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What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

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Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#101

Post by selimthegrim »

rayiner wrote: post #92
dahart wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that’s the very thing we decided is immoral Racism is the thing we decided is immoral, actions based on belief that one group is inferior to another, not any and all notions of groups for any reason. > Objectively, Black Americans are extremely privileged by virtue of being Americans. A redlined community in 1950s America was still better than my dad’s village in Bangladesh. Whoa. They should be happy with what the…

> Racism is the thing we decided is immoral, actions based on belief that one group is inferior to another, not any and all notions of groups for any reason. No, what we decided was wrong was using race as a salient factor to discriminate between people. That’s why all our laws use that word. The laws reflect the moral principle. > They should be happy with what they have, and put up with racism and inequality here b…

Exactly who was East Pakistan a colony of in 1950 and who was denying them the franchise?

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#102

Post by kxyvr »

ordx wrote: post #98
kxyvr wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still contend strongly that it is wrong to distill a person into a collection of numbers. They are not. My mother was a special ed teacher who eventually became a diagnostician whose job it was to determine eligibility for services. Part of this job was to give a standardized test to a child to see if they met state set criteria. That said, this was only part of an assessment and was used along with parent preferen…

> I still contend strongly that it is wrong to distill a person into a collection of numbers. Welcome to the adult world, where you are distilled into a collection of number each step of the way: look at credit scores, performance reviews, etc. > I'll also mention that using tests scores is not entirely "fair" either. Unfortunately we didn't come up with a better way to rank a group of people on scale in a reasonable…

Thankfully, I also work in the adult world and this world requires judgement.

As an example, my wife is a physician. She and her colleagues use metrics to help assess a patient, but ultimately treatment is based on their judgement. Purely relying on hard numbers, such as what an EKG gives, would lead to dead patients. Many of them. I am a mathematician. My world revolves around hard computational numbers, yet my algorithms will often given misleading results. Determining when that is requires judgement. Despite a push too the contrary, good hiring managers assess applicants and take responsibility for both good and bad hires. This requires judgement.

And, yes, I can also find examples where someone either didn't study or used a book and did well on their SAT. That said, in person test prep with a tutor absolutely has a large, positive effect on test scores, much more than simply a book. Kaplan has the internal data. It's absolutely worth the money if one can afford it. Most can't.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#103

Post by mrguyorama »

codedokode wrote: post #62

What's the point of giving preferences to athletes at places like computer science department? Would not it make more sense to create an athletic department and accept all athletes there so they do not have to struggle with math? Also, they could make a separate department for the riches where there also is no math.

The entire premise of the NCAA for the longest time was "They aren't employees, they are getting a good education for free and playing sports in their off hours!"

This has long been a farce though. They would be put in made up classes with no actual work and given fake grades.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#104

Post by dahart »

tanseydavid wrote: post #100
dahart wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reject your presumptive framing that affirmative action is a “punishment”. If you help someone, you are punishing the entire world?

> Where else in our society do we justify imposing a moral wrong on a specific individual > If you help someone, you are punishing the entire world? You are missing (or maybe even ignoring) the huge difference between these two viewpoints.

I’d be very happy to discuss the nuances and relative merits. I agree that it’s time to have race blind admissions and stop preferential treatment. I’m arguing against the hyperbolic notion that affirmative action is inherently immoral. @rayiner is trying to cut off the idea that it had any upsides and was ever reasonable. I’m still trying to convey that racism != any and all types of discrimination.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#105

Post by ordx »

kxyvr wrote: post #102
ordx wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still contend strongly that it is wrong to distill a person into a collection of numbers. Welcome to the adult world, where you are distilled into a collection of number each step of the way: look at credit scores, performance reviews, etc. > I'll also mention that using tests scores is not entirely "fair" either. Unfortunately we didn't come up with a better way to rank a group of people on scale in a reasonable…

Thankfully, I also work in the adult world and this world requires judgement. As an example, my wife is a physician. She and her colleagues use metrics to help assess a patient, but ultimately treatment is based on their judgement. Purely relying on hard numbers, such as what an EKG gives, would lead to dead patients. Many of them. I am a mathematician. My world revolves around hard computational numbers, yet my algo…

