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‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

nytimes.com

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Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#11

Post by SenseiMaster »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #2

>Harvard says it also considers “tips,” or admissions advantages, for some applicants. The plaintiffs say the college gives tips to five groups: racial and ethnic minorities; legacies, or the children of Harvard or Radcliffe alumni; relatives of a Harvard donor; the children of staff or faculty members; and recruited athletes. I just don't think you can, at the same time, claim to be for diversity in admissions and a…

> To the asian issue I wonder if it isn't even a negative treatment

During "lopping" time, they use ethnic stats and ethnic profile to downgrade people from "admit" to "waitlist" or "deny", so it can be characterized as "negative treatment".

> As the admissions process winds down, the dean and the director of admissions review the pool of tentatively admitted students and decide how many need to be “lopped,” by having their status changed from “admit” to “waitlist” or “deny,” the court papers say.

Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#12

Post by darawk »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #2

>Harvard says it also considers “tips,” or admissions advantages, for some applicants. The plaintiffs say the college gives tips to five groups: racial and ethnic minorities; legacies, or the children of Harvard or Radcliffe alumni; relatives of a Harvard donor; the children of staff or faculty members; and recruited athletes. I just don't think you can, at the same time, claim to be for diversity in admissions and a…

> To the asian issue I wonder if it isn't even a negative treatment, just that other racial minorities get a tip and many whites make it through legacy and donoring.

Those are equivalent things. Whether you frame it as boosting the scores of every other group, or cutting the scores of Asians, the net effect is the same, and should be considered the same activity.

Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#13

Post by duxup »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #2

>Harvard says it also considers “tips,” or admissions advantages, for some applicants. The plaintiffs say the college gives tips to five groups: racial and ethnic minorities; legacies, or the children of Harvard or Radcliffe alumni; relatives of a Harvard donor; the children of staff or faculty members; and recruited athletes. I just don't think you can, at the same time, claim to be for diversity in admissions and a…

I think you can say that. It just depends on how the numbers turns out, but then we also have to agree on what the right "diversity numbers" are.

Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#14

Post by privateSFacct »

The stats on how they scored asians were pretty incredible.

Asian personalities were only 2 or better at the top decile (top 10%), african-americans scored 2 or better 8 deciles in (top 80%, only the worst 20% didn't score 2 or better).

Personalities were scored on: likability, helpfulness, courage, kindness, positive personality, people like to be around them, the person is widely respected.

Harvard insists this was unbiased, but it's pretty incredible that Asians score so low on these measures and African-Americans so highly.

This was a key scoring measure because it was the one area Asians got crushed in (and was very subjective). They actually used I think a similar subjective scoring tool in the past to keep out other groups.

Interesting article here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-ame...

Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#15

Post by privateSFacct »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #2

>Harvard says it also considers “tips,” or admissions advantages, for some applicants. The plaintiffs say the college gives tips to five groups: racial and ethnic minorities; legacies, or the children of Harvard or Radcliffe alumni; relatives of a Harvard donor; the children of staff or faculty members; and recruited athletes. I just don't think you can, at the same time, claim to be for diversity in admissions and a…

This was part of the study, and even controlling for legacy and athletes, Asians still underrepresented.

Harvard absolutely INSISTS it doesn't discriminate against Asians though - their president came out with a pretty strong statement about correcting the record.

Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#16

Post by nradov »

kart23 wrote: post #5

College admissions aren't about sat scores anymore. I graduated from high school this year, and know 2 people going to Harvard. It doesn't matter if you get perfect sat scores, it matters about what you do outside of school, and whether you spend all your time studying or actually doing something that will contribute to society. Numbers just aren't enough to admit students by, since if they admitted everyone with per…

Admissions at elite private colleges were never just about SAT scores. Harvard for example tries to admit students with the potential to become leaders in their chosen fields. Naturally that evaluation is quite subjective.

Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#17

Post by Veelox »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #2

>Harvard says it also considers “tips,” or admissions advantages, for some applicants. The plaintiffs say the college gives tips to five groups: racial and ethnic minorities; legacies, or the children of Harvard or Radcliffe alumni; relatives of a Harvard donor; the children of staff or faculty members; and recruited athletes. I just don't think you can, at the same time, claim to be for diversity in admissions and a…

>To the asian issue I wonder if it isn't even a negative treatment, just that other racial minorities get a tip and many whites make it through legacy and donoring.

I am going to make some assumptions and I apologise if they are wrong. I am going to assume that you think racism is wrong. I think that includes structural rasism. That is, policies, procedures, and practices by institutions that systematically disadvantage on race over another. From you above comment, it seems like you believe other racial minorities get an excplicit tip as a matter of policy. It also seems like you believe whites get an implicit tip due to the due to the process of how legacies work.

Yet, you seemed to stop a step short of calling this structural rasism against Asian Americans. Is there something I am missing for why you didn't take that last step?

Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#18

Post by rspeer »

throwa_way_ wrote: post #6
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #2

>Harvard says it also considers “tips,” or admissions advantages, for some applicants. The plaintiffs say the college gives tips to five groups: racial and ethnic minorities; legacies, or the children of Harvard or Radcliffe alumni; relatives of a Harvard donor; the children of staff or faculty members; and recruited athletes. I just don't think you can, at the same time, claim to be for diversity in admissions and a…

>I just don't think you can, at the same time, claim to be for diversity in admissions and allow legacy admissions and preferential treatment for donors. Why can't they do that. Of course they can do that, most Universities in the US do that. >To the asian issue I wonder if it isn't even a negative treatment, just that other racial minorities get a tip and many whites make it through legacy and donoring. No, they are…

I recognize that in a literal sense you can claim to support diversity and also have legacy admissions. What GP meant is that you shouldn't, because it makes the claim a lie. Legacy admissions promote exactly the opposite of diversity.

Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#19

Post by speedplane »

The article says that there are only 1600 spots at Harvard, and of the applicants "3,500 had perfect SAT math scores, 2,700 had perfect SAT verbal scores, and more than 8,000 had straight A’s" (doesn't say how many had all three).

Obviously hard objective criteria are not be enough to get into Harvard, and they need to dip into subjectivity which is rife with bias. The only fair solutions are to make the SATs harder (Havard can't control this) or expand the university and accept more students and make the school larger.

It boggles my mind why they don't expand the school. The US population and GDP increase, the demand for education and exemplary leaders in society increase, Harvard's endowment and prestige increase, yet their class size remains the same. I'd say they have an obligation to increase class size.

Re: ‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions

#20

Post by Veelox »

I think the part of the issue that bothers me most is how much of a double standard there is between what counts as racism against African Americans and rasism against Asian Americans. Objectively, if you have two identical applications to Harvard except one is labeled black and the other is labeled Asian, the black one has a higher chance of success.

They do the same thing with fake job applications with white names and black names. When whites get called back at higher rates that rasism. Yet when it's Harvard doing it to Asians, that's okay.

This just rubs me the wrong way.

Edit: this post has 30+ votes at 4 hours old and went from the front page to not the top 3 in less than 30 minutes. Looks like mods nuked it.

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