How Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans in college admissions

[Anonymous]

It’s human nature to more warmly accept someone who is familiar to you. It’s tribe mentality. And if we really want to talk about admitting good people, what about athletes like Brock Turner? Your swim time gets you in, but clearly their process wasnt good at determining character. That judge who let him off with no probation also was biased and identified with him because of a shared background.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

No - both of which is legal. Where in the world do you get that use of race in college admissions is illegal?

No. You are wrong. Read what I said carefully. The Supreme Court has said that using race as A FACTOR is legal. Racial Balancing is using race based quotas. That is illegal. and deliberately scoring Asians low on certain scores to bring their admission rates down so that you can balance your class racially is also illegal.

Perfectly legal. And balancing, i.e., making sure all races are more proportionally represented is not a quota.
You're talking out of the plaintiff's play-book here, and they will lose. The use of race in the fashion Harvard is doing it to have a balanced class of the type students they want is perfectly legal.

That's nonsense. MAKING SURE THAT A CERTAIN RACE IS proportionally represented is the very definition of a quota. You cannot racially balance unless you have a quota in mind. Otherwise what does it mean to racially balance? And quotas are illegal. That is very clear. So when you say hey "2% blacks" is too less but "10 percent is ok" and I will shape my class based on that, you are enforcing a quota and the Supreme court has said that is illegal.

If you were not racially balancing your class, one year you would get 2% blacks, one year you would get 10%. Your number would depend on the applicant pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The bias is not used to determine the development candidates. The incredibly rich kids get in, with much lower standards, and that’s life. The reason the bias against Asians exist is because they want to preserve their culture. That’s also why they use legacy so much. Legacy is also another way to favor their longstanding culture and yes can race is a part of culture. Do you know why MIT’s demographics are really different than Harvard? Because they aren’t interested in culture. They are interested in have the best math and science candidates. The culture of institutions like Harvard and Yale are built on wealthy white elite culture. It’s still amazing that a supposedly liberal community like the DC metro area doesn’t understand the idea of white privilege. When the top of the pyramid is white- CEOs, University Deans, even just the overwhelmingly white alumni reading apps, the bias is just simply there. Harvard’s own internal study found it. Unfortunately, instead of just addressing it, they buried it.

well there ya go! Harvard isn't interested only in this. Apples and oranges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

No - both of which is legal. Where in the world do you get that use of race in college admissions is illegal?

No. You are wrong. Read what I said carefully. The Supreme Court has said that using race as A FACTOR is legal. Racial Balancing is using race based quotas. That is illegal. and deliberately scoring Asians low on certain scores to bring their admission rates down so that you can balance your class racially is also illegal.

Perfectly legal. And balancing, i.e., making sure all races are more proportionally represented is not a quota.
You're talking out of the plaintiff's play-book here, and they will lose. The use of race in the fashion Harvard is doing it to have a balanced class of the type students they want is perfectly legal.

That's nonsense. MAKING SURE THAT A CERTAIN RACE IS [b]proportionally represented is the very definition of a quota[/b]. You cannot racially balance unless you have a quota in mind. Otherwise what does it mean to racially balance? And quotas are illegal. That is very clear. So when you say hey "2% blacks" is too less but "10 percent is ok" and I will shape my class based on that, you are enforcing a quota and the Supreme court has said that is illegal.

If you were not racially balancing your class, one year you would get 2% blacks, one year you would get 10%. Your number would depend on the applicant pool.

No. A quota is what was at issue in Bakke. The school set aside a specific number of spots for minorities.
And read what I said: making sure all races (not certain races) are MORE proportionally represented is not a quota.
This is not a case involving quotas

[Anonymous]

the admissions at these schools are rediculous. Regardless of bias, even your white nice well rounded kid is not going to get in. And it’s not because another minority took the spot. It’s because you are not rich enough and your kid did not devote their entire life to one talent. So go ahead, keep defending these universities. They love world chess champions. They love that kid who invested the next cure for cancer. They love the Olympic level swimmer. They love math champions. They love these kids with extraordinary talents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is a simple way to fix this. Harvard first sets a floor on what it will take to be considered "qualified" to attend Harvard. They can set this floor however they like, but it has to be the same for all races. Then have a third party firm, anonymize ALL Applications. They read through the application and remove anything that would help identify the race of the applicant, including zipcode. They also toss out any application that does not meet the floor.

