9 ms·

Harvard, Princeton Targeted in Asian Discrimination Probe

98 points by leelin 15y ago

estevez 15y ago
I don't get it. Family income is a very strong (if not the best) predictor of SAT score. In this case, if you order each race by median income you get the exact same order as mean SAT score, Asian-American families with the highest median income and SAT, African-American families with the lowest.
- rottencupcakes 15y ago
  Correlation does not imply causation. You have, in fact, provided no proof that family income isn't ordered that way as a result of SAT scores.
  - fluidcruft 15y ago
    Causation is irrelevant. The question is the extent to which SAT score and family income contain the same information.
    - lurker17 15y ago
      Causation is measure of the extent to which they contain different information. Assuming a college wants to admit a student with high "intelligence" or intellectual potential, which cannot be measured directly. If high income causes high SAT, and high intelligence also causes high SAT, then (low income, high SAT) may well indicate much higher intellectual potential than (high income, high SAT) If high income and SAT are both caused by high intelligence, then there is less (intelligence-related) reason to prefer (high income, low SAT) or (low income, high SAT).
  - esrauch 15y ago
    That could be verified by looking at first-generation SAT takers, eg immigrant families or perhaps historical data from when SAT wasn't so common in the US. It seems extremely intuitive to me that families with higher income raise children that have higher SAT scores though.
  - estevez 15y ago
    >Correlation does not imply causation. Precisely my point. By my reading it appears that the only empirical evidence for race-based discrimination (an extraordinarily grave accusation) is something that could just as easily be explained by factors other than racism. But this is no defense of those elite institutions, mind you. I'd even go so far as to make an exception and tax the staggering returns on their endowments. http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/09/harvard-endowment-rises-to-32-billion http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/09/harvard-endowment-rises-t...
- microarchitect 15y ago
  Are you suggesting that affirmative action should be based on family income, then? Seems like a good idea to me, but I might be missing something. I'd be interested in a break up of admission statistics, SAT scores, race and family income for the Ivies. because I'm not entirely convinced that just because SAT scores follow family income in the general population, the trends are exactly the same among admitted students.
  - michael_miller 15y ago
    It's not fair to take affirmative action solely on family income, as the cost of living varies vastly across the US. $100K in Manhattan is nothing, but can translate to an extremely comfortable lifestyle in rural Texas.
    - estevez 15y ago
      Not solely on family income (but I'd suggest that if 100K is nothing in Manhattan one might be better served by looking a bit farther afield, Brooklyn perhaps...), but as it currently stands low income students receive no advantage at many elite institutions. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhardt.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhar...
    - _delirium 15y ago
      What I found most lacking among my own relatively diverse class (relatively diverse for an engineering school, anyway) was actually people from areas with low cost of living, aka "poor areas". For example, the school boasted that the incoming class represented 49 of the 50 states; the one missing was West Virginia. And in general people from places like West Texas or other non-major-metropolitan areas were underrepresented. Also true among minorities; there were a few black students from Los Angeles and Atlanta, but none from Mississippi.
  - estevez 15y ago
    Yes, to an extent. I think the focus on what the ivies do or don't do distorts our view (the majority of US undergraduates attend community colleges, for example) of what truly is broken in higher ed. I've commented before on it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3309894 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3309894
- daveed 15y ago
  Can you provide a source for this?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
Are the essays that some universities require there to offer a layer of plausible deniability ("sure your marks were excellent but your essay somehow didn't get us very excited").
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  That's exactly what Malcolm Gladwell suggests in this article: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar...
- lurker17 15y ago
  That's not really needed, when the universities proudly proclaim their commitment to diversity and a well-"balanced" class, which of course requires uneven application of objective measures to different subpopulations.
yosho 15y ago
Isn't it pretty easy to determine if there is racial bias in admissions? Isn't the fact that Asians need to score a couple hundred points higher on SAT score just to get admitted enough evidence that there is bias? Correct me if I'm wrong, but at Berkeley where Race is not considered in admissions, Asians comprise like 50% of the student body. I'm pretty sure you'd see similar numbers at all the elite universities if race wasn't an issue.
- crazygringo 15y ago
  No, because SAT scores don't determine admissions. A schoolmate of mine with straight A's who scored a perfect 1600 SAT was rejected from Harvard, because he had essentially zero extracurriculars. Schools like Harvard and Princeton look both for well-rounded students ("future leaders" they call them), as well as diversity in their student body. This means they won't accept, for example, 100 top violin players in the same class, no matter how impressive their individual applications are. Instead, they want a complete and balanced orchestra, for example. So if, hypothetically, Asians tended to disproportionately cluster in the same extracurricular activities, or have less extracurricular activities, then there would be a very valid non-race-based explanation for the SAT gap.
  - lurker17 15y ago
    > because he had essentially zero extracurriculars. You have no way of knowing how true that is. Distribution of talents (as you mention) among the applicants, and luck (a larger factor every year that the US population grows but the firstyear class doesn't) are the main factors.
    - grot 15y ago
      Maybe not in his particular case...but as an alumni interviewer, I can tell you that personality and extracurriculars matter a lot.
  - aeeeee 15y ago
    > 100 top violin players in the same class, no matter how impressive their individual applications are. Instead, they want a complete and balanced orchestra, for example. I agree that SAT scores shouldn't be the only factor, I disagree though if you are saying race can and should be factor. Where it's legal and appropriate to discriminate on say what instrument you play it is illegal (and most would agree immoral) to discriminate on race. Proving racial discrimination may be tricky in this case though.
grot 15y ago
