4 ms·

>If you were black, you might see it as "Orwellian" when someone claims an admissions policy is non-discriminatory when it results in a class that is 6% black a

by jasode 12y ago

>If you were black, you might see it as "Orwellian" when someone claims an admissions policy is non-discriminatory when it results in a class that is 6% black and 29% Asian among U.S. students (this is CMU), while blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population and Asians make up 5.3%. That is not logical at all. How can it be discrimination when 2 racial groups are admitted in opposite class-to-population ratios? Blacks at 6% < 13% AND Asians at 29% > 5.3%? The AND conjunction is key. It would be clear discrimination if both groups' percentages were less than the representative population. And by the way, if such a hypothetical black person didn't know: the Asians are already an "undesirable" applicant group. It's somewhat of an open secret in admissions that "we don't want anymore Asians."[1] That the maligned group still gets 29% in the uphill battle against that condescension is astounding. Also, I'm not sure where the logic of blacks as 13% of population should or would translate to ~13% of Harvard student body. Let's look at each layer of qualifications for an elite school: Of the students that achieve SAT scores of ~2200+, are 13% of them black? Ok, let's pretend Harvard removes SAT scores from consideration and only looks at GPA. Out of all the valedictorians at high schools, are 13% of them black? Ok, let's eliminate SAT and GPA. Just evaluate students on course workload. Of the students that took AP (Advanced Placement) classes such as AP Calculus, AP English, etc, are 13% of those enrolled black? How is it Harvard's problem of discrimination if their student body doesn't happen to have ~13% blacks? The only way to do that would be to relax the tough academic standards until it's meaningless. No SAT, GPA, or course transcripts. I can't see how a black person with any dignity would feel pride about being "accepted" into Harvard with less qualifications than his peers of the last 100 years. The 6% blacks at an elite school may be low but hopefully, the vast majority of those 6% actually belong there by genuine academic qualifications. [1]http://cornellsun.com/blog/2011/11/14/no-asians-need-apply/ http://cornellsun.com/blog/2011/11/14/no-asians-need-apply/

