Sorry @chasingmymd1 my bad. Guess I didn’t pay close enough attention.
Unfortunately for us, @T26E4 is probably right. Oh well, it is what it is. Moving on.
And it has been said many times before, if you don’t like Harvards /(insert any other elite school here) admissions
policies ,please feel free to apply elsewhere.
@GA2012MOM
I don’t understand. I gave one example of a great EC, but obviously there are many others out there that dont have anything to do with STEM (write an award-winning novel, intern with the New York times, etc). I never implied that only STEM majors or those with STEM ECs could get into top colleges.
And actually, I scored well above 33 on the ACT though I certainly don’t think that my chances at HYPSM will be much greater because of it.
Hmmm chasing. You seem to not see your inconsistency here. I’m saying that H values attributes beyond academics. If there were two applicants but one also had solid acting background and had potential to do more, but the non-actor’s metrics were slightly above the actor, I feel that H is perfectly fine to admit the thespian. And I’d feel the same about if one were to switch out “actor” with “black American”. You differ. I get that. That’s my opinion.
@T26E4
@GA2012MOM
Thank you both for providing your thinking and rationale on this subject. As I said before, I’m a strong proponent of free speech and discussion so I do value your opinions, even if they clash with my own. With that said, I wish you two the best, as I feel that this discussion has reached the limits of its usefulness and will not be posting/replying on this thread again. Truly, no hard feelings. 
You’re basically saying that “If black people don’t want to sit at the back of the bus, then they can walk.”
The fact is that it is illegal to set racial quotas on applicants. Harvard can tailor its admission process however it wants by making it “holistic,” but it is against the law to reject applicants on the basis of race. Of course Harvard will never say that they have racial quotas, but the fact that Asians have to score several hundred points on the SAT higher to get into the same college (all else being equal, with the exception of their skin color), and the fact that the percentage of Asians at Harvard is much less than public schools that don’t use affirmative action (e.g., UC Berkeley) suggest that they do.
The only way to create a fair admissions process for black, white, and Asian students is to forgo the use of race and name in admissions altogether. As another poster said, we need the best players on the field.
@GA2012MOM How is this even relevant?
It’s easy to dismiss this criticism as whining from high school students who were upset that they weren’t accepted to any Ivies, but the fact is, much of the criticism comes from people attending such elite institutions - the author of the article went to Harvard and Columbia.
Altho these arguments sound great for Asians, you have to think that other minorities blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, the poor, first generations, wouldn’t stand a chance at Harvard. Also Harvard is 30% legacy admissions. You have to consider these other students. Diversity is a good thing. Sometimes the best athlete, best artist, best actor, best dancer, best swimmer, do not have the greatest test scores. Many engineers have lousy verbal scores. Should they be denied? Using test scores alone is just as silly as saying you have to dribble a ball to get accepted. Just as unfair.
And a big reason why Columbia and Cornell’s teams stink is because they exactly take the smartest students, not necessarily the best athletes. Many players on Columbia’s football team had 800 SAT scores. Most of the team goes on to attend med and law school. (Harvard, Princeton, Penn do recruit for athletes. Harvard had the big scandal where basketball players had extremely low SAT scores that were not reported.)
@rickk1,
“Also Harvard is 30% legacy admissions.”
Only about 10% of admitted freshmen are legacies. You may be thinking of the admission rate, which is about 30% for legacies.
“Diversity is a good thing…”
The plaintiffs in the current court case are not arguing to the contrary. They have no problem with Harvard pursuing the goal of diversity. What they say is that, given the history of the United States, the use of race or ethnicity is an illegitimate way of achieving diversity.
The Supreme Court has previously ruled that, basically, race IS an illegitimate means by which to achieve diversity. Except if the use of race cannot otherwise be avoided to achieve diversity.
The plaintiffs claim there are ways to achieve diversity without the use of race. In fact, I believe that at least some of the lawyers involved have a practice that works with large organizations to develop and implement diversity programs and goals that explicitly foreswear race and ethnicity as tools.
My own view is that if these folks can persuade the court that organizations can achieve diversity without using race, Harvard’s practices will be forbidden.
For the lawyers among the readers, I apologize in advance for any flaws in my summary. I’m not a lawyer. Just an interested observer.