They then forward the apps to Harvard. Harvard can use any criteria it wants to pick its class. They assign ranks to all their applicants. and pick the top 2000. After this is done, only the URM applicant pool (but not names) is revealed to them. So they will know that applicant #31938 is black from North Dakota. and 20,987 is Hispanic from Texas.

Now lets say that the resulting class is 2% black and they want to increase that to 6%. They now have a choice.

Eject one non URM applicant out of the pool and get one URM in or balance between one URM and another. They don't know who they are ejecting. They only know their ranking in the pool. They stop when their diversity goal is reached.

That should be the final admitted class.

I think the deal is that URM stats are so much lower that if you did this, you would end up with very few in the pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about Yale?

every school in the top 25 and top lacs does this to varying degrees. for example JHU, duke, and vandy don't penalize Asians AS much as the ivies but they still do.

[Anonymous]

You're dancing around the key question - why is selecting a class on the basis of ethnity/religion/SATs or any other factor any better or more "just" than using Harvard's "secret sauce"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is a simple way to fix this. Harvard first sets a floor on what it will take to be considered "qualified" to attend Harvard. They can set this floor however they like, but it has to be the same for all races. Then have a third party firm, anonymize ALL Applications. They read through the application and remove anything that would help identify the race of the applicant, including zipcode. They also toss out any application that does not meet the floor.

They then forward the apps to Harvard. Harvard can use any criteria it wants to pick its class. They assign ranks to all their applicants. and pick the top 2000. After this is done, only the URM applicant pool (but not names) is revealed to them. So they will know that applicant #31938 is black from North Dakota. and 20,987 is Hispanic from Texas.

Now lets say that the resulting class is 2% black and they want to increase that to 6%. They now have a choice.

Eject one non URM applicant out of the pool and get one URM in or balance between one URM and another. They don't know who they are ejecting. They only know their ranking in the pool. They stop when their diversity goal is reached.

That should be the final admitted class.

I think the deal is that URM stats are so much lower that if you did this, you would end up with very few in the pool.

this. It's the reason why pure SES based affirmative action is pushed back upon. Studies show if we used the Israeli model here (they use SES based affirmative action for their universities), URM populations would drastically fall because URM academic scores are so low and there are a lot of poor Asians out there with much higher scores.

There was a study by brookings that showed that the poorest Asians scored as high, if no higher, than the richest blacks.

[Anonymous]

It’s also kind of amazing that people here don’t seem to know what white kids are doing at elite prep schools to get into these schools. They are taking test prep classes, they are utilizing private tutors. It’s really amazing how much people believe in racial stereo types. You have to get an amazing SAT, and perfect grades, AND something really special just get in nowadays. If people don’t like the pressure that is coming down on kids looks like, they should blame the universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is a simple way to fix this. Harvard first sets a floor on what it will take to be considered "qualified" to attend Harvard. They can set this floor however they like, but it has to be the same for all races. Then have a third party firm, anonymize ALL Applications. They read through the application and remove anything that would help identify the race of the applicant, including zipcode. They also toss out any application that does not meet the floor.

They then forward the apps to Harvard. Harvard can use any criteria it wants to pick its class. They assign ranks to all their applicants. and pick the top 2000. After this is done, only the URM applicant pool (but not names) is revealed to them. So they will know that applicant #31938 is black from North Dakota. and 20,987 is Hispanic from Texas.

Now lets say that the resulting class is 2% black and they want to increase that to 6%. They now have a choice.

Eject one non URM applicant out of the pool and get one URM in or balance between one URM and another. They don't know who they are ejecting. They only know their ranking in the pool. They stop when their diversity goal is reached.

That should be the final admitted class.

I think the deal is that URM stats are so much lower that if you did this, you would end up with very few in the pool.

this. It's the reason why pure SES based affirmative action is pushed back upon. Studies show if we used the Israeli model here (they use SES based affirmative action for their universities), URM populations would drastically fall because URM academic scores are so low and there are a lot of poor Asians out there with much higher scores.

There was a study by brookings that showed that the poorest Asians scored as high, if no higher, than the richest blacks.

There was a study published in the Journal of Blacks Higher Education that showed that blacks with HHIs of over $200K scored approximately the same on the SAT as whites with incomes below $20,000.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The bias is not used to determine the development candidates. The incredibly rich kids get in, with much lower standards, and that’s life. The reason the bias against Asians exist is because they want to preserve their culture. That’s also why they use legacy so much. Legacy is also another way to favor their longstanding culture and yes can race is a part of culture. Do you know why MIT’s demographics are really different than Harvard? Because they aren’t interested in culture. They are interested in have the best math and science candidates. The culture of institutions like Harvard and Yale are built on wealthy white elite culture. It’s still amazing that a supposedly liberal community like the DC metro area doesn’t understand the idea of white privilege. When the top of the pyramid is white- CEOs, University Deans, even just the overwhelmingly white alumni reading apps, the bias is just simply there. Harvard’s own internal study found it. Unfortunately, instead of just addressing it, they buried it.