ritchiea 12y ago
Posted this elsewhere in the thread but I'll say something similar again: I love that here on HN, where from working in the industry I can sensibly assume the posters are mostly white and Asian, no one questions whether the metrics are of any quality. Is SAT really a good measure of your talents as a human being? Are high school grades? Two things that vary based on your education before the moment of the test and the grades. The grades themselves being subjective evaluations from thousands of people with different standards. If the quotas were swapped and whites and Asians were getting the "bonus", how quickly would the arguments shift to the idea that the metrics aren't any good in the first place? You probably took the SAT, do you honestly think its' a great talent indicator or a mediocre one? How many courses are out there that promise to improve your score and how much money do they cost? Ask an SAT tutor and they'll tell you it's easy to take someone from a decent score to a good one. Is that a great metric to decide people's futures. Who has access to SAT prep courses? Wealthy people (and people who know the system well and budget to game it). Grades? You want to talk about grades? If the culture is overall discriminatory, how can we trust subjective evaluations from that culture? Not to mention if you approach the admissions officers at Ivies, particularly at Harvard, Princeton & Yale, they say that they easily could fill 3 freshman classes or more with the applicants they receive. That even most of the rejected applicants could succeed academically at their schools. So yes, I think it's okay to select for diversity. If the system is gameable why should we take its metrics seriously? And if we can't take the metrics seriously we shouldn't be upset about ignoring the metrics and making subjective choices.
- Torgo 12y ago
  I worked in standardized testing for ten years for SAT's competitor and am very familiar with the SAT as well, and phenomenal effort was made detect and correct for racial, gender and cultural bias. I cranked out crates of statistical analysis using SAS analyzing every demographic breakdown looking for statistical anomalies in answers so they could be excluded from scoring (and mainly preventing pretest items from ever being scored items in the first place.) If blacks (or whites, or women, or Eskimos) performed statistically significantly worse on a question, then it was thrown out of scoring. > Ask an SAT tutor and they'll tell you it's easy to take someone from a decent score to a good one. Yeah, they have a financial interest in promoting their snakeoil. They teach you how to not be a fuckup before you take the test (get good sleep, don't go drinking) and a few general facts about the test to minimize wasting time, they don't teach you how to "beat" the SAT/ACT, that hasn't been a thing since the 80's.
  - ritchiea 12y ago
    I didn't say cultural bias was an issue, you're twisting my words. And the people I know who vouch for the effectiveness of test prep classes don't even teach them anymore, they taught them mostly as a summer jobs or jobs out of college before they found more of a career path job. They have no reason to vouch for the effectiveness of the classes, they are speaking about personal experience. And you honestly don't think the classes help at all? Seeing sample questions, taking sample tests, and learning strategies to handle questions you don't know. You might as well say structured practice doesn't help. And sure you could say "why don't the kids from less affluent families practice just as much?" but if your parent doesn't know how the game is played the sixteen year old kid still isn't as prepared as the kid who has affluent parents. And the scores aren't going to reflect ability as much as they reflect whether you come from a household that prepares you for standardized tests.
    - Torgo 12y ago
      The demographic information collected for the test is a proxy for culture, since we really don't have any idea. We just detected if individual test items were gotten wrong substantially more often for any individual demographic categories. In the end it really doesn't matter why people got it wrong, just that statistically it's a strong sign it's a bad question. Yes, the tests help. But they just help you reach your maximum potential. You're not hacking the test, you're hacking yourself. You can get basic prep courses for not much money. Yes some people cannot afford that, but that is a problem with secondary education that test prep even exists. There is no way you can make a test that doesn't discriminate against people that don't get enough sleep or show up hung over or the person didn't figure out the basics of taking standardized tests through primary and secondary education.
Anechoic 12y ago
I can't see how a black person with any dignity would feel pride about being "accepted" into Harvard with less qualifications than his peers of the last 100 years. As a black person who was accepted to (and graduated from) MIT, and had SAT scores less than my peers (but excellent grades and extracurriculars) allow me to respond: I feel fine.
- jasode 12y ago
  If you had "excellent grades" (GPA), you're not the example of watered down academic standards for admittance that I was talking about. Your MIT peers had excellent grades and so did you. You got admitted without some artificial lowering of standards to mirror a 13%-black-ratio of the population at large. I'm sure some Caucasian MIT students had lower SAT scores than you as well. As a whole, all the students at MIT had legitimate academic chops to get admitted. MIT doesn't have football scholarships like the University of North Carolina academic scandal.
  - Anechoic 12y ago
    you're not the example of watered down academic standards for admittance that I was talking about At tend to give as much credence to those "example[s] of watered down academic standards" at elite universities as I do to welfare queens driving Cadillacs. MIT doesn't have football scholarships like the North Carolina academic scandal. Interesting fact: MIT coaches do have input into the admissions process. The NC scandal was not about reducing admission standards in the name of discrimination, it was about stacking athletic teams. That's a whole different (and real) topic than this thread, especially since your post referred to Harvard.
    - jasode 12y ago
      >At tend to give as much credence to those "example[s] of watered down academic standards" at elite universities as I do to welfare queens driving Cadillacs. Understood. However, you're addressing something I didn't say. I wasn't accusing elite universities of dumbing down existing standards. I was talking about about how the universities would hypothetically have to lower the academic thresholds to fulfill someone's idea that 13% of Ivy Leagues should be black to mirror the 13% in the general population. >, it was about stacking athletic teams. Right. But, what's the reason-behind-the-reason that it gets framed as "stacking athletes" so that it looks like it has nothing to do with academics? In reality, it's the academics (or fiction of it) that made it a scandal in the first place. Let's remember that it's a football scholarship. It's supposed to be scholars who go to school and happen to use football participation to pay for tuition. For many reasons (societal, circuses & bread, etc), it has mutated into athletes who need to fake the academic process to play for the school. Since society has not embraced an alternative structure for 19-year olds to play televised minor-league football outside of college institutions, that's how academics got twisted to fit a non-educational agenda. Football isn't getting in the way of school; it's school that is getting in the way of football. As for making the black percentages at ivy leagues match the population at large, I'm not exactly sure what the other posters who dismiss SAT + GPA + AP course transcripts are proposing. If elite schools are academic institutions (instead of unpaid football teams), and SAT+GPA+AP classes are cultural discrimination, what do they propose the schools look at? The color of the skin? If football doesn't have much to do with academic qualifications, the amount of pigment in the skin doesn't either. You're black -- and you got into MIT. You had the academic qualifications. Is there something you're debating that I missed or are we agreeing?

by jasode 12y ago

ritchiea 12y ago

Posted this elsewhere in the thread but I'll say something similar again: I love that here on HN, where from working in the industry I can sensibly assume the posters are mostly white and Asian, no one questions whether the metrics are of any quality. Is SAT really a good measure of your talents as a human being? Are high school grades? Two things that vary based on your education before the moment of the test and the grades. The grades themselves being subjective evaluations from thousands of people with different standards. If the quotas were swapped and whites and Asians were getting the "bonus", how quickly would the arguments shift to the idea that the metrics aren't any good in the first place? You probably took the SAT, do you honestly think its' a great talent indicator or a mediocre one? How many courses are out there that promise to improve your score and how much money do they cost? Ask an SAT tutor and they'll tell you it's easy to take someone from a decent score to a good one. Is that a great metric to decide people's futures. Who has access to SAT prep courses? Wealthy people (and people who know the system well and budget to game it). Grades? You want to talk about grades? If the culture is overall discriminatory, how can we trust subjective evaluations from that culture? Not to mention if you approach the admissions officers at Ivies, particularly at Harvard, Princeton & Yale, they say that they easily could fill 3 freshman classes or more with the applicants they receive. That even most of the rejected applicants could succeed academically at their schools. So yes, I think it's okay to select for diversity. If the system is gameable why should we take its metrics seriously? And if we can't take the metrics seriously we shouldn't be upset about ignoring the metrics and making subjective choices.

