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

nytimes.com

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

#151

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

Veelox wrote: post #17
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #2

>Harvard says it also considers “tips,” or admissions advantages, for some applicants. The plaintiffs say the college gives tips to five groups: racial and ethnic minorities; legacies, or the children of Harvard or Radcliffe alumni; relatives of a Harvard donor; the children of staff or faculty members; and recruited athletes. I just don't think you can, at the same time, claim to be for diversity in admissions and a…

>To the asian issue I wonder if it isn't even a negative treatment, just that other racial minorities get a tip and many whites make it through legacy and donoring. I am going to make some assumptions and I apologise if they are wrong. I am going to assume that you think racism is wrong. I think that includes structural rasism. That is, policies, procedures, and practices by institutions that systematically disadvant…

>Yet, you seemed to stop a step short of calling this structural racism against Asian Americans. Is there something I am missing for why you didn't take that last step?

If we remove legacy admissions, does the Harvard admission system become racist against white people? I don't think so. Harvard is trying to counter-balance a (semi) racially stratified society.

Imagine a caste society. Higher caste children are provided with much more material support and are going to be more equipped to get high scores on standardized tests and participate in extracurricular activities (and the right ones). Would a school that looked only at test scores and extracurriculars be race-blind? No, it would just be an indirect observer of race, in this way we have 'laundered' race.

In a racist structure there is no way to be blind to race, you either perpetuate it or you work against it.

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

#152

Post by Ntrails »

georgecmu wrote: post #121
thecleaner wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess thats a problem with the SAT. I saw a couple of questions and a lot of them are very easy for college entrance exams. I think university entrances should be a bit on the tough end (China's standardized tests and JEE from India come to mind). Of course schools could look at a lot more but if so many people get perfect scores then that clearly is a problem with the tests themselves.

The challenge of SAT is not in the difficulty of the questions. The challenge is that there are 40 questions and you have 1.25 minutes to do each one.

When i was at uni they described the intention as:

    40% for book learning (memorisation)
    30% for variations on things you've seen before
    30% for applying concepts in new ways, requiring "deeper" understanding
From that perspective, if I want good students I don't care if you can answer a standard question quickly and accurately, I care whether you can reason something about a harder question given time to think.

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

#153

Post by Eridrus »

Veelox wrote: post #20

I think the part of the issue that bothers me most is how much of a double standard there is between what counts as racism against African Americans and rasism against Asian Americans. Objectively, if you have two identical applications to Harvard except one is labeled black and the other is labeled Asian, the black one has a higher chance of success. They do the same thing with fake job applications with white names…

So, I don't think this is about any of the racial groups, but more so about the fact that diversity advocates have latched onto a narrative of underrepresentation of minorities as the issue, which is basically asking for equality in outcomes (i.e. demographically proportionate representation), and Asian Americans (largely due to skilled immigration) do not fit this framing.

Except for Asian Americans this is a narrative that works well for minorities, and also lets them push for affirmative action that may be necessary to correct past injustices.

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

#154

Post by melkiaur »

arkh wrote: post #99
drawnwren wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that top 5 US schools are taking a much smaller percentage of a much larger population. They simply can't differentiate on academic performance alone. They generally admit somewhere around 5% of their applicants. Keeping in mind that those applicants are self-selecting, to some degree, thanks to the previously known admit rates and high application fees -- they have to use something else. A professor of…

In France, the most sought after enginnering schools use an entrance exam. No need to check for old academic performances as everyone is tested on the same things. They usually also have alternate admittance system but that's for 2% or 3% of students.

In France, Polytechnique is probably the most sought after. There's an oral exam to get in, and guess what ? Only 25% of student from Paris are eliminated, versus 40% of kids from la province.

7% of girls are eliminated in the Computer Science branch (MP-Info), versus 27% of boys.

More info, in french: https://www.lemonde.fr/campus/article/2014/11/25/l-ecole-pol...

And besides, the real filtering is actually done after the Baccalauréat: not everyone gets to be admitted to the big Parisian Lycées (Henry-IV, Louis-Le-Grand, etc.).

