“Nor is it all that high a bar, to ask kids for some breadth. It’s just not all about who has the more wins, perfect scores, ran every club or team, etc. And really, that’s true in life, too.”
They have breadth since they do get in to a couple of their reaches, they don’t run every club, they typically have been working on this since middle school. Are you saying someone with this profile that gets accepted into Yale but not Stanford don’t have the breadth? Maybe they don’t get in because of as I mentioned, institutional reasons - race, athlete, first-gen among others. These kids are very similar to athletes wrt their singular focus, yet athletes are accepted up the proverbial wazoo at these places.
“They are now almost exclusively Asian Americans, or at least predominantly Asian Americans. Unconscious stereotyping?”
It’s conscious stereotyping for sure, the applicants even though they have won these awards, are similar wrt to profiles, Asian, upper middle income, and they all apply to the same colleges for their reaches. Whether this stereotyping is illegal discrimination is what the Harvard lawsuit is about.
“We’re falling behind in 5G. Silicon Valley is sliding and no longer the most innovative place in the world”
5G is a legitimate threat but the first article on China colleges overtaking US ones is a puff piece.