7 ms·

Here in India, we have quotas for different kinds of people. There's caste based, Gender based and finally EWS (Economically Weaker Section) Quota. Overall 60%

by _mh56 4y ago

Here in India, we have quotas for different kinds of people. There's caste based, Gender based and finally EWS (Economically Weaker Section) Quota. Overall 60% of total seats are reserved for these people. My friend who's ultra rich was selected in EWS Quota. His father who runs his own company took Zero pay for the last two years so he qualified for the benefits. Meanwhile people who actually deserved this had to compete for the non reserved seats. The point is you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge.

civilized 4y ago
Wouldn't any metric be gamed? Why single out income for criticism? At least favoring lower income is going directly at the problem.
jakeinspace 4y ago
This is off topic, but do you find it difficult seeing this friend the same way while knowing that they and their father gamed the system like that? If I learned this about somebody I knew it would seriously hurt their image in my eyes.
- photonbucket 4y ago
  People will do what they can to make their children's lives better. It just means the system was poorly designed
- DSingularity 4y ago
  Well he is still his “friend”. Perhaps he has repented and paid for the education of a number of people who would otherwise not be able to afford it.
- ab0aa907 4y ago
  Coming from other side of border but with similar culture and attitudes, corruption is so common in that part of the world that most of the people don’t even see it. They would consider it smart to game the system. Only way I can explain this attitude is to compare it tax loopholes in the west. It is very hard for many Americans to see loopholes in tax codes as unethical. Like using mega-backdoor-ira loophole to bypass income limits for contributing to IRA. (Personally, I am not saying that tax loopholes are ethical or unethical, just something that can be seen both ways.)
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    The only equitable tax is one that taxes other people.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  A suggestion: Judge the parent who did the action, not the child who was along for the ride. Unless you have some specific knowledge that the child insisted on their parents taking the action, it’s not really fair to blame the child. A lot of children don’t have much choice in the matter at that age.
- _mh56 4y ago
  Atleast in India, everyone "games" systems as much as they can. Those who can't dream about gaming it. The Kafkaesque system makes sure that the few who actually tread the right path are never rewarded [1]. And unlike EU, this benefits corporates/capitalism as they can cut through the red tape easily by "gaming" things. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33368104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33368104
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Does it benefit capitalism? India has always had a less prosperous economy.
    - yencabulator 4y ago
      Bias toward corruption probably means any prosperous company will have its pockets emptied by those with power within the company.
LewisVerstappen 4y ago
> The point is you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge. Okay, well this is the US. Your tax returns are a very good indication of how much money you make. If you lie on your tax returns then you have much bigger issues than college admissions counselors.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  I think you’re missing the point. The really wealthy can just stop receiving income and have enough to draw on from their accumulated wealth. You can start looking at net assets but it’s a cat and mouse game against lots of very well resourced opponents.
  - 77pt77 4y ago
    > You can start looking at net assets When I applied for grad school many admission documents explicitly asked about this, even outside the realm of financial assistance.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Taking a $0 salary for a few years is feasible for most rich people. That's why the FAFSA (financial aid form) also asks about assets.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    And the CSS profile, like FAFSA but for fancier schools, is even more exhaustive.
  - tyoma 4y ago
    Or they could just have their kid “adopted” by a friend and avoid having to list parents income: https://www.propublica.org/article/university-of-illinois-financial-aid-fafsa-parents-guardianship-children-students https://www.propublica.org/article/university-of-illinois-fi...
- djbusby 4y ago
harvey9 4y ago
That sounds like it was designed to be easy to game; income in last two years as a metric rather than total assets, or zip code, or high school attended etc Does India have something like SAT as well?
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  Yes, it's actually much harder. But the final results are group by category order by rank. There is negative marking to discourage guessing, so the cutoff for certain categories can even be 0 or even negative
  - harvey9 4y ago
    So you could make the cut (be considered a successful exam taker) with a zero score just because a large proportion of your peers got negative scores? This seems just as unhelpful for deciding who to hire or who to allow onto a higher course of study as the campaigns we have seen on some USA university campuses to give all students an automatic A grade.
