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Comment by _23sd | Hacker News Reader

I worry that "holistic" admissions in universities with highly competitive admissions are already disadvantaging groups that aren't culturally aligned with university administrators and their donors: Asian Americans, people from the South and rural areas regardless of race, and people brought up in religious households where most time spent on "extracurricular activities" is church-related. I personally think that people pushing against standardized tests and for holistic admissions have good intentions and aren't trying to systemically ensure that all students at prestigious and elite universities in the US talk, think, and act like them, but I can't blame anyone for thinking so. And I worry that will be the main result while the inequities they seek to fix will be obscured rather than improved.

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Indeed, I briefly mentioned my service work with my church in my interviews as a part of an overview of me; it led to some of my larger accomplishments I wanted to highlight. In most interviews, this resulted in me getting a look like I'd just grown a third eye. This after reading web pages full of smiling, multi-cultural faces that lectured me on just how diverse and open-minded students and alumni were at these universities. I'm a bit baffled; when did attending church become unusual in America?

> I'm a bit baffled; when did attending church become unusual in America?

It’s not. Even in Manhattan 45% of people attend religious services “frequently” or “regularly.”

It’s very unusual among the kind of people who staff the admissions departments of selective colleges though.

Harvard, The most elite school in USA, has a church in the center of campus, an official preacher, and a whole Divinity School.

https://harvardmagazine.com/2007/07/faculty-faith.html

37% of professors at elite universities are atheist or agnostic. Saying Harvard is friendly to the religious because it has a divinity school is like saying Stanford is a hotbed of the rightwing because of the Hoover Institution, except that you would expect a lot of atheists and agnostics at Harvard’s divinity school and no Marxists at Hoover.

Could both the Hoover institution and the divinity school be a signal that there are no communists on campus?

I sometimes wonder if the US is less secular than Europe because atheists were for a long time associated with communists. Church going people obviously couldn't be communists.

> when did attending church become unusual in America?

It’s not that common in elite liberal circles, especially in the NE corridor and California.

Note that some people in this group do go to church, but it’s just not widely advertised and is typically not a central part of their lives (e.g.(compared to some places where going to church for some sort of event 2-3 times on Sunday and 1-2 times during the week is a thing).

Also note that every Ivy League school was founded around a church and the church-based seminary/school. The same is true of many of the elite feeder prep schools. Note that there is a church prominently in the middle of all of the campuses.

That said, rightly or wrongly, churches are associated with anti-science folks who are anathema to most academics and academic types.

Reminds me of the nebulous catch-all “cultural fit” criteria that allows a company to justify not hiring someone who, while they measurably fit with the job, the company just doesn’t want to hire due to some feeling or unconscious bias they have. When you remove quantitative measurements, no matter how flawed the measurements are, you risk further dooming discriminated-against groups.

It's also a useful catch-all to reject candidates who, while they have the technical skills, would cause significant personality clashes within the team. I don't disagree that the "culture fit" criteria can be abused in the way you're describing, and I'm sure it is, but I think it's a little less black and white than you're describing.

> I personally think that people pushing against standardized tests and for holistic admissions have good intentions and aren't trying to systemically ensure that all students at prestigious and elite universities in the US talk, think, and act like them, but I can't blame anyone for thinking so.

I’m not sure I feel like giving the benefit of the doubt here. I think folks are acting in good faith, no doubt. But they have decided that everyone who doesn’t talk, think, and act like them is a danger to society. Where those people are white, they can be condemned as “deplorables.” Where those same views are shared by minorities (Asian Americans with respect to views on family and marriage, and meritocracy, black people with respect to views on religion, etc.) they just select figureheads that happen to agree with them and then have those people claim to speak for everyone non-white.

some ideas are dangerous to society, flat out. ie, "the institution of slavery was good because it's part of my cultural heritage".

University admissions are not just an issue of personal merit. It isn't something that you're owed because you did X, Y and Z. Colleges are trying to build a positive culture, just like startups, and that can involve rejecting skilled people with fringe beliefs.

Not to mention, who wants to pay $30,000/yr and have their kid be roommates with a holocaust denier?

People can believe whatever they want. They just can't work and go to school wherever they want

Can you link the academic, journalist, politician, author, or executive who made the argument you're quoting, that slavery is good?

yes it was a man named "ie". perhaps you've heard of him?

Did you just claim that Asian Americans are disadvantaged by UC admissions?

No, I referred to the broad category of "universities with highly competitive admissions". More of those are on the east coast than the west coast. California is a bit of an outlier in the US in both Asian American population and integration, so maybe UC is better and they'll be able to do away with standardized tests without hurting Asians too much. Anecdotally, though, people I know who grew up in California tend to think that UC lets in too many rich mainland Chinese and not enough from the large but poor and less integrated (vs. Vietnamese and Koreans) Filipino and Lao populations. Not sure how true that is, and I don't think UC records demographic info that granular, but as I mentioned the perception matters.

> Part of the Mare report -- obtained by Sander through an open-records request -- looks at applicants by race/ethnicity for several years, noting those who -- all other factors being equal -- would have been admitted based on standard criteria. Over a five-year period, he notes that more than 1,300 Asian American applicants in this group were denied admission, while black and Latino applicants were admitted.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/11/19...

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