Too often these threads weakly acknowledge that it isn’t all about stats- and then turn right back to stats.
It was a very limited study that talked about score differentials and the rest of the world then took off like a lightning bolt and started calling that a “higher bar” for Asian Americans. Gee, but not the author. In fact, excellence and “merit” are far more comprehensive than scores. Many of the kids you assume are less worthy are out there taking rigor, getting their A’s, showing leadership beyond the little high school context and having real impact, and reflecting admirable levels of breadth and depth. And by gummy, they can write great essays and their LoRs are solid.
But, you don’t know this, do you? You assume it can’t be, that no “fair” system could possibly find worth in “that kid” unless it’s quotas and racial discrimination.
@lookingforward,
I think what you’re saying works okay when you’re deciding on one candidate versus another. One can imagine that the candidate with the lower scores may have other qualities that make him or her the superior candidate.
The difficulty is when one finds that Asians regularly must score significantly higher, on average, to achieve admission. One would think, if all things were held equal, that even if in a particular case, the candidate with the lower test scores were clearly superior to the one with the higher scores, it would all average out. But the fact that there is s fairly substantial statistical difference suggests one of two conclusions:
- that less-qualified candidates are being admitted in the interests of "diversity" over more-qualified candidates, or
- that test scores overstate the qualifications of Asians.
The funny thing is, I’ve heard Harvard actually assert the latter in public, while more or less admitting the former when providing a legal defense of their policies. I won’t quite say that the two are contradictory to each other, but there is a certain… tension between them.
As well, although I don’t know the history well, to me, this suggests what was done by Harvard to Jews in a previous generation. Less objective measures were substituted for more objective measures, in what we might call today a more “holistic” admission process, so that Harvard could simultaneously maintain the Jewish quota and a straight face that they were picking the most qualified candidates, not discriminating against Jews.
My own view is that Chief Justice Roberts, in the opinion for Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 2007, pretty much nailed it:
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Many things are used to create a diverse class. If all things are equal between an Asian and black student, and they have already accepted a bunch if Asian students, they may go with the black student. Also males and females have different scores and GPA’s , why is no one saying anything about that? There are also significant regional differences, the scores of accepted students from New York, Mass, NJ, are significantly higher than mid west, southern, or western states. They could also fill the entire class with just the north east states. Would that be a good thing?
Would you please supply an article or a link that references this fact, as I’ve never read anything that indicates the above statement to be true.
The plaintiffs aren’t against diversity. The plaintiffs are against racism.
The plaintiffs are saying that in a country with a history of using race as an attribute by which to oppress people, where a war was fought to correct some of these ills, where constitutional amendments were passed, and a century of laws, to eliminate pernicious discrimination based on race, it is illegitimate to discriminate based on race.
The plaintiffs are not disputing that there may be value in admitting the great athlete, the opera singer. They don’t dispute that perhaps GPA is more important than test scores (although there have been times in Harvard’s history when the opposite was held). They don’t dispute that one might take the brilliant STEM fellow who might not be quite as excellent verbally. But these are all distinctions with meaning. In fact, the plaintiffs say that these are good and positive ways of achieving diversity. On the other hand, in the view of the plaintiffs, basing the final decision on race goes against what this country has been trying to for the last century and a half: to judge people on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Notjoe, are you assuming the As-Am kids who get admitted are only the ones with the highest scores? Like, there’s some top-down thing with them, until they fill the pot? Their other qualities aren’t weighed?
And you take us right back to the “stats dictate superiority” notion with, “less-qualified candidates are being admitted in the interests of “diversity” over more-qualified candidates.” I’m saying, flat out, you don’t know which admits are more qualified, in the eyes of a tippy top, if all you look at are score stats. I often say, this is a multi-page app, scores are just a few lines. And nearly every candidate under serious consideration is a 4.0 or darned close.
No, that’s not what I’m saying. Please re-read my post. I said that on an individual basis, test scores aren’t quite as relevant. One can easily imagine that an individual applicant with a 2100 may be truly a better candidate than an individual applicant with a 2300. Hey, it happens.
But if there are significant group differences, then one must conclude either that the best candidates are not being chosen, or there is something systematically defective with the test that overstates the applicant quality of the group with the substantially higher score.
