NY Time article on discrimination lawsuit against Harvard

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

I'm surprised that this hasn't been talked about. 

Colleges do look at race of incoming applicants. So, I guess, it is perhaps fair game to have a brief chat about that.

When I went to B-School, the GMAT cut-off for admissions for Asians was around 740 where as it was around 510 for African American applicants or applicants from Latin America - a massive difference that made it very difficult for qualifying, smart Asians to get into good schools. The attitude of the incoming Asian students (mostly from China and India) seemed to be of acceptance (as they concentrate on trying to improve things within their control). However, in some ways, this seems wrong to me. A lot of them did grow up in very poor homes and had the deck stacked up against them throughout their lives.

Well, that last point can't be said of the HS students from the generally well-assimilated Asian community in our region (towns like Maplewood / SO, Millburn / SH, Chatham, Livingston) but yes, it seems that their struggle to get into good schools is much greater than that of others applying for college.

I can understand a case for taking one of their slots and giving it to a African American applicant that grew up in hardship. However, to me, it seems like their slots also go to prep-school Caucasian kids with relatively mediocre grades who grew up in affluent families. Many colleges (not, perhaps Harvard) use the 'promote racial diversity of the incoming class' card but then, when you look at their profile, they are about 65 - 80% Caucasian afterwards. At the least, they should, perhaps, peg the Asian american applicants in the same preference slot as Caucasian applicants (ie: both types of applicants should be equally disadvantaged, if at all, during the admission process).

Please note that my intent is not to rile anyone up - we should be able to have civil, friendly discussions on semi-touchy subjects like this. I love the generally tolerant behavior in this forum and in our local community.

To clarify:

"Mr. Jia, who is not a party to the lawsuit against Harvard, graduated in 2016 from Millburn High School in New Jersey."

j_r said:

To clarify:

"Mr. Jia, who is not a party to the lawsuit against Harvard, graduated in 2016 from Millburn High School in New Jersey."

I apologize - I missed that part in the article (looks like I need to take a 3rd grade elementary school reading class! How do I amend the thread title? The discussion is still relevant as so many times, when I talk to friends' kids here, they start their college admissions chat with "Well, we know that the Ivys don't take more than 1-2 Asian-american kids from Millburn High School as per of their policy, so...".

If you go back and edit your first post, that should let you change the title, too.

Thankfully in this country, College admissions is not solely a game of let's see who scored the highest (or has the highest GPA).  Compared to a place like India or China, where the competition on these high stakes tests is immense.  Makes the NJASK, and the PARC look like child's play.  The only exception being legacy admissions, colleges generally don't admit more than a fixed number of kids from any given town/school/state, so in effect as a HS senior, you are competing with everyone in your own socioeconomic/gender/ethnic pool.   As AA's test scores improve(which they are), their admission rates will not sky rocket.  They will stay below the proportion of their population (10-13%, only difference being, the scoring floor will be higher.  

I think if they got rid of legacy admissions, or at least raised the bar for same, it might solve some of the issues.  Only in America. http://www.businessinsider.com/legacy-kids-have-an-admissions-advantage-2013-6

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-unfair-advantage-in-admissions.html

Given the enormous demand, the most competitive Ivies (and Stanford) weed out 95% or so of freshman undergrad applicants. I don't know how you do that in a completely fair, equitable and objective way. It is encouraging that schools such as Yale and Princeton are investing in increasing the size of admitted classes, but admission there still is hyper-competitive.

At Princeton, 12% of the new class is legacy. Ok, say you limit that to 8% or 5%. Would that make a meaningful difference? And aren't some of the legacy students non-white?

I'm not in a legacy situation, but if someone says, "Our family has been involved with this institution for generations, including significant financial investments. Why shouldn't that be considered in the admissions process?" it is hard to argue against that.

Those of Asian decent are absolutely descriminated in admission to the top schools and have long been the most screwed group. But they are not in the favor of those that control what is politically correct. 

Actually, if SAT scores are the measure of achievement (arguments of bias notwithstanding), then "test scores" have not been rising significantly over the past few years except for Asian American Students.  The scores below are the combined mean scores for the Critical Reading and Math sections sorted by ethnic group.  [ https://www.insidehighered.com... ]

Of course, some of this may be explained by the fact that as more members of a given group take the test (it is no longer only the "top" students taking the test) the mean score naturally tends to drop.  And, scores also are closely tied to SES and other factors.

