So --what would a Harvard or Yale or Princeton incoming freshman class look like if there were no racial quotas/preferences? Based on all available data-including athletes and legacies.
See Model 3 on the page I cited in post #1981 above. Harvard has already done the work for you!
As if “stuck at 200k salary” (about four times the median household income in the US) were such a bad thing…
A school that admitted by academics alone might look a lot like Caltech. It’s more difficult to say if schools continued to be holistic. There was a very long debate in another thread about whether Ivy athletes had a higher or lower percentage of blacks than their undergrad student populations as a whole. Depending on how you assign mixed race/ethnicity students, which is an increasingly large percentage of most student bodies, and international students, you could get different numbers for the same institution.
All sorts of tidbits. I had always understood the Harvard Z-list to be basically the very weakest “admits” - students who had to be admitted for one institutional reason or another, but who were academically unready to be at Harvard (think donor’s son or politician’s daughter), so they had to wait a year. I was roundly criticized one time on here for posting something to that effect, and told that it was simply yield management…
From the statement of undisputed facts in connection with the summary judgment motion:
The entire prior paragraph 147 regarding the Z-List is redacted, so we can only speculate. Regardless, as a matter of law all this info will have been based upon testimony (or admissions) of Harvard staff.
See paragraphs 147-149 here: http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-414-Statement-of-Material-Facts.pdf
http://web1.ncaa.org/rgdSearch/exec/saSearch lets you find out for yourself (“The Ivy League” is a Division I FCS conference). It does vary considerably by sport.
I don’t remember all the details, but I think part of the issue was the NCAA methodology for categorizing mixed race or international students didn’t match the methodology used by the university for reporting mixed race students in other contexts.
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As an actuary, I would not recommend this field to anyone. Jobs are extremely scarce..
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200K sounds pretty good for a regular job. The only people I know personally that make this kind of money in my small/midsize city with many govt’ jobs are Doctors/Lawyers/Mid-size Business Owners or Big school district superintendents/University administrators.
What’s driving down demand and/or increasing supply for actuaries? Elimination of defined Benefit Plans? Automation? More “Mathy” kids trying to get into the field? And staying somewhat on topic of this thread, are more high SAT Asian-American kids passing the exams to bump up supply?
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Your day will be spent looking at BS models and massaging development factors This is funny.. My kid was complaining on the way home from his data analysis internship, that he spent 8 hours in Excel.
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Of these occupations you’ve listed, Actuaries are, by far, the most overpaid. The only reason why actuaries are so important to insurance companies is because of government mandates: Only a fully-credentialed actuary can sign-off on insurance rate renewals.
I have never met an actuary who hated his/her job, but I’ve met plenty of doctors and lawyers who are stressed and want to do something else.
It’s hard to hate your job when you’re taking home 200k/year and the only thing you do is update some spreadsheet every month and maybe write some simple VBA code every now and then.
It’s a stress-free and high-paying job, but I wouldn’t consider it “sexy” like being a doctor or lawyer. You’re also not making a positive impact to the world.
I know actuaries are stereotyped as socially awkward math nerds who can’t speak well, but only the first part of that stereotype is true. Actuaries may be ‘shy’, but they are often good communicators.
There aren’t really a lot of Asian actuaries in this field. Most of them don’t even make it to the interview round since there’s probably some unconscious bias that people with an Asian last name won’t speak English fluently.
If your son has a non-Asian last name, he shouldn’t have much difficulty finding a position. Just make sure that he gets an internship the summer after his junior year.
I also spent 8 hours a day looking at Excel when I wasn’t in management… I just stared at it and did nothing…
Also, if you want to see salary stats, go here: www.dwsimpson.com/salary
Here’s the thread I was referencing earlier. The race discussion starts on #286
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/2057260/third-rail-of-college-admissions/p20
Thanks for the info. I’ll encourage him to start pursuing this in the fall when he gets back to school. There is a major insurer in his college city who hires from the school. Would it make a difference if the internship was with an ins. company or one of the consulting firms? Maybe someone like Milliman? (They do our retirement and benefits projections at work).
BTW, by “Mathy” I was just referring to people who are just good at math without the hard work…until Real Analysis that is 
Not the stereotypical nerd “Sheldon”.
@StudyingIsBad Where is the data to support your claim that Jews only need a 1400 vs a 1550 for a white non Jew at an elite college? And, re your citing of Steve Hsu and data on this issue, see Andrew Gelman debunking that claim. http://andrewgelman.com/2013/02/12/that-claim-that-harvard-admissions-discriminate-in-favor-of-jews-after-checking-the-statistics-maybe-not/
I can tell you from personal experience with many kids in the Jewish community that what you are saying is not their experience (and all the kids I know rejected from the Ivys had over 1500 SATs - who would even bother applying with a 1400 SAT, come on!)
Who Benefits from Harvard’s Asian Quota?
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/harvard-asian-quota-who-benefits/
check the chart for the different models in the article… very eye opening.
