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Comment by pkaye | Hacker News Reader

Factor parents income into the equation instead of race.

Even that would make little sense. Jeff Bezos' income is $0 (or maybe $1, can't remember) — you really think his kids would be disadvantaged tho? That just massively incentivizes financial trickery in order to reduce stated incomes.

For example if I were a parent I would just give all my money to my siblings with the understanding that they provide it to my kids under my management, state my income as $0 or even negative, and watch my kids' college acceptance letters roll in.

It's impossible to use finances as an admissions variable because finances are already so heavily gamed by modern accounting practices.

Meanwhile Harvard keeps being racist AF. Don't they know about Goodwins law!?!? Lol

Okay maybe combination of income and assets reported to the IRS for the past 5 years. Not perfect but it is better than current scheme that uses race.

Yes it's better but still so gameable it's essentially unusable. Also if you factor in assets reported to the IRS it would be damn near impossible not to be biased towards kids whose families have more assets and thus higher chances of contributing to your university's endowment via donations.

I guess it depends what the priorities are. Are they trying to increase the university endowment, increase diversity, teach bright students, run a winning college sports team, etc.

I Dunno dude we were talking about fairness in admissions and now you're talking about the goals of colleges. I agree different colleges have different goals. I'm just saying that taking finances into consideration is so gameable that it shouldn't be a factor in a fair admissions process.

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