4 ms·

>This makes sense: Harvard has a huge issue with discrimination against Asian Americans, who are not represented according to their ACT/SAT score distribution.

>This makes sense: Harvard has a huge issue with discrimination against Asian Americans, who are not represented according to their ACT/SAT score distribution. If Harvard could waive away these scores, they can continue their admissions policy that favor students from wealthy families who pay full price, and are likely to be institutional givers after graduation by focusing on admission factors that are much less accountable, like "personality". Please. This is about affirmative action for people who aren't Asian or White. Not wealthy donors. The argument is that lack of privilege causes poor SAT scores which is preventing certain minorities from realizing their potential, and that this justifies selectively lowering the bar and allocating additional resources. But this is all based on a conflation between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity.

MagnumOpus 6y ago
> Not wealthy donors Harvard's admission rate is <6% for general population - that includes affirmative action ethnicities. Harvards admission rate is >30% for "legacies" which make up one in six of their students, and even higher for donors. These are the kids who get in while being thick as a brick. The injustice is not primarily the black kid with 1400 SAT getting in over the east Asian kid with 1580 -- the injustice is the hundreds of CEOs/senators' kids being assured admission even being dumber than a sack of hammers.
- phonon 6y ago
  25th percentile for Harvard SAT scores is 1460...so there is a limit for how many dumb as a brick legacies matriculate :-)
  - jmalicki 6y ago
    1 in 6 is only the 17th percentile, so many of them may be well under that score.
- retortio 6y ago
  I would expect legacies to have a higher admission rate. They are a subpopulation coming from homes with intelligent parents, likely grew up in intellectually stimulating environments, and were probably focused on the Ivy League before many of their peers had even heard that term. There is definitely some application boost legacies get simply by virtue of being a legacy, but their applications are probably quite strong in general. So it's unlikely that dropping the SAT was meant to cater to them.
  - evanpw 6y ago
    This should be easy to test, right? Look at the percentage of students admitted to Harvard whose parents went to Harvard vs. the percentage admitted whose parents went to some other similarly-selective school.
csharptwdec19 6y ago
No, it's about pretending they are making changes while still only allowing the same wealthy families they did before.
ericmay 6y ago
I'm not sure about this. I'm not a fan of the ACT/SAT (I've never taken them and somehow wound up with a master's degree) - but what I worry about them is that it removes one somewhat objective measure that you could point to in scoring. When you remove that, well, what do you look at? I think that's where we see students who come from well-off families have an even larger advantage because they can be captain of the sports team, the debate team, volunteer at the hospital, etc. Whereas if you are poor and smart - you work a second job to support your family, or you spend as much time not at home as possible. Good luck convincing an admissions officer that working a second job is more "valuable" in the process than doing all these other things when they want to maintain the "image" of the university. Without an ACT/SAT you'll also probably get more applicants hoping to hit the lottery from an admissions officer too. I will say that obviously wealthy parents can pay for a tutor for the ACT/SAT, but a poor kid can get a practice book for $20 and at least have a shot.
usaar333 6y ago
> The argument is that lack of privilege causes poor SAT scores which is preventing certain minorities from realizing their potential, and that this justifies selectively lowering the bar and allocating additional resources. The UC system also removed SAT recently arguing it discriminates. I haven't seen clear evidence though that the SAT discriminates more against poorer students than any other admissions factor. In fact given that richer kids go to elite colleges at higher rates than middle income, conditioned on same test score, I'm inclined to think it's being underweighted.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  The Regents argued that the tests discriminated w/o evidence. Internal UC studies that looked into how the test scores were applied to admissions determined there was no discrimination.
  - mtgp1000 6y ago
    >The Regents argued that the tests discriminated w/o evidence That's the entire diversity/inclusion in a nutshell. None of this has been scientifically verified and the basic premise is in contradiction with what we know about humans. But bringing this up anywhere where your name is visible is liable to get you cancelled.
retortio 6y ago
Exactly. First of all a distinction must be made between legacies and big donors. Legacies are often dismissed as getting in only because of their legacy status, but I'd wager that their grades, test scores and other accomplishments put them on the admissions bubble already. Dropping the SAT isn't going to help Harvard let more of them in because they're probably doing quite well to begin with. Donors' children may have more wiggle room with their grades and scores, but they're a much smaller population than legacies and the idea that Harvard is going to drop standardized testing just to marginally increase the numbers of donors' children they can let in, like some nefarious plot to marginally increase donations, is laughable and culturally tone deaf. Harvard administrators have no interest in drastically increasing the number of legacy or donor students. The admissions rates for those groups have likely been static for decades. Harvard administrators do, however, have a huge interest in increasing black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) admissions rates. This is made much more difficult by standardized testing scores. In fact much of the stated justification by the schools and other intellectuals for dropping the tests is that it discriminates against the poor and minorities, which is ironic because it is one of the factors of admission least correlated with wealth and also because many minority groups do better on the test than the overall test taking population.

