Reply to student admissions and TJ lawsuit

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The whole "test-buying Asians" trope is a very dangerous one, and it conflates a number of different things that have happened.

What I'm assuming people are referring to is the situation at Curie, whose flagship TJ prep program was a $5,000 investment for 16 months of targeted coaching to the TJ Admissions process that included, according to named students from the Classes of 2022 and 2023, a few specific questions that had been re-used from form to form on the Quant-Q exam. This was a problem because the Quant-Q exam was purported to be "secured", with everyone who saw the exam being required to sign a statement agreeing not to discuss its contents.

The reason people are tagging the "Asian" on to this story is because Curie had a habit of publishing the first and last names of all of its students who successfully gained admission to TJ, AOS, or AET - and it was notable that literally 100% of the names on these lists would be of Asian, and specifically South Asian, descent. This raises questions, of course, as to the nature of Curie and its true mission

These people did not [i] buy the test, [/i] they [b]paid for a product that granted their children access to information about the test that they shouldn't have had[/b], and in so doing skewed the admissions results for a couple of years. Because the semifinalist criteria were based on percentile achievement rather than raw score, it's easy to see how many students were likely booted out of the semifinalist pool because of this inappropriate (though not illegal) access.

What Curie did went beyond "prep" and entered into really problematic territory, though there is no reasonable way for them to be held accountable. And it's bothersome to me that the parents who benefited from this gap in the process seem to be so rejective to understanding that they paid for a boost that was unavailable to other students. You already have the prize - why are you so hell-bent on denying that you got a leg up?

But in the end, there's a very strong chance that this story at least in part motivated the changes to the admissions process, which has in effect had a significant negative impact on the ability of (apparently) South Asian parents to use their resources to create imbalances in the TJ admissions process.

There are almost certainly other racially and socioeconomically homogenous groups that were impacted by the changes (Kate Dalby in McLean serves mostly a wealthy white clientele, for example), but none of those other prep centers made the choice to publish the names of their successful students and open a window to criticism that they exist only to serve narrow populations.[/quote]

I think you're the only one saying test buying Asians.[/quote]

Nope, I'm simply acknowledging where the trope comes from, while indicating that it is dangerous to paint with a broad brush. The people who took advantage of the Curie situation certainly do not represent all Asians, or even South Asians. They only represented about three quarters of the Class of 2024's South Asian population, meaning that there were a significant number of South Asian students who did gain admission to TJ without the imbalances that Curie provided. It is unfair to assume that all of them fall into that group.[/quote]

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