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Here's a parallel situation at the high school level. At Stuyvesant High School here in NYC admissions is 100% test base, meaning the only criteria for accepta

Here's a parallel situation at the high school level. At Stuyvesant High School here in NYC admissions is 100% test base, meaning the only criteria for acceptance is your test score. Here's a quote about their acceptance policy (from an article called "Paper Tigers" in NY Mag last year): "Entrance to Stuyvesant, one of the most competitive public high schools in the country, is determined solely by performance on a test: The top 3.7 percent of all New York City students who take the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test hoping to go to Stuyvesant are accepted. There are no set-asides for the underprivileged or, conversely, for alumni or other privileged groups. There is no formula to encourage “diversity” or any nebulous concept of “well-roundedness” or “character.” Here we have something like pure meritocracy. This is what it looks like: Asian-Americans, who make up 12.6 percent of New York City, make up 72 percent of the high school." Not sure if this article ever made Hacker News, but it's worth reading if you have a chance. It's long-winded, but being Asian-American myself there's a sort of poetic-truth to it: http://nymag.com/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/ http://nymag.com/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/

balloot 15y ago
That's a great article. The same situation has developed here in San Francisco, where the magnet public high school that admits based solely on test scores is Asian by a large majority. The problem is, in the drive to get perfect grades and test scores, the drive for knowledge and life skills is lost somewhere along the way. And in the end, many asian students simply never get the skills needed to actually create things or execute at a job that doesn't have very rigid guidelines. I think the larger picture issue is optimizing for grades and tests does not optimize for achieving in the real world. And elite colleges in the US have acknowleged that, and brought in the use of subjective factors. And while that may be an imperfect system, it is less imperfect than choosing solely on scores and grades.

balloot 15y ago

That's a great article. The same situation has developed here in San Francisco, where the magnet public high school that admits based solely on test scores is Asian by a large majority. The problem is, in the drive to get perfect grades and test scores, the drive for knowledge and life skills is lost somewhere along the way. And in the end, many asian students simply never get the skills needed to actually create things or execute at a job that doesn't have very rigid guidelines. I think the larger picture issue is optimizing for grades and tests does not optimize for achieving in the real world. And elite colleges in the US have acknowleged that, and brought in the use of subjective factors. And while that may be an imperfect system, it is less imperfect than choosing solely on scores and grades.