As for college admission, the general status of the Supreme Court rulings (Michigan, Fisher) is that institutions (while the major court rulings have applied to public institutions, they are extended to private institutions via regulatory law) may consider race as a factor either to address identifiable and narrowly construed conditions of discrimination or to create the sort of student body thought to contribute to the learning experience of all students....as institutionally defined.  No quotas are allowed and race cannot be the sole factor in admission decisions.  The emerging challenge for colleges may be to demonstrate the benefits of diversity in the form of educational outcomes for all students.   No college can be required, at least by the current legal standards, to admit students strictly on the basis of GPA, SAT or some other factor.  

While the emphasis always seems to be on admission, the greater problem might be in completion rates. The percentage of African-American students who start a 4-year college as first-time freshmen and earn a bachelor’s degree within six years has hovered at about 41% for years.  For Whites, the 6-year college completion rate tends to run about 67/68% and for Asian-Americans it is about 69/70%.  The numbers are even more abysmal for 2-year colleges.  Getting students in the door is not the "end all, be all".  Our job is not done after the admission letters go out.

It's not about political correctness at all.  It's about the distribution of resources, wealth, and opportunity within a democratic society, where wealth correlates to power.  Lets say you can bench press more than me.  Are you entitled to more land, wives, chickens, food, and houses?  Seems arbitrary.  I score higher on a test then you.  Am I more deserving of the same spoils.  I've heard it say many times, if Cals state school system admitted solely based on test scores, virtually every school would be +80% asian.  Think of all the tax paying white families not gaining access to those fine state run institutions.  The horror.

The reason graduation classes look different from admissions classes is that you do no one a favor by having people attend schools they are not suited for just to achieve a politically correct balance. Thomas Sowell has written on this extensively. 

Gilgul said:

The reason graduation classes look different from admissions classes is that you do no one a favor by having people attend schools they are not suited for just to achieve a politically correct balance. Thomas Sowell has written on this extensively. 

Do you think colleges should take the top X% of scorers only?

They should pick the highest academic achievers who apply. Unless it is a specialized school like art or music. 

And then you have admissions bought outright, a la Jared Kushner's acceptance into Harvard...

Gilgul said:

They should pick the highest academic achievers who apply. Unless it is a specialized school like art or music. 

Among applicants to competitive colleges the range of academic achievement is as narrow as a the eye of a needle. Maybe 85% of applicants fit into that range and only 15% are outliers. IOW, there is no material difference in academic achievement among 85% of applicants to top colleges.

Besides, as Malcolm Gladwell says, there has to be the "happy bottom quarter." Check it out. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in

In a society that attempts to give all an equal opportunity, you have to counteract the luck of the draw in life somehow. No selection process is perfect, but there's no doubt that admissions must allow for the different life circumstances of its applicants if it wants to give all of society's children a chance at success.

Inevitably, if you change your admissions criteria, you're going to bounce people who would have been shoe-ins in another time. That makes them understandably bitter, but not justifiably so - they just assume that the past process was the just one, which makes the current process, which left them out, unjust. But I think they're wrong about that. The more just process is the current one.

Gilgul said:

They should pick the highest academic achievers who apply. Unless it is a specialized school like art or music. 

Why? Are colleges just about academics? 

Admissions criteria should be based on selecting those applicants that stand the best chance of graduating.  If a high percentage of students flunk out in their freshman year (in my freshman class 25% of entering freshmen flunked out at the end of freshman year), something is wrong with the selection process.  

Tests such as the ACT and SAT batteries measure only a portion of a student's readiness for college.  Part of the problem may be language skills, especially for those for whom English is not their primary language.  Cultural bias almost certainly enters into the written testing process as well. This may be why some colleges now give less weight to these test scores while others no longer require the tests at all. Colleges do try to get what they consider to be a "balanced" class, considering various factors, one of which may be race. Affirmative action has been in place in many U.S. colleges for a long time, resulting in reverse discrimination litigation.

There is no easy answer to resolving this problem if one focuses entirely on admission to an ivy league college. There  are other excellent colleges out there, enough to provide space for qualified candidates of all races who want to attend.  Raising the profile on these colleges could help make room for more students. The ivy league schools can only expand their freshman class by so much.

Another way of looking at the problem is the emphasis that is placed on getting a college education.  College is not the best option for everyone.  There are plenty of job opportunities that do not or need not require a four year degree or higher from a tier 1 university.  We need to place more emphasis on providing a good educational system for advanced study in these areas, either through dedicated specialty schools or work study/apprenticeship programs; and attaching more prestige to entering these fields.  

