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Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

104 points by skolos 8y ago

mrep 8y ago
Somewhat clickbait. They overview the different criteria but don't go into how each factor contributes to the overall score and thus the admission process so you don't really learn much how the overall admission process is decided.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > They overview the different criteria but don't go into how each factor contributes to the overall score Applicants are graded 1 - 6, so an applicant getting 'tipped' doesn't necessarily bump their score. The way I've seen it work elsewhere is just that applicants who are flagged get their entire applications reviewed, so that way someone actually reads the essays instead of just tossing it after spending 30 seconds looking at the grades and SATs. Also each department is going to have its own quota, so that way the orchestra gets 10 people and the rowing team gets 10 people and the development office gets 10 people and so on. So you're really only competing with other applicants within your bucket, unless you're not in a bucket in which case it's really just lottery odds at that point.
  - mrep 8y ago
    The 1-6 grading I haven't read before this article but since there is no information on how that contributes to the overall application outside of 1 (strong admit) and 6 (strong deny), it doesn't really tell us much. Also, they never mentioned "quotas", just that they try to "looks at factors like parental occupation, which Mr. Fitzsimmons said offer clues about financial hardship, and intended major, to avoid having too many students with the same educational interests".
    - Alex3917 8y ago
      > they never mentioned "quotas" There isn't a quota in the sense that there is a permanent fixed number, it's all just politics. So you've got situations like someone who donated $100 million to the school had the kid they wrote a recommendation for rejected last year, and now they're pissed so the development office wants to make sure whoever they recommend this year gets in. But then the rowing coach is considering going to another school where they're promised 12 recruits instead of 8, so now you have the AD and the head of development both lobbying the head of admissions to get more slots for their department. And exactly how many each actually gets each year is going to depend partly on how the admissions process is structured, but also on the facts of the situation, who owes who favors, where different people are in their careers and how much they've been contributing to the overall mission and prestige of the university, etc. As well as what the admitted class looks like so far, which can be vastly different a few days or even hours apart.
cpr 8y ago
The "secret" (at least for me back in 1972 ;-) was to be in a far-flung location (San Diego for me) where there's slim pickin's. ;-) Seriously, I'm sure the decision process has quantitative elements, but it's got to still be 70% intuition. And the "legacy" applicants most definitely get a big bump.
- blazespin 8y ago
  Yeah, I think the legacy crap is the real crime.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
djflutt3rshy 8y ago
Why on God's green earth are we evaluating candidates to a major university based on how well they're "grappling with [their] sexual identity"?
- munchbunny 8y ago
  I think you're coming at this from the wrong perspective. The fact that someone is grappling with their sexual identity isn't by itself a qualification. On the other hand, if in the essays or interviews you get the feeling that this candidate has matured beyond his/her peers as a result of it, or if this candidate demonstrates resilience dealing with growing up this way in an extremely conservative culture, then you'd probably consider betting on this person's upward trajectory. The context is important, and I don't think the NYT article captures it.
  - dev_dull 8y ago
    At that point why specifically call out sexuality? Why not just say “candidates whom have matured behind their peers because of difficult life experiences”?
    - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
      Because that was specifically what the student was dealing with. If the student was dealing with the stress of a laid-off parent, or a serious disease, or a sibling with a drug problem, I wouldn't be surprised if those details were mentioned, and not just vague language about "difficult life experiences."
    - PacifyFish 8y ago
      For specificity's sake.
- whymauri 8y ago
  It's called holistic for a reason. Overcoming hardships and excelling despite social pressures is probably one of many good markers of potential.
sen_mendoza 8y ago
So in addition to having solid academic credentials, the ideal student would be from a rural place, a star athlete, potential humanities major (Philosophy, History, English), have parents with working-class jobs (chef, homemaker, construction worker), interesting or familial extracurriculars (film making, baby sitting), maybe an immigrant, maybe a racial minority, maybe not straight, but most importantly has great interview skills and personal recommendations emphasizing how outgoing, clever or mature you are. Or your parents are super rich and can donate money for a new building or donate their entire art collection.
throwaway333444 8y ago
> Harvard has testified that race, when considered in admissions, can only help, not hurt, a student’s chances of getting in. So if your race matches their preference they improve your odds of admittance. Since the number of admissions is fixed this reduces the odds of those who have a race that doesn’t match their preference. IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty. I don't like what they seem to be doing, but Harvard is a private university - they should be able to recruit who they want to based on their own criteria. Of course, it's not a binary thing: universities in the US receive lots of subsidies from local states, so there is a certain expectation of fairness. Maybe the right thing to do would be to completely cut subsidies if they decide to have a non-public selection process.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - curious_fella2 8y ago
