‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

Post by raincom » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:12 AM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #25

Veelox wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Obviously hard objective criteria are not be enough to get into Harvard, and they need to dip into subjectivity which is rife with bias. I think you are missing the point OP is making. The top 80% of blacks score well on the subjective stuff. Only the top 10% of Asians score that well. With that, there are a few possibilities. 1) Blacks are more interesting than Asians. 2) Personality is uncorrelated with test score…

I wish you were right, because if the issue was just a few racist admissions officers, then the solution would be simple: fire them and get non-racist ones, problem solved. However, there is a fourth, more likely explanation: 4) Harvard's scoring is unintentionally hurting Asian students. From the article, it seems that Harvard focuses on establishing student diversity that roughly tracks the US population, bringing…

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:17 AM UTC

Veelox wrote: post #22

speedplane wrote: post #19

The article says that there are only 1600 spots at Harvard, and of the applicants "3,500 had perfect SAT math scores, 2,700 had perfect SAT verbal scores, and more than 8,000 had straight A’s" (doesn't say how many had all three). Obviously hard objective criteria are not be enough to get into Harvard, and they need to dip into subjectivity which is rife with bias. The only fair solutions are to make the SATs harder…

>Obviously hard objective criteria are not be enough to get into Harvard, and they need to dip into subjectivity which is rife with bias. I think you are missing the point OP is making. The top 80% of blacks score well on the subjective stuff. Only the top 10% of Asians score that well. With that, there are a few possibilities. 1) Blacks are more interesting than Asians. 2) Personality is uncorrelated with test score…

Post by verylongname » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:24 AM UTC

lozenge wrote: post #44

'Yet another was “bright & busy” but it was “a bit difficult to see what would hold him in during a lop.”' 'admissions officers then fine-tune the final class using a form that lists five pieces of information about the applicant; they give an example of a form that has spaces for the applicant’s name, LIN (lineage), ETH (ethnicity), ATH (athlete), and HFAI (financial aid).' It's undeniably racism. I wonder what the…

Post by rspeer » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:26 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #35

rspeer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recognize that in a literal sense you can claim to support diversity and also have legacy admissions. What GP meant is that you shouldn't , because it makes the claim a lie. Legacy admissions promote exactly the opposite of diversity.

For the sake of simplicity, let's assume all legacy admissions are white males, and that the diversity they claim to promote is racial and gender diversity. > Legacy admissions promote exactly the opposite of diversity That's only true if the number of white males that would be admitted in a fully diverse class is not large enough to accommodate all the legacy admissions. I suspect that this is not the case, and so l…

Post by DanBC » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:30 AM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #19

The article says that there are only 1600 spots at Harvard, and of the applicants "3,500 had perfect SAT math scores, 2,700 had perfect SAT verbal scores, and more than 8,000 had straight A’s" (doesn't say how many had all three). Obviously hard objective criteria are not be enough to get into Harvard, and they need to dip into subjectivity which is rife with bias. The only fair solutions are to make the SATs harder…