Personally I'm not too concerned about this at the undergrad level. So you don't get into Harvard and you have to go to a state school or whatever, that's not really an impediment to your life and career unless you want to become a congressman or a supreme court justice or whatever.
Where it does bother me is med school. I've seen several of my Asian friends who were just ridiculously obviously great applicants either fail to get into med school or struggle to get into med school over several years. I'm not talking about someone who you see and think "yeah he could be a doctor", I'm talking about someone who you see and think "wow this person has it all - smart, charismatic, hard working, intellectual curiosity, top notch GPA, tons of extracurriculars - this is a no brainer, he'd be a great doctor".
All my friends of other races who seemed similarly qualified to me had no trouble getting in on their first try. And getting into med school or not is a big fucking deal. In some cases, we're turning away people who would be incredible doctors and making them pursue other careers, which is a huge waste.
Those are just anecdotes of course, but I wonder if anyone else has noticed the same thing.
It's difficult to conclude that from those statistics alone, as we don't know the distribution of MCAT and GPA scores within the self-identified Asian applicants - a higher mean may be because it is positively skewed. In that regard, it would be interesting to see the median values too. Or the stats for the rejected cohort.
From a comment on Reddit so research required but it could be true that it comes down to money:
"As an applicant to medical school. On the day of my interview at my state school, a director basically told everybody that the school favored Hispanics/Latinos because the school is given state/federal? money if they churn out a lot of Hispanic/Latino doctors. My stomach dropped when I heard that. As other have pointed out, medical schools clearly hold Asians to a higher standard than any other race."
If that anecdote is true, it means the medical school would have a bias against anyone who doesn't identify as Hispanic/Latino, and not necessarily a specific bias against Asians.
>wow this person has it all - smart, charismatic, hard working, intellectual curiosity, top notch GPA, tons of extracurriculars - this is a no brainer, he'd be a great doctor"
All those don't make a great doctor. I have couple of friends who are currently in med school and are there because they wanted social prestige of being a doctor and not particularly because they have some sort of passion for medicine.
All of them did "volunteering" in school just so they can brag about it in their med school applications, not because they wanted to better the community they live in.
Being a type A prestige seeker doesn't make someone a good doctor.
True, but I have no reason to believe that my Asian and non-Asian friends differed in that regard.
The one I'd most label a "prestige seeker" wasn't Asian and got accepted into a great school right after undergrad, but that's an anecdote within an anecdote. Besides that, I wouldn't come close to calling any of them prestige seekers.
> Personally I'm not too concerned about this at the undergrad level.
But if you accept it here, why not accept it everywhere?
Either race-based discrimination is bad and should never be done or acceptable in some cases. If it's bad, Harvard (and others) should stop immediately. End of story.
If it's acceptable in "some cases" the next question is: Who determines those cases? And then: Are there a set of fixed criteria or is it a case by case basis? If it's case by case, who empowers and chooses the group making the decisions? What oversight and rules are on this group?
The "some cases" scenario is ripe for malfeasance and influence peddling.. which is just another "good old boys club."
Harvard vs. state school is far less important than med school vs. no med school.
The broader problem with med school is that we should have more med schools accepting more students, and then there wouldn't be such a stark "med school vs. no med school" scenario. So the root cause of that problem isn't racial discrimination, it's just that racial discrimintation in that context might have a much bigger impact due to some other unrelated factors.
Beyond the med school issue, racial discrimination in college admissions is pretty far down the list of issues in society that I'm worried about, because it just doesn't have that big of an impact.
> Harvard vs. state school is far less important than med school vs. no med school.
> The broader problem with med school is that we should have more med schools accepting more students, and then there wouldn't be such a stark "med school vs. no med school" scenario.
Since the bottleneck is residency programs, not the number of people who receive MDs, all this would do is increase the number of people who have taken on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt without being able to legally practice medicine.
There are more people who graduate medical school than there there are residency slots available, and since residency slots are government-funded (through Medicare). Establishing new medical schools won't do anything.
I figured we could use more doctors because doctors are so busy and expensive. Economics 101 type reasoning. Am I missing something? Would having more doctors not be a good thing?
Also, what do you mean residency programs are the bottleneck? Do we really have tons of MDs running around who aren't allowed to practice medicine? Then we should increase residency programs. Whatever. I'm no expert in the field, just seems to me like more doctors would be a good thing, same way it would be good to have more of any profession that's highly in demand.
> I figured we could use more doctors because doctors are so busy and expensive. Economics 101 type reasoning. Am I missing something? Would having more doctors not be a good thing?
I never said that it wouldn't; I said that having more medical schools would have literally zero impact on the number of doctors practicing medicine.
> Do we really have tons of MDs running around who aren't allowed to practice medicine?
Yes, because medical school isn't where you learn to practice medicine; residency is.
> Then we should increase residency programs.
There are so many political barriers to allocating the kind of funding necessary for this that it's not a realistic expectation anytime for the foreseeable future.
> I'm no expert in the field, just seems to me like more doctors would be a good thing, same way it would be good to have more of any profession that's highly in demand.
Sort of - but the medical field is rather complicated to a degree that would be tough to summarize in an HN comment. In short, yes, this general principle is true, but in the case of medicine, there are enough confounding factors that it's not as simple as "more residency programs → more and better care". If you could hold everything else constant, yes, that may be the case, but in practice, this wouldn't happen in isolation, and there would be a lot of other effects.
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2014/05/26/Some-med-... says this year there were 26,678 residency positions and 412 people who didn't match. Even if we opened more residency positions, we'd still need more medical schools too, right? Because 412 doctors isn't enough to make a dent in the status quo. I mean, we'll need another 412 doctors just to account for population growth in a couple years.
But the whole system seems weird to me as an outsider.
> this year there were 26,678 residency positions and 412 people who didn't match. Even if we opened more residency positions, we'd still need more medical schools too, right? Because 412 doctors isn't enough to make a dent in the status quo.
Well, for starters, some of that is self-selecting, in that the only people who feel they are competitive candidates for a residency even apply. Overall, there are about 15,000 more applicants than first-year residency positions as of last year - 40,394 total.
Also, that 412 number is looking at the people who didn't match, which isn't actually the same as saying how many were "unaccepted". Residencies don't work like undergraduate admissions. The residency matching is a complicated two-way process that separates by field, so the 412 aggregate number isn't actually answering the same question. This is implied by the discussion of primary care residencies halfway down the article you link, but if you're not already familiar with the process, you wouldn't notice it.
Finally, that is only looking at students in the United States who did not match. Many residents in the US attended medical school outside the US. In fact, it's very common for US students who don't get into medical school in the US to go to medical schools in the Caribbean instead, and then come back to the US to do their residency so they can practice in their home country.
> I mean, we'll need another 412 doctors just to account for population growth in a couple years.
The number of residency programs is increasing, so population growth isn't the concern. The original topic of discussion was increasing the availability of doctors - in other words, increasing the number of residency programs by an order of magnitude, rather than incrementally, as has occurred almost every year since 1952.
