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Asian-American admissions at Harvard

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Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#111

Post by learc83 »

toasterlovin wrote: post #110
learc83 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that shows the rate at which Asian Americans take the SAT, the birth rates of 2.5 million Asian Americans who were here in 1980, or the ages of the Asians who've immigrated since. So saying that we have an extra 17.5 million Asian Americans, and Asian Americans outperform whites on the SAT, therefore 2nd generation Asian Americans outperform whites isn't supported by the evidence presented so far. However non…

Yeah, and my original point was that these tests don’t discriminate based on skin color or ancestry. What you’re saying is that different races have different aggregate outcomes, but that that is due to different aggregate income levels. That doesn’t really sound like you disagree with my original point.

No. I'm saying that income plays a larger role than dialect. Dialect still plays a role. If dialect differences were accounted for, speakers of non-standard dialects would have greater aggregate scores.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#112

Post by learc83 »

colordrops wrote: post #101
learc83 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of an impact it has is debatable, but the academic consensus is that it is relevant. If you trust your own experiences and opinions more than the current research, there isn't much I can do to convince you otherwise. >It's almost insulting to think that dialect matters that much considering how much exposure everyone gets to the mainstream dialect. Whether it's insulting is irrelevant to whether it's true. >…

Do you have a link to the study? I'm curious what "relevant" means in this case. From the beginning I've not denied that dialect can have an effect, only that I believe it to overwhelmed by a sea of countless other factors that cause someone to succeed or fail at getting into college, and I haven't seen any data that shows that it is the prevailing factor and one that truly matters. The subtext to my comments is that…

>only that I believe it to overwhelmed by a sea of countless other factors that cause someone to succeed or fail at getting into college

Yes it can be and is at an individual level.

If you removed 50 points from every Black student's SAT score just because they were Black, there would still be countless other factors that caused them to succeed for fail at getting into college. Their being Black wouldn't be the largest factor (family income still would be).

But across the entire population, you would see a significant drop in the number of Black students in college.

As to a link: Here's a link and a quote from the abstract of a relevant metastudy

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26090843

"The results showed a negative and moderate relationship between dialect use and overall literacy performance (M effect size = -0.33) and for dialect and reading (M effect size = -0.32). For spelling and writing, the relationship was negative and small (M effect size = -0.22). Moderator analyses revealed that socioeconomic status and grade level were not significant predictors for relations among dialect use and literacy skills."

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#113

Post by taneq »

tomdell wrote: post #10
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.

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…

> 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.

So have your test writers distributed in a way that matches the general population. Don't just blindly try and force the population of VLSI design engineers or whatever to mimic the city's demographics.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#114

Post by doubleunplussed »

tzs wrote: post #102
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…

> 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 How does this work with universities that have different focuses? From the information at [1] and at your Wikipedia link, my understanding is that the way this number works is as follows. • There is a…

Specific university courses will have additional requirements, for example my science course required an ATAR of 95, but also required a minimum score in a maths unit, and required that you completed some number of science units (I don't exactly remember). So based on the requirements, you couldn't ace English and then enrol in a science degree, for example.

In practice the minimum scores required in specific units are more easily achievable than the ATAR, so the ATAR ends up being the limiting factor most of the time.

Here is an example:

https://www.monash.edu/study/courses/find-a-course/2018/scie...

You can see the scores required in individual units are all 30. 30 is the mean by definition, whereas an ATAR of 95 means you're in the 95th percentile, so obviously if you're in the 95th percentile it's pretty likely you were above the mean in the relevant units.

> Do the universities these students apply to just see the ATAR number, or do they also see which courses went into its calculation?

I've been told by an administrative person in my department that there is in fact no system in place to verify that the students have completed the prerequisite high school courses or their scores. This is surprising to me but there you go.

My memory is unreliable so this might not be quite right but I think I heard from the head a department that they just get ATARs and whether the applicant is from a socioeconomically disadvantaged background. So if that's the case and is true for other universities, then the advertised subject requirements etc mostly have the effect of encouraging students to self-select. Presumably after the fact, the university could ask a failing student to provide their high school transcripts, but basically they're not enforcing it up-front automatically.

