24 ms·

To be clear, Yale absolutely does discriminate against Asian applicants. As far as I can tell, they justify it using the same language about "personality" that

To be clear, Yale absolutely does discriminate against Asian applicants. As far as I can tell, they justify it using the same language about "personality" that they used to justifying discriminating against Jews in the the first half of the 20th century.

jhowell 6y ago
Seems like this statement might need a little support to make its point without being inflammatory, or worse inaccurate. edit: typo
- jonathanyc 6y ago
  That a supposed lack of personality was used as cover for discrimination against Jewish applicants to universities is well-known. I’m not sure why you’d express concern over that reference being inflammatory ex nihilo. There are citations for that point specifically in this article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._Harvard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions... > Harvard itself found a bias against Asian-American applicants in an internal investigation in 2013, but had never made the findings public or acted on them.[1] Plaintiffs and commentators have compared thetreatment of Asians with the Jewish quota in place in the early 20th century, which used deficient personalities as the reason for excluding Jews in elite universities.[4][1] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvards-asian-quotas-repeat-an-ugly-history-11570575962 https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvards-asian-quotas-repeat-an... - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...
- renewiltord 6y ago
  The "well-rounded" fraud against Jewish-Americans is one of the most well-established direct educational discrimination of recent US history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell#Admissions_and_Jewish_quota_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell#Admissions_... Lowell wanted a quota, but couldn't get it and introduced this well-roundedness thing and weirdly and totally coincidentally Jewish people found themselves unable to match up. Turns out they were all one-dimensional human beings less skilled at all those other things White Americans were capable at. It is sheer good fortune Lowell was there to rescue us from these nerdy egg-heads. Close one.
dmurray 6y ago
Source for the "personality" language? In everything I've seen from US universities, they justify race-based admissions policies primarily with language about "diversity".
- rconti 6y ago
  This is what it is referencing: >One of the most striking revelations pertains to Harvard’s consideration of applicants’ soft skills—things like “likability,” “helpfulness,” “integrity,” and “courage”—in determining their acceptance. Despite boasting higher test scores, better grades, and stronger extracurricular resumes than applicants of any other racial group, Asian American applicants consistently received lower rankings on those personality traits, according to a statistical analysis conducted on behalf of SFFA of more than 160,000 student records. This emphasis on personality, the analysis concludes, significantly undermined otherwise-qualified Asian Americans’ chances of getting in. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/06/harvard-admissions-personality/563198/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/06/harvar...
  - ggggtez 6y ago
    >Harvard The OP said Yale. I know they are both Ivy league schools but you can't just lump them together when you are accusing one of wrongdoing.
    - travisoneill1 6y ago
      In a court of law, no, but it's a pretty safe assumption that their admissions procedures are very similar.
  - gundmc 6y ago
    This is the problem with assigning weight to subjective, hand-wavey categories. It becomes an easy way for bias (conscious or unconscious) to creep in. The same thing happens with "culture fit" evaluations at tech companies.
    - 6y ago
MichaelRazum 6y ago
It reminds me a bit what my parents told me about the soviet union. So basically it was kind of the same. Too much jews in the universities, so lets discriminate them. The same is going on here, as far as race plays any role. Kind of sad to see this kind of decision making around the globe.
- jpxw 6y ago
  It reminds you of the Soviet Union because the underlying philosophy is the same. Equality at all costs.
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    Was that really the philosophy of the USSR? Marx argued against the abstract notion of equality to begin with (and more concretely, the idea of equality between people) and Lenin explicitly rebuked the notion that equality means anything more than class equality for socialists. The whole phrase "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is precisely against equality - it recognizes that people have different abilities, talents, capabilities, and things happening in the course of life, and it recognizes that people have different needs, wishes, and desires. Unless you're saying that the USSR's underlying philosophy comes from somewhere other than Marx or Lenin, in which case I'm curious as to what philosophy, and originated by whom, you're talking about.
    - pandaman 6y ago
      >Was that really the philosophy of the USSR? It was. There was affirmative action for "ethnic minorities" too. Source: born and raised in the USSR.
      - eganist 6y ago
        > It was. There was affirmative action for "ethnic minorities" too. Source: born and raised in the USSR. Can you please link an authoritative source for this? Edit: found an authoritative source, no air quotes. https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/rightsviews/2017/11/07/soviet-affirmative-action-and-contemporary-inclusion-of-minorities/ https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/rightsviews/2017/11/07/sovie...
dirtyid 6y ago
This years UCSF admissions also caught a stir. Asian admission cut in half from 40 in 2019 to 22% in 2020. Student demo suggest it was cut from 60% the years prior.
- dba7dba 6y ago
  You sure about that? That number sounds so extreme that I have to see official source to believe it...
  - nos4A2 6y ago
    +1 I can’t find a source for this. There are some tweets referencing this, but no official data.
  - dirtyid 6y ago
    No, as referenced below, the original tweet by a first year student UCSF Med was removed. But original tweet and some of the drama from /r/premed below. Apparently figures were shared in privately in acceptance emails during height of protests. The rest of the numbers was Asian community extrapolating from acceptance and demographic data from past years. I guess we'll wait until official data updates to confirm. >UCSF upcoming class reveals heavily shaped racial mixtures. Other schools will probably follow? “The stats are in: @UCSFMedicine's Class of 2024 is 23% Hispanic/Latinx, 22% Asian, 20% White, 19% Black, and includes 4 Native Americans” (twitter.com) https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/comments/hkvv6r/ucsf_upcoming_class_reveals_heavily_shaped_racial/ https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/comments/hkvv6r/ucsf_upcomin...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - swrj 6y ago