The thing is, admissions to elite universities is almost never about test scores. Immigrant parents from countries like China and India are used to test scores mattering a lot. In those countries, your absolute score on the National Exam determines not only your placement into a university, but also what fields are available to you for study. The SAT is nothing like that. If you walk into Harvard or Princeton, you'll find that most of the kids got above 2300 on the SAT, and a ton had perfect scores. If you tried using the SAT to distinguish between members of the student body at either place, you would have little success. The admissions committee has the same problem, so, kids are not selected based on SATs. You get in because you're good, or at least, you show a lot of promise, not because you can study for a test. So yeah, maybe asians have higher test scores as a cohort, but maybe they also have less other things that are equally important -- sports, focus, passion, alumni connections, etc. These things count just as much in admissions decisions. It's possibly to argue that selecting for these things is inherently racist, but I mean, what isn't? The SAT itself privileges a white collar suburban education. Who's to say it's more valuable to be able to memorize vocab, or do arithmetic than to run or paint?
- aeeeee 15y ago
  I would say just because one culture is more inclined to sports and social activities doesn't mean it is racist to use these things as a discriminating factors. I don't think it's possible to argue that a selection criteria is racist unless the color of your skin is the sole discriminator.
  - tesseractive 15y ago
    On the other hand, it bears mentioning that you can be racist in your choice of selection criteria, if you choose criteria based on their ability to produce a certain racial outcome. The use of a poll tax people have to pay in order to vote isn't racist per se, but in the segregationist south, poll taxes were used as a mechanism to suppress black votes because they knew (disproportionately poor) black people would have a harder time paying it, and this use was racist.
- tokenadult 15y ago
bilbo0s 15y ago
Wow... I wonder what the Ivies would look like if admissions were 100% merit. No legacies. I think there would be FAR fewer trust-funders. And MIT's 'Chocolate City'...pretty much gone. I suspect they would be very Asian places with a smattering of Jewish students. I think I can see why they would give ... say ... a Colorado snow boarder a few extra points. I think there is something that he brings to an Ivy campus...though I can't quantify it.
- gte910h 15y ago
  >I wonder what the Ivies would look like if admissions were 100% merit. The issue is "how do you determine merit".
  - geogra4 15y ago
    Right on. Merit is much more than SAT scores and GPA. It is, in fact, whatever the school wants it to be.
    - vecter 15y ago
      Surely merit does not include race?
      - hackinthebochs 15y ago
        Merit can include a consideration of race. One factor of merit is being an outlier of your group. There are many ways to analyze a given population that reveals different clusters. Being an outlier of this cluster is a factor in merit. The question is, is race a relevant dimension to consider? At face value, the answer is no. But in the US at least, race is a proxy to many other factors that are extremely hard to quantify. These hard to quantify factors are relevant in determining who "deserves" a spot at your prestigious school. Thus a consideration of race within specific contexts can be relevant, college admissions being one of them.
      - gte910h 15y ago
        That isn't at all what I was saying, but the idea that two IDENTICAL students with nothing other than one being white and the other being asian would require 200 more SAT score points to get in is inaccurate. As a class, the students who applied who happened to be asian are probably lacking in other areas as well if this BIG of a bias is being seen. Perhaps there aren't enough participation in volunteering/jobs/sports. Perhaps there isn't a good relationship in the alumni interviews, who knows. There may STILL be a racial bias on top of that, however I'm guessing not 200 points worth of pure racial bias.
patio11 15y ago
We will now see the same racial discrimination departments which filed court briefs saying that race-neutral admissions policies would make them into Asian enclaves suddenly pretend to be shocked, shocked that anyone would suggest they were anything but valiant upholders of equal opportunity. I'll refrain from opining on what the government will do, solely out of respects for the HN politics rule. [Edit: One may think I am being unfair. Here, try reading Harvard's amici brief. http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/legal/gra_amicus-ussc/um/Harvard-both.pdf http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/legal/gra_amicus-ussc... ]
- Alex3917 15y ago
  One of my favorite education quotes, supposedly from Larry Summers, comes from when he was asked about why it was that 60% of white students were jewish. Supposedly he responded that while there was no surefire way of getting into Harvard, it certainly helps to have every advantage one can get.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
kandalf 15y ago
SAT scores are not a sufficient indicator for bias in college admissions. There are two factors at work here: 1. For elite colleges, specific SAT scores are irrelevant. Essentially, once a certain cut-off is reached, say 2250, it doesn't matter how high you go. In fact, I'm sure admissions officers get a kick out of rejecting the 2400 - I'd rather have a 2380 than a 2400 any day. The variance in SAT scores over a certain cutoff is simply not a good enough indicator for what the colleges are looking for. 2. In my experience, Asian families tend to place a disproportionate emphasis on test scores and grades. This leads to higher than average SAT scores for Asian students, sometimes at the cost of other parts of the application package. Taken together, I believe these two ideas contribute to a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon discussed in the article. This is not to say that admissions are not racially biased - I would not be at all surprised if they are.
- gte910h 15y ago
  Agreed. I'm sure they'll look racially biased, I think they probably are racially biased, but saying "LOOK AT THE NUMBERS AND GRADES" as the only indicator of who a college should let in is ludicrous. Other things people have done in life factor into future success. Working a part time job, for instance, something many 4.0/2400 people didn't do, relating well to others, volunteering, government service, art, sports, etc all have value as well, and can all be a much better determiniate of success than "did he test well".
- gxs 15y ago
  This is exactly right. I completely detest knee-jerk reactions and blanket statements that crop up instead of some good old fashioned critical thinking. I went to a school, a good school, that was predominantly asian in my department. If admissions are racial for no other reason than to diversify the student body, this is a reasonable approach on its own - though I'm sure there are plenty of other more old-fashioned legitimately fashioned arguments. So you had good grades but didn't get in because you are asian? Tough shit - a lot goes into creating a desirable incoming class than grades and standardized test scores.
  - hartleybrody 15y ago
hugh4life 15y ago
"""" "If all other credentials are equal, Asian-Americans need to score 140 points more than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450 points above African-Americans out of a maximum 1600 on the math and reading SAT to have the same chance of admission to a private college, according to “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal,” a 2009 book co-written by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade. """" The gap is nowhere near that large for Wisconsin-Madison or Duke which are rather selective institutions. I bet you're only going to get those kind of gaps at the Ivies and even then I'm very skeptical.
