4 ms·

Did you look at the 3 links provided above? To quote from [3]: "They find that being Asian is the equivalent of a 140 point score penalty on your SAT when appl

by Naritai 10y ago

Did you look at the 3 links provided above? To quote from [3]: "They find that being Asian is the equivalent of a 140 point score penalty on your SAT when applying to top private universities. For example, a white student that scored 1360 on the SATs would be on equal footing with an Asian student that scored 1500."

willhslade 10y ago
Asking for a friend: how do they penalize half Asians?
- Naritai 10y ago
  As far as the statistics go, on the application form they ask you for what race you self-identify as. There are only a certain number of checkboxes so a 'half' just has to choose which box to tick. That's the meaning behind the line in [3]: "Asian-American students face an extra source of stress : deciding whether to respond to the application question asking for their race and ethnicity."
- csa 10y ago
  They don't penalize Asians or half-Asians at all. Be an interesting person, and your likelihood of getting into a given school increases dramatically, and the odds of getting into at least one of a few that your friend applies to approaches 100%. Feel free to ask more about what "interesting" means.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > Be an interesting person, and your likelihood of getting into a given school increases dramatically > [...] > Feel free to ask more about what "interesting" means. For reasons that are of no relevance here (for the simple reason that this would be rather off topic) I think I know what "interesting person" means here. Perhaps in the future I will be sitting in a panel and be obligated to apply these criteria. But deep inside I think these criteria are a really limited perspective on what an "interesting person" is (I actually often find the kind of person that is selected by these criteria as not too interesting, but I digress). For example what about the kind of people who have rather interesting views on a topic, with which universities often prefer not to be associated with? Or do things that are rather illegal (in terms of law), but can morally be justified? An example: Aaron Swartz and his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto and https://archive.org/download/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008.pdf https://archive.org/download/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goa...). Or Aaron Swartz' JSTOR action: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aaron_Swartz&oldid=760375243#JSTOR https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aaron_Swartz&oldi... and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_v._Swartz&oldid=760763117 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_v._... Or what about people who have a vocal opinion on a topic that is so far off the typical opinions that one will hear in society that they will polarize people a lot - even though their opinions are very interesting to those who can handle them? Or what about people who tried ambitious things multiple times, but failed at them, stood up again, failed again, ... In other words: Were of the kind that did not fall under the survivor bias/bias for success stories that admission panels select for? TLDR: There exist a lot more kinds of "interesting persons" than what admission panels consider as such.
    - csa 10y ago
      I think you bring up several good points. In summary, it seems like you are saying that while elite schools do look for "interesting" people, they put parameters on the scope of interesting (in terms of admissions) based on their preference. I agree with this, and I personally believe that this is their right (and perhaps obligation), but I think the parameters are not as narrow as you seem to believe based on your examples. Furthermore, I think that this is a relatively minor issue since these are statistically edge cases or corner cases (most of which actually have a favorable disposition towards the applicant). > Aaron Swartz Admissions committees LOVE applicants like Aaron Swartz. Note that he enrolled at Stanford despite dropping out of school after 9th grade or so. He also had a lot of support from powerful people both at MIT and Harvard. He is an Ivy dream applicant. That said, my understanding of the biggest problem that Aaron had was that: 1) he was breaking the law, 2) he was caught, told he was breaking the law, and was asked not to do it again, and 3) he did it again. This is why MIT went after him and why some of his support dried up (or at least became more subtle). Large institutions with very public profiles have a right to draw the line at illegal activities that happen under their names or on their property -- some would say an obligation. On a personal level, I have found that many places are ok with gray area stuff, but blatantly illegal activity even after being warned is typically a no-go. > vocal polarized