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But how is that threshold itself determined? Seems like it's completely arbitrary and at the discretion of the institution.
by jihadjihad 8y ago
But how is that threshold itself determined? Seems like it's completely arbitrary and at the discretion of the institution.
- trowawee 8y agoIt would also probably dramatically worsen the grade inflation that's already rampant at a lot of the elite feeder high schools that pump people into the Ivies (and rampant at Harvard itself[1], fwiw). 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/20/why-grade-inflation-even-at-harvard-is-a-big-problem/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/...
- throwawaymath 8y agoGood question! I think you can come up with different models for how to define a threshold, and I'm not done reading the paper the article is based on. But implicit in any discussion of a threshold is the idea that the threshold has to be explicit. You can't realistically hold a lottery for ostensible fairness maximization without publicly defining your baseline for lottery eligibility.
- nine_k 8y agoAn institution can make a threshold high enough that a sample task from the admission exam is considered hard and selective enough. It can still have it sufficiently low that the number of applicants passing it is 10-30-100 times higher than the number of admissions, so that the lottery effect is not lost.