Scybert 15y ago
What's to stop people from putting whatever they want on the checkbox? For example, a white person can put Asian without having to prove it, right?
carguy1983 15y ago
Controversial topics like these usually have a core "assumption" that the discussions and arguments always circle around. The un-stated assumption in this case is that Asians, are for the most part, not well-rounded (and only focus on test scores), and hence, any reasonable admissions process that favors well-roundedness will result in an understandable (obviously!) bias against Asians.
hugh4life 15y ago
Here are my problems with Affirmative Action. 1. Academic Mismatch - Those who benefited from AA often can't keep up. They often fall behind or transfer to an easier major. 2. Cascading Academic Mismatch - This mismatch is replicated everywhere because the top academic tier recruits the top 'racial balancing' students from the tier below it. 3. Academic Mismatch Semiotics - This mismatch encourages judging people by their race on campus. It breeds racial conflict(no matter how low level it may be) and reduces solidarity between peoples on campus. Racial balancing and academic standards are at odds with each other. Schools that value racial diversity should set their academic standards appropriately.
- setzer 15y ago
  Respectfully, do you have any references regarding your first point?
balloot 15y ago
This article fails to mention that college admission is not based solely on test scores. Many Asians are almost solely test-driven and tend to ignore the other aspects of a "well-rounded" eduction. I am sure if you looked at race-based stats on who played sports in high school (as opposed to test scores like in the article), you would see that Asians are way behind in that particular metric. And while some may not think sports matter, colleges do. And it appears that there is good reason for this, as sports teach leadership, teamwork, how to perform under pressure, etc. I would hope this lawsuit is thrown out, as this country really should not be encouraging "tiger mom" behavior as the right thing to do. Instead, if you want your son to get into Harvard, stop making him study 15 hours a day and get him into extracurricular activities.
- hugh4life 15y ago
  Why shouldn't there be affirmative action for Asians in sports? Why are jock parents better than tiger moms? I really wish college sports were segregated by academics and were not just glorified development leagues for the professionals. Most of these college athletes have absolutely no business representing their schools. I didn't go to Stanford(I went to the UofI), but they are one of my favorite teams because at least I know those athletes belong in a college.
- kytmizuno 15y ago
  Don't throw out vast generalizations without data to support it.
- unavoidable 15y ago
  And punishing the children for the sins of the "tiger mom" is fine?
  - hackinthebochs 15y ago
    You're only being punished if somehow you can claim you deserved a spot at any particular school. This is what this discussion is about, how one determines "merit".
- 15y ago
tokenadult 15y ago
A very comprehensive FAQ on "race" and "ethnicity" as those categories apply to college admission in the United States can be found at http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/12282... The FAQ links to the relevant federal regulations defining the categories, and to guides to admission professionals on how to apply the categories, and to admissions statistics from a variety of colleges. Some colleges admit a substantial percentage of students who decline to self-report race or ethnicity, as is the right of every United States college applicant. Harvard, for example, has 12 percent of its currently enrolled undergraduates reported to the federal government as "race/ethnicity unknown" http://members.ucan-network.org/harvard http://members.ucan-network.org/harvard (even though Harvard personally interviews essentially all of its undergraduate applicants) and another 10 percent of its enrolled undergraduates are international students, for whom race and ethnicity are not reported as a matter of federal regulation. It will be interesting to see how this latest case turns out. As the submitted article notes, "While the Office for Civil Rights has the power to terminate federal financial aid to colleges, it almost always negotiates agreements with schools on steps required for compliance, rather than taking enforcement action, the Education Department spokesman said."
Irishsteve 15y ago
Seems to be a case of helicopter parents freaking out because their beloved didn't get offers from the same universities as their neighbours. Good colleges look at how rounded a person is, standardised tests don't always capture the high achievers.
- Quizzal 15y ago
  Keep in mind that truly sophisticated and informed "helicopter" parents know that tests are not enough - they've done their research, they themselves have been through the system. As a matter of fact, the truly informed helicopter parents are engineering failure into their child as well in order make him stronger. Many are reading how Native Americans create emotional strength in their children; others research and study the biographies of great leaders, investigating what separates these leaders from those that failed.
dgabriel 15y ago
Long ago, the valedictorian of my high school class (white, female), did not get into Brown, Harvard, MIT or Cornell, despite a stellar academic record and near-perfect SAT scores. She wound up going to a state school. Another white female in my class got into three of those places, despite being below the top 10%. Ivy admissions are entirely mysterious to me.
- itg 15y ago
  The number of people with good academic records and top SAT scores outnumber the total seats available at top schools. They also take into account extra-circulars, leadership experience, and other activities. This prevents people from just studying for tests and thinking they have an automatic admission. Personally, I'm glad they do or I imagine it would be a very dull environment if there was nothing but people with their head in the books all the time.
  - unavoidable 15y ago
    This pre-supposes that a lack of ("stellar") high school extracurriculars translates to a future lack of college extra-curriculars.
    - pradocchia 15y ago
      It's not that, it's that those with perfect scores appear to be wasting their talent on test taking. They'd prefer students who studied hard enough to get into the 95% percentile, and then devoted the remainder of their efforts elsewhere. If you can do both, fine, but don't sacrifice everything for a few more points on the SAT.
- dpritchett 15y ago
  I hear there are extracurriculars involved, like a decade of aspirational music training, leadership in high school sports, and civic engagement. I suppose someone else can weigh in with clues.
  - 15y ago
Shenglong 15y ago
Have we considered, that maybe the reason Asians need higher entrance scores, is because they end to have the same qualifications? I'm going to be a little racist towards my own race here, and tell you what I've observed recently. Most Chinese Females... 1. Play piano and/or violin 2. Take pictures of food 3. Probably applying to sciences Most Chinese Males... 1. Plays a racket sport - probably badminton (myself included) 2. Only works out upper body 3. Probably applying to engineering I never scored perfect SAT marks, and yet I still got my acceptances just fine, because I did so many things most Asians don't do. If the people doing these assessments actually spent time at elite campuses, they would understand better. Filing a complaint for not being admitted with a 2400 SAT score is ridiculous. I wouldn't want that kind of person in my class, that's for sure.
