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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

#31

Post by speedplane »

Veelox wrote: post #28
speedplane wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you were right, because if the issue was just a few racist admissions officers, then the solution would be simple: fire them and get non-racist ones, problem solved. However, there is a fourth, more likely explanation: 4) Harvard's scoring is unintentionally hurting Asian students. From the article, it seems that Harvard focuses on establishing student diversity that roughly tracks the US population, bringing…

>4) Harvard's scoring is unintentionally hurting Asian students. It's Harvard we are taking about, not a community college. Someone in admissions knew it was happening and let it keep happening. If you are willing to say unintentional means knew it was happening and didn't care to stop it, sure it was unintentional. The issue I have with that is if the same thing was happening but you replaced Asian with African, peo…

I am not arguing with you that it's wrong, I am saying the solution isn't as easy as you describe. This isn't a tumor you can cut out, it's a veiny cancer that is hard to see and widespread. I'd bet there were a number of individuals that knew about it, felt it was wrong, and maybe some did do something about it. Firing them would probably make the system worse, not better.

It's quite easy for a bunch of non-racist individuals to create a well-intentioned system that has a racist effect. It happens in many institutional systems, this year's Pulitzer prize went to a guy who showed that D.C.'s well intentioned and black-run criminal justice system discriminated against black people in their own city.

When you have systemic problems like this, you can't just swap out some individuals, you need to fix the system. My original point is that increasing Harvard's class size will be a necessary component. It may also require a change of leadership (e.g., president or dean of admissions), but this is not a personnel problem, it 's a structural one.

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

#32

Post by raincom »

throwawayanon12 wrote: post #10

Would love to see a concerted movement to arrange a boycott of Harvard by Asian students - having a graduating class without any Asian students would send a very a strong symbolic message.

It won't happen. Imagine there are 3800 Asians, with perfect SAT, validictorians, excellence, etc. You can make 95% people boycott, the other Asian applicants will apply even if they sign to the pledge.

It is better for professors of Asian descent to leave, and not join, Harvard. That will send a better message.

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

#33

Post by chii »

speedplane wrote: post #27
strstr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Z-list probably isn't illegal (despite it being pretty disheartening).

Of course it isn't illegal. Folks with money and power create the rules, and obviously one of the first rules you'd make is that those with money and power can use that money and power to get what they want. But just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right or it should be. And you could potentially make a case that it's illegal, even though it's flimsy and you'd probably would lose. Harvard makes all sorts of clai…

> Harvard makes all sorts of claims that they pick the best and the brightest based on merit.

they didn't lie - they do pick the best and brightest. But they don't claim that's the _only_ people they pick.

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

#35

Post by tzs »

rspeer wrote: post #18
throwa_way_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

For the sake of simplicity, let's assume all legacy admissions are white males, and that the diversity they claim to promote is racial and gender diversity.

> Legacy admissions promote exactly the opposite of diversity

That's only true if the number of white males that would be admitted in a fully diverse class is not large enough to accommodate all the legacy admissions. I suspect that this is not the case, and so legacy admissions are essentially orthogonal to diversity considerations.

Dropping the assumptions stated in the first paragraph, the above argument remains correct as long as each category considered for diversity analysis has more admissions than the number of legacy admissions in that category.

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

#36

Post by tzs »

xkcdefgh wrote: post #30

Why is SAT so ridiculously easy that thousands have perfect score?

It's not. A perfect score puts you in the top 0.0348% (2014 test). That about 1 in 2900.

It only seems like a lot because millions take the test.

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

#37

Post by lsc »

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…

I always thought that historically, the elite schools were for the children of the elite; the idea behind letting "scholarship students" in is that if the children of the elite are going to run the world (and they always have in the past) it's really in everyone's best interest if we set them up so that they build relationships with some people who are competent and will have to work.

I think the fact that there does seem to be some grumblings about 'legacy admissions' is progress.

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

#38

Post by lordnacho »

xkcdefgh wrote: post #30

Why is SAT so ridiculously easy that thousands have perfect score?

There's a lot of kids taking it, and it needs to be able to differentiate kids in a country with very wide ranging abilities. If you made it harder there'd probably be a whole load of people bunched up at the bottom.

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

#39

Post by lordnacho »

This is terrible to read about from a European perspective.

- It seems getting into America's most prestigious institution on merit is incredibly unlikely, compared to if you happened to have rich relatives. If 50 or 60 rich kids a year out of a pool of what? A few hundred people rich enough to be z-listed? Maybe not even that. Versus the busload of ordinary kids who need to slip through the eye of the needle.

- Athletes I guess are a special American thing where universities are involved. Maybe not Harvard, but some of the others will let people attend for free. Which isn't even then terribly fair, because they make a lot of money off those kids, possibly a lot more per person than a comparable athlete would get in the free market. That's if their sport is one of the popular ones.

- You can't work your way out of poverty over two generations. If anything is the American Dream (arguably there's more people outside of America who have one of these, but I digress), it's being able to see your kids succeed. But they want 1st gen immigrants according to the article.

At the end of this, I still don't quite understand how you communicate all this stuff in your admissions form. Do they have a drop-down for ethnicity? If they did, I would game it, knowing that they seem to like Vietnamese people more than Chinese. And where do you say "my name is Smith, but please check the donation register for ...". I've got a hard luck story as well, is that what the essay is for?

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

#40

Post by verylongname »

xkcdefgh wrote: post #30

Why is SAT so ridiculously easy that thousands have perfect score?

It was "recentered" in 1995. The right side of the distribution was essentially truncated. A 1600 on the pre-1995 SAT was quite an accomplishment (I don't have data at my fingertips, but in most years, fewer than 10 students achieved a perfect score of 1600 and only a few dozen scored 1550+). By contrast, several hundred students a year scored 1600 on the recentered test.

The scoring system has been changed several times since 1995 and I have no idea how the current system compares to the pre-1995 system or the recentered test given for some years afterward.

Many, including myself, suspect that one of the motivations for the recentering was to give colleges cover for their admissions decisions. It is pretty hard to turn down students who get 1600s when only 7 or 8 students a year do so. It is easier to "shape" a class without provoking criticism when a large percentage of students score 1500+.

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