    "I don't like what they seem to be doing, but Harvard is a private university - they should be able to recruit who they want to based on their own criteria" How is this argument different than supporting a private restaurant not serving e.g. Chinese people since they "are a private company that should be able to serve whom they want based on their own criteria?"
    - dnautics 8y ago
      It's not. And as a person of color, I'll tell you that laws preventing discrimination offered me and my family zero protections (specifically with respect to restaurants) in the post CRA-III era.
      - k_sh 8y ago
lazyant 8y ago
If it was up to me, for university admissions there would be a public clear and objective scoring system, based for example only on grades and then use a lottery system weighted inversely by income. No more essays and subjective values, silly extracurriculars or race involved (it's already somehow accounted for in the income).
- roymurdock 8y ago
  That's why it's not up to you and Harvard has a $40B endowment ;) But more seriously, grades do not correlate across schools in the slightest. The rigor of a public school in rural Kansas vs. a private school in NY could be wildly different. AP scores and SATs correlate well (same test for everyone that takes it), but normal grades do not And good grades are already a prerequisite for admission, you generally need to averaging an A- average GPA to be competitive. schools want to see that you can balance a ton of things on your plate well (or your parents can afford to send you to classes/camps) rather than just optimize for a 5.0 GPA
  - mj_olnir 8y ago
    AP scores might, but class rank is a far better correlator than SAT scores [1]. Although I couldn't find any research on it for overall collegiate performance, the only research i could find in a short Google Scholar search found slight correlations between SAT performance and freshman year performance (but not overall). [1] http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~norman/SAT.pdf http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~norman/SAT.pdf
  - thrwawy12 8y ago
    > The rigor of a public school in rural Kansas vs. a private school in NY could be wildly different. AP scores and SATs correlate well (same test for everyone that takes it), but normal grades do not. That assumes students in rural Kansas have the same AP & SAT preparation as students in the elite NY private schools. The income disaparity between the two schools is probably quite noticable with one having more access to elite college prep than the other. By focusing purely on SAT scores and ignoring economic advantages you are discriminating against those from poor places without access to college prep. It's easy to be blind to that when you fall into the "elite NY private school" camp and have no idea how bad educational resources are in rural Kansas. It is a process of the elite admitting the elite and excluding the poor. You can tout how "fair" SAT scores are and how they equalize talent while conveniently ignoring you are just using it as a filter to keep out poor folks. The elite private NY school may send dozens of kids to HYP every year. The rural Kansas school may never send anyone to elite college in its entire existence. And it would be questionable if that rural Kansas school never had at least one student that would have excelled at an ivy (if given the same opportunities as students in the elite NY private school). Take the kids from the elite NY private school, strip them of their high parential income, put them into the rural Kansas school and take the kids in the rural Kansas school and put them into the elite NY private school with high parential income. Now see how many from each get admitted where.There are students at Harvard that have parential income of over $500,000. It wouldn't be unusual to find not one kid with the same parential income in the rural Kansas school.
frozenport 8y ago
Does this article defend Harvard?
imranq 8y ago
Why should anyone care what Harvard does? Isn’t it a private university, and shouldn’t they be able to choose who they want? The whole thing strikes me as presumptuous and entitled.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Because employers love credentialism and can discriminate based on college. Your ability to break into the highest levels of many fields depends on that Harvard degree vs a public or 2nd tier private school.
  - imranq 8y ago
    What’s stopping you from making a groundbreaking company of your own and becoming an employer yourself? Employers can hire who they want and if Harvard’s selection of candidates does not meet their standards, you can be sure that employers are going to stop hiring from Harvard.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      Nothing. I can’t afford Ivy League people, 90% of the people we fire are from public colleges.
- nilkn 8y ago
  So if they just decided not to admit a certain race of students entirely, that’d be okay because they’re a private institution?
- throwawayfri10 8y ago
  A private university that receives $600 million a year in federal funds.
  - imranq 8y ago
    This is a good counterpoint, but they could probably survive without it. I don’t agree with discrimination and don’t think it’s right, but I do feel like Harvard should do what it wants if it didn’t take a single dollar of public funds.
blazespin 8y ago
