33 ms·

Harvard’s Asian Problem

30 points by softdev12 12y ago

Terr_ 12y ago
What's the etiquette for registration-required (or paywalled) links?
- iLoch 12y ago
  Someone usually posts either the article in full, or the Google redirect link (WSJ doesn't paywall traffic directly from Google)
- vmarsy 12y ago
  For true pay-wall articles it would be a problem but here you can just search for the article's title on Google and see it for free
  - greglindahl 12y ago
    No, you can't. I opened up Google News and did a search for the article title in an incognito window and still couldn't view the article. Maybe it worked for you, but it's a lot higher paywall than the ones at NYT. HN can't continue to publish stories that people can't read. Edit: That was using Firefox's incognito mode; in Chrome incognito it worked. I can't imagine how that could possibly be true. Maybe it's because the first time I clicked on the wsj link in FF I wasn't incognito and the WSJ recorded my IP/UA? In any case, no, it's not an easily solved paywall.
    - dang 12y ago
      Part of the problem is that we get inconsistent reports from readers about what articles do and don't have workarounds. I just did what you described (from SF) and it worked.
    - vmarsy 12y ago
      This is strange, I opened it from Firefox, but without bothering going into incognito mode. I tried multiple times from the direct link I had the paywall, from Google's search everything was fine. If it can help anyone access the article, I use the Disconnect, Adblock plus, and self destructing cookies add-ons.
- dang 12y ago
  Good question. Thanks for putting it so precisely. HN wants the most substantive article for a story, and also prefers non-paywalled links. From that we can deduce one bit of etiquette, which is that if you post a paywalled article you're implicitly promising that it's the best one, i.e. that you searched and there's nothing else as good on this story. In such a case, as long as it falls in the workaround-able category (which most paywalls do), it's ok. That's on the submitter side. On the reader side, the etiquette might be that you should point out a non-paywalled URL if you can find one that's as good (in which case we'll be happy to switch to it), and also that you probably shouldn't post generic complaints about paywalls to the thread, which are guaranteed to be off-topic. It's not a status quo anyone's happy with, and we'd be happy to hear suggestions of a better way, but please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634076 before you do.
himynameistimli 12y ago
Asians are being used as a wedge in the one lawyer's agenda against affirmative action.
- sremani 12y ago
  That does not exonerate Harvard from its Asian glass ceiling, misdirection does not explain 20 years of "record".
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- verroq 12y ago
  Are Asians as privileged as whites?
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Lawyers and other people interested in rational argument will look at cases where a policies stated justification does not match up to it's actual implementation, and use that (correctly) as evidence of malfeasance. What's your point?
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  You say that as if it's a bad thing.
butwhy 12y ago
I would speculate that this problem is not as big as the paywall problem.
- viggity 12y ago
  Search the title of the article in google, then click the link. They'll let you through if the referrer is a search engine
  - fabulist 12y ago
    This is usually my goto move, but it failed me here.
tokenizerrr 12y ago
To bypass the paywall: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCQQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fharvards-asian-problem-1416615041&ei=aWJxVNX7KsWCPenpgcgF&usg=AFQjCNFx4jAu3iXSX2MOITUbgE1rO6gK_A&sig2=38LP7WVfphG3BkJL9pNFYg&bvm=bv.80185997,d.ZWU https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- ocb 12y ago
  On my Mac this doesn't work on Safari but does work on Chrome. Interesting!
- gamesbrainiac 12y ago
  If you can access it, just save it via the internet archive.
  - greglindahl 12y ago
    IA has 4 copies of this page. 3 are CAPTCHA challenges, and the 4th throws an error message. Why on earth did you think this might work without testing it yourself?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- pickle27 12y ago
  can you explain how this works?
  - gizmo686 12y ago
    http includes a referer field that tells a webserver what page linked you to it. It is therefore possible for the server to disable the paywall for visitors who arrive through google.
  - jacalata 12y ago
    I think that if you want google to be able to index the article text, then the article has to be accessible from the search result - you can't show different pages to google's robot than to human visitors or they'll block you. So the paywall is not allowed to kick in if you are coming directly from google. (Works for the NYT as well, probably anywhere else that is indexed on google too).
parennoob 12y ago
As I have tried to point out before, this exact same problem is also present in efforts to bolster minority participation in tech. Asian men are often completely ignored in minority programs, because "Uh, there are a lot of Asian guys in tech", completely ignoring the strongly inferior position that they hold in American society as a whole (in my opinion, definitely one below that of white women; though this is only an opinion.) The response I usually get when I point out this problem on HN is a glib "Hey, it's a free country. Nobody prevented you from starting up your own minority program for Asians." [1] Unfortunately, so far I haven't been able to find a proper response to this. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524665
- potatolicious 12y ago
