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Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

nytimes.com

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Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#31

Post by lainga »

pishpash wrote: post #22
lainga wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "accounting for a category called 'demographic,'... [pushing] up African-American and Hispanic numbers, while reducing whites and Asian-Americans" maintaining the "good old days"? Or are these stodgy elites just incompetent bunglers?

That's just dividing the (small) minority pie between the 'others'. If African American or Hispanic numbers ever threaten to reach those of the Asian horde, you think they'd keep promoting diversity?

OK, first off, from TFA, "Harvard’s class of 2021 is 14.6 percent African-American, 22.2 percent Asian-American, 11.6 percent Hispanic and 2.5 percent Native-American or Pacific Islander, according to Harvard’s website." That leaves you with 49.1-percent white or Jewish, which I don't consider small pie.

Second, I and my maternal ancestors haven't been part of a "horde" since Padishah Babur shacked up in the 16th century.

Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#32

Post by dnautics »

These sorts of subjective judgements can drive you crazy. My father (who was asian-american) had a civilian job with the United States government and a part time job with the United States navy. His civilian job, which was in the most corrupt branch of the executive branch, rated him as a poor performer personality wise and as having "no leadership potential". Nobody got the message, really since after this he took a temporary leave of absence and activated his us navy job as full time - as a captain (O6), the team he led delivered the first fully digitized, network inventory system which saved the navy on the order of billions of dollars. When he got back to his civilian job those negative reviews kept coming and he was denied promotions on those bases.

Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#33

Post by rb808 »

I read an article a while back that compared admissions process to a bouncer in a nightclub. Was the best description of why things are done as they are.

As a hazy summary - the prestigious institutions try to have a mix of different types of people - rich people bring resources, well connected families bring influence & contacts, people with high test scores bring hard work and intelligence, achievers in arts/sports/activities bring hard work and desire to win, alumni children bring culture, loyalty and resources. Its no coincidence that there are different routes in for these different types of people.

Its the unique mix that makes places like Harvard great. There are other schools that choose people with highest test scores - that is a different approach. Harvard has no obligation to do this. Given the track record of alumni to achieve, the Harvard approach seems to work much better if you consider routes to powerful & high achieving jobs to be the main outcome.

Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#34

Post by tlholaday »

jogjayr wrote: post #11

I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores (as done in India, Russia, maybe China?), and nothing else, might be the least unfair way to judge applicants. Every admission system is unfair in some way but tests are a yardstick everyone understands and can optimize for. In India they publicly post the list of admitted students and their marks. Richer students may benefit from higher-quali…

Single-gate protocols reward investment in gate-deception.

Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#35

Post by noetic_techy »

Funny how the activist at these universities cry "institutional racism" when in reality the only concrete verifiable evidence of it is their own institution.

It makes no sense to cry about white privilege when you're actively holding down a race that is on pace and even outperforming whites in higher education and median income, and yet this very contradiction and others alludes people due to their own confirmation bias.

Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#36

Post by dnautics »

Alex3917 wrote: post #30
poster123 wrote: post #5

There may be racial differences in personality, but it is implausible that as the proportion of Asians in the high-achieving student population rises, their personalities get just worse enough that the fraction of Asian students at Harvard stays about the same. Harvard admits this when it says that what brings the Asian fraction down to 18% is "demographic". Elite universities are often accusing the broader society o…

What always gets lost in this debate though is the fact that grades and SAT scores aren't especially meaningful or important. Given that we've had Asians and Jews freaking out all week and making dogwhistle attacks against blacks/hispanics because of the Stuy admissions issue, the fact that these so-called metrics aren't inherently any better or more fair than a personality test or whatever somehow always gets lost i…

Why do you assume that Asians are only good at posting test scores and grades?

Those scores are being talked about because of all the criteria they are the measurable ones, so you can use them as a baseline. Asian Americans do extracurricular activities just like everyone else does.

Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#37

Post by Alex3917 »

dnautics wrote: post #36
Alex3917 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What always gets lost in this debate though is the fact that grades and SAT scores aren't especially meaningful or important. Given that we've had Asians and Jews freaking out all week and making dogwhistle attacks against blacks/hispanics because of the Stuy admissions issue, the fact that these so-called metrics aren't inherently any better or more fair than a personality test or whatever somehow always gets lost i…

Why do you assume that Asians are only good at posting test scores and grades? Those scores are being talked about because of all the criteria they are the measurable ones, so you can use them as a baseline. Asian Americans do extracurricular activities just like everyone else does.

> Why do you assume that Asians are only good at posting test scores and grades?

Not something I said or implied. I was purely talking about the responses to the NYC admissions thing on Facebook, the NYC subreddit, etc.

> Those scores are being talked about because of all the criteria they are the measurable ones

They're not measurable, they just have numbers attached to them. You can attach numbers to a personality test just as easily.

Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#38

Post by klipt »

danielfoster wrote: post #14

"Alumni interviewers give Asian-Americans personal ratings comparable to those of whites. But the admissions office gives them the worst scores of any racial group, often without even meeting them, according to Prof. Arcidiacono." I can't imagine the feeling of working so hard through elementary school, middle school, and high school to get into an Ivy League school, only for an admissions panel to declare me "low in…

America: "we only want highly skilled, highly educated immigrants."

Also America: "these immigrants' children are too skilled and educated, and it's upsetting our racial quotas. We have to discriminate against them."

America - you can work here, but don't dare dream that your children will be treated equally if you're from Asia. Of course, if you're from Europe your children will be lumped into the white demographic. If you're from Africa, your children may even benefit from affirmative action meant for the descendants of American slaves. Yay racial profiling!

Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#39

Post by acomjean »

jogjayr wrote: post #11

I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores (as done in India, Russia, maybe China?), and nothing else, might be the least unfair way to judge applicants. Every admission system is unfair in some way but tests are a yardstick everyone understands and can optimize for. In India they publicly post the list of admitted students and their marks. Richer students may benefit from higher-quali…

The supreme court ruled that you can use a variety of metrics for admissions. Like hiring you have to try and make a transparent decision, not just "I feel like this person would work well", so everything gets measured and quantified.

Harvard hired an analysis of their admissions: 196 page analysis of the admissions process. It seems like they rank 4 things: Academics/ extracurricular/ personality / athletics.

You can see some comparison rankings on page 36 of Harvard's report -

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/file...

From https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education

I didn't go to harvard, but I work there.

Re: Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits: Lawsuit

#40

Post by ra1n85 »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #25
lainga wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "accounting for a category called 'demographic,'... [pushing] up African-American and Hispanic numbers, while reducing whites and Asian-Americans" maintaining the "good old days"? Or are these stodgy elites just incompetent bunglers?

This was why this holistic admission was introduced in the first place: anti-semitism. Jewish applicants were becoming too good at the existing criteria used for admissions, so these universities switched to more subjective standards that they could use to disqualify these candidates.

Do you have a source for that?

I would have assumed it was to create some diversity in their acceptance pool.

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