I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores (as done in India, Russia, maybe China?), and nothing else, might be the least unfair way to judge applicants.
Every admission system is unfair in some way but tests are a yardstick everyone understands and can optimize for. In India they publicly post the list of admitted students and their marks. Richer students may benefit from higher-quality test coaching but a) that happens today anyway and b) the Internet will ensure rapid dissemination of test-prep strategies for cheap or free
The other downside is it might give you a more, for lack of a better word, boring student body at the higher levels. Fewer non-academic interests and achievements because every bit of spare time in high school was spent on studying.
I thought the American system sounded better when I was a high-schooler in India with not good but not great marks ("surely they'd recognize my specialness despite my lower scores, even if these hidebound colleges in India won't!") but it does leave more room for implicit bias.
I think the Indian system seems fairer on the outset and more merit-based but there are definitely conditions attached to the entrance examinations. For instance,
- It’s more than just a Boolean to get into the right school. Your score dictates what major you’ll study for the next 3-4 years. This idea single-handedly ruins it for most students as they try and game the system because they want to study what they’re interested in. On the flip side you’re training students in majors that they personally may have no interest in
- The Indian system adds “quotas” for minorities but these percentages are fixed and don’t fluctuate over time. To make it worse they very publicly lower the bar for admissions since there’s two different scores that can now get you into the same university. This again leads a lot of students to try and game the system and forces the general populace to think of the system as unfair.
- There is no age barrier and combined with the above reasons, you’ll see a lot of students take the entrance exams many years in a row after graduating high school to land the right school and major. A lot that don’t succeed settle for a major/school or worse - commit suicide.
I think there’s a midpoint somewhere between the West’s opaque approach to college admissions and the East’s transparent yet rigid approach.
> I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores [...] might be the least unfair way to judge applicants.
Intentionally provocative question: is "least unfair" the right goal to solve for in college admissions?
If a change to an admissions system makes it less "single-input->single-output" from the perspective of an applicant, but produces a positive effect elsewhere, what is the right standard to decide whether it was a good or bad change?
The supreme court ruled that you can use a variety of metrics for admissions. Like hiring you have to try and make a transparent decision, not just "I feel like this person would work well", so everything gets measured and quantified.
Harvard hired an analysis of their admissions:
196 page analysis of the admissions process. It seems like they rank 4 things: Academics/ extracurricular/ personality / athletics.
You can see some comparison rankings on page 36 of Harvard's report -
I don't know much about the Indian system but what is missed in the discussion is that Harvard is NOT a technical university - it is a liberal arts program, and as such, one would expect a broader set of admission criteria than some other institutions.
> I can't help but think that college admissions based solely on test scores (as done in India, Russia, maybe China?)
Russian here, this is not entirely correct. Instead of race you have region and when that region is 80-90%+ single ethnicity then a region division serves as "race-by-proxy".
You can also get a certain region overrepresented (with regards to it's total population) and by extension certain ethnicity as well.
"Alumni interviewers give Asian-Americans personal ratings comparable to those of whites. But the admissions office gives them the worst scores of any racial group, often without even meeting them, according to Prof. Arcidiacono."
I can't imagine the feeling of working so hard through elementary school, middle school, and high school to get into an Ivy League school, only for an admissions panel to declare me "low in personality" or too introverted.
Harvard's admission criteria seem heavily based on outdated stereotypes of what makes an individual successful. I question if Ivy League schools are choosing the best applicants and by extension, how much prestige Ivy League degrees really deserve.
I read an article a while back that compared admissions process to a bouncer in a nightclub. Was the best description of why things are done as they are.
As a hazy summary - the prestigious institutions try to have a mix of different types of people - rich people bring resources, well connected families bring influence & contacts, people with high test scores bring hard work and intelligence, achievers in arts/sports/activities bring hard work and desire to win, alumni children bring culture, loyalty and resources. Its no coincidence that there are different routes in for these different types of people.