  I read an article once that phrased it well regarding Asians: "we have a problem, and we are a problem, at the same time". We're "represented" in tech, but not at the upper echelons where we're substantially under represented, and at the same time our presence is used as justification that other races aren't being discriminated against. Asians are tremendously more privileged than Blacks or Hispanics in tech, but still suffer from tremendous problems ourselves. Many seem unable to comprehend this in a world view where privilege is binary.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    We're "represented" in tech, but not at the upper echelons where we're substantially under represented... Do you have data on this? Anecdotally it isn't hard to think of Asians in the upper echelons (e.g. Satya Nadella). A quick glance at google's management team finds Asians to be overrepresented at 4/18 Asians (6/18 if you include middle easterners). http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/ http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/ Microsoft (2/16) and Twitter (2/14) seem similar: http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-senior-leaders/ http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-senior-leaders/ https://about.twitter.com/company/leadership https://about.twitter.com/company/leadership (0.8/16 is what would be expected based on proportional representation.)
greglindahl 12y ago
Back when Harvard didn't admit (many) blacks and women, they also had an anti-Jewish quota. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus... Edit: Now that I eventually figured out how to get around the paywall (hint: Chrome makes it easier than Firefox, I wonder why), the article mentions this: "The suit compares its current racial admissions to Harvard’s quotas limiting Jewish students in an earlier era. In both cases, Harvard kept out minorities who would have been admitted based on academic merit."
- msherry 12y ago
  Just read an interesting article on boingboing (I know, I know) about this. http://boingboing.net/2014/11/20/for-god-for-country-and-for.html http://boingboing.net/2014/11/20/for-god-for-country-and-for...
fabulist 12y ago
Non-paywalled link: https://archive.today/0a9a6 https://archive.today/0a9a6
icelancer 12y ago
As someone who is Asian, I've just kind of accepted this kind of casual racism. The stereotype of Asian men are that we are better at math, science, and logic (sadly enough, this is where I spent most of my working career) and everyone kind of laughs about it and jokes how it's great this stereotype is so positive. Except, of course, that it leads to these kinds of policies. Just like Jewish people are ascribed the stereotype of being good with money leads to other policies that have occurred in the past and probably still continue to this day. To me, though, this is just another example of why higher education is becoming a parody of itself. To become personally angry about decisions that are based on the angle of my eyelids is a waste of my time; and this reaction is overwhelmingly common in the Asian community. It has been for decades since Korematsu v. United States, too. I'm not sure it's the "best" approach, but I've learned to live with it, knowing that others have it a hell of a lot worse. Is that rationalization and "giving up?" Perhaps. But I just can't bring myself to care.
- obviouslynot 12y ago
  The head of my (STEM) course at a university in the top 5 of most global rankings (not Harvard, though) once told me casually (I am white) that she was upset at the high percentage of Asians in her course since they were "great at tests, but really bad at leadership" and "never move beyond middle management" which looked bad on statistics and (implied) wasted seats. So, anecdotally, another example of that "casual" racism.
- dengnan 12y ago
  As I said in another comment, this stereotype of American Asian men is partly caused by the universities admission procedure and the country's immigration policy. In short, they just like foreigners in STEM. Another reason is probably the culture differences. Asian people are not only interested in STEM. We do have other majors in universities. However, Asian has an equally long, if not longer, history with Europe. Many fields are "stateful", i.e. they rely on the history. For example, a physicist could have a very successful career even he does not know Newton's anecdotes. However, a art-majored student probably needs to know some history in his field --- at least, he needs to remember some names and their corresponding achievements. People majored in literature in China definitely know poets like Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and they have devoted lots of time to learn these poets' work. The culture barrier prohibits them from studying in another country in a different language. That's probably another reason why there's little Asian students outside STEM.
tzs 12y ago
For those complaining about the paywall or for whom the usual paywall bypass tricks failed, Google "harvard asian lawsuit" or "Students for Fair Admissions" (that's the group that is suing) and filter to limit the search to article in the last week. That will give you a few other sites that have covered the story. Some details might differ from the WSJ coverage, but it will give you enough to be able to appreciate the comments here and participate meaningfully in the discussion.
jeffreyrogers 12y ago
I noticed the article compared Harvard's admission percentage to Caltech (19% to 25%). If you're going to make that comparison it's worth noting that a significant fraction of Harvard students are athletes and the admissions criteria for athletes is different. Anecdotally, Asians seem to be under represented in athletics, so that probably explains part of the difference.
- ekm2 12y ago
  > If you're going to make that comparison it's worth noting that a significant fraction of Harvard students are athletes and the admissions criteria for athletes is different. Another significant fraction are legacies.
- saretired 12y ago
  That's 1992. "In 2013 Harvard made 18% of its offers to Asians, while CalTech admitted 42.5% Asian students." "Though the number of Asians applying for admission [to Harvard] has increased, the percentage of offers has barely budged." Funny, what you say about Asians and sports "anecdotally" is exactly what was said to "explain" discrimination against Jews in the Ivy League.
