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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

It’s not as if Harvard is excluding Asian students. They are an over-represented minority. No one in this thread has offered *principled* explanations of why <22% represents discrimination and/or what % would be considered indicative of a non-racist admissions policy. As the Princeton data indicates, 9 out of 10 kids with perfect test scores and 9 out of 10 kids with a 3.9+ get rejected. This is not an admissions process in which those stats determine who gets in.

And no, the trade-off isn’t between well-rounded kids vs. world class talent. It’s among kids who stand out in different ways. And Harvard is trying to put together a class that is diverse in various ways (including racially). Diversity is a different value than well-roundedness or representativeness. There are various kinds of non-racial balancing going on — e.g. gender and geographic— in a not-always-successful attempt to create a class in which no one demographic or POV feels hegemonic (or completely marginalized).

I agree that the best potential evidence of discrimination here appears to be personality scores, but two things stand out. First, having interviewed for an HYPS, I know our input doesn’t really matter (unless, perhaps, the candidate does something egregiously awful and there’s something else in the file that lends credibility to the interviewer’s account). Personality is assessed primarily through things like letters of rec and essays. Also, the most detailed account I’ve seen (Yang’s NYT op-ed) leads me to think that the disproportionately low personality scores get assigned to Asian applicants who aren’t in the running for admission anyway. Asian kids in the top decile academically are given high personality scores 20+% of the time. The difference is that whites, blacks, and Hispanics in other academic deciles get similar personality scores. It’s a weird stat (and one formulated by the plaintiff’s expert witness), so maybe there’s something more or better that I haven’t seen and I’d be happy to have it pointed out to me.

What I’d love to see is a negotiated settlement involving an experiment in which applications are sufficiently anonymized that applicants are in control of whether colleges know their race and/or gender. (I believe URMs should be recognized as adding diversity to the class, so race can be treated as a positive attribute). How/would that change Harvard College’s demographics?

Are you playing dumb? or are you totally clueless. The reason is that currently Harvard is around 22% Asians. The question is if we removed all traces of race from the application and forced the Admissions office to score these applications, using the same system that they use today, what would be the percentage of Asians in that pool? I am not asking Harvard to use only Academic rating. Let them use their current rating. If you anonymize the applications, would the percentage of Asians increase materially. Only a fool would think it wouldn't. It would be closer to 30% or maybe even 40%. So the only real factor keeping the number of Asians at 22% is racial animus towards them. Nothing else. Everything else is smoke and mirrors to justify the blatant bias.

Harvard can swat that charge away in a second. Agree to score an entire year of applications twice. First have a firm look at all applications and anonymize the applications completely. No trace of race, name or zipcode or anything that could suggest anything about an applicant race should be visible. Now they can pick the class. They then release the data. Lets see what the data shows.
Harvard WILL NEVER DO THIS. Because they know what will happen. Race at Harvard is not a factor. It is THE FACTOR

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

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It’s not as if Harvard is excluding Asian students. They are an over-represented minority. No one in this thread has offered *principled* explanations of why <22% represents discrimination and/or what % would be considered indicative of a non-racist admissions policy. As the Princeton data indicates, 9 out of 10 kids with perfect test scores and 9 out of 10 kids with a 3.9+ get rejected. This is not an admissions process in which those stats determine who gets in.

And no, the trade-off isn’t between well-rounded kids vs. world class talent. It’s among kids who stand out in different ways. And Harvard is trying to put together a class that is diverse in various ways (including racially). Diversity is a different value than well-roundedness or representativeness. There are various kinds of non-racial balancing going on — e.g. gender and geographic— in a not-always-successful attempt to create a class in which no one demographic or POV feels hegemonic (or completely marginalized).

I agree that the best potential evidence of discrimination here appears to be personality scores, but two things stand out. First, having interviewed for an HYPS, I know our input doesn’t really matter (unless, perhaps, the candidate does something egregiously awful and there’s something else in the file that lends credibility to the interviewer’s account). Personality is assessed primarily through things like letters of rec and essays. Also, the most detailed account I’ve seen (Yang’s NYT op-ed) leads me to think that the disproportionately low personality scores get assigned to Asian applicants who aren’t in the running for admission anyway. Asian kids in the top decile academically are given high personality scores 20+% of the time. The difference is that whites, blacks, and Hispanics in other academic deciles get similar personality scores. It’s a weird stat (and one formulated by the plaintiff’s expert witness), so maybe there’s something more or better that I haven’t seen and I’d be happy to have it pointed out to me.

