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I really don't see it as Harvard enforcing racial quotas but rather looking at the whole student not just academics and standardized test scores. I applaud them

I really don't see it as Harvard enforcing racial quotas but rather looking at the whole student not just academics and standardized test scores. I applaud them for attempting to create a diverse and varied student body. Do you have a better alternative or would you select a student body just by GPA and standardized tests?

ronyeh 8y ago
Very easy. Admissions should be race blind and name blind. Everything else, including socioeconomic background, can be included in the admissions packet.
- eganist 8y ago
  Socioeconomic background is blocked out for need-blind schools, of which there are a ton, Harvard included. The application process becomes a strict meritocracy when all of these points (race/name/need) are blocked, which works in a perfect world but does not work when you consider that socioeconomic disparities tend to impact minority races the most. Strict meritocracies are favored in the bay but are substantially out of favor everywhere else precisely because so many minorities are born directly into a disadvantage. To encourage the leveling of socioeconomic success, race-aware admissions will probably be necessary until we as a country start seeing success in moving the odds of economic success closer to the center rather than in favor of white males. Anyway this isn't really a commentary on this specific lawsuit so much as it's a response to the suggestion of blinding multiple other categories out.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > The application process becomes a strict meritocracy when all of these points (race/name/need) are blocked, which works in a perfect world but does not work when you consider that socioeconomic disparities tend to impact minority races the most. Access to education has been one of the best thing to happen to minorities, and Asians are a good example of that. Most came from poor immigrant families and in the space of 2 generations they made it to top universities. So what exactly were we doing wrong? Seems to me the system is clearly working as a social escalator.
    - eganist 8y ago
      > Access to education has been one of the best thing to happen to minorities, and Asians are a good example of that. Most came from poor immigrant families and in the space of 2 generations they made it to top universities. So what exactly were we doing wrong? Seems to me the system is clearly working as a social escalator. (circa 1998) https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-... (Circa 2015) https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-ed... (Circa 2017) http://college.usatoday.com/2017/03/07/report-the-race-gap-in-higher-education-is-very-real/ http://college.usatoday.com/2017/03/07/report-the-race-gap-i... The overarching theme is that non-asian minority populations may be disparately affected by adverse conditions continuously perpetuated on them such as single-parenting. And before we conclude that single-parenting is the fault of the parent -- no, not generally. It's generally the fault of the society that disparately targets adults of a given background for separation or incarceration. If we're being frank, neither white majority nor Asian minority populations have had to deal with imposed inadequacies in family structure. TL;DR: Asian immigrants are more likely to have support networks similar to the majority population, something frequently deprived from other minority populations in the US.
      - ekianjo 8y ago
        > with imposed inadequacies in family structure. If I remember correctly the US government kind of encourages single parenthood through several incentive schemes instead of promoting families, and this has made ravages in black communities since it was implemented. Time to repeal bad policies? Thomas Sowell on this very topic: https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/07/slavery-didnt-cause-todays-black-problems-welfare-did/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/07/slavery-didnt-cause-t...
