Source for the "personality" language? In everything I've seen from US universities, they justify race-based admissions policies primarily with language about "diversity".
>One of the most striking revelations pertains to Harvard’s consideration of applicants’ soft skills—things like “likability,” “helpfulness,” “integrity,” and “courage”—in determining their acceptance. Despite boasting higher test scores, better grades, and stronger extracurricular resumes than applicants of any other racial group, Asian American applicants consistently received lower rankings on those personality traits, according to a statistical analysis conducted on behalf of SFFA of more than 160,000 student records. This emphasis on personality, the analysis concludes, significantly undermined otherwise-qualified Asian Americans’ chances of getting in.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/06/harvar...
The OP said Yale. I know they are both Ivy league schools but you can't just lump them together when you are accusing one of wrongdoing.
I totally agree, this reminded me of culture fit interview questions as well. I think the evidence is very strong that almost any subjective evaluation is going to devolve down to the evaluator picking whatever confirms their subjective biases, then coming up with ex post facto rationalizations.
Combining standardized tests along with bias-ridden subjective measurements may just be the best solution among lots of imperfect solutions. We try to address egregious abuses when we find them, but "fair" will always be a goal, not a destination.
In all seriousness it works well if you have a pool sufficiently quality homogenous but would tend towards the mean of the pool.
However it can help us evaluate who is able to perform in a higher learning environment and that they have the knowledge to study advanced degrees. I had 4 standardized tests in my educational career, 4th grade state test, 10th grade state test, ACT and GRE. Only 2 of those were non-repeatable. How many do students take these days?
As opposed to a generation of people highly optimized for a fuzzier metric that nevertheless exists. I know a bunch of graduates from elite universities who all just happened to be really into debate/mock trials/mock UN, competed at the national/international level at obscure sports, founded a school newspaper (we had five new school newspapers every year because everyone wanted to be a founder, few of them last once the founder graduates), "founded" a "business", etc in high school[1]. They're all in consulting/banking/law/ML now. Mildly obfuscating the metric doesn't actually make Goodhart's law go away, it just means you have to be in the right crowd to game the metric.
[1] I, on the other hand, actually liked maths and became one of your "highly optimized test takers". Funnily enough, all the elite American schools said no, while Oxford said yes. I am now a PhD student (in maths) at one of the elite American institutions that rejected me as a high school student.[2] If you have a scarce resource, and a system that distributes it, people are going to game the system. The trick is to have better tests so you can't study to the test without actually, you know, learning.
Take a look at the SAT (subject) math section. That's the test that should be distinguishing between the student that goes to Harvard and the student that "merely" goes to Georgia Tech. Obviously it can do no such thing, it's way too easy. This is by design. The American system does not want to distinguish between the top 3% and the 0.5%, because then Harvard would have to take the poor genius over the solidly talented but unexceptional rich legacy kid whose dad is worth billions and will donate tens of millions.
Now take a look at the MAT, the maths test that tells you if you'll be going to Oxford or Imperial. Or the STEP, the analogous test for Cambridge.
[2] Disclaimer: I may be a little bitter to this day. In my defence, I teach the wannabe consultants now, and while some of them are legitimately very competent, boy does the system have false positives.
Everything else is just a new set of rules to game.
* edit: typo on mobile :)
I feel like you're expecting some sort of clear stack ranking of students. Even if you take tests at face value, do you accept the student who aces math but bombs literature, or the student who is merely above average in both? See also: computer science, chemistry, biology, physics, history, physical fitness, social sciences, languages, music, art...
We have examples of test-regime-driven educational advancement in Asia. From what I've read, it doesn't seem very appealing to me, either as a student or as a parent.
This is the kind of tradeoff I'd be happy to see colleges worried about. Complicating the fact is that US universities generally don't expect students to be set on a specific major while European ones do, making the US problem a bit harder. But I don't think this is what US unis are trading off on. I think they're trading off merit for parental wealth + future wealth (which is greatly effected by parental wealth).
Re: your comment about different unis with different criteria, I'd be a lot less worried if the diversity was evenly distributed geographically. I had the privilege of being able to choose from multiple countries. For the vast majority of high school students, studying abroad is not an option.