True... but what if you are going to have to spend your whole life fighting against silent discrimination?
Reddit CEO Ellen Pao says she is hiring for diversity. Google and IBM are putting hundreds of millions into diversity programmes for hiring and training. Twitter is publishing employee diversity reports.
So if you're a coding genius but you're white or Asian, straight, male, not disabled, guess what?
You're not going to be hired by tech start-ups and companies who are obsessed about showing how "diverse" they are rather than hiring the best candidate for the job.
I don't think any tech firms that are concerned with diversity are not hiring "coding geniuses" that happen to be White or Asian.
Diversity programs mainly attempt to increasing the number of members of currently-underrepresented groups in the entrance of the hiring funnel and reducing biases in the hiring process that select for currently-overrepresented groups over merit.
Maybe it's just that the accepted applicants were of the same quality or better, in terms of their predicted suitability to practice medicine. The fact is that not everyone can get into such highly competitive programmes, and unfortunately some have to lose out.
That wouldn't explain my observations, where excellent non-Asian applicants were shoe-ins on their first try and Asian applicants of the same quality had to try multiple times, some of them never making it in at all. If it was just a numbers issue and not everyone could make it in, you wouldn't expect such a clear racial difference.
Of course my anecdotes could just be flukes or I could be misinterpreting the quality of various candidates. But given what we know about undergrad admissions, it's not a stretch to imagine the same thing in med school. It's just that med school acceptance is much more impactful than undergrad.
> Of course my anecdotes could just be flukes or I could be misinterpreting the quality of various candidates.
The beauty of commenting on HN is that you don't need to provide data or citations, you can just write down anecdotes (made up or not), and you'll be upvoted by those who like what you say. And you can feel good about it, because the community thinks it has an intellectual side, engaging in deep conversations about a variety of topics.
> The beauty of commenting on HN is that you don't need to provide data or citations, you can just write down anecdotes
You didn't finish your thought. The beauty of HN isn't just that. Because immediately after doing that, someone jumps out and points out that you didn't write a research paper backing up your comment on the internet. Thanks for keeping the HN culture alive and strong.
As an aside, if you're genuinely curious about this subject, there has been a lot written about it, a lot of research done into it, and a clear bias has been show against certain minorities which tend to outperform other populations (asians, jews, etc.). If I actually cared about convincing you, I would cite a few, but I don't actually care what you think and this is the internet ... so please use Google.
I think that unless you're privy to all the information that the admissions staff are using to judge acceptance, including the quality of the competition and a myriad of other factors that you or I may not have considered, it's a bit of a stretch to assume your friends were racially discriminated against. I don't know how many people you're talking about, but assuming it's a relatively small number, the rejection of most/all of your Asian friends to study medicine could just be down to chance.
I would agree for you, except it's well known that Asians are discriminated against in undergrad college admissions, so it's not a stretch for me to imagine the same thing in med school admissions. Indeed, one of the comments replying to me showed MCAT distribution by race for accepted med students is similar to the SAT distribution by race for accepted undergrad students.
Yes but even if it could be confirmed that racial quotas that are significantly unfavourable toward Asian applicants exist for some medical school admissions, that doesn't mean it was the reason for your friends being rejected.
We just don't know if they would have been accepted in an equivalent system without these alleged discriminatory policies, because gaining a medical school offer depends on such a myriad of other factors.
Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-American === Harvard Accused of Favoritism towards African-Americans/Latinos/etc.
The former just has a sexy title. The latter we've known all along because these schools openly state that they embrace affirmative action.
The matter of fact is that the school is incredibly strategic in how it makes its admissions decision, taking into account not only race, but geography, and a whole host of other factors. The complaint is utterly silly, because it fails to realize that nowhere is the claim made that the admissions process seeks to select the best students according to the SAT -- it seeks to select the students who best add something novel to that year's entering class.
A VERY STRONG argument could be made that race ought to be something which can't enter into that calculus. And I agree with that. But, from the moment a school adopts Affirmative Action (and the US supreme court upholds it), then this is just the sort of thing we can expect to see.
That's not actually true. The majority of Harvard's class is white. Statistically, if they are biased against Asians, that seat is going to a white person, not a black or Hispanic person.
The magnet school where I went to high school has median SAT scores comparable to one of the mid-level Ivies. They got rid of affirmative action. It is now 70% Asian. And that's without accepting any foreign or out of state students. Asians didn't take seats from other minorities, because there weren't all that many to begin with. They took seats from white kids.
CalTech, which is race blind, has 40% Asians, more than the number of whites. That's the end result schools like Harvard are trying to avoid.
That's the end result schools like Harvard are trying to avoid.
Why? That is the worst kind of discrimination in my book. How is it my fault that I was born smart, worked hard to capitalize on my innate abities and then competed on a standardized test to perform better than folks who just happened to pop out of a different vagina or uterus? Nice way to fuck me for no fault of mine.
For those saying not getting into Harvard or MIT is no big deal, are either in the sour grapes camp or have never had to face opportunity costs arising from picking a non-exclusive-low-visibility-(but-great)-school.
I don't know what la-la-land they live in, but that Veritas stamp will open doors that no amount of effort, intelligence or other factors ever can.
To the question of why, Harvard believes that standardized tests are simply one of many factors that should be taken into account when deciding on who to admit. In building a student class, they value diversity not of race but of backgrounds and experiences. Perhaps that correlates closely with race since much of our country's socio-economic divisions also fall along racial lines in many places.
As an Asian myself, perhaps the question that needs to be asked is if there is enough diversity in our upbringing to be well-rounded candidates for admissions to "elite" schools?
Historically, concerns about "diversity of backgrounds", "well-rounded" candidates, and the even more nebulous "character" were code for the fear by the majority's elite of an overrepresented minority gaining entrance into that elite. In the time when these policies were first promulgated the target was Jews [1], but the strategies and motives seem not to have changed: the presence of enormous academic success among an immigrant minority group without high economic status is resented as somehow a "gaming" of the system that needs to be corrected by introducing subjective factors into the system.
Where this gets politically complicated is by the concurrent policies in favor of non-Asian minorities, but at least there the policies are quite explicit about their justifications (correcting historical disadvantage).
As an asian yourself don't belittle your upbringing by assuming you need to be 'improved' by special programs to make you a better all around fit. You're better off being proud of your race or family line and whatever demonstrated intelligence level and then pursue your career interests which (hopefully for us will also align with bettering the world).
Let's face it, the harvard admissions process is secretive they aren't giving all candidates a thorough review, they aren't looking deeply into 150,000 applications in a three month period. They can't. So they dump and dump based on subjective and biased methods being careful to honor first and foremost those requirements like affirmative action. And then they probably get the quota and then start onto the smaller piles. In other words all the activities an Asian might be on, they can and will be overlooked because somebody else has a righter color at the right time when the stack of applications are being sorted by whatever computer or individual at that step.