- ernestipark 15y ago
  I believe this is absolutely true. I've heard from a real admissions officer at an elite school that too many asian applicants just look exactly the same on paper. Schools are looking for diversity, not just ethnically, but in interests and talents as well.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- benmccann 15y ago
  If that were true then the admissions forms should not be asking about race. However, college admissions are explicitly race biased and use this information on incoming applications to alter the distribution of the student body from the distribution that would result in a race-blind admissions process.
- pradocchia 15y ago
  SAT scores above a certain threshold can become a negative signal, if they aren't paralleled by equally exceptional performance elsewhere. It suggests a certain misallocation of effort. "Why did this person spend all his time on the tests?"
  - 15y ago
lobster45 15y ago
This has been happening for at least 15 years. When I was in high school mid 1990's we had several Asian students with over a 4.2 GPA that were not accepted to local universities such as UCLA. There was not a specific rejection reason related to race, however several students with a GPA around 3.6 who were not Asian were accepted to UCLA.
- tikhonj 15y ago
  One thing to keep in mind is that large schools like UCLA tend to have different admissions policies for different colleges. So somebody interested in engineering would have a harder time getting into UCLA than somebody interested in anything else. I don't know exactly how it works for UCLA, but for Berkeley the admissions percentage for the EECS program is much smaller than the general admissions percentage. So, even ignoring differences in the application pools, getting into the EECS program is going to be much more difficult than getting into most other programs. And if you don't get into the program you applied to, you don't get in at all. So perhaps the different students applied to different colleges at UCLA? I know that from my high school, some fairly smart people didn't get in to Berkeley Engineering while some who weren't particularly gifted got into, say, the College of Natural Resources. This was just a reflection of the different admissions policies than any discrimination.
juiceandjuice 15y ago
I'd like to see some numbers related more to where people applying/going to prestigious schools are actually from, and application density for a given area.
mhartl 15y ago
The issue remains unresolved, said Stephen Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon who blogs about the admissions process. “The only way to answer these questions is to force these schools to open their data sets,” he said. “College admissions should be transparent.” If this every happens, heads will roll. Alas, Hell will freeze over first.
neilparikh 15y ago
People are pointing out the fact that Asians may not be getting in because they are focused too much on their studies and do not spend enough time in extra-circulars. If that's the issue, why not remove the race category on the form? That way, it is completely merit-based. I don't the admissions officer needs to see the race of the applicant to determine if he/she is interesting and has diverse extracurricular activities. The name could still hint at the race, but it should be much fairer than currently.
nandemo 15y ago
Whenever I read articles about the American university admission system, and the ensuing discussions about them, I feel like Gulliver visiting a weird country. It is so arcane and bizarre. If you want to major in CS or mathematics or engineering, who cares if you do ice skating or can play the tuba? And if you're a tuba player who wants to major in music, what can be possibly be more important than your musical skills? Entrance examinations are like the democracy. They suck but they suck far less than the existing alternatives. Of course, a lot of the top universities in the world are American; but I think that's despite the admission system, not thanks to it.
- jinushaun 15y ago
  Because there is much more demand than supply in the US for a college education. Going merit based is not that simple. If you have 1000 open seats at your school, 50,000 students apply and 1500 of them all have perfect SAT scores, how do you choose who gets in if it's entirely merit based. What makes this perfect SAT score different from that equally perfect SAT score? If everyone looks the same on paper, you need something extra to stand out. That's where extra-curricular activities come in. The other issue is programs. If you're a school with 1000 open seats and 100 of that is music, you're going to have to drop some very science-smart students to make room for music-smart students.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
Quizzal 15y ago
We should explore why some people deserve to enter Harvard/Stanford/etc. and why some don't? Part of the reason Harvard graduates are successful have little to do with merit and everything to do with being a "Harvard Grad", so it is a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways. In other words, if we pulled 3 super-hard working freshman from random state schools, and put them through Harvard, and follow them 10 years later, would it surprise anybody that they would end up being successful? If so, what does it matter that their SATs sucked in the first place? Do they not deserve a shot at success as the next person? So they scored "only" in the top 20%, because they were hard working dual athletes with a part time job helping out their single parent and no AP classes, so what? Why should they not have the same shot at the Harvard lottery ticket as the kid who's fortunate enough to be born to a "tiger" Asian mother or well connected blue blood parents? It's clearly a racket, this whole Ivy/Stanford system where grads from such schools receive the benefit of the doubt when it comes to employment. By the way, I am such a tiger parent, and it's almost ridiculously pathetic to game this system to a certain degree. Let's see, he is currently enjoying: 1. Summer computer camps 2. Singing/piano lessons + rock band camp in the summer 3. Leadership/Scout programs 4. Private school education with very small teacher/student ratios 5. Competing on the swim team 6. Starting a recycling program at his school as his "entrepreneurial project" and writing a journal about his experiences Most importantly, the above is very fun for him because he's allowed to enjoy the moment after periods of incredibly hard work. And he just turned 8. The only time he watches "TV" is Netflix on the iPad in the car while we shuttle him between activities. This is the new normal, and what I'm doing is what all the other Tiger parents are doing to create the "balanced" individual. Yes, he goes to birthday parties, yes he has sleepovers, and yes he has lots of friends. But because he's having "fun", we are not pushing him 24/7 to be the "best" in all these activities, but to simply do his best, as best as an 8 year old is expected to do. Nevertheless, I feel bad for the kids that do not have such supportive parents with the resources to help their children in this way. My son does not deserve success any more than the next child, he's simply blessed that he was not born in the 'hood.
eneveu 15y ago
Guess they should use "Asian Problems"? http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096793 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096793