      Link to original tweet here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200702004840/https://twitter.com/chloe_cheng7/status/1278489590110642176 https://web.archive.org/web/20200702004840/https://twitter.c...
    - 6y ago
gfaure 6y ago
What is most galling about this is that even if we assume that culture X yields candidates with personality characteristics undervalued by culture Y, _racial background doesn't indicate culture_. How should a second-generation Taiwanese American raised predominantly in American culture answer the race question on their application?
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  African American. Everyone should answer the race question with whatever they think benefits themselves the most, because race is bullshit.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Radim 6y ago
    This. I remember an anecdote by Ota Ulč, a Czech writer who escaped communism to emigrate into the USA. When asked to select his race, Ota didn't realize "Caucasian" applied to him – after all he's Czech, not from Caucasus! So he checked "Other" instead. An honest mistake. As a result, he got in no problem.
  - charlesu 6y ago
    Racism is bullshit. Race is a social construct but it’s definitely has real implications.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      What are the implications of my race?
icelancer 6y ago
Discrimination against Asians and Jews is very similar in most respects, I agree. Definitely seems to be that way here.
- rbecker 6y ago
  Yale is 20-27% Jewish [1,2], while the US is just 1.7-2.6% [3]. Few other groups would have the gall to call 10x over-representation as being discriminated against. [1] https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/yale-university https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/yale-univer... [2] https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/The-most-heavily-Jewish-US-college-and-other-facts-about-Jews-at-American-colleges-437701 https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/The-most-heavily-Jewish-US-co... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews
  - MichaelRazum 6y ago
    That was exactly the same argument the soviet union had. So we have too much jews there, lets limit it. Its not discriminating, since there are already so much jews or asians in the universities (20%+). On the individual level a person get reject based on its race, that is sad.
    - rbecker 6y ago
      I'm sorry, are you saying that Jewish students are currently, in the US, in Yale, being discriminated against in college applications? Despite the current and previous Yale presidents both being Jewish [1,2]? And that without that discrimination, they would be... what? 40% of all Yale students? More? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Salovey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Salovey [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Levin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Levin
      - j7ake 6y ago
        No OP was saying Asian students can be discriminated against even if percentage of Asians being accepted were higher than national demographic.
atroche 6y ago
Would be interested to see if Asians whose families have been in the USA for many years get in at different rates to e.g. immigrants or the children of immigrants. It would indicate that perhaps Yale et al. really do care about "personality", and aren't just being racist.
- walamaking 6y ago
  Measuring the nth degree from 1st-gen immigrants is a pretty poor proxy for "personality".
leafboi 6y ago
I would say most universities who don't have a huge asian student body are probably discriminating against asians.
jollofricepeas 6y ago
Actual statistics of the Yale student body by ethnicity: - American Indian or Alaska Native 0.3% - Asian 14.7% - Black or African-American 5.8% - Hispanic of any race 9.8% - Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander 0.1% - White 42.7% - Race/ethnicity unknown 1.0 SOURCE: https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts
- jollofricepeas 6y ago
  US population by ethnicity (2019) - Black or African American alone, percent(a) 13.4% - American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent(a) 1.3% - Asian alone, percent(a)5.9% - Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent(a) 0.2% - Two or More Races, percent 2.8% - Hispanic or Latino, percent(b) 18.5% SOURCE: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    You have not provided any data on how many qualified applications they get from each ethnicity. You've basically said nothing.
  - newfriend 6y ago
    Is there some reason you specifically omitted the White category? - White alone, percent 76.3%
  - code_sloth 6y ago
    Are there any ethnicity statistics (or estimates) on actual applicants to yale? It's apples vs oranges when we compare to the US population.
  - naveen99 6y ago
    It’s hard to find global numbers by these categories, but I think world class universities should look at global numbers rather than usa only numbers... if they are going to look at demographics at all. if you look at global numbers, caltech demographics may be pretty close to being proportional representation.
piokoch 6y ago
I am really curious how those Yale guys check applicants race. Some kind of skin color pigment measurement (sorry, you are a bit too white to qualify as African American, next person please)? Or do they measure someones eye shape to "detect" Asian people? How about Jews, is nose measurement sufficient (they need to dig really hard in their archives to find some Nazi "scientific" statistics on that...) or they just ask to take off pants during interview to check if someone is not hiding his race?
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> language about "personality" More on this, although it's about Harvard not Yale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._Harvard#Personality_scores_of_Asian-Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...
xiaodai 6y ago
The difference is now that Jews are rich and hence big donors while Asian just don't cut it until they become big donors too. Also the industrial revolution didn't happen in Asia, so if you put Asian who work hard but aren't creative into all these top schools, then America is just optimising not innovating. Having said that, Newton if he was alive today would have no issue getting into Yale so there will always be creative breakthroughs and Asians like Terry Tao shows that Asians can also be creative with math/tech. So yeah... I don't know if it's a race thing. But Asians tend to study harder but remember, the industrial revolution didn't happen in Asia.
deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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jhowell 6y ago