But that is a culture!

FWIW, the Dean of Harvard College is Asian. And alumni are not reading apps. Nor did the internal study find bias — it said Asian American admissions would increase significantly if Harvard had an academic-only admissions policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about Princeton?

https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statistics

In 2015, the Education Department cleared Princeton University of bias against Asian applicants -- after a nine-year investigation in which it reviewed such data.

The reason Asian-American applicants have such a tough time getting into Princeton, OCR concluded, was that everyone has a tough time getting into Princeton.

The OCR report found that there are so many highly qualified applicants to Princeton that the university rejects many with stellar if not perfect academic records. And OCR found that Asians could also be found among some of the less than perfect applicants, as well....

Princeton also told OCR (and the agency confirmed), “that less than stellar grades or test scores do not mean that an applicant is automatically foreclosed from admission. OCR in its file review found examples of applicants who did not have the highest quantifiable qualifications, such as grades and test scores, who were nonetheless admitted by the university based on other qualities and the overall strength of their applications. Some of these applicants were Asian.

“The university reported to OCR that the university ‘frequently accepted to the Class of 2010 applicants from Asian backgrounds with grades and test scores lower than rejected non-Asian applicants.’

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/08/07/look-data-and-arguments-about-asian-americans-and-admissions-elite

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about Princeton?

https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statistics

In 2015, the Education Department cleared Princeton University of bias against Asian applicants -- after a nine-year investigation in which it reviewed such data.

The reason Asian-American applicants have such a tough time getting into Princeton, OCR concluded, was that everyone has a tough time getting into Princeton.

The OCR report found that there are so many highly qualified applicants to Princeton that the university rejects many with stellar if not perfect academic records. And OCR found that Asians could also be found among some of the less than perfect applicants, as well....

Princeton also told OCR (and the agency confirmed), “that less than stellar grades or test scores do not mean that an applicant is automatically foreclosed from admission. OCR in its file review found examples of applicants who did not have the highest quantifiable qualifications, such as grades and test scores, who were nonetheless admitted by the university based on other qualities and the overall strength of their applications. Some of these applicants were Asian.

“The university reported to OCR that the university ‘frequently accepted to the Class of 2010 applicants from Asian backgrounds with grades and test scores lower than rejected non-Asian applicants.’

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/08/07/look-data-and-arguments-about-asian-americans-and-admissions-elite

Pure gold. Same will be found if OCR investigates Harvard. Both are 22% Asian BTW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

No - both of which is legal. Where in the world do you get that use of race in college admissions is illegal?

No. You are wrong. Read what I said carefully. The Supreme Court has said that using race as A FACTOR is legal. Racial Balancing is using race based quotas. That is illegal. and deliberately scoring Asians low on certain scores to bring their admission rates down so that you can balance your class racially is also illegal.

Perfectly legal. And balancing, i.e., making sure all races are more proportionally represented is not a quota.
You're talking out of the plaintiff's play-book here, and they will lose. The use of race in the fashion Harvard is doing it to have a balanced class of the type students they want is perfectly legal.

That's nonsense. MAKING SURE THAT A CERTAIN RACE IS [b]proportionally represented is the very definition of a quota[/b]. You cannot racially balance unless you have a quota in mind. Otherwise what does it mean to racially balance? And quotas are illegal. That is very clear. So when you say hey "2% blacks" is too less but "10 percent is ok" and I will shape my class based on that, you are enforcing a quota and the Supreme court has said that is illegal.

If you were not racially balancing your class, one year you would get 2% blacks, one year you would get 10%. Your number would depend on the applicant pool.

No. A quota is what was at issue in Bakke. The school set aside a specific number of spots for minorities.
And read what I said: making sure all races (not certain races) are MORE proportionally represented is not a quota.
This is not a case involving quotas

Don't be disingenuous. More Proportional representation is not possible without quotas and Bakke ruled that quotas are illegal. More representation is possible which is affirmative action and is allowed under Bakke under some circumstances specially for diversity. The second you bring proportional into the picture you need quotas, because the very act of measuring proportional cannot be done unless you have a number to compare it with, which is a quota.