Its the unique mix that makes places like Harvard great. There are other schools that choose people with highest test scores - that is a different approach. Harvard has no obligation to do this. Given the track record of alumni to achieve, the Harvard approach seems to work much better if you consider routes to powerful & high achieving jobs to be the main outcome.
These sorts of subjective judgements can drive you crazy. My father (who was asian-american) had a civilian job with the United States government and a part time job with the United States navy. His civilian job, which was in the most corrupt branch of the executive branch, rated him as a poor performer personality wise and as having "no leadership potential". Nobody got the message, really since after this he took a temporary leave of absence and activated his us navy job as full time - as a captain (O6), the team he led delivered the first fully digitized, network inventory system which saved the navy on the order of billions of dollars. When he got back to his civilian job those negative reviews kept coming and he was denied promotions on those bases.
The "character and fitness" criteria has been instituted by Harvard in 1920s for a very simple purpose - to solve the "Jewish problem", i.e. too many Jews getting into Harvard. After Harvard's President A. Lawrence Lowell's proposal of outright Jewish quota met significant resistance, they had to find some way to keep the Jews out while not having outright ban. So they had "geographic diversity" and "character" criteria. And it did wonders - Jewish admission percentage fell to the coveted 15% that was the original quota target. Now the same old weapon is being deployed against the new "too many people of your kind here" target.
“We could fill our class twice over with valedictorians,” Harvard President
Drew Gilpin Faust told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, sponsored
by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, on Monday. That means admissions
officers rely on intangibles like interesting essays or particularly unusual
recommendations to decide who comprises the 5.9 percent of applicants who
get in.
Faust's top tip for raising a Harvard man or woman: “Make your children
interesting!”
For parents and students alike, that’s both good news and bad news. The bad
news is that of course it’s much easier to say that than to actually make it
happen, though Faust recommended encouraging children to follow their
passions as a way to develop an interesting personality. It’s much easier to
complete a checklist, however daunting, than to actually be interesting.[1]
I wonder if HN news algo reads my mind. In another news thread, I just pulled out the fact that Xiaomi electronics makes overwhelmingly superior gadgetry, yet can't break through the stigma of Asian "uncoolness"
Situation for them is pretty much as it was with Toyota in its first decade in US, and them being greatly puzzled why Americans were so bent on buying Buicks over "twice as cheap, and twice as better" Corollas, and had total nil appetite for the supreme Corona.
To authors of comments in line of "being a minority is actually a boon, statistics wise" I can say this: on the other side of "social invisibility" lies life of being "trophy" talent/socialite acquaintance/romantic partner, and, the most dreaded one, the life of diversity hire.
Xiaomi created a stigma for themselves, by shamelessly copying Apple in everything including presentation style. [1] So I can't really take them seriously (doesn't help that I don't like Apple either).
My Xiaomi Yi 4k has numerous basic issues. I'm really not sure they're superior. They're just cheaper. And cheap is rarely whats "cool". In fact it's usually the opposite.
The entire tech industry would not exist if we judged people based on this:
In its admissions process, Harvard scores applicants in five categories — “academic,” “extracurricular,” “athletic,” “personal” and “overall.” They are ranked from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best.
Well, why discriminate on US citizenship for that matter, if academic merit is the main criterion. Americans of any kind would be less than 10% of the student body.
Harvard does not claim to be a purely academic meritocracy.
Just thinking out loud, but I would posit that high grades/scores and "personality scores" tend to be negatively correlated, regardless of race/or within a particular race (just as i would hazard that academics and athletic achievement are often negatively correlated). e.g. the kids with highest gpa's in a school are often not the most outgoing.
That doesn't mean they are doing anything in a less evidence-based manner. They may have simply devised a superior empirical instrument; of course, if they have done so, then it ought be demonstrable.
I guess the more woolly selection criteria are there so that racial discrimination can be conducted, otherwise the student population would be overwhelmingly asian with a large white minority?