  - jeffreyrogers 12y ago
    Ah okay, thanks for pointing that out. I just skimmed the article. Also, I don't think that I suggested that explains all of it, and it certainly doesn't in the case where 42.5% of the students are Asian, however, it is worth noting that Caltech and Harvard admit students for different reasons, and many of Harvard's students are admitted for non-academic reasons.
mynameishere 12y ago
Shrug. The anti-European ruling class of the Western world is unintentionally hurting Asians as well. No kidding. But they really didn't want this to happen, and any Asians hurt by these policies should try to understand: You are just collateral damage--the real enemy is people of European descent. This has been going on for a long time. I'm sure they'll straighten it out. Trial balloons on the topic are always going up.
epoxyhockey 12y ago
In 1992, 19.1% of Harvard’s admissions offers went to Asian applicants, compared to 25.2% who were admitted to the California Institute of Technology, a school that doesn’t use racial preferences. In 2013 Harvard made 18% of its offers to Asians, while CalTech admitted 42.5% Asian students. It is an interesting choice to compare Harvard's racial admissions with that of CalTech. I would think that Harvard vs. MIT or Stanford would create a more convincing argument. So, here are the numbers: Stanford class of 2018: 22.6% Asian [1] MIT class of 2018: 30% Asian [2] Harvard class of 2018: 20% Asian [3] It looks like the writer of the article chose the school with the highest percentage Asian population to make this comparison (excluding Hawaii). [4] [1] http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-profile http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-profile [2] http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile [3] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics [4] http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-highest-percentage-of-asian-students/2361/ http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-hi...
- gareim 12y ago
  A quick Google search found me this for Stanford. I haven't checked for MIT. >While Supreme Court justices question the role of racial consideration as a factor in the college admissions, Stanford remains committed to upholding affirmative action, arguing that the policy helps to ensure a diverse student body. One Stanford professor has submitted a brief to the Supreme Court defending the practice. http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/10/16/stanford-administrators-committed-to-affirmative-action/ http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/10/16/stanford-administrat...
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Caltech is fairly unique in that it explicitly does not use non-merit factors in admission (no racial preferences, no legacies, no "we want someone from all 50 states").
  - Anechoic 12y ago
    Not true according to CalTech's CDS filing (see my other post upthread).
siliconc0w 12y ago
Diversity in education may be more valuable to Harvard (and, probably, the rest of us) than a few tenths of a GPA point or handful of SAT points. This seems perfectly valid. (IMO) Diversity helps creates better solutions to better problems than you're likely to get with slightly higher performing but less diverse populations.
- icelancer 12y ago
  >Diversity in education may be more valuable to Harvard And fair to those who have no control over their genotype?
- smtddr 12y ago
  Assuming this to be true(and I generally do), you end up with a different problem - that of resentment. There are groups of people who will be upset that they couldn't get into a school because they were the "wrong" race. So you still have a racism problem at the end of the day; just a lesser-known version. This is where I prefer things like BlackGirlsCode.com to try and work on these issues "on the side"[1] to raise academic performance, so the school in the big public spotlight like Harvard don't have to take sides in the controversy and just admit people based on scores, achievements, whatever... just not the controversial stuff like gender, race, etc. _______ 1. When I say "on the side", I basically mean that probably nobody is going to be upset at BlackGirlsCode.com enough to actually file a lawsuit(and have a chance at winning) the way Harvard is getting sued now. Is this fair/right? Probably not, but I think this is the best way to navigate the shaky terrain of public opinion & racism.
- gamesbrainiac 12y ago
  Agreed. But, diversity is not limited to race alone, there are many kinds of Asian people, with diverse backgrounds and different beliefs. Is that not worthy of consideration?
- dengnan 12y ago
  I would say that fairness is more important than diversity. Setting different goals for different races is a racism no matter how diverse you could get in the end. About GPA/SAT: According to Goodhart's Law, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." However, a measure is required and should be consistent. Asians are not born to be good at GPA, American Asians are good at that because the universities admission system and immigrant policy are specifically designed to select students who are good at school. The first generation of Asians in the US are most grad students from foreign countries.
dengnan 12y ago
When talking about Asian's stereotype, one thing is always ignored: the stereotype of Asian in the U.S. is a direct result of the education system and immigrant policy. Most 1st generation Asian immigrants are students who come to the U.S. for grad school. They (and their children) are better at STEM simply because they (or their parents) are/were grad students in that area. As an Asian, I saw lots of students who are not good at STEM and simply did not get an offer from any U.S. university. The immigration policy and universities' admission procedure are intentionally designed to select foreign students who are good in those majors.

