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Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

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Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#241

Post by noetic_techy »

40acres wrote: post #42

Unfortunately this is bigger than Harvard and the Asian American students are 'collateral damage'. Fundamentally, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow permeates every facet of American life, education especially. You can't fix hundreds of years worth of discrimination without tipping the scales in a way that seems discriminatory to others, seems like the Judge in this case understands that.

I just don't buy this anymore. Not when Asians, Indians, Nigerians, Lebonese, Cubans, Iranians and Jews all do better than average White households in America and are over represented in education. If it permeates everything, why does it not apply to these groups?

Amy Chau wrote a great book on this: The Triple Package.

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

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#242

Post by cobbzilla »

Recent article on Harvard "legacy" admissions by Tyler Cowen of MR: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-23/harvar...

The "oh wow, that's odd" part:

"The most shocking number in the paper is this: Of the white students admitted to Harvard, more than 43% are in the so-called ALDC category — that is, they are recruited athletes, legacy admissions, applicants on the “dean’s interest” list and children of Harvard faculty and staff. Furthermore, in the model constructed by the authors, three quarters of those applicants would have been rejected if not for their ALDC status."

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#243

Post by nilkn »

jdoliner wrote: post #110
deogeo wrote: post #37

For perspective, here are the Harvard vs US demographics, sorted by most to least represented [1,2,3,4]: Jewish: 14.0% vs 2.6% (5.38x) Asian American: 25.3% vs 5.3% (4.77x) Native Hawaiian: 0.6% vs 0.2% (3.00x) Native American: 1.8% vs 0.7% (2.57x) African American: 14.3% vs 12.7% (1.13x) Hispanic or Latino: 12.2% vs 17.6% (0.69x) non-Jewish white: 33.0% vs 58.9% (0.56x) [1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/adm…

These numbers are next to meaningless, Harvard doesn't just accept people from the US, so we should be looking at population percentages of the world. I assume that people who don't fit in any category are shunted into one of them based on skin color. For example a Jamaican is, I assume, counted in the African American bucket, and compared against the African American population, even though they're neither American…

It's a great exaggeration to say the numbers are meaningless. Just shy of 90% of Harvard undergraduates are from the US and its territories: https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#244

Post by turbo_fart_box »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #213
jhawk28 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that it is ok to be racist depending on the status of the person?

No, I'm saying there's a difference between people saying "there's too many Asians in tech" and "there's too many white males in tech".

Americans fixate on skin colour and forget that class is far more important

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#245

Post by underpand »

deogeo wrote: post #37

For perspective, here are the Harvard vs US demographics, sorted by most to least represented [1,2,3,4]: Jewish: 14.0% vs 2.6% (5.38x) Asian American: 25.3% vs 5.3% (4.77x) Native Hawaiian: 0.6% vs 0.2% (3.00x) Native American: 1.8% vs 0.7% (2.57x) African American: 14.3% vs 12.7% (1.13x) Hispanic or Latino: 12.2% vs 17.6% (0.69x) non-Jewish white: 33.0% vs 58.9% (0.56x) [1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/adm…

These numbers are grossly misleading. US population numbers are meaningless.

Harvard doesn't consider all US born students. They have an academic floor. Most of the US population does not meet the academic floor. Low achieving students are effectively not in the applicant pool even if they apply.

A more accurate representation of the applicant pool would be the USA demographics that meet the 10th percentile SAT score at Harvard. However, even with this more accurate pool, the accepted population would differ because different races have different average scores within this pool. The races with lower averages would be expected to be underrepresented in the accepted pool compared to the applicant pool.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#246

Post by oarabbus_ »

opportune wrote: post #190
oarabbus_ wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear that Harvard's selection process is more about letting in wealthy and legacy students. This population tends to be more successful in life.

Elite institutions need to juggle a few responsibilities: They need to let in the children of the ultra wealthy for the status symbol, money, and networking for students. They need to let in the children of high paying donors (not always the same group as above) for the money. They need to let in a lot of smart students to give legitimacy to the above groups and create new families of donors. They need to have a demo…

>They need to have a demographic profile that roughly approximates the US demographic profile to not appear racist. They also need to have a balanced gender ratio, not overly favor a single region, etc.

I don't think this is true of any Ivy League institution (that the racial demographics mirrors that of the nation). The gender ratio and "regionality" are well-balanced, however.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#247

Post by abhisuri97 »

Yeah. Reading the opinion, it looks like SFFA only could make an argument via statistics and it failed to establish how those statistics related to reality. About 20-30 pages of the opinion are about comparing and contrasting Card and Acidiacono and honestly...it seems to me that both models are just inconclusive. Neither ends up taking into account what goes through the mind of an admissions officer and leaves out (what are arguably) critical components in an applicant's profile. In general, it does not seem there is a way for us to point to statistics and say "look...this is discrimination" there are human factors involved that are too complex (whether that be school support ratings, racial biases of interviewers/admissions officers, or just luck of the particular application cycles we have data on). I'm unsure whether the supreme court would take this case on...there doesn't seem to be much here that SFFA could argue in its favor.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#248

Post by paulcole »

opportune wrote: post #221

I wanted to go to Harvard, and didn't get in, so I went to a slightly less prestigious school instead. I had perfect test scores and grades so I potentially could have been part of this lawsuit, and I used to be super bothered by affirmative action. But now I don't really care. Even if you don't get into your favorite top school, if you're actually a strong applicant you're likely to get into at least one, or if not,…

> I had perfect test scores and grades

If Harvard wanted to admit 1,000 kids with perfect test scores and perfect grades they’d just take the first 1,000 applicants and call it a day.

They can be and are much choosier than that. Why wouldn’t they be? If you have the choice between a 4.0/1600 kid and a 4.0/1600/world-class pianist, who would you take?

When applying to Harvard grades and test scores aren’t even worth mentioning. If you’re counting on those to get you in then you’ve got almost no shot.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#249

Post by cloverich »

_fq4v wrote: post #134
40acres wrote: post #42

Unfortunately this is bigger than Harvard and the Asian American students are 'collateral damage'. Fundamentally, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow permeates every facet of American life, education especially. You can't fix hundreds of years worth of discrimination without tipping the scales in a way that seems discriminatory to others, seems like the Judge in this case understands that.

Asian Americans were as discriminated against as African Americans under Jim Crow. The fact is that we have forgotten the rampant bigotry against Asian Americans because us Asian Americans now basically own the United States of America. Asian Americans had to put up with (among other things): * Being ineligible to become citizens of the United States well after the passage of the 13th Amendment. There was a time in t…

Clearly all racial and ethnic sub-groups were discriminated against to various degrees in the US (and elsewhere). I distinctly remember being taught this (including about several of your bullet points) in the Texas suburb I grew up in. But its not comparable in scope or legacy to that of Black Americans, and by your own admission if Asian American's "basically own the United States" -- do they actually need help? Its not just about being fair, its about fixing the legacy of segregation in the US. There's an obvious gap between blacks and whites -- not so much between asians and whites.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#250

Post by wendyshu »

buboard wrote: post #99
umeshunni wrote: post #10

Wow - this sets a bad precedent. This might now encourage companies to now discriminate against Asias in hiring as well. There are already murmurs in the Valley about how there are too many Asians in tech.

Considering that a degree opens doors to employment, not giving them the degree (all other things being equal) is guaranteed to result to hiring discrimination

I.e. Asians who went to Harvard will be seen as extra desirable because they had higher admission requirements?
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