"US unis" don't seem like a homogenous block to me. But then, I went to a state school and received a fantastic CSc education that I would not trade for ivy league at any price. I've also interviewed/hired countless people and never even noticed what school they came from. I guess the policies of Yale don't bother me that much either way.
They were such classic Oxbridge style questions, sure you can probably game them but as you say, once you've done the graft to game those types of questions, you're pretty much qualified to be there because the rest of your degree will just be more of the same.
That's why I don't like standard tests. When I was studying, entrance exams were oral. You were given three problems (chosen at random), had some time to solve them, then presented your solutions to the examiner. Examiner would then ask follow-up questions.
There is no way to prepare for such test other than to learn the subject. No multiple-choice questions you can Kaplan.
It is simply wrong to evaluate and condemn a person based on race. To justify any kind of discrimination on the idea that you are helping one person, you are hurting another. This an equally problematic, it’s taking us back to times before equal rights and for people to be judged on their abilities.
Hoping a brilliant student will apply to a university twice and deepfake their race in one of their admission interview videos.
Why don’t we prefer hard working students or students that played the most sports? There’s nothing inherently special about being a good student.
When I buy elite golf clubs, it means the clubs are elite not other people who buy it are.
Now you can argue part of the reason to attend college is because of your classmates. And then I’d ask is the best experience a bunch of kids who are simply good at school?
"boasting higher test scores, better grades, and stronger extracurricular resumes than applicants of any other racial group, Asian American applicants consistently received lower rankings on those personality traits"
The outcome was to move the bar to soft skills:
things like “likability,” “helpfulness,” “integrity,” and “courage”
This has happened to minority groups of all backgrounds in this country since its inception.
Even the whole argument about success rates of assimilation aside, this doesn't seem to check out.
How does this whole "assimilation doesn't work" argument even flow from the statement? Asian Americans referenced were all born in the US, grew up here, went through the education system here, etc. There is nowhere they need to assimilate to, they were born Americans and grew up here. This is their primary culture, not that of a country where their ancestors were born.
I am leaving a big possibility that I completely misunderstood your comment, so please correct me if my interpretation of it was incorrect.
I am glad I studied in France, where admission to elite schools is based purely on objective entrance exams (emphasis on Math). It’s not a perfect system, rich parents can afford tutors and teachers can tutor their kids, but it’s a hella fairer than the system in the US, corrupted by legacy admissions, sports scholarships and racial quotas that purposefully ignore socioeconomic disparity, because it’s easier for the powers-that-be to throw poor rural white kids under the bus than something that might adversely impact their own children.
I've heard the claim that the SAT is biased against lower SES for a while now, but more on the left than the right, and I've never heard "most" biased.
I don't see any evidence either that most people believe that or that it's true.
I personally find it more likely that high school grades and extracurriculars are probably the most biased portions (grades because a large portion of them usually depends on assignments with loose grading rubrics, which are empirically linked to greater racial and other bias for otherwise similar responses, and extracurriculars because both access and evaluation of them is impacted by cultural factors of both the student, the evaluators, and other members of society.
Determined by who?
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ, along with the UC system’s chief academic officer, Provost Michael Brown, said Friday that research has convinced them that performance on the tests is so strongly influenced by family income, parents’ education and race...
> UC should keep SAT and ACT as admission requirements, faculty report says
> University of California faculty leaders are recommending the continued use of the controversial SAT and ACT as an admission requirement for now, citing UC data showing the standardized tests may actually help boost enrollment of disadvantaged students, according to a highly anticipated report released Monday
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-03/uc-shoul...
"The new yearlong faculty review found evidence that most UC admissions officers offset much of the bias against disadvantaged students by evaluating standardized test scores in the context of their high schools and neighborhoods."
"Among students with SAT scores of 1000 — the 40th percentile — half of Latinos were admitted compared to less than one-third of whites."
https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/print/land...
When I was in university I remember being somewhat intimidated by the asian students because I knew that while other white students had an even chance of being smarter or dumber than me, the asian ones were all probably smarter than me just to get in.