30 points by softdev12 12y ago

Terr_ 12y ago

What's the etiquette for registration-required (or paywalled) links?

iLoch 12y ago
Someone usually posts either the article in full, or the Google redirect link (WSJ doesn't paywall traffic directly from Google)
vmarsy 12y ago
For true pay-wall articles it would be a problem but here you can just search for the article's title on Google and see it for free
- greglindahl 12y ago
  No, you can't. I opened up Google News and did a search for the article title in an incognito window and still couldn't view the article. Maybe it worked for you, but it's a lot higher paywall than the ones at NYT. HN can't continue to publish stories that people can't read. Edit: That was using Firefox's incognito mode; in Chrome incognito it worked. I can't imagine how that could possibly be true. Maybe it's because the first time I clicked on the wsj link in FF I wasn't incognito and the WSJ recorded my IP/UA? In any case, no, it's not an easily solved paywall.
  - dang 12y ago
    Part of the problem is that we get inconsistent reports from readers about what articles do and don't have workarounds. I just did what you described (from SF) and it worked.
  - vmarsy 12y ago
    This is strange, I opened it from Firefox, but without bothering going into incognito mode. I tried multiple times from the direct link I had the paywall, from Google's search everything was fine. If it can help anyone access the article, I use the Disconnect, Adblock plus, and self destructing cookies add-ons.
dang 12y ago
Good question. Thanks for putting it so precisely. HN wants the most substantive article for a story, and also prefers non-paywalled links. From that we can deduce one bit of etiquette, which is that if you post a paywalled article you're implicitly promising that it's the best one, i.e. that you searched and there's nothing else as good on this story. In such a case, as long as it falls in the workaround-able category (which most paywalls do), it's ok. That's on the submitter side. On the reader side, the etiquette might be that you should point out a non-paywalled URL if you can find one that's as good (in which case we'll be happy to switch to it), and also that you probably shouldn't post generic complaints about paywalls to the thread, which are guaranteed to be off-topic. It's not a status quo anyone's happy with, and we'd be happy to hear suggestions of a better way, but please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634076 before you do.

