8 ms·

This is what it is referencing: >One of the most striking revelations pertains to Harvard’s consideration of applicants’ soft skills—things like “likability,”

• 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.
  • rurp 6y ago
    > The same thing happens with "culture fit" evaluations at tech companies. I totally agree, this reminded me of culture fit interview questions as well. I think the evidence is very strong that almost any subjective evaluation is going to devolve down to the evaluator picking whatever confirms their subjective biases, then coming up with ex post facto rationalizations.
  • stickfigure 6y ago
    The alternative isn't that rosy - if you judge everyone by (objective) standard tests, Goodhart's Law takes effect, and we breed a generation of highly optimized test takers. Maybe I'm just exposing my Western bias, but I have a child and I don't want his adolescence to be continuous preparation for one academic test after another. Mine wasn't. Combining standardized tests along with bias-ridden subjective measurements may just be the best solution among lots of imperfect solutions. We try to address egregious abuses when we find them, but "fair" will always be a goal, not a destination.
    • jkhdigital 6y ago
      False dichotomy; there's another option, which is to use a lottery: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/44-the-powerball-revolution http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/44-the-powerball-revo...
      • Nasrudith 6y ago
        Have we checked for extraterrestrial influnce? Seriously it is Larry Niven's straight out of the Known Space's series Puppeteer plot. In all seriousness it works well if you have a pool sufficiently quality homogenous but would tend towards the mean of the pool.
      • lopmotr 6y ago
        They're obviously not interested in what's better or they would expand to accept them all! But if they grow, they'll dilute their elite status.
    • keith___talent 6y ago
      Certainly the test is not the be all end all, other factors are important. Grades, recommendation letters, activities, and an understanding of the students background. However it can help us evaluate who is able to perform in a higher learning environment and that they have the knowledge to study advanced degrees. I had 4 standardized tests in my educational career, 4th grade state test, 10th grade state test, ACT and GRE. Only 2 of those were non-repeatable. How many do students take these days?
  • keith___talent 6y ago
    We’re about to see an end to standardized tests for college admissions. This is paving the way for discrimination against good students who wish to attend elite universities. Currently elite universities ideas of diversity and “personality” are more important than upholding educational standards. It is simply wrong to evaluate and condemn a person based on race. To justify any kind of discrimination on the idea that you are helping one person, you are hurting another. This an equally problematic, it’s taking us back to times before equal rights and for people to be judged on their abilities. Hoping a brilliant student will apply to a university twice and deepfake their race in one of their admission interview videos.
    • kenjackson 6y ago
      Why do good students have more of a right to attend elite colleges than other students? Why don’t we prefer hard working students or students that played the most sports? There’s nothing inherently special about being a good student.
      • pyronik19 6y ago
        Because it can't be elite its filled with people who are mediocre. It's in the name... elite. Everytime you just let someone in on some flimsy diversity grounds you debase degree.
        • collyw 6y ago
          Do you have any evidence of that
        • kenjackson 6y ago
          It’s not in the name. The presumption is that elite means other good students, and not the school itself. When I buy elite golf clubs, it means the clubs are elite not other people who buy it are. Now you can argue part of the reason to attend college is because of your classmates. And then I’d ask is the best experience a bunch of kids who are simply good at school?
    • 6y ago
  • raxxorrax 6y ago
    It is an excellent excuse to select for rich parents though.
• jhowell 6y ago
  This to me says that assimilation doesn't work. The article states: "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" The outcome was to move the bar to soft skills: things like “likability,” “helpfulness,” “integrity,” and “courage” This has happened to minority groups of all backgrounds in this country since its inception.
  • filoleg 6y ago
    >This to me says that assimilation doesn't work Even the whole argument about success rates of assimilation aside, this doesn't seem to check out. How does this whole "assimilation doesn't work" argument even flow from the statement? Asian Americans referenced were all born in the US, grew up here, went through the education system here, etc. There is nowhere they need to assimilate to, they were born Americans and grew up here. This is their primary culture, not that of a country where their ancestors were born. I am leaving a big possibility that I completely misunderstood your comment, so please correct me if my interpretation of it was incorrect.
    • jhowell 6y ago
      I think you're looking at the problem from your perspective and not theirs.
      • muststopmyths 6y ago
        so you meant to say assimilation doesn't work for them ? Makes me see your statement in a completely different light so you may want to qualify that :)
  • fmajid 6y ago
    Except when alumni interviewed candidates, there was no such difference, only when university staff did. A pretty convincing smoking gun if you ask me. I am glad I studied in France, where admission to elite schools is based purely on objective entrance exams (emphasis on Math). It’s not a perfect system, rich parents can afford tutors and teachers can tutor their kids, but it’s a hella fairer than the system in the US, corrupted by legacy admissions, sports scholarships and racial quotas that purposefully ignore socioeconomic disparity, because it’s easier for the powers-that-be to throw poor rural white kids under the bus than something that might adversely impact their own children.
• floren 6y ago
  That really reads as "We can use these non-measurable factors to mark down Asian applications as needed", which seems... bad.
  • gyc 6y ago
    Or at the very least unconscious anti-Asian bias on the part of admissions officers.
    • barry-cotter 6y ago
      It’s not unconscious.
• prvc 6y ago
  That does not show, however, that "personality" is used as a "cover" for discrimination. That argument, in fact, implicitly assumes equalism (i.e. that all groups have equal distributions of traits), which in turn justifies representation-based admissions. It is self-defeating in that regard.
  • Nasrudith 6y ago
    Essentially "personality" appears a very pretextual criteria along with the goalposts mounted on rails. It is an infamous pattern of behavior of bigots that when they present some nominal objection they keep on changing it whenever it can actually be fulfilled. If they keep on changing the game it becomes clear that they just don't want to let them win no matter what and aren't acting in good faith.