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Comment by IvyAdmisions | Hacker News Reader

Agreed and for similar reasons imo, to guard against admiting too many students with no ambition beyond a comfy middle class lifestyle.

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What makes you think that? Stereotyping perhaps?

In the case of Jews, they can hardly be called unambitious given the number of writers and scientists they produced.

In the case of Asians, ambitious engineering, scientific and business persons do not seem to be short supply.

> What makes you think that? Stereotyping perhaps?

Look at the quasi racist stuff this guy wrote. He obviously doesn't like asians for some reason.

"Harvard and the other Ivies don't want to keep out asian people. They want to keep out boring, myopic applicants who spend all day studying to achieve the grades and scores they have and show little sign of interest in contributing to the outside world beyond getting a well-paying job as a lawyer or doctor and raising a family comfortably."

The guy claims to have been an admissions officer at an ivy league school. Doesn't seem likely.

I've had an admissions officer at MIT scream at me--handing out leaflets at a protest--that MIT "doesn't admit people like me any more." I think he meant to communicate that they were aiming at more complacent people who would participate on the rails--as admissions officers of his era imagined Millenials to be. "Whoops"

He's out of admissions and lecturing physics at U Kentucky now, which seems a fair result. But anyway, these groups hire bozos to do the low-tier work. The heads of admissions are usually fantastic, but the clerks are lower quality than average because of supply issues.

Just remember that the heads of admissions are the ones coming up with these policies (in tandem with other university leaders) and personally reviewing all the applicants in the end to make sure they're carried out.

I think he might have fit in at Dartmouth?

Fighting stereotypical prejudice with...a stereotype? Dartmouth is around the mean in Asian-American student body according to https://blog.collegevine.com/the-demographics-of-the-ivy-lea... .

"Not Asian" was not the stereotype invoked above.

17% < 19.6%, as if it matters.

Lots of downvotes. To clarify my point: The elite schools only want to admit so many future doctor/lawyer/engineers. Today, the way they limit those numbers hits asian applicants disproportionately hard. 80 years ago, jewish applicants were hit disproportionately hard. There was racism mixed in then as there is now, but having read a bit about those policies and experienced the current ones, I think the main thrust was the same: managing the large number of applicants looking for a ticket to the upper middle class.

You were downvoted probably because you could have stated it more tactfully. The real problem is that many Asian applicants tend to look similar on paper. There is a real problem among Asian families for hyper-optimizing on gaming the admissions system and overly trying to superficially hit all of the checkboxes for admissions (max out AP classes, start SAT test prep in middle school, play a musical instrument, etc.), instead of trying to raise well-rounded children with their own idiosyncratic interests and unique character.

If you have an admissions system that tries to select for uniqueness in addition to aptitude, it's going to naturally disfavor cookie-cutter applicants that do not attempt to differentiate or stand out from the crowd.

Uniqueness and well-roundedness are traits of privilege. The activities typically used to signal "uniqueness" for college admissions like philanthropy and political activism have roots in privilege. If you're not from a rich, well-connected white family, the best chance for success is through the typical tryhard, academic STEM path. You can't afford to be unique. You don't have cronyism or money to fall back on.

This does not hold up at all to scrutiny, because Harvard accepts many students that do not come from privileged backgrounds. In fact, their lack of privilege and the challenges they overcame are seen as very "unique" and favorable by the admissions committees.

Look up the income statistics. There are very few low income students at Harvard and similar "holistic" universities. It's a school for rich people.

MIT cares more about scores and STEM and MIT actually has around the lowest family income and lowest percent of rich people in the Ivy League tier.

If you want to limit the number of doctor/lawyer/engineers, why not filter the applicants based on what they intend to study rather than filtering based on race based on the idea that race is somehow correlated with field of study?

...Jews and Asians have no ambition beyond a comfy middle class lifestyle?

Is aiming for a middle class lifestyle ambitionless? Modern America is showing that it takes concentrates effort to maintain a middle class or it dissolves away

You forgot also needing enormous luck

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