Ivy League US Ratio Mean SAT score [1]
Jewish 17.2% 2.4% 7.16 n/a
Asian 19.6% 5.3% 3.71 1216
White (incl. Jewish) 50.3% 61.5% 0.82 1148
Hispanic 11.4% 17.6% 0.65 1043
Black 7.8% 12.7% 0.61 966
White (non-Jewish) 33.1% 59.1% 0.56 ~1141 (lower estimate)
[1] https://www.ednc.org/eraceing-inequities-the-influence-of-ra...
In other words, WASPs have a positive view of Jews, while Jews have a very negative view of WASPs.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/07/16/how-american... 2nd table
In fact, no country has a more positive view of Jews than the US (at least among those polled by Pew research): https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2008/09/17/chapter-1-view... - 2nd graph
But this sampled all US residents, not just WASPs.
On the other hand, Ivy League students are only 33% non-Jewish white, and 4-5 of the 8 presidents are Jewish, per their wikipedia pages (Martha Pollack is listed as Jewish, but the citations in support of that claim are ambiguous, hence the uncertainty), so what makes you think that admissions are the exception where WASPs reign?
Jews and Asians are overrepresented because they give the hard signal. Some absurd double-digit number of Asian students at Harvard have a perfect SAT score.
What's taking assessment tests out of that picture likely to do to the percentage?
It's not more WASPs, there are exactly twenty of those matriculating per year and they all drink blood out of a skull†. It's less Asians and more, heartfelt college essays about: you can fill that in, I'm sure.
†I'm not actually blood-libeling WASPs, something about how conversations have gone here recently compels me to point this out. Remember the 2004 election? Me neither.
That is why I included the SAT score in the table. Non-Jewish whites don't benefit from a higher score - they get admitted at approximately the same rates as Hispanic and Black students, despite 100-180 points higher mean SAT scores.
On the other hand, the smaller, 70 point lead of Asians gives a 6.6x higher admission rate, and the unknown lead of Jewish students a 12.8x higher admission rate. Strange, isn't it?
If you do, you probably did ok on the SAT.
Certainly not by the normal normal distribution - unless there were truly dramatic differences in the standard deviation. Do you have any evidence that there are, and are in the correct direction for your argument?
Or you could look at e.g. Harvard's own documents and see that they required higher SAT scores for whites, and highest for Asians [1]. Of course they do not count Jews separately in those figures.
[1] https://www.thecrimson.com/widget/2018/10/21/sat-by-race-gra...
Moreover, you are talking about "admission rate" which you haven't clearly defined.
Also, the normal distribution is a law of averages - that does not apply here. You have to use the actual distribution of data, not the normal distribution of averages.
If you want to make a proper statistical argument you must have the acceptance ratio at a given college for every race for a particular SAT score (say a SAT score of 1250) Any other data is just muddling signal with noise.
In fact, the paper that you linked does just that
https://www.ednc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Screenshot-2...
The darker bar graph us what needs to be used.
Asians most discriminated. Whites and Pacific islanders a distant second. Hispanics and multiracial follow closely at 3rd position. Blacks benefit the most, but given that the number of students in each ethnicity is not specified then the discrimination level is unclear.
If there are very few Asian students and plenty of black students, whites can be experiencing discrimination. However, if there are lots of Asians and very few black students, then whites are beneficiaries!
They could have used the average as a zero control, but they used whites, which means that definitive statements can only be made about black and Asian students!
Because each university belongs to the whole world, and none were founded to serve their country.
Besides, the idea that you have to be wealthy to avail yourself of test prep is absurd. I buy books at the thrift store all the time, and there are always test prep books there for a couple dollars. The local public library has them for free. yootoob is loaded with test prep videos. There are no excuses.
If you want to prep for the test,
1. read lots of books meant for adults
2. pay attention in math class
Why? Prior to test prep I was solving the problems as I was taught in calculus. Deriving equations. The test prep re-inforced memorizing key formulas and how to think not about solving the problem but eliminating options and determining when it's faster to validate if a given answer is correct.
SAT test prep does work. Similar to how FANG interview prep also works.
> not about solving the problem but eliminating options and determining when it's faster to validate if a given answer is correct
Those skills are not specific to test taking, they are general problem solving skills. You'll use them all the time in industry.
BTW, I picked up an SAT vocabulary prep book to see what was in it. I knew nearly all the words. That's simply from reading a lot. I kinda doubt that memorizing words from a vocabulary book is going to help. The SAT prep book had "hundreds" of words in it. The typical high school graduate has a vocabulary of 10,000 words, for college graduates it's 30,000 words. Hundreds of words isn't going to make much difference. Besides, memorizing words is not the same as organically learning them from routinely encountering them.
The TV vocabulary is 3,000 words if I recall correctly. That's right, TV is dumbed down. (On the other hand, that means one can learn a foreign language by only learning 3,000 words!)
I don't agree that math classes are enough because teachers do vary, some sucks, some are great, but also at the end of the day they have to teach whole class, not just you, meanwhile maths on youtube runs at your pace
This is a worthless distinction, that is correct only on an irrelevant technically.
The point being, that when people prepare for the test, they get better scores.
Yes, there are multiple ways to prepare for a test. But preparing is a good thing, regardless of what you call it, or if you are saying that regular math class also covers it.
You'd also be wrong here. Let me give you a simple example, that might not be immediately apparent to someone who doesn't know the rules of these tests.
At one point in time, on some tests, there was a "guessing penalty" for getting a wrong answer.