  - fraudsyndrome 8y ago
    They do but it goes deeper as people tend to stereotype Asians as being privileged as if they are a monolithic group, yet you have those (mainly from South East Asia) coming from low socio-economic backgrounds being lumped in as privileged. People tend to forget that minorities being born directly into a disadvantage include Asians/Asian-Americans.
    - eganist 8y ago
      You're entirely right. The anti-Asian bias would probably (as suggested by the article) also impact populations with the same socioeconomic detriments, examples of whom can be seen among Vietnam War refugees and subsequent South-East Asian asylum-seekers/immigrants more generally, as you suggested. So by penalizing the whole band of Asian races to even out admission, a whole bunch of materially disadvantaged Asian populations end up less favored than their African counterparts. It's an unfortunate state of affairs.
      - fraudsyndrome 8y ago
        Actually, I forgot to add that it can be bad as a whole for Chinese people too if they're stereotyped as rich. There are plenty going overseas to study who are pretty much in poverty too or even those born here with a Chinese background that are poor.
  - Chathamization 8y ago
    Tangentially, if we wanted a strict meritocracy based solely on someone's skills, then we'd base our decisions off of a skill assessment that was open to all people, and do away with college degree credentialism. The current system is based on what you were like when you were 17, what your peers (competition) at the time were like, how admissions personnel feel (what they believe is) your personality at a particular time fits (what they believe is) the culture of an institution at a particular time, etc. I think this sometimes gets overlooked - no matter what form it takes, the system of college credentialism is in itself fairly arbitrary and removed from actual merit. It shouldn't be surprising that such a system tends to run into a lot of problems.
superioritycplx 8y ago
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/06/13/about-face-hospital-will-disperse-portraits-past-white-male-luminaries-put-focus-diversity/0pICgbpsw7QoHFFJQQEZOJ/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/06/13/about-face-hosp...
gizmo686 8y ago
So, you disagree with the allegation that the admissions office was biased against Asian-Americans in the personality test?
albntomat0 8y ago
That's not what the article said. The key point is that Asian applications scored well in "whole person" metrics when evaluated face to face, from teachers, high school counselors, and alumni interviews, but much worse when graded by Harvard admissions officers, on supposedly similar categories. All of those subjective ratings should be heavily correlated, as they are all trying to measure the same things.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > All of those subjective ratings should be heavily correlated I wouldn't go so far. If your measures always correlate, why have separate measures? The point is when one measure disagrees with the others, it should say something meaningful. In this case, the disagreement appears to say "this student is Asian."
  - albntomat0 8y ago
    My understanding of it is that they are multiple samples of the same underlying distribution (the applicant's subjective characteristics). Multiple references who know/have interacted with the applicant attest to his/her personality strengths & weaknesses, and the average of all of them should result in an accurate measure of the person. If one of your "sensors" consistently measures lower than the grouping of the others, then you look into why that one is giving faulty readings, if it does so over a large sample size.
- davidwihl 8y ago
  I read the (poorly written) article and disagree with it. I suggest you read Harvard's request for summary judgement (linked in the article) to see how carefully they weigh a multitude of factors.
sremani 8y ago
>> -- staffers who are likely under pressure to deliver a target mix of ethnicities each year -- under pressure to deliver a target mix of ethnicities sounds more like, we do not have a hard quota but we have a wink-and-nod quota.