Your personal stories are very cute, but they don't explain what you're proposing instead of tests. I'm not sure how you're going to use so-called "judgment" to decide which students get in out of hundreds of thousands of applications in a reasonable amount of time.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#106

Post by meetingthrower »

chasd00 wrote: post #6

The price portion of this hits hard. My oldest starts college in 2 year and then his younger brother follows 2 years later. We make enough to not qualify for need based aid but not enough to just write a check, merit based aid + a meager 529 and our savings is their only hope besides debt. Further, both are male, hetero, only 1/4 hispanic, and my wife and I are not drug addicts or alcoholics so they'll get nothing fr…

The Dartmouth analytics say that is true. The top 1% is taking from the top 10% in admissions.

That said, your view that they need "trauma" to get in is very wrong. You need to find a hook. The hook should be positive and not negative. (Why should they let you in to the private club?)

Source: I've gotten my kids into 6 Ivies. Non-athletes, white, public schools, and I am not a doner.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#107

Post by JuniperMesos »

dahart wrote: post #38
az226 wrote: post #16

Pretty 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…

> This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past Affirmative Action is institutionalized discrimination, at least when used to promote some groups over others. (Though it didn’t start that way; it started as a call to be purely race-blind in hiring.) I wouldn’t call it racism though, because it’s not based on any belief that races have different capability, it is purely intended t…

> This might be true, but there are still achievement and pay gaps in the US. There are lots of debates about why, and I don’t want to start one. I’m just curious how else to solve systemic biases if they’re still here.

If you're unwilling to have a debate on why achievement and pay gaps exist, then you should be unwilling to assert that systemic bias is a problem, or even that achievement and pay gaps are a problem.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#108

Post by alistairSH »

blagie wrote: post #91
alistairSH wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What data do you have to support the assertion that affirmative action is no longer necessary to ensure proper representation of minorities on campus? I'm open to arguments that there are better ways to achieve the goal of equitable access to higher eduction, but looking at enrollment numbers, the problem is far from solved.

The open question is the meaning of "proper representation:" - One which maximizes Harvard's power network? - Most likely to succeed in the future? - Representative of the general public by race? - Representative of the general public in other ways (e.g. religion, political affiliation)? - Academically, best-qualified right now? - Academically, most potential? At birth? Now? - Most likely to donate? Etc. However defi…

Fair questions and criticisms.

I would prefer to have colleges [elite or otherwise] be generally representative of the population by race, religion, socio-economic background, etc.

The problem, as I understand it, is "best qualified" is massively impacted by things like race, parental income, and other factors outside the control of college applicants. Society is far from a meritocracy.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#109

Post by JuniperMesos »

dahart wrote: post #41
rayiner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of problems in society that are hard to fix. But there's nowhere else in society where our solution to a problem is to subject people who had nothing to do with the problem to unfair treatment. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a good general principle.

If only it were actually that simple and fixed with platitudes. Culture and belief is passed on from generation to generation, otherwise we wouldn’t have had the persistent problem in the first place. How do we fix a problem that we already have historical evidence that when left alone doesn’t go away on its own, that people who weren’t the original cause of the problem still, in fact, perpetuated it? How can we know…

The alternative proposal is not treating racial discrepancies in outcome as a problem to be solved.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#110

Post by Georgelemental »

blagie wrote: post #93
cleandreams wrote: post #36

I was listening to a podcast where the host and the guest were both Black and both had been to Harvard. This was before the Supreme Court ruling. They joked that it was well known that the Black students at Harvard who were descendants of American slaves were about 10% of the Black student body at Harvard. There were a lot of children of Nigerians and 3rd world tycoons and such. I think there is a good argument for a…

This is not an accident. If you talk to admissions officers, over drinks, they'll tell you that poor black students from marginalized US communities have abysmal performance at elite schools. The decision to admit rich black students is very deliberate. There are many reasons why. Schools in the US are locally-funded, and a marginalized community might have 25% of the per-student spending of a rich community (actual,…

In my state, the poor Black inner city schools have the highest per-student spending in the state (and some of the highest in the country), as the state government funds them heavily. Performance remains abysmal
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