Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

So then I ended up where we have this one time test, which stresses the hell out of everyone. Luckily he did well on it, school decisions came out last week and he got what he wanted.

I'm not actually sure which is better, part of why I thought maybe teacher recommendations would have been better was that my kid would undoubtedly get recommended if that were the system, he just happens to have that thing that teachers recognise. But even so he could have had a bad day and not made it in the system we actually live in.

Just wanted to add since I've looked into Harvard Extension School (HES): a HES graduate from a degree program is enrolled in the Harvard Alumni Association and does get to refer to themselves as a "Harvard graduate".

The degree is from the HES with a degree in "Extension Studies", which is the big distinction versus "real" Harvard, but I also suspect that beyond you first or second job, that becomes about as meaningful as your GPA.

Also importantly, that difference has come up in the last few years, to the point where the Harvard College Undergraduate Council and the Harvard Graduate Council both voted last year in favour to remove that differentiation from HES degrees[1]. It is however, Harvard University that has to decide, although it's quite interesting that the students - who are generally considered to be the ones who make the biggest fuss about "real" Harvard - are the ones in support of the move.

It's also worth noting that the child of a HES graduate is still considered a legacy, so that benefit is also conferred on their family.

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[1] https://blogs.harvard.edu/lamont/2022/03/28/harvard-college-...

Please don’t put words into my mouth that I did not say (and certainly don’t think).

Note that I had a positive experience living in Asia for 9 years, and I am currently active in Asian communities in Asia as well as the Asian-American community. If I felt for one second that there has been any actual systemic discrimination happening, I would be all over it, and I would speak out loudly against it.

Clearly I haven’t found any plausible systemic discrimination.

Regarding the “Asians being weaker” in some areas argument, i think there are two sides of this argument.

First, using Harvard as an example, 25-28% or so of the entering class is Asian. Given that Asians-Americans are about 6% of the US, this hardly smacks of systemic racism. Something doesn’t add up with this argument.

Second, I hear people say something like “ah, when you control for grades and test scores, Asians are accepted less frequently”. This is pretty much true at every elite school whose data I have seen.

So is this racism? Maybe, but I’m guessing not. Two courts who basically did a full body cavity search on Harvard also did not find any discrimination (note that if the Supreme Court overturns these decisions, it will be based on labeling affirmative action policies as being actively discriminatory against Asians and Whites, not actual direct discrimination against Asian applicants).

What I will say, based on hundreds of data points, is that Asian parents of kids who apply to elite schools (esp. those who don’t get in) routinely emphasize grades and SAT scores over all else. As I mentioned in my original reply, this is just living in denial about what the actual application process is. It’s much more than grades and SATs.

Check out the article I linked to above - applicants really want one or more 1s (and these 1s are tougher to get than this article makes it out to be) or pretty much all 2s with nothing below 3. The people who complain loudest about elite school admissions are typically scoring 5 or 6 in one or more categories while not getting a 1 in any. I have no idea why they are surprised that they were denied.

Some additional comments:

- The most likely discrimination that an applicant will face is at their own high school. High school counselors and teachers can be petty tyrants, and ambitious students can be screwed by high school counselors and teachers if they do not play their cards right. It can be a very political process.

- For folks who think that they were “almost there” and didn’t get in due to being Asian, I ask them this — were they waitlisted? If not, they were not even close.

- If someone is a strong applicant to elite schools, they will get into at least one. There are some weird things like rough quotas from certain high schools that may make it seem arbitrary for a specific school, but generally this is a known issue if it’s an issue. There is plenty of room at the bottom of each entering class for strong applicants, so these schools aren’t randomly turning away highly qualified applicants for meaningless reasons like race.

- I have an open offer to people who think Asians are discriminated against in admissions. Show me their application (or give me a lot of details), and I will tell you where things went south. 100% of the time people have done this, there was a glaring gap in their application. In the event that I somehow don’t find a gap, my next inquiry would be about their references (one bad one can ruin an applications, and some applicants get blindsided). If you have any examples, please post here. I will be happy to comment.

But they don't really think about how to deal with the fallout if things don't go well. I mean sure, tell the kid it's important to do well, but don't put everything on passing the test. I've never heard any strategy for what to do in case it doesn't go well. You'll destroy the kid's confidence and possibly his friendships too if you make it about your worth as a person.