Notjoe, what I am still seeing you suggest is that these “group” differences are…stats. But nothing in real life shows that stats superiority = application superiority. The app is a freaking minefield.
And who here knows the final distinctions are made on race alone? People try to draw conclusions after the fact. Oh, they have only 20%, they must be artificially limiting. You also have to take geo diversity into account- in my eyes the biggest threat to all great candidates.
Of course the scores are statistics. But the test scores are supposed to be a measure of academic ability and a predictor of academic success. And, in fact, there is a large body of research to suggest that SAT scores do, indeed, measure academic ability fairly well.
They are an imperfect measure of ability. My professors would say that this is the difference between sign and sample. To some degree, the SAT is a sign of academic ability, not a direct sample. But sample is a lot harder to get than sign. So, it’s an imperfect tool, and although it may be approximately correct in judging academic ability, no one is going to argue that it perfectly measures that ability.
On an individual basis, the higher score doesn’t necessarily equal the superior applicant.
However, if a large, statistically-significant score difference exists between groups, then, if Harvard is actually selecting the superior candidate in each case, it means that the test has gone awry. It has a fundamental, systemic flaw. There are actually folks who assert that. I’ve read their arguments, looked at their research over the years, and found their research and arguments wanting.
Otherwise, we wouldn’t expect to see the group difference. We’d expect that in one case, the Asian applicant might score higher than the otherwise comparable non-Asian applicant but that the non-Asian applicant was superior. But in the next case, the non-Asian applicant would score higher than the Asian applicant, but the Asian applicant was superior. And these cases would roughly all come out in the wash, and although on individual terms, scores may be less predictive, the group numbers would be roughly equal.
But they’re not.
Which means, if Harvard is truly picking the best candidates, that Asians’ applications, apart from test scores, are generally inferior to non-Asians, given similar test scores.
In that the test scores are SUPPOSED to correlate fairly well with academic ability, as well as with all the other indicia of academic ability and success, at least when looking at a large population, that means that the test score is overpredicting the ability of Asians as a group, and they’re just not as good, as a group, as their test scores indicate. If that’s true, then it’s a systemic flaw in the test. I’ve seen this argument made, that in comparison, the applications of Asian students are less creative, or imaginative, or what-have-you. We’ll see whether Harvard uses that argument in court. As an observer with no dog in this fight, I will find it highly entertaining to see them make it.
Either that, or Harvard has imposed a quota on the number of Asians they’re going to let in the door, and it’s really not about admitting the best and the brightest, but rather making sure that we have enough folks of each “kind” to fill out our class.
And, in fact, Harvard has readily ADMITTED something along these lines: The arguments presented in favor of race awareness in admissions include that Harvard (and similar schools) must have a “critical mass” of underrepresented groups in order to achieve diversity, even if it means not always picking the best individual candidate.
Here, Harvard tries to have it both ways. They use the mystery of the admissions process to say things like, “Well, you don’t know what the rest of the lower-scoring kid’s app looked like,” to give the impression that each and every selected student is the best possible choice they could have made on an individual basis. Then they turn around and offer a legal defense that, “Well, we may not always pick the absolute most qualified candidate, but we balance that value against the value of having a critical mass of each group.”
It’s tough to hold both views at the same time.
Notjoe, not academic ability- std test taking ability. Actually, what I have seen is that scores may predict grades- and what I have seen was soph grades. (Some refer to some other year, whatever.) Not what I’d call the sole measure of ‘academic success.’ (No adcom I know has ever said, let’s find the kids who will get the best grades.) There’s a lot of hierarchical thinking on CC about merit and I just don’t ascribe to it all. I see apps and best scores simply don’t equate to “must-have.” With due respect to your prof, what a great score can indicate is, imo, drive to get a great score. (In itself, not a bad thing. But just one thing.)
Espenshade himself said don’t make too much of his findings. Yes, As-Am kids, as a group, are great kids and usually highly motivated. But that’s not the only muster they have to pass, to get into a tippy top. It’s too simple to say, ‘As-Am kids get better scores, they should predominate. Something is flawed if they don’t.’ I do understand you’re applying statistical theory.
One has to set aside a lot of preconceptions. Forget stereotypes.
“Critical mass” is a phrase from the Texas case. I believe H was one that submitted an Amicus Curiae.