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Asian-American admissions at Harvard

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#71

Post by pessimizer »

Let's be honest here; bias towards blacks and hispanics is intended to address larger societal inequities, and assumes a rough justice is to aim for representation of those groups at their proportion of the population. Bias against Asian admissions is aiming for the same outcome - maintaining white proportion in the student body at a similar level as the wider population, though without the aim of addressing societal ills, but instead simply to preserve white majority.

That's where "diversity" arguments lead you. The real argument for bias toward disadvantaged groups is that discrimination in society leads to members of advantaged groups looking better on paper than they really are, and following the results of a biased system blindly would both predictably lead to a lower quality of student and recursively contribute to the original bias.

Separately: minorities face material discrimination at every income and wealth level. I understand that it's tough for some white people to support anything positive that they're left out of, but racial bias in college admissions is meant to be a counterbalance to other, negative things that white people were also left out of, at every income and wealth level.

But Asians were also suppressed by force of US law, and by angry, murderous mobs. If anything, they should be favored instead of pushed out, regardless of their level of achievement.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#72

Post by gaius »

throwawayjava wrote: post #14
tomdell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the argument. Tests are written by people who talk a certain way, in a way that is easier to process for people who talk the same way. Different communities use different language, and this is reflected in how quickly different students process the problems on standardized tests. There's also the issue that standardized test scores are higher for students who have the time and encouragement to study for t…

The diversity thing is mostly a red-herring. Admissions offers are abandoning standardized tests because of Goodhart's Law. > for students who have the time and encouragement to study for them It's not just time and encouragement. SAT/ACT prep is serious industry. $100+/hr tutoring sessions. Owners of good SAT prep businesses can make six or seven figures in a few months. And good prep courses really do work. Tests,…

And good prep courses really do work. Tests, like coding interviews, are a game you can hack with enough time and effort.

Years ago I took the GMAT and scored very highly, 98th percentile, and GMAT-taking is definitely a learnable skill in and of itself. Then again, maybe the test is really a proxy for “willing to do prep work upfront”. Having said that obviously it filters for those who have the opportunity to do so, but I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say the latter is not it’s deliberate intent.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#73

Post by jiminy_john »

learc83 wrote: post #45
colordrops wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it is case that native speakers of a specific dialect score higher, it's not clear that the result is due to language barriers, and could be a correlation with socio-economic groups. That is the point of bringing up non-native speakers doing well, as the test is not even their native language, which is certainly a greater disadvantage than a different dialect.

So you don't think that there is an advantage gained by being a native speaker of a dialect a test is written in? The academic consensus is that there is. The clearest example is that vocabulary is a large part of most standardized tests and native speakers have larger vocabularies than proficient L2 speakers.

So you want to not test people in English but in some vague universal language?! What would that be: "equality of outcome"? Propaganda?!

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#74

Post by jpao79 »

rdtsc wrote: post #15

The linked report (exhibit A) is interesting to read: http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c... It would seem at first that Harvard wants to help poor students and race just happens to be a proxy for socioeconomic status, but it turns out that's not what they are doing: > Harvard’s preferential treatment of African-American and Hispanic applicants is not the result of efforts to achieve socioeco…

There could be a case that it is not just for photographs but it is actually the marketing pitch for the value proposition of Harvard over, as the Tyler Cowen mentions, UC Irvine.

If you are trying to train and prepare a student to lead global teams, set global government policy, guide diverse groups toward a common solution, etc., you will need exposure to a diverse set of ideas and a diverse future network of fellow alumni to debate ideas with during your formative undergraduate years.

Otherwise, might as well save the $0.25 million in tuition and indeed go to UCI instead because otherwise it really is the same lectures, reading material and tests!

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#75

Post by Teeer »

learc83 wrote: post #7
toasterlovin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To say nothing of the logical contortions required to argue that modern standardized tests discriminates based on ancestry or skin color.

They clearly do. The most explicit example is that ancestry correlates with whether you are a native speaker of the dialect the test was written in.

But yet Asians perform the best on standardized tests, not whites who comes from England?