So to question, "maybe I need a better holistic upbringing?" Bullshit. in this case it's highly likely many many many of these asians had a remarkable upbringing that would satisfy anyone but they got dumped for somebody so the color factor was satisfied.
The less measurable your admissions criteria, the more subconscious bias seeps into your decision making process. You can not extricate the perverse stereotypes that exist in society when making a decision whether a candidate is "diverse" or "well-rounded".
There have been numerous studies showing that whites favor meritocratic admission criteria, but reverse their position when shown the high percentage of Asian admits (e.g. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/670664?uid=2&uid=4&sid...). Indeed the data also shows that white admissions are barely affected in comparison to Asians (e.g. see the MCAT admissions data linked elsewhere in this thread).
It seems to me that the shroud of "diversity" is being used to preserve the existing white power structure in elite universities, especially with the prevalence of legacy admits.
Anyone who has designed a system knows that you can tweak variables to get your desired result and then tautologically justify your decisions post-hoc.
> That is the worst kind of discrimination in my book.
That's only true if SAT score are a good predictor of "success" - however you define that. That's obviously not true for elite institutions since their candidates' SAT score are all bunched up at the top and within the MOE of each other. It's low-resolution. If you want test-based admissions, you'll have to design a test that shows significant differences among the elite schools' applicant pool.
On the hand, just having an "Asian attenuator" is, objectively, racist. The schools that do that will probably claim they just deemphasize applicants who don't have outside activities, which has led to formulaic portfolios of the "right" outside activities among high school students now, because "grades are not enough." Ugh. That's worse than just accepting the top SAT scores.
How can you tell which highly selective universities really have a sophisticated selection process and which are just running ethnic groups through different sized apertures? Elite schools that have legacy preferences have an especially hard job defending their policies.
"White applicants would benefit very little by removing racial and ethnic preferences; the white acceptance rate would increase by roughly 0.5 percentage points."
No, because that asian student would replace the white would just mean the white would replace the black or latino. the lower end falls off not the middle if you go by the academically qualified here.
Discrimination is a bad thing that should be rooted out and stopped. The most insidious is of course the very PC "positive or affirmative discrimiation" - where a group of people decide discrimination is now ok, just because. It ends up with parody situations, like here in the UK, there is the joke about a lady making an absolute fortune, companies being desperate to hire her, because she is disabled, ethnic, lesbian, has diverse politics - and so in one hire, the company can tick every positive discrimination category.
Back to the real world though - what a shitty thing to do to someone - to care so little about them as an individual, but to only give them a place because they meet this week's PC hiring criteria. For shame all of those who promote or continue with positive discrimination.
> Discrimination is a bad thing that should be rooted out and
> stopped. The most insidious is of course the very PC "positive
> or affirmative discrimiation" - where a group of people decide
> discrimination is now ok, just because.
Seriously? "Just because?" The ignorance here is staggering. Or there is dishonesty. There's lots of room for arguing the theory what should be done about America's racism problem, or whether anything will work at all, but none whatsoever for suggesting that people are doing things "just because."
Next, your use of the word "insidious." This means something that appears innocuous but is actually a creeping evil. There is nothing "innocuous" about affirmative action. It's not banal. Nobody thinks it makes no difference.
Insidious is something like claiming to strengthen democracy by eliminating voter fraud, but actually attempting to suppress the votes of African-Americans. THAT is insidious.
Openly favouring applications of one group while openly claiming that you believe this will right a systemic wrong is not insidious. You may feel it is wrong-headeded, but there is no deceit involved.
Finally, you may not intend it this way, but your phrasing is misleading. It makes it seem as if affirmative action, by being "the most insidious discrimination," is somehow more dangerous and damaging than the everyday discrimination minorities face every day in North America and have for more than a century.
Affirmative action may be misguided, but under no circumstances is it the same level of threat to our stated principles of equality as the existing systemic and cultural discrimination minorities face. To use words so carelessly as to equate the two is irresponsible argumentation.
Racism is intrinsically wrong because it is discrimination for discrimination's sake. Races don't exist, they're a fiction.
Ethiopians and Papuans are both "black", Japanese and Indian people are both "asian", Spaniards and Bosnians are both "white", and nobody can agree on what the hell "hispanic" means.
None of these people have anything in common, culturally, genetically, linguistically, you need a bogus concept like 'race' to do that.
It's fine for universities to use a form of affirmative action to correct society, they're called grants.
So then you're saying that Harvard is being discriminatory right? Because they are accepting students with test scores WAY below those of the superior test scores of the asian pacific islander visual demographic. In that way they are being discriminatory, in other words, they don't want too many asians around and they have a certain look for the school they wish to achieve or maintain. So racism. People these days aren't used to hearing about Asian discrimination because black discrimination is thrown in our face so much it's almost fatiguing.
This instance is very much a first world problem (I couldn't get into harvard because I'm asian, but that white or black person did even though they scored lower.) but it's one we have proof of and it's very much worth fixing to set an example everywhere.
You read harvard's reply or reasoning that what they do is ok. Actually depending how you interpret it it could be a complaint by harvard. They said are following STATE Law. Maybe, if we interpret what they said another way, we learn they don't like doing things that way and really shouldn't be held accountable for any so called legal discrimination because they are following the law. Maybe harvard wants us to blame the law and not them. Maybe harvard would like to bring on more asians or more whites but can't even though they perform better and do more research.
Any attempt for harvard or any other school to bring up the holistic student argument is ridiculous. Because Asian students very much participate in extracurricular activities here and in asian countries, objectively so. You won't see a lot on the football or basketball team. You will see a lot of them in other things sports and clubs of all kinds.
Also what do you mean to affirmative action will "correct" society? In what interpretation is a society "corrected" if as you said races are a fiction in your mind? If there's no race, then there's no racism, it's just a bunch of people interacting with a bunch of other people of various colors and any "trends" are meaningless.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say it's a fiction but then wish that any places you go was would be more "correct" if it were more color diverse, (tossing out all concept of people's personal choice or their capabilities.)
Races do exist because groups of people evolved based on their environments and their ancestors ability to procreate. We may not know exactly why because people move and separate and that long span of time has no written record really. But we do know people look different, their languages are different behaviors however "anecdotally" are often different. Their prevalence of various conditions, disease and health are different. Artifacts were different too. Their capabilities on tests across the world are clearly different.
And if various experiments weren't shunned we'd likely understand more about race. They acquired various levels of intelligence and physique due to conditions. The problem is a lot of these things that make people different aren't studied enough. Because universities fear their reputation because even true scientific findings can and have been hidden due to political implications. Thankfully learning about the brain and understanding people are sciences that won't be stopped. So we'll probably learn more over time about race. We most certainly won't be able to find ways to boost equality in humans or find how or where they best flourish if we can't study and be able to honestly interpret the differences in humans.
>being "the most insidious discrimination," is somehow more dangerous and damaging than the everyday discrimination minorities face every day in North America and have for more than a century.
This is why it's so dangerous, no one takes it seriously.
