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I'm a Chinese American and I have experienced this type of behavior during the college admissions process, and during the hiring process with larger companies.

I'm a Chinese American and I have experienced this type of behavior during the college admissions process, and during the hiring process with larger companies. During the college applications process, I noticed I was receiving vastly different responses than my girlfriend (wife now) who was African American. Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my girlfriend and I were both A students that made the varsity swimming team. She was African American and had 5/7 full tuition responses including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. While I only was accepted into Columbia, with partial financial assistance. We both wanted to attend Yale at the time and this put a dent in our future plans. I have also experienced a similar scenario in the "pre-interviewing" resume selection phase, right out of college with no experience. My friend group noticed comparatively that those who were not White or Asian tended to get faster and more initial responses to schedule an interview. (I will note that this occurred exclusively when submitting for large Fortune 500 companies, and not for smaller business such as startups. Perhaps some selection bias) However after a while with some work experience on the resume, this doesn't manifest as much. It is my belief that university admissions and diversity initiatives need to focus more on individuals than race. The goal should be equality of opportunity and evaluation rather than equality of outcome.

yorwba 8y ago
> The goal should be equality of opportunity and evaluation rather than equality of outcome. In general, that will still require taking race into account. https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02413 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02413 "Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning" discusses various fairness measures in the context of deciding loan applications based on credit scores. The issue is that you only know whether someone was qualified once they pay the loan back, and credit scores are not a perfect predictor of that, which on top of that is differently imperfect for different races. If you want equal opportunity (defined as "the probability of a qualified application being accepted is equal independent of race"), you need different thresholds to compensate for the different prediction error rates.
mwnivek 8y ago
> Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my girlfriend and I were both A students that made the varsity swimming team. I don't have data, but I would assume that many Ivy League applicants are straight A students with a varsity sport, so recommendations and personal projects (and luck) are actually very important for admission to very selective colleges. You also noted a difference in financial aid, but note that Harvard, Yale and Columbia all state that their financial aid is based only on need, not on merit.
IvyAdmisions 8y ago
I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college. I promise you your application was viewed as "well, here's another really smart asian kid who's otherwise unremarkable from the other 1000 we'll see". Meanwhile, hers was treated like precious gold.
- sizzle 8y ago
  So what's the solution to the problem of not enough seats for x ethnicity when filtering out academic performance metrics?
  - IvyAdmisions 8y ago
    Lawsuits like this, I'd imagine. Also, waaaaaay more asians need to be running for Congress. It's getting better but they're still underrepresented slightly (4.8% of reps are asian while 5.6% of americans are).
    - bedhead 8y ago
      Asians evidently are too smart to want to get involved in politics. Gotta respect that. (not joking)
      - siosonel 8y ago
        This reply demonstrates the problem that an admission process is trying to address. The reply makes it seem like Ivy league admission is like a game to master for some students. Whereas graduates of top schools like Harvard are generally expected to become leaders who care about bigger issues, to have been informed by historical patterns and long term trends. These future leaders must know how to emphatize and care about much more than just getting ahead. (I'm an Asian, btw, if that helps inform the reader of where I'm coming from.)
        bedhead 8y ago
        It was a comment about the quality of people that go into politics, nothing more. There is little incentive for smart, ambitious people to enter anymore.

yorwba 8y ago

> The goal should be equality of opportunity and evaluation rather than equality of outcome. In general, that will still require taking race into account. https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02413 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02413 "Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning" discusses various fairness measures in the context of deciding loan applications based on credit scores. The issue is that you only know whether someone was qualified once they pay the loan back, and credit scores are not a perfect predictor of that, which on top of that is differently imperfect for different races. If you want equal opportunity (defined as "the probability of a qualified application being accepted is equal independent of race"), you need different thresholds to compensate for the different prediction error rates.

mwnivek 8y ago

> Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my girlfriend and I were both A students that made the varsity swimming team. I don't have data, but I would assume that many Ivy League applicants are straight A students with a varsity sport, so recommendations and personal projects (and luck) are actually very important for admission to very selective colleges. You also noted a difference in financial aid, but note that Harvard, Yale and Columbia all state that their financial aid is based only on need, not on merit.

IvyAdmisions 8y ago

I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college. I promise you your application was viewed as "well, here's another really smart asian kid who's otherwise unremarkable from the other 1000 we'll see". Meanwhile, hers was treated like precious gold.

sizzle 8y ago
So what's the solution to the problem of not enough seats for x ethnicity when filtering out academic performance metrics?
- IvyAdmisions 8y ago
  Lawsuits like this, I'd imagine. Also, waaaaaay more asians need to be running for Congress. It's getting better but they're still underrepresented slightly (4.8% of reps are asian while 5.6% of americans are).
  - bedhead 8y ago
    Asians evidently are too smart to want to get involved in politics. Gotta respect that. (not joking)
    - siosonel 8y ago
      This reply demonstrates the problem that an admission process is trying to address. The reply makes it seem like Ivy league admission is like a game to master for some students. Whereas graduates of top schools like Harvard are generally expected to become leaders who care about bigger issues, to have been informed by historical patterns and long term trends. These future leaders must know how to emphatize and care about much more than just getting ahead. (I'm an Asian, btw, if that helps inform the reader of where I'm coming from.)
      - bedhead 8y ago
        It was a comment about the quality of people that go into politics, nothing more. There is little incentive for smart, ambitious people to enter anymore.