A really great admissions primer - Sierra Burgess is a loser. You really have to stand out. Be bigger than life, grades and sat are not enough. Be a positive force but mature and mindful. If you can be super smart and this at 18, the world is your oyster.
zone411 8y ago
There is some more information in this document: https://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-415-2-Arcidiacono-Rebuttal-Report.pdf https://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... One interesting thing I saw in there was the huge advantage that the legacy applicants and the kids of the staff get https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1053290170315927552 https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1053290170315927552. The exact racial advantages/disadvantages are also calculated - they are large (Table 5.1N but it doesn't include Asian applicants).
- mturmon 8y ago
  I have heard anecdotally that legacies get a huge bump, and this seems to quantify it. Like 6x. It’s not like they aren’t already considering a lot of factors besides some kind of test metric.
mothers 8y ago
To those who have a problem with Harvard's alleged discrimination. Do you think female-only schools should exist? In addition, would you agree with an admission policy that only uses SAT and AP scores? Grades inherently are subjective and can unfairly be given on the basis of race on the K-12 level, so that's helpful. Harvard should just model China and make the SAT the only criterion. If there are too many people with a perfect school, use randomization accordingly. Of course, the typical Harvard admit won't like this since it'll mean their private school boost won't mean anything, nor will the fact that they come from a feeder school.
- dev_dull 8y ago
  Goodhart's Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” SATs will quickly become one of the poorest indicators for success.
  - dorchadas 8y ago
    ACT should already be like that. I looked at the last one they sold, and, at least for math, you can easily game your way up to a 22ish on it. Which, granted, isn't needed for higher levels, but that's above what some states set as their benchmark, so... I'm sure the other sections are the same, though I didn't look at those. But, really, any math exam with multiple choice answers can be gamed, at least to an extent. And then people will start teaching how to game it (especially if funding comes from them, which some does in the state I teach in)
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    Not sure that holds up under all cases. Grades, as an example, are both measures and targets.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Except that SATs measure something real (intelligence), so unless outright cheating and bribery are taking place, it will continue to be a good measure.
    - 8y ago
NovaX 8y ago
The root of this is the Harvard Jew Crisis of the early 1900s, which redesigned the admissions process away from merit. This is the basis of the modern practice at the Ivy Leagues. It was not done secretly, publicized by the university's President in speeches, and had little backlash. It is in fact a result of Asian Americans having many similarities to Jews that they are being discriminated against, but they were not the original target. It will be interesting to see if they were ever explicitly targeted, but so far it appears to be collateral damage as times changed but the process's foundation has not.
- divbzero 8y ago
  As NovaX describes, “holistic” admissions had very ugly roots. It was specifically instituted as a way to limit Jewish admissions. Oddly enough, Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell justified the policy as a way to avoid antisemitism, reasoning that too many admitted Jews could provoke antisemitic sentiment. This was the same President Lowell who tried but failed to impose segregation on students. (“We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man; but we do not owe it to him to force him and the white into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial.”) [1] Still, as Judge Burroughs has pointed out, the ugly origins aren’t necessarily relevant to the current impact. [2] It will be interesting to see how well Harvard’s “diverse student body” argument holds up to scrutiny. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell [2]: https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/09/harvard-discrimination-jews-227842 https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/09/harva...
spangry 8y ago
I thought the ACLU had a rather interesting take on this issue: "Make no mistake: A lawsuit against Harvard that's purported to represent the interests of Asian-Americans would, if successful, primarily benefit white students. #DefendDiversity" https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1051626960537808898 https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1051626960537808898
- int_19h 8y ago
  The question is not who the lawsuit will benefit, though. The question is what the law says right now, and whether Harvard is trying to concoct a scheme that violates that law in practice while pretending to be compliant. Whether the law is a good idea or a bad idea as written is another question, and is up to the legislature to debate that and amend the law as needed. But courts shouldn't be in the business of rewriting laws because they had some consequences that their authors didn't intend (although in this case I suspect that the original authors actually did very much intend for this sort of thing to be illegal also, since the laws were written back in the era where being color-blind was not considered bad).
- JPKab 8y ago
  The ACLU has been corrupted by money. They have become a mirror of Democratic party talking points. They used to defend Nazis to make a point of dedication to free speech. Now they openly abandon due process if the accused is a white guy (Kavanaugh) and have recently decided to never protect a Nazi, saying some speech shouldn't be protected. Very sad to see.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- verylongname 8y ago