himynameistimli 12y ago

Asians are being used as a wedge in the one lawyer's agenda against affirmative action.

sremani 12y ago
That does not exonerate Harvard from its Asian glass ceiling, misdirection does not explain 20 years of "record".
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
verroq 12y ago
Are Asians as privileged as whites?
yummyfajitas 12y ago
Lawyers and other people interested in rational argument will look at cases where a policies stated justification does not match up to it's actual implementation, and use that (correctly) as evidence of malfeasance. What's your point?
forrestthewoods 12y ago
You say that as if it's a bad thing.

butwhy 12y ago

I would speculate that this problem is not as big as the paywall problem.

viggity 12y ago
Search the title of the article in google, then click the link. They'll let you through if the referrer is a search engine
- fabulist 12y ago
  This is usually my goto move, but it failed me here.

tokenizerrr 12y ago

To bypass the paywall: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCQQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fharvards-asian-problem-1416615041&ei=aWJxVNX7KsWCPenpgcgF&usg=AFQjCNFx4jAu3iXSX2MOITUbgE1rO6gK_A&sig2=38LP7WVfphG3BkJL9pNFYg&bvm=bv.80185997,d.ZWU https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

ocb 12y ago
On my Mac this doesn't work on Safari but does work on Chrome. Interesting!
gamesbrainiac 12y ago
If you can access it, just save it via the internet archive.
- greglindahl 12y ago
  IA has 4 copies of this page. 3 are CAPTCHA challenges, and the 4th throws an error message. Why on earth did you think this might work without testing it yourself?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
pickle27 12y ago
can you explain how this works?
- gizmo686 12y ago
  http includes a referer field that tells a webserver what page linked you to it. It is therefore possible for the server to disable the paywall for visitors who arrive through google.
- jacalata 12y ago
  I think that if you want google to be able to index the article text, then the article has to be accessible from the search result - you can't show different pages to google's robot than to human visitors or they'll block you. So the paywall is not allowed to kick in if you are coming directly from google. (Works for the NYT as well, probably anywhere else that is indexed on google too).

parennoob 12y ago

As I have tried to point out before, this exact same problem is also present in efforts to bolster minority participation in tech. Asian men are often completely ignored in minority programs, because "Uh, there are a lot of Asian guys in tech", completely ignoring the strongly inferior position that they hold in American society as a whole (in my opinion, definitely one below that of white women; though this is only an opinion.) The response I usually get when I point out this problem on HN is a glib "Hey, it's a free country. Nobody prevented you from starting up your own minority program for Asians." [1] Unfortunately, so far I haven't been able to find a proper response to this. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524665

potatolicious 12y ago
I read an article once that phrased it well regarding Asians: "we have a problem, and we are a problem, at the same time". We're "represented" in tech, but not at the upper echelons where we're substantially under represented, and at the same time our presence is used as justification that other races aren't being discriminated against. Asians are tremendously more privileged than Blacks or Hispanics in tech, but still suffer from tremendous problems ourselves. Many seem unable to comprehend this in a world view where privilege is binary.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  We're "represented" in tech, but not at the upper echelons where we're substantially under represented... Do you have data on this? Anecdotally it isn't hard to think of Asians in the upper echelons (e.g. Satya Nadella). A quick glance at google's management team finds Asians to be overrepresented at 4/18 Asians (6/18 if you include middle easterners). http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/ http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/ Microsoft (2/16) and Twitter (2/14) seem similar: http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-senior-leaders/ http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-senior-leaders/ https://about.twitter.com/company/leadership https://about.twitter.com/company/leadership (0.8/16 is what would be expected based on proportional representation.)

greglindahl 12y ago

Back when Harvard didn't admit (many) blacks and women, they also had an anti-Jewish quota. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus... Edit: Now that I eventually figured out how to get around the paywall (hint: Chrome makes it easier than Firefox, I wonder why), the article mentions this: "The suit compares its current racial admissions to Harvard’s quotas limiting Jewish students in an earlier era. In both cases, Harvard kept out minorities who would have been admitted based on academic merit."

