4 ms·

There is some truth to the heuristic that "if you got into Harvard" you have to be pretty good. Because Harvard is really good at finding the "Harvard quality"

There is some truth to the heuristic that "if you got into Harvard" you have to be pretty good. Because Harvard is really good at finding the "Harvard quality" people among applicants.

gammarator 4y ago
Jared Kushner would like a word: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-ku...
- fny 4y ago
  Having a lot of money is Harvard quality. Remember these institutions survive because the rich donate. This is also how brilliant minds come in contact with capital, and how we fund people studying knots and english literature all day long. It's a form of patronage. In turn, no one would ever give Jared Kusher a professorship unless he bought it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
derbOac 4y ago
Maybe I'm jaded but I've met a lot of brilliant people in my life. They come from all sorts of backgrounds. I've often in turn seen how those backgrounds can become safety nets, not equally distributed. The benefit of the doubt is extended very far, and when you have knowledge on the other side of the curtain it starts to look self-fulfilling sometimes. It's hard not to look at scatterplots of things like SATs, GREs, and GPAs, and see a lot of randomness. Not pure randomness but it starts to be hard to justify to yourself when correlations of .1-.3 begin to be interpreted in the general public as if they were .9.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > It's hard not to look at scatterplots of things like SATs, GREs, and GPAs, and see a lot of randomness. Not pure randomness but it starts to be hard to justify to yourself when correlations of .1-.3 begin to be interpreted in the general public as if they were .9. Do you have a link? Be keen to read about this.
nextos 4y ago
The problem is that hiring committees are busy, have imperfect information and therefore rely on easy metrics, i.e. prestige of candidate's university and journals where he has published. Many universities are now signatories of the SF Declaration, where they promise to value research based on ideas, not on prestige of journals: https://sfdora.org https://sfdora.org I have noted e.g. UMass goes one step further and asks tenure-track applicants to remove affiliation and journal names on their CVs to avoid bias. So that someone who comes from e.g. Oxford and has published in Nature is not judged to be better a priori than someone who comes from Exeter and has published in JCI. I think this is a great initiative.
- woooooo 4y ago
  How does that work if anyone actually reads the publications? They'll have the journal name and probably current institution of the authors, right? Am I being naive with the question? Is reading the publications unusual?
  - sdenton4 4y ago
    Pretty easy to ignore the publication journal of you download all your papers from the arxiv...
  - neffy 4y ago
    It would be very interesting to have that studied... but my general impressions (as somebody who does read the publications) is that the answer is usually no.
  - nextos 4y ago
    It's a bit more complicated, you are asked to submit a CV, a research proposal and some summaries of your publications, all anonymized. Then, an external committee theoretically does look only at that, and preselects candidates. At that stage, they tell applicants and their internal committee begins looking at all non-anonymized materials.
HWR_14 4y ago
> Harvard is really good at finding the "Harvard quality" people among applicants. How hard is that sifting process? How good is Harvard at doing that? How was it tested? I certainly think Harvard could have made an incoming class out of rejected students and they would all be the same caliber.
- bigbacaloa 4y ago
  This study is talking about doctoral training not undergraduate. Selection is very different.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    I guess I assumed that doctoral training would be more likely to draw from a fully qualified pool than undergraduate studies.
blagie 4y ago
That's true. "Harvard quality" means either: - Very smart - Connections to wealth and power A bit over 2/5s of the white undergrads are admitted for the later. That came up in the Asian law suit. Similar mechanisms apply elsewhere, but we haven't had legal discovery (note: not speculation; insider knowledge).
- jl2718 4y ago
  “White” seems overly broad here. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-american...
  - blagie 4y ago
    Yes, speaking as an insider, cheating at universities like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT is ubiquitous. I'm not talking about undergrads copying exams, so much as research fraud, bizarre financial schemes to funnel endowment funds into faculty pockets, conflicts-of-interest, and occasionally, actual crime. I was following the article until I ran into xenophobia: "The absurd parental efforts of an Amy Chua, as recounted in her 2010 bestseller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, were simply a much more extreme version of widespread behavior among her peer-group, which is why her story resonated so deeply among our educated elites." Chua is an immigrant academic who has devoted much of her life to the study of cultural dynamics in the US. She published an honest account of her life parenting in the US, coming from a different cultural background, as a means of helping people understand the immigrant experience with America trying to Americanize them. Instead, what she did got cast through an American cultural lens, anecdotes got distorted by the media, and she got beat up over a very personal, very honest, very well-crafted account. I am an immigrant, and her book resonated 100% with me. Things I do with my kid seem absurd from an American cultural perspective. It's not the same set of things as Amy did, at all, but that's true of most immigrant families from different cultures, be that Middle Eastern countries, Africa, or many other places. An author of this article either doesn't know what they're writing about (they're citing a book they haven't read), or they're lying.
BurningFrog 4y ago
OP here: Note that I said "some truth". I'm aware of the imperfections and biases. But I also think there is a baby in that bathwater.

