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Comment by eweise | Hacker News Reader

As someone currently helping my son fill out college applications, I find this article 100% on point. For one public college, there are only two essay questions and they both deal with diversity. How does a white middle class male answer? He has an incredible fascination with weather and wants to pursue that as a major. Does he emphasize this aspect since it sets him apart from other applicants. Logically, that would be the right choice. But we know the university really is filtering out people like my son, so we will probably talk about his ancestor's immigration story and how that has affected his worldview, blah, blah blah.

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> How does a white middle class male answer?

Someone close to me hired a writer to pen a woke entrance essay for their son. This was after a guidance counselor warned that "people like him" are having a hard time getting into medical school right now. We can't say if it worked or not, but he did get in.

A couple questions, since you're here:

• were you asked to write an essay that took an aspect of his life and portrayed it from a woke perspective, or were you asked to fabricate an essay from whole cloth?

• why do you think your friend asked you to write the essay? Was it based on your race/sex/etc., or are you an expert in the field based on your occupation?

• have you given any thought to the consequences of writing essays like this for applicants? Do you think the ethics of writing these essays differs from the ethics of writing entrance essays in general (where this essay signals ideological alignment in addition to competence, if well-written)?

> How does a white middle class male answer?

Diversity doesn't only mean race. It can mean cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints. It can mean creative vs. analytic thinkers, artistic vs. not, leadership, extroversion, unusual contributions to society, and so on. If you're a physics expert in a team of math experts, you add diversity.

That’s true but it’s not what they actually mean when they say “diversity” so all of this should be left out of the essay.

Not true.

Take University of Washington for example. They ask for a "diversity essay". They define diversity as "diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints." [1]

[1] https://admit.washington.edu/apply/freshman/how-to-apply/wri...

Yep they do. Wonder what the chances are for someone writing about their conservative viewpoint as opposed to the applicant writing about their struggles growing up in a racially segregated neighborhood?

> Wonder what the chances are for someone writing about their conservative viewpoint...

I'd imagine it is about the same! Why? Because they don't really care about the essays.

Applications are not reviewed by "admissions people". They hire temporary workers (grad students, retirees etc) to review applications, and give them 8min per application. And that's for the whole application, and they have barely any time to read your essay. See story about UW, which I am referencing here [1].

The reason for making you write essays is just to obfuscate the reason you were denied admission.

[1] https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/a-look-inside-admis...

> Diversity doesn't only mean race.

Yes it does. It's an imperialist code-word for state sanctioned racism against the majority population of the proletariat in order to pit the proletariat against itself. Absolutely no one is fooled.

I don't think that's the case. Name a university where they ask for diversity essays in order to reduce the percentage of whites. The reverse is often true. For example, many universities use it to control asian population.

Well, same thing really. They are asking a general diversity question in order to get more info about your cultural background.

Ah, so it's not racist because it only discriminates against the non-majority portion of the proletariat. How very bougie of you. The fact that you don't see that as a problem tells me all I need to know.

I didn't say it is not racist, and I didn't say it is not a problem.

Public universities, especially, must use objective criteria. Students need to be able to control their own destiny through hard work. That's a basic principle of fairness that should apply in this land of opportunity. No "shaping" of the student body by universities that receive funding from taxpayers, because that is unfair to students. Imagine being denied admission by the only good public university in your state, not because your grades or test scores are not good enough, but because you didn't fit in whatever "shape" the university decided is appropriate for that year!

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