people have become less
| capable because fewer people know how to say repair their
| cars. Ignoring the fact cars just don't break down as
| much and are also vastly more complicated today. So,
| basic car repair is both more difficult and less
| necessary.
| ghaff wrote:
| Car repair is just pretty far down the list of things
| it's important for most people to be able to do. I have a
| general notion of how cars work but there's relatively
| little I could do on my own. (And, of course, it's
| increasingly difficult for even indie garages to do a lot
| of things.)
|
| I do wonder if selective schools have over-rotated in the
| theoretical direction though that's a debate with a
| _very_ long history. I 'm reading a bio of "Doc" Draper,
| for whom Draper Labs--which designed the Apollo Guidance
| Computer--is named. And I was just commenting to a friend
| literally last night that I bet a lot of the very hands-
| on engineers who tinkered as much as they did theory like
| Draper and Doc Edgerton (inventor the strobe) and others
| would probably never have gotten faculty appointments as
| prestigious universities today.
|
| Personally, the courses where I did hands-on work are
| some of the ones I remember best.
| blululu wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. Every time I read
| through a scientific journal from the 60's or 70's I am
| pleasantly surprised by the fact that the qualitative and
| quantitative reasoning is clearer and more sophisticated than
| what I see in many contemporary publications. The OP is
| perhaps justified that we should fixate less in the US news
| rankings, but the sense of decay seems justified. Imposter
| syndrome is frequently brought up to reassure people but in a
| lot of cases I see that people are actually frauds and we
| mask this over with endless positive affirmations. It is
| genuinely upsetting to see mediocre researchers get tenure
| when there is such a glut of talent that is simply passed
| over.
| peteradio wrote:
| Probably because they weren't blasting out a paper every 2
| weeks and could invest much more time on frankly more
| fertile ground.
| blululu wrote:
| That would make sense. There are probably a lot of
| reasons for this trend. The OP's point about fixating on
| US News ranking seems related to your suggestion.
| Whatever the cause may be it seems clear to me that a lot
| of our best scientific minds are increasingly excluded
| and marginalized by the modern academy.
| scythe wrote:
| >The minimum IQ required to graduate college (and even some
| masters degrees) with decent grades can't be much more than
| 100 at this point, but was certainly more like 115 or even
| 120 in the 1950s.
|
| IQ is in practice affected by education (to a small extent
| and mostly in early childhood), but the whole point of it as
| a concept was to _avoid_ measuring education. So I don 't
| think it follows that higher IQ = more educated.
| Vecr wrote:
| That's not what he's saying, he's saying collage is too
| hard to graduate and get good grades with an IQ less that a
| bit over 100 now, and that number was more like 115 in the
| past.
| mobilefriendly wrote:
| Most of the Ivies were much more academically rigorous in the
| past. There were no ideological, unrigorous majors like
| Sociology or Gender Studies. Graduates were expected to read
| both Greek and Latin.
| mplanchard wrote:
| Weirdly, I don't think society and the role of gender in it
| are worthless topics of study, and I don't think
| intellectual rigor should be measured primarily by
| knowledge of the languages that form the roots of the non-
| Germanic portion of English.
| cabalamat wrote:
| In the 19th century you could get a degree in Divinity,
| which is clearly ideological and unrigorous.
| ghaff wrote:
| While I'm equally skeptical of certain modern majors, I'm
| not convinced that just because the "educated Western man"
| (and, yes, we're mostly talking men) of the 19th century
| were expected to be well-versed in certain subjects doesn't
| mean there aren't better options for many today.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Almost all of those men went on to marry women who were
| also very well-educated on the classics. Education was
| about social class much more than gender.
|
| The fact that we only hear about "great educated men" in
| the history books has more to do with a bias in society
| than with who actually got educated.
| ghaff wrote:
| From what I see, that was mostly a Victorian era thing.
| Not sure about earlier--though there were certainly
| tutors for the upper class. Certainly, in general, women
| weren't learning classical languages in universities
| until female colleges became fairly common in the US and
| Britain.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Before the Victorian Era, nothing about womens' lives was
| well documented, so you can't exactly infer an absence of
| education from the absence of evidence.
|
| What we know is that the very wealthy often had private
| tutors for their daughters, and that some women also
| learned a lot from their parents. Records exist that
| describe the tutelage of aristocratic and royal women,
| and it's not hard to extrapolate that those professional
| tutors probably needed other clients (from the less-well-
| off aristocracy and merchants) to both "climb the ladder"
| and fill the gaps between aristocrats' daughters.
|
| An interesting tidbit in this regard is that we actually
| do know that the women in the (middle class) Bach family
| were as musically-educated as the men, since they ended
| up as leading sopranos in opera houses. Some people
| theorize that the Bach women were the ones teaching their
| sons music, not the men.
|
| Universities definitely aren't the only places to get
| educated, and they were a men's club for a shockingly
| long time. Women were getting higher education in more
| private settings.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| > Before the Victorian Era, nothing about womens' lives
| was well documented
|
| There are plenty of female diarists. Court cases often
| delved into women's lives. Women belonged to institutions
| like convents that kept records.