The actual purpose of Harvard is to mix the children of the elite (regardless of their ability) with talented children of a broad cross section of the rest of society. One can observe this directly by searching "harvard" on wikileaks: http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/04/20/deborah-friedell/how-to...
or by, say, observing the life of Barack Obama.
The stated mission of Harvard college is to "educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society"
In neither case is their any value is filling up the school with people with highest test scores. The primary use of the test scores is to select from the cream from a broad cross section of society, because the entirety of society is whom the graduates of are expected to lead (serve or exploit). A secondary use is to extort larger sums of money from the elite whose children score exceptionally low.
Working class whites complain that lower scoring african americans get jobs as police or firemen over higher scoring whites. They ignore that purpose of the tests is simply to weed out people who can't do the job.
Scholastic test scores serve a similar purpose. Harvard has an exceptionally high graduation rate. There is no reason to believe that Harvard is admitting students who can't benefit from what is offered. Even if it was, the children of tiger moms pursuing meaningless vanity metrics have no standing to complain about it.
Well, the general idea is "there are groups of people who are being discriminated against at some level, so we'll discriminate for them at this level, to even the scales out."
A better solution would be to stop negative discrimination in the first place, but sometimes that's too hard. When you pile hacks on hacks, you end up with crazy edge cases.
Yeah, I think achieving this - or even coming sufficiently close to achieving this - is impossible. Tracking discrimination is very difficult.
A person is an incredibly complex array of both discriminatory and nondiscriminatory features. A tall, poor African American with a really great support network might actually face less discrimination than a fat, middle-class European American who has that one goofy ear. It's just impossible try and rectify this after the fact. Stopping negative discrimination in the first place is not just a better solution, it's the only solution.
Spreading that fictional "parody situation" is fuel for real discrimination. At best, you've got it backwards.
People of colour & women who are perfectly competent at their jobs fall under more suspicion, have to prove themselves more, and are assumed to be less competent than white men doing the same work. There are so many studies affirming this.
It's pretty ugly behaviour to hold onto the idea that a single PoC might be an incompetent "diversity token" rather than just ... someone doing their job.
>It's pretty ugly behaviour to hold onto the idea that a single PoC might be an incompetent "diversity token" rather than just ... someone doing their job.
I've got news for you: People don't hold white males in high regard because they're white males, they do so because they're privileged.
I've never met a "SJW" that actually knows what it's like to be poor, it's all well-off, college educated, mostly white people. Some social justice warriors even go so far as to split people up into groups (PoC?) while at the same time espousing ideas of "equality".
I think most poor people who make their way to the top don't actually get any help, so they end up forming conservative view points, whereas the rich white people just can't understand why poor people don't just stop being poor. It must be because they're black! Congratulations you're a racist.
>Spreading that fictional "parody situation" is fuel for real discrimination.
No it's not. You're basically saying that by not taking race into account at all you're fueling racism. Institutionalized discrimination fuels racism. Why do you refuse to accept that people who are against affirmative discrimination may in fact be for RACE BLINDNESS and not just letting people be racist?
Why can't being blind to race completely be an option? Why does everything that doesn't go your way have to be racism? It sounds more to me like you're just trying to control the narrative to push some political agenda.
A private school can use whatever criteria it wants if it believes it enhances the experience. But why should Asian American tax dollars go to a university that clearly discriminates against them? Harvard shouldn't be able to get public funds and engage in systemic racism.
Why should childless adults pay taxes that go toward a school system that educates children, despite the fact that they don't have children?
Whatever your answer to that is, it is probably closely related to the answer to the question you posed. My own interpretation is that the whole point of paying taxes and building services is to cover the larger society's needs, not simply my own needs.
I see some strength in your analogy, but two main differences:
1) Tax money spent on sending kids to college helps everyone, even the non-parents, since more educated people = better world. Affirmative action doesn't help Asians in any conceivable way. Does it even help society at large? No one arguing for it shows reliable data that it creates significant community benefit.
2) You can always have a child in the future if you choose to. You can't become non-Asian if you were born Asian.
I hate typing on my phone so I'll make this short.
When it comes to companies, diversity is far better than having whatever the equivalent of "everyone looks the same and has the same SAT scores" so presumably it'd probably work to Harvard's benefit as well to encourage diversity whether mandated by law or not.
There's been plenty of studies pointing to the positives of diversity. In order to foster an environment which will be diverse you're probably going to have to skip over some of the kids from the populations that are large and generally well off even if they have better SAT scores.
I personally, have no problem with this. The kid who just missed getting into Harvard because of their race is probably going to an awesome school and statistically is more likely to come from a pretty good place in the world. They'll be fine.
The other kids who do get in though, get to go to a school that is better precisely because of the advantages diversity offers.
"The kid who just missed getting into Harvard because of their race is probably going to an awesome school and statistically is more likely to come from a pretty good place in the world. They'll be fine."
Or they kill themselves because their life goal is over or become bitter and hateful of others. Really hard to tell when you shatter someones dreams arbitrarily.
If not getting into Harvard is something that would cause someone to kill themself, then that's probably a good sign that they should not have been admitted. I'm not trying to be mean but someone who can't handle rejection or have confidence in their ability to do well without getting into Harvard is not Harvard material.
Yeah, there have been a couple comments in this thread with this kind of viewpoint; "How will I go on in life after all the opportunity cost of not getting into [insert high prestige school]".
I feel so sad for anyone that has such a futile outlook in life. Life is literally what you make it, not what some gatekeepers make of it for you.
I feel sad for them too, but it doesn't mean because I have never felt that way that it doesn't happen. The post I replied to was overly optimistic. Some might strive on and pick somewhere else. Some, like failed olympic athletes, might go down a darker road.
Sadly, a stint working with social services has taught me some folks, who are normal about everything else, have one event that they have strived for that will break them if they miss it. Its actually easier if it was your doing, but not when its your ancestry or other factor you had no control over.
> I hate typing on my phone so I'll make this short.
Have you considered getting the Blackberry Passport which features a physical keyboard which is also touch sensitive for swiping. I find the Passport quite interesting and it can also run Android apps.
I approve of affirmative action where it helps to redress an unfair societal imbalance, as it does here. I think it acts as a band-aid, as is commonly said, and I don't think it's an ideal solution to racial discrimination. But band-aids exist exactly because they contribute towards long-term improvement of a wound.
On that point, it's very hard for me to see how Asian-Americans have a societal advantage that needs redressing in the USA.
As I see it, Asian-Americans are being punished - not to admit more Afrian-Americans - but to keep European-American admissions higher.
If we say that African-Americans are benefiting from positive discrimination, we must be consistent and say that European-Americans are benefiting from positive discrimination.
I would expand your use of 'etc':
Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans === Harvard Accused of Favoritism Towards European-Americans
The complaint argues that elite schools “that use race-neutral admissions” have far higher Asian-American enrollment than Harvard. At California Institute of Technology, for instance, about 40% of undergraduates are Asian-American, about twice that at Harvard.