Seems like this statement might need a little support to make its point without being inflammatory, or worse inaccurate. edit: typo

jonathanyc 6y ago
That a supposed lack of personality was used as cover for discrimination against Jewish applicants to universities is well-known. I’m not sure why you’d express concern over that reference being inflammatory ex nihilo. There are citations for that point specifically in this article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._Harvard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions... > Harvard itself found a bias against Asian-American applicants in an internal investigation in 2013, but had never made the findings public or acted on them.[1] Plaintiffs and commentators have compared thetreatment of Asians with the Jewish quota in place in the early 20th century, which used deficient personalities as the reason for excluding Jews in elite universities.[4][1] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvards-asian-quotas-repeat-an-ugly-history-11570575962 https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvards-asian-quotas-repeat-an... - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...
renewiltord 6y ago
The "well-rounded" fraud against Jewish-Americans is one of the most well-established direct educational discrimination of recent US history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell#Admissions_and_Jewish_quota_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell#Admissions_... Lowell wanted a quota, but couldn't get it and introduced this well-roundedness thing and weirdly and totally coincidentally Jewish people found themselves unable to match up. Turns out they were all one-dimensional human beings less skilled at all those other things White Americans were capable at. It is sheer good fortune Lowell was there to rescue us from these nerdy egg-heads. Close one.

dmurray 6y ago

Source for the "personality" language? In everything I've seen from US universities, they justify race-based admissions policies primarily with language about "diversity".