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
      That is the cost of equity. Note that the system also has many holes, so the categorization isn't perfect. Its possible for a large number of students to belong to the categories only on paper. So you don't even get equity in the end.
pmoriarty 4y ago
> you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge That's why you have to look at total wealth, not just income... though I'm sure the ultra wealthy will find some way to work around that as well.
- csa 4y ago
  Trusts are the most common way to do this.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    Then any trusts that benefit you should be counted as part of your wealth.
    - zamnos 4y ago
      So then the trust doesn't list you as a beneficiary but instead goes through a series of shell corporations that they don't control on paper. With stakes this high - your very child's future, there are always going to be people that are rich enough to break the spirit of the rules. If it's a small handful of people, there's probably better things for them to spend time on, rather than trying to make an unbeatable system.
- _mh56 4y ago
  You don't even need Trusts for this. EWS is decided by an issued certificate. The issuer can be bribed.
- nradov 4y ago
  As a practical matter how would college admissions departments even try to account for "total wealth"? That number doesn't appear on income tax returns. Applicants could write down any number and there wouldn't be any way to verify it short of a court ordered forensic audit.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
notlukesky 4y ago
40% for meritocratic entrance is more than twice what is at elite schools in the US. Maybe ambitious Americans should move to India for a fairer chance. At most US elite schools, less than 20 percent is for “non-reserved” seats. Elite schools reserve seats for sports teams (affirmative action for rich white elites with “sports” like fencing and rowing), legacies (affirmative action for rich white elites), related to professors and school administrators (affirmative action for rich white elites), those who write essays on poverty tourism and their work experience in the NGO/white savior/charity scams (rich white elites), and then regular affirmative action (capped at 20%]. So it is a brilliant way to use regular affirmative action for Blacks as a weapon to ensure that rich white elites always win and do not compete with the “deplorable” poorer whites, the Asians and immigrants.
- pilarphosol 4y ago
  This is about right. They want every podunk town to remember that the smartest or most impressive kid in 10 years went (finishing is optional) and they don’t really want more “strivers” than that.
- rayiner 4y ago
  > So it is a brilliant way to use regular affirmative action for Blacks as a weapon to ensure that rich white elites always win and do not compete with the “deplorable” poorer whites, the Asians and immigrants. I just realized that there are more Appalachians in America than Asian Americans. But how many people have you run into in an elite school with an Appalachian accent? (Or a southern or mid-atlantic, or other lower-tier white accent?)
  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    I can think of exactly one guy: a classmate in electrical engineering courses who was from Kentucky. While you can obviously still find accents in the US, there are lots of reasons why you won't run into that family of accents much. Just about everyone in the US can avoid accents they don’t want by engaging in all forms of audible media, and social climbers and people who move around will avoid strong accents. Those are the same people who will filter to the top of any affirmative action cohort and end up at elite schools. Maybe the redneck culture of poor Appalachian people is less sticky than the redneck culture of many poor Blacks in the US. My personal anecdotes support that, but then selection bias means they necessarily must. When I run into guys at work with heavy Appalachian accents, they tend to be heavy machinery mechanics. That's also where I find Black guys who cling to a large amount of Black redneck culture. And those two groups together comprise the supermajority of heavy machinery mechanics at work, come to think of it. Source: I spent my entire childhood on counties adjacent to what is considered 'Appalachia', and I went to a higher-end college with a significant affirmative action focus on geographic distribution around the US.
tomcam 4y ago
What the hell. When you say caste based do you mean something unspoken or is it explicitly legislated? Mind-blowing.
- doetoe 4y ago
  Discrimination against lower castes is very real. There are quota to somewhat compensate for this. Maybe you interpreted it as there being quota for each caste?
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Trying to understand, not interpret. Is there law allowing discrimination against lower cases? Or is there law allowing reverse discrimination to redress previous discrimination?
    - known 4y ago
      [dead]
    - doetoe 4y ago
      Sorry, I hadn't seen your message. There is a law prohibiting caste-based discrimination. For university admissions there are also quota for low caste, casteless and tribal people, meaning that a certain percentage of places is reserved only for students belonging to those groups
      - tomcam 4y ago
        Thanks. That matches what I had expected.

