Personally I'm not too concerned about this at the undergrad level. So you don't get into Harvard and you have to go to a state school or whatever, that's not really an impediment to your life and career unless you want to become a congressman or a supreme court justice or whatever. Where it does bother me is med school. I've seen several of my Asian friends who were just ridiculously obviously great applicants eithe…
Data on MCATs agree with your anecdote - Asians seem to need to meet a higher bar to be accepted into med school. https://web.archive.org/web/20080801022539/http://www.aamc.o...
Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
91–100 of 136 posts
Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
If not getting into Harvard is something that would cause someone to kill themself, then that's probably a good sign that they should not have been admitted. I'm not trying to be mean but someone who can't handle rejection or have confidence in their ability to do well without getting into Harvard is not Harvard material.
Yeah, there have been a couple comments in this thread with this kind of viewpoint; "How will I go on in life after all the opportunity cost of not getting into [insert high prestige school]". I feel so sad for anyone that has such a futile outlook in life. Life is literally what you make it, not what some gatekeepers make of it for you.
Sadly, a stint working with social services has taught me some folks, who are normal about everything else, have one event that they have strived for that will break them if they miss it. Its actually easier if it was your doing, but not when its your ancestry or other factor you had no control over.
Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it's just that the accepted applicants were of the same quality or better, in terms of their predicted suitability to practice medicine. The fact is that not everyone can get into such highly competitive programmes, and unfortunately some have to lose out.
That wouldn't explain my observations, where excellent non-Asian applicants were shoe-ins on their first try and Asian applicants of the same quality had to try multiple times, some of them never making it in at all. If it was just a numbers issue and not everyone could make it in, you wouldn't expect such a clear racial difference. Of course my anecdotes could just be flukes or I could be misinterpreting the quality…
Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
#94What would be interesting to see if we replace all applicant's informations were anonymous and everyone got reviewed strictly based on merits.
Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Discrimination is a bad thing that should be rooted out and > stopped. The most insidious is of course the very PC "positive > or affirmative discrimiation" - where a group of people decide > discrimination is now ok, just because. Seriously? "Just because?" The ignorance here is staggering. Or there is dishonesty. There's lots of room for arguing the theory what should be done about America's racism problem, or wh…
Racism is intrinsically wrong because it is discrimination for discrimination's sake. Races don't exist, they're a fiction. Ethiopians and Papuans are both "black", Japanese and Indian people are both "asian", Spaniards and Bosnians are both "white", and nobody can agree on what the hell "hispanic" means. None of these people have anything in common, culturally, genetically, linguistically, you need a bogus concept l…
This instance is very much a first world problem (I couldn't get into harvard because I'm asian, but that white or black person did even though they scored lower.) but it's one we have proof of and it's very much worth fixing to set an example everywhere.
You read harvard's reply or reasoning that what they do is ok. Actually depending how you interpret it it could be a complaint by harvard. They said are following STATE Law. Maybe, if we interpret what they said another way, we learn they don't like doing things that way and really shouldn't be held accountable for any so called legal discrimination because they are following the law. Maybe harvard wants us to blame the law and not them. Maybe harvard would like to bring on more asians or more whites but can't even though they perform better and do more research.
Any attempt for harvard or any other school to bring up the holistic student argument is ridiculous. Because Asian students very much participate in extracurricular activities here and in asian countries, objectively so. You won't see a lot on the football or basketball team. You will see a lot of them in other things sports and clubs of all kinds.
Also what do you mean to affirmative action will "correct" society? In what interpretation is a society "corrected" if as you said races are a fiction in your mind? If there's no race, then there's no racism, it's just a bunch of people interacting with a bunch of other people of various colors and any "trends" are meaningless.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say it's a fiction but then wish that any places you go was would be more "correct" if it were more color diverse, (tossing out all concept of people's personal choice or their capabilities.)
