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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

#161

Post by SiempreViernes »

golergka wrote: post #92
speedplane wrote: post #23

I understand the outrage of racial discrimination in this case, but I'm saddened over the lack of outrage over Harvard's self-described "Z-List" students who get into the school solely based on their family's money and power. No one is suing Harvard over the fact that you can buy your way in. We've come to accept that money and legacy power provides access and opportunity regardless of merit. If that more fundamental…

It's a private university. Why shouldn't you be able to buy your way in?

Well, the problem is that they serve as a credential issuing authority, but they also provide what is essentially a credential laundering service for the people who can pay.

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

#162

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

Veelox wrote: post #157
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yet, you seemed to stop a step short of calling this structural racism against Asian Americans. Is there something I am missing for why you didn't take that last step? If we remove legacy admissions, does the Harvard admission system become racist against white people? I don't think so. Harvard is trying to counter-balance a (semi) racially stratified society. Imagine a caste society. Higher caste children are provi…

>In a racist structure there is no way to be blind to race, you either perpetuate it or you work against it. You could be trying to say one thing while I hear something different. Do you think it is okay to elevate underrepresented minorities despite a lack of objectively measurable merit?

>Do you think it is okay to elevate underrepresented minorities despite a lack of objectively measurable merit?

In the sense that you mean it - yes. But I would say that there is no such thing as 'objectively measurable merit' and that frequently the type of merit we measure when admitting applicants to the Ivy League isn't really merit at all but instead laundered privilege (whether on race or class or anything else). Some intelligent black girl who goes to a school that performs in the bottom third and takes the hardest classes available to her and has to work a job after school has basically no chance to make it to Harvard or Stanford or Cornell. Some intelligent Asian girl who goes to a private school and takes the hardest classes available and plays tennis and is on the debate team still has a decent chance. Who is more meritorious? We aren't really measuring merit at all, we're measuring likelihood to pass into the upper echelons of society.

And then to the extent that there are lots of white and Asian kids who have grown up in circumstances which allow them to signal in a way that the black girl above can't, I really don't have a problem with Harvard stepping in and fixing that.

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

#163

Post by SiempreViernes »

drawnwren wrote: post #77
zimablue wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extracurriculars have been moved away from in the UK because you're basically discriminating on class. I went to a uni much like the one you describe, Imperial College London. It has it's problems but I wouldn't have traded all the engineers and scientists for lit students. Pretty sure we produce our share of investment bankers. A uni discriminating on extracurriculars and perceived sociability is insane. We're suppo…

Keep in mind that top 5 US schools are taking a much smaller percentage of a much larger population. They simply can't differentiate on academic performance alone. They generally admit somewhere around 5% of their applicants. Keeping in mind that those applicants are self-selecting, to some degree, thanks to the previously known admit rates and high application fees -- they have to use something else. A professor of…

Just do a unbiased lottery draw for the rest, that's about as fair you can do until you go down the really dystopian full facebook micro surveillance.

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

#164

Post by posting2fast »

golergka wrote: post #92
speedplane wrote: post #23

I understand the outrage of racial discrimination in this case, but I'm saddened over the lack of outrage over Harvard's self-described "Z-List" students who get into the school solely based on their family's money and power. No one is suing Harvard over the fact that you can buy your way in. We've come to accept that money and legacy power provides access and opportunity regardless of merit. If that more fundamental…

It's a private university. Why shouldn't you be able to buy your way in?

For quality of education and quality of reputation.

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

#165

Post by jessaustin »

You don’t have son of a police officer.

Well that's an obnoxious qualification to help one into a selective school. In future I won't be as concerned with mundane corruption like the free coffee and donuts in any quick-trip they feel like shaking down...

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

#166

Post by Spooky23 »

IvyAdmisions wrote: post #68

From an earlier thread: I was a college admissions officer for a few years and am familiar with the process at the top Ivies. The outcome is racist but there's no intent to be racist. Imagine your job is to create the best possible 2000-student freshman class for Harvard from the 40,000 students who apply. You review the applications and notice to your horror that 600-1000 of them all have perfect or near perfect tes…

> Who's going into investment banking to pull down big bonuses 10 years from now?

Won't somebody, please, think of the bankers!

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

#167

Post by jeffreyrogers »

jancsika wrote: post #158
IvyAdmisions wrote: post #68

From an earlier thread: I was a college admissions officer for a few years and am familiar with the process at the top Ivies. The outcome is racist but there's no intent to be racist. Imagine your job is to create the best possible 2000-student freshman class for Harvard from the 40,000 students who apply. You review the applications and notice to your horror that 600-1000 of them all have perfect or near perfect tes…

> play an instrument (very well, but not remarkably), Let's take your low end of 600 students. Let's say you are a former musician and could judge their ability after listening to a mere 1 minute of music. Plus perhaps 30 seconds to reflect upon what you heard and make some notes. That alone is 15 hours of your work week as an admissions officer, or 3% of your total time for the review period if you figure a full 3 m…

Of course you don't do that. You look to see what orchestras they were in as a kid, what competitions they've won, etc. You'll immediately see that most people who list music as an extracurricular are decent, but nothing extraordinary. If you are really good then you can meet with someone at the music department at the university you're applying to, perform for them, and if they think you're good enough they'll tell the admissions department and give your application a boost.

I'm not sure what you're trying to suggest the OP do differently with this comment.

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

#168

Post by sctb »

kanox wrote: post #119
IvyAdmisions wrote: post #68

From an earlier thread: I was a college admissions officer for a few years and am familiar with the process at the top Ivies. The outcome is racist but there's no intent to be racist. Imagine your job is to create the best possible 2000-student freshman class for Harvard from the 40,000 students who apply. You review the applications and notice to your horror that 600-1000 of them all have perfect or near perfect tes…

[flagged]

If you keep posting like this we'll ban the account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#169

Post by brians »

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've had an admissions officer at MIT scream at me--handing out leaflets at a protest--that MIT "doesn't admit people like me any more." I think he meant to communicate that they were aiming at more complacent people who would participate on the rails--as admissions officers of his era imagined Millenials to be. "Whoops"

He's out of admissions and lecturing physics at U Kentucky now, which seems a fair result. But anyway, these groups hire bozos to do the low-tier work. The heads of admissions are usually fantastic, but the clerks are lower quality than average because of supply issues.

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

#170

Post by citizenkeen »

jancsika wrote: post #158
IvyAdmisions wrote: post #68

From an earlier thread: I was a college admissions officer for a few years and am familiar with the process at the top Ivies. The outcome is racist but there's no intent to be racist. Imagine your job is to create the best possible 2000-student freshman class for Harvard from the 40,000 students who apply. You review the applications and notice to your horror that 600-1000 of them all have perfect or near perfect tes…

> play an instrument (very well, but not remarkably), Let's take your low end of 600 students. Let's say you are a former musician and could judge their ability after listening to a mere 1 minute of music. Plus perhaps 30 seconds to reflect upon what you heard and make some notes. That alone is 15 hours of your work week as an admissions officer, or 3% of your total time for the review period if you figure a full 3 m…

I don't believe you have to listen to a student musician to judge them. You can see on their application what they've achieved. Are they third chair in some youth philharmonic? That's not remarkable. If they were remarkable, they would have remarkable achievements on their application.
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