A while back (post #1699), I was speculating that the apparent difference was primarily due to choice of intended major. While you don’t have to declare a major for admission at Harvard and many other selective colleges, it is clear that the admissions committee has to try to fit the class to available resources.
And I still hold out hope that this explains the score differences between white and Asian applicants. But the data presented by @SatchelSF about highly relaxed admission criteria for black applicants is troubling, although I have not been able to read the underlying reports yet.
I would rather see applicants that bring well roundedness in the form of athletic ability than in the color of their skin alone. At least applicants that play sports add to the community of the school with their talents just like someone who is a talented musician or mathematician or software developer. Skin color isnt a talent or skill.
@SatchelSF I agree it would be more honest to just say, and probably more productive honestly, “Yeah, we want our class to be about 15% this race, 20% that race, etc.” and I do feel like the point system, which I commented on a few pages ago, on those “personal” characteristics almost seems like a cover up to justify their subjective decisions…it might be more accepting for them to try to defend their decisions, rather than try to convince people they are not “discriminating”. Good point about Target.
This is kind of a tangent/possibly new thread topic, but threads and “passions” like this one, in some ways, are making the problem worse in that we (and I am including me in the “we”) are just making the elite schools that much more elite because we keep referencing them as the ultimate prize in academic achievement.
Maybe we need to stop doing that.
It’s upsetting to me that these other schools that are the next rung down are being viewed as the “consolation” prizes. Instead, these displaced geniuses (that want to study in Boston, for example) that aren’t getting into Harvard are ending up at Tufts, BU, BC, Northeastern, and Brandeis…these are GREAT schools with probably more “intelligence” than ever before in their classrooms because they are welcoming these Harvard rejects to their campuses like never before. I would think this phenomenon is narrowing the differences in the “success” of its graduates (although I bet someone will now post a link to a study that will prove me wrong on that, lol…).
Harvard’s own internal reports reveal that only considering academics in the admissions process would raise the proportion of the Asian American students admitted to Harvard from 18.7 percent today to 43.4 percent. Even when including “legacy” admissions and athletic recruitment, the percentage of Asian students would rise to 31.4 percent. The estimates were produced by an internal investigation conducted in 2013 by Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research (OIR)
@OHMomof2 - Awesome. Check out Steve Hsu’s blog for some intelligent discussion (sorry for posting more than once for emphasis). That guy is the real deal in terms of brain power (theoretical physicist, graduated CalTech at 19, I believe after turning down Harvard).
Here is Steve’s take on Harvard’s expert:
The nice thing is that there is a tremendous amount of mathematical talent out there in the blogosphere (and in the prospective Asian applicant pool), and these Harvard guys are not going to get away with a “baffle 'em with bsh” presentation this time (as Bok and Bowen did in 1999 when they refused to make available their data sets for “Shape of the River”). A quick perusal of the undisputed empirical statistics already demonstrates that most minority applicants are instant rejects, as are most applicants generally.
It may also be simply that preference white applicants are also thrown into the aggregate score data. It should be expected that legacies (~20% of white admit pool), athletes (~15%) and development (~14%) each have lower qualifications on average than the unhooked white admits. Each of these categories is much more frequent in the white admit pool than the Asian. These white preference admits have the effect of lowering the overall quality of the white admit pool generally (on all metrics, including scores).
The takeaway should be that unhooked white candidates may well face the longest odds of all (fully 50% of the white “quota” would appear to be reserved for special categories). I would suspect that the quality of this unhooked white demographic would be very high, and perhaps indistinguishable from that of (largely unhooked) Asians.
I actually agree with you for once.
Colleges should just be frank that Asians have it much harder than other races instead of beating around the bush and pretending they’re a meritocracy.
Colleges can discriminate all they want. We’re just asking that they be honest.
A quota system has a lot going for it, not the least of which is that it negates the incessant pressure to lower standards for all in order to mask differences among some.
If true, that would seem to be the end of any potential liability. The “hooks” are allowed. racial preference for URMs is, at least for now, allowed. Unless the court is willing to overturn the current law allowing schools to consider ethnicity, Harvard has nothing to worry about.
The statistics about the “personal” rating are a bombshell, and I suspect will lead to that category getting phased out entirely.