Here is a chart from Harvard’s internal review. As mentioned above, Asians would be 43 percent of the admitted class under an academics-only selection system (far-left column), but they are just 19 percent of those actually admitted (far-right column). Notice that whites rise from 38 percent in the academics-only model to 43 percent in real life, so some of the Asians’ loss does appear to be whites’ gain. The much larger gain, however, goes to black and Hispanic applicants. They rise from a combined 3 percent in academics-only to 19 percent in reality. Therefore, Asians appear to lose far more from black and Hispanic preferences than from white preferences.
one only has to look at the racial power structure of admissions offices to understand why this is so.
Now look at Model 2, which incorporates legacy and athlete admissions. I’m no fan of those preferences, and clearly they work to the benefit of whites relative to Asians.
But at least the definitions are objective and not easily manipulated by race — unlike the “personal” and “demographic” factors in Models 3 and 4. If we take Model 2 as our race-neutral standard, then both Asians and whites are underrepresented among admitted students. Both groups lose ground to blacks and Hispanics on “demographics,” which is presumably where most of the direct racial balancing takes place.
basically Asians lose on legacy and athletics while whites gain, lose on personality while whites gain and lose on demo while whites gain.
Consulting has rougher work hours but higher pay. You’ll be dealing with clients, so people who like to talk will succeed in this industry.
There’s also less emphasis on passing exams. No one cares if you failed an exam 10 times as long as you’re keeping your clients satisfied.
Insurers are more laid back and stress-free. You also never deal with clients. None of the actuaries here ever stay past 5:00 PM.
If you’re extroverted, go into consulting. If you’re introverted, go into insurance.
I reviewed the Harvard generated chart on p. 34 that @SatchelSF provided a link to in post #1981. ETA, @sballer referenced the same chart, minus the numeric values, in post #1996.
I urge everyone to look at this chart, focusing particularly on Black enrollment. Harvard is basically saying that if they perform a full holistic review, except for considering race, black enrollment would be at 2.4%. After considering race, it more than quadruples to 11.1%, nearly reflecting the population of blacks in America (~13%).
This is no longer a feather on the scale. This is not even a thumb on the scale. This is the admissions committee, perhaps unconsciously, putting their entire body weight on the scale.
This is a quota.
Equally useful is page 35.
Prior to considering race, but considering all other holistic factors, Blacks world have an admit rate of 2.67%, lower than every other group. After considering race, their admit rate is multiplied by 5x, to about 12.6%, higher than every other group.
It is surprising to see Harvard admit this, but not that surprising to the plaintiffs of the case, they’re basically saying that blacks are at Harvard because they’re black, which means that other races are not there in the numbers they should be, because of their race.
It’s common knowledge that Harvard (as well as other HYPSM…) consider URMs to be a hook in admissions decisions. Such colleges usually imply ethnic diversity benefits in admissions decisions on the CDS and admissions website, sometimes explicitly stating…
What may be more surprising to some from the lawsuit is the degree of the URM benefit. For example, I’ve seen many posts on the forum where posters have made wildly varying guesses about how SAT and other scores differ among admitted students by race at highly selective colleges, but the lawsuit provides actual numbers. The lawsuit suggests that in recent years Black admits had an average SAT score of low 1400s, while White admits averaged high 1400s. Black admits averaged 5.1 AP classes with an average AP score of 4.5, while White admits averaged 5.9 AP classes with an average AP score of 4.7.
Those numbers aren’t actually that horrifying to me, Data, especially the AP metric. However, those numbers are also limited because, as I understand it, they aren’t an apples to apples comparison. I’d be interested to see what the picture would look like if we took out candidates with non-racial hooks and controlled for socioeconomics.
As someone who is in favor of Affirmative Action in more or less the relatively limited way OKed by the courts, the relevant question for me is not whether URM status vastly increases the odds of qualified URM applicants. Of course it does, and that’s something I’ve already accepted as among the legitimate interests of a university. The question for me is whether URM candidates are being admitted who would have had virtually no chance of admission if they were white or Asian applicants with otherwise identical profiles.
I would strongly wager that a white or Asian student from New Trier or Scarsdale does not get into Harvard with a 1420 SAT score unless there’s some pretty significant hook or something really special in his or her profile. Are there upper-middle class URMs from places like this being admitted with that score? I can’t say for sure, but the fact that Harvard seems to magically wind up with precisely the same demographic balance each year makes me at least strongly suspect that the school is willing to lower standards in order to reach the desired number - which is a quota system.
And, of course, the numbers might be even more exaggerated if you looked at elite schools a tier or two below Harvard. Tons of super high stats, unhooked white and Asian students from suburbia are going to have to settle for Tufts or Wesleyan or Wash U. But if the top Ivies and the equivalent are admitting almost all URM applicants with scores in the elite school range, I’d anticipate even greater disparities between demographics as you move down the food chain.
Generally I am not a fan of affirmative action based on race, preferring light affirmative action based on socioeconomic status if anything.
But referring to the AP exam average–that largely has to do with socioeconomic status and the quality of the public school where a student lives. My school only offered 5 AP exams and due to schedule conflicts, I only took 4. However, that’s the only public school that I could go to. So I wouldn’t use the average AP exams as a metric since URMs have a higher chance of growing up in disadvantaged areas.
Also the SAT score disparity isn’t as bad as I expected. Is there an average for Asians released by Harvard? Just curious. @Data10