  Quite aside from the question of whether or not its okay to discriminate as long as it is principally whites who are harmed, I find this statement from the ACLU to be bizarre. I think it is fairly obviously wrong. Moreover, the plaintiffs commissioned a study on the effect color blind admissions would have on the racial distribution of Harvard's undergraduate population. It should be taken with a grain of salt, as should the materials offered by the defense, and I suspect it overestimates the effect a bit, but it conforms fairly closely with anecdotal evidence I've seen and so sounds much more plausible to me than the ACLU's take. It claims the share of black students would shrink from ~15% to ~0.9% and the share of hispanic students from ~15% to ~3%. Meanwhile, the share of white students would shrink slightly from ~37% to ~35%. The proportion of Asian students would roughly double, from ~25% to ~50%. Again, the specific numbers might be a bit off, but it generally agrees with a lot of anecdotal evidence I've seen --- being black or Hispanic gives one a large advantage, being white is close to neutral, and being Asian is a large disadvantage.
dev_dull 8y ago
The answer to this is so simple: rather than trying to optimize algorithms for admission, we need to decrease the demand for admissions to these schools. 1. Increase the supply. More seats. More schools. More teachers. More locations. 2. Decrease the demand. Better alternatives. Vocational schools. On the job training. Not using degree a job criteria.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  As a teacher, I agree with all the things you say in number 2. Full-heartedly. But can't really bring myself to agree with Number 1. Quality will just keep going down, and I know several schools that stay afloat right now only because of BS online programs (half supported by the state)... 2 really needs to be the answer, not 1.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  The point of exclusive clubs like top schools is to be exclusive. If they’re not exclusive, then they don’t confer the benefits of distinction. That’s all elite universities are, for the most part. You can learn whatever you want from books; going to a top school doesn’t bestow greater knowledge on you.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
qubax 8y ago
On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. On the other hand, harvard and the left are obsessed with race. So is harvard and the left racist? Aren't they supposed to be colorblind and not focused on a person's immutable characteristic? By giving certain racial group an unfair advantage, aren't they condescendingnly assuming these racials groups are inferior. Doesn't that make them patronizing racists? If we are all humans and equal, why does race matter? Who cares if the humans attending harvard are all white or all asian or all black? We are humans right? From where I stand, harvard's admissions policy seems like blatant condescending and patronizing racism.
- munchbunny 8y ago
  On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. That's a MASSIVE straw man. Harvard won't argue that, and nobody who studies race and equality issues will argue that. I'm assuming that you are looking for actual discourse on the topic. The issue of color-blindness vs. race consciousness is pretty well-trodden territory in the context of studying racism. If you google those words, you'll find plenty of literature about it. I just tried it and there are several good discussions of the topic in the first couple pages. The short version is that colorblindness doesn't address the "rich get richer" effect, so if you want to close the gap, you're going to have to look at ways to create catch-up mechanisms. If we are all humans and equal, why does race matter? Who cares if the humans attending harvard are all white or all asian or all black? We are humans right? You're assuming that the default behavior is fair. That's fundamentally not true. If you're looking for the actual argument made by Harvard and "the left," then this is it: the default is unfair, and the goal is to make it fair.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    How is “the rich get richer” a racial issue?
gwbas1c 8y ago
What is diversity? In a place so highly desirable, does that mean that discrimination is needed to preserve diversity?
xor_ax_ax 8y ago
Does it still include a photograph? When I was a kid, my parents avoided such private schools and similar institutions because of the dog-whistle of anti-Semitism and other genetic pedigree bias it likely signals.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
one thing that always puzzles me about this topic is that even though everyone knows Harvard's admissions process is unfair/phony/rigged many people still want desperately to be accepted there in order to send the right signal so what signal could possibly be getting sent if we already know the game is unfair/phony/rigged?
jeffdavis 8y ago
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
notyouravgdoge 8y ago
It's my understanding that California's Proposition 209 [1] prohibits public universities from considering race in their admissions process. I'm curious if those who attended public universities in California felt that their education was less "holistic" in any way due to Prop 209. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209
jungletime 8y ago
Pretty sure this is at expense of poor whites, who are under represented under such admission criteria. Since "whites at the bottom 10% of family income distribution, do about as well as blacks at the top 10% of family income on SAT scores". This video purports to break down the stats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXjAaxpI2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXjAaxpI2I