Nah it would be more like UC Berkeley, which is forbidden from using racial quotas by California law. Still less than half Asian.
In fact the Asian numbers at Berkeley are probably inflated due to Asian students being discriminated against elsewhere (like Harvard) and going to Berkeley instead, so if all the universities stopped discriminating, the numbers would average out to lower than Berkeley's current demographic.
It's possible. Controlling for grit and time spent not resting, being the best at anything demands a significant time investment in that activity. If you had just one hour a day, you could spend it either playing basketball or doing math. I'm not saying one is better than the other; just that if you do the former, you'll get better at basketball. If you do the latter, you'll do better at math.
(I'm fully aware of studies that show that being athletic leads to sharper mind and better neuronal circuitry. But moderate physical activity is sufficient to have that effect. Being the best at football requires a lot of practice beyond just staying fit.
Yes there are those who are really good at doing both. But that's an exception I'd surmise.)
It is time to phase out Affirmative Action, it not only hurt high achieving minorities but also those minorities that it is supposed to help.
There are so many times where I have heard indirect comments that so and so got in only because he is the right minority. I see there is a lot resent among those who say they would have made it if it wasn't for AA.
Trump is direct result of this resentment, and it will only get worse if we don't address this issue.
There's a similar issue going on at the NYC elite public schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Mayor De Blasio is pushing to drop the entrance exams for those schools pretty much for the exact same reason. This guy discusses it in this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QixRuK68lk4
Because they want something that provides a subjective element for making decisions.
Admissions is high-stakes for everyone, including Harvard. Having some opaque, non-mechanical criteria lets them pick and choose without giving as much of a lever to lawyers.
The best way I've been able to find to think about this is the fundamental axiom of geopolitics, which is basically tribalism defined mathematically. People want to work with and help others who are closer to them, who they feel are neighbors, brothers. This gets more and more true the more money and resources you have.
While you and I are more tribally identified with Asian Americans, America's upper crust considers them a threat. An elite university is a gateway into the upper crust, so it makes tribal sense for them to limit their access on grounds that to everyone else looks blatantly racist but doesn't really feel that way to them.
If I had to wager a guess, I imagine that the upper crust justifies this morally by saying that without Harvard and other elite schools, no Asians would get to climb that ladder. And also to note that not even the paragons of democracy, the Greeks, were immune to tribal identification and social stratification and racist policies to enforce them. Sparta was especially egregious in this regard.
From Harvard's perspective, in order to maintain their prestigious reputation, they have to cater to the tribal whims of the upper class, even if they don't want to. Otherwise Harvard, well, wouldn't be Harvard anymore, the prestige will move on to other universities that are willing to play ball. Remember, it's not us that determines Harvard's prestige status, it's the elites. Expect Harvard to dream up an endless array of subjective metrics that pay lip service to inclusivity while in practice serving exclusive goals.
I believe that if we succeed in forcing an inclusivity agenda onto the Ivy League, then it'll just cause the elites to make even more ultra-exclusive educational institutions and send their kids there, revoking not just Harvard's, but the whole Ivy Leagues' cool card. While this will democratize Harvard, it will ultimately increase stratification and inequality.
Many organizations create processes that are essentially random number generators. It allows bureaucrats to insert their personal preferences under a veneer of technocracy. Hang out at a corporate budget allocation meeting sometime.
Because every applicant has the best grades and extracurriculars in the world, the only thing left to use for admissions is “How pleasant of a person is this student to be around?”
What Harvard is trying to do is admit the people who will be national and global leaders 30 years from now, not the people who will get the best grades at Harvard. Since the country’s future leaders won’t be 60% Asian it doesn’t make sense for their class to be either.
I don't think we should prejudge what the racial makeup of the country's future leadership should be and then use de facto racial quotas to match those assumptions.
