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Comment by crimsonalucard | Hacker News Reader

>* Implicitly accepting the idea that SAT or ACT scores are the only metric on which students ought to be judged for making admissions decisions. (Okay they mentioned "extracurriculars" and I was amused by the Northwestern person who said recruiters were looking for people who played lacrosse and rowed crew. But all the data mentioned were based on test scores alone.)

What other metrics are you referring to besides academic performance? The color of the skin? Obviously not. But this sentence implies something else. It admits that asians deliver superior performance in terms of test scores but that there must be some other metric that causes Ivy leagues to dismiss them.

I would like to know what that metric is. What is the supposed metric that asians are inferior to other races at that causes their superior test scores to be completely dismissed? Do you know the answer? Can anyone else answer it?

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From the horse's mouth:

  “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]

[1] How to Get Into Harvard

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to-...

in other words, use unclear and vague criteria to judge admissions that just happen to massively disadvantage asian americans. it's strange that Faust is not condemned for her absurd and racist suggestion that asian american applicants are on average much less "interesting" people.

That's a rather pithy way to interpret what was said. Here's an alternate interpretation: be different from all the other applicants. If you have the same grades, the same extracurriculars, and the same things to talk about in an essay, you're not going to be different from everyone else and thus won't get in. And that's the nature of being different - you can't quantify it until you see it.

Having gone to a high-percentage Asian high school, I can tell you that traditional Asian parents mostly push their kids to do a limited set of things (high academic scores, orchestra, etc.), which can easily lead to a homogeneous pool of applicants.

Faust is saying that if you want your kid to get into Harvard, you should instead encourage them to do things that set them apart from the thousands of other smart kids applying. Build an airplane, climb a famous mountain, invent something, be a sailor, race sled dogs, etc. Those are the things that make an applicant stand out.

How many Latino or African American kids are different? How many "White" kids are standing out? All white kids seem the same is not an understatement.

the point is that holistic can be easily used as a cover for race based discrimination and that this is what is happening at harvard and elite universities. when you look at the quantitative disadvantage for asian applicants in terms of SAT/GPA, I think it's clear that homogeneity cannot explain this away. it's also a little absurd that they publicly place so much emphasis on diversity and "interesting" applicants when the actual student body of ivy league colleges is filled with bland wealthy strivers of all races.

the interpretation in your last paragraph is even worse in a way for faust and harvard: only children with the right parental financial resources and support would have been able to "Build an airplane, climb a famous mountain, invent something, be a sailor, race sled dogs" before the age of 18. it is also hard to see why an academic institution cares so much about such things.

The problem is that the SAT isn't a very interesting test, IMO, for college admission. It doesn't test achievement, but is closer to an IQ test. I think its reasonable for top-tier schools to create a cut-off, but once you score above a threshold, I don't think it provides much value.

And as another poster noted -- Asians are still greatly overrepresented at Harvard. Faust really is saying that Whites aren't interesting (Blacks are of about average interest as their numbers match the general population now).

"All these Asian applicants look the same..."

Seems to be her meta-message.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but 20% of those admitted were Asian American, for the class of 2019, in a country where less than 5%, self-identify as Asian-American.[1][2]

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

[1]

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to-...

[2]

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to-...

Yeah, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be more.

Harvard accepts students from all over the world. Over 50% of the world is Asian.

Only 12% of admitted students are from outside the US. Harvard clearly favors US applicants.

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

I'm not the one to defend Harvard, but an unestablished minority group only has so many opportunities so of course a lot of peoples resumes are going to look the same. That said, this is pretty much just traditional elitism. If your work harder than anyone else you'll still not get recognized because you're not claimed to be smart, cultured, pretty or interesting enough.

> If your work harder than anyone else you'll still not get recognized because you're not claimed to be smart, cultured, pretty or interesting enough.

Err, that's not at all what she said or even implied.

That's the point: they didn't work harder than anyone else applying to Harvard. They can't make decisions based on GPA/ACT/SAT scores, because everyone has the same top scores.

Hypothetically, and probably not that far off: So you have 10,000 applicants for a class of 2,000 and 8,000 of those applicants are valedictorians with extremely high SAT/ACT scores and they've managed to check all the regular boxes (played sports, instruments, etc.). How are you going to cull 6,000 applicants?

"All these Asians look the same..."

Another win for casual racism.

College admissions could really do with some sort of objective criteria. Because yeah, obviously human foibles always creep in.

> College admissions could really do with some sort of objective criteria

Like GPA and SAT/ACT scores? Because they tried that. Secondary education is too easy and variable in the US, and Harvard can't really do much about that.

How about Harvard specific entrance exams? I did extra exams for Cambridge.

>absurd and racist suggestion that asian american applicants are on average much less "interesting" people

Talk about putting words in one's mouth...

this follows directly from what she said.

Admissions offices curate the incoming class. In doing so, they have multiple objectives: maintain a high standard of intellectual ability and engagement, admit a heterogeneous student body so that people are exposed to others who are not like them, and preserve the particular character of the institution (a specific brandy of nerdy at Columbia/Chicago, the hacker ethos at MIT, etc).

An admitted class that's mostly homogeneous (in race, interests, gender, whatever) is just as much of a failure as an admitted class that's stupid.

The purpose of an elite college's admissions office is not to admit the top N students on some metrics, nor is elite college your "just reward" for being in the top N percent of your year on some metrics.

As with tech employment, there is an element of having the specialization an employer wants, an element of "culture fit," and an element of being able to do the song-and-dance that appeases the gatekeepers (the SAT is a lot like a coding interview).

As with dating, it's not "academic performance in, admissions out." The college has a personality too, and it has to like you.

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