ronyeh 8y ago

Very easy. Admissions should be race blind and name blind. Everything else, including socioeconomic background, can be included in the admissions packet.

eganist 8y ago
Socioeconomic background is blocked out for need-blind schools, of which there are a ton, Harvard included. The application process becomes a strict meritocracy when all of these points (race/name/need) are blocked, which works in a perfect world but does not work when you consider that socioeconomic disparities tend to impact minority races the most. Strict meritocracies are favored in the bay but are substantially out of favor everywhere else precisely because so many minorities are born directly into a disadvantage. To encourage the leveling of socioeconomic success, race-aware admissions will probably be necessary until we as a country start seeing success in moving the odds of economic success closer to the center rather than in favor of white males. Anyway this isn't really a commentary on this specific lawsuit so much as it's a response to the suggestion of blinding multiple other categories out.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > The application process becomes a strict meritocracy when all of these points (race/name/need) are blocked, which works in a perfect world but does not work when you consider that socioeconomic disparities tend to impact minority races the most. Access to education has been one of the best thing to happen to minorities, and Asians are a good example of that. Most came from poor immigrant families and in the space of 2 generations they made it to top universities. So what exactly were we doing wrong? Seems to me the system is clearly working as a social escalator.
  - eganist 8y ago
    > Access to education has been one of the best thing to happen to minorities, and Asians are a good example of that. Most came from poor immigrant families and in the space of 2 generations they made it to top universities. So what exactly were we doing wrong? Seems to me the system is clearly working as a social escalator. (circa 1998) https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-... (Circa 2015) https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-ed... (Circa 2017) http://college.usatoday.com/2017/03/07/report-the-race-gap-in-higher-education-is-very-real/ http://college.usatoday.com/2017/03/07/report-the-race-gap-i... The overarching theme is that non-asian minority populations may be disparately affected by adverse conditions continuously perpetuated on them such as single-parenting. And before we conclude that single-parenting is the fault of the parent -- no, not generally. It's generally the fault of the society that disparately targets adults of a given background for separation or incarceration. If we're being frank, neither white majority nor Asian minority populations have had to deal with imposed inadequacies in family structure. TL;DR: Asian immigrants are more likely to have support networks similar to the majority population, something frequently deprived from other minority populations in the US.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      > with imposed inadequacies in family structure. If I remember correctly the US government kind of encourages single parenthood through several incentive schemes instead of promoting families, and this has made ravages in black communities since it was implemented. Time to repeal bad policies? Thomas Sowell on this very topic: https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/07/slavery-didnt-cause-todays-black-problems-welfare-did/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/07/slavery-didnt-cause-t...
- fraudsyndrome 8y ago
  They do but it goes deeper as people tend to stereotype Asians as being privileged as if they are a monolithic group, yet you have those (mainly from South East Asia) coming from low socio-economic backgrounds being lumped in as privileged. People tend to forget that minorities being born directly into a disadvantage include Asians/Asian-Americans.
  - eganist 8y ago
    You're entirely right. The anti-Asian bias would probably (as suggested by the article) also impact populations with the same socioeconomic detriments, examples of whom can be seen among Vietnam War refugees and subsequent South-East Asian asylum-seekers/immigrants more generally, as you suggested. So by penalizing the whole band of Asian races to even out admission, a whole bunch of materially disadvantaged Asian populations end up less favored than their African counterparts. It's an unfortunate state of affairs.
    - fraudsyndrome 8y ago
      Actually, I forgot to add that it can be bad as a whole for Chinese people too if they're stereotyped as rich. There are plenty going overseas to study who are pretty much in poverty too or even those born here with a Chinese background that are poor.
- Chathamization 8y ago
  Tangentially, if we wanted a strict meritocracy based solely on someone's skills, then we'd base our decisions off of a skill assessment that was open to all people, and do away with college degree credentialism. The current system is based on what you were like when you were 17, what your peers (competition) at the time were like, how admissions personnel feel (what they believe is) your personality at a particular time fits (what they believe is) the culture of an institution at a particular time, etc. I think this sometimes gets overlooked - no matter what form it takes, the system of college credentialism is in itself fairly arbitrary and removed from actual merit. It shouldn't be surprising that such a system tends to run into a lot of problems.

superioritycplx 8y ago

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/06/13/about-face-hospital-will-disperse-portraits-past-white-male-luminaries-put-focus-diversity/0pICgbpsw7QoHFFJQQEZOJ/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/06/13/about-face-hosp...

gizmo686 8y ago

So, you disagree with the allegation that the admissions office was biased against Asian-Americans in the personality test?

albntomat0 8y ago

That's not what the article said. The key point is that Asian applications scored well in "whole person" metrics when evaluated face to face, from teachers, high school counselors, and alumni interviews, but much worse when graded by Harvard admissions officers, on supposedly similar categories. All of those subjective ratings should be heavily correlated, as they are all trying to measure the same things.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> All of those subjective ratings should be heavily correlated I wouldn't go so far. If your measures always correlate, why have separate measures? The point is when one measure disagrees with the others, it should say something meaningful. In this case, the disagreement appears to say "this student is Asian."
- albntomat0 8y ago
  My understanding of it is that they are multiple samples of the same underlying distribution (the applicant's subjective characteristics). Multiple references who know/have interacted with the applicant attest to his/her personality strengths & weaknesses, and the average of all of them should result in an accurate measure of the person. If one of your "sensors" consistently measures lower than the grouping of the others, then you look into why that one is giving faulty readings, if it does so over a large sample size.
davidwihl 8y ago
I read the (poorly written) article and disagree with it. I suggest you read Harvard's request for summary judgement (linked in the article) to see how carefully they weigh a multitude of factors.

sremani 8y ago

>> -- staffers who are likely under pressure to deliver a target mix of ethnicities each year -- under pressure to deliver a target mix of ethnicities sounds more like, we do not have a hard quota but we have a wink-and-nod quota.