98 points by leelin 15y ago

I don't get it. Family income is a very strong (if not the best) predictor of SAT score. In this case, if you order each race by median income you get the exact same order as mean SAT score, Asian-American families with the highest median income and SAT, African-American families with the lowest.

rottencupcakes 15y ago
Correlation does not imply causation. You have, in fact, provided no proof that family income isn't ordered that way as a result of SAT scores.
- fluidcruft 15y ago
  Causation is irrelevant. The question is the extent to which SAT score and family income contain the same information.
  - lurker17 15y ago
    Causation is measure of the extent to which they contain different information. Assuming a college wants to admit a student with high "intelligence" or intellectual potential, which cannot be measured directly. If high income causes high SAT, and high intelligence also causes high SAT, then (low income, high SAT) may well indicate much higher intellectual potential than (high income, high SAT) If high income and SAT are both caused by high intelligence, then there is less (intelligence-related) reason to prefer (high income, low SAT) or (low income, high SAT).
- esrauch 15y ago
  That could be verified by looking at first-generation SAT takers, eg immigrant families or perhaps historical data from when SAT wasn't so common in the US. It seems extremely intuitive to me that families with higher income raise children that have higher SAT scores though.
- estevez 15y ago
  >Correlation does not imply causation. Precisely my point. By my reading it appears that the only empirical evidence for race-based discrimination (an extraordinarily grave accusation) is something that could just as easily be explained by factors other than racism. But this is no defense of those elite institutions, mind you. I'd even go so far as to make an exception and tax the staggering returns on their endowments. http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/09/harvard-endowment-rises-to-32-billion http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/09/harvard-endowment-rises-t...
microarchitect 15y ago
Are you suggesting that affirmative action should be based on family income, then? Seems like a good idea to me, but I might be missing something. I'd be interested in a break up of admission statistics, SAT scores, race and family income for the Ivies. because I'm not entirely convinced that just because SAT scores follow family income in the general population, the trends are exactly the same among admitted students.
- michael_miller 15y ago
  It's not fair to take affirmative action solely on family income, as the cost of living varies vastly across the US. $100K in Manhattan is nothing, but can translate to an extremely comfortable lifestyle in rural Texas.
  - estevez 15y ago
    Not solely on family income (but I'd suggest that if 100K is nothing in Manhattan one might be better served by looking a bit farther afield, Brooklyn perhaps...), but as it currently stands low income students receive no advantage at many elite institutions. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhardt.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhar...
  - _delirium 15y ago
    What I found most lacking among my own relatively diverse class (relatively diverse for an engineering school, anyway) was actually people from areas with low cost of living, aka "poor areas". For example, the school boasted that the incoming class represented 49 of the 50 states; the one missing was West Virginia. And in general people from places like West Texas or other non-major-metropolitan areas were underrepresented. Also true among minorities; there were a few black students from Los Angeles and Atlanta, but none from Mississippi.
- estevez 15y ago
  Yes, to an extent. I think the focus on what the ivies do or don't do distorts our view (the majority of US undergraduates attend community colleges, for example) of what truly is broken in higher ed. I've commented before on it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3309894 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3309894
daveed 15y ago
Can you provide a source for this?

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

GiraffeNecktie 15y ago

Are the essays that some universities require there to offer a layer of plausible deniability ("sure your marks were excellent but your essay somehow didn't get us very excited").

w1ntermute 15y ago
That's exactly what Malcolm Gladwell suggests in this article: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar...
lurker17 15y ago
That's not really needed, when the universities proudly proclaim their commitment to diversity and a well-"balanced" class, which of course requires uneven application of objective measures to different subpopulations.

yosho 15y ago

Isn't it pretty easy to determine if there is racial bias in admissions? Isn't the fact that Asians need to score a couple hundred points higher on SAT score just to get admitted enough evidence that there is bias? Correct me if I'm wrong, but at Berkeley where Race is not considered in admissions, Asians comprise like 50% of the student body. I'm pretty sure you'd see similar numbers at all the elite universities if race wasn't an issue.

crazygringo 15y ago
No, because SAT scores don't determine admissions. A schoolmate of mine with straight A's who scored a perfect 1600 SAT was rejected from Harvard, because he had essentially zero extracurriculars. Schools like Harvard and Princeton look both for well-rounded students ("future leaders" they call them), as well as diversity in their student body. This means they won't accept, for example, 100 top violin players in the same class, no matter how impressive their individual applications are. Instead, they want a complete and balanced orchestra, for example. So if, hypothetically, Asians tended to disproportionately cluster in the same extracurricular activities, or have less extracurricular activities, then there would be a very valid non-race-based explanation for the SAT gap.
- lurker17 15y ago
  > because he had essentially zero extracurriculars. You have no way of knowing how true that is. Distribution of talents (as you mention) among the applicants, and luck (a larger factor every year that the US population grows but the firstyear class doesn't) are the main factors.
  - grot 15y ago
    Maybe not in his particular case...but as an alumni interviewer, I can tell you that personality and extracurriculars matter a lot.
- aeeeee 15y ago
  > 100 top violin players in the same class, no matter how impressive their individual applications are. Instead, they want a complete and balanced orchestra, for example. I agree that SAT scores shouldn't be the only factor, I disagree though if you are saying race can and should be factor. Where it's legal and appropriate to discriminate on say what instrument you play it is illegal (and most would agree immoral) to discriminate on race. Proving racial discrimination may be tricky in this case though.

