"… In the Harvard case, Students For Fair Admissions, led by affirmative action opponent Edward Blum, is suing to make the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college replace its vaunted ‘holistic’ admissions process with a race-blind system. To create a diverse student body of future leaders, Harvard responds, it needs to consider race as one of many factors, as the high court allows.
The fate of affirmative action? Here’s what eight experts and partisans think." …
Definitely going to the Supreme court.
The only honest way to achieve diversity at selective institutions like Harvard is to have a hard quota system. We have to make this legal, and I am saying this as an Asian American.
Unusually fair article.
We don’t need a hard quota. Just the right balance, whatever that is, in a given year.
Also think the UT case is relevant in accepting the concept of critical mass.
I also think H is ready to implement whatever and will still look for diversity. That’s the irony. Holistic doesn’t mean stats rule. Any kid aiming for a tippy top had better be able to comprehend that. That level of smarts.
How would a hard quota system work? Mirror the US population at large seems the most logical. If so, Asians would see their enrollment at Harvard radically reduced.
As of the 2010 census, Asian Americans make up 5.6% of the US population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_Americans
According to the Harvard 2017-18 Common Data Set, Asians make up 20.7%, 1,388 out of 6,701, of the degree seeking undergraduates at Harvard. Some of them will be from other countries, but most likely, not enough to make a significant difference between 5.6% and 20.7%.
https://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2017-18.pdf
The UT “critical mass” defense referred to having enough balance that no group feels like the odd man out. Or the rarity, walking into a class full of one predomnant sort.
I think any the discussion (and implications) of percentages may not be ok anywhere but the “race” thread.
The current holistic system forces these schools into grotesque contortions to justify their admission decisions. It is simply dishonest. I wouldn’t mind giving African American and Hispanic students extra points on SAT, say 200. It makes it transparent.
How is it that the large majority of multiple Ivy commits are black or hispanic? No one else can afford to go all RD to these schools. To my mind this is the actual hard proof that the schools are flouting the most recent supreme court guidance and not whether or not Harvard says Asian applicants have lower personality scores. Maybe they do–we cant prove that that is or is not true. We do know the SAT breakdown by races ad we do know anecdotally (the news) that each year multiple Ivy admits seem to be largely black. This is not to say that those kids arent qualified -please no one get your panties in a twist. But why would so many multiple accepts go to such a narrow group of applicant? This data is far more telling. I personally think that population numbers should play a role. Diversity requirements would be less inflammatory if applicants were benefited or limited by their population. Further, low socioeconomic applicants could get a handicap value applied based on income. Rather than color so that say poor kids of any color would have a little bit of help. Just my two cents.
The reference to “extra points” or “penalties” is from an entirely different context, a limited study of unnamed colleges, and just a comparison of average scores of admits. Also, dated now. I know of no process that "adds’ points to any score. This is holistic.
Center: that’s not holistic, either.
Just because a kid has high stats doesn’t mean he offers what a college wants. No one should assume a Chance Me kid with top stats and a bunch of ECs (that sound good on CC) actually puts forth a good app.
@lookingforward I totally agree --but I was trying to offer ideas that WEREN’T holistic to ensure/ achieve diversity without resorting to race as a qualifier
That is the expected result of colleges that use varied (holistic) admission criteria. The admit rate will not be 100% for all applicants above a stat threshold because admission is holistic, as well as because admission decisions depend on the needs and applicant pool of a specific college. If the holistic colleges all give a boost to a common hook, then highly qualified applicants who have that hook/boost have a greater chance of acceptance than similarly qualified applicants who do not have the hook, leading to a greater chance of having multiple acceptances. A similar pattern occurs for other strong hooks. For example, an academically qualified top football recruit is likely to be admitted to nearly any top academic college with a Div 1/1A football team that he shows interest in attending – a greater chance of multiple acceptances than similarly qualified applicants without that hook.
Another less significant factor is that certain groups are more likely to apply to all Ivies RD (and not stop after getting accepted to 1st choice early) than others. The Harvard lawsuit OIR internal reports mentioned that both URMs and lower income students were more likely to apply RD. I’d expect that having application fee waivers is correlated with applying to all Ivies, which also occurs more often among URM applicants.
Do URMS apply more often to “all” Ivies? Never heard this before.
@ Center #7 I think there’s a fairly obvious answer to your question. There are a lot more Caucasian applicants than African Americans. So if there are less African American applicants for the Ivies to choose from its logical those AA that apply would be more likely to get multiple admits.
A clearer way of saying that is: Given two qualified candidates that are ranked equal, except that one is white and the other black (and assuming both are otherwise unhooked) the white applicant has a far lower chance of admission compared to the black applicant.
Expand that same rationale to all of the Ivies, and this explains why black applicants get into all Ivies far more often than explainable by random chance, compared to white applicants.
No. There is no hypothetical true equivalence among candidates and as this is holistic, the commentary matters, too. The real problem is the quality of the apps/supps, LoRs, interview and what actually comes across. This varies. Any use of numbers ratings is just one shorthand, not the final disposition. And don’t forget institutional needs also come into play- sorry, they will not take every bright kid from the Bay Area. Or Stuy. Or imbalance their class with more stem majors and no one to humanities depts. Etc.
And black applicants do not get into all Ivies more often. Maybe you’re referring to some few media darlings.
The previously discussed logical reasoning, anecdotal reports, and the lawsuit analysis all suggest a higher rare among black applicants. What is the evidence to the contrary?
The real problem is the quality of the apps/supps, LoRs, interview and what actually comes across
In the lawsuit, looks like the Asians do better on LoRs and interviews too, the only category they don’t is the personal rating, for some reason, wonder what that is…
“they will not take every bright kid from the Bay Area”
They don’t have to, but they don’t have to take every bright black kid either, but they do.
“And black applicants do not get into all Ivies more often. Maybe you’re referring to some few media darlings.”
Well media darlings is a little harsh, not sure they sought the media, anyway the four black brothers from Ohio who started their app process here on cc all got in to the Harvard Yale, Stanford, etc., the one brother who started the thread even said the ACT for one is a little low but were hope being URM and four brothers would help. They clearly understand the system, and imo should exploit it for all its worth.
I know a lot of Asians in the bay area who are the best stem students in the country and I can’t think of any in a given year that got into all ivies and Stanford and MIT. They didn’t apply to all eight, I’ll grant that, but they best they do is say a Yale, MIT, Stanford accept and a Princeton, Harvard wait-list. They did well of course, but the point is that they cannot get into all like an URM can.
They all got into Harvard and Yale, but Stanford admitted two out of four. One got rejected from Tulane.
.May we get off the subject of race?
Harvard tried making the same argument too, when attempting to dismiss its own internal models. To which the judge replied something to the effect of: Why do you need more when the model almost perfectly fits the actual class?
Note that I am not predicting this judge’s ruling. There were other times she was more sympathetic to Harvard. But she saw through the “inaccurate model” fallacy quickly.