Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian' • Hacker News Board

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#131

Post by markvp » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 5:47 AM UTC

I went to a high school in NYC with an Asian plurality, and it was pretty well known among the students and the counselors that being Asian was not something that would help you get into college.

In any case, there's a suit 'Fisher v University of Texas at Austin' which experts think will be heading to the Supreme Court sometime in 2012, and may have a good chance of bringing education a little closer to the meritocracy it should be: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/sunday-review/college-dive...

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#132

Post by _pius » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 5:48 AM UTC

Duff wrote: post #115

_pius wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that MIT practices affirmative action, but incorrect that this means they have "non-academic" admits.

"Non-academic" status wouldn't work there anyway. The smartest person I ever met went there, and was in mortal fear of flunking out a few times.

This. MIT doesn't not flunk you based on who you know or what you look like.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#133

Post by _pius » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 5:51 AM UTC

cbrauchli wrote: post #99

_pius wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This flies in the face of the fact that affirmative actions exists and that the racial demographics at any given college are typically consistent year-to-year. Not if you know how affirmative action actually works.

How does it actually work?

My friend and I wrote an article about this here: http://tech.mit.edu/V124/N45/faberpius4.45c.html

TL;DR follows:

Affirmative action comes into play only at the final stages when making the extremely difficult decisions that come along with deciding between two qualified applicants. This is the time when the admission staff is comparing the “fit to the Institute” of Bobby, whose dad paid for him to learn 10 different languages and backpack through Europe for a semester, to that of Jerry, who started the world’s first solar-powered electric violin club at his local church and snorkels on weekends. Notice how none of these activities are essential to determining whether or not these students can graduate from MIT, but only to guessing at what each student’s potential contribution is to the positive atmosphere at MIT. Yet, these types of things are used in colleges and companies across the country to decide between two qualified applicants.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#134

Post by mehn » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 6:17 AM UTC

BlackJack wrote: post #25

Full disclaimer: I'm a sophomore at Yale, my adviser last year was an admissions officer, and a friend of mine works in the admissions office. I'm also friends with the girl photographed, but that's irrelevant :) This is roughly how admissions works at Yale: 1. An officer reviews your application for 20-25 minutes. 1a. Some kids are clear rejects. 1500/2400 SAT and a 2.7 GPA, with no activities usually does the trick…

Do Africans count as an underepresented minority?I had a 2100+ SAT and failed to get into any top 100 school

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#135

Post by JVirissimo » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 6:19 AM UTC

calibraxis wrote: post #29

narkee wrote: post #8

I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages. They don't reject high-performance black athletes for lower performing, asian athletes. I've never once heard anyone complain that their university's football team had a disproportionate number of non-asian people. Serious double standard there.

To help ensure university doesn't look as racially and sexually homogenous as the tech industry?

Are you bothered when professional sports leagues are racially homogeneous? Would you prefer that they practice affirmative action?

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#136

Post by narkee » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 6:26 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #49

According to PBS, Race is an Illusion: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm Jared Diamond concurs: http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/0... If you believe their arguments, there is no scientific basis for categorizing someone on the basis of race. Appearance is particularly hazardous. Therefore, why can't Asians mark black on the application? Who is to say they are not black if t…

I haven't read much on the subject, but the idea that races can't be separated based on genetics is either false, or due to the fact that we don't have enough sensitivity in the measurement.

Phenotypically, I can easily identify a black person vs. an asian person, with nearly 100% accuracy. What I'm seeing are phenotypic differences in hair type, skin colour, facial structure, etc. that are all defined by genetics.

It's ludicrous to think that I can't sort people into groups based on these apparent differences(and I'm talking broad racial categories, not Ukranians vs. Russians or anything). Ignoring that might be PC, but it's definitely not realistic.

Just to be clear, I'm not insinuating anything about intelligence, ability, or whatever. I'm just saying that to deny that there are distinct categories that humans can be classified into is unrealistic. There may be edge cases, but nobody would mistake one of China's 1.6 billion people for an east African.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#137

Post by r00fus » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 6:28 AM UTC

dennisgorelik wrote: post #102

anatoly wrote: post #32

I was 13, I think, when I went to compete in the all-Ukrainian math olympiad, back a bunch of years ago when it was called a "republican" olympiad because Ukraine was a republic in the USSR and not a separate country. It was a long event: delegations from all the regions came and were housed in a sort of summer camp for two weeks. As we were getting registered, one of the organizers who was getting everyone's details…

She gave you very valuable advise.

s/advise/advice/

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#138

Post by cousin_it » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 6:31 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #49

According to PBS, Race is an Illusion: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm Jared Diamond concurs: http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/0... If you believe their arguments, there is no scientific basis for categorizing someone on the basis of race. Appearance is particularly hazardous. Therefore, why can't Asians mark black on the application? Who is to say they are not black if t…

> According to PBS, Jared Diamond, and many sociology departments, it is impossible to administer a genetic test that distinguishes African Americans from Asians

Are you sure Jared Diamond actually made that statement? It seems weird. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering mentions a study where genetic markers were found to predict self-reported race/ethnic group with a discrepancy of only 0.14%.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#139

Post by rgbrgb » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 6:33 AM UTC

forensic wrote: post #120

narkee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand they're overrepresented. What I meant was why is that a problem? According to the article, that degree of over-representation (relative to population) is below what it would be, given a completely blind admissions process. So why not have 25% asian population? What's the problem? On the other hand, why isn't anyone saying there is a problem with ORM in football?

Basically social power and wealth is distributed in a top-down way based on which school you went to. "grades" don't actually mean anything they're just a social fiction created to justify why some people have greater shares of power/wealth/freedom than others. Asian families, the pragmatic authoritarians they are, are very good at hacking this system of social sorting. The elite colleges know this. Elite colleges ar…

>> Asian families, the pragmatic authoritarians they are, are very good at hacking this system of social sorting. >> Asian authoritarian parents are just hacking the system for their family's wealth.

Wow. I don't care what ethnicity your are, this is horribly offensive.

Re: Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'

#140

Post by narkee » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 6:37 AM UTC

wan23 wrote: post #90

narkee wrote: post #8

I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages. They don't reject high-performance black athletes for lower performing, asian athletes. I've never once heard anyone complain that their university's football team had a disproportionate number of non-asian people. Serious double standard there.

That's not really a good comparison. In both cases they're trying to put together the best team. Right or wrong, the idea is that having diversity of experiences improves the academic experience for everyone. I don't know why people have such a hard time understanding this. It's fair to disagree with the idea, but it's completely different from racism.

Actually that's exactly racism.

In this case, the assumption is that asian are a homogenous group, and that having a class full of asians in necessarily not diverse. That's in line with the "violin playing automatons" perception of asian students.

Why is it not possible to have diversity of experience without artificially restricting access by race. The assumption that people of a certain race are defined by the same experiences is exactly racism.