Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students • Hacker News Board

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#91

Post by the_lonely_road » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #42

MichaelCollins wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shaping the ethnic demographic of the school is a big component of the modern intent as well. Particularly, these "holistic" admission standards are designed to facilitate discrimination against Asian Americans. This is justified with transparently racist bullshit claims about Asian American students being too focused on academic performance, not "well rounded" whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. They reduce…

A more charitable interpretation is that a student body made up of too much of any one thing is not good. Part of the value proposition for going away to university for four years is to spend that time surrounded by diverse and interesting people. That doesn't excuse the actual racism that we've seen in admissions, of course.

By that logic if it’s okay for 60% of the student body to be white because 60% of the United States is white then you are explicitly saying it’s okay for the university to be 60% of the same race which means it should be equally acceptable for the university to be 60% Asian regardless of them being x% of the United States and merit based admittance should be acceptable.

The only logical reason for discriminating against so many Asians in our current setup needs to be attempting to mirror the population statistics of the United States. I don’t approve of that logic to be clear and think the universities will be issuing apologies to the Asian American community in X years similar to the ones they just made to the Jewish American community recently.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#92

Post by FredPret » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #38

tsunamifury wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really disappointing that many recent attempts of progressivism have just turned into new sexism and racism but defended as “the correct” versions of those. It erodes the intellectual validity of these institutions.

Fortunately I feel convinced that it's a passing fad. I just hope that the pendulum does not swing too far the other way.

Maybe I'm in a bubble, but every anecdote I read online in the past year or two is someone royally fed up with liberal politics. On Twitter, Reddit, and real life, the majority of people keep complaining about crime, drugs, homelessness.

Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#93

Post by kenjackson » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

brigandish wrote: post #80

kenjackson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a society we got ourselves into a situation where ignoring race now I promotes inequality as it helps those that have benefited from racism in the past. And doing ANYTHING proactive now is racism not. The question is just — what type of injustice do you prefer?

> ignoring race now I promotes inequality as it helps those that have benefited from racism in the past Does it?

This is a much longer discussion and one that tends to devolve. And there is a camp that believes that black peoples have it better than whites people today. I find it hard to believe, but they exist.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#94

Post by kenjackson » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:42 PM UTC

LorenPechtel wrote: post #77

kenjackson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better alternative is to fix the problem upstream. Push much more test taking prep for poor students. And reevaluate the SAT. It’s well known the stories of the SAT not including questions blacks score higher on and using questions that whites score higher on. Try to remove the bias from the test even if that gives surprising results. I’m not a fan of quotas, but I do think taking race into account up until a point…

Cite?

Cite what?

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#95

Post by mindslight » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #62

MichaelCollins wrote: post #22

Who could have seen that coming? The whole point of ditching quantitative tests is to empower the bureaucrats who want to make qualitative judgements based on their personal whims and biases. "Holistic" my ass.

The problem with "quantitative" tests is that they are not without their own bias - they select for students that had the luck (or the right parentage) to go to either a private school or to a public school in a well-funded school district. The result is that the student base will be overwhelmingly white rich kids, which is pretty problematic (see e.g. [1], fresh out of the press). Additionally, at least when one goe…

Families with more resources are going to be able to use those resources to game anything. The question is then, which metrics have the most resistance to gaming? Testing would seem more resistant to gaming than extracurricular activities or how well "you" write essays.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#96

Post by kenjackson » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:44 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #78

kenjackson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no cutoff, just an SAT score? And then a cutoff based on that? What about GPA? Weighted GPA? AP tests matter? Creating a cure for COVID matter? I think for the very top schools they care about the intangibles. For mid-tier schools the SAT cutoff lottery is fine. But the cut off is probably like 1150, and these arguments aren’t about those schools.

Just an SAT cutoff. Maybe cure Covid kid ends up at Vassar instead of Princeton. So what? Will his life be over? Will the US decline into irrelevance?

That’s an interesting race to the bottom for those schools. They’d end up with kids who basically ditched studying advanced math, physics, research, etc and just a lot of kids who prepped for the SAT for four years.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#97

Post by giardini » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

nO0b wrote: post #41

onos wrote: post #2

USA is rich in universities. I wish people would focus less on the rankings and looking good credential aspect of college, and more on using it as an opportunity to learn / actually getting good at something. If we did the latter, we’d realize that people could go to pretty much any university (or coursera!) and get a high quality education here.

Malcolm Gladwell explains why it's statistically FAR better to be among the smartest kids at a 2nd or 3rd tier school than struggling to get into some elite institution where you will be below average among your peers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UEwbRWFZVc&t=220s If you're borrowing money to pay for a degree, going to a school where you are not at the very top of the class is really taking a big risk.

Thank you for posting Gladwell's talk, which should be required viewing for any young, bright and hopeful high-school graduate. I wish all my nephews and nieces had watched it.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#98

Post by thefaux » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

For everyone who finds the removal of admission tests ridiculous, how do y'all feel about leetcode?

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#99

Post by ethbr0 » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

chitowneats wrote: post #82

inglor_cz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not just neo-racism and neo-sexism. It is also a weird kind of neo-feudalism, excluding outsiders that cannot or won't fit the expected mold. In the court of Versailles, you had to behave according to a certain stiff etiquette. If the same is required in institutions of higher learning, how many really creative people will be willing to put up with it?

They won't. Can't wait for all the great music in the next few decades.

Fair point. The 60s wouldn't have happened without the 50s. The 90s without the 80s.

Artistic creativity brews strongest when there's an omnipresent dogma to reject, and the current pastiche of thoughtlessly-implemented progressivism is fertile ground.

It's been bubbling up in standup comedy for a while, but that tends to be the quickest turnaround on cultural commentary.

No nuanced good idea ever survives contact with a brainless bureaucracy.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#100

Post by rayiner » Sat, Oct 22, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

What surprises me is how many Asians support these measures. Make no mistake: our ability to progress as we have in America has depended on the fact that objective metrics cannot easily be gamed. The cost of test prep is a minor barrier to entry compared to the cultural knowledge required to write an essay that moves a WASP admissions officer, or the social capital and connections required to get involved in charitable or social activities that stand out in an application.