104 points by skolos 8y ago

mrep 8y ago

Somewhat clickbait. They overview the different criteria but don't go into how each factor contributes to the overall score and thus the admission process so you don't really learn much how the overall admission process is decided.

Alex3917 8y ago
> They overview the different criteria but don't go into how each factor contributes to the overall score Applicants are graded 1 - 6, so an applicant getting 'tipped' doesn't necessarily bump their score. The way I've seen it work elsewhere is just that applicants who are flagged get their entire applications reviewed, so that way someone actually reads the essays instead of just tossing it after spending 30 seconds looking at the grades and SATs. Also each department is going to have its own quota, so that way the orchestra gets 10 people and the rowing team gets 10 people and the development office gets 10 people and so on. So you're really only competing with other applicants within your bucket, unless you're not in a bucket in which case it's really just lottery odds at that point.
- mrep 8y ago
  The 1-6 grading I haven't read before this article but since there is no information on how that contributes to the overall application outside of 1 (strong admit) and 6 (strong deny), it doesn't really tell us much. Also, they never mentioned "quotas", just that they try to "looks at factors like parental occupation, which Mr. Fitzsimmons said offer clues about financial hardship, and intended major, to avoid having too many students with the same educational interests".
  - Alex3917 8y ago
    > they never mentioned "quotas" There isn't a quota in the sense that there is a permanent fixed number, it's all just politics. So you've got situations like someone who donated $100 million to the school had the kid they wrote a recommendation for rejected last year, and now they're pissed so the development office wants to make sure whoever they recommend this year gets in. But then the rowing coach is considering going to another school where they're promised 12 recruits instead of 8, so now you have the AD and the head of development both lobbying the head of admissions to get more slots for their department. And exactly how many each actually gets each year is going to depend partly on how the admissions process is structured, but also on the facts of the situation, who owes who favors, where different people are in their careers and how much they've been contributing to the overall mission and prestige of the university, etc. As well as what the admitted class looks like so far, which can be vastly different a few days or even hours apart.

cpr 8y ago

The "secret" (at least for me back in 1972 ;-) was to be in a far-flung location (San Diego for me) where there's slim pickin's. ;-) Seriously, I'm sure the decision process has quantitative elements, but it's got to still be 70% intuition. And the "legacy" applicants most definitely get a big bump.

blazespin 8y ago
Yeah, I think the legacy crap is the real crime.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

djflutt3rshy 8y ago

Why on God's green earth are we evaluating candidates to a major university based on how well they're "grappling with [their] sexual identity"?

munchbunny 8y ago
I think you're coming at this from the wrong perspective. The fact that someone is grappling with their sexual identity isn't by itself a qualification. On the other hand, if in the essays or interviews you get the feeling that this candidate has matured beyond his/her peers as a result of it, or if this candidate demonstrates resilience dealing with growing up this way in an extremely conservative culture, then you'd probably consider betting on this person's upward trajectory. The context is important, and I don't think the NYT article captures it.
- dev_dull 8y ago
  At that point why specifically call out sexuality? Why not just say “candidates whom have matured behind their peers because of difficult life experiences”?
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    Because that was specifically what the student was dealing with. If the student was dealing with the stress of a laid-off parent, or a serious disease, or a sibling with a drug problem, I wouldn't be surprised if those details were mentioned, and not just vague language about "difficult life experiences."
  - PacifyFish 8y ago
    For specificity's sake.
whymauri 8y ago
It's called holistic for a reason. Overcoming hardships and excelling despite social pressures is probably one of many good markers of potential.

sen_mendoza 8y ago

So in addition to having solid academic credentials, the ideal student would be from a rural place, a star athlete, potential humanities major (Philosophy, History, English), have parents with working-class jobs (chef, homemaker, construction worker), interesting or familial extracurriculars (film making, baby sitting), maybe an immigrant, maybe a racial minority, maybe not straight, but most importantly has great interview skills and personal recommendations emphasizing how outgoing, clever or mature you are. Or your parents are super rich and can donate money for a new building or donate their entire art collection.

throwaway333444 8y ago

> Harvard has testified that race, when considered in admissions, can only help, not hurt, a student’s chances of getting in. So if your race matches their preference they improve your odds of admittance. Since the number of admissions is fixed this reduces the odds of those who have a race that doesn’t match their preference. IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty.