But I also get the impression things are just not as competitive as in the US. Most people live in the major cities and just attend the best university that their score allows, out of the universities in their own city. They don't care enough about going to the best school to move cities for it. The differences between the top 8 universities are not great enough for it to be worth moving when there is likely one in your city already.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#115

Post by arcturus17 »

wallace_f wrote: post #33
gnodar wrote: post #26

For those interested in Harvard's point of view: https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2018/defending-divers... https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education

I like how Harvard sings praises of opportunity and diversity from ivory towers while literally discussing their will to hold up barriers to entry to education. There's no good reason to hold education hostage. The goal should be to create as much opportunity as possible.

Harvard is one of the founding partners of edX and has a ton of high-quality courses there. It also has the Harvard Extension School, which offers high-quality degrees at a fraction of the cost of the other schools. Probably unfair to say that they hold educatio hostage.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#116

Post by wallace_f »

arcturus17 wrote: post #115
wallace_f wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how Harvard sings praises of opportunity and diversity from ivory towers while literally discussing their will to hold up barriers to entry to education. There's no good reason to hold education hostage. The goal should be to create as much opportunity as possible.

Harvard is one of the founding partners of edX and has a ton of high-quality courses there. It also has the Harvard Extension School, which offers high-quality degrees at a fraction of the cost of the other schools. Probably unfair to say that they hold educatio hostage.

I know, but what I'm trying to say is that this whole discussion is misguided and ridiculous.

The shame is that those "49%" of students who are, according to Harvard, fully qualified, are not given access. The whole discussion should be about how to give every qualified person--and in fact, every person: barriers to entry will always be deleterious to competitive results--access to their degree programs.

But that's not how the world works. Harvard sells prestige and privilege, and profits from limiting access to it. So we end up in these ridiculous discussions about who should get access to that prestige and privilege.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#117

Post by toasterlovin »

learc83 wrote: post #111
toasterlovin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and my original point was that these tests don’t discriminate based on skin color or ancestry. What you’re saying is that different races have different aggregate outcomes, but that that is due to different aggregate income levels. That doesn’t really sound like you disagree with my original point.

No. I'm saying that income plays a larger role than dialect. Dialect still plays a role. If dialect differences were accounted for, speakers of non-standard dialects would have greater aggregate scores.

But you’re saying that dialect is caused by income!

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#118

Post by fooker »

barry-cotter wrote: post #65
fooker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For grad school, GRE and the other tests exist to filter out obviously unmotivated candidates. So, a good GRE score can not get you in with any certainty, but a bad one can disqualify you.

Obviously unmotivated? Your thoughtless dismissal of those less intelligent is enraging. Do you think all the people who work harder than you to get worse results are less motivated? There are tens of thousands of people who would love to get into top graduate programmes, who love the subject they study but who just aren’t as smart as other people and you’re shitting on them as unmotivated? Conscientiousness and inte…

The GRE is designed to reward hard workers as well as intelligent people, that's why it is a widely used metric. Grad schools need hard working people as much as (probably more than, to be fair) they need intelligent people.

I am joining a CS PhD program in an US university this fall. The GRE, especially the math part, is high school mathematics. If you are not good at math, you can ace it by studying hard for a month.

That is why a low GRE quant score reflects that you haven't really bothered.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#119

Post by fooker »

slantyyz wrote: post #31
fooker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For grad school, GRE and the other tests exist to filter out obviously unmotivated candidates. So, a good GRE score can not get you in with any certainty, but a bad one can disqualify you.

I think it depends. When I wrote the GMAT (albeit in 1992), a good score would get you into most Canadian business schools even if you had mediocre marks. My recollection of the GMAT's difficulty was that any high school grad with an A average could easily score higher than the 80 percentile on the test. While I was happy my result gave me the ability to choose which business school I wanted to go to (my marks, while…

I am not familiar with business school admissions, but it is very rare nowadays to get into non cash-cow grad school programs in STEM fields on the basis of the GRE score alone.

Re: Asian-American admissions at Harvard

#120

Post by learc83 »

toasterlovin wrote: post #117
learc83 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm saying that income plays a larger role than dialect. Dialect still plays a role. If dialect differences were accounted for, speakers of non-standard dialects would have greater aggregate scores.

But you’re saying that dialect is caused by income!

No. I'm saying some of the differences in dialect between 2nd generation and later Hispanic and Asian immigrants are caused by income.
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