Races do exist because groups of people evolved based on their environments and their ancestors ability to procreate. We may not know exactly why because people move and separate and that long span of time has no written record really. But we do know people look different, their languages are different behaviors however "anecdotally" are often different. Their prevalence of various conditions, disease and health are different. Artifacts were different too. Their capabilities on tests across the world are clearly different.
And if various experiments weren't shunned we'd likely understand more about race. They acquired various levels of intelligence and physique due to conditions. The problem is a lot of these things that make people different aren't studied enough. Because universities fear their reputation because even true scientific findings can and have been hidden due to political implications. Thankfully learning about the brain and understanding people are sciences that won't be stopped. So we'll probably learn more over time about race. We most certainly won't be able to find ways to boost equality in humans or find how or where they best flourish if we can't study and be able to honestly interpret the differences in humans.
Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the end result schools like Harvard are trying to avoid. Why? That is the worst kind of discrimination in my book. How is it my fault that I was born smart, worked hard to capitalize on my innate abities and then competed on a standardized test to perform better than folks who just happened to pop out of a different vagina or uterus? Nice way to fuck me for no fault of mine. For those saying not getting into H…
To the question of why, Harvard believes that standardized tests are simply one of many factors that should be taken into account when deciding on who to admit. In building a student class, they value diversity not of race but of backgrounds and experiences. Perhaps that correlates closely with race since much of our country's socio-economic divisions also fall along racial lines in many places. As an Asian myself, p…
Let's face it, the harvard admissions process is secretive they aren't giving all candidates a thorough review, they aren't looking deeply into 150,000 applications in a three month period. They can't. So they dump and dump based on subjective and biased methods being careful to honor first and foremost those requirements like affirmative action. And then they probably get the quota and then start onto the smaller piles. In other words all the activities an Asian might be on, they can and will be overlooked because somebody else has a righter color at the right time when the stack of applications are being sorted by whatever computer or individual at that step.
So to question, "maybe I need a better holistic upbringing?" Bullshit. in this case it's highly likely many many many of these asians had a remarkable upbringing that would satisfy anyone but they got dumped for somebody so the color factor was satisfied.
Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
#97Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-American === Harvard Accused of Favoritism towards African-Americans/Latinos/etc. The former just has a sexy title. The latter we've known all along because these schools openly state that they embrace affirmative action. The matter of fact is that the school is incredibly strategic in how it makes its admissions decision, taking into account not only race, but geography, and a w…
That's not actually true. The majority of Harvard's class is white. Statistically, if they are biased against Asians, that seat is going to a white person, not a black or Hispanic person. The magnet school where I went to high school has median SAT scores comparable to one of the mid-level Ivies. They got rid of affirmative action. It is now 70% Asian. And that's without accepting any foreign or out of state students…
Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not actually true. The majority of Harvard's class is white. Statistically, if they are biased against Asians, that seat is going to a white person, not a black or Hispanic person. The magnet school where I went to high school has median SAT scores comparable to one of the mid-level Ivies. They got rid of affirmative action. It is now 70% Asian. And that's without accepting any foreign or out of state students…
Whites are actually unaffected by affirmative action. The transfer is from Asians to blacks/Hispanics. Here's some hard data: http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Opportunity%20Cost%20of%... "White applicants would benefit very little by removing racial and ethnic preferences; the white acceptance rate would increase by roughly 0.5 percentage points."
Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
#99So if the Ivy league schools are not actually choosing the best students, wouldn't that mean that Ivy League graduates do worse after graduation than alumni form other schools that don't use the Holistic admission process? More simply, if the SAT is the perfect determinate for intelligence and energy, and success in life directly relates to intelligence and hard work then the SAT alone should be the prefect predictor…
Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans
#100This doesn't surprise me, as an Asian American myself. I went to a high school that, while it wasn't the greatest in my county, routinely sent a student to Harvard every year - it was one of those schools that Harvard & other Ivy League schools tended to cherry-pick its minorities from (over 70% black/hispanic I was told the statistics were, in one of the wealthiest counties in the US). I had extremely strong credent…