|
| The real gaps in documentation aren't based on gender but
| class. Not entirely clear what medieval peasants did with
| their time.
|
| But even then, inquisitions kept meticulous records and
| regularly investigated small towns. Women were questioned
| as often as men.
|
| Modern historians (pre-1970s) may have been less
| interested in women's lives, but they weren't necessarily
| less documented.
|
| Edit: another big gap in records is from the wars of the
| 20th century. WWII and the wars of the 1990s destroyed
| "the record" in large parts of eastern europe.
| ghaff wrote:
| Musical education absolutely, which in the days before
| recorded music was a relatively widespread and practical
| undertaking. I assume that private tutoring in classical
| subjects for upper class women was, if not the norm,
| probably not rare. And we do know of some examples like
| Ada Lovelace.
|
| >they were a men's club for a shockingly long time
|
| But, yeah. A lot of elite universities had a rather small
| percentage of women well into the latter half of the 20th
| century. Those that have larger numbers was often because
| there were sister female schools like Harvard and
| Radcliffe Colleges. Dartmouth College didn't start
| admitting women until the 1970s.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I forgot to add this, and it still seems relevant: before
| the industrial revolution (the Victorian era), education
| in the West was pretty rare in general for members of
| both genders, and very much the privilege of the upper
| classes.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Why do we collectively put up with this anti-democratic shit?
|
| The entire back and forth between the judge and the reporter was
| just totally irresponsible and shows the Judge's lack of
| dedication to the principles of a free and informed society. That
| alone should be worth disbarment.
|
| I think it's because everyone secretly just wants in on the scam,
| and thinks that they are cunning enough to get their hand stamped
| if they do the right set of actions.
| nichohel wrote:
| Can anyone suggest what "CJer" is short for in "AA CJer"? It
| apparently is used to refer to Asian American pre-med type
| students, but I'm curious was the CJer part is.
| jancsika wrote:
| _Judge Burroughs's opinion also addressed the striking fact that,
| when sending recruitment letters to potential applicants in
| "Sparse Country" (underrepresented states in the Harvard
| applicant pool), Harvard used an SAT score cutoff of 1310 for
| white students, 1350 for Asian American females, and 1380 for
| Asian American males._
|
| Constitutional lawyers-- how is this not discrimination?
|
| Edit: to be clear-- when I wrote "constitutional lawyers," I
| meant people who have domain experience in constitutional law.
| And when I wrote "discrimination," I mean discrimination that
| would be unconstitutional according to both the U.S. Constitution
| and relevant U.S. legal precedent.
|
| Hopefully this will cause relevant comment to bubble up above the
| one that begins with "IANAL..."
| twoodfin wrote:
| It is, or at least likely to be recognized as such within the
| next month or so by SCOTUS.
|
| Chief Justice Roberts, for one, seemed pretty steamed by
| Harvard's treatment of Asian-ancestry applicants, and he's got
| 5 justices to his right on this.
|
| Honestly, I would not be shocked if Justice Kagan hopped on
| with the majority: Quantitative practices like this--and the
| "social scoring" that would be taken as clear evidence of
| racism in almost any other context--are hard to defend under
| the "value of diversity" rationale.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It will be interesting to see if Gorsuch breaks with the
| conservative side here. He seems like a "good old boy" from
| the Harvard social club (he is one of 4 SCOTUS judges who
| went to Harvard law). Roberts is also a Harvard graduate, but
| he doesn't seem to be the kind of person to break with his
| principles on this.
|
| I would agree with you on Kagan, but her alma mater is...
| Harvard Law. The last Harvard SCOTUS judge is Jackson, who
| has a 0% chance to rule against them here.
| twoodfin wrote:
| I think there is 0 chance any of the six conservative
| justices let stand practices that, again, are either
| facially discriminatory or have demonstrated
| disproportionate impact with no plausible explanation other
| than discriminatory intent.
|
| The interesting question to me is whether there's a
| consensus position on acceptable means to "diversity" ends
| that pulls in Kagan or the other liberals.
| kolbe wrote:
| Jackson is recused, so the only only other liberal they
| need is Sonja, and she seemed pretty virulently in favor
| of Harvard in oral arguments.
| macinjosh wrote:
| > The last Harvard SCOTUS judge is Jackson, who has a 0%
| chance to rule against them here.
|
| Pardon my ignorance, why?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| During oral arguments on other affirmative action cases,
| she was incredibly defensive of the practice.
| sfink wrote:
| IANAL, but I would say it's because these are recruitment
| letters, not acceptance policies. As in: it alters where you
| look, not what you're looking for. And that can alter the
| balance in the representation that you end up with, even if
| your selection criteria are exactly the same across all groups.
|
| It's the same as hiring policies. Imagine you have an objective
| test that you can give candidates, and you are willing to
| accept anyone who gets a 5 on a 5-point scale. The test is
| completely independent of race. You have two schools to draw
| candidates from. One is 90% white, the other 90% Black. You
| have resources to recruit at only one school. You want to
| increase the representation of Black employees, _without_
| lowering your standards.