What I’d love to see is a negotiated settlement involving an experiment in which applications are sufficiently anonymized that applicants are in control of whether colleges know their race and/or gender. (I believe URMs should be recognized as adding diversity to the class, so race can be treated as a positive attribute). How/would that change Harvard College’s demographics?

Are you playing dumb? or are you totally clueless. The reason is that currently Harvard is around 22% Asians. The question is if we removed all traces of race from the application and forced the Admissions office to score these applications, using the same system that they use today, what would be the percentage of Asians in that pool? I am not asking Harvard to use only Academic rating. Let them use their current rating. If you anonymize the applications, would the percentage of Asians increase materially. Only a fool would think it wouldn't. It would be closer to 30% or maybe even 40%. So the only real factor keeping the number of Asians at 22% is racial animus towards them. Nothing else. Everything else is smoke and mirrors to justify the blatant bias.

Harvard can swat that charge away in a second. Agree to score an entire year of applications twice. First have a firm look at all applications and anonymize the applications completely. No trace of race, name or zipcode or anything that could suggest anything about an applicant race should be visible. Now they can pick the class. They then release the data. Lets see what the data shows.
Harvard WILL NEVER DO THIS. Because they know what will happen. Race at Harvard is not a factor. It is THE FACTOR

+1000. Simply knowing the race of the applicant affects how Harvard scores them. There is either severe unconscious racial bias or blatant race balancing going on. Both of which is illegal. It's like the Heisenberg college uncertainty principle is at play here for the Asian applicant. You can be Asian or have high personality scores, but not both. Once the Harvard admission reader realizes that the applicant is Asian, they somehow find ways to eff them over, consciously or unconsciously.

Anonymous wrote:

It’s not as if Harvard is excluding Asian students. They are an over-represented minority. No one in this thread has offered *principled* explanations of why <22% represents discrimination and/or what % would be considered indicative of a non-racist admissions policy. As the Princeton data indicates, 9 out of 10 kids with perfect test scores and 9 out of 10 kids with a 3.9+ get rejected. This is not an admissions process in which those stats determine who gets in.

And no, the trade-off isn’t between well-rounded kids vs. world class talent. It’s among kids who stand out in different ways. And Harvard is trying to put together a class that is diverse in various ways (including racially). Diversity is a different value than well-roundedness or representativeness. There are various kinds of non-racial balancing going on — e.g. gender and geographic— in a not-always-successful attempt to create a class in which no one demographic or POV feels hegemonic (or completely marginalized).

I agree that the best potential evidence of discrimination here appears to be personality scores, but two things stand out. First, having interviewed for an HYPS, I know our input doesn’t really matter (unless, perhaps, the candidate does something egregiously awful and there’s something else in the file that lends credibility to the interviewer’s account). Personality is assessed primarily through things like letters of rec and essays. Also, the most detailed account I’ve seen (Yang’s NYT op-ed) leads me to think that the disproportionately low personality scores get assigned to Asian applicants who aren’t in the running for admission anyway. Asian kids in the top decile academically are given high personality scores 20+% of the time. The difference is that whites, blacks, and Hispanics in other academic deciles get similar personality scores. It’s a weird stat (and one formulated by the plaintiff’s expert witness), so maybe there’s something more or better that I haven’t seen and I’d be happy to have it pointed out to me.

What I’d love to see is a negotiated settlement involving an experiment in which applications are sufficiently anonymized that applicants are in control of whether colleges know their race and/or gender. (I believe URMs should be recognized as adding diversity to the class, so race can be treated as a positive attribute). How/would that change Harvard College’s demographics?

Are you playing dumb? or are you totally clueless. The reason is that currently Harvard is around 22% Asians. The question is if we removed all traces of race from the application and forced the Admissions office to score these applications, using the same system that they use today, what would be the percentage of Asians in that pool? I am not asking Harvard to use only Academic rating. Let them use their current rating. If you anonymize the applications, would the percentage of Asians increase materially. Only a fool would think it wouldn't. It would be closer to 30% or maybe even 40%. So the only real factor keeping the number of Asians at 22% is racial animus towards them. Nothing else. Everything else is smoke and mirrors to justify the blatant bias.

Harvard can swat that charge away in a second. Agree to score an entire year of applications twice. First have a firm look at all applications and anonymize the applications completely. No trace of race, name or zipcode or anything that could suggest anything about an applicant race should be visible. Now they can pick the class. They then release the data. Lets see what the data shows.
Harvard WILL NEVER DO THIS. Because they know what will happen. Race at Harvard is not a factor. It is THE FACTOR

Anonymous wrote:

It’s not as if Harvard is excluding Asian students. They are an over-represented minority. No one in this thread has offered *principled* explanations of why <22% represents discrimination and/or what % would be considered indicative of a non-racist admissions policy. As the Princeton data indicates, 9 out of 10 kids with perfect test scores and 9 out of 10 kids with a 3.9+ get rejected. This is not an admissions process in which those stats determine who gets in.