rconti 6y ago
This is what it is referencing: >One of the most striking revelations pertains to Harvard’s consideration of applicants’ soft skills—things like “likability,” “helpfulness,” “integrity,” and “courage”—in determining their acceptance. Despite boasting higher test scores, better grades, and stronger extracurricular resumes than applicants of any other racial group, Asian American applicants consistently received lower rankings on those personality traits, according to a statistical analysis conducted on behalf of SFFA of more than 160,000 student records. This emphasis on personality, the analysis concludes, significantly undermined otherwise-qualified Asian Americans’ chances of getting in. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/06/harvard-admissions-personality/563198/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/06/harvar...
- ggggtez 6y ago
  >Harvard The OP said Yale. I know they are both Ivy league schools but you can't just lump them together when you are accusing one of wrongdoing.
  - travisoneill1 6y ago
    In a court of law, no, but it's a pretty safe assumption that their admissions procedures are very similar.
- gundmc 6y ago
  This is the problem with assigning weight to subjective, hand-wavey categories. It becomes an easy way for bias (conscious or unconscious) to creep in. The same thing happens with "culture fit" evaluations at tech companies.
  - 6y ago

MichaelRazum 6y ago

It reminds me a bit what my parents told me about the soviet union. So basically it was kind of the same. Too much jews in the universities, so lets discriminate them. The same is going on here, as far as race plays any role. Kind of sad to see this kind of decision making around the globe.

jpxw 6y ago
It reminds you of the Soviet Union because the underlying philosophy is the same. Equality at all costs.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  Was that really the philosophy of the USSR? Marx argued against the abstract notion of equality to begin with (and more concretely, the idea of equality between people) and Lenin explicitly rebuked the notion that equality means anything more than class equality for socialists. The whole phrase "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is precisely against equality - it recognizes that people have different abilities, talents, capabilities, and things happening in the course of life, and it recognizes that people have different needs, wishes, and desires. Unless you're saying that the USSR's underlying philosophy comes from somewhere other than Marx or Lenin, in which case I'm curious as to what philosophy, and originated by whom, you're talking about.
  - pandaman 6y ago
    >Was that really the philosophy of the USSR? It was. There was affirmative action for "ethnic minorities" too. Source: born and raised in the USSR.
    - eganist 6y ago
      > It was. There was affirmative action for "ethnic minorities" too. Source: born and raised in the USSR. Can you please link an authoritative source for this? Edit: found an authoritative source, no air quotes. https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/rightsviews/2017/11/07/soviet-affirmative-action-and-contemporary-inclusion-of-minorities/ https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/rightsviews/2017/11/07/sovie...

dirtyid 6y ago

This years UCSF admissions also caught a stir. Asian admission cut in half from 40 in 2019 to 22% in 2020. Student demo suggest it was cut from 60% the years prior.

dba7dba 6y ago
You sure about that? That number sounds so extreme that I have to see official source to believe it...
- nos4A2 6y ago
  +1 I can’t find a source for this. There are some tweets referencing this, but no official data.
- dirtyid 6y ago
  No, as referenced below, the original tweet by a first year student UCSF Med was removed. But original tweet and some of the drama from /r/premed below. Apparently figures were shared in privately in acceptance emails during height of protests. The rest of the numbers was Asian community extrapolating from acceptance and demographic data from past years. I guess we'll wait until official data updates to confirm. >UCSF upcoming class reveals heavily shaped racial mixtures. Other schools will probably follow? “The stats are in: @UCSFMedicine's Class of 2024 is 23% Hispanic/Latinx, 22% Asian, 20% White, 19% Black, and includes 4 Native Americans” (twitter.com) https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/comments/hkvv6r/ucsf_upcoming_class_reveals_heavily_shaped_racial/ https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/comments/hkvv6r/ucsf_upcomin...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - swrj 6y ago
    Link to original tweet here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200702004840/https://twitter.com/chloe_cheng7/status/1278489590110642176 https://web.archive.org/web/20200702004840/https://twitter.c...
  - 6y ago

gfaure 6y ago

What is most galling about this is that even if we assume that culture X yields candidates with personality characteristics undervalued by culture Y, _racial background doesn't indicate culture_. How should a second-generation Taiwanese American raised predominantly in American culture answer the race question on their application?