He found ample evidence of anti-Asian quotas at Harvard, Yale, and other elite institutions, and perhaps more controversial, evidence of what appears to be a form of affirmative action in favor of Jews:
In fact, Harvard reported that 45.0 percent of its undergraduates in 2011 were white Americans, but since Jews were 25 percent of the student body, the enrollment of non-Jewish whites might have been as low as 20 percent, though the true figure was probably somewhat higher.51 The Jewish levels for Yale and Columbia were also around 25 percent, while white Gentiles were 22 percent at the former and just 15 percent at the latter. The remainder of the Ivy League followed this same general pattern.
Jews comprise a mere 2% of the population yet a massive 25% of the student body at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. The contrast with Caltech and UC schools with more merit-based admissions processes is quite stark:
But Caltech’s current undergraduates are just 5.5 percent Jewish, and the figure seems to have been around this level for some years; meanwhile, Asian enrollment is 39 percent, or seven times larger. It is intriguing that the school which admits students based on the strictest, most objective academic standards has by a very wide margin the lowest Jewish enrollment for any elite university.
Let us next turn to the five most selective campuses of the University of California system, whose admissions standards shifted substantially toward objective meritocracy following the 1996 passage of Prop. 209. The average Jewish enrollment is just over 8 percent, or roughly one-third that of the 25 percent found at Harvard and most of the Ivy League, whose admissions standards are supposedly far tougher. Meanwhile, some 40 percent of the students on these UC campuses are Asian, a figure almost five times as high. Once again, almost no elite university in the country has a Jewish enrollment as low as the average for these highly selective UC campuses
(Unz himself is Jewish, in case you're wondering.)
Ron Unz used different methodologies for figuring out the percentage of Jewish 'top academic achievers' and the percentage of Jewish students attending elite colleges, making his statistics suspect. If you're going to count Jews to make an argument, you need to count Jews in a consistent way.
It's partly location. Asian-Americans are more heavily concentrated on the West Coast (hence Caltech and UC's high Asian admissions). Jews are more heavily concentrated on the East Coast (hence Harvard, Yale and Columbia's high Jewish admissions).
Although I agree there is a strong test/race bias at Stanford and Harvard, I'd also like to see the numbers on admission, not just enrollment. Cultural background may strongly influence your choice of where to go: CalTech vs Stanford, MIT vs Harvard. Compared to Asian families, Jewish people may want an undergrad education more aligned with law and humanities than very tech schools.
True, but whether someone self-identifies as Jewish depends on exactly how you ask him. To compare the Jewish representation in the US population, college X, and college Y, it's important that the same definition was used.
Feynman (mentioned in Unz's article) famously objected to being labeled as a Jew or Jewish scientist, since he was unreligious and didn't like the speculations about race and ability.
He used Jewish surnames. His analysis, IIRC, did not control for the fact that top American universities foreign enrollment had been increasing steadily for a long time.
The implication is that Jews are gaining advantages from an ethnic network. Discussing even the existence of such a network is not considered acceptable in the West.
This doesn't surprise me, as an Asian American myself. I went to a high school that, while it wasn't the greatest in my county, routinely sent a student to Harvard every year - it was one of those schools that Harvard & other Ivy League schools tended to cherry-pick its minorities from (over 70% black/hispanic I was told the statistics were, in one of the wealthiest counties in the US).
I had extremely strong credentials overall - generally strong standardized testing scores (1250 on the SAT in 7th grade with a 740 Math/510 Verbal split, 800 on the SAT II Math 2C in 8th grade, 780 SAT II Biology, 780 SAT II Physics, 750 SAT II Chemistry, 750 SAT II Writing, 1450 on the regular SAT with a 750 Math/700 Verbal split), college math & physics credits while in high school (Calculus III/Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, etc.), lots of extracurriculars & achievements, and a recommendation from an Ivy League physics professor. However, I slipped up on my essay since I wasn't a good writer then (which clicked for me the summer before college strangely enough) - that slip up was all it took to get deferred rejection from schools like Harvard in a year where a lot of the private colleges were weakened by the Enron scandal & consequently took 3/4th of the normal enrollment.
On the flip side, in just the class before mine, there was a girl who had nowhere near my scores or achievements (in fact, I heard her SAT score was a 1320) who was accepted to Harvard - the kicker was that she was half latino.
At the time this happened, I was extremely angry/bitter - I ended up attending a public university, which ended up being a blessing in many ways. I ended up learning a lot in non-academic aspects, but a lot of that was from force of character as someone who pushes himself to break barriers and challenge himself to succeed on difficult situations. I still believe those schools made a bad mistake, but I've accepted that admission is not necessarily a merit based decision for these schools, and to concern myself with what I can control.
I have a story very similar to this as well.
I'm glad you got over the anger/bitterness, but I and many of my friends have not.
It's tough when your friends and family still consider you to have failed. I'll never forget the shame and disappointment after sacrificing so much of my life. It makes life hurt when you have to work an order of magnitude harder to achieve the same result.
I'm not even going to post this with my real account. I wonder if we'll even be able to have a discussion about this without me getting downvoted into oblivion.
Asians have the highest GPAs and SAT scores, followed by whites, followed by Hispanics, followed by blacks. As such, blacks are given the benefit of the doubt, where as Asians are judged more harshly.
Statistically, these groups have differing average IQs in the same order that I just described, with Asians at the top (actually Ashkenazi Jews at the top, followed by Asians) and blacks, sadly, at the bottom. This isn't to say a black individual can't have a high IQ or an Asian individual can't have a low IQ, just that on average they cluster around certain numbers, so a black with genius-level IQ is rarer than an Asian one.
Whether or not you believe IQ measures intelligence accurately or comprehensively, the fact is that it correlates strongly with academic performance and SAT scores. I also will concede that "race" has questionable biological validity, and it gets really fuzzy when one is the offspring of one or more "mixed-race" parents". Still, race/IQ statistics in all of their generalities are a source of existential depression for me. Most of the data is touted boldly by people I despise and used to bolster viewpoints that I find deplorable, but there seems to be at least some truth to it.
The idea of discriminating based on one's race seems unfair if we lived in a world where literally everyone has the same capacity to succeed but merely chooses not to. But what if that's not the case? If Asians generally can attain high test scores and high GPAs due to an innate advantage, could that mean the admissions standards should be stricter for them and more lax for other groups? The alternative is that certain groups completely dominate academia with ease, while other groups are barely represented at all -- which is probably already the case to a large extent.
I don't think there are any easy answers. Trouble arises with an Asian individual with a relatively "average" IQ faces the admissions process, and trouble arises because the black individuals who manage to get in have above-average IQs. Still, I support the idea of affirmative action for the reasons that I previously described.
Asians might have a harder time while other groups get a bit of a head start, but if you have a high IQ you will ultimately have the capacity to carve out a high-paying career in ways that someone with a relatively lower IQ never will.
There's evidence[1] that there's no difference in intelligence between races at a very young age, and that tested differences only emerge later. This suggests that the IQ differences seen later are a result of societal factors and not something innate.