grot 15y ago

The thing is, admissions to elite universities is almost never about test scores. Immigrant parents from countries like China and India are used to test scores mattering a lot. In those countries, your absolute score on the National Exam determines not only your placement into a university, but also what fields are available to you for study. The SAT is nothing like that. If you walk into Harvard or Princeton, you'll find that most of the kids got above 2300 on the SAT, and a ton had perfect scores. If you tried using the SAT to distinguish between members of the student body at either place, you would have little success. The admissions committee has the same problem, so, kids are not selected based on SATs. You get in because you're good, or at least, you show a lot of promise, not because you can study for a test. So yeah, maybe asians have higher test scores as a cohort, but maybe they also have less other things that are equally important -- sports, focus, passion, alumni connections, etc. These things count just as much in admissions decisions. It's possibly to argue that selecting for these things is inherently racist, but I mean, what isn't? The SAT itself privileges a white collar suburban education. Who's to say it's more valuable to be able to memorize vocab, or do arithmetic than to run or paint?

aeeeee 15y ago
I would say just because one culture is more inclined to sports and social activities doesn't mean it is racist to use these things as a discriminating factors. I don't think it's possible to argue that a selection criteria is racist unless the color of your skin is the sole discriminator.
- tesseractive 15y ago
  On the other hand, it bears mentioning that you can be racist in your choice of selection criteria, if you choose criteria based on their ability to produce a certain racial outcome. The use of a poll tax people have to pay in order to vote isn't racist per se, but in the segregationist south, poll taxes were used as a mechanism to suppress black votes because they knew (disproportionately poor) black people would have a harder time paying it, and this use was racist.
tokenadult 15y ago

bilbo0s 15y ago

Wow... I wonder what the Ivies would look like if admissions were 100% merit. No legacies. I think there would be FAR fewer trust-funders. And MIT's 'Chocolate City'...pretty much gone. I suspect they would be very Asian places with a smattering of Jewish students. I think I can see why they would give ... say ... a Colorado snow boarder a few extra points. I think there is something that he brings to an Ivy campus...though I can't quantify it.

gte910h 15y ago
>I wonder what the Ivies would look like if admissions were 100% merit. The issue is "how do you determine merit".
- geogra4 15y ago
  Right on. Merit is much more than SAT scores and GPA. It is, in fact, whatever the school wants it to be.
  - vecter 15y ago
    Surely merit does not include race?
    - hackinthebochs 15y ago
      Merit can include a consideration of race. One factor of merit is being an outlier of your group. There are many ways to analyze a given population that reveals different clusters. Being an outlier of this cluster is a factor in merit. The question is, is race a relevant dimension to consider? At face value, the answer is no. But in the US at least, race is a proxy to many other factors that are extremely hard to quantify. These hard to quantify factors are relevant in determining who "deserves" a spot at your prestigious school. Thus a consideration of race within specific contexts can be relevant, college admissions being one of them.
    - gte910h 15y ago
      That isn't at all what I was saying, but the idea that two IDENTICAL students with nothing other than one being white and the other being asian would require 200 more SAT score points to get in is inaccurate. As a class, the students who applied who happened to be asian are probably lacking in other areas as well if this BIG of a bias is being seen. Perhaps there aren't enough participation in volunteering/jobs/sports. Perhaps there isn't a good relationship in the alumni interviews, who knows. There may STILL be a racial bias on top of that, however I'm guessing not 200 points worth of pure racial bias.

patio11 15y ago

We will now see the same racial discrimination departments which filed court briefs saying that race-neutral admissions policies would make them into Asian enclaves suddenly pretend to be shocked, shocked that anyone would suggest they were anything but valiant upholders of equal opportunity. I'll refrain from opining on what the government will do, solely out of respects for the HN politics rule. [Edit: One may think I am being unfair. Here, try reading Harvard's amici brief. http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/legal/gra_amicus-ussc/um/Harvard-both.pdf http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/legal/gra_amicus-ussc... ]

Alex3917 15y ago
One of my favorite education quotes, supposedly from Larry Summers, comes from when he was asked about why it was that 60% of white students were jewish. Supposedly he responded that while there was no surefire way of getting into Harvard, it certainly helps to have every advantage one can get.
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kandalf 15y ago

SAT scores are not a sufficient indicator for bias in college admissions. There are two factors at work here: 1. For elite colleges, specific SAT scores are irrelevant. Essentially, once a certain cut-off is reached, say 2250, it doesn't matter how high you go. In fact, I'm sure admissions officers get a kick out of rejecting the 2400 - I'd rather have a 2380 than a 2400 any day. The variance in SAT scores over a certain cutoff is simply not a good enough indicator for what the colleges are looking for. 2. In my experience, Asian families tend to place a disproportionate emphasis on test scores and grades. This leads to higher than average SAT scores for Asian students, sometimes at the cost of other parts of the application package. Taken together, I believe these two ideas contribute to a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon discussed in the article. This is not to say that admissions are not racially biased - I would not be at all surprised if they are.

gte910h 15y ago
Agreed. I'm sure they'll look racially biased, I think they probably are racially biased, but saying "LOOK AT THE NUMBERS AND GRADES" as the only indicator of who a college should let in is ludicrous. Other things people have done in life factor into future success. Working a part time job, for instance, something many 4.0/2400 people didn't do, relating well to others, volunteering, government service, art, sports, etc all have value as well, and can all be a much better determiniate of success than "did he test well".
gxs 15y ago
This is exactly right. I completely detest knee-jerk reactions and blanket statements that crop up instead of some good old fashioned critical thinking. I went to a school, a good school, that was predominantly asian in my department. If admissions are racial for no other reason than to diversify the student body, this is a reasonable approach on its own - though I'm sure there are plenty of other more old-fashioned legitimately fashioned arguments. So you had good grades but didn't get in because you are asian? Tough shit - a lot goes into creating a desirable incoming class than grades and standardized test scores.
- hartleybrody 15y ago

hugh4life 15y ago

"""" "If all other credentials are equal, Asian-Americans need to score 140 points more than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450 points above African-Americans out of a maximum 1600 on the math and reading SAT to have the same chance of admission to a private college, according to “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal,” a 2009 book co-written by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade. """" The gap is nowhere near that large for Wisconsin-Madison or Duke which are rather selective institutions. I bet you're only going to get those kind of gaps at the Ivies and even then I'm very skeptical.

