Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

I think this type of statement represents the main problem that folks who run down the “Asians at Harvard” rabbit hole.

People assume that Harvard admissions is all just based on who is the biggest brainiac based on grades and SATs, and that’s simply not the case at Harvard or any other elite school.

Decent article on the topic:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/10/21/dockets-...

High SAT and high grades gets you merely a 2 (1 being best) in one of four categories (academic, athletic, extracurricular, and personal/leadership). If you get a 2 in three of four categories, it still only gets you a 40% chance of admission.

That said, getting a 1 in any category gives the applicant a bump to anywhere between 48% and 88% chance of admission. Note that only about 100 people per year get a 1 on academic, and that still only gives them a 68% chance of admission if that’s their only 1. Standards are sky high.

To anyone who has high scores and great grades in a rigorous curriculum and wants to apply to an elite school, I advise them to differentiate themselves in ways other than academics — it’s a much easier path to acceptance. In my opinion, these non-academic selection criteria is one of the things that makes top schools amazing places.

Specifically:

- Great grades and great SAT scores (750+ in Math and Verbal) are a baseline for being considered.

- The more of the following list below an applicant can check off, the more likely they are to get admitted. If they have several high quality checks, the requirements for grades and scores can actually decrease to a surprisingly low level:

(rough order of importance... non-exhaustive list)

1. Recruited athlete.

2. Diversity candidate (race).

3. Notable academic achievement (e.g., publish a paper).

4. Demonstrate leadership via some verifiable and substantial project.

5. Be a skilled-but-not-recruited athlete (esp. in non-varsity sports), entertainer, or person of interest (e.g., children of famous or powerful people). Accolades or championships help.

6. Create a substantial and successful business or non-profit.

7. Diversity candidate (geographical).

8. Have an incredible personal narrative (e.g., Malala) — this might be more important... it’s hard to tell.

9. Be the child of an alum.

10. Be the child of a substantial donor (also hard to rate in importance... it really only comes into play if they aren’t admitted normally).

11. School/department applied to (depends on university).

It boggles my mind when someone (Asian or otherwise) points to great grades and great SAT scores and gripes about not getting into an elite school. Elite schools explicitly state that they are looking for well-rounded applicants or “multidimensional excellence”. Why is that person/applicant surprised when they only focused on one dimension and did that in a non-exceptional way (compared to other applicants)?

Anyway, this is a topic I know quite a bit about. Please feel free to ask follow-up questions.

Among democrats and liberals, it's usually "equal opportunity" or "equal starting lines", language like that. That's very different than "equal outcomes" because it still believes in self-reliance, merit, diversity in outcomes, etc - it's just that it requires a level of fairness that applies to everyone.

You're not solving the problem at all by attempting to sweep racism under the rug; quite the opposite in fact because it fails to address how race affects family background and discrimination in the first place.

Your solution is the correct one, yes. Except the 'progressives' in question are working very hard to selectively remove context (and intention) from language for an ever growing and arbitrary list of words/situations. Where simply speaking about it in a way which a [insert particular special interest group depending on the situation] view as 'incorrect' based on thier ideology/worldview, then you are instantly wrong and acting maliciously regardless of context/intention. You hear this often today. for example: "you can't ever joke about x" or "you can't talk about x historical event without also mentioning y" or having to preface any wide-ranging statement with 100x conditions so as not to offend any group loosely related to the topic.

We should fight to keep language from moving further in this direction because this alternative idealistic world, despite good intentions, is making the world a worse place, not a better one. We can't naively pretend that by creating a huge complicated system of no-go-words, ie not saying certain combinations of words out loud, will automatically makes peoples internal thoughts change for the better and ultimately change outcomes in society. This is merely hypothetical and far from proven method to be effective.

If anything it makes people resentful and creates ridiculous kafkaesque situations where you have to jump through hoops to engage in the most basic innocent dialogue and debate.

Which is ultimately anti-intellectual, inefficient, and irrational compared to how incredibly important context and intention are in a million other examples which they seem to have no problem with.

The worst part is how it incentivizes the worst behavior by giving small people "power" by allowing them to walk around correcting everyone's apparent "misuse" of "problematic" language (which is like crack to the social media outrage culture). Even despite situations where the given audience and in context it was totally harmless and the meaning fully understood by everyone involved.