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Comment by m0zg | Hacker News Reader

> ability to "shape" the incoming class

Also known today as racial discrimination where Asians are heavily downweighted, similar to how Jews were downweighted 40-50 years ago. Then again when Columbia rejected Richard Feynman because he was a Jew, it put a permanent stain on their reputation, and Feynman did all right anyway. I'm pretty sure smart kids will do all right, Ivy League or no Ivy League.

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There are plenty of elite schools outside the Ivy League which do not discriminate against Asian students. The aforementioned Berkeley, for example, had only 21% incoming white freshmen in 2019 but 17% incoming Chinese freshmen [1]. This is particularly striking given that only 1.3% of US residents are Chinese-Americans [2]. You’ll find a similar story for the representation of other Asian and south Asian freshmen at Berkeley.

[1] https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Americans

California law prohibits Berkeley from applying discriminatory racial preferences. It's my understanding that, with a handful of exceptions, almost all elite schools which are allowed to discriminate do so.

And there's a ballot measure in November that would allow Berkeley to discriminate based on race again.

Harvard isn't trying to pump out just academics or engineers, lawyers and doctors. They want to pump out prominent businessmen, politicians, activists, fields like these have a looser correlation to raw technical ability and can't really be measured by sat scores or GPA

> fields like these have a looser correlation to raw technical ability

Citation needed.

You think George Bush or Donald Trump got a 1600 on the SAT, valedictorian of their high school, and/or play the violin at a high level?

No, but they aren't really the examples of excellence you're looking for. :-)

They're not fucking nerds, no.

but skin color can measure it?

in some cases a most definite YES. America is not some post racial utopia, we are far away from Asians having prominence in politics or social life.

This could be because politics sucks and pay is low, so successful lawyer/doctor Asians do not want to participate in it.

One of the leading candidates in the DNC was Asian, this is about forced diversity from woke-ism

With respect, no. This lens misunderstands both the "admissions" process, the larger goals a given Uni has, and charter they operate under. In practice at the Uni level a much more significant amount of filtering is done through aid packages.

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