Scybert 15y ago

What's to stop people from putting whatever they want on the checkbox? For example, a white person can put Asian without having to prove it, right?

carguy1983 15y ago

Controversial topics like these usually have a core "assumption" that the discussions and arguments always circle around. The un-stated assumption in this case is that Asians, are for the most part, not well-rounded (and only focus on test scores), and hence, any reasonable admissions process that favors well-roundedness will result in an understandable (obviously!) bias against Asians.

hugh4life 15y ago

Here are my problems with Affirmative Action. 1. Academic Mismatch - Those who benefited from AA often can't keep up. They often fall behind or transfer to an easier major. 2. Cascading Academic Mismatch - This mismatch is replicated everywhere because the top academic tier recruits the top 'racial balancing' students from the tier below it. 3. Academic Mismatch Semiotics - This mismatch encourages judging people by their race on campus. It breeds racial conflict(no matter how low level it may be) and reduces solidarity between peoples on campus. Racial balancing and academic standards are at odds with each other. Schools that value racial diversity should set their academic standards appropriately.

setzer 15y ago
Respectfully, do you have any references regarding your first point?

balloot 15y ago

This article fails to mention that college admission is not based solely on test scores. Many Asians are almost solely test-driven and tend to ignore the other aspects of a "well-rounded" eduction. I am sure if you looked at race-based stats on who played sports in high school (as opposed to test scores like in the article), you would see that Asians are way behind in that particular metric. And while some may not think sports matter, colleges do. And it appears that there is good reason for this, as sports teach leadership, teamwork, how to perform under pressure, etc. I would hope this lawsuit is thrown out, as this country really should not be encouraging "tiger mom" behavior as the right thing to do. Instead, if you want your son to get into Harvard, stop making him study 15 hours a day and get him into extracurricular activities.

hugh4life 15y ago
Why shouldn't there be affirmative action for Asians in sports? Why are jock parents better than tiger moms? I really wish college sports were segregated by academics and were not just glorified development leagues for the professionals. Most of these college athletes have absolutely no business representing their schools. I didn't go to Stanford(I went to the UofI), but they are one of my favorite teams because at least I know those athletes belong in a college.
kytmizuno 15y ago
Don't throw out vast generalizations without data to support it.
unavoidable 15y ago
And punishing the children for the sins of the "tiger mom" is fine?
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  You're only being punished if somehow you can claim you deserved a spot at any particular school. This is what this discussion is about, how one determines "merit".
15y ago

tokenadult 15y ago

A very comprehensive FAQ on "race" and "ethnicity" as those categories apply to college admission in the United States can be found at http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/12282... The FAQ links to the relevant federal regulations defining the categories, and to guides to admission professionals on how to apply the categories, and to admissions statistics from a variety of colleges. Some colleges admit a substantial percentage of students who decline to self-report race or ethnicity, as is the right of every United States college applicant. Harvard, for example, has 12 percent of its currently enrolled undergraduates reported to the federal government as "race/ethnicity unknown" http://members.ucan-network.org/harvard http://members.ucan-network.org/harvard (even though Harvard personally interviews essentially all of its undergraduate applicants) and another 10 percent of its enrolled undergraduates are international students, for whom race and ethnicity are not reported as a matter of federal regulation. It will be interesting to see how this latest case turns out. As the submitted article notes, "While the Office for Civil Rights has the power to terminate federal financial aid to colleges, it almost always negotiates agreements with schools on steps required for compliance, rather than taking enforcement action, the Education Department spokesman said."

Irishsteve 15y ago

Seems to be a case of helicopter parents freaking out because their beloved didn't get offers from the same universities as their neighbours. Good colleges look at how rounded a person is, standardised tests don't always capture the high achievers.

Quizzal 15y ago
Keep in mind that truly sophisticated and informed "helicopter" parents know that tests are not enough - they've done their research, they themselves have been through the system. As a matter of fact, the truly informed helicopter parents are engineering failure into their child as well in order make him stronger. Many are reading how Native Americans create emotional strength in their children; others research and study the biographies of great leaders, investigating what separates these leaders from those that failed.

dgabriel 15y ago

Long ago, the valedictorian of my high school class (white, female), did not get into Brown, Harvard, MIT or Cornell, despite a stellar academic record and near-perfect SAT scores. She wound up going to a state school. Another white female in my class got into three of those places, despite being below the top 10%. Ivy admissions are entirely mysterious to me.

itg 15y ago
The number of people with good academic records and top SAT scores outnumber the total seats available at top schools. They also take into account extra-circulars, leadership experience, and other activities. This prevents people from just studying for tests and thinking they have an automatic admission. Personally, I'm glad they do or I imagine it would be a very dull environment if there was nothing but people with their head in the books all the time.
- unavoidable 15y ago
  This pre-supposes that a lack of ("stellar") high school extracurriculars translates to a future lack of college extra-curriculars.
  - pradocchia 15y ago
    It's not that, it's that those with perfect scores appear to be wasting their talent on test taking. They'd prefer students who studied hard enough to get into the 95% percentile, and then devoted the remainder of their efforts elsewhere. If you can do both, fine, but don't sacrifice everything for a few more points on the SAT.
dpritchett 15y ago
I hear there are extracurriculars involved, like a decade of aspirational music training, leadership in high school sports, and civic engagement. I suppose someone else can weigh in with clues.
- 15y ago

Shenglong 15y ago

Have we considered, that maybe the reason Asians need higher entrance scores, is because they end to have the same qualifications? I'm going to be a little racist towards my own race here, and tell you what I've observed recently. Most Chinese Females... 1. Play piano and/or violin 2. Take pictures of food 3. Probably applying to sciences Most Chinese Males... 1. Plays a racket sport - probably badminton (myself included) 2. Only works out upper body 3. Probably applying to engineering I never scored perfect SAT marks, and yet I still got my acceptances just fine, because I did so many things most Asians don't do. If the people doing these assessments actually spent time at elite campuses, they would understand better. Filing a complaint for not being admitted with a 2400 SAT score is ridiculous. I wouldn't want that kind of person in my class, that's for sure.

