<p>poetgrl Assuming that the AdComs are discussing Asian Americans in the manner of my post what then would you think about the lawsuit? Should Harvard be required to change its ways? Or keep doing it?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl You are advocating that race be a tiebreaker when all things are equal, and I don’t have a problem with that and I don’t think most would have a problem with that.</p>
<p>I haven’t read every post, but voiceofreason repeatedly misstates legal point and mischaracterizes what other people have said.</p>
<p>Accepting government funds does not make an entity a de facto government actor.</p>
<p>Once the plaintiff establishes that there is a policy to discriminate on the basis of race, the defendant has the burden of establishing that the policy nevertheless survives strict scrutiny. That first part is the hard part, as xiggi has noted.</p>
<p>A policy of using holistic evaluation of applicants - and one which may specifically includes among its aims increasing diversity - has been held to survive strict scrutiny. The plaintiff can quote dissents all it wants to try to convince people otherwise. There’s a reason they’re dissents: they disagree with what the court says the law is. The plaintiff has to prove Harvard is doing something other than that. All the statistics in the world aren’t sufficient by themselves.</p>
<p>Also - and numerous people have pointed this out - the complaint doesn’t remotely establish that this kid would get admitted under a pure grades-and-score system. Indeed, it’s likely he wouldn’t. While we don’t know everything about him, the “missing” superlative information (like 2400 SATs) indicates it’s highly likely there are thousands of applicants every year who are more qualified than he is. Most of them get turned down too.</p>
<p>The kid’s not a party. They’re using his existence to gin up a “case or controversy.” But they’re failing, badly. He’s not going to get admitted as a transfer anyway, because only about 12 people a year do. And their prayer for relief makes it patently obvious that what they’re seeking isn’t a legitimate declaratory judgment, but an advisory opinion. </p>
<p>Kind of a different topic, but I think they’re on the wrong side of public opinion and where policy is going. The few pure test-score systems (like the NY specialized high schools) are under fire.</p>
<p>Has anyone wondered what these kids who complain about not being admitted have for essays?</p>
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<p>Try to get into any Yale Club without a Yale degree. Try to get into a finals club if you’re not a Princeton student. Try to join a fraternity at University of Wisconsin if you’re not a student.</p>
<p>Everybody can’t get into various clubs. The people that got accepted at Harvard can’t joint whatever clubs are at the prestigious college this mysterious applicant now goes ot.</p>
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<p>I really seriously doubt that is how they are discussing it.</p>
<p>I honestly believe they are looking for a certain mix of students with various talents and gifts, including but not only, those who are great at X, Y, Z.</p>
<p>Also, they are looking for unique talents, gifts, qualities. They are looking for a community and they are in the unique position with an acceptance rate of less than 6%, to make a lot of high quality choices. The graduation rate alone tells you they are not making any mistakes on who they admit. The students they admit are doing the work and graduating.</p>
<p>I don’t know what you might want beyond being nearly three times the population rate accepted to Harvard. </p>
<p>Most of the country is more concerned that we get enough Hispanic Americans in there now. For good reason.</p>
<p>ThereAreLlamas thank you for clearing that up about Clubs. It was enlightening.</p>
<p>rhandco Since this data is not available to the public of any applicant, no one knows. But assuming essays make a difference, how much of a difference should it make? Does anyone actually know if the applicant wrote it vs some professional essay writer? From my understanding that many kids that get accepted to HYPSM seem to get professional help in doing their applications.</p>
<p>poetgrl I would just like fair admission standards that are applied equally across all ethnicity. Since sally305 states that there is no benefit of Harvard over any other top school then it should make no difference to any of the students who gets in as long as the AdComs are fair in their treatment of each applicant.</p>
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BINGO. I couldn’t have said it better.</p>
<p>This is PRECISELY what the lawsuit is about: that each race is insulated from competing against the rest of the applicant pool, and it’s asian competing against asian for a predetermined number of asian slots: ** an illegal quota**</p>