|
| Which school do you recruit at? The 90% Black one. You end up
| with employees who are exactly as qualified as if you had
| recruited at the other school, but a higher percentage of them
| are Black. If you're white and go to the second school, your
| chances of getting an offer are no different. If you're white
| (or Black) and go to the first school, you get no recruiter and
| unless you find out about the position on your own, you're
| screwed. If the schools are the same size, then you could say
| that being white lowered your chances of getting hired, as a
| direct result of the choice that the recruiter made.
|
| Does the recruiter have a responsibility to make your odds of
| being admitted independent of your race? What would that mean?
| If there are 100 schools to choose from, it would mean that the
| recruiter would have to go to every one of them, and spend an
| amount of time at each inversely proportional to the school
| percentage of some race, which doesn't take into account the
| overall size of each school... it doesn't even work
| mathematically.
|
| Back to the original example, imagine if Sparse Country states
| had twice as many good Asian male candidates as Asian female,
| and twice as many of those as good white candidates. (The
| percentages of _not_ good candidates could be completely
| different, even reversed, and it wouldn 't change anything.)
| Nothing stops any of those candidates from applying. But you
| can adjust your recruiting policies to get roughly the same
| number of good applications from each group.
|
| This reduces the odds that a given Asian male (sampled evenly
| from the population) will end up admitted. But it does not
| affect the odds for an Asian male _who chooses to apply_.
| rayiner wrote:
| * * *
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| So much effort seems to go into arguing what should be public and
| what should not. While I see the benefits of privacy, and the
| benefits of openness, I don't see the benefits of everyone
| spending days arguing.
|
| I propose a different solution:
|
| All content is put in 3 categories. One is fully open info. One
| will be kept hidden for one year after proceedings finish
| (basically long enough that nobody can appeal anymore). One will
| be kept hidden for 80 years.
|
| There is _no_ secret information. If you do something dishonest,
| you might get away with it for a lifetime, but your children will
| find out.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Judges should be impartial, nay are required to be impartial, yet
| we never punish judges who are not. This smells like collusion,
| at the very least seriously unprofessional. Judges and
| prosecutors should not have qualified immunity, the temptation to
| insert personal bias is too great.
| skilled wrote:
| https://archive.is/R6Ad7
| petilon wrote:
| The whole "holistic review" crap should be banned. It was
| originally invented to reduce the number of Jewish people [1]. It
| is still being used for illegal or illicit discrimination of one
| kind or another.
|
| This article [2] says "holistic review" is subterfuge... it is
| how colleges make admission decisions based on factors they would
| rather not talk about.
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/united-
| states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...
|
| [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-
| fa...
| at-w wrote:
| I agree that much of their use of "holistic" factors is simple
| discrimination and should be illegal, but considering other
| non-academic factors (arguably including character) seems
| reasonable, if not necessary, given the intent of these schools
| to build future leaders in various fields.
|
| Quantitative measures can only give you so much information
| about a student. GPA is questionably useful past a point, where
| it starts to have more to do with grade inflation and gaming
| the system than differences in hard work or ability.
|
| That leaves the SAT, which is far more of a level playing field
| than things like extracurriculars or "personal statements" that
| also end up reflecting your social class and ability to play
| the admissions game more than ability. Yet admitting students
| based solely on a single standardized test seems to
| disincentivize working hard at other pursuits that may actually
| bring more to the classroom than slightly higher test scores.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| If there is a magical way to gauge character in a short
| amount of time then sure, however I doubt most people will do
| any better than a coin flip when asked to predict the
| "character" of someone without having known the person
| deeply.
| petilon wrote:
| > _If there is a magical way to gauge character in a short
| amount of time then sure_
|
| This is key. Many universities that claim to do "holistic
| reviews" don't have the time or resources to actually do
| holistic reviews. University of Washington is an example.
| UW gives application reviewers 8 minutes per application.
| And who are these reviewers? Do they have the knowledge and
| experience to do a "holistic review" in 8 minutes,
| including reading essays and personal statements and so on?
| Nope! They hire grad students, retirees etc. to act as
| application reviewers [1].
|
| [1] https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/a-look-inside-
| admis...
| scarmig wrote:
| The thing is, getting into a top level school requires
| maximizing all of GPA, SATs, and what might be called
| "extracurricular appeal"; this crowds out a bunch of
| different pursuits, more so than grinding test-taking ability
| (which has rapidly decreasing marginal returns) alone would.
| You might hope that those different pursuits being crowded
| out would instead feed into increased extracurricular appeal,
| but in practice there's a very particular subset of things
| that universities care about when it comes to
| extracurriculars. Indeed, some of them (like leadership
| activities in 4H, ROTC, or Future Farmers of America)
| actually _hurt_ your chances of admission, which seems insane
| if you 're looking for a variety of impressive individuals
| who can bring diverse perspectives.
|
| If I were dictator of college admissions across the US, I'd
| use tests and GPA to coarsely bucket individuals (into
| basically capable of doing the work or not at each
| institution), and use a lottery to distribute spots where
| demand outstrips supply.