Torgo 12y ago
I worked in standardized testing for ten years for SAT's competitor and am very familiar with the SAT as well, and phenomenal effort was made detect and correct for racial, gender and cultural bias. I cranked out crates of statistical analysis using SAS analyzing every demographic breakdown looking for statistical anomalies in answers so they could be excluded from scoring (and mainly preventing pretest items from ever being scored items in the first place.) If blacks (or whites, or women, or Eskimos) performed statistically significantly worse on a question, then it was thrown out of scoring. > Ask an SAT tutor and they'll tell you it's easy to take someone from a decent score to a good one. Yeah, they have a financial interest in promoting their snakeoil. They teach you how to not be a fuckup before you take the test (get good sleep, don't go drinking) and a few general facts about the test to minimize wasting time, they don't teach you how to "beat" the SAT/ACT, that hasn't been a thing since the 80's.
- ritchiea 12y ago
  I didn't say cultural bias was an issue, you're twisting my words. And the people I know who vouch for the effectiveness of test prep classes don't even teach them anymore, they taught them mostly as a summer jobs or jobs out of college before they found more of a career path job. They have no reason to vouch for the effectiveness of the classes, they are speaking about personal experience. And you honestly don't think the classes help at all? Seeing sample questions, taking sample tests, and learning strategies to handle questions you don't know. You might as well say structured practice doesn't help. And sure you could say "why don't the kids from less affluent families practice just as much?" but if your parent doesn't know how the game is played the sixteen year old kid still isn't as prepared as the kid who has affluent parents. And the scores aren't going to reflect ability as much as they reflect whether you come from a household that prepares you for standardized tests.
  - Torgo 12y ago
    The demographic information collected for the test is a proxy for culture, since we really don't have any idea. We just detected if individual test items were gotten wrong substantially more often for any individual demographic categories. In the end it really doesn't matter why people got it wrong, just that statistically it's a strong sign it's a bad question. Yes, the tests help. But they just help you reach your maximum potential. You're not hacking the test, you're hacking yourself. You can get basic prep courses for not much money. Yes some people cannot afford that, but that is a problem with secondary education that test prep even exists. There is no way you can make a test that doesn't discriminate against people that don't get enough sleep or show up hung over or the person didn't figure out the basics of taking standardized tests through primary and secondary education.

Anechoic 12y ago

I can't see how a black person with any dignity would feel pride about being "accepted" into Harvard with less qualifications than his peers of the last 100 years. As a black person who was accepted to (and graduated from) MIT, and had SAT scores less than my peers (but excellent grades and extracurriculars) allow me to respond: I feel fine.

jasode 12y ago
If you had "excellent grades" (GPA), you're not the example of watered down academic standards for admittance that I was talking about. Your MIT peers had excellent grades and so did you. You got admitted without some artificial lowering of standards to mirror a 13%-black-ratio of the population at large. I'm sure some Caucasian MIT students had lower SAT scores than you as well. As a whole, all the students at MIT had legitimate academic chops to get admitted. MIT doesn't have football scholarships like the University of North Carolina academic scandal.
- Anechoic 12y ago
  you're not the example of watered down academic standards for admittance that I was talking about At tend to give as much credence to those "example[s] of watered down academic standards" at elite universities as I do to welfare queens driving Cadillacs. MIT doesn't have football scholarships like the North Carolina academic scandal. Interesting fact: MIT coaches do have input into the admissions process. The NC scandal was not about reducing admission standards in the name of discrimination, it was about stacking athletic teams. That's a whole different (and real) topic than this thread, especially since your post referred to Harvard.
  - jasode 12y ago
    >At tend to give as much credence to those "example[s] of watered down academic standards" at elite universities as I do to welfare queens driving Cadillacs. Understood. However, you're addressing something I didn't say. I wasn't accusing elite universities of dumbing down existing standards. I was talking about about how the universities would hypothetically have to lower the academic thresholds to fulfill someone's idea that 13% of Ivy Leagues should be black to mirror the 13% in the general population. >, it was about stacking athletic teams. Right. But, what's the reason-behind-the-reason that it gets framed as "stacking athletes" so that it looks like it has nothing to do with academics? In reality, it's the academics (or fiction of it) that made it a scandal in the first place. Let's remember that it's a football scholarship. It's supposed to be scholars who go to school and happen to use football participation to pay for tuition. For many reasons (societal, circuses & bread, etc), it has mutated into athletes who need to fake the academic process to play for the school. Since society has not embraced an alternative structure for 19-year olds to play televised minor-league football outside of college institutions, that's how academics got twisted to fit a non-educational agenda. Football isn't getting in the way of school; it's school that is getting in the way of football. As for making the black percentages at ivy leagues match the population at large, I'm not exactly sure what the other posters who dismiss SAT + GPA + AP course transcripts are proposing. If elite schools are academic institutions (instead of unpaid football teams), and SAT+GPA+AP classes are cultural discrimination, what do they propose the schools look at? The color of the skin? If football doesn't have much to do with academic qualifications, the amount of pigment in the skin doesn't either. You're black -- and you got into MIT. You had the academic qualifications. Is there something you're debating that I missed or are we agreeing?