Reply to Turns out, Harvard students aren’t that smart after all

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I didn't see any proof in the article that those applicants were not qualified or would have been rejected. Just a statement that said they would have with no support.  Just because you are an athlete, a legacy or a teacher's child...does not mean you aren't smart or have the grades or test scores.
Did those things help them get in - sure - but no support for the other.
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The study itself states that a significant portion of this group would not have gotten in without the preference. [/quote]

That's because brilliant white kids still need another hook to get in.[/quote]

Brilliant white kids need another hook to get in because non brilliant white kids are being accepted due to their athletic abilities. [/quote]

[b]Being white is a detriment for admissions[/b]. [/quote]

You can't really believe this do you? I guarantee if a white kid doesn't get in, it's not because he is white. It's because there is a more qualified, hooked, legacy white kid who took that space. Not some random person of color.[/quote]

Admissions is a function of a bunch of variables -- test scores, school performance, extracurriculars, athletics, legacy, other hooks, region, random noise, and yes, ethnicity.  Nobody who studies this seriously denies that race plays a major causal role in admissions.  That is, given equivalence across all other dimensions, candidates of different races get different treatment.  Of course given the complexity of the decision-making process you can always point to some other factor.  But that's a naive way of looking at it.

This topic is so interesting because of the knots people will tie themselves into trying to deny this basic fact.  But if you support AA, as I do, you need to be honest about this because otherwise it's just discrediting.[/quote]

DP. You need to be honest with yourself. White kids are advantaged by race.  If race were not a factor at all, there would be many more high stats Asian kids who would replace white ones. Yes, white kid may have higher stats than URMs, but if whites took the places of lower stats URMs, those white kids would then be replaced by higher stats Asian kids. White kids are advantaged by admissions not being race blind. Look at the UCs.
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