by _mh56 4y ago

civilized 4y ago

Wouldn't any metric be gamed? Why single out income for criticism? At least favoring lower income is going directly at the problem.

jakeinspace 4y ago

This is off topic, but do you find it difficult seeing this friend the same way while knowing that they and their father gamed the system like that? If I learned this about somebody I knew it would seriously hurt their image in my eyes.

photonbucket 4y ago
People will do what they can to make their children's lives better. It just means the system was poorly designed
DSingularity 4y ago
Well he is still his “friend”. Perhaps he has repented and paid for the education of a number of people who would otherwise not be able to afford it.
ab0aa907 4y ago
Coming from other side of border but with similar culture and attitudes, corruption is so common in that part of the world that most of the people don’t even see it. They would consider it smart to game the system. Only way I can explain this attitude is to compare it tax loopholes in the west. It is very hard for many Americans to see loopholes in tax codes as unethical. Like using mega-backdoor-ira loophole to bypass income limits for contributing to IRA. (Personally, I am not saying that tax loopholes are ethical or unethical, just something that can be seen both ways.)
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The only equitable tax is one that taxes other people.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
A suggestion: Judge the parent who did the action, not the child who was along for the ride. Unless you have some specific knowledge that the child insisted on their parents taking the action, it’s not really fair to blame the child. A lot of children don’t have much choice in the matter at that age.
_mh56 4y ago
Atleast in India, everyone "games" systems as much as they can. Those who can't dream about gaming it. The Kafkaesque system makes sure that the few who actually tread the right path are never rewarded [1]. And unlike EU, this benefits corporates/capitalism as they can cut through the red tape easily by "gaming" things. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33368104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33368104
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Does it benefit capitalism? India has always had a less prosperous economy.
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    Bias toward corruption probably means any prosperous company will have its pockets emptied by those with power within the company.

LewisVerstappen 4y ago

> The point is you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge. Okay, well this is the US. Your tax returns are a very good indication of how much money you make. If you lie on your tax returns then you have much bigger issues than college admissions counselors.

vlovich123 4y ago
I think you’re missing the point. The really wealthy can just stop receiving income and have enough to draw on from their accumulated wealth. You can start looking at net assets but it’s a cat and mouse game against lots of very well resourced opponents.
- 77pt77 4y ago
  > You can start looking at net assets When I applied for grad school many admission documents explicitly asked about this, even outside the realm of financial assistance.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
Taking a $0 salary for a few years is feasible for most rich people. That's why the FAFSA (financial aid form) also asks about assets.
- jefftk 4y ago
  And the CSS profile, like FAFSA but for fancier schools, is even more exhaustive.
- tyoma 4y ago
  Or they could just have their kid “adopted” by a friend and avoid having to list parents income: https://www.propublica.org/article/university-of-illinois-financial-aid-fafsa-parents-guardianship-children-students https://www.propublica.org/article/university-of-illinois-fi...
djbusby 4y ago

harvey9 4y ago

That sounds like it was designed to be easy to game; income in last two years as a metric rather than total assets, or zip code, or high school attended etc Does India have something like SAT as well?

cuteboy19 4y ago
Yes, it's actually much harder. But the final results are group by category order by rank. There is negative marking to discourage guessing, so the cutoff for certain categories can even be 0 or even negative
- harvey9 4y ago
  So you could make the cut (be considered a successful exam taker) with a zero score just because a large proportion of your peers got negative scores? This seems just as unhelpful for deciding who to hire or who to allow onto a higher course of study as the campaigns we have seen on some USA university campuses to give all students an automatic A grade.
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    That is the cost of equity. Note that the system also has many holes, so the categorization isn't perfect. Its possible for a large number of students to belong to the categories only on paper. So you don't even get equity in the end.