And no, the trade-off isn’t between well-rounded kids vs. world class talent. It’s among kids who stand out in different ways. And Harvard is trying to put together a class that is diverse in various ways (including racially). Diversity is a different value than well-roundedness or representativeness. There are various kinds of non-racial balancing going on — e.g. gender and geographic— in a not-always-successful attempt to create a class in which no one demographic or POV feels hegemonic (or completely marginalized).

I agree that the best potential evidence of discrimination here appears to be personality scores, but two things stand out. First, having interviewed for an HYPS, I know our input doesn’t really matter (unless, perhaps, the candidate does something egregiously awful and there’s something else in the file that lends credibility to the interviewer’s account). Personality is assessed primarily through things like letters of rec and essays. Also, the most detailed account I’ve seen (Yang’s NYT op-ed) leads me to think that the disproportionately low personality scores get assigned to Asian applicants who aren’t in the running for admission anyway. Asian kids in the top decile academically are given high personality scores 20+% of the time. The difference is that whites, blacks, and Hispanics in other academic deciles get similar personality scores. It’s a weird stat (and one formulated by the plaintiff’s expert witness), so maybe there’s something more or better that I haven’t seen and I’d be happy to have it pointed out to me.

What I’d love to see is a negotiated settlement involving an experiment in which applications are sufficiently anonymized that applicants are in control of whether colleges know their race and/or gender. (I believe URMs should be recognized as adding diversity to the class, so race can be treated as a positive attribute). How/would that change Harvard College’s demographics?

Are you playing dumb? or are you totally clueless. The reason is that currently Harvard is around 22% Asians. The question is if we removed all traces of race from the application and forced the Admissions office to score these applications, using the same system that they use today, what would be the percentage of Asians in that pool? I am not asking Harvard to use only Academic rating. Let them use their current rating. If you anonymize the applications, would the percentage of Asians increase materially. Only a fool would think it wouldn't. It would be closer to 30% or maybe even 40%. So the only real factor keeping the number of Asians at 22% is racial animus towards them. Nothing else. Everything else is smoke and mirrors to justify the blatant bias.

Harvard can swat that charge away in a second. Agree to score an entire year of applications twice. First have a firm look at all applications and anonymize the applications completely. No trace of race, name or zipcode or anything that could suggest anything about an applicant race should be visible. Now they can pick the class. They then release the data. Lets see what the data shows.
Harvard WILL NEVER DO THIS. Because they know what will happen. Race at Harvard is not a factor. It is THE FACTOR

It’s not as if Harvard is excluding Asian students. They are an over-represented minority. No one in this thread has offered *principled* explanations of why <22% represents discrimination and/or what % would be considered indicative of a non-racist admissions policy. As the Princeton data indicates, 9 out of 10 kids with perfect test scores and 9 out of 10 kids with a 3.9+ get rejected. This is not an admissions process in which those stats determine who gets in.

And no, the trade-off isn’t between well-rounded kids vs. world class talent. It’s among kids who stand out in different ways. And Harvard is trying to put together a class that is diverse in various ways (including racially). Diversity is a different value than well-roundedness or representativeness. There are various kinds of non-racial balancing going on — e.g. gender and geographic— in a not-always-successful attempt to create a class in which no one demographic or POV feels hegemonic (or completely marginalized).

I agree that the best potential evidence of discrimination here appears to be personality scores, but two things stand out. First, having interviewed for an HYPS, I know our input doesn’t really matter (unless, perhaps, the candidate does something egregiously awful and there’s something else in the file that lends credibility to the interviewer’s account). Personality is assessed primarily through things like letters of rec and essays. Also, the most detailed account I’ve seen (Yang’s NYT op-ed) leads me to think that the disproportionately low personality scores get assigned to Asian applicants who aren’t in the running for admission anyway. Asian kids in the top decile academically are given high personality scores 20+% of the time. The difference is that whites, blacks, and Hispanics in other academic deciles get similar personality scores. It’s a weird stat (and one formulated by the plaintiff’s expert witness), so maybe there’s something more or better that I haven’t seen and I’d be happy to have it pointed out to me.

What I’d love to see is a negotiated settlement involving an experiment in which applications are sufficiently anonymized that applicants are in control of whether colleges know their race and/or gender. (I believe URMs should be recognized as adding diversity to the class, so race can be treated as a positive attribute). How/would that change Harvard College’s demographics?