ekianjo 8y ago
> IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty. I don't like what they seem to be doing, but Harvard is a private university - they should be able to recruit who they want to based on their own criteria. Of course, it's not a binary thing: universities in the US receive lots of subsidies from local states, so there is a certain expectation of fairness. Maybe the right thing to do would be to completely cut subsidies if they decide to have a non-public selection process.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- curious_fella2 8y ago
  "I don't like what they seem to be doing, but Harvard is a private university - they should be able to recruit who they want to based on their own criteria" How is this argument different than supporting a private restaurant not serving e.g. Chinese people since they "are a private company that should be able to serve whom they want based on their own criteria?"
  - dnautics 8y ago
    It's not. And as a person of color, I'll tell you that laws preventing discrimination offered me and my family zero protections (specifically with respect to restaurants) in the post CRA-III era.
    - k_sh 8y ago

lazyant 8y ago

If it was up to me, for university admissions there would be a public clear and objective scoring system, based for example only on grades and then use a lottery system weighted inversely by income. No more essays and subjective values, silly extracurriculars or race involved (it's already somehow accounted for in the income).

roymurdock 8y ago
That's why it's not up to you and Harvard has a $40B endowment ;) But more seriously, grades do not correlate across schools in the slightest. The rigor of a public school in rural Kansas vs. a private school in NY could be wildly different. AP scores and SATs correlate well (same test for everyone that takes it), but normal grades do not And good grades are already a prerequisite for admission, you generally need to averaging an A- average GPA to be competitive. schools want to see that you can balance a ton of things on your plate well (or your parents can afford to send you to classes/camps) rather than just optimize for a 5.0 GPA
- mj_olnir 8y ago
  AP scores might, but class rank is a far better correlator than SAT scores [1]. Although I couldn't find any research on it for overall collegiate performance, the only research i could find in a short Google Scholar search found slight correlations between SAT performance and freshman year performance (but not overall). [1] http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~norman/SAT.pdf http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~norman/SAT.pdf
- thrwawy12 8y ago
  > The rigor of a public school in rural Kansas vs. a private school in NY could be wildly different. AP scores and SATs correlate well (same test for everyone that takes it), but normal grades do not. That assumes students in rural Kansas have the same AP & SAT preparation as students in the elite NY private schools. The income disaparity between the two schools is probably quite noticable with one having more access to elite college prep than the other. By focusing purely on SAT scores and ignoring economic advantages you are discriminating against those from poor places without access to college prep. It's easy to be blind to that when you fall into the "elite NY private school" camp and have no idea how bad educational resources are in rural Kansas. It is a process of the elite admitting the elite and excluding the poor. You can tout how "fair" SAT scores are and how they equalize talent while conveniently ignoring you are just using it as a filter to keep out poor folks. The elite private NY school may send dozens of kids to HYP every year. The rural Kansas school may never send anyone to elite college in its entire existence. And it would be questionable if that rural Kansas school never had at least one student that would have excelled at an ivy (if given the same opportunities as students in the elite NY private school). Take the kids from the elite NY private school, strip them of their high parential income, put them into the rural Kansas school and take the kids in the rural Kansas school and put them into the elite NY private school with high parential income. Now see how many from each get admitted where.There are students at Harvard that have parential income of over $500,000. It wouldn't be unusual to find not one kid with the same parential income in the rural Kansas school.

frozenport 8y ago

Does this article defend Harvard?

imranq 8y ago

Why should anyone care what Harvard does? Isn’t it a private university, and shouldn’t they be able to choose who they want? The whole thing strikes me as presumptuous and entitled.

Spooky23 8y ago
Because employers love credentialism and can discriminate based on college. Your ability to break into the highest levels of many fields depends on that Harvard degree vs a public or 2nd tier private school.
- imranq 8y ago
  What’s stopping you from making a groundbreaking company of your own and becoming an employer yourself? Employers can hire who they want and if Harvard’s selection of candidates does not meet their standards, you can be sure that employers are going to stop hiring from Harvard.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Nothing. I can’t afford Ivy League people, 90% of the people we fire are from public colleges.
nilkn 8y ago
So if they just decided not to admit a certain race of students entirely, that’d be okay because they’re a private institution?
throwawayfri10 8y ago
A private university that receives $600 million a year in federal funds.
- imranq 8y ago
  This is a good counterpoint, but they could probably survive without it. I don’t agree with discrimination and don’t think it’s right, but I do feel like Harvard should do what it wants if it didn’t take a single dollar of public funds.