Consultant32452 6y ago
African American. Everyone should answer the race question with whatever they think benefits themselves the most, because race is bullshit.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Radim 6y ago
  This. I remember an anecdote by Ota Ulč, a Czech writer who escaped communism to emigrate into the USA. When asked to select his race, Ota didn't realize "Caucasian" applied to him – after all he's Czech, not from Caucasus! So he checked "Other" instead. An honest mistake. As a result, he got in no problem.
- charlesu 6y ago
  Racism is bullshit. Race is a social construct but it’s definitely has real implications.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    What are the implications of my race?

icelancer 6y ago

Discrimination against Asians and Jews is very similar in most respects, I agree. Definitely seems to be that way here.

rbecker 6y ago
Yale is 20-27% Jewish [1,2], while the US is just 1.7-2.6% [3]. Few other groups would have the gall to call 10x over-representation as being discriminated against. [1] https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/yale-university https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/yale-univer... [2] https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/The-most-heavily-Jewish-US-college-and-other-facts-about-Jews-at-American-colleges-437701 https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/The-most-heavily-Jewish-US-co... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews
- MichaelRazum 6y ago
  That was exactly the same argument the soviet union had. So we have too much jews there, lets limit it. Its not discriminating, since there are already so much jews or asians in the universities (20%+). On the individual level a person get reject based on its race, that is sad.
  - rbecker 6y ago
    I'm sorry, are you saying that Jewish students are currently, in the US, in Yale, being discriminated against in college applications? Despite the current and previous Yale presidents both being Jewish [1,2]? And that without that discrimination, they would be... what? 40% of all Yale students? More? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Salovey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Salovey [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Levin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Levin
    - j7ake 6y ago
      No OP was saying Asian students can be discriminated against even if percentage of Asians being accepted were higher than national demographic.

atroche 6y ago

Would be interested to see if Asians whose families have been in the USA for many years get in at different rates to e.g. immigrants or the children of immigrants. It would indicate that perhaps Yale et al. really do care about "personality", and aren't just being racist.

walamaking 6y ago
Measuring the nth degree from 1st-gen immigrants is a pretty poor proxy for "personality".

leafboi 6y ago

I would say most universities who don't have a huge asian student body are probably discriminating against asians.

jollofricepeas 6y ago

Actual statistics of the Yale student body by ethnicity: - American Indian or Alaska Native 0.3% - Asian 14.7% - Black or African-American 5.8% - Hispanic of any race 9.8% - Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander 0.1% - White 42.7% - Race/ethnicity unknown 1.0 SOURCE: https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts

jollofricepeas 6y ago
US population by ethnicity (2019) - Black or African American alone, percent(a) 13.4% - American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent(a) 1.3% - Asian alone, percent(a)5.9% - Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent(a) 0.2% - Two or More Races, percent 2.8% - Hispanic or Latino, percent(b) 18.5% SOURCE: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  You have not provided any data on how many qualified applications they get from each ethnicity. You've basically said nothing.
- newfriend 6y ago
  Is there some reason you specifically omitted the White category? - White alone, percent 76.3%
- code_sloth 6y ago
  Are there any ethnicity statistics (or estimates) on actual applicants to yale? It's apples vs oranges when we compare to the US population.
- naveen99 6y ago
  It’s hard to find global numbers by these categories, but I think world class universities should look at global numbers rather than usa only numbers... if they are going to look at demographics at all. if you look at global numbers, caltech demographics may be pretty close to being proportional representation.

piokoch 6y ago

I am really curious how those Yale guys check applicants race. Some kind of skin color pigment measurement (sorry, you are a bit too white to qualify as African American, next person please)? Or do they measure someones eye shape to "detect" Asian people? How about Jews, is nose measurement sufficient (they need to dig really hard in their archives to find some Nazi "scientific" statistics on that...) or they just ask to take off pants during interview to check if someone is not hiding his race?

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

> language about "personality" More on this, although it's about Harvard not Yale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._Harvard#Personality_scores_of_Asian-Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...

xiaodai 6y ago

The difference is now that Jews are rich and hence big donors while Asian just don't cut it until they become big donors too. Also the industrial revolution didn't happen in Asia, so if you put Asian who work hard but aren't creative into all these top schools, then America is just optimising not innovating. Having said that, Newton if he was alive today would have no issue getting into Yale so there will always be creative breakthroughs and Asians like Terry Tao shows that Asians can also be creative with math/tech. So yeah... I don't know if it's a race thing. But Asians tend to study harder but remember, the industrial revolution didn't happen in Asia.

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