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Ivy League Demographics
- glitchc 3y agoWell, this is a strong counterpoint to the alumni/patronage theory. All the Ivies seem to be selecting the smartest of the bunch. Grades and standardized test scores matter.
- interroboink 3y agoYet in the chart, at the bottom ("Commentary"), it says: "Their 100- and 177-point SAT score lead ... seems to have hurt, not helped, their chances of admission"
- richiebful1 3y agoCan you draw that conclusion from these charts? The only SAT score chart is a mean SAT score across the entire US, not the Ivies
- drtz 3y agoYour comment is a perfect example of how this kind of data can be misinterpreted and distorted, intentionally or otherwise. There is no information in these charts about the test scores of those admitted.
- MathMonkeyMan 3y agoI came here to conclude that Asians and Jews are smarter, and so that's what I have concluded.
- BoorishBears 3y agoHow? Do you think the median student applies to an Ivy league? You'd need the scores their admissions team has, not graphs that include a randomly decided multiplier to determine white vs jewish SAT scores (seriously, read the methodology section at the bottom)
- emmelaich 3y agoI'd like to see further breakdowns. Asian to Indian, Chinese, Korean, other White to WASP and other -- maybe geographical Jewish to observant and non-observant Hispanic to ?? It's a loose category it seems to me. Is DeSantis Hispanic? Also how many are here on educational visas?
- BoorishBears 3y agoI was trying to find where this graph actually came from until I stumbled across the methodology section's... interesting approaches. It reads like something someone on 4chan would make to backup their soapbox, not an actual scientific study. (If you think assuming 100% of college students applied to Yale is sound methodology, maybe you don't need to worry about who goes to what Ivy.)
- kevinventullo 3y agoWhich part of the methodology do you think is suspect?
- BoorishBears 3y ago"Mean SAT score for non-Jewish Whites was derived by assuming the mean Jewish SAT score is a generous 1268." Very scientific. And the conclusion: "Their 100- and 177-point SAT score lead over Hispanic and Black students seems to have hurt, not helped, their chances of admission. On the other hand, the smaller 73-point lead of Asian students over Whites helped greatly." They're using scores from across the 100% of college applicants when less than 1% of them apply to Ivy League schools. If they had used more natural language I'd be charitable and say they didn't know better, but not after they went out of their way to invent numbers to... separate out Jewish people from whites? While also insisting they're a small group so it doesn't matter? I'm going to guess the admissions numbers didn't show the kind of dramatic gap they wanted so off to town they went.
- the_lego 3y ago
- buggythebug 3y ago[flagged]
- wudangmonk 3y agoJewish and Hispanics are now races yes.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoYou can be a multiracial Hispanic Jew, with Black, Asian and White heritage. And Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, Native American, etc.
- emmelaich 3y agoTo be fair its titled demographics not race. Whatever you want that to mean.
- GloomyBoots 3y agoIt’s an ethnic group with an associated religion. I don’t know about race in the sense it’s used today, but it makes sense to disentangle it from White here given its wildly divergent pattern. That said, White here presumably still includes other populations originating in Asia and Africa that aren’t likely to be considered White colloquially.
- user_named 3y agoWhat are those other white populations from Asia and Africa?
- torstenvl 3y agoThe Jewish people are an ethnic group, one that has survived for thousands of years of persecution and murder. So if you could maybe not start with a semantic argument about how the Holocaust wasn't "actually" a genocide, that would be fantastic. Thanks.
- 3y ago
- yieldcrv 3y agoEvery time people try to point this out, a less privileged Jewish person points out the less privileged Jewish people as if proof that nobody can see with their own eyes that, yes, there is also heavily disproportionate representation of Jewish people in an influential caste of US society Why is that deflection the depth of the discussion, not everyone is trying to exclude Jewish people or start a pogrom over these observations, but the depth of the discussion seems more like a deflection just in case, and I dont think its that helpful like, is there something other groups could learn, perhaps even the less privileged Jewish people?