blazespin 8y ago

A really great admissions primer - Sierra Burgess is a loser. You really have to stand out. Be bigger than life, grades and sat are not enough. Be a positive force but mature and mindful. If you can be super smart and this at 18, the world is your oyster.

zone411 8y ago

There is some more information in this document: https://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-415-2-Arcidiacono-Rebuttal-Report.pdf https://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... One interesting thing I saw in there was the huge advantage that the legacy applicants and the kids of the staff get https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1053290170315927552 https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1053290170315927552. The exact racial advantages/disadvantages are also calculated - they are large (Table 5.1N but it doesn't include Asian applicants).

mturmon 8y ago
I have heard anecdotally that legacies get a huge bump, and this seems to quantify it. Like 6x. It’s not like they aren’t already considering a lot of factors besides some kind of test metric.

mothers 8y ago

To those who have a problem with Harvard's alleged discrimination. Do you think female-only schools should exist? In addition, would you agree with an admission policy that only uses SAT and AP scores? Grades inherently are subjective and can unfairly be given on the basis of race on the K-12 level, so that's helpful. Harvard should just model China and make the SAT the only criterion. If there are too many people with a perfect school, use randomization accordingly. Of course, the typical Harvard admit won't like this since it'll mean their private school boost won't mean anything, nor will the fact that they come from a feeder school.

dev_dull 8y ago
Goodhart's Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” SATs will quickly become one of the poorest indicators for success.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  ACT should already be like that. I looked at the last one they sold, and, at least for math, you can easily game your way up to a 22ish on it. Which, granted, isn't needed for higher levels, but that's above what some states set as their benchmark, so... I'm sure the other sections are the same, though I didn't look at those. But, really, any math exam with multiple choice answers can be gamed, at least to an extent. And then people will start teaching how to game it (especially if funding comes from them, which some does in the state I teach in)
- chrisco255 8y ago
  Not sure that holds up under all cases. Grades, as an example, are both measures and targets.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Except that SATs measure something real (intelligence), so unless outright cheating and bribery are taking place, it will continue to be a good measure.
  - 8y ago

NovaX 8y ago

The root of this is the Harvard Jew Crisis of the early 1900s, which redesigned the admissions process away from merit. This is the basis of the modern practice at the Ivy Leagues. It was not done secretly, publicized by the university's President in speeches, and had little backlash. It is in fact a result of Asian Americans having many similarities to Jews that they are being discriminated against, but they were not the original target. It will be interesting to see if they were ever explicitly targeted, but so far it appears to be collateral damage as times changed but the process's foundation has not.

divbzero 8y ago
As NovaX describes, “holistic” admissions had very ugly roots. It was specifically instituted as a way to limit Jewish admissions. Oddly enough, Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell justified the policy as a way to avoid antisemitism, reasoning that too many admitted Jews could provoke antisemitic sentiment. This was the same President Lowell who tried but failed to impose segregation on students. (“We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man; but we do not owe it to him to force him and the white into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial.”) [1] Still, as Judge Burroughs has pointed out, the ugly origins aren’t necessarily relevant to the current impact. [2] It will be interesting to see how well Harvard’s “diverse student body” argument holds up to scrutiny. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell [2]: https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/09/harvard-discrimination-jews-227842 https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/09/harva...

spangry 8y ago

I thought the ACLU had a rather interesting take on this issue: "Make no mistake: A lawsuit against Harvard that's purported to represent the interests of Asian-Americans would, if successful, primarily benefit white students. #DefendDiversity" https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1051626960537808898 https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1051626960537808898