<p>I think H is going to have a hard time explaining why the number of asian slots have been decreasing over the last 2 decadesv when asians as a percentage of the US population have doubled, and accordingly the percentage of asian kids at caltech, dartmouth , princeton has also increased.</p>
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Yes, they KNOW they want more non-asian students.</p>
<p>Whether or not u think the profile data is useless to pore over, no doubt H will be required to disclose a good bit of the data to the court for the court to decide.</p>
<p>I hope they are. I hope the court is required to read every last application and make up their own class. I really do.</p>
<p>poetgrl My hypothetical is an adaptation of what transpired with Jewish students at Harvard. See pg 23-24 of the Harvard complaint. The court will not read every application, but I am sure that you know that. I do hope that admissions at all schools are fair and just to all ethnicity.</p>
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<p>Which is why they sure as hell aren’t doing that about Asians.</p>
<p>Just don’t overvalue SAT/GPA scores. It’s the only argument I’ve ever seen advanced and, quite frankly, even the SAT is currently changing over tests and sees them as problematic. </p>
<p>I think you see something sinister where there isn’t. </p>
<p>“sally305 Try to get into any Harvard Club without an Harvard degree if you really insist on an example or any other social network that requires an Harvard degree.”</p>
<p>Well, that’s silly. Show me evidence of harm about not being able to get into the Harvard Club. I can’t get into the Google cafeteria either since I’m not an employee.</p>
<p>We want REAL evidence that Harvard-alone-provides-opportunities-that-are-not-possible-elsewhere-and-thus-you-are-entitled. And not “but everyone in my home country falls to their knees and worships it,” because that’s not the US.</p>
<p>"AdCom1 “What do you think about this Asian American applicant? She has great EC and wonderful essay but she has below average SAT of 2100, let’s admit her?”
AdCom2 “Can’t do that, we have too many Asian American applicants who have similar EC etc and also have higher SAT scores so it’s a no go for her.”
AdCom1 “But we admit others with low SAT?”
AdCom2 “But not if they are Asian Americans.” "</p>
<p>|You cannot be serious if you actually think that this is how the discussion goes. You’re demonstrating that you are just completely unaware of American norms and what holistic admissions means. Race is not an on/off switch where the determination is made as to whether someone should be admitted and then poof their race is revealed and then the card flips to the other side. </p>
<p>Can an adcom say - this particular candidate doesn’t bring anything to the table that the last 30 candidates we admitted this morning haven’[t already brought? </p>
<p>Also, and this is at the heart of the matter, don’t overvalue a Harvard degree. There are so many excellent places to get an education in this country. Obsession with a school with a 6% acceptance rate on a good day is madness. </p>
<p>The school wants a football team, plays, a symphony, a government, musical theater, humanities students, ice hockey, dancers, stem students, computer geeks, crew, basketball, lacrosse, a smattering of the well connected to make the network. They want inovators, educators, dreamers. Medalists, philosophers, poets.</p>
<p>They really aren’t looking at the SAT/GPA except as the tag up to participate in the actual competition to get in.</p>
<p>poetgrl But the data suggests that that is exactly what may be happening. Not sure what to make of your statement “don’t overvalue SAT/GPA”? SAT is changing because the ACT is taking customers away not because it sees itself as problematic. The change is a business decision to compete against the ACT which has now surpassed the number of test takers over the SAT.</p>
<p>The data speaks for itself. Harvard and other elite schools that discriminate can point to the high number of Asian Americans in its schools as proof positive of no discrimination and for many people that is sufficient to believe that the Harvards of the world are not discriminatory. However, the admit rates and the substantially different SAT and GPA standards are present. </p>
<p>Washington and Lee states that it is not discriminatory against Asian Americans but unlike Harvard it cannot fall on its high Asian American enrollment.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl If going to Harvard has no benefits then why is there a desire to go there vs some other elite school? Harvard has $36 Billion at its disposal to enrich the student experience, although I don’t believe that Harvard is the end all, it does have its perks.</p>
<p>Jewish students are 2% of the population, but are many times more the population at elite schools.
