[1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics
Years ago I tried to counsel her parents into letting her do extra-curricular activities that did not fit the stereotypical Asian student profile, but they would not hear it. Piano it was, rather than sports or other non-academic work/volunteering. They did not understand that an Asian girl with a 4+ GPA and years of piano training was not going to get a fair shake when it came to college admissions.
Yeah, you might not get Berkeley, but an A+ student is guaranteed admission to a UC. The profile you describe is far better than the average student at UCR and would be quite competitive at Davis or Irvine.
Did something fall through here? Did she not even apply to a mid-tier "safety school"?
https://priceonomics.com/where-are-all-the-white-people-in-s....
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Demographics_of_San_Francisco#:~....
No Asians go big or go home. They yield to all schools that are prestigious regardless of race-neutrality because all of these school (on the surface) appear to be race neutral.
The most obvious criteria is: most likely to graduate.
Some others that aren't bad:
* Highest expected value of future donations
* Highest expected value of impact (publication)
* Highest expected value of future salary
* Highest expected value of holding public office (the weighting here might be contentious)
As long as all of the criterion are achievement based, I expect them to screen for roughly the same people, demographically.
This. This is the one. If you view everything Harvard does as supporting this goal, it all makes perfect sense.
You don't necessarily want the smartest kids. You want the kids that are most likely to go on to make the most money AND the kids who are most likely to have a strong emotional connection to the university so they write big checks.
Most likely to graduate is interesting. Almost everyone I know who didn’t graduate, it was due to finances. Purely academic reasons, at least anecdotally, seem relatively uncommon now.
That's probably true for the Ivy's since they get the cream of the crop.
The community colleges near me have a 25% 6 year graduation rate. I guarantee you that's not all due to finances.
1. I'm have yet to be convinced that Harvard is trying to maximize its benefit to society.
2. Even if we stipulate that Harvard's sole goal is to maximize its benefit to society, it may be that increasing the number of Jeff Deans or Jim Kellers, even by a small amount, is more beneficial to society than better educating a lot of average people.
... or it may not be. My point is that the approach you suggest is not obviously correct.
Well, it used to be, but it isn't any more now that they're rejecting standardized tests.
Perhaps, but sure as hell is better than race to qualify a candidate.
Harvard is a non-profit institute that seeks to create a diverse & successful that leave a mark on the world, which therefore upholds the eliteness of Harvard.
So exactly like Hollywood who has rightly or wrongly be heavily campaigned against because of discrimination, btw it is ironic but if you check the numbers white women are over represented same as black people, the 2 leading-voices among the minorities, its is Asian- Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Native Americans who are completely sidelined in that industry.
but who is implementing this, exactly, and on what agenda?
it's "harvard" the institution, the non-profit business.
instead of having a clear motive: making money, we have to guess what "diverse and successful" means.
does a powerful institution in our society owe us an explanation for this? maybe not.
There's definitely something else going on here.
In 1996 California passed prop 209 which banned affirmative action on the state level. All top UC schools have become majority asian despite California being less than 20% asian.
Now considering Harvard, there was a federal case brought against it since asians scoring higher marks than peers were being rejected.
Harvard's defense was that they were scoring lower, on average on "personality" scores -- a qualitative measure on admissions.
By contrast, african americans were scoring highest on these personality scores.
Ultimately, the case was won by Harvard since the intent was not determined to be pernicious.
It's no question Harvard artificially diversifies its student body, but affirmative action does come at a cost.