int_19h 8y ago
The question is not who the lawsuit will benefit, though. The question is what the law says right now, and whether Harvard is trying to concoct a scheme that violates that law in practice while pretending to be compliant. Whether the law is a good idea or a bad idea as written is another question, and is up to the legislature to debate that and amend the law as needed. But courts shouldn't be in the business of rewriting laws because they had some consequences that their authors didn't intend (although in this case I suspect that the original authors actually did very much intend for this sort of thing to be illegal also, since the laws were written back in the era where being color-blind was not considered bad).
JPKab 8y ago
The ACLU has been corrupted by money. They have become a mirror of Democratic party talking points. They used to defend Nazis to make a point of dedication to free speech. Now they openly abandon due process if the accused is a white guy (Kavanaugh) and have recently decided to never protect a Nazi, saying some speech shouldn't be protected. Very sad to see.
deleted 8y ago
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verylongname 8y ago
Quite aside from the question of whether or not its okay to discriminate as long as it is principally whites who are harmed, I find this statement from the ACLU to be bizarre. I think it is fairly obviously wrong. Moreover, the plaintiffs commissioned a study on the effect color blind admissions would have on the racial distribution of Harvard's undergraduate population. It should be taken with a grain of salt, as should the materials offered by the defense, and I suspect it overestimates the effect a bit, but it conforms fairly closely with anecdotal evidence I've seen and so sounds much more plausible to me than the ACLU's take. It claims the share of black students would shrink from ~15% to ~0.9% and the share of hispanic students from ~15% to ~3%. Meanwhile, the share of white students would shrink slightly from ~37% to ~35%. The proportion of Asian students would roughly double, from ~25% to ~50%. Again, the specific numbers might be a bit off, but it generally agrees with a lot of anecdotal evidence I've seen --- being black or Hispanic gives one a large advantage, being white is close to neutral, and being Asian is a large disadvantage.

dev_dull 8y ago

The answer to this is so simple: rather than trying to optimize algorithms for admission, we need to decrease the demand for admissions to these schools. 1. Increase the supply. More seats. More schools. More teachers. More locations. 2. Decrease the demand. Better alternatives. Vocational schools. On the job training. Not using degree a job criteria.

dorchadas 8y ago
As a teacher, I agree with all the things you say in number 2. Full-heartedly. But can't really bring myself to agree with Number 1. Quality will just keep going down, and I know several schools that stay afloat right now only because of BS online programs (half supported by the state)... 2 really needs to be the answer, not 1.
toasterlovin 8y ago
The point of exclusive clubs like top schools is to be exclusive. If they’re not exclusive, then they don’t confer the benefits of distinction. That’s all elite universities are, for the most part. You can learn whatever you want from books; going to a top school doesn’t bestow greater knowledge on you.

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qubax 8y ago

On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. On the other hand, harvard and the left are obsessed with race. So is harvard and the left racist? Aren't they supposed to be colorblind and not focused on a person's immutable characteristic? By giving certain racial group an unfair advantage, aren't they condescendingnly assuming these racials groups are inferior. Doesn't that make them patronizing racists? If we are all humans and equal, why does race matter? Who cares if the humans attending harvard are all white or all asian or all black? We are humans right? From where I stand, harvard's admissions policy seems like blatant condescending and patronizing racism.

munchbunny 8y ago
On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. That's a MASSIVE straw man. Harvard won't argue that, and nobody who studies race and equality issues will argue that. I'm assuming that you are looking for actual discourse on the topic. The issue of color-blindness vs. race consciousness is pretty well-trodden territory in the context of studying racism. If you google those words, you'll find plenty of literature about it. I just tried it and there are several good discussions of the topic in the first couple pages. The short version is that colorblindness doesn't address the "rich get richer" effect, so if you want to close the gap, you're going to have to look at ways to create catch-up mechanisms. If we are all humans and equal, why does race matter? Who cares if the humans attending harvard are all white or all asian or all black? We are humans right? You're assuming that the default behavior is fair. That's fundamentally not true. If you're looking for the actual argument made by Harvard and "the left," then this is it: the default is unfair, and the goal is to make it fair.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  How is “the rich get richer” a racial issue?

gwbas1c 8y ago

What is diversity? In a place so highly desirable, does that mean that discrimination is needed to preserve diversity?

xor_ax_ax 8y ago

Does it still include a photograph? When I was a kid, my parents avoided such private schools and similar institutions because of the dog-whistle of anti-Semitism and other genetic pedigree bias it likely signals.

HillaryBriss 8y ago

one thing that always puzzles me about this topic is that even though everyone knows Harvard's admissions process is unfair/phony/rigged many people still want desperately to be accepted there in order to send the right signal so what signal could possibly be getting sent if we already know the game is unfair/phony/rigged?

jeffdavis 8y ago

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

notyouravgdoge 8y ago

It's my understanding that California's Proposition 209 [1] prohibits public universities from considering race in their admissions process. I'm curious if those who attended public universities in California felt that their education was less "holistic" in any way due to Prop 209. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209

jungletime 8y ago

Pretty sure this is at expense of poor whites, who are under represented under such admission criteria. Since "whites at the bottom 10% of family income distribution, do about as well as blacks at the top 10% of family income on SAT scores". This video purports to break down the stats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXjAaxpI2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXjAaxpI2I