pmoriarty 4y ago

> you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge That's why you have to look at total wealth, not just income... though I'm sure the ultra wealthy will find some way to work around that as well.

csa 4y ago
Trusts are the most common way to do this.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  Then any trusts that benefit you should be counted as part of your wealth.
  - zamnos 4y ago
    So then the trust doesn't list you as a beneficiary but instead goes through a series of shell corporations that they don't control on paper. With stakes this high - your very child's future, there are always going to be people that are rich enough to break the spirit of the rules. If it's a small handful of people, there's probably better things for them to spend time on, rather than trying to make an unbeatable system.
_mh56 4y ago
You don't even need Trusts for this. EWS is decided by an issued certificate. The issuer can be bribed.
nradov 4y ago
As a practical matter how would college admissions departments even try to account for "total wealth"? That number doesn't appear on income tax returns. Applicants could write down any number and there wouldn't be any way to verify it short of a court ordered forensic audit.
- SoftTalker 4y ago

notlukesky 4y ago

40% for meritocratic entrance is more than twice what is at elite schools in the US. Maybe ambitious Americans should move to India for a fairer chance. At most US elite schools, less than 20 percent is for “non-reserved” seats. Elite schools reserve seats for sports teams (affirmative action for rich white elites with “sports” like fencing and rowing), legacies (affirmative action for rich white elites), related to professors and school administrators (affirmative action for rich white elites), those who write essays on poverty tourism and their work experience in the NGO/white savior/charity scams (rich white elites), and then regular affirmative action (capped at 20%]. So it is a brilliant way to use regular affirmative action for Blacks as a weapon to ensure that rich white elites always win and do not compete with the “deplorable” poorer whites, the Asians and immigrants.

pilarphosol 4y ago
This is about right. They want every podunk town to remember that the smartest or most impressive kid in 10 years went (finishing is optional) and they don’t really want more “strivers” than that.
rayiner 4y ago
> So it is a brilliant way to use regular affirmative action for Blacks as a weapon to ensure that rich white elites always win and do not compete with the “deplorable” poorer whites, the Asians and immigrants. I just realized that there are more Appalachians in America than Asian Americans. But how many people have you run into in an elite school with an Appalachian accent? (Or a southern or mid-atlantic, or other lower-tier white accent?)
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  I can think of exactly one guy: a classmate in electrical engineering courses who was from Kentucky. While you can obviously still find accents in the US, there are lots of reasons why you won't run into that family of accents much. Just about everyone in the US can avoid accents they don’t want by engaging in all forms of audible media, and social climbers and people who move around will avoid strong accents. Those are the same people who will filter to the top of any affirmative action cohort and end up at elite schools. Maybe the redneck culture of poor Appalachian people is less sticky than the redneck culture of many poor Blacks in the US. My personal anecdotes support that, but then selection bias means they necessarily must. When I run into guys at work with heavy Appalachian accents, they tend to be heavy machinery mechanics. That's also where I find Black guys who cling to a large amount of Black redneck culture. And those two groups together comprise the supermajority of heavy machinery mechanics at work, come to think of it. Source: I spent my entire childhood on counties adjacent to what is considered 'Appalachia', and I went to a higher-end college with a significant affirmative action focus on geographic distribution around the US.

tomcam 4y ago

What the hell. When you say caste based do you mean something unspoken or is it explicitly legislated? Mind-blowing.

doetoe 4y ago
Discrimination against lower castes is very real. There are quota to somewhat compensate for this. Maybe you interpreted it as there being quota for each caste?
- tomcam 4y ago
  Trying to understand, not interpret. Is there law allowing discrimination against lower cases? Or is there law allowing reverse discrimination to redress previous discrimination?
  - known 4y ago
    [dead]
  - doetoe 4y ago
    Sorry, I hadn't seen your message. There is a law prohibiting caste-based discrimination. For university admissions there are also quota for low caste, casteless and tribal people, meaning that a certain percentage of places is reserved only for students belonging to those groups
    - tomcam 4y ago
      Thanks. That matches what I had expected.