Of course you aren't going to post this with your real name. This post is full of racist rhetoric. You suggest that blacks are innately inferior to Asians in terms of intelligence, which is nonsense. (Note the post below about IQ issues. There is considerably more research on this point.)
Moreover, many blacks admitted to Ivy League schools aren't black Americans at all--they are Africans, and their scores are on par with Asian students. People like the "Tiger Mom" acknowledge this openly. But educational institutions lump all blacks into the same statistical category--in part because as soon as it becomes evident that some black Americans are getting left behind in favor of Africans, the institutions will have to deal with various groups on that issue.
Ultimately, you fail to differentiate between black students, assuming they are all of one type--and yet you tout your intelligence! Besides, it's hardly surprising that African students fare better in education than Black Americans. Most African students are from an environment where they are viewed as leaders, as equals, and not as inferiors. They see themselves reflected positively for most of their lives. Contrast that with how Black Americans are treated, and it's no surprise that Africans fare better.
Not to mention that among black Americans at Ivy League schools, many get their admission boost from legacy admissions and their family's wealth--they don't even need to benefit affirmative action. Grades just okay but Dad gives enough money to the school? Take a trip to Europe for a year, write about it and come back next year--that's for wealthy kids, regardless of race.
And, finally, just because any racial group has an "average" GPA or LSAT score, doesn't mean that every student in the group does. Drop the pretense: some Asians and whites with lower test scores benefit from affirmative action just like other minorities.
sex and intelligence and race and intelligence have great wikipedia pages, with cite notes. they are easy to get lost in. some topics can't be debated easily. in my own experience the people who tend to do well, work hard.
So if the Ivy league schools are not actually choosing the best students, wouldn't that mean that Ivy League graduates do worse after graduation than alumni form other schools that don't use the Holistic admission process?
More simply, if the SAT is the perfect determinate for intelligence and energy, and success in life directly relates to intelligence and hard work then the SAT alone should be the prefect predictor of success after graduation regardless of which university you graduate from. Particularly if, as alleged, employers don't care about your school after you've been in the work force for a number of years.
If Ivy League's continue to generate the most successful people then their holistic approach is better at choosing the best candidate than the SAT or...
Or the ivy league diploma works like a tile of nobility to a great degree nearly guaranteeing success in life to all its holders regardless of wit. In this case the argument really is what proportion of races should get these titles, each person looking to advantage their own.
The article only mentions "very subjective Holistic admissions" and only mentions SAT scores, citing them alone as proof of discrimination. By looking at that nothing else, the article is implying SAT scores should be the sole criterion for admission selection. Giving the benefit of the doubt to the author, I assume he believes it corresponds to talent and post graduate success and these are the reasons for selecting candidates.
Then change the word "article" above to "complaint" if you want. Correct the spelling and the grammar too if you wish. It makes absolutely no difference to the point at hand.
And by the way, the choice of what to and not to report on is itself a bias.
I am using Holistic in exactly the way the article did and my argument has nothing to do with the normal definition of it anyway. My argument is:
Either the current process in its entirety used by Ivy Leagues produce the most successful candidate or it does not. If it does then either it is already selecting the smartest hardest working candidates whatever the race statistics or success from going to an Ivy League has less to do with brains and effort. If so, we're just arguing about who get's a non-merit based boost in life.
I think the problem is that in addition to affirmative action, asians are being compared against other asians rather than against the candidate pool at large (thus effectively having quotas).
I knew it! I had near-perfect SAT scores and a very high GPA, but I was rejected by many schools that accepted my friends with lower scores. Now it makes perfect sense. Except I'm white and my high school classmates were Asian and Indian. I'll never understand the admissions process.
Depends on what variety of English you speak whether the term Asian normally includes Indians or not.
For Brits, Asian primarily means "From the Indian Subcontinent" which includes Pakistan for them, IIRC.
For Americans, Asian primarily means "From East Asia" which is China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.
Of course, in an academic context, Asian means "Anyone from the Asian Continent" which includes some but not all Russians, all South Asians, all East Asians, all Central Asians, all Middle Easterners (except Egyptians), and whoever else depending on how certain lines get drawn.
This confuses the hell out of me as an Indian living in America. Mostly it's me wondering if I am included in the stereotype or not. Otherwise I don't really care.
re, the first part: So you're saying that if I run some private business, and the gov't gives a loan to somebody else to buy the product I'm selling, that makes me a publicly funded business and forces me to abide by rules for businesses that are publicly funded? I don't think that makes sense.
If we posted stipulations on all the grant money we give universities, every elite university would quickly follow through with it. It's too much money to throw away, even for Harvard.
95% of why a college degree is valuable is for the signal "hey I went to uni of X degree of prestige [and therefore am probably of Y degree of intelligence/ambition]".
Why do young Americans need to spend $100k just to signal their iq level to employers?
Why do young Americans need to compete with each other to do so?
Maybe to get into Harvard you need iq > 130. As the population grows, there are more kids with iq > 130, but # of Harvard seats does not increase.
There needs to be a low cost and widely accepted way to signal iq that does not create unnecessary competition and cost for people starting out.
Also with AI coming along the corporate obsession with iq will be obviated as well. Nobody gives a shit how well you did on the SAT when goddamn Skynet can diagnose 5000 medical conditions per second with quadruple human accuracy.
I wonder what the basis of their complaint will be considering that race-based preferences in admissions has already been upheld in the US supreme court.
This focus on affirmative action is sort of like people who say they are against "government handouts", and focus on welfare, while ignoring corporate subsidies.
It's misplaced attention on what "minorities" are (or should be) getting, while overlooking the benefits that the wealthy receive. Also, many people's understanding of the minority groups at Ivy League institutions seems flawed.*
The reason affirmative action exists is only partially as a benefit to minorities. Sure, they benefit (as do some whites and Asians), but affirmative action also acts as cover for legacy benefits in the admissions process.
You see, the day affirmative action falls, lawsuits will be filed to remove legacy preferences. If you're going to get rid of preferences, the argument will say, then get rid of them all! Do you think that wealthy donors will have the incentive to lay heavy money on the endowment if they don't receive some benefit for their children in the form of legacy admissions?
Or, as Sandra Day O'Connor said in the oral arguments in one of the affirmative action cases related to a state school: "I want my sons to go to Stanford" (paraphrased), her alma mater. Did I mention that the Supreme Court justices attended Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Northwestern?
If you think this is primarily about minorities, think again. Wealthy people will protect themselves, but in this case, people are so focused on race that nothing need be done--legacy clauses continue to fly under the radar.
You can expect to see Affirmative Action end when the wealthy are prepared to give up the benefits their children receive.
How long do you think that will take?
*In terms of African-Americans/Latinos, consider the following:
1 - Many of black students admitted to Harvard aren't black Americans, they are Africans, with test scores and grades on par with Asian-American students.
