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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

#141

Post by frockington »

danieltillett wrote: post #129
frockington wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if the lottery produced only White and Asian males being accepted. The meltdown and tears that a even a less than 0.01% event would cause prevents the lottery concept. I personally agree that a lottery is a valid suggestion but I don't think it would ever happen, at least completely random without "supervision"

How could a lottery produce such an outcome with tens of thousand of people in the pool and thousands being chosen? Set a threshold to get into the lottery (say a SAT score of 1200) and then choose at random. Such an approach will likely encourage diversity as people who think they don't have a chance under the current system will apply.

I'm not disagreeing with you. But someone in Admissions (who is heavily incentivized to not use a lottery) is going to vehemently argue the opposite

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

#142

Post by tomp »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #88
IvyAdmisions wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what basis? The Ivy League schools understand that admission is a ticket to a comfy-but-historically-and-culturally-insignificant middle-class life. Their goal is to guard against applicants seeeking that and to look for those who will go further. It's not unlike VCs who guard against investing in founders who will take the first acquisition offer they see so they can score a few million and live comfortably. That…

You're making an argument of rational self interest, which doesn't at all speak to morality. Imagine a company that maintains a culture of grooming executives through the ranks. After reviewing their data, they find that more women than men leave to start families. Are they then justified to hire only men, or more subtly divert resources to only groom male junior employees? OK, so an Ivy League school wants to contin…

> they find that more women than men leave to start families

They're definitely justified in filtering out people (men and women) who are more likely to leave to start familier, and prefer those who won't.

This is of course a bad outcome for society, but that's how capitalism works - and if we want companies to optimize for/prefer families, then we should structure the societal incentives such.

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

#143

Post by extra88 »

jstoeffler wrote: post #112
Amezarak wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By 'academic performance' he is almost certainly including their ACT and SAT test scores, which serve essentially as standardized university entrance exams in the US. The problem is for schools like Harvard or Stanford, almost all the applicants have near-perfect scores, so they're not a good differentiator - people with lower scores will not apply, since they know they will not be accepted.

The French system he’s talking about is more a contest than an exam. They are intentionally too hard/long for anybody to score perfectly. This way it’s possible to differentiate between two excellent students. Not saying it’s perfect, but at least it’s sort of fair.

Don't the families who are well off spend a lot of money on test prep? The bright students who don't have the time or money for that are at a disadvantage. There's also the unlucky ones who have something happen and can't do their best on the exam. High-stakes testing has its own problems.

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

#144

Post by Eridrus »

sadamznintern wrote: post #58
Veelox wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 disadvant…

Structural racism for African Americans is longstanding issues of disproportionate policing, a massive wealth gap as a result of block busting and red lining, and the educational disadvantages that come with it. If the only thing Asians have against them is having to go to Cornell or a state school instead of Harvard I think those complaining should rethink their priorities.

Asian people have been discriminated against and oppressed plenty throughout (recent) history, just because the Asians in the US are doing well doesn't mean there is no discrimination - we're just seeing that minorities who come here through skilled immigration pathways tend to be more successful, but don't worry, we're cracking down on that now and you'll see the reversion to the mean occuring in Asian kids soon enough.

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

#146

Post by cowpewter »

gaius wrote: post #100
Veelox wrote: post #20

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…

As a non-white who doesn’t fit into any of the pre-defined buckets, race-specific programmes have always bothered me too. I never play the race card to gain advantage but hypothetically if I’m as generally discriminated against as a member of group X but there’s a quota for X that I’m not eligible for then I’ve been double-discriminated against.

I've never thought about it that way, but as a mixed-race white/asian, I wonder if including that information rather than just letting them assume "white" from my name actually hurt me rather than helped me when I applied to (and did not get accepted to) the ivy league 20 years ago.

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

#147

Post by jessaustin »

IvyAdmisions wrote: post #76
reitzensteinm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't discriminate against asian people, just their problematic culture.

Correct. There's a belief at the very top of these schools that they only want so many people leading one-dimensional lives focused on entering upper middle class trades like law and medicine.

I think you missed some sarcasm there. Are you sure you were in admissions at Harvard?

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

#148

Post by tomp »

verylongname wrote: post #45
lozenge wrote: post #44

'Yet another was “bright & busy” but it was “a bit difficult to see what would hold him in during a lop.”' 'admissions officers then fine-tune the final class using a form that lists five pieces of information about the applicant; they give an example of a form that has spaces for the applicant’s name, LIN (lineage), ETH (ethnicity), ATH (athlete), and HFAI (financial aid).' It's undeniably racism. I wonder what the…

See CalTech for an example of an elite school that has race-blind admissions. As far as I can tell, it hasn't put any pressure on the Ivy's to change. Incidentally, Caltech's latest class is roughly 50% Asian and about 30% white.

Do you know how much is black? If it's less than 8% (or whetever the US average is), then it's literally "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

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

#149

Post by WillPostForFood »

danieltillett wrote: post #129
frockington wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if the lottery produced only White and Asian males being accepted. The meltdown and tears that a even a less than 0.01% event would cause prevents the lottery concept. I personally agree that a lottery is a valid suggestion but I don't think it would ever happen, at least completely random without "supervision"

How could a lottery produce such an outcome with tens of thousand of people in the pool and thousands being chosen? Set a threshold to get into the lottery (say a SAT score of 1200) and then choose at random. Such an approach will likely encourage diversity as people who think they don't have a chance under the current system will apply.

In Harvard wanted to stay a top school, they wouldn’t set the lottery threshold to 1200, they’d set it to 1500, with minimum 4.0 GPA. They’d still have a huge pool of applicants, but it would likely end up with a class around half Asian, which is what they are explicitly trying to avoid.

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

#150

Post by jessaustin »

paidleaf wrote: post #138
grandinj wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that? Stereotyping perhaps? In the case of Jews, they can hardly be called unambitious given the number of writers and scientists they produced. In the case of Asians, ambitious engineering, scientific and business persons do not seem to be short supply.

> What makes you think that? Stereotyping perhaps? Look at the quasi racist stuff this guy wrote. He obviously doesn't like asians for some reason. "Harvard and the other Ivies don't want to keep out asian people. They want to keep out boring, myopic applicants who spend all day studying to achieve the grades and scores they have and show little sign of interest in contributing to the outside world beyond getting a w…

I think he might have fit in at Dartmouth?
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