[+] [-] jogjayr|7 years ago|reply
Every admission system is unfair in some way but tests are a yardstick everyone understands and can optimize for. In India they publicly post the list of admitted students and their marks. Richer students may benefit from higher-quality test coaching but a) that happens today anyway and b) the Internet will ensure rapid dissemination of test-prep strategies for cheap or free
The other downside is it might give you a more, for lack of a better word, boring student body at the higher levels. Fewer non-academic interests and achievements because every bit of spare time in high school was spent on studying.
I thought the American system sounded better when I was a high-schooler in India with not good but not great marks ("surely they'd recognize my specialness despite my lower scores, even if these hidebound colleges in India won't!") but it does leave more room for implicit bias.
[+] [-] dhruvarora013|7 years ago|reply
- It’s more than just a Boolean to get into the right school. Your score dictates what major you’ll study for the next 3-4 years. This idea single-handedly ruins it for most students as they try and game the system because they want to study what they’re interested in. On the flip side you’re training students in majors that they personally may have no interest in
- The Indian system adds “quotas” for minorities but these percentages are fixed and don’t fluctuate over time. To make it worse they very publicly lower the bar for admissions since there’s two different scores that can now get you into the same university. This again leads a lot of students to try and game the system and forces the general populace to think of the system as unfair.
- There is no age barrier and combined with the above reasons, you’ll see a lot of students take the entrance exams many years in a row after graduating high school to land the right school and major. A lot that don’t succeed settle for a major/school or worse - commit suicide.
I think there’s a midpoint somewhere between the West’s opaque approach to college admissions and the East’s transparent yet rigid approach.
[+] [-] perpetualpatzer|7 years ago|reply
Intentionally provocative question: is "least unfair" the right goal to solve for in college admissions?
If a change to an admissions system makes it less "single-input->single-output" from the perspective of an applicant, but produces a positive effect elsewhere, what is the right standard to decide whether it was a good or bad change?
[+] [-] acomjean|7 years ago|reply
Harvard hired an analysis of their admissions: 196 page analysis of the admissions process. It seems like they rank 4 things: Academics/ extracurricular/ personality / athletics.
You can see some comparison rankings on page 36 of Harvard's report -
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/file...
From https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education
I didn't go to harvard, but I work there.
[+] [-] cascom|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education
[+] [-] johan_larson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlholaday|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gspetr|7 years ago|reply
Russian here, this is not entirely correct. Instead of race you have region and when that region is 80-90%+ single ethnicity then a region division serves as "race-by-proxy".
You can also get a certain region overrepresented (with regards to it's total population) and by extension certain ethnicity as well.
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|7 years ago|reply
You would probably have been lumped in and compared to the other Asian high-performers and would not have even gotten an interview.
[+] [-] danielfoster|7 years ago|reply
I can't imagine the feeling of working so hard through elementary school, middle school, and high school to get into an Ivy League school, only for an admissions panel to declare me "low in personality" or too introverted.
Harvard's admission criteria seem heavily based on outdated stereotypes of what makes an individual successful. I question if Ivy League schools are choosing the best applicants and by extension, how much prestige Ivy League degrees really deserve.
[+] [-] rb808|7 years ago|reply
As a hazy summary - the prestigious institutions try to have a mix of different types of people - rich people bring resources, well connected families bring influence & contacts, people with high test scores bring hard work and intelligence, achievers in arts/sports/activities bring hard work and desire to win, alumni children bring culture, loyalty and resources. Its no coincidence that there are different routes in for these different types of people.
Its the unique mix that makes places like Harvard great. There are other schools that choose people with highest test scores - that is a different approach. Harvard has no obligation to do this. Given the track record of alumni to achieve, the Harvard approach seems to work much better if you consider routes to powerful & high achieving jobs to be the main outcome.
[+] [-] jfnixon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akhilcacharya|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fapjacks|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thucydidesofusa|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dnautics|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomzi12|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smsm42|7 years ago|reply
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-di...
[+] [-] wozniacki|7 years ago|reply
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to...
