4 ms·

You can, absolutely. A lottery system for admissions.

lordnacho 5y ago
Not sure if you're joking but it would be a heck of a lot more fair. Just have some sort of objective bar like SAT score, and then do a lottery. Then you don't have the "did we do enough for XYZ group", the RNG will simplify both decision making and justification. If there's x% of XYZ passing the minimum score, that's how many will be in your class.
- technothrasher 5y ago
  But if there were racial disparities in your primary and secondary education systems which lowered the scores of some racial groups, then your supposedly objective "minimum score cutoff" would still be discriminatory.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    Yes but then it's society's fault and you can't do anything about it and you have a reasonable explanation. You can pour money into giving test prep help to disadvantaged groups and keep the headline, which is that fate decides among many who are worthy.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  And when you find that x% of XYZ passing the minimum score isn’t exactly the same x% of XYZ in the population, what then?
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    "We didn't make the test. The bar is lower so more of every group passes. Fate decides who gets in, we don't add or remove anything based on legacy or donations etc."
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    To how many decimal points are you measuring “exactly”?
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      In the cases cited in the article, I strongly suspect “zero decimal places of percentage” is sufficient to show discrepancies (that discrepancies of full percentage point or more will be present, given the admissions rate for one group changed from 73% to under 50%).
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  The article calls out the TJ admissions process as discriminatory. The activists that are regularly called racist against asians proposed exactly this policy. It was called a "merit lottery" and worked by setting a GPA lower bound and then admitting students randomly if they had a GPA of at least that level. This policy was ultimately seen as "too extreme" and non implemented but it saw its fair share of "lefties hate asian success" and proponents were even called "enemies of excellence" by Scott Aaronson.
  - xvector 5y ago
    yes, lowering your admissions bar because you don't like how many asians there are is clearly racist.

Not sure if you're joking but it would be a heck of a lot more fair. Just have some sort of objective bar like SAT score, and then do a lottery. Then you don't have the "did we do enough for XYZ group", the RNG will simplify both decision making and justification. If there's x% of XYZ passing the minimum score, that's how many will be in your class.

technothrasher 5y ago
But if there were racial disparities in your primary and secondary education systems which lowered the scores of some racial groups, then your supposedly objective "minimum score cutoff" would still be discriminatory.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Yes but then it's society's fault and you can't do anything about it and you have a reasonable explanation. You can pour money into giving test prep help to disadvantaged groups and keep the headline, which is that fate decides among many who are worthy.
sokoloff 5y ago
And when you find that x% of XYZ passing the minimum score isn’t exactly the same x% of XYZ in the population, what then?
- lordnacho 5y ago
  "We didn't make the test. The bar is lower so more of every group passes. Fate decides who gets in, we don't add or remove anything based on legacy or donations etc."
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  To how many decimal points are you measuring “exactly”?
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    In the cases cited in the article, I strongly suspect “zero decimal places of percentage” is sufficient to show discrepancies (that discrepancies of full percentage point or more will be present, given the admissions rate for one group changed from 73% to under 50%).
UncleMeat 5y ago
The article calls out the TJ admissions process as discriminatory. The activists that are regularly called racist against asians proposed exactly this policy. It was called a "merit lottery" and worked by setting a GPA lower bound and then admitting students randomly if they had a GPA of at least that level. This policy was ultimately seen as "too extreme" and non implemented but it saw its fair share of "lefties hate asian success" and proponents were even called "enemies of excellence" by Scott Aaronson.
- xvector 5y ago
  yes, lowering your admissions bar because you don't like how many asians there are is clearly racist.