2 - The first black student graduated from Harvard in 1869. Over the past ~150 years, there have been enough black graduates such that a fair number of black applicants now have the legacy boost to their admissions.
3 - Affirmative Action was meant to rectify the disadvantages minorities received. Such as denying black soldiers access to the GI bill, while white soldiers used it to receive an education. Was that fair? And how much does education impact the future of a family? Multiply that by a few generations and you see why Affirmative Action still exists.
> 1 - Many of black students admitted to Harvard aren't black Americans, they are Africans, with test scores and grades on par with Asian-American students.
i've heard of african immigrants doing better, economically. but never students, any sort of supporting link to this point?
reminded - our professors at the University love their Asian students (Russian Universities got a lot foreign Asian(China) students in the recent decade) because, as one professor put it, "they are hard-working and eager to learn, not lazy arrogant bums like you people were back then".
The population continues to grow while people continue to value a handful of schools with fixed campus sizes. What a nightmare it must be to be a parent or a high schooler these days.
Affirmative Action is to care for minorities, aren't Asian Americans minorities in this country? What's the definition of Minority in US? Why are so many blacks in NBA?
The best solution is to set up a few Asia-American self-funded private schools across the country, where academics becomes the major admission criteria and your race does not matter, of course this has to be stated carefully otherwise you still could be sued for "discrimination" becomes some group of people will be least represented as expected.
Affirmative Action will not make those who can take advantage strong, as strong comes from serious competition only, they will make that group stay weak for good. It's simply unfair to those kids who spent most of their time learning, what a shame to Harvard and the Supreme Court.
Yeesh. The basis of their complaint seems to be rooted in test score (and possibly grade analysis) but they neglect the increased homogeneity that it represents. Asians may have a tighter distribution of metric based qualities with a mean at the higher end of the spectrum when you cut by race but it's quite possible that there are other deficits that cannot easily be highlighted through a metric based comparison alone.
It's hard to form a full opinion without the type of information you'd only have access to as a member of the admissions comittee.
Would you defend Harvard if they had a de-facto quota for Jewish applicants? This is a trick question. Harvard (and other Ivy League schools) did discriminate against Jews[1], and their justifications were quite similar to what we're hearing today. These universities switched from grades and test scores to a more "holistic" evaluation, allowing them to surreptitiously limit the number of Jewish students. The game is the same, only the names have changed.
Use all the rationalizations and euphemisms you want, but the truth is this: Ivy League schools are rejecting many of their most-qualified applicants solely because of their race[2]. These policies need to end.
I responded to another comment below[1]. I understand that it is easy to view these policies as racism but if you think about the people that spots are being freed for there is a larger net social gain.
I knew this would be unpopular when I posted it, and I am personally biased, but I don't think one can make the argument that Asian's lack socioeconomic mobility in the same way as some of the other races.
Suppose black students were accepted at far lower rates than their SAT scores suggested they would be. Would you accept the argument that blacks are secretly deficient in some hard to measure way? I'd sure be suspicious of that.
In any case, it would be great if Harvard could provide some stats showing exactly how Asians are deficient. Will be interesting.
I think if black students would otherwise be over-represented at the school it would make sense.
So Asian's are 5% of the US population [1] but make up 20% of the admitted applicants [2]. While African American's, representing 13% of the country [1] and a shameful legacy of mistreatment make up 12% of admitted applicants [2].
The problem is that admissions isn't based solely on your capabilities as a student at the time of application, but also on your potential to grow. Asian's tend to be fairly successful in the US (especially 2nd and 3rd generations) [wish I could find stats for this right now], if you start in a good environment with two intelligent well-meaning parents a 780 in math is impressive, if you're the son of a single mother with a father in jail and 3 younger siblings you share responsibilities for that 520 in math looks spectacular.
If I ever see Asian's in this being denied social mobility I'll raise torches and pitchforks, but in this scenario Harvard is a limited resource that provides immense social mobility for students from the lower echelons of society, if admissions were rooted solely in test scores and grades then these students with potential, but not the resources from birth, will be denied a chance to benefit from a prestigious education.
edit: I appreciate people's rights to disagree, but I find it frustrating that the preference has been to downvote this rather than engage in meaningful dialogue.
Asians aren't just discriminated against relative to black students, they're also discriminated against relative to white students. Your distractions like "shameful legacy of mistreatment" and "single mother with a father in jail" don't work so well then, do they?
> If I ever see Asian's in this being denied social mobility
All the ones that would've been admitted if they were white. You just have to treat them as individual sentient people instead of a mass statistic.
Edit: For that matter, compare Asians with academically demanding parents and white people and black people with academically demanding parents. Looking at that subset of the population, Asians are discriminated against, keeping the variable you were considering constant. Then consider Asians with single mothers and white people and black people with single mothers. Asians in that strata are discriminated against, too.
You are down voted because you dodged the question. The question is a positive, not a normative one: would you believe it if someone claimed blacks were secretly deficient in the way you claim Asians are?
Also, do you have any stats suggesting that the black student with a 520 sat is likely to outperform the Asian with a 780? If I present stats showing that blacks underperforming their sat and Asians over perform, will you favor pro-asian and anti-black discrimination? If not, your reply is a bit dishonest.
Okay, so this concept of 'secret deficiency' is not what I purported, hard to measure does not make something secret. I will explicitly state that Asian applicants, with an admission rate of 4:1 relative to their racial representation in society, will typically start at a higher socio-economic standing relative to blacks (and whites if you want to talk means here).
To give you a positive answer: If blacks were over-represented at Harvard and asians under-represented then I would definitely accept the argument.
Now, as to the concept of 'outperform,' it depends on how 'performance' is defined. I don't care about academic performance as much as I do about long-term social mobility. If you can demonstrate that asians who attend college accomplish even the same amount of social mobility as blacks I would take a difference stance here.
People coming in with ultra-high SAT scores typically wont represent the underprivileged and the underprivileged will typically receive the most benefit (∆-socioeconomically) from the prestigious education out of all applicants.
Can you create a model that admits everyone based solely on GPA and test score while also addressing the challenges faced by the underprivileged? How does social mobility fit into your desire for fairness in admission towards asians? (honestly, not trying to be antagonistic, I'm curious what you think about this because we clearly differ on opinion here but this point is valid)
edit: so that would be 'deficits relative to their established peer group' then.
You originally claimed that "quite possible that there are other deficits" that Asians suffer. Glad we have established that is unlikely.
If I wanted to address the "challenges" of the underprivileged, I'd simply give a preference to those who can demonstrate it. This is not currently politically favored because even highly privileged blacks underperform poor whites and Asians. (I can dig up stats on that if you like.)
No need to use race as a bad proxy when you can actually measure the underlying variable you claim to care about.
What happens when you have limited resources (housing, dorms, teachers) and a group of people who are superior in some way end up wanting to use all your resources (buy all housing, be smartest and get admitted everywhere)?