- decremental 3y ago[dead]
- a_vanderbilt 3y agoBecause the discussion unfortunately devolves almost immediately into appallingly anti-semitic nonsense. I think that many minority groups tend to stick together because not only is it practical, but it keeps them close to their culture. The side effect of that is that success "stays in" the group. I observe a similar effect in my partner's family. My partner is Vietnamese, and their family placed heavy value on personal success, or the success of who they married. I can't speak for Vietnamese culture, but it may be a cultural value too. The result? One half of the family is incredibly well off, and the other half is supported by them to help raise them beyond their circumstance. It isn't a conspiracy as some posit, it's familial love and mutual support. One could argue they are doing the same as what Jews who came to the US also did: stick together and help each other, because it's a rough world out there. Some decry it as nepotism, as if those who are wealthy are not allowed to have preference for their own kind simply because they are wealthy. In that same vein, not everyone proves to be successful. It can simply be a matter of statistics or circumstance, but people place the blame on the individual or the group at the wrong times. I for one avoid any discussion on the matter because all too often it proves non-conductive to actually useful conversation.
- kevinventullo 3y agoSome decry it as nepotism, as if those who are wealthy are not allowed to have preference for their own kind simply because they are wealthy. Eh, I don’t think it was okay for the WASP owners of the Los Angeles Country Club to “prefer their own kind”. Maybe the right heuristic is something like: the more power and dominance a group of people have, the less okay it is for them to have preferences for others within that group.
- droptablemain 3y agoWhy is the non-Jewish white demo so under-represented everywhere but Dartmouth?
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoI bet that any breakdown of this sort: - minority X - minority Y - minority Z - the uncategorized ones Is going to find weird behavior around the last group, regardless of whether it's skin color or some other feature that's chosen to generate the partition. Something about remarkableness (being a minority and being in the ivy league are both remarkable traits) not being evenly distributed.
- bjourne 3y agoWhy can't you Americans just stop fetishizing university brands? In Europe nobody gives a shit if you graduated from, say, University of Frankfurt and not La Petit de Academy Francois Internatzionale. It's the content of the education that matters not the brand. You have a masters in archaeology? Ok, good luck finding a job. You have a masters in civil engineering? Good for you, you won't need luck. We even have evidence in forms of things like Mathematical Olympiads and coding competitions which are full of university students. Are they dominated by Ivy league students? No.
- ipaddr 3y agoPeople care about Oxford vs University of Bedfordshire. LMC Munich carries more weight than Hochschule der Wirtschaft für Management HdWM Mannheim
- frozenport 3y agoThis isn't true. Sorbonne got you into the door of substantially higher paying finance jobs.
- porknubbins 3y agoAmerican culture is almost entirely based on English not European culture. England historically was highly class based, heirarchical and had no revolution to upset the system. You might just as well attack Oxbridge. The Ivies are modern day route to preferment in presteige industries like big law and finance. Industries in which (for better or worse) US and UK firms are globally dominant. So it was less about education and more about training a ruling class.
- mvncleaninst 3y ago> American culture is almost entirely based on English not European culture. France also had a pretty strong influence on the founding fathers apparently. From what I've heard English are much nicer than we are
- cafard 3y ago
- abdisalan 3y agoLet's see: * uses a mix of sources from different years * a lot of guesses eg. arbitrary calculation with international students and Jewish SAT scores * Uses Mean SAT Scores nationally, not from Ivies * "This guaranteed to not unfairly over- or under-count any demographic" lol * Commentary makes conclusions about entrance based solely on SAT scores despite that not being anywhere near the full picture of an application Calling B.S.
- neltnerb 3y agoNow do the same thing for legacy admits versus non-legacy admits. Breaking it down by race as if it's a zero sum game is a distraction to get people fighting amongst themselves. What is the point in arguing about the relative fairness if most of the spots are taken by people who wouldn't have gotten in otherwise. Open their slots and it relieves most of the pressure on the admissions system, no?
- mattmcknight 3y agoI think the over/under representation stuff is suspect. If you want to start with the right candidate population, it is not all US university students. It is better to start with the population of students that scored over 1500 on the SAT.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AnotherGoodName 3y agoIt compares a non-US, international demographic to a US only demographic if you need help spotting the fallacy. The world sends it best and brightest to these institutions.
- zekrioca 3y agoAnalysis hasn’t included international students (read small letters), so you can’t conclude that, although plausible.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- andrewp123 3y agoHow is the average Jewish Mean Nationwide SAT score n/a? I would have liked to see that...
- daft_pink 3y agoFYI, not all Jews are white. Contrary to this ridiculous chart.