opinions I think this group is largely sought after. It's tough to say without specific examples. Let me try a few. First, I have heard that one of the Beastie Boys (Mike D?) was accepted to Harvard in the 90s. The Beasties were extremely politically incorrect in a very PC time. This acceptance would not surprise me. Second (a made up example), let's say a person of Sudanese descent supported female circumcision and wanted to advocate for this position. Depending on how their stance was presented, I think that this person could get in. If they said something like "this practice is important to me for xyz reasons, and i would like to go to [elite school] to help me learn about [specific topics] that will help me communicate my message in a more compelling manner", then that's probably a strong application. If they say something like "This practice is important to me, and I think all people in my culture should be forced to do it" is probably not a strong application. So there is a range of possible outcomes even on controversial topics. I think the key points are that the applicant needs to be curious about learning (esp. something that the specific school can help with), and the attitudes should probably be based on something of perceived high moral ground (law, human rights, etc.) rather than an individual's personal beliefs that may come across as being arbitrary. It can be a fine line. A third (real) example is an applicant to a HYPS grad school who was accepted against all odds and violated most of the "rules" that people think exist. The person in question was a minority rights activist -- the stuff they did was super cool. That said, this person had bad grades and unbelievably bad standardized test scores, neither of which were explained (e.g., illness, personal protest, etc.). The recommendations all said that the person worked on cool stuff, but was decidedly not academically oriented. They also said that the applicant struggled to write clearly, and this was easy to confirm based on application essays that were tough to read and full of technical errors and questionable decisions on style (but were still fascinating once they were understood). This person was accepted and offered the best minority scholarship we had -- full tuition and a very healthy stipend. The applicant ended up not matriculating. I give this last story as an example of how far some admission committees will go to admit interesting people. Granted, had this person been white or Asian, the rules probably could not have been bent this far. That said, I assure you that the "limits" can actually be quite loose even for these groups... if they are interesting enough. > multiple failures Yeah, this might be a group that falls through the cracks, but I would also consider this group to collectively be a corner case -- there just aren't that many of them. That said, I would suggest that if someone truly tries and fails multiple times in high school, then maybe their process has major flaws (e.g., too ambitious, poorly structured, etc.), and this might actually signal a hard limit on their ability to get things done. Even then, it wouldn't be a terrible application to reflect on these failures and point out that the target school has one or more things that might help address these points of failure. I'm open to other ideas or examples in this area. SUMMARY I certainly hope that you get to sit on an admissions committee one day. I think that you will find that most applicants are not interesting and/or not qualified and are relatively easy to reject. The interesting candidates are easy to spot and typically are easy to accept. They toughest part is filling in the bottom 30% or so of the class -- there will be no truly good options.
Retric 10y ago
On it's own SAT scores mean little to these schools. So, finding it does not correlate with admissions does not actually demonstrate discrimination from the school. The reality is they accept far more students from 'prep' schools than average and those prep schools don't have the same ratio of Asians as the Ivy applicants. ex: Harvard get's ~17 percent of it's students from New England even though less than 5% of the US population is from New England. PS: There is also likely an applicant bias where Asians may be culturally more likely to apply when outside of these feeder schools.
- vostok 10y ago
  In my experience, prep schools have a higher proportion of Asians than would be expected based on the proportion of Asians in the US population. Of course I'm not adjusting for things like income. http://www.usaschoolinfo.com/school/phillips-exeter-academy-exeter-new-hampshire.109303/enrollment http://www.usaschoolinfo.com/school/phillips-exeter-academy-...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 10y ago
    It's also important to look at the ratio of applicants not the general population. Further, schools which give preference to 'legacy' students whose parents went there are not going to reflect more recent trends.