[+] [-] ardent_uno|7 years ago|reply
The statistics clearly show this.
[+] [-] mlthoughts2018|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koops|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|7 years ago|reply
Situation for them is pretty much as it was with Toyota in its first decade in US, and them being greatly puzzled why Americans were so bent on buying Buicks over "twice as cheap, and twice as better" Corollas, and had total nil appetite for the supreme Corona.
To authors of comments in line of "being a minority is actually a boon, statistics wise" I can say this: on the other side of "social invisibility" lies life of being "trophy" talent/socialite acquaintance/romantic partner, and, the most dreaded one, the life of diversity hire.
[+] [-] Grue3|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/business/global/in-china-...
[+] [-] randyrand|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtawfik1|7 years ago|reply
In its admissions process, Harvard scores applicants in five categories — “academic,” “extracurricular,” “athletic,” “personal” and “overall.” They are ranked from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best.
[+] [-] dkural|7 years ago|reply
Harvard does not claim to be a purely academic meritocracy.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cascom|7 years ago|reply
Has anyone tried to control for this?
[+] [-] jsilvers|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thucydidesofusa|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] leemailll|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threatofrain|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nmeofthestate|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klipt|7 years ago|reply
In fact the Asian numbers at Berkeley are probably inflated due to Asian students being discriminated against elsewhere (like Harvard) and going to Berkeley instead, so if all the universities stopped discriminating, the numbers would average out to lower than Berkeley's current demographic.
[+] [-] Jagat|7 years ago|reply
(I'm fully aware of studies that show that being athletic leads to sharper mind and better neuronal circuitry. But moderate physical activity is sufficient to have that effect. Being the best at football requires a lot of practice beyond just staying fit. Yes there are those who are really good at doing both. But that's an exception I'd surmise.)
[+] [-] efgefgewfe|7 years ago|reply
There are so many times where I have heard indirect comments that so and so got in only because he is the right minority. I see there is a lot resent among those who say they would have made it if it wasn't for AA.
Trump is direct result of this resentment, and it will only get worse if we don't address this issue.
[+] [-] abby_cohen_221|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ganzuul|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jal|7 years ago|reply
Admissions is high-stakes for everyone, including Harvard. Having some opaque, non-mechanical criteria lets them pick and choose without giving as much of a lever to lawyers.
[+] [-] vinceguidry|7 years ago|reply
While you and I are more tribally identified with Asian Americans, America's upper crust considers them a threat. An elite university is a gateway into the upper crust, so it makes tribal sense for them to limit their access on grounds that to everyone else looks blatantly racist but doesn't really feel that way to them.
If I had to wager a guess, I imagine that the upper crust justifies this morally by saying that without Harvard and other elite schools, no Asians would get to climb that ladder. And also to note that not even the paragons of democracy, the Greeks, were immune to tribal identification and social stratification and racist policies to enforce them. Sparta was especially egregious in this regard.
From Harvard's perspective, in order to maintain their prestigious reputation, they have to cater to the tribal whims of the upper class, even if they don't want to. Otherwise Harvard, well, wouldn't be Harvard anymore, the prestige will move on to other universities that are willing to play ball. Remember, it's not us that determines Harvard's prestige status, it's the elites. Expect Harvard to dream up an endless array of subjective metrics that pay lip service to inclusivity while in practice serving exclusive goals.
I believe that if we succeed in forcing an inclusivity agenda onto the Ivy League, then it'll just cause the elites to make even more ultra-exclusive educational institutions and send their kids there, revoking not just Harvard's, but the whole Ivy Leagues' cool card. While this will democratize Harvard, it will ultimately increase stratification and inequality.
Tragedy of the commons writ large.
[+] [-] xapata|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tozeur|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone1234|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threatofrain|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb808|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ggg9990|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linuxkerneldev|7 years ago|reply
huh? what? what scientific reason do you have for believing such a thing?
[+] [-] poster123|7 years ago|reply