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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

He was privileged to be a black man since this drastically improved his odds of getting into Princeton. It's not anywhere near as much of an achievement as you are making it out to be.

As of 2006, between 2/3 and 5/6 of black students in the top 25 schools are there only due to race.

http://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html

So with high probability, it wasn't that much of an achievement to get into Princeton.

It's certainly far less of an achievement than it would have been if he were Asian.

(If anyone has more current numbers I'd love to see them. I've seen more recent numbers on state schools, which suggest 23% of blacks are only there due to race. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-what-happens-when... But nothing at the ivy level.)

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11904014 and marked it off-topic.

I don't think we need another litigation of Ivy admissions (and affirmative action), posted as commentary on a particular person's story. When you make statements like "it wasn't that much of an achievement to get into Princeton" and "It's certainly far less of an achievement than it would have been if he were Asian", you're inevitably putting that person down, and that's not right. Your unspoken assumption—that all other things are equal and history began the day they applied to Princeton—is facile to begin with, but particularly uncharitable when applied to someone's life.

Dang, the guy who wrote the article characterizes his success as luck. I'm agreeing with him and pointing out the fallaciousness of a claim that he's wrong. How is that off-topic?

Imagine someone cited the fact that I've worked for American companies as evidence of my skill and accomplishment. Under some circumstances, this very easily could be evidence of that. To work for American companies, some people need to bust their ass hard until 12th standard to get into IIT, get top marks at IIT, demonstrate kickass skills to companies 12,000 miles away and get one of them to sponsor the visa. That surely is an accomplishment.

But actually I just happened to be born on the right side of an arbitrary border.

And if someone were to cite my work for American companies as accomplishment, where I claimed it was merely luck, it would be perfectly valid to point out my US citizenship and how that helps me.

I feel like you are simply objecting to my mood affiliation, and perhaps trying to make HN seem more welcoming to people who wish we didn't point out true facts like this.

> He was privileged to be a black man since this drastically improved his odds of getting into Princeton.

His guidance counselor pretty much knew this and the article spelled it out...

> She thought that my math and science scores made me a good candidate, as did the fact that I was an African American male — something which we all know the engineering world is lacking.

> The strategy worked.

>As of 2006, between 2/3 and 5/6 of black students in the top 25 schools are there only due to race.

Thats a pretty bold claim that assumes

1. Any minority at Princeton falls neatly into that trend, and isn't simply an outlier.

2. Princeton & Ivies weigh SAT scores significantly as part of the admissions process.

3. Princeton & Ivies use raw objective performance as the primary basis for acceptance.

If 2 & 3 were true, you wouldn't see as much pressure for students to play 3 sports, 9 instruments, and have 300 other extra-currics to remain competitive for those spots. Anyone who believes that they just rank applicants by SAT scores and take the top N is a little bit delusional.

At the Ivies, you've got piles of white and Asian kids with perfect scores on the SAT, 4.0+ GPAs, etc. So you've got to do something to separate yourself from that herd in some way or another that catches the eye of somebody in the admissions office or otherwise ticks enough boxes on whatever rubric they are using this week.

Competition for some of these places is completely insane. I remember the campus newspaper publishing admissions statistics and it was something like 8-9% of applications were accepted, at one of the smaller and less well-known ones. Of those, you have a few dozen with the same last names as buildings on campus, a couple hundred international students paying every dime, and maybe another hundred recruited athletes. They could admit an entire class of high school valedictorians and salutatorians if they felt like it.

So 2/3-5/6 of black students at the top 25 schools are outliers? Or black students are wildly disproportionately likely to play 3 sports, 9 instruments and have 300 extra-currics?

I'd love to see data supporting this claim.

That sure goes against stereotypes, which suggest it's mainly Asian students who do that.

>So 2/3-5/6 of black students at the top 25 schools are outliers?

Princeton's total undergrad class size is about 2000 of which 7% identified as African-America (2000 * 7% * 25=3500). BLS says that was from a pool of 2.2MM students. (Assuming even population distribution of 13% African-American=286000).

So of the potential 286000 African American students every year, 3500 are going to top 25 schools - which is 1.2%. Is it far fetched to assume that the top 1% of Black students are outliers (to your "study")?

Keep in mind Asians are 5% of the American population, but make up 22% of Princeton's undergrad class. To me - it just looks like you are grasping at straws to make this conclusion. Basic statistics overwhelmingly backs up your "stereotype". To imply the admissions officers are giving minorities a whopping 80% preference to minorities, based of the data, shows that admissions officers are either incredibly incompetent at giving preferential treatment to minorities, or you are just talking out of your ass.

Lets go with your 3500 number. In 2006, 976 blacks scored above 700 in SAT math, and 1117 scored above 700 in SAT verbal.

1117 is a lot smaller than 3500. (Or the 3000 number the study uses.)

(Note: 1400 SAT, or whatever that translates to on the current 2400 pt test, is table stakes for getting into a top 25 school.)

I don't know why you put "study" in quotes - do you consider the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education to somehow be an "illegitimate" source?

To imply the admissions officers are giving minorities a whopping 80% preference to minorities, based of the data, shows that admissions officers are either incredibly incompetent at giving preferential treatment to minorities, or you are just talking out of your ass.

I don't understand. If you take 1200 qualified black students and turn them into 3000 enrollees, how is that not a highly successful preferential treatment program?

Similarly, the relevant comparison when looking at Asians is not what percentage of the American population they make up. A more relevant comparison would be what percentage of the top students are Asian. I can't find top scores, but a quick google search suggests Asians do in fact outperform everyone else on average.

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171

Is your implication that he was at Princeton only due to his race? Can you prove that?

Otherwise, this seems gratuitously negative and irrelevant.

Obviously if I'm claiming a 66-83% chance of something, I'm not claiming to have "proof". I'm simply claiming that it's more likely than not.

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