by Naritai 10y ago

willhslade 10y ago

Asking for a friend: how do they penalize half Asians?

Naritai 10y ago
As far as the statistics go, on the application form they ask you for what race you self-identify as. There are only a certain number of checkboxes so a 'half' just has to choose which box to tick. That's the meaning behind the line in [3]: "Asian-American students face an extra source of stress : deciding whether to respond to the application question asking for their race and ethnicity."
csa 10y ago
They don't penalize Asians or half-Asians at all. Be an interesting person, and your likelihood of getting into a given school increases dramatically, and the odds of getting into at least one of a few that your friend applies to approaches 100%. Feel free to ask more about what "interesting" means.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > Be an interesting person, and your likelihood of getting into a given school increases dramatically > [...] > Feel free to ask more about what "interesting" means. For reasons that are of no relevance here (for the simple reason that this would be rather off topic) I think I know what "interesting person" means here. Perhaps in the future I will be sitting in a panel and be obligated to apply these criteria. But deep inside I think these criteria are a really limited perspective on what an "interesting person" is (I actually often find the kind of person that is selected by these criteria as not too interesting, but I digress). For example what about the kind of people who have rather interesting views on a topic, with which universities often prefer not to be associated with? Or do things that are rather illegal (in terms of law), but can morally be justified? An example: Aaron Swartz and his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto and https://archive.org/download/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008.pdf https://archive.org/download/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goa...). Or Aaron Swartz' JSTOR action: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aaron_Swartz&oldid=760375243#JSTOR https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aaron_Swartz&oldi... and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_v._Swartz&oldid=760763117 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_v._... Or what about people who have a vocal opinion on a topic that is so far off the typical opinions that one will hear in society that they will polarize people a lot - even though their opinions are very interesting to those who can handle them? Or what about people who tried ambitious things multiple times, but failed at them, stood up again, failed again, ... In other words: Were of the kind that did not fall under the survivor bias/bias for success stories that admission panels select for? TLDR: There exist a lot more kinds of "interesting persons" than what admission panels consider as such.
  - csa 10y ago
    I think you bring up several good points. In summary, it seems like you are saying that while elite schools do look for "interesting" people, they put parameters on the scope of interesting (in terms of admissions) based on their preference. I agree with this, and I personally believe that this is their right (and perhaps obligation), but I think the parameters are not as narrow as you seem to believe based on your examples. Furthermore, I think that this is a relatively minor issue since these are statistically edge cases or corner cases (most of which actually have a favorable disposition towards the applicant). > Aaron Swartz Admissions committees LOVE applicants like Aaron Swartz. Note that he enrolled at Stanford despite dropping out of school after 9th grade or so. He also had a lot of support from powerful people both at MIT and Harvard. He is an Ivy dream applicant. That said, my understanding of the biggest problem that Aaron had was that: 1) he was breaking the law, 2) he was caught, told he was breaking the law, and was asked not to do it again, and 3) he did it again. This is why MIT went after him and why some of his support dried up (or at least became more subtle). Large institutions with very public profiles have a right to draw the line at illegal activities that happen under their names or on their property -- some would say an obligation. On a personal level, I have found that many places are ok with gray area stuff, but blatantly illegal activity even after being warned is typically a no-go. > vocal polarized opinions I think this group is largely sought after. It's tough to say without specific examples. Let me try a few. First, I have heard that one of the Beastie Boys (Mike D?) was accepted to Harvard in the 90s. The Beasties were extremely politically incorrect in a very PC time. This acceptance would not surprise me. Second (a made up example), let's say a person of Sudanese descent supported female circumcision and wanted to advocate for this position. Depending on how their stance was presented, I think that this person could get in. If they said something like "this practice is important to me for xyz reasons, and i would like to go to [elite school] to help me learn about [specific topics] that will help me communicate my message in a more compelling manner", then that's probably a strong application. If they say something like "This practice is important to me, and I think all people in my culture should be forced to do it" is probably not a strong application. So there is a range of possible outcomes even on controversial topics. I think the key points are that the applicant needs to be curious about learning (esp. something that the specific school can help with), and the attitudes should probably be based on something of perceived high moral ground (law, human rights, etc.) rather than an individual's personal beliefs that may come across as being arbitrary. It can be a fine line. A third (real) example is an applicant to a HYPS grad school who was accepted against all odds and violated most of the "rules" that people think exist. The person in question was a minority rights activist -- the stuff they did was super cool. That said, this person had bad grades and unbelievably bad standardized test scores, neither of which were explained (e.g., illness, personal protest, etc.). The recommendations all said that the person worked on cool stuff, but was decidedly not academically oriented. They also said that the applicant struggled to write clearly, and this was easy to confirm based on application essays that were tough to read and full of technical errors and questionable decisions on style (but were still fascinating once they were understood). This person was accepted and offered the best minority scholarship we had -- full tuition and a very healthy stipend. The applicant ended up not matriculating. I give this last story as an example of how far some admission committees will go to admit interesting people. Granted, had this person been white or Asian, the rules probably could not have been bent this far. That said, I assure you that the "limits" can actually be quite loose even for these groups... if they are interesting enough. > multiple failures Yeah, this might be a group that falls through the cracks, but I would also consider this group to collectively be a corner case -- there just aren't that many of them. That said, I would suggest that if someone truly tries and fails multiple times in high school, then maybe their process has major flaws (e.g., too ambitious, poorly structured, etc.), and this might actually signal a hard limit on their ability to get things done. Even then, it wouldn't be a terrible application to reflect on these failures and point out that the target school has one or more things that might help address these points of failure. I'm open to other ideas or examples in this area. SUMMARY I certainly hope that you get to sit on an admissions committee one day. I think that you will find that most applicants are not interesting and/or not qualified and are relatively easy to reject. The interesting candidates are easy to spot and typically are easy to accept. They toughest part is filling in the bottom 30% or so of the class -- there will be no truly good options.

Retric 10y ago

On it's own SAT scores mean little to these schools. So, finding it does not correlate with admissions does not actually demonstrate discrimination from the school. The reality is they accept far more students from 'prep' schools than average and those prep schools don't have the same ratio of Asians as the Ivy applicants. ex: Harvard get's ~17 percent of it's students from New England even though less than 5% of the US population is from New England. PS: There is also likely an applicant bias where Asians may be culturally more likely to apply when outside of these feeder schools.

vostok 10y ago
In my experience, prep schools have a higher proportion of Asians than would be expected based on the proportion of Asians in the US population. Of course I'm not adjusting for things like income. http://www.usaschoolinfo.com/school/phillips-exeter-academy-exeter-new-hampshire.109303/enrollment http://www.usaschoolinfo.com/school/phillips-exeter-academy-...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 10y ago
  It's also important to look at the ratio of applicants not the general population. Further, schools which give preference to 'legacy' students whose parents went there are not going to reflect more recent trends.