| majormajor wrote:
| It's a hard problem and anyone who says it's easy (including
| "just look at SAT/GPA!!") shouldn't be taken seriously.
|
| The problem with SAT, GPA is that once everyone knows what
| you're measuring, they optimize for that measure, and it loses
| its meaning.
|
| Of ten kids with no particular extra tutoring over what they
| got in their average public school, SAT and GPA are going to
| tell you a lot about underlying aptitude.
|
| Have one of those kid's parents send the kid to a bunch of
| extra tutoring, and it ruins the ability to do the comparison.
|
| Have every kid get all that exact same level of tutoring and
| it's back to an even playing field, but you've managed to ruin
| everyone's childhood.
|
| And you might've beaten a lot of creativity and other useful-
| for-real-life but less useful for mass-produced-college-
| education skills out of them.
|
| Today we're somewhere in between - well-off kids often get the
| helicopter-parent-study-to-the-test short-term-maximization
| childhood; less well-off ones do not.
|
| So you need a new metric, or some secret sauce, but the secret
| sauce is only useful if it's secret. And if it's secret, it's
| hard to tell if it's legitimately trying to value the right
| things...
|
| If we were starting schools greenfield it might make sense to
| just let them all do whatever they want, and then see how their
| graduates do, but... we're saddled with a lot of legacy shit
| from existing wealth, past wrongs, etc, that make that real
| tough.
|
| And then some people put crazy expectations on colleges to do
| things like fix those historical problems, too, when in reality
| so much damage to some kids prospects are done WAY earlier:
| https://crookedtimber.org/2023/02/06/can-college-level-the-p...
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| How much does tutoring raise an SAT score typically?
| tomsthumb wrote:
| The impact of test prep is commonly overstated.
|
| According to Washington Post and Slate, both being rather
| progressive, SAT prep might improve scores 10-20 points on
| average, with greater effect on the math section. There is a
| paper on the ACT website suggesting 30-60 points.
|
| Downward adjustments for high performing demographics can be
| double that.
|
| A cup of coffee would probably see similar or better
| improvements than test prep.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
| sheet/wp/2017/05/...
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-
| the...
|
| https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/R171.
| ..
| onos wrote:
| This statement just does not match reality.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Do you have any studies showing the opposite?
| lordnacho wrote:
| The Slate article says the points effect is modest but also
| that a few points make a big difference to college
| admissions at the selective schools.
|
| I also question how the controlling is done. The control
| group does better seemingly from doing the test more. You'd
| think that's one of the things that shouldn't be controlled
| for. After all isn't it part of test prep?
| civilized wrote:
| > well-off kids often get the helicopter-parent-study-to-the-
| test short-term-maximization childhood; less well-off ones do
| not.
|
| This criticism of standardized tests is ubiquitous, but what
| _never, ever_ seems to be discussed is whether holistic
| review of many facets actually _improves_ this problem or
| simply entrenches the well-off further.
|
| Say you're a poor, smart kid who works to support a
| dysfunctional family. You want to go to a life-changing
| school. Would you rather prove your potential by simply
| taking a test, perhaps along with a brief note about your
| disadvantaged background, or would you rather have to submit
| materials reflecting ten different dimensions of yourself,
| all of which the wealthy have hired armies of consultants to
| optimize for them, and networks of insiders to feed them
| knowledge of what the schools want to see?
|
| We don't have to answer that because the schools have never
| asked. It was never their goal to get poor students in the
| first place, and income statistics of admits at Ivies show
| this clearly.
| chollida1 wrote:
| > The whole "holistic review" crap should be banned.
|
| I'd very strongly disagree with this. If you just use grades
| then you are benefiting the rich to a very high degree. As the
| rich can pay any amount for tutors and the kids don't need to
| work, hence being able to use a far higher amount of their
| waking time for studying than someone who needs to work can.
|
| Other factors should be factored into admissions. But the
| moment you agree that grades alone should be the only
| determination of who you allow in then you are by definition
| back to holistic admittance requirements.
|
| How would you balance who to let in between a kid who has
| tutors and no job who gets higher marks than a kid who has to
| work to feed their family and has lower marks if you don't have
| a holistic review process?
|
| Grades alone just doesn't seem fair and would only make wealth
| inequality worse as the rich get richer and the poor would fall
| further behind.
| scarmig wrote:
| The idea that "holistic" admissions is used to benefit teens
| working to support their family is not realistic. An Asian-
| American kid who spends most of his waking hours doing
| deliveries to help keep his parents' struggling Chinese
| restaurant afloat _is absolutely not_ getting admitted to
| Harvard, even if he is a valedictorian with a perfect SAT
| score. In practice, holistic admissions means admitting
| students who wouldn 't otherwise be admitted in order to
| satisfy admissions officers' ideological or financial goals.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Asian-American kid who spends most of his waking hours
| doing deliveries to help keep his parents' struggling
| Chinese restaurant afloat
|
| Nor the white kid in Iowa helping on the farm.
| cabalamat wrote:
| > How would you balance who to let in between a kid who has
| tutors and no job who gets higher marks than a kid who has to
| work to feed their family and has lower marks if you don't
| have a holistic review process?
