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Comment by puredemo | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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