It puzzles me why US colleges are allowed to consider anything other than standardized test scores.
What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
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Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
#22For all these completely anonymous, AI-generated investigative pieces that are hitting the front page of HN every week, I'd love to see the prompts. Because I suspect they say more about what the proprietor of the site is trying to achieve than the article itself.
Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
#23It would have been helpful to model the effect of legacy status while accounting for academic indices.
conflates a couple of things: the legacy tip itself and the fact that legacies tend to have stronger academic profiles to begin with (they come from advantaged households). A skeptic can fairly say "of course legacy admits do well, they're better applicants"
> legacies tend to have stronger academic profiles
Maybe for Harvard, but I'm not sure a legacy for some random private liberal arts school nobody has ever heard of (or $STATE University) will be any more academically gifted than someone whose parents both went to college anyway.
Maybe we need to differentiate between "legacy of a school" and "legacy of a school with a historically high academic quality"
Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
#24Looking at this without consideration for two factors (number of applicants and the number of applications per applicant) is borderline malpractice. I can’t pull older numbers on my phone at the moment but in the last 12 years the number of applications to colleges (applicants*applications) has risen 50%. So correct for the reality that… 1) that immediately skews your denominator and changes your percentages. 2) the…
So with some searching… In the UK you can apply to upto five colleges. In the US the recommendation seems to be between 5-8
On the sixth application does someone knock on your door?
Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but not at the admittance rate that legacies get. There's been stats & studies showing for example some Ivys with ~3% admit rates having something closer to ~12% for legacy applicants. Most people applying to an Ivy are already self-selecting as pretty exceptional applicants (putting aside the delusional) and the legacy admits had same/worse SATs, etc. edit: just looked it up, Harvard is at ~34% legacy admit ra…
A study of a top 25 school showed that legacy admitted students had identical scores than non-legacy: https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-why-elite-colleges-... “Among the admitted legacies, grades and test scores were indistinguishable from non-legacy students. Both groups had an average SAT score that surpassed 1430.” At Harvard, my understanding is that the legacy admits have slightly higher test scores than…
Legacy SATs were about 30pts lower per Harvard Crimson in 2023
https://features.thecrimson.com/2023/freshman-survey/academi...
Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
#26Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell is the one chart showing the same student as Asian, 25%, White, 36%, Hispanic 77%, and Black 95%. This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past to kickstart the disproportionate enrollment demographics, but it was past due to get rid of it. The most interesting part following SCOTUS' ruling is that Harvard said it wouldn't change their wa…
Do consider the incentives of those developing the model that made those predictions. Afaict, it was not selected for purpose other than testimony.
Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
#27When you combine the fraction of "hooked" admits with the number of seats affected by affirmative action, you get something between 35%-43% (depending on if you discount hooked admits that were extremely qualified anyway). I think this is an interesting way to frame it. Left to its own devices, Harvard would only devote around 60% of its undergraduate program to simply educating very very bright students. The other 40% is/was for les vieux riches, athletes, generally connected kids, and racial diversity.
While I'm sure it varies by school, I suspect you will find a similar dynamic at many other elite private schools. The undergraduate program is going to be much less important to a top-tier research university, and consequently the admissions board can go nuts with other priorities. When even the runners-up (on a merit basis) are quite strong you can go quite far indeed before anyone would notice a slip in standards.
Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
#28Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell is the one chart showing the same student as Asian, 25%, White, 36%, Hispanic 77%, and Black 95%. This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past to kickstart the disproportionate enrollment demographics, but it was past due to get rid of it. The most interesting part following SCOTUS' ruling is that Harvard said it wouldn't change their wa…
If you treat prestige acceptance rates as a derivative of the progression of racial policy, it absolutely makes sense why affirmative action is in place given the history of racial justice in America.
Can you really claim that the trend won't reverse if purely meritocratic admissions are reinstated (disregarding legacy admits...although very unfair to disregard since their racial makeup heavily tracks with asian/white/etc)
It's simply a single lever to change the racial makeup of the upper class. And certainly it goes both ways, but to simply remove it with no solution implies a regression to the former system, which was all but equal, much less equitable.
Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
A study of a top 25 school showed that legacy admitted students had identical scores than non-legacy: https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-why-elite-colleges-... “Among the admitted legacies, grades and test scores were indistinguishable from non-legacy students. Both groups had an average SAT score that surpassed 1430.” At Harvard, my understanding is that the legacy admits have slightly higher test scores than…
Legacy SATs were about 30pts lower per Harvard Crimson in 2023 https://features.thecrimson.com/2023/freshman-survey/academi...
"The average SAT score among legacy students was 1543, while it was 1515 for non-legacy students."
Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
#30Really enjoyed your article.
Some random chart feedback. I found the use of red for elite colleges and then the use of red to mean white applicants to make the article slightly harder to read and understand. Recommend changing using completely different colors from that chart to he next one, because they are completely unrealted axis and