|
| Give a bonus to kids with low parental income/assets.
| kolbe wrote:
| > If you just use grades then you are benefiting the rich to
| a very high degree. As the rich can pay any amount for tutors
| and the kids don't need to work, hence being able to use a
| far higher amount of their waking time for studying than
| someone who needs to work can.
|
| So what? Even if it's unfair that some group of people were
| able to study more and have better teachers, the fact is they
| are better educated people--fair or not.
|
| What about taking someone who is significantly less
| educated/prepared due to unfortunate circumstances in their
| first 18 years of life is made right by thrusting them into
| an environment where they're unprepared to compete for 4
| years?
|
| I say this as one of these people. I should not have been
| admitted to the school I went to. I got a terrible GPA my
| first year that progressively improved over the course of the
| years, but even after catching up to the Exeter students by
| my senior year, my GPA was shit from being averaged out with
| the first couple years. There are plenty more people in my
| same position who decided to just bow out of the competition,
| and studied subjects where they weren't forced to compete
| with the well-educated magnet/prep schoolers.
| michaelt wrote:
| You think they're using 'holistic review' to _disadvantage_
| the rich?
|
| A college that literally has a legacy admission policy?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| You need to separate the types of rich. Yes, if your family
| is rich enough to name a Harvard building, you'll be in the
| legacy admissions pipeline, but for those who are merely
| upper middle class, they have a much higher chance of
| getting in via only test scores than those who don't have
| the means to hire outside tutors for their children.
| HFguy wrote:
| Legacy at top schools means if your parents went there,
| you are fast tracked to admissions. It matters a lot.
| More than test scores.
|
| If you are in that group, you have way higher chance of
| admission. TBC, you still need high test scores.
|
| The point here is that good test scores and grades prob
| won't get you in today unless you are legacy or a
| preferred group.
| kyrra wrote:
| I'd recommend reading those that disagree with race-based
| admission (Jason Riley for example) as to why it tends to be
| a bad idea.
|
| My take on the argument against what you are saying is that
| it is effectively lowering the standards for certain groups
| of people to get in. This can 1 of 2 effects:
|
| (1) those that are admitted to a college where the standards
| expected of their students are higher will mean that these
| lower-performing people will fail out.
|
| (2) the university either lowers the standards for all, or
| creates specific majors that are "easier" for people to
| attempt to be able to graduate.
|
| Neither of these are good options.
|
| Guess what? Life isn't fair. Kids that grew up in a family
| that promotes education and learning will perform better in
| these high-tier colleges (on average). The reason is that the
| kids were able to (or forced to) perform to certain standards
| much earlier on in life (see Tiger Moms). Kids with parents
| that don't have the time (or care) to focus on a child's
| education will obvious not have the same skills/training at
| 18 compared to some others. Does this make them less smart?
| Nope! These kids can still be served very well by lower-tier
| colleges where they can still learn a lot and develop their
| skills. They just aren't as prepped for certain universities.
|
| If we want our society to continue to be a meritocracy,
| holistic review needs to DIAF.
| chollida1 wrote:
| I think I agree with most of what you wrote, especially
| race based administration.
|
| But I have a hard time thinking that grades alone is the
| best determinant of who should get into university, but the
| moment you use anything other than straight up grades, you
| are back to a holistic process, which the OP claims is
| worse.
| turrican wrote:
| ANY statistic other than race can be gamed by rich families.
| It seems like it would at least be harder for a rich teenager
| to game a standardized test, as no matter what study is
| required.
|
| Compare this to political activism, prestigious internships,
| club membership, and other "holistic" application line items.
| Poor teenagers have no realistic way to build up these items
| for their application, especially if they're working at
| Burger King after school.
|
| The suspicious part of me feels that dropping standardized
| testing from applications is just a way to get MORE rich,
| advantaged legacy kids in the door.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Holistic review can still exist on the basis of impartial
| factors subject to quantitative analysis. The strength of the
| SFFA case is that there's no way the numbers the public or
| perhaps even the plaintiffs have privileged access to can avoid
| reasonable doubt that quotas exist in the current system.
| That's why many top colleges have recently announced they will
| stop requiring SAT scores, because the data on their racial
| breakdown can be easily obtained.
| HyperSane wrote:
| > many top colleges have recently announced they will stop
| requiring SAT scores
|
| What will they use instead? SAT scores do a good job of
| predicting success in college.
| scarmig wrote:
| In theory, other measures of student achievement: grades,
| extracurricular activities, personal statements, letters of
| recommendation. GPA by itself isn't terrible for this,
| though pairing it with test scores is an improvement over
| both it by itself and test scores by themselves for
| prediction of academic success in college.
|
| In practice: things that satisfy ideological goals and
| maximize fundraising outlook for the institution.
| cabalamat wrote:
| > extracurricular activities, personal statements,
| letters of recommendation
|
| These are just selection for middle-classness.
| panda88888 wrote:
| I would say upper to middle-upper class.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| According to a professor I know, the average
| quality/preparedness of students has dropped with the
| removal of the SAT where he teaches. A high SAT score was
| never going to get you accepted to a good school, but a
| low SAT score used to get you rejected. Removing that
| filter makes room for less objective measures (I know the
| SAT isn't particularly objective either) to get more
| weight.