Often, differences in outcome are treated as presumptive evidence of discrimination.This is true even on metrics far more likely to be objective and facially neutral than an amorphous “personal” rating. The fact that the Harvard motion includes the line “The same modeling approach on which Dr. Arcidiacono relies to conclude there is bias against Asian-Americans in the personal rating finds bias in favor of Asian-Americans in academic and extracurricular rating” is ludicrous. Even if we were to accept that the SAT and/or GPA displayed anti-URM bias - the idea that it displays pro-Asian bias doesn’t bear serious consideration – it would not approach the potential for prejudiced assessment in a metric that claims to assess things like “courage” and “kindness.” What is more, academic characteristics are indisputably relevant to college admissions; personality traits have a much more tenuous connection to the basic goals of the university, making the argument that this category is being employed in large measure as a justification for demographic manipulation more compelling.
I really can’t see Harvard winning this case on this evidence. Asian-Americans perform well on every metric except a poorly defined and inherently subjective one. Furthermore, they are getting high marks in categories that would seem likely to have a close correlation with “personal” rating like recommendations and essays. Combine this with the remarkable consistency in class demographics from year to year, and it gets very hard to claim that Harvard isn’t essentially imposing a quota system and using the personal category to help justify it.
I support racial preferences. I believe Harvard does have an interest in creating a diverse class, which gives them legitimate reason to prefer people with less common academic and extracurricular interests over those with more common ones and, yes, people from less represented communities over people from more represented communities. But that is very different from creating fundamentally different admissions requirements for people of different races, especially when that process involves, as it seems to, actively disfavoring people of a particular race. This is consistent with current case law on the subject. It will be a shame, to me, if the outcome of this case is to end affirmative action entirely - but if it does, schools like Harvard will be largely to blame for cynically instituting a covert quota system in defiance of court directives.
I used to be more receptive to the idea that the perceived anti-Asian bias in admissions was heavily mitigated by more benign factors like overrepresentation of Asians in certain geographical regions or among certain intended majors. That still may be the case - but it seems clear that, as used at Harvard, the personal ratings cross the line into active discrimination.
As a matter of strategy, now that plaintiffs have a friendly DOJ, Harvard may be compelled to enter into some sort of resolution prior to even more extensive discovery. The evidence that there is systematic bias in the assigned personal ratings appears compelling, and so extensive that it must be policy within the admissions office. These adcoms are not sophisticated white collar Wall Street criminals, and I would imagine it would be quite easy to trip up at least some of them at the deposition stage. Although Harvard can hire the best lawyers, it is still stuck with the fact witnesses it has. The odds that a whistleblower and/or “hostage taker” emerges are something lawyers have difficulty quantifying, and will lead to conservative advice.
Harvard may ultimately judge its prospects too uncertain at trial, as the public acknowledgement that it is official policy to artificially inflate black and Hispanic personal ratings (assigned subjectively by adcoms who have not even met the applicants) while simultaneously deflating those of Asians might be too much. Such an artificial scheme - apart from reputational effects should it be confirmed - would not likely survive a challenge under Fisher jurisprudence as a narrowly-tailored method to ensure diversity (even recognizing that as a private Harvard will be granted a bit more leeway).
The takeaway should be that unhooked white candidates may well face the longest odds of all (fully 50% of the white >>"quota" would appear to be reserved for special categories). I would suspect that the quality of this unhooked white >>demographic would be very high, and perhaps indistinguishable from that of (largely unhooked) Asians.
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Man does this describe our High School’s results. In the past 4 years, unhooked white males were completely shut out of the ivy++ schools. 4 years ago a white male athlete (LAX) made it, but at least he was the Val so no complaints here.
FWIW, Northeastern, RPI, Rochester, and Bing/Stony/Buffalo have been the beneficiary, scooping up these kids.
Jews make up half the white population at elite colleges. It’s likely Jews are favored over non-Jew whites in admissions at elite colleges.
So while unhooked non-Jew whites might have be the best to get admitted, it’s evened out by “white” Jews with lower stats. In aggregate, the stats will show that Asians still need higher scores.
“FWIW, Northeastern, RPI, Rochester, and Bing/Stony/Buffalo have been the beneficiary, scooping up these kids.”
These other great schools, down a rung or two in the rankings, are picking up these kids which will hopefully benefit their universities and all students that attend them. Good for them!
@StudyingIsBad well we agreed on one thing but that might be where it ends…maybe you have some articles to back your belief which you will now post (or already did!), but from what I have seen in my community, Jews are not held to lower standards than other white non-Jewish applicants. And I am NOT Jewish (but I live in a community where there are many Jewish people). I just haven’t seen that.
