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You forgot to mention two very important points: 1) The ivy leagues (and many other colleges of the US) shifted from a purely meritocratic assessment to an "al

You forgot to mention two very important points: 1) The ivy leagues (and many other colleges of the US) shifted from a purely meritocratic assessment to an "all rounder" vetting process of potential candidates simply to eliminate the "undesirables" (at that time, mostly jews). > The first thing to understand is that everything we know about selective college admissions today is less than a century old. So if you go back to 1910 or 1920, the Ivy League schools were not particularly expensive. They were not particularly desirable, in that they didn't have five or 10 or 20 times as many applicants as there were spots. And they weren’t particularly rigorous about vetting students ... So how did we get from there to here today, when these schools are desirable, expensive, and have a very rigorous vetting process? > The answer is that most of those measures came about as part of the effort to limit the percentage of Jews in the student body. The extensive college application of multiple pages came about because they added questions to figure out if an applicant was Jewish, including What’s your religion? What is your father’s occupation? What is your mother’s maiden name? Where were your parents born? At some schools, they asked you to attach a photograph. Some began to require an interview. And that was in part so they could try to suss out if you were Jewish or not. (Source: America’s most prestigious universities became elite through policies designed to keep Jews out of them. - https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/632c8ea068f61f0021dbfd41/mark-oppenheimer-interview-jewish-ivy-league-antisemitism/ https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/632c8ea068f6... ). > ... the Ivy League didn't really want them. Being first-generation students, these applicants didn't have rich alumni parents who would be likely to donate big bucks. Being from an ethnicity not associated with America's governing class, they didn't help the Ivy League with its biggest selling point — that going to college there provides an opportunity to rub shoulders with America's governing class. And they were seen as boring grinds who studied too hard and weren't much fun. > The result was a change in admissions criteria to reward "leadership," and "well-rounded" candidates — a thin disguise for "WASPs" — and, following closely on, actual quotas for Jewish students, so that no matter how many applied, their numbers on campus would stay just about the same. Source: Asians get the Ivy League's Jewish treatment: Column - https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/23/ivy-league-college-asians-race-jews-students-diversity-discrimination-quotas-column/19445201/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/23/ivy-league... Yeah, it looks like they are doing the same thing with the Asian-Americans today (who have a similar immigrant cultural values like the jewish immigrants of the early 20th century - strong family ties and cultural importance to getting a good education). 2) If you are rich and have money to bribe these colleges, the "minimum qualification" will be "adjusted" to accommodate you. (Source: How elite US schools give preference to wealthy and white 'legacy' applicants - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/elite-schools-ivy-league-legacy-admissions-harvard-wealthier-whiter https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/elite-school... ).

csa 4y ago
Let me give a less Monty Burns-esque take on things (with one very valid wart): 1. A good history of the SAT and ACT can be found here: https://www.erikthered.com/tutor/sat-act-history-printable.html https://www.erikthered.com/tutor/sat-act-history-printable.h... 2. Here is another very solid source on the wart (Lowell): https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/10/27/opinion/harvard-president-abbott-lowell-is-laughing-us-again/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/10/27/opinion/harvard-presi... 3. One goal of standardized tests in the early 1900s was to get the better students and a more diverse group of students into the better schools rather than lean very heavily on feeder WASP private schools (which had been standard up until then). There were societal needs that the the existing admissions processes did not address on a number of levels. 4. Eliot, Harvard president in the early 1900s before Lowell, embraced diversity. "Eliot was bragging to The New York Times about Harvard’s racial, ethnic, and religious diversity as well as its economic class diversity." 5. A racist Lowell became president and implemented a Jewish quota in the 1920s. 6. In the 1930s, Conant, Lowell's successor, gradually eased these quotas and focused on using the SAT as less-biased assessment tool. "Eight years after rejecting the SAT for use in admissions, Harvard begins requiring all prospective scholarship students to take the SAT. The president of the university, James Conant, feels that the test provides an accurate assessment of a student's intelligence. (Conant reasons that the SAT could then be used by Harvard to select scholarship candidates from among students other than those from well-known East Coast private schools.) By 1938, all of the College Board member schools will be using the SAT to evaluate scholarship applicants." 7. In summary, Lowell's Jewish quota was only in place for a decade or so (a dark time to be sure). Prior to and after that, diversity found via various forms of merit were aggressively sought after. 8. Some of your quotes seem to suggest that academically strong students are also boring grinds. It is possible to be strong academically while also being well-rounded, regardless of your race. The definition of "well-rounded" may have been tailored during Lowell's time to exclude Jews, but a modern day definition definitely does not exclude any race by design (e.g., it is possible to be an acclaimed Asian athlete, leader, artist, etc.). 9. There are book-length treatments of the subject of Harvard's history of seeking diversity that are quite compelling (noting that Harvard never was and never has been perfect). Rather than read and quote click-bait articles about the topic, I would encourage folks to read one of these books. Student Diversity at the Big Three: Changes at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Since the 1920s is one possible book, but I'm not sure it's the best (I read a very good one in the 00s, but I cannot remember the title or author). The Chosen is another. I will close with a quote from the Boston Globe link above: "Don’t be fooled by those using the Jewish quota of the mid-20th century or charges of discrimination against Asian Americans (also despicable when true, but which the lower courts convincingly found was not the case here) as an excuse to limit the inclusion of Black and Latino students at selective universities. We should be celebrating, not ending, the policies of diversity and inclusion that opened universities to Catholics, Jews, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, women, and other outsiders."

