The best method of college entrance is whats done in east asia. China does the Gaokao (hard SAT), and students list their university preferences and filters students into colleges based on their score and their preferences. Japan takes entrance exams for a university. These seem like infinitely fairer methods than the US where they try and correct for disadvantage in a variety ways.
Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
291–300 of 1001 posts
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#292I often wished universities (and other organizations) would use a scoresheet-like "matrix of oppression" to determine someone's background difficulties. Like okay, you get X points if you're this race, Y points for that. Z points if your parents were poor. Or if you grew up in these bad zip codes. Or if your dad was gone and mom was an addict. Whatever. As an Asian American of relatively privileged (middle class) upb…
You're worried about skin color being used as a determining factor, but you were admitted based on zip code. That's trying to admit disadvantaged people, but not doing so based on skin color. So maybe in this specific case, they're already looking at it with more nuance? Or at least a different axis than skin color?
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#293Harvard and UNC are well intentioned but they are trying to fix inequities which start much earlier.
They sit at the end of 12 years of schooling for applicants, where the quality of that schooling and the level of funding for extra curricular activities will have been vastly different based on where that student lived and which school they attended.
Trying to fix this problem at the college admissions level creates the unintended effect and consequence that Asians and whites who are objectively better academic candidates get rejected in favor of non white/Asian candidates with lower academic scores. That is wrong and it's discrimination on the sole basis of the color of your skin.
The real fight needs to be about fixing our education system so every kid of every race and everywhere gets the same high quality education. It means giving parents school choice to take their kids to private school instead of the poorly run public schools that may be near them. It means raising the standards for training teachers so they can have real workable educational tools to make sure their students succeed.
You can't fix this broken system with more racism, and it was wrong to try to do so.
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#294It is important to note that Harward’s admission policy that is the subject of this case was designed to favor White students over Jewish ones [1]. Today it is being used to discriminate against Asian Americans. Colleges are already prepared for this ruling. Many, such as the University of Washington have abandoned standardized tests because such tests compell universities to admit the kinds of students universities…
This ends up moving the burden onto individuals. If you have an Asian Medical Doctor, they are AAA. If you have a multiple minority Medical Doctor, they are not necessarily AAA, they could be As. Which one do you want to do brain surgery on you? Without Affirmative action, you'd trust a multiple minority doctor equally to an Asian doctor. I wonder what the cost is on the healthcare system/US citizens when we have wor…
I just saw the stats from a medical school— I believe it was UCSF but correct me if I’m wrong— where the average Asian reject had higher scores than the average Black/Hispanic accepted applicant
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have opportunities that more priviledged people have already. Right? I mean, I can get behind that. But then why the entire detour with race? Up until about 1971 (possibly later, but that's the date of Loving vs Virginia ), the US had formal, legal discrimination against black people. On finally removing that, there was at various times discussion of whether peopl…
Yeah, every time the discussion comes up about, for example, reparations for the descendants of slaves, I start out thinking: it's been 150 years! Some of those descendants are very successful now and some descendants of slave owners are probably very poor now. And some people are descendants of both. And then I learn about the Jim Crow period, and then you hear that even the GI bill explicitly excluded black people,…
> Have things been made right by now? I have no idea.
Ask any black person and there's your answer.
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#296Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#297The concept of affirmative action is foreign to me (quite literally so). I only know it from American media, and I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please correct me of I'm wrong. But anyway, my question for the Americans here who grok this stuff: I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have opportunities that more priviledged people…
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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#298The concept of affirmative action is foreign to me (quite literally so). I only know it from American media, and I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please correct me of I'm wrong. But anyway, my question for the Americans here who grok this stuff: I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have opportunities that more priviledged people…
The intent is to factor in some unknown "racism" value. Poor White and Asian kids still beat out poor Black and Hispanic kids academically on average, so if you naively stratified by income, you'd still wind up with a mostly white and Asian student population. There are a lot of reasons Black and Hispanic kids underperform, and it's just easier for the school to short circuit all that and choose based on race rather…
> Poor White and Asian kids still beat out poor Black and Hispanic kids academically on average
Why is that the case?
For Asians, I don't see what systemic privilege they could have that would need to be compensated away?
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
This ends up moving the burden onto individuals. If you have an Asian Medical Doctor, they are AAA. If you have a multiple minority Medical Doctor, they are not necessarily AAA, they could be As. Which one do you want to do brain surgery on you? Without Affirmative action, you'd trust a multiple minority doctor equally to an Asian doctor. I wonder what the cost is on the healthcare system/US citizens when we have wor…
> If you have an Asian Medical Doctor, they are AAA. If you have a multiple minority Medical Doctor, they are not necessarily AAA, they could be As. > Which one do you want to do brain surgery on you? I have no strong opinion on affirmative action but this is a dishonest way to frame this topic. Affirmative action doesn't mean an institution can produce unqualified doctors. Both doctors should've gone through same ex…
Taking the same texts and having the same books mean nothing since the point of tests is the grades so what matters is if they had the same grades or not
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I went to MIT ... I was valedictorian [presumably in high school] and had a perfect score on the SATs > I've always wondered if being Hispanic helped me get into college or into jobs I've been on plenty of hiring committees for engineers and product owners. The fact that you have stellar academics and went to MIT stands out well more than your name or whatever your skin color is. Good for you for your accomplishmen…
> AA had a purpose and place at some moment in time. I think that moment has passed. Given how women and people with disabilities are still largely absent from these discussions and who still face massive challenges in breaking into some industries - let alone leadership roles in those industries - I think AA still had a place. I think it's a mistake to say that absent AA we have a pure meritocracy. Instead the discr…
MIT's acceptance rate for women is more than double that of male applicants (11% v 5%)?