Reply to Race in college admissions is back in front of the Supreme Court Oral Argument on Oct. 31 (Monday)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][img]https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BVffPix3bXA/UFfjy8BQPrI/AAAAAAAABjg/GyfTL3zVjWg/s1600/Please-climb-that-tree1.png[/img][/quote]

We get that is the argument, but what is the solution that is more fair? I see both ways but tests are at least somewhat objective. And I have been on BOTH sides of the aisle here, growing up poor, first gen, no test prep options vs. what I can now offer my kid. [/quote]

"more fair"?

Basketball players are judge by how well they play basketball
Dancers are judged by how well they dance
Legacies are judged by how well they help fund the school and if they will provide connections to current students
Some kids are judged by SAT scores
Some kids are judged by the fact they started a movement after somebody shot up their school

If you want to be in the top 5% there are many ways to do that and GPA and SAT is only one way. Stop using that measure to say the other kids were not qualified.
If 20 kids are great basketball players the coach picks the 5 he wants, you don't have to understand why he picked those 5 kids. I don't care if you scored more baskets than the 5 he chose. [/quote]

The core issue is that those schools that have been practicing holistic admissions still weren’t getting the “desired” diversity that they wanted when looking at all of those factors you’ve mentioned without directly looking at race. As a result, at least Harvard systemically and artificially reduced totally subjective personality scores on Asian applicants at the admissions office level. Let’s stop with the trope that Asian applicants were just robots studying for grades and test scores - the Harvard disclosures  showed that Asian applicants also had leadership positions and extracurricular activities in line (or better) than all other races. The one factor that changed was the admissions office that never met these applicants putting in lower personality scores for Asians. THAT is patently unfair no matter how much one believes in a desired outcome.

We know it’s patently unfair because if you replace “Asian” with any other race (or religion or sex or sexual orientation), it would be recognized as racist right away. If Black students were getting the best grades, garnering the highest test scores, and had extracurricular activities and interview scores that were in line with every other race… but then the Harvard admissions office assigned a totally subjective personality score to Blacks that were lower than all other races because they were worried that Blacks would be too overrepresented at Harvard, that would rightfully be called out as racist immediately. If you applied Jewish people in that hypothetical, it would rightly be called antisemitic immediately (and that’s actually what happened at elite schools in the middle of the 20th century - it’s why holistic admissions exist in the first place). For some reason, people either don’t recognize that the fact this pattern is happening to Asians is racist or, arguably even worse, effectively know that it’s racist but think that the ends justify the means, it appalling to me.

By and large, I’m a liberal on cultural issues. I volunteer for the Democratic Party and will be voting for them on Tuesday up and down the ballot for many reasons. However, on this particular issue, too many liberals seem to have a complete blind spot. I firmly believe in DEI efforts as a goal, but they simply can’t use racist policies (against a minority group, no less) to achieve such goals as that defeats the idea behind DEI initiatives in the first place.[/quote]

+1 this post should be required reading for all[/quote]

Except for the fact that there's no proof that Harvard looked at the applications of Asian applicants and lowered their scores in order to keep them out.[/quote]
The "proof" is that they give those applicants lower "likeability" scores without ever having met them face to face even as the interviewers who did meet the applicant gave them high "likeability" scores

As the ^PP stated, can you imagine if the admissions office rated blacks as "not likeable" without ever having met them?  NAACP would be all over it.

But here, it's fine that they do that to Asian Americans because that group is over represented anyways.

Diversity is important, yes. We chose a cluster for its diversity, but what Harvard did there was unfair and racist.

What is the % of other applicants who were scored "not likeable" by the admissions office?  If it was equally as high, then you have an argument that Harvard did no wrong.  Does someone have that info?[/quote]

Your argument is illogical. [b]They didn't see ANY applicants face to face when giving personality scores, so that's irrelevant.

[/b]And if you break down any measure using any demographic, one group will come out on bottom and one will come out on top, necessarily. To say it must be discrimination against the group that scores lowest makes no sense.

If you were to look at the personality scores by US state, someone would be at the bottom. If that state was Minnesota, would you say that Harvard was deliberately excluding Minnesotans?

If you were to break it down by musical instrument played and those who played the viola had the lowest scores, are they being demonized?[/quote]
the bolded is actually very relevant.

If they didn't see any applicant, then how are they judging "likeability" and personality?  What was the rate "likeability" for black students?[/quote]

Essays and letters of recommendation are the two most obvious. For some, it might include activities or some really interesting combination of classes they took. For others, their choice of research projects. Etc.[/quote]

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