msherry 12y ago
Just read an interesting article on boingboing (I know, I know) about this. http://boingboing.net/2014/11/20/for-god-for-country-and-for.html http://boingboing.net/2014/11/20/for-god-for-country-and-for...

fabulist 12y ago

Non-paywalled link: https://archive.today/0a9a6 https://archive.today/0a9a6

icelancer 12y ago

As someone who is Asian, I've just kind of accepted this kind of casual racism. The stereotype of Asian men are that we are better at math, science, and logic (sadly enough, this is where I spent most of my working career) and everyone kind of laughs about it and jokes how it's great this stereotype is so positive. Except, of course, that it leads to these kinds of policies. Just like Jewish people are ascribed the stereotype of being good with money leads to other policies that have occurred in the past and probably still continue to this day. To me, though, this is just another example of why higher education is becoming a parody of itself. To become personally angry about decisions that are based on the angle of my eyelids is a waste of my time; and this reaction is overwhelmingly common in the Asian community. It has been for decades since Korematsu v. United States, too. I'm not sure it's the "best" approach, but I've learned to live with it, knowing that others have it a hell of a lot worse. Is that rationalization and "giving up?" Perhaps. But I just can't bring myself to care.

obviouslynot 12y ago
The head of my (STEM) course at a university in the top 5 of most global rankings (not Harvard, though) once told me casually (I am white) that she was upset at the high percentage of Asians in her course since they were "great at tests, but really bad at leadership" and "never move beyond middle management" which looked bad on statistics and (implied) wasted seats. So, anecdotally, another example of that "casual" racism.
dengnan 12y ago
As I said in another comment, this stereotype of American Asian men is partly caused by the universities admission procedure and the country's immigration policy. In short, they just like foreigners in STEM. Another reason is probably the culture differences. Asian people are not only interested in STEM. We do have other majors in universities. However, Asian has an equally long, if not longer, history with Europe. Many fields are "stateful", i.e. they rely on the history. For example, a physicist could have a very successful career even he does not know Newton's anecdotes. However, a art-majored student probably needs to know some history in his field --- at least, he needs to remember some names and their corresponding achievements. People majored in literature in China definitely know poets like Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and they have devoted lots of time to learn these poets' work. The culture barrier prohibits them from studying in another country in a different language. That's probably another reason why there's little Asian students outside STEM.

tzs 12y ago

For those complaining about the paywall or for whom the usual paywall bypass tricks failed, Google "harvard asian lawsuit" or "Students for Fair Admissions" (that's the group that is suing) and filter to limit the search to article in the last week. That will give you a few other sites that have covered the story. Some details might differ from the WSJ coverage, but it will give you enough to be able to appreciate the comments here and participate meaningfully in the discussion.

jeffreyrogers 12y ago

I noticed the article compared Harvard's admission percentage to Caltech (19% to 25%). If you're going to make that comparison it's worth noting that a significant fraction of Harvard students are athletes and the admissions criteria for athletes is different. Anecdotally, Asians seem to be under represented in athletics, so that probably explains part of the difference.

ekm2 12y ago
> If you're going to make that comparison it's worth noting that a significant fraction of Harvard students are athletes and the admissions criteria for athletes is different. Another significant fraction are legacies.
saretired 12y ago
That's 1992. "In 2013 Harvard made 18% of its offers to Asians, while CalTech admitted 42.5% Asian students." "Though the number of Asians applying for admission [to Harvard] has increased, the percentage of offers has barely budged." Funny, what you say about Asians and sports "anecdotally" is exactly what was said to "explain" discrimination against Jews in the Ivy League.
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  Ah okay, thanks for pointing that out. I just skimmed the article. Also, I don't think that I suggested that explains all of it, and it certainly doesn't in the case where 42.5% of the students are Asian, however, it is worth noting that Caltech and Harvard admit students for different reasons, and many of Harvard's students are admitted for non-academic reasons.