With money, we end up with capitalism doofus blindness and say "you got money, you EARNED that money, clearly, so do whatever you want" even though in modern "foreigners buying real property" practices, it's corrupt/graft money breaking SF/London/NYC/LA/Seattle/Vancouver housing markets in a worldwide government sanctioned oligarch money laundering scheme.
With intelligence/capability, it's trickier. The popular belief is every human brain starts as a blank slate with unlimited capability. By that logic, if you don't get accepted somewhere, it's your own damn fault. But, that's so obviously wrong. I know plenty of people who are physically smarter than me. In certain problem-solving capacities, they think faster, better, and in more immediately creative ways than I do (what I lack in immediate ability I make up for in long-term effort). And so do their siblings and their parents and their grandparents going back many many years. But, just because I'm lesser, should I be thrown to the gutter while _only_ high quality education goes to the "truly smart" people?
Then that's where race rears its ugly head. If you only select people with a certain strand of hereditary smarts, you end up with a campus with a majority of people from background X where X feel "at home" there and welcome, but then your minorities C, D, E, F, G, H feel, well, minority. A popular solution to the "too many high achieving people from the same background" bugaboo is to try and make the minorities less minority by boosting their numbers though allowing sub-perfect acceptance (not sub-par, just sub-not-the-absolute-best-ever). But, you have a fixed resource to allocate (class sizes, dorm rooms), so that kicks out some of the (glut) of perfect achievers you would have otherwise accepted.
Then it comes down to politics. Conservative = "me me me, i'm perfect me me me, kill the lessers." Liberal = "we're all in the together, so maybe you should step aside from this opportunity to let others advance too."
You end up with a spectrum from top-down solutions ("no more than 20% of people from X background") to a bottom-up solutions ("only compare people of Y background from other Y background, then start acceptance from non-majority application piles first"). Neither is "fair" to the other, but if you don't pick a society-optimal fairness system (which is inherently unfair to those rejected), you get a completely unfair system of privilege boosting privilege (inherent privilege obtained by upbringing or genetic lottery). (Completely ignoring the other soft acceptance categories of "will this student eventually give us (or will their children eventually give us) lots of money in donations or bring us fame as a legacy.")
There's no actual solution to preventing the over-allocation of fixed resources in the presence of superior consumers; all we're left with is compromises on the spectrum of "superiors only" versus "helping everybody in society."
Thought experiment: if space aliens (superior consumers) landed and offered to sell us antigravity fabric and replicators for $9 trillion USD ('fixed' resources), would we just give them all the money? (Extension: what if they wanted $1 trillion USD worth of bitcoin and you can't even generate that much? Fiat wins again!)
You've got a couple problems in your argument here. Your "thrown in the gutter" argument is pretty silly. People not accepted at harvard (if harvard actually were more honest about qualified admissions) would't fall down a slope into a gutter. They would find their place and ranking elsewhere. Just like you said, you aren't the smartest quickest, you work hard to attempt to make up for it. Clearly you have a place, maybe not at an elite environment where the smarter quicker will save a life or solve a critical failure or set up an infrastructure more efficently. And sure academic testing is flawed and outcomes are chaotic but a school accepting based on various rankings should do so honestly.
The next thing is this. You say, well people of other races might feel uncomfortable if it's too much asian on that campus. So the white or black will feel out of place. But you're being a sort of coddling racist with that kind of thinking. You know what will make somebody out of place in an elite school? Somebody who didn't actually measure up to the standard and got in anyway. Somebody who starts to suspect they don't really deserve to be there and realizes they don't fit and they will take a lot more personal and school resources and probably won't fit much better and so are really a drain on others rather than a contributor.
Because a person who achieves something honestly will have the confidence that they belong and even if the first few days feel weird to them, their work and intelligence will quickly bring them into the fold with their academic peers and teachers. The current biased admission methods will inevitably create tensions too and a bad long term result. If harvard is now confirming a bias, then they leave an elephant in the room. The asians at harvard will look around and notice, say on of their latino classmates is clearly not capable. And that asian will think "my cousin is WAY better than him / her" and she couldn't get in with me. Who is this clown? And so it breaks down their own belief in the school they got into and a tension with their classmates. A non-biased academic admission would mean that conflict or tension like this would be dissolved, the asian would give the latino the benefit of the doubt
It also breaks down the reputation and brand of harvard and so people of minority races with harvard might be suspected as lucking their way in due to color.
The article is not true, Chinese president Xi Jingping's daughter goes to Harvard and many her high school class mates in China think she is just an average student.
"It cites third-party academic research on the SAT exam showing that Asian-Americans have to score on average about 140 points higher than white students, 270 points higher than Hispanic students and 450 points higher than African-American students to equal their chances of gaining admission to Harvard. The exam is scored on a 2400-point scale."
It's odd that affirmative action is basically basing everything on color of your skin and not the content of your character. I was under the impression that it was supposed to prevent this.
The entire point of affirmative action was to provide unearned opportunities based on the color of your skin. With the theory being that over time it would help boost the well being of minorities (at the time mostly African Americans). That by forcing open opportunities, the next generation would do better, and the generation after that would do even better, and so on.
At the expense of other individuals. I personally don't believe affirmative action continues to serve its original purpose, although I've always been against it and gender discrimination as well.
I only have one life. Being told it's ok that I was denied an opportunity because I'm white and I'll be ok is easier to abstract into a broad formula, but harder to take when, on merit alone, I'd be given that opportunity and my life as a human being would be better for it.
Affirmative action was arguably a way to accelerate towards true unbiased judgement, but any purpose it served has run its course and now it's rather harmful, IMHO.
"Affirmative action programs" differ. But in general, they're to control the racism of gatekeepers, these bureaucrats who choose who gets a decent education.
There are better solutions. For instance: free lifelong quality education to all. But naturally, elites would rather waste society's wealth on wars (international killing) and prisons (the most jailings in the world)... than silly things like knowledge and healthcare.
Affirmative action is a modest, successful effort to chip away at the self-destructive inequalities of society. Naturally, many try to attack it to claw back more unearned white privilege for themselves.
There's bias against Asians everywhere. The difference is remarkably pronounced between asian men and asian women. Hollywood, for example: Asian women? Minority. Asian men? nonexistent.
Go to any engineering school in the US, especially grad school, and it's almost all Asian. Out of 28 students in my DSP class, 25 were Asian, and that was 20 years ago, although maybe it has changed.
Where it does bother me is med school. I've seen several of my Asian friends who were just ridiculously obviously great applicants either fail to get into med school or struggle to get into med school over several years. I'm not talking about someone who you see and think "yeah he could be a doctor", I'm talking about someone who you see and think "wow this person has it all - smart, charismatic, hard working, intellectual curiosity, top notch GPA, tons of extracurriculars - this is a no brainer, he'd be a great doctor".
All my friends of other races who seemed similarly qualified to me had no trouble getting in on their first try. And getting into med school or not is a big fucking deal. In some cases, we're turning away people who would be incredible doctors and making them pursue other careers, which is a huge waste.
Those are just anecdotes of course, but I wonder if anyone else has noticed the same thing.