4 ms·

Can we just call a spade a spade? "Terrible personality" is a euphemism designed to give plausible deniability for admission decisions. The metric itself is fu

Can we just call a spade a spade? "Terrible personality" is a euphemism designed to give plausible deniability for admission decisions. The metric itself is fungible and subjective enough that they could ascribe any number they please to any individual. There was a systemic effort decades ago to reduce the Jewish admission rate, and now there's a systemic effort to reduce the Asian admission rate. History may not repeat but it certainly does rhyme

busterarm 8y ago
The Asian admission rate reduction at Harvard has been going on for almost 20 years now. At least since I was in high school. I had an asian friend who didn't get into Harvard because they had admitted his older brother two years before _and they told him this in his rejection letter_... Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up 25% of their admissions. They don't collect statistics on white, those who choose not to identify or other. Kind of hard to argue a bias. It seems like if anything the school is actively trying to be less homogenous, not more. https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics
- ggg9990 8y ago
  Rejection letters are generic. Your story is quite dubious, can you post a scan of the letter?
  - busterarm 8y ago
    I'm going to post a scan of someone else's letter from 20 years ago? That's a realistic ask?
    - ggg9990 8y ago
      More realistic than the notion that Harvard wrote the reason for a rejection in any of the tens of thousands of rejection letters they send every year. Sounds very much like a “friend of a friend” story.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> History may not repeat but it certainly does rhyme “'When two-thirds or three-quarters of the C.E.O.s in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . ' Bannon said, trailing off. 'A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society'" [1]. [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/steve-bannon-racist-comments-silicon-valley-inaccurate https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/steve-bannon-racist-...
SilasX 8y ago
It's academia's equivalent of tech's "not a culture fit".

busterarm 8y ago

The Asian admission rate reduction at Harvard has been going on for almost 20 years now. At least since I was in high school. I had an asian friend who didn't get into Harvard because they had admitted his older brother two years before _and they told him this in his rejection letter_... Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up 25% of their admissions. They don't collect statistics on white, those who choose not to identify or other. Kind of hard to argue a bias. It seems like if anything the school is actively trying to be less homogenous, not more. https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

ggg9990 8y ago
Rejection letters are generic. Your story is quite dubious, can you post a scan of the letter?
- busterarm 8y ago
  I'm going to post a scan of someone else's letter from 20 years ago? That's a realistic ask?
  - ggg9990 8y ago
    More realistic than the notion that Harvard wrote the reason for a rejection in any of the tens of thousands of rejection letters they send every year. Sounds very much like a “friend of a friend” story.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> History may not repeat but it certainly does rhyme “'When two-thirds or three-quarters of the C.E.O.s in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . ' Bannon said, trailing off. 'A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society'" [1]. [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/steve-bannon-racist-comments-silicon-valley-inaccurate https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/steve-bannon-racist-...

SilasX 8y ago

It's academia's equivalent of tech's "not a culture fit".