csa 4y ago

Let me give a less Monty Burns-esque take on things (with one very valid wart): 1. A good history of the SAT and ACT can be found here: https://www.erikthered.com/tutor/sat-act-history-printable.html https://www.erikthered.com/tutor/sat-act-history-printable.h... 2. Here is another very solid source on the wart (Lowell): https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/10/27/opinion/harvard-president-abbott-lowell-is-laughing-us-again/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/10/27/opinion/harvard-presi... 3. One goal of standardized tests in the early 1900s was to get the better students and a more diverse group of students into the better schools rather than lean very heavily on feeder WASP private schools (which had been standard up until then). There were societal needs that the the existing admissions processes did not address on a number of levels. 4. Eliot, Harvard president in the early 1900s before Lowell, embraced diversity. "Eliot was bragging to The New York Times about Harvard’s racial, ethnic, and religious diversity as well as its economic class diversity." 5. A racist Lowell became president and implemented a Jewish quota in the 1920s. 6. In the 1930s, Conant, Lowell's successor, gradually eased these quotas and focused on using the SAT as less-biased assessment tool. "Eight years after rejecting the SAT for use in admissions, Harvard begins requiring all prospective scholarship students to take the SAT. The president of the university, James Conant, feels that the test provides an accurate assessment of a student's intelligence. (Conant reasons that the SAT could then be used by Harvard to select scholarship candidates from among students other than those from well-known East Coast private schools.) By 1938, all of the College Board member schools will be using the SAT to evaluate scholarship applicants." 7. In summary, Lowell's Jewish quota was only in place for a decade or so (a dark time to be sure). Prior to and after that, diversity found via various forms of merit were aggressively sought after. 8. Some of your quotes seem to suggest that academically strong students are also boring grinds. It is possible to be strong academically while also being well-rounded, regardless of your race. The definition of "well-rounded" may have been tailored during Lowell's time to exclude Jews, but a modern day definition definitely does not exclude any race by design (e.g., it is possible to be an acclaimed Asian athlete, leader, artist, etc.). 9. There are book-length treatments of the subject of Harvard's history of seeking diversity that are quite compelling (noting that Harvard never was and never has been perfect). Rather than read and quote click-bait articles about the topic, I would encourage folks to read one of these books. Student Diversity at the Big Three: Changes at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Since the 1920s is one possible book, but I'm not sure it's the best (I read a very good one in the 00s, but I cannot remember the title or author). The Chosen is another. I will close with a quote from the Boston Globe link above: "Don’t be fooled by those using the Jewish quota of the mid-20th century or charges of discrimination against Asian Americans (also despicable when true, but which the lower courts convincingly found was not the case here) as an excuse to limit the inclusion of Black and Latino students at selective universities. We should be celebrating, not ending, the policies of diversity and inclusion that opened universities to Catholics, Jews, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, women, and other outsiders."