mynameishere 12y ago

Shrug. The anti-European ruling class of the Western world is unintentionally hurting Asians as well. No kidding. But they really didn't want this to happen, and any Asians hurt by these policies should try to understand: You are just collateral damage--the real enemy is people of European descent. This has been going on for a long time. I'm sure they'll straighten it out. Trial balloons on the topic are always going up.

epoxyhockey 12y ago

In 1992, 19.1% of Harvard’s admissions offers went to Asian applicants, compared to 25.2% who were admitted to the California Institute of Technology, a school that doesn’t use racial preferences. In 2013 Harvard made 18% of its offers to Asians, while CalTech admitted 42.5% Asian students. It is an interesting choice to compare Harvard's racial admissions with that of CalTech. I would think that Harvard vs. MIT or Stanford would create a more convincing argument. So, here are the numbers: Stanford class of 2018: 22.6% Asian [1] MIT class of 2018: 30% Asian [2] Harvard class of 2018: 20% Asian [3] It looks like the writer of the article chose the school with the highest percentage Asian population to make this comparison (excluding Hawaii). [4] [1] http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-profile http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-profile [2] http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile [3] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics [4] http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-highest-percentage-of-asian-students/2361/ http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-hi...

gareim 12y ago
A quick Google search found me this for Stanford. I haven't checked for MIT. >While Supreme Court justices question the role of racial consideration as a factor in the college admissions, Stanford remains committed to upholding affirmative action, arguing that the policy helps to ensure a diverse student body. One Stanford professor has submitted a brief to the Supreme Court defending the practice. http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/10/16/stanford-administrators-committed-to-affirmative-action/ http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/10/16/stanford-administrat...
yummyfajitas 12y ago
Caltech is fairly unique in that it explicitly does not use non-merit factors in admission (no racial preferences, no legacies, no "we want someone from all 50 states").
- Anechoic 12y ago
  Not true according to CalTech's CDS filing (see my other post upthread).

siliconc0w 12y ago

Diversity in education may be more valuable to Harvard (and, probably, the rest of us) than a few tenths of a GPA point or handful of SAT points. This seems perfectly valid. (IMO) Diversity helps creates better solutions to better problems than you're likely to get with slightly higher performing but less diverse populations.

icelancer 12y ago
>Diversity in education may be more valuable to Harvard And fair to those who have no control over their genotype?
smtddr 12y ago
Assuming this to be true(and I generally do), you end up with a different problem - that of resentment. There are groups of people who will be upset that they couldn't get into a school because they were the "wrong" race. So you still have a racism problem at the end of the day; just a lesser-known version. This is where I prefer things like BlackGirlsCode.com to try and work on these issues "on the side"[1] to raise academic performance, so the school in the big public spotlight like Harvard don't have to take sides in the controversy and just admit people based on scores, achievements, whatever... just not the controversial stuff like gender, race, etc. _______ 1. When I say "on the side", I basically mean that probably nobody is going to be upset at BlackGirlsCode.com enough to actually file a lawsuit(and have a chance at winning) the way Harvard is getting sued now. Is this fair/right? Probably not, but I think this is the best way to navigate the shaky terrain of public opinion & racism.
gamesbrainiac 12y ago
Agreed. But, diversity is not limited to race alone, there are many kinds of Asian people, with diverse backgrounds and different beliefs. Is that not worthy of consideration?
dengnan 12y ago
I would say that fairness is more important than diversity. Setting different goals for different races is a racism no matter how diverse you could get in the end. About GPA/SAT: According to Goodhart's Law, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." However, a measure is required and should be consistent. Asians are not born to be good at GPA, American Asians are good at that because the universities admission system and immigrant policy are specifically designed to select students who are good at school. The first generation of Asians in the US are most grad students from foreign countries.

dengnan 12y ago

When talking about Asian's stereotype, one thing is always ignored: the stereotype of Asian in the U.S. is a direct result of the education system and immigrant policy. Most 1st generation Asian immigrants are students who come to the U.S. for grad school. They (and their children) are better at STEM simply because they (or their parents) are/were grad students in that area. As an Asian, I saw lots of students who are not good at STEM and simply did not get an offer from any U.S. university. The immigration policy and universities' admission procedure are intentionally designed to select foreign students who are good in those majors.