| scarmig wrote:
| To be clear, I strongly oppose removal of SATs as a
| metric used to evaluate candidates.
|
| That said, there's a confounder here: schools which
| remove SATs as an admissions metric are schools that are
| looking for different things than academic
| preparedness/quality. It's likely that they're using
| methods and rubrics to deemphasize the predictive quality
| of GPAs as well.
|
| GPA is fairly objective (though less so than the SAT) and
| predictive (more so than the SAT) as a standard.
| Accounting for the courses taken and the high schools the
| courses are taught at, you could select a class purely
| based on grades that is highly qualified and prepared
| (and incidentally would also have high SAT scores; GPA
| and SAT are correlated). But a university removing the
| SAT from admissions is also likely to be trying
| deemphasize the component of GPA that's predictive of
| quality as well.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| To add one thing here: the professor in question is at a
| school in the top 20 worldwide. Almost every applicant
| had a basically perfect GPA from high school, but some of
| them had SAT scores that were 70th percentile or below.
| The SAT seems to "scale up" to that market much better
| than GPA as a predictor.
| scarmig wrote:
| Right; GPA is a coarse representation of performance on
| coursework. A 4.0 at Stuy with coursework on real
| analysis and organic chemistry means something very
| different than a 4.0 at a struggling inner city public
| school where the hardest math class is Algebra 2.
|
| My point is more that universities can (and do!) create a
| different representation of coursework performance that
| accounts for rigor. But a university that eliminates the
| SAT is also likely intentionally making that
| representation less predictive of undergraduate
| performance to allow weighing of things more than
| preparedness/quality as indicated by grades.
|
| What makes SATs so important is that you get a very
| limited preparedness signal from kids with 4.0 at the
| crappy school; combining test scores with GPA allows for
| a selective school to get a much more meaningful signal
| for quality/preparedness.
|
| My motivation here is to push back against the scores
| alone are enough idea, though it's an understandable
| reaction to the people who by all appearances think
| quality/academic preparedness should be a secondary
| concern in admissions.
| antiquark wrote:
| DEI points will replace SAT scores. (DEI = Diversity,
| Equity, Inclusion).
| klipt wrote:
| Don't send your kids to extra math classes, send them to
| extra Spanish classes so they can plausibly tick the
| Hispanic box!
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| The same shifting criteria were applied to Jews. In the early
| 1900s proficiency in Latin was required because only prep school
| offered Latin, so it was an implied filter that's nonetheless
| "impartial". Then Jews became very good at Latin, so the ivies
| phased out Latin as a criteria and began admitting talent from
| the interior, because Jews did not settle there. So this whole
| game is applies to Asian Americans now, not at all surprising
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > What was Judge Burroughs trying to hide? I eventually obtained
| the joke memo and the surrounding e-mails, and what I read didn't
| strike me as having been worth the fight to keep them secret.
|
| Yet you wrote a whole article about it. Sounds like a
| nothingburger that downplays and pulls attention away from real
| problems.
|
| A Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Education who is
| supposed to regulate Harvard is a friend of the dean of
| admissions at Harvard. And you just gloss over it and focus on
| the joke...
| dmix wrote:
| Agreed, I actually agree with the judge here (even though I
| disagree with her rulings and behaviour otherwise):
|
| > she added, asserting that asking him about the memo on the
| stand would be "designed for media consumption and not for any
| great search for the truth."
|
| It really is press fodder that will get 10x the attention of
| their buddy-buddy relationship between regulator and admissions
| office. The fact they were close friends and having lunch
| together regularily seems like a bigger story and a serious
| conflict of interest that gets glossed over to focus repeatedly
| on the joke memo + the judges reaction. The memo may have some
| minor relevance to the case for credibility attacks but this
| case is about much more than an individual DOE regulator's
| personality (especially considering it was the gov official not
| the Harvard guy who wrote it).
|
| But I guess the Streisand Effect cancels this out regardless.
| eternalban wrote:
| > fodder
|
| Since 'fodder' is food for cattle, I think GP's point stands:
| _The New Yorker_ is supposed to be food for the somewhat
| highly literate two legged reader.
| sfink wrote:
| Yeah, this is a massive nothingburger, seemingly written
| because the author was pissed at being brushed off by the
| judge. And whether the judge was right or wrong to try to
| squash the joke, the comments in this thread show that she was
| right about people being eager to misinterpret the joke and
| focus on it, missing any signal for the shiny noise.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| The focus on subjective essay over objective tests baffles me. It
| is guaranteed that the rich kids will have more opportunities to
| a.) get a more polished essay written by whatever help needed, b)
| do all kinds of stuff that looks good on an essay but costs
| either time or money and is much harder for a poor kid to do.
|
| A poor kid can compete on objective tests relatively better by
| spending a much smaller amount of money. Subjective criteria just
| seem designed to game.
