Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

These are not mutually exclusive propositions. As I mentioned in my comment, there are two concerns here:

1. Reducing the number of violent antisocial people by reducing the number of people who are exposed to childhood circumstances that tend to produce them. This is complicated and entails dictating to parents how they raise their children to a much higher degree than most people are comfortable, and than our society's values permit.

2. Dealing with the ones who already exist. This is policing and justice.

> the people you label "antisocial" these days are people who have been left behind by society

> It's the economy, stupid

If only it were this simple. I'm referring to people who haven't been correctly socialized in their early childhood. Toddlers are all violent, self centered, assholes by adult standards. They learn not to be through appropriate socialization with their peers, through play. Children who are not given this developmental opportunity past a particular age tend to exhibit traits that strongly correlate with violence in early adulthood. This is exacerbated by numerous domestic factors, most importantly the absence of two parents in the household and the presence of violent antisocial adults in the household (not household income).

We can observe these same traits and behaviours develop in our ape relatives for the same reasons. We're not that different.

> I think those people are a much smaller percentage of people who commit crimes than you think

This just isn't true - this small percentage of people are the serial criminals responsible for most of the real danger in our society - shootings, armed home invasions, armed robberies, etc. These sorts of crimes are largely not committed by people who are "down and out", but by people who are in many ways fundamentally different from the average person. I'm not talking about petty theft here.

This can be most clearly illustrated by the phenomenon of college campus rape. The rapes themselves are committed by a tiny fraction of repeat offenders. "Teach men not to rape" doesn't work on them. They're just not like most people, mostly as a result of some combination of tragic childhood circumstances and poor socialization (again, not household wealth). The best solution is to identify these people and imprison them as efficiently as possible. To enact this solution effectively, the people we entrust with it need power.

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_L._Eisgruber

That doesn't full show the degree to which those institutions reflect the Jewish view of the world, but it gives one an idea.

In a sense all of the above were indeed WASP institutions: Those evil, evil WASPs created them, funded them, and built them into fine schools. But that part of their history is over and now they are controlled by a different group with a different purpose.

Maybe, but this is so far from my experience, I'm having trouble accepting it.

There's an important test coming up. Surely the default, baseline assumption must be that you should prepare for it? How could anything else be true? Everyone knows getting some practice in makes you better at something, right?

I guess your answers to all of these questions are "no", and I accept that, I'm not arguing, but man, this is weird.

I guess there some things the school do (unarguably) need to tell kids: the SAT is coming up and it's important. My impression is that schools don't always do that.

Is it fair that my parents went on an extended walkabout and so I happened to be in the US during high school and had the chance to go to amazing universities?

Is it fair that some kid with a 160 IQ grew up on a reservation with parents who desperately wanted to help the kid succeed but had no idea how, while the kid had to go to crappy schools, learn only the basics, and worry about their next meal? They would be waay smarter than I, but I would be far better prepared and would get more out of an MIT education.

Trying to diversify the student population sounds like a good thing for schools to be doing, something that in the medium term will hopefully ablate some of the second case. And if that excludes someone with high test scores, which is "fair"? Hell, if it excludes someone who diligently labored to worked the system, well, the there's a reasonable case to be made that such a person will do OK regardless while the student with less opportunity might end up with a greater benefit for society.

And, as far as "fair" goes: private universities, at least, are going to accept a certain number whom they believe will provide future donations, helping the institution survive and grow, even if they are otherwise unqualified. Is that fair?