The reality at many schools, certainly the ivies and other 'elites', is that far greater numbers of well-qualified students apply than get accepted.  If, from among those qualified students, a school considers factors other than GPA and test scores to determine the admission decisions, I don't have a problem with that, although I hope that it is a variety of factors designed to produce a diverse student body rather than just legacies and big money donor children.  In fact, I think the overall result is almost always better for them having done so, although it might not advantage 'my' kid. 

And, anyway, if you spend any time at all in academia, you know that GPA comparisons between different high schools are far from 'apples to apples' and many of the most successful students are not the ones who came in with the highest test scores.

'Academic readiness' is not either of the top two reasons for dropping out of college. Finances is the #1 reason. 

So, maybe they should just stop accepting poor kids?

http://fortune.com/2016/03/08/...

We found that two strong predictors of attrition were financial need and a sense of social isolation. In other words, students struggling to cover tuition costs – sometimes with excessive borrowing – were more likely to drop out, as were students who felt detached and alone – those, for instance, who were not active in a club, sport, or academic group.

http://www.americaspromise.org...

What’s the most important indicator of whether or not a student will graduate from college? According to Vice Provost David Laude at the University of Austin (UT), it isn’t how hard a student studies or how well they did in high school.

Instead, the most important indicator of whether or not a student will graduate from college is largely out of his or her control: household income.

just look at who is behind this suit.  It will provide context. 

By which standards?  Grade point average? Class rank? SAT or ACT score? The best AP test scores?

xavier67 said:

Gilgul said:

They should pick the highest academic achievers who apply. Unless it is a specialized school like art or music. 

Why? Are colleges just about academics? 

Your info about CA schools is way out of date. It's illegal in CA to consider race in admissions to state schools and has been for awhile. Berkeley, the most competitive UC, fall admission profile is 42%+ Asian and about 24% white, 2.5% African American and 13% hispanic. 

GWebb said:

It's not about political correctness at all.  It's about the distribution of resources, wealth, and opportunity within a democratic society, where wealth correlates to power.  Lets say you can bench press more than me.  Are you entitled to more land, wives, chickens, food, and houses?  Seems arbitrary.  I score higher on a test then you.  Am I more deserving of the same spoils.  I've heard it say many times, if Cals state school system admitted solely based on test scores, virtually every school would be +80% asian.  Think of all the tax paying white families not gaining access to those fine state run institutions.  The horror.

 

Yes, but it's also kind of the point of the lawsuit. Asian population in the Ivies is closer to 20%. The suit against Harvard argues that because selective schools such as UC Berkeley are over 40%, the admissions decisions at places like Harvard (which do take into account race) discriminate against Asians.

Private universities generally argue that as long as their decisions do not rely on race alone, and instead on a variety of factors, and that they make an effort to have diverse student bodies, their decision-making is fair. And to date, the courts have supported them in that.

It's also illegal for public universities in the state of Michigan to consider race in admissions decisions. 

Essay question: Someone tells you that if California's public college systems admitted solely based on test scores, virtually every school would be at least 80 percent Asian. Given that roughly 750,000 students attend those schools, and that about 1,400,000 students of Asian descent attend colleges nationwide, how would you explain to that person, in 500 words or fewer, that his or her math was absurd?

Without knowing the number of Asian students in California, the question is not answerable.

DaveSchmidt said:

Essay question: Someone tells you that if California's public college systems admitted solely based on test scores, virtually every school would be at least 80 percent Asian. Given that roughly 750,000 students attend those schools, and that about 1,400,000 students of Asian descent attend colleges nationwide, how would you explain to that person, in 500 words or fewer, that his or her math was absurd?

drummerboy said:

Without knowing the number of Asian students in California, the question is not answerable.

Pssst. All you need to know is that 80 percent of 750,000 is 600,000. I'd say more, but I'm saving my words.

Well, it's not numerically impossible, is it? Suppose every Asian student lived in California?

The 80% number is foolish outside of the actual numbers involved.

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

Without knowing the number of Asian students in California, the question is not answerable.

Pssst. All you need to know is that 80 percent of 750,000 is 600,000. I'd say more, but I'm saving my words.

drummerboy said:

Well, it's not numerically impossible, is it? 

Who said impossible?

Suppose every Asian student lived in California?

That'd be absurd.