MagnumOpus 6y ago

> Not wealthy donors Harvard's admission rate is <6% for general population - that includes affirmative action ethnicities. Harvards admission rate is >30% for "legacies" which make up one in six of their students, and even higher for donors. These are the kids who get in while being thick as a brick. The injustice is not primarily the black kid with 1400 SAT getting in over the east Asian kid with 1580 -- the injustice is the hundreds of CEOs/senators' kids being assured admission even being dumber than a sack of hammers.

phonon 6y ago
25th percentile for Harvard SAT scores is 1460...so there is a limit for how many dumb as a brick legacies matriculate :-)
- jmalicki 6y ago
  1 in 6 is only the 17th percentile, so many of them may be well under that score.
retortio 6y ago
I would expect legacies to have a higher admission rate. They are a subpopulation coming from homes with intelligent parents, likely grew up in intellectually stimulating environments, and were probably focused on the Ivy League before many of their peers had even heard that term. There is definitely some application boost legacies get simply by virtue of being a legacy, but their applications are probably quite strong in general. So it's unlikely that dropping the SAT was meant to cater to them.
- evanpw 6y ago
  This should be easy to test, right? Look at the percentage of students admitted to Harvard whose parents went to Harvard vs. the percentage admitted whose parents went to some other similarly-selective school.

csharptwdec19 6y ago

No, it's about pretending they are making changes while still only allowing the same wealthy families they did before.

ericmay 6y ago

I'm not sure about this. I'm not a fan of the ACT/SAT (I've never taken them and somehow wound up with a master's degree) - but what I worry about them is that it removes one somewhat objective measure that you could point to in scoring. When you remove that, well, what do you look at? I think that's where we see students who come from well-off families have an even larger advantage because they can be captain of the sports team, the debate team, volunteer at the hospital, etc. Whereas if you are poor and smart - you work a second job to support your family, or you spend as much time not at home as possible. Good luck convincing an admissions officer that working a second job is more "valuable" in the process than doing all these other things when they want to maintain the "image" of the university. Without an ACT/SAT you'll also probably get more applicants hoping to hit the lottery from an admissions officer too. I will say that obviously wealthy parents can pay for a tutor for the ACT/SAT, but a poor kid can get a practice book for $20 and at least have a shot.

usaar333 6y ago

> The argument is that lack of privilege causes poor SAT scores which is preventing certain minorities from realizing their potential, and that this justifies selectively lowering the bar and allocating additional resources. The UC system also removed SAT recently arguing it discriminates. I haven't seen clear evidence though that the SAT discriminates more against poorer students than any other admissions factor. In fact given that richer kids go to elite colleges at higher rates than middle income, conditioned on same test score, I'm inclined to think it's being underweighted.

pnw_hazor 6y ago
The Regents argued that the tests discriminated w/o evidence. Internal UC studies that looked into how the test scores were applied to admissions determined there was no discrimination.
- mtgp1000 6y ago
  >The Regents argued that the tests discriminated w/o evidence That's the entire diversity/inclusion in a nutshell. None of this has been scientifically verified and the basic premise is in contradiction with what we know about humans. But bringing this up anywhere where your name is visible is liable to get you cancelled.

retortio 6y ago

Exactly. First of all a distinction must be made between legacies and big donors. Legacies are often dismissed as getting in only because of their legacy status, but I'd wager that their grades, test scores and other accomplishments put them on the admissions bubble already. Dropping the SAT isn't going to help Harvard let more of them in because they're probably doing quite well to begin with. Donors' children may have more wiggle room with their grades and scores, but they're a much smaller population than legacies and the idea that Harvard is going to drop standardized testing just to marginally increase the numbers of donors' children they can let in, like some nefarious plot to marginally increase donations, is laughable and culturally tone deaf. Harvard administrators have no interest in drastically increasing the number of legacy or donor students. The admissions rates for those groups have likely been static for decades. Harvard administrators do, however, have a huge interest in increasing black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) admissions rates. This is made much more difficult by standardized testing scores. In fact much of the stated justification by the schools and other intellectuals for dropping the tests is that it discriminates against the poor and minorities, which is ironic because it is one of the factors of admission least correlated with wealth and also because many minority groups do better on the test than the overall test taking population.