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> Every private University recruits from their "tribe" whether it is 'quirky' at Reed or 'cosmopolitan' at Harvard, while not discriminating on race, religion, Etc they do pick people who create a community "like them".

This is about building generations and generations worth of brand loyalty, as far as I can tell

>while not discriminating on race

Affirmative action IS discrimination on race. AFAIK Harvard has been sued because of that not too long ago - I don't know the outcome though.

Not necessarily, if hypothetically silver people make up 20% of the population, but due to cultural bias in testing they make up 10% of the student body you could correct for that bias without discriminating.

For an actual example, rich people tend to look better on Harvard applications, but preform worse at Harvard than poor people. Adjusting for a bias in the application process would not be discrimination based on income.

If you strongly feel that affirmative action is wrong then the best way to end it is to end racial segregation in housing and K-12 education. When colleges see that all kids are getting the same opportunities they will end their programs to correct for that societal flaw. It seems very shortsighted to think that displacing affirmative action students is the best way to improve our society or that not getting into Harvard will take something from you that you deserve or need.

> I think Harvard would still reject him, he doesn't seem to fit in with what a "Harvard Man" is.

I disagree for a simple reason- suppose Harvard could go back in time and reject Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, or Stanford could reject Sergey Brin and Larry Page- do you think they would?

Of course not, even though you'd be hard-pressed to suggest that they were great fits for their programs since they dropped out after their first year. The reason is that unicorn students like that give those schools a huge amount of mystique, not to mention press, which adds a lot more to their image than most doctors, lawyers, or consultants could.

> Of course not, even though you'd be hard-pressed to suggest that they were great fits for their programs since they dropped out after their first year.

Bill Gates was just a semester shy of graduating and even published a paper in his junior year at Harvard. There are many many Stanford graduate students who take leave of absences to work on entrepreneurship -- Larry and Sergey just were wildly successful with theirs. Both Larry and Sergey got their Masters degrees. I'd chalk up neither case to a bad fit nor did they drop out after 1 year.

And Zuckerberg? Jobs? Ellison? Dell? If you think that elite schools wouldn't want one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful entrepreneurs on their list of alumni instead of another lawyer or investment banker even if they knew they were not a "great fit," you put more stock in the principles of admissions committees than I.

The reality is pretty simple. The Harvard's and Stanford's of the world put out an enormous number of hugely successful graduates because of selectivity bias. If you pool a group of 10,000 eager 18 year-olds with high standardized test scores from top high schools and mostly from privileged and wealthy families and compare that to a pool of 10,000 18 year-olds with average test scores and from average backgrounds, and pick one at random, which is more likely to be successful in their career?

The point being that if Harvard could pick their classes with the benefit of hindsight, my opinion is that that they would take a lot of students that they would otherwise turn down in place of a lot of others that they would otherwise accept.

Zuck started his business at Harvard with Harvard cofounders and harvard content and later Harvard employees.

Jobs credited Reed classes for inspiring the beauty and font quality that made Mac a standout.

They were great fits for their school, they just didn't need he arbtirary 4-year degree.

I don't know about the others.

Um that's like saying the founders of Intel were a great fit for Fairchild Semiconductor because they all met there. Just because their schools created an extremely fortuitous environment for meeting cofounders does not mean that that's the reason the schools admitted them, and to suggest such is absurd. Jobs wasn't even enrolled at Reed when he took those classes, as has been well-documented.

I don't know about Gates but Larry Page went to UMich for his undergrad degree and Sergey to the University of Maryland. Both had excellent academic track records when they applied to Stanford and Stanford's engineering graduate program seems to be filled with people like that (STEM undergrad, some technical projects or notable activity, entrepreneur tendencies ...) So in general I think they would have gotten in (and fit in).

I went to harvard. In freshman orientation, we were told that harvard doesn't "admit" mistakes. But obviously they do; a small percentage of students are mentally ill for example. My freshman roommate was one of them.

Another interesting orientation tip mentioned was that harvard accepts the top 10% of high school students but 90% of them won't be in the top 10% at harvard. The take away is that students need to stop their obsession with ranking and figure out how to be successful anyway.

They are definitely "Harvard Type" students (and not just in terms of wealth) but I think 30% or so of the Harvard students don't fit that stereotype and I don't see why Ma wouldn't have done well. Harvard classes aren't any different from classes at any other good school. I understand the obsession with going to Harvard (it is a fashion statement) but you aren't missing anything. Having Harvard on your resume will move it to the top of the pile but you still need to be impressive and few schools teach that or any of the things that Jack mentioned in the interview.

Mentally ill students are "mistakes"?

Clearly someone needs to tell Princeton that accepting John Nash was a mistake

I heard claims that Ivies were analyzing the living hell out of alumni donation probabilities... and Asians flunked.

Also, I think Ron Unz claimed empirical evidence for anti-Asian discrimination.

That looks different if Asians are greatly over-represented in their applications.

What are you basing this analysis on?

> he would have been fine at MIT I suspect

Why? Because he is Asian and must be good with numbers?

Chuck, what you describe, does indeed exist in American universities, but it is a discrimination. We should fight such atrocities.

Not at all, because everything I read about him suggests he is a focused problem solver. Someone who meets challenges with creative solutions out of the stuff he has on hand versus someone going back and doing a lot of set up research and then testing phases and then development. Many of the folks I've met from MIT fit that same model, basically uniting around solving complex problems.

I was thinking the same thing. The speed at which parent jumped to that conclusion made me think he was the discriminating one, not you.

I guess I should've put /s at the end of the first statement/question. I meant we shouldn't judge by stereotypes - I'm glad Chuck meant a different thing... at that level though.

MIT is actually more diverse than Harvard. In the past several years, it's been >10% international. Both schools have about the same percentage of Asian students.

Harvard: https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

MIT: http://web.mit.edu/ir/pop/students/diversity.html

Natural diversity is good of course, but we've heard some horrible stories regarding forced diversity (race, gender, ...) - preferring A over B only because B's race quota has been filled...