|
| It seems like what the US universities really want is some quota
| for the % of students representing some demographic ratio they
| have in mind. But since that is not constitutional, and might
| also make bad press, they come up with totally opaque and
| subjective criteria. I feel really bad for students being
| rejected for being less "likeable" just so the University can
| meet it's undisclosed quotas.
|
| If quotas are what you want then come out and say it.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| _On November 30, 2012, amid a friendly back-and-forth about lunch
| plans, Hibino e-mailed Fitzsimmons an attachment that he
| described as "really hilarious if I do say so myself!" Hibino
| explained, "I did it for the amusement of our team, and of
| course, you guys"--presumably Harvard admissions officers--"are
| the only others who can appreciate the humor." The joke memo had
| been written on Harvard admissions-office stationery, during the
| earlier investigation. It was purportedly from an associate
| director of admissions and parodied the admissions officer
| downplaying an Asian American applicant's achievements. The memo
| denigrated "Jose," who was "the sole support of his family of 14
| since his father, a Filipino farm worker, got run over by a
| tractor," saying, "It can't be that difficult on his part-time
| job as a senior cancer researcher." It continued, "While he was
| California's Class AAA Player of the Year," with an offer from
| the Rams, "we just don't need a 132 pound defensive lineman,"
| apparently referring to a slight Asian male physique. "I have to
| discount the Nobel Peace Prize he received. . . . After all, they
| gave one to Martin Luther King, too. No doubt just another
| example of giving preference to minorities." The memo dismissed
| the fictional applicant as "just another AA CJer." That was
| Harvard admissions shorthand for an Asian American applicant who
| intends to study biology and become a doctor, according to the
| trial transcript._
|
| It's pretty disgusting what you can get away with as long as you
| follow the right politics.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > It's pretty disgusting what you can get away with as long as
| you follow the right politics.
|
| Do you mean the joke? I read it as criticism of the policy to
| do racial discrimination.
| duxup wrote:
| I also thought it was intended as a sort of parody /
| criticism.
| vsskanth wrote:
| I think the parent comment meant that there doesn't seem to
| be any cost to making jokes at the expense of Asians.
|
| A similar parody letter based on stereotypes about black
| people will pretty much end their career, no matter the
| intent.
| HyperSane wrote:
| The Asian in the joke was practically superhuman, nothing
| was made at the "expense" of Asians. The joke was
| explicitly mocking Harvard's obvious discrimination against
| Asian applicants.
| mb7733 wrote:
| The joke is not at the expense of Asians, it is satirizing
| how Asians can be discriminated against in admissions
| bsaul wrote:
| Still would have been a risky move. There are examples in
| the past of jokes not well understood ...
| dmix wrote:
| The email itself said "you're the only person who would
| understand this sort of humor" so it's important to look
| at this in context. The recipient of the email was asian
| himself.
|
| Whether it can end careers? Sure people freely ignore
| context and socially burn people at the stake for much
| less. But IRL it's important to ask whether they were
| actually being racist with their satire. Which I
| personally think is a pretty thin argument.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The author was Japanese and the subject was Filipino.
| There's a lot of (racial? cultural?) animus there - it's
| a little like a yankee making fun of a white southerner.
| Among Asian people, Filipino and Japanese are often
| considered different races.
| areyousure wrote:
| > The recipient of the email was asian himself.
|
| The recipient was
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/22/fitzsimmons-
| pro...
| pksebben wrote:
| Caveat: no archive link and I'm not about to start paying
| the new Yorker to tell me how the world works, so might be
| missing context.
|
| Hibino, I'm gonna guess, is Japanese.
|
| The jokes don't seem like their punching down at Jose (the
| fictional Filipino). They seem to be saying; "no matter how
| hard Jose seems to work, nobody is ever impressed because
| they assume he's either getting handouts or his job is
| easy".
|
| My take, like the parent comment, is that this is a joke on
| the admissions office, and the systemic racism in such
| institutions - not at the expense of Asians (esp. since the
| one sending the joke was Asian to begin with).
| steveBK123 wrote:
| This isn't the defense you think it is.
|
| Asians can be racist & discriminatory towards other
| Asians.
|
| Japanese & Filipinos having something of a history no
| less..
| bradleyjg wrote:
| _My take, like the parent comment, is that this is a joke
| on the admissions office, and the systemic racism in such
| institutions - not at the expense of Asians (esp. since
| the one sending the joke was Asian to begin with)._
|
| If the Dean of Admissions and a government official with
| detailed knowledge of Harvard's admissions process both
| privately believe that Harvard illegally discriminates on
| the basis of race, that seems extremely probative in a
| trial on that exact issue.
| btilly wrote:
| If it was intended as criticism, then one would expect the
| joke's author, who was the regulator in charge of ensuring no
| racial discrimination, would have offered the much more
| direct criticism of taking regulatory action.
|
| The joke's author did no such thing. And was careful to make
| sure it never got to anyone who might be inclined to
| criticize Harvard's admissions practice.
|
| Furthermore the fact that Harvard admissions HAD slang like
| "Just another AA CJer" is pretty strong evidence of
| discrimination.
| emmp wrote:
| The author of the joke memo is himself Asian American,
| which is a relevant detail.