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

#155

Post by WillPostForFood »

speedplane wrote: post #52
DanBC wrote: post #49

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. Why do they need to dip into subjectivity? Why not just set admission standards and then run a lottery on everyone who meets those standards?

Using randomness to evaluate students is an admission that it's impossible to evaluate them with any objective or subjective criteria. While it would be fair, it's a dereliction of responsibility on the part of admissions officers.

Get rid of the admissions officers.

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

#156

Post by WillPostForFood »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #67
aiyodev wrote: post #59

It’s worth reminding everyone that Harvard is the reason there’s any discrimination in the admissions process. Students used to get accepted on academic merit alone. But Harvard wanted to covertly discriminate against Jewish applicants. The reason why you have to write essays about your extracurricular activities, for example, is because a Jewish applicant back then typically wouldn’t have any. It’s also when legacy…

Hell no. Optimizing solely for grades and test scores will get you rote-memorizing robots with zero personal skills and minimal potential. A completely merit-based, objective admissions system simply does not exist.

You are making a reasonable, but baseless claim. You are saying that 4.0 GPA students with 1600 SAT scores have zero personal skills, are robots, and have minimal potential. We know though, that SAT is a one of the best available predictors of outcome.

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

#157

Post by Veelox »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #151
Veelox wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To the asian issue I wonder if it isn't even a negative treatment, just that other racial minorities get a tip and many whites make it through legacy and donoring. I am going to make some assumptions and I apologise if they are wrong. I am going to assume that you think racism is wrong. I think that includes structural rasism. That is, policies, procedures, and practices by institutions that systematically disadvant…

>Yet, you seemed to stop a step short of calling this structural racism against Asian Americans. Is there something I am missing for why you didn't take that last step? If we remove legacy admissions, does the Harvard admission system become racist against white people? I don't think so. Harvard is trying to counter-balance a (semi) racially stratified society. Imagine a caste society. Higher caste children are provi…

>In a racist structure there is no way to be blind to race, you either perpetuate it or you work against it.

You could be trying to say one thing while I hear something different. Do you think it is okay to elevate underrepresented minorities despite a lack of objectively measurable merit?

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

#158

Post by jancsika »

IvyAdmisions wrote: post #68

From an earlier thread: I was a college admissions officer for a few years and am familiar with the process at the top Ivies. The outcome is racist but there's no intent to be racist. Imagine your job is to create the best possible 2000-student freshman class for Harvard from the 40,000 students who apply. You review the applications and notice to your horror that 600-1000 of them all have perfect or near perfect tes…

> play an instrument (very well, but not remarkably),

Let's take your low end of 600 students. Let's say you are a former musician and could judge their ability after listening to a mere 1 minute of music. Plus perhaps 30 seconds to reflect upon what you heard and make some notes.

That alone is 15 hours of your work week as an admissions officer, or 3% of your total time for the review period if you figure a full 3 months of reviews for applications. That's assuming you didn't listen to musical excerpts from the thousands of other musician students you ostensibly reviewed to fill in the slots for the rest of the Freshman class.

Did you do that as an admissions officer?

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

#159

Post by jessaustin »

imgabe wrote: post #91
reitzensteinm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't discriminate against asian people, just their problematic culture.

Funny how you substituted culture for the word application in the OP. Is it your belief that college applications are the sum total of Asian culture?

Clearly 'reitzensteinm is baiting this "IvyAdmisions" [sic] character. No one who had a job at Harvard for more than a month would tolerate that statement, but "IA" agrees heartily. He's going to claim that he was in admissions at a different Ivy, but no matter how people might look down on Penn or Cornell, they wouldn't have this joker around either. This account has existed for 42 days, and is trolling this entire thread.

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

#160

Post by justin66 »

aiyodev wrote: post #59

It’s worth reminding everyone that Harvard is the reason there’s any discrimination in the admissions process. Students used to get accepted on academic merit alone. But Harvard wanted to covertly discriminate against Jewish applicants. The reason why you have to write essays about your extracurricular activities, for example, is because a Jewish applicant back then typically wouldn’t have any. It’s also when legacy…

> Students used to get accepted on academic merit alone.

That seems unlikely, to put it mildly. Nepotism is not a recent innovation.

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