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Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

nytimes.com

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Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#81

Post by throwaway333444 »

ekianjo wrote: post #15
throwaway333444 wrote: post #10

> Harvard has testified that race, when considered in admissions, can only help, not hurt, a student’s chances of getting in. So if your race matches their preference they improve your odds of admittance. Since the number of admissions is fixed this reduces the odds of those who have a race that doesn’t match their preference. IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty.

> IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty. I don't like what they seem to be doing, but Harvard is a private university - they should be able to recruit who they want to based on their own criteria. Of course, it's not a binary thing: universities in the US receive lots of subsidies from local states, so there is a certain expectation of fairness. Maybe the right thing to do would be to c…

>I don't like what they seem to be doing, but Harvard is a private university - they should be able to recruit who they want to based on their own criteria.

So your position is that they are free to racially discriminate against candidates because they are a private university?

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#82

Post by toasterlovin »

munchbunny wrote: post #76
qubax wrote: post #65

On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. On the other hand, harvard and the left are obsessed with race. So is harvard and the left racist? Aren't they supposed to be colorblind and…

On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. That's a MASSIVE straw man. Harvard won't argue that, and nobody who studies race and equality issues will argue that. I'm assuming that you…

How is “the rich get richer” a racial issue?

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#83

Post by toasterlovin »

dev_dull wrote: post #49

The answer to this is so simple: rather than trying to optimize algorithms for admission, we need to decrease the demand for admissions to these schools. 1. Increase the supply. More seats. More schools. More teachers. More locations. 2. Decrease the demand. Better alternatives. Vocational schools. On the job training. Not using degree a job criteria.

The point of exclusive clubs like top schools is to be exclusive. If they’re not exclusive, then they don’t confer the benefits of distinction. That’s all elite universities are, for the most part. You can learn whatever you want from books; going to a top school doesn’t bestow greater knowledge on you.

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#84

Post by adamnemecek »

munchbunny wrote: post #76
qubax wrote: post #65

On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. On the other hand, harvard and the left are obsessed with race. So is harvard and the left racist? Aren't they supposed to be colorblind and…

On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. That's a MASSIVE straw man. Harvard won't argue that, and nobody who studies race and equality issues will argue that. I'm assuming that you…

The main problem is that the catch up mechanisms don’t have a termination condition. At what point do these go away? What if for whatever reason, these mechanisms don’t actually improve anything. Do we keep adding more mechanisms?

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#85

Post by toasterlovin »

dev_dull wrote: post #48
mothers wrote: post #39

To those who have a problem with Harvard's alleged discrimination. Do you think female-only schools should exist? In addition, would you agree with an admission policy that only uses SAT and AP scores? Grades inherently are subjective and can unfairly be given on the basis of race on the K-12 level, so that's helpful. Harvard should just model China and make the SAT the only criterion. If there are too many people wi…

Goodhart's Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” SATs will quickly become one of the poorest indicators for success.

Except that SATs measure something real (intelligence), so unless outright cheating and bribery are taking place, it will continue to be a good measure.

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#86

Post by pgodzin »

qubax wrote: post #65

On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. On the other hand, harvard and the left are obsessed with race. So is harvard and the left racist? Aren't they supposed to be colorblind and…

Yes, they say we should live in a colorblind society. But because we don't, applicants' paths to Harvard are very different, often because of systemic differences in opportunities, resources, enforcement, etc that differ strongly between races.

Thus, the theory is that the way to get to that colorblind society is by accounting for those differences and to afford greater opportunities to historically disadvantaged groups.

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#87

Post by barry-cotter »

dev_dull wrote: post #48
mothers wrote: post #39

To those who have a problem with Harvard's alleged discrimination. Do you think female-only schools should exist? In addition, would you agree with an admission policy that only uses SAT and AP scores? Grades inherently are subjective and can unfairly be given on the basis of race on the K-12 level, so that's helpful. Harvard should just model China and make the SAT the only criterion. If there are too many people wi…

Goodhart's Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” SATs will quickly become one of the poorest indicators for success.

There’s an entire academic field designed around making reliable tests with valid results for psychological measurements, called psychometrics. IQ tests and we swear it’s not an IQ test like SATs, the GRE, GMAT, LSAT are all designed to be as close to ungameable as possible and it works. Practice effects exist, you can get better by doing more of them but they’re also limited. Usain Bolt is never going to run 100m in 5s and I’m never going to run a sub 10s 100m no matter how hard I practice. Likewise SATs are not going to stop predicting success in college or in life because they measure g, the general factor of intelligence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometrics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#88

Post by yhoneycomb »

ajross wrote: post #67
rdiddly wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume they're trying to have it be affirmative-action-like, but your comment did make me think of it in an interesting way: You can't say "race always helps" or "race only helps" because everybody has a race. There are no Person for which Person.Race is null. (Can you tell I'm on a break from writing code tonight?)

> There are no Person for which Person.Race is null. Are there not? There are surely Person for which multiple rows with distinct Race exist. It's... complicated. And yes: if you buy that "race" matters, for good or ill, it's not possible to have a completely just policy that is race-blind, it just isn't. If Harvard wants a campus whose diversity of background (and that obviously includes much more than just race) ma…

Actually, it would probably be mainly Asian students if it was completely merit based

Does that suck? If so IMO you're racist

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#89

Post by pgodzin »

toasterlovin wrote: post #85
dev_dull wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodhart's Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” SATs will quickly become one of the poorest indicators for success.

Except that SATs measure something real (intelligence), so unless outright cheating and bribery are taking place, it will continue to be a good measure.

Citation needed. The huge amount of time and resources spent preparing for the SATs imply that it is not a direct measure of intelligence.

Is a someone who scored a 2300 after years of test prep necessarily more intelligent than someone who couldn't afford test prep or didn't have access to it and still scored a 2000?

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#90

Post by protomyth »

ekianjo wrote: post #15
throwaway333444 wrote: post #10

> Harvard has testified that race, when considered in admissions, can only help, not hurt, a student’s chances of getting in. So if your race matches their preference they improve your odds of admittance. Since the number of admissions is fixed this reduces the odds of those who have a race that doesn’t match their preference. IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty.

> IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty. I don't like what they seem to be doing, but Harvard is a private university - they should be able to recruit who they want to based on their own criteria. Of course, it's not a binary thing: universities in the US receive lots of subsidies from local states, so there is a certain expectation of fairness. Maybe the right thing to do would be to c…

Once you take federal money, you have public obligations spelled out in multiple laws. Harvard takes a lot of federal money.
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