| [deleted]
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Maybe, maybe not. Could also be read as the very real
| racism / discrimination of East Asians towards Southeast
| Asians. Especially a white collar educated East Asian vs
| a more recently immigrated working class Southeast Asian
| family.
|
| Analogy would be a white guy named Bob Smith working a
| fancy office job, living in Manhattan making jokes about
| slack jawwed Cletus the farmer from Alabama.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You're forgetting who the audience is. The audience is
| Harvard admissions staff. That changes the nature of the joke
| quite a bit in my opinion. Since it is an inside joke for
| only Harvard's people and their ideologically-aligned
| "regulators," it reads to me as more of an acknowledgement
| and acceptance of the practice of anit-asian discrimination,
| and at most a suggestion that they tone it down a bit.
|
| If this were a parody written for the daily show (for
| example) or something else intended for a wide audience, it
| would absolutely have been criticism of Harvard, but the
| audience really does change the joke.
|
| Personally, I think this is one of the more racist things
| that I have seen recently, and large swathes of both
| Harvard's admissions staff and the folks "investigating" them
| need to resign.
| bdowling wrote:
| The real punchline is that the Harvard dean initially believed
| the memo was genuine, that an associate director of admissions
| had written it as a parody of Harvard's own practices.
| gnicholas wrote:
| My reading was that he initially thought the memo was a joke
| that was written by a real admissions officer (whose name was
| used on the document). The memo was so over-the-top (Nobel
| Prize!) that it would have been obvious that no such student
| had ever applied.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Yes, but SFFA is almost definitely going to eventually breach
| this wall sooner or later, and I can bear these awfully obvious
| judicial biases on the margins as we advance our way toward
| stamping out centuries old pseudoscientific human taxonomy from
| our society one slow step at a time.
| lumb63 wrote:
| The characterization of this joke as "anti-Asian" seems very
| incorrect to me. It's clearly satirizing the stereotype that
| Asian American typically are more accomplished and
| discriminated against in admissions because of it. It's
| absolutely relevant to the case, but is definitely not anti-
| Asian.
|
| EDIT: changed "fact" to "stereotype". Guess I'll let the court
| decide the facts...
| kolbe wrote:
| Yeah, it's anti-Harvard admissions, which is the entire point
| of the case, and the judge wouldn't allow it into evidence?
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| And it's pretty hilarious how far over your head a joke can fly
| when you follow the wrong politics.
| jcaldas wrote:
| I have always seen Ivy League admission controversies as stemming
| from the fact that the number of "perfect" (as measured by
| objective criteria) candidates is so high versus available spots,
| that there are only two solutions:
|
| * Select candidates randomly from a pool of perfect candidates.
|
| * Select candidates based on additional, subjective criteria.
|
| The first approach seems inherently fairer, but schools went with
| the second approach. It's hardly surprising that all sorts of
| biases creep in.
|
| I once read that a candidate was rejected because, having an
| enormous amount of extracurricular activities in his CV, was
| deemed "too intense".
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> the number of "perfect" (as measured by objective criteria)
| candidates is so high versus available spots
|
| "Elite overproduction"
| csa wrote:
| > I once read that a candidate was rejected because, having an
| enormous amount of extracurricular activities in his CV, was
| deemed "too intense".
|
| While "too intense" is poor wording (and perhaps shorthand),
| I'm guessing that the activities had the following traits:
|
| 1. Limited to unspecified "participation", the substance of
| which was not verified or confirmed in other parts of the
| application. Typically elite schools are looking for leadership
| roles as well as moving the needle in some way.
|
| 2. Looked like resume/application boosting since no one can
| reasonably participate in a quality manner in this many
| activities.
|
| In certain communities, especially in the NE corridor, racking
| up mostly low-engagement ECs is a hobby.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Of my colleagues, the who is most successful didn't attend
| college at all. With the internet providing near free information
| we don't *need* college.
|
| Sure it's a fun 4 years, sure you might meet someone nice, but
| it's not needed to live a full life.
|
| In fact, I'd argue before attending college you should have to
| work a real job for a bit. Understand how money works, then
| blowing 60k a year to get a degree means a different thing.
|
| With all of this in mind, get rid of race based admissions.
| rShergold wrote:
| Harvard was created to educate the elite not to create it. This
| is the fundamental issue here.
|
| These institutions see their purpose as preserving western
| civilisation and hopefully shaping its future direction. Part of
| this joke was about turning Harvard into a trade school for asian
| doctors. From their point of view this would be the same as
| becoming a factory churning out plumbers or electricians.
|
| The "secret sauce" of the admissions process is simply "If this
| candidate doesn't attend Harvard are they highly likely to become
| a member of the elite anyway?". This opens up things about our
| society we don't want to face. George Bush is related to the late
| Queen of England. Many of the elite are the same families who
| have ruled over us for the last thousand years.
|
| Even at the local level your chance at becoming an important
| person in your city is closely related to who your parents are.
|
| By accounting for the structure of society and distribution of
| power at the time of application the admissions process becomes
| at best conservative and at worst racist.
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