Asian students are x% of the population, but are many times more the population at elite schools.</p>
<p>What makes you think Asians are discriminated against, again? </p>
<p>Look, VOR, I’m in favor of seriously letting the courts see every last application. I’m honestly not kidding. I know you think I am, but I’m not. </p>
<p>I don’t think they can release the applications to the public due to privacy concerns, but I’m really in favor of this.</p>
<p>I’m not in favor of hiding a thing. And I don’t think they will find discrimation. I think they will find that some groups are being given favorable treatment for SES and other historical reasons which are perfectly valid, imho. </p>
<p>Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not it matters that test prep is unevenly available in this country, that test prep has proven advantageous, and whether or not SAT is partnering with KHAN academy to offer free SAT prep to compete with the ACT.</p>
<p>But, if they released the apps to the courts, we could get an actual answer to your question, which isn’t mine, but which I believe deserves an educated answer. </p>
<p>“Pizzagirl You are advocating that race be a tiebreaker when all things are equal, and I don’t have a problem with that and I don’t think most would have a problem with that.”</p>
<p>There’s no such thing as all else being equal. The only thing is remotely standardized is the SAT/ACT. High school rigor, teachers, opportunities are wildly different. Student bodies / competition are wildly different. A 3.8 at High School A isn’t “equal” to a 3.8 at High School B. A student from MA where applicants to elite schools are a dime a dozen is different from a student from ND where there are only a handful of such applicants. Being student council president at High School A is a real responsibility there but a joke at High School B. </p>
<p>Don’t you evaluate people holistically when you interview them for jobs? It’s the same darn thing. It’s a mix of qual and quant. it’s just not all that hard, really. </p>
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<p>I am not sure how much of my posts you’re reading before excerpting a small portion to offer a rebuttal of a point I never made. This discussion, as more than a decade can attest to, is already hard enough to follow without creating strawmen arguments. </p>
<p>To be clear, I did not write that they know how to look for reasons to reject Asians. I wrote than from the 30,000 to 40,000 schools such as Harvard get, they know how to trim down by 75%. The intimation that they are NOT looking to accept Asians on the sole basis of their race is preposterous. And especially so in light of a final enrollment of 15 to 20 percent of Asians. But again, that is a point you are entitled to make based on your personal opinion. Nothing here pretends that any of us has the monopoly of correct points. </p>
<p>As far as the data that might be provided by Harvard, I hardly think it would be useless. Check the original post of this thread for the correct interpretation of what I wrote. On the other hand, speaking about useless, I happen to think that most of what was used to build the spine of this lawsuit happens to be close to useless, and especially so in a legal case. At best, it is a hodgepodge of old news, mostly irrelevant cases to a claim of discrimination, and shoddy “research.” </p>
<p>My point if that was not clear is that, contrary to what is intimated here, Harvard will have no problems whatsoever to document its admission process as being … well within the law. As unsavory as it might be to some, the reliance of holistic admission and the use of preferences to compose its targeted class of freshman is entirely within its right.</p>
<p>In the meantime, I DO welcome the hypothetical fact that Harvard might be forced to disclose a lot more than Fitz has done thus far, and that this disclosure might bury this case for just as long as it did the last time Harvard was a target of a discrimination challenge. But if I were a betting man, I would not waste many pennies considering the mountain that the plaintiffs have to climb and the difficulty to do so with anecdotes, sketchy science, and an obviously ill-prepared team of experts. If it survives the first salvo, this claim will meet a barrage of the very best legal talent money can buy. </p>
<p>Harvard might not have a long way to find talented alumni. Incidentally, one question that begs for a plausible answer is … why aren’t there any Asian attorneys who might have taken a stab at this issue? Must not be their cup of tea!</p>
<p>Pizzagirl You are taking all applicants as equals in the academic quality. The problem is that all applicants have different levels of achievement. For instance Blacks are about 15% of the general population but about 75% of the NBA. By your logic, the NBA is overrepresented by Blacks. </p>
<p>It is not the size of the overall population, it is the size of the quality of the applicant pool that is important. It just happens that the size of the high stats Asian American students in the applicant pool are disproportional to the general population. So if applications are fairly evaluated the disproportionally high stat Asian kids should be accepted. If the admission is race neutral than the acceptance rate at each score/GPA bucket for each ethnicity should be about the same.</p>
<p>As to all things being equal comment, that is from your hypothetical I was addressing.</p>
<p>This is where the wheels fall off the argument. It’s not up to you to decide what is most important to Harvard in admissions. They might rank being the best soprano in the country above stats. They might rank being an olympic caliber fencer above the stats you yourself favor. They do not necessarily rank those particular stats as higher than growing up in an incredibly disadvantaged situation and still obtaining stats you yourself would rank as subpar.</p>
<p>The issue is the measurement, and the measurement is not necessarily the way you think. What is valued in the US is a lot of different qualities. And the truth is that there has been an anti-intellectual streak running through the US since the day the country was founded. The cultural preference for excelling at ECs bears this out. </p>
<p>But, and this is the thing I think people sometimes find difficult to understand, it’s not up to you to choose which qualities these schools deem to be essential. They know what they want. It’s not all about the stats.</p>