- the_lego 3y agoIn 2013, the Pew Research Center's Portrait of Jewish Americans found that more than 90% of Jews who responded to its survey described themselves as being non-Hispanic whites, 2% described themselves as being black, 3% described themselves as being Hispanic, and 2% described themselves as having other racial or ethnic backgrounds. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews
- eli_gottlieb 3y agoWell yes, if you define Iran as a "white" country of origin, all of LA's Persian Jewish exiles will report themselves as "non-Hispanic white", as if they were somehow akin to Boston Brahmins for having come to the USA from Iran in 1979.
- the_lego 3y agoWe can debate the various subtleties of "white" till the cows come home, but that is irrelevant to how accurate those graphs are. Let's assume the graphic erroneously counted 100% of Jews as white, instead of 90%. That would change the estimate of non-Jewish whites in the US from 55.4% to 55.64%, and the estimate of non-Jewish whites in the Ivies from 29.2% to 30.63%. This changes the under-representation of non-Jewish whites from 0.53 to 0.55. Is this so significantly different that the entire graphic can be dismissed?
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoUS demographics surveys typically lump the entirety of Europe (except Spain), most of Russia, and the middle east into "Non-Hispanic White". Iranians would definitely be marking themselves down as such. Occasionally you'll see one that has subdivisions of "White", typically splitting it up into Eastern and Western Europe, and Middle Eastern.
- jpn 3y agoDistribution of 1500+ SAT Scores White 0.381106 Black/African American 0.0544724 Hispanic/Latino 0.111558 Asian/Asian American 0.414271 Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 0.00100503 American Indian/Alaska Native 0.00261307 Two or More Races 0.0349749 Sources: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_226.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_226.10.a... https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/sat-percentile-r...
- TechBro8615 3y agoIs this normalized by number of each demographic that sits for the test? (Sorry if that's answered in the PDF but maybe someone with more time or statistical understanding than me can check it.)
- jpn 3y agoOut of all the people that scored 1500+ on the SATS, this is the percentage breakdown by race.
- the_lego 3y agoIf the mainstream discourse was "yes, whites are underrepresented, but they deserve it because they're dumb", that would be progress compared to the current "there are too many whites in the Ivies due to white supremacy (and the SAT is racist)" narrative. Sources: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36992516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36992516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36992739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36992739
- the_lego 3y agoFurthermore, why use 1500 SAT score? Because it gives the distribution you like? Harvard's cutoffs are 1100 for Blacks, Native Americans and Hispanics, 1350 for Asian women and 1380 for Asian men, and 1310 for "white wannabe students in states that don’t see a lot of Harvard attendees": https://nypost.com/2018/10/17/harvards-gatekeeper-reveals-sat-cutoff-scores-based-on-race/ https://nypost.com/2018/10/17/harvards-gatekeeper-reveals-sa...
- glimshe 3y agoPeople look at these stats and come up with all sorts of theories to explain them besides the obvious one: income and cultural differences highly correlated with race and leading to better testing and outcomes.
- raincom 3y agoNot all Ivy leagues are on the same pedestal: H(Harvard), Y(Yale), P(Princeton) are seen as elite. Demographics just masquerade the real composition of students: kids of elite (billionaires and presidents of countries that matter to the national interests of the states) across the world are admitted. One has to dig into the pedigree of these students to get a real handle: otherwise, admitting a kid of a black billionaire is sold as doing 'justice' to past injustices of Slavery.
- HPMOR 3y agoHYP may be elite but quite frankly it's to their own disadvantage. For funded startup founders as of 2023, the ranking list was 1) Stanford, 2)MIT, 3)UC Berkely, 4) Harvard, 5) Cornell. Cornell is consistently seen as "not elite" and in a sense it isn't, same with Berkely. Each of these top 5 schools, besides Harvard, exude a scrappy spirit for challenging the status quo. HYP, is focused on dominating the EXISTING power structure, whereas Stanford, MIT, Berkely, and Cornell are focused on building their own power structure. https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/top-universities-recently-funded-founders-stanford/#:~:text=The%20leading%20universities%20for%20funded,are%20Harvard%2C%20Stanford%20and%20Wharton https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/top-universities-recent....
- donkasaurus 3y agoThe emphasis on alleged Jewish and Asian over representation really strikes me as someone’s personal project. I don’t think they track who’s Jewish anymore at these schools. They certainly used to. Anonymous posters of demographic information with those emphases… leaves me with 4chan vibes.