ernestipark 15y ago
I believe this is absolutely true. I've heard from a real admissions officer at an elite school that too many asian applicants just look exactly the same on paper. Schools are looking for diversity, not just ethnically, but in interests and talents as well.
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benmccann 15y ago
If that were true then the admissions forms should not be asking about race. However, college admissions are explicitly race biased and use this information on incoming applications to alter the distribution of the student body from the distribution that would result in a race-blind admissions process.
pradocchia 15y ago
SAT scores above a certain threshold can become a negative signal, if they aren't paralleled by equally exceptional performance elsewhere. It suggests a certain misallocation of effort. "Why did this person spend all his time on the tests?"
- 15y ago

lobster45 15y ago

This has been happening for at least 15 years. When I was in high school mid 1990's we had several Asian students with over a 4.2 GPA that were not accepted to local universities such as UCLA. There was not a specific rejection reason related to race, however several students with a GPA around 3.6 who were not Asian were accepted to UCLA.

tikhonj 15y ago
One thing to keep in mind is that large schools like UCLA tend to have different admissions policies for different colleges. So somebody interested in engineering would have a harder time getting into UCLA than somebody interested in anything else. I don't know exactly how it works for UCLA, but for Berkeley the admissions percentage for the EECS program is much smaller than the general admissions percentage. So, even ignoring differences in the application pools, getting into the EECS program is going to be much more difficult than getting into most other programs. And if you don't get into the program you applied to, you don't get in at all. So perhaps the different students applied to different colleges at UCLA? I know that from my high school, some fairly smart people didn't get in to Berkeley Engineering while some who weren't particularly gifted got into, say, the College of Natural Resources. This was just a reflection of the different admissions policies than any discrimination.

juiceandjuice 15y ago

I'd like to see some numbers related more to where people applying/going to prestigious schools are actually from, and application density for a given area.

mhartl 15y ago

The issue remains unresolved, said Stephen Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon who blogs about the admissions process. “The only way to answer these questions is to force these schools to open their data sets,” he said. “College admissions should be transparent.” If this every happens, heads will roll. Alas, Hell will freeze over first.

neilparikh 15y ago

People are pointing out the fact that Asians may not be getting in because they are focused too much on their studies and do not spend enough time in extra-circulars. If that's the issue, why not remove the race category on the form? That way, it is completely merit-based. I don't the admissions officer needs to see the race of the applicant to determine if he/she is interesting and has diverse extracurricular activities. The name could still hint at the race, but it should be much fairer than currently.

nandemo 15y ago

Whenever I read articles about the American university admission system, and the ensuing discussions about them, I feel like Gulliver visiting a weird country. It is so arcane and bizarre. If you want to major in CS or mathematics or engineering, who cares if you do ice skating or can play the tuba? And if you're a tuba player who wants to major in music, what can be possibly be more important than your musical skills? Entrance examinations are like the democracy. They suck but they suck far less than the existing alternatives. Of course, a lot of the top universities in the world are American; but I think that's despite the admission system, not thanks to it.

jinushaun 15y ago
Because there is much more demand than supply in the US for a college education. Going merit based is not that simple. If you have 1000 open seats at your school, 50,000 students apply and 1500 of them all have perfect SAT scores, how do you choose who gets in if it's entirely merit based. What makes this perfect SAT score different from that equally perfect SAT score? If everyone looks the same on paper, you need something extra to stand out. That's where extra-curricular activities come in. The other issue is programs. If you're a school with 1000 open seats and 100 of that is music, you're going to have to drop some very science-smart students to make room for music-smart students.
- deleted 15y ago
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Quizzal 15y ago

We should explore why some people deserve to enter Harvard/Stanford/etc. and why some don't? Part of the reason Harvard graduates are successful have little to do with merit and everything to do with being a "Harvard Grad", so it is a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways. In other words, if we pulled 3 super-hard working freshman from random state schools, and put them through Harvard, and follow them 10 years later, would it surprise anybody that they would end up being successful? If so, what does it matter that their SATs sucked in the first place? Do they not deserve a shot at success as the next person? So they scored "only" in the top 20%, because they were hard working dual athletes with a part time job helping out their single parent and no AP classes, so what? Why should they not have the same shot at the Harvard lottery ticket as the kid who's fortunate enough to be born to a "tiger" Asian mother or well connected blue blood parents? It's clearly a racket, this whole Ivy/Stanford system where grads from such schools receive the benefit of the doubt when it comes to employment. By the way, I am such a tiger parent, and it's almost ridiculously pathetic to game this system to a certain degree. Let's see, he is currently enjoying: 1. Summer computer camps 2. Singing/piano lessons + rock band camp in the summer 3. Leadership/Scout programs 4. Private school education with very small teacher/student ratios 5. Competing on the swim team 6. Starting a recycling program at his school as his "entrepreneurial project" and writing a journal about his experiences Most importantly, the above is very fun for him because he's allowed to enjoy the moment after periods of incredibly hard work. And he just turned 8. The only time he watches "TV" is Netflix on the iPad in the car while we shuttle him between activities. This is the new normal, and what I'm doing is what all the other Tiger parents are doing to create the "balanced" individual. Yes, he goes to birthday parties, yes he has sleepovers, and yes he has lots of friends. But because he's having "fun", we are not pushing him 24/7 to be the "best" in all these activities, but to simply do his best, as best as an 8 year old is expected to do. Nevertheless, I feel bad for the kids that do not have such supportive parents with the resources to help their children in this way. My son does not deserve success any more than the next child, he's simply blessed that he was not born in the 'hood.

eneveu 15y ago

Guess they should use "Asian Problems"? http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096793 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096793