There is some truth to the heuristic that "if you got into Harvard" you have to be pretty good. Because Harvard is really good at finding the "Harvard quality" people among applicants.

gammarator 4y ago

Jared Kushner would like a word: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-ku...

fny 4y ago
Having a lot of money is Harvard quality. Remember these institutions survive because the rich donate. This is also how brilliant minds come in contact with capital, and how we fund people studying knots and english literature all day long. It's a form of patronage. In turn, no one would ever give Jared Kusher a professorship unless he bought it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

derbOac 4y ago

Maybe I'm jaded but I've met a lot of brilliant people in my life. They come from all sorts of backgrounds. I've often in turn seen how those backgrounds can become safety nets, not equally distributed. The benefit of the doubt is extended very far, and when you have knowledge on the other side of the curtain it starts to look self-fulfilling sometimes. It's hard not to look at scatterplots of things like SATs, GREs, and GPAs, and see a lot of randomness. Not pure randomness but it starts to be hard to justify to yourself when correlations of .1-.3 begin to be interpreted in the general public as if they were .9.

robertlagrant 4y ago
> It's hard not to look at scatterplots of things like SATs, GREs, and GPAs, and see a lot of randomness. Not pure randomness but it starts to be hard to justify to yourself when correlations of .1-.3 begin to be interpreted in the general public as if they were .9. Do you have a link? Be keen to read about this.

nextos 4y ago

The problem is that hiring committees are busy, have imperfect information and therefore rely on easy metrics, i.e. prestige of candidate's university and journals where he has published. Many universities are now signatories of the SF Declaration, where they promise to value research based on ideas, not on prestige of journals: https://sfdora.org https://sfdora.org I have noted e.g. UMass goes one step further and asks tenure-track applicants to remove affiliation and journal names on their CVs to avoid bias. So that someone who comes from e.g. Oxford and has published in Nature is not judged to be better a priori than someone who comes from Exeter and has published in JCI. I think this is a great initiative.

woooooo 4y ago
How does that work if anyone actually reads the publications? They'll have the journal name and probably current institution of the authors, right? Am I being naive with the question? Is reading the publications unusual?
- sdenton4 4y ago
  Pretty easy to ignore the publication journal of you download all your papers from the arxiv...
- neffy 4y ago
  It would be very interesting to have that studied... but my general impressions (as somebody who does read the publications) is that the answer is usually no.
- nextos 4y ago
  It's a bit more complicated, you are asked to submit a CV, a research proposal and some summaries of your publications, all anonymized. Then, an external committee theoretically does look only at that, and preselects candidates. At that stage, they tell applicants and their internal committee begins looking at all non-anonymized materials.

HWR_14 4y ago

> Harvard is really good at finding the "Harvard quality" people among applicants. How hard is that sifting process? How good is Harvard at doing that? How was it tested? I certainly think Harvard could have made an incoming class out of rejected students and they would all be the same caliber.

bigbacaloa 4y ago
This study is talking about doctoral training not undergraduate. Selection is very different.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  I guess I assumed that doctoral training would be more likely to draw from a fully qualified pool than undergraduate studies.

blagie 4y ago

That's true. "Harvard quality" means either: - Very smart - Connections to wealth and power A bit over 2/5s of the white undergrads are admitted for the later. That came up in the Asian law suit. Similar mechanisms apply elsewhere, but we haven't had legal discovery (note: not speculation; insider knowledge).

jl2718 4y ago
“White” seems overly broad here. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-american...
- blagie 4y ago
  Yes, speaking as an insider, cheating at universities like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT is ubiquitous. I'm not talking about undergrads copying exams, so much as research fraud, bizarre financial schemes to funnel endowment funds into faculty pockets, conflicts-of-interest, and occasionally, actual crime. I was following the article until I ran into xenophobia: "The absurd parental efforts of an Amy Chua, as recounted in her 2010 bestseller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, were simply a much more extreme version of widespread behavior among her peer-group, which is why her story resonated so deeply among our educated elites." Chua is an immigrant academic who has devoted much of her life to the study of cultural dynamics in the US. She published an honest account of her life parenting in the US, coming from a different cultural background, as a means of helping people understand the immigrant experience with America trying to Americanize them. Instead, what she did got cast through an American cultural lens, anecdotes got distorted by the media, and she got beat up over a very personal, very honest, very well-crafted account. I am an immigrant, and her book resonated 100% with me. Things I do with my kid seem absurd from an American cultural perspective. It's not the same set of things as Amy did, at all, but that's true of most immigrant families from different cultures, be that Middle Eastern countries, Africa, or many other places. An author of this article either doesn't know what they're writing about (they're citing a book they haven't read), or they're lying.

BurningFrog 4y ago

OP here: Note that I said "some truth". I'm aware of the imperfections and biases. But I also think there is a baby in that bathwater.