You can search up Jewish representation at elite colleges on google images and check out the first graph.
It should be self-explanatory.
Also, check out Steven Hsu’s article on the Myth of American Meritocracy, especially the last graph. Jews only make up 2-5% of NMS Semifinalists, but make up 20% of the elite college student body. It’s undeniable that Jews have some form of advantage compared to non-Jewish whites. It’s not as big as what URMs have over non-URMs, but it’s still significant - Ex. Scoring 1200 on the SAT as a URM will give you a good chance of getting into an elite college, but a Jew would need to score 1400 and a non-Jew white would need 1550+.
You have to understand that elite colleges are businesses at the end of the day. The people who rise up in corporate America, politics, and other fields tend to be Jews, and these Jews will probably donate lots of money to their alma mater. It’s no surprise that elite colleges favor Jews over non-Jew whites.
So the rich jews with lesser grades fall into the hooked category (donors(Kushner’s felon dad), legacy, kids of celebrities/politicians?).
I guess my little unhooked jews (4.0/35 ACT and 4.0 /1550 SAT) didn’t make the cut. (get it, the “cut”) Neither were NMS since you just take the PSAT at the specified time. No prep or awareness of the test at all. A little studying might have helped, especially on the verbal since they both got perfect math scores.
On the actuarial front:
My S20 took the P1 exam right after he took the regular Math dept. probability course (Math dept (hard-lots of calc), Stats dept.(easier)). I don’t think he studied at all, and just barely passed it . He said it was much harder than his school P exams and didn’t know anything about insurance. He is considering following the actuarial route since it is based on math and exams, of which he excels in both. His school has a finance Math course that hopefully lines up with the FM exam.
Some fantastic information has emerged from Harvard itself that confirms the size of race preferences. In 2013, Harvard looked internally at its data, and concluded that the addition of preferences for skin color raised the share of black students by ~440% and of Hispanic students by ~240%. These increases were after the entire range of holistic criteria had been considered.
If only academics had been considered, the shares of black students at Harvard would only have been ~0.7% (10 students) and of Hispanic students would have been ~2.4% (36 students).
If my math is right (apologies in advance for any calculation errors), holistic consideration plus skin color bumps thus raise black representation by ~1,560% and Hispanic representation by ~390%. This is one reason why places like Harvard do not want people to look behind the curtain.
After consideration of the full range of holistic criteria, note the enormous differential between the race bumps for Hispanics (240% over academic alone ==> 390%) and bumps for blacks (440% ==> 1,560%). Perhaps this information will be helpful to URM parents and prospective applicants.
Congrats on your son for passing the first actuarial exam.
As an actuary, I would not recommend this field to anyone. Jobs are extremely scarce and the pay isn’t even that good (Starting 70k and max of 200k if you pass all the exams unless you move into management roles).
I was an exam superstar (Passed all exams in under 4 years starting sophomore year of college), but it was a huge pain moving up the corporate ladder. I was stuck at a 200k salary for many years before someone finally decided to take a chance on me.
Your day will be spent looking at BS models and massaging development factors to jack up stock prices and maximize “investor value”. It’s a BS job… You only work 30 minutes a day and spend the other 7.5 hours pretending to work.
The exams are also pretty crappy. They just added 2 more preliminary exams (Time series and predictive analytics).
The 3rd exam, MFE, did get a lot easier after they removed stochastic calculus. I’m not sure why they would do that.
The numbers you cite are striking, Satchel. I do think, however, that it is worth remembering that the fact that less than one percent of Harvard’s class would be African-American on a system that only considered academics doesn’t mean that only ten African American applicants per year are academically qualified for Harvard, even if you maintain pretty strict standards of what “academically qualified” means.
Most unhooked students with a 1550 and a 4.2 GPA get rejected from Harvard, even though that’s a score that should certainly qualify you for Harvard. What this means is that if you have a demographic group with fewer students in this score range, you’re unlikely to wind up with a significant number of students in that demographic if you leave it purely up to chance, even though qualified applicants are available.
If you don’t think diversity is a legitimate interest, then maybe that’s not a problem. But if you do, you’re going to have to virtually guarantee that the most qualified URMs are going to be admitted, even if admitting an unhooked student with that profile would be a roll of the dice.
To me, that isn’t the problem. What becomes a problem is when you’re really widening the idea of what a qualified student is in the first place - something that is probably more of an issue when you get beyond HYP, who are going to disproportionately attract the limited number of high scoring URM students.