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#76

Post by Teeer »

Harvard, along with most other private universities, use racism in their college admissions. It's very sad that we still have to deal with this, after history has showed favoritism towards certain races has never ended well.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#77

Post by barry-cotter »

learc83 wrote: post #70
barry-cotter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This phenomenon is known as the practice effect. It has a ceiling in terms of IQ tests, just like it does in terms of physical tests. IQ tests are designed to be as close to ungameable as possible. This is like pointing out that I can make large gains in my 100m sprint time by practicing for half an hour a day for a month and predicting that I can make the Olympic team if I put in a thousand hours practice. Novice ga…

IQ tests are gameable to a degree. They are accurate across large populations largely because most people don't practice, not because they are actually ungameable. SATs are different in 2 respects. 1. There is a large incentive to practice. 2. It isn't an IQ test, it only correlates fairly strongly with scores on IQ tests. SATs are highly knowledge based--most of the math questions can be answered by memorizing algor…

The SAT is highly g loaded and it correlates with tests that are designed and marketed as IQ tests at levels sufficient that saying it isn’t one is quibbling. The lowest estimate I found for IQ SAT correlation was an r^2 of 0.76.

SATs are more knowledge based than a test designed to be culture fair, like Raven’s Progressive Matrices but they’re not meant to be culture fair either, they’re for testing educated English speaking Americans. The test population are in high school but there’s nothing on the test that you wouldn’t have known by the end of middle school.

As far as algorithms and vocabulary go, most people have limited ability to follow complex algorithms because that requires a lot of working memory, which correlates with... Intelligence!

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#78

Post by jakecopp »

Eridrus wrote: post #51
doubleunplussed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Affirmative action has biases of its own, should be blinded to prevent it. Let it be based on family income only. In Australia university admissions are based pretty much solely on one number [1] that represents your high school results (unless you didn't go to high school in Australia), plus bonus points if you are disadvantaged (for which race is not relevant unless you are an indigenous Australian or Torres S…

This is largely true, but not entirely. UNSW definitely had a program for accepting engineering students who didn't get the appropriate UAI, based on other criteria. I don't remember what it was called, but I definitely applied for it because I spent a good chunk of school fucking around and wasn't sure how badly I had messed up my grades.

Might be Faculty of Engineering Admissions Scheme (FEAS)?

Though I believe there are also bonus ATAR points for students from regional schools.

https://www.engineering.unsw.edu.au/study-with-us/feas

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#79

Post by learc83 »

jiminy_john wrote: post #73
learc83 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't think that there is an advantage gained by being a native speaker of a dialect a test is written in? The academic consensus is that there is. The clearest example is that vocabulary is a large part of most standardized tests and native speakers have larger vocabularies than proficient L2 speakers.

So you want to not test people in English but in some vague universal language?! What would that be: "equality of outcome"? Propaganda?!

Yes. You've correctly read between the lines to discover my hidden, unwritten argument.

All standardized testing should be conducted in the universal language of interpretive dance.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#80

Post by jakecopp »

sien wrote: post #49
doubleunplussed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Affirmative action has biases of its own, should be blinded to prevent it. Let it be based on family income only. In Australia university admissions are based pretty much solely on one number [1] that represents your high school results (unless you didn't go to high school in Australia), plus bonus points if you are disadvantaged (for which race is not relevant unless you are an indigenous Australian or Torres S…

The Australian National University, headed by the Nobel Prize winning Brian Schmidt is going to change their admissions policy to be more like the US. http://theconversation.com/anus-new-entrance-criteria-wont-d... Amongst Australian academics there is a push to change ATAR allegedly because it reflects socio-economic status (SES) too much. https://theconversation.com/should-we-scrap-the-atar-what-ar... Andrew Norton…

Is grading to a curve the norm at Australian Universities?

They don't seem to do that at UNSW except in special circumstances.

It's quite strange coming from the Canberra secondary school system where everything was scaled to a consistent mean and stdev.

I think Canberra's secondary school system (years 11 & 12, 2 years before Uni) is light years ahead of other Australian states. It's great how you can focus on individually driven project work rather than studying state-wide standardized tests.

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