Having a basic understanding of how that works, and different guessing strategies, can increase your score.
EX: questions like should you guess? Should you rule out answers, and guess on the remaining?
There are even other things to think about, such as one's strategy for how long to spend on a question, and if/when you should give up on that one.
A person not experienced in test taking, might make a mistake of spending too much time on one single question, for example, when instead it could make more sense to skim the test first, for easy questions, and answer those first, so you don't run out of time and miss easy points.
Just learning the material doesn't automatically prevent you from making this mistake.
As the book said, it wasn't a guessing penalty, it was a guessing-wrong penalty. They told you it was a guessing penalty to scare you into not guessing.
The penalty was a quarter point. Most questions had four options. So it was already an expected zero points on average, not a penalty, and if you could eliminate a single answer it was a net positive to guess.
1. Read the rules of the tests. Come on! Does one really need handholding with this?
2. Understanding the probability of success at guessing based on how many of the answers you can eliminate is trivial probability, which goes back to my advice to pay attention in math class.
3. "how long to spend on a question" I'm laughing/crying now. It's third grade arithmetic to figure out the time per question. You know, number of minutes for the test divided by the number of questions. Of course skim the test picking off the easy ones then the medium ones and save the hard ones for last. This is just common sense.
If this is what test prep is, things are much worse than I thought. Who needs to be told that reading the instructions is a strategy for doing well on the test? My gawd.
For some tests, that's not the right approach. Going in order may be a bad idea. Actually trying to immediately solve the problems may be a bad idea. For example, it may be more efficient to check the units of all the multiple-choice answers first, to see if there's only one that's possibly correct.
You could try to figure out the best strategy during the test, but it's far more effective to learn these things before the test.
If you've already done a dozen practice tests, you'll know what kinds of methods there are to quickly eliminate incorrect multiple-choice answers. You'll know, say, that there are fundamentally 8 types of problems, and you'll be able to skim the test and immediately recognize which problems call into which categories.
This is why people who do test prep get higher scores.
That doesn't mean that we should throw out standardized tests, but it is silly to deny that test prep helps (a lot).
And yet despite your incredulous, fake outrage, the stats simply show that test prep helps people significantly.
If you really want more reasons, read the other response that DiogenesKynikos gave to you in the post.
My problem is with you make false statements here. Be as mad as you want about the fake that test prep helps a lot of people, significantly, but do not make false claims, and ignore the fact that the stats show that it works.
Because gaming the test works, as the stats prove. And these tests are very important for college admissions.
There is no reason to handicap one's self, just because someone from the peanut gallery is yelling in incredulous outrage.
I don't see how spending more time on memorizing formulas instead of actually understanding formulas, deriving them, and going above and beyond the high school curriculum would be a deficiency, and you would definitely be penalised in the SAT with such an approach over an objectively worse education where students are exposed to less math and more memorization. There is objectively no value to memorizing what amounts to trivia that you will then immediately forget.
That is to say, I strongly disagree that SAT prep is actually going to be just making you a better student, and we seem to both agree that it is strongly correlated to SAT score, while using such prep is correlated to SES.
It worked for me, too, though I already had a high score, and wanted to see if I could get it even higher. (It worked; I did.)
That's great that you managed to develop SAT-ready vocabulary and math techniques on your own before taking the test. Many, many people don't, and test prep can help fill that gap, not only in their knowledge, but in strategies that work well for the test itself. And that last bit was probably what helped most for me: I, too, had a solid vocabulary (I read a lot growing up), and I never had trouble acing my math classes. But understanding how the test itself worked was helpful too, and netted me a nearly-perfect score.
It's pretty irrefutable that this can work; not sure why this is the hill you've decided to die on.
Preparation absolutely did help. I didn't develop any new generally-applicable skills, but I did:
1. Practice the style of essays these tests require.
2. Improve my speed at spotting specific types of incorrect answers.
3. Learn a few grammatical rules that were different from the way I learned English growing up. (It was a long time ago, and sadly I don't remember the specifics.)
Not quite. You have assumed that money is the only barrier, but that is not the case.
Arguing that "test prep is free - or nearly free - so anyone must be able to prep", doesn't account for the fact that both money and time are barriers to test prep.
What if you have no time prep because you must support your family through work? You have no free time to prep - or do any extracurricular - because you have a job. This is not uncommon! Or you have a parent or guardian who is incapacitated in some way and you must act as their care-giver? Again, not uncommon.
It's very uncommon for minor children to have to act as caregivers for their parents.
BTW, admissions officers do look for diamond-in-the-rough applicants. Those whose test scores are lower, but have a solid reason for why. An example could be a significant accomplishment at their job.
There’s a very obvious correlation between the SATs de-emphasizing essays (~2000-2005ish) and Asians absolutely blasting past Whites in terms of average SAT score.
You are making a nuanced argument for sure then. But the Students for Fair Admissions have explicitly made the case that whites are given an advantage that takes Asian seats at Harvard via the children of faculty admissions, donations, essays, athletics, etc. But this discounts donations from certain foreign governments and I think it creates a misconception about the average white student there and pressures Harvard to specifically accept fewer whites (WASPs in particular imo) because that is the only socially acceptable result of their lawsuits despite whites being underrepresented there anyway. No one questions whether any other group has a backdoor admissions advantage though.
But the institutions are controlled by them. And minorities must appeal to their fancy to get in.
If you had said this about any other group it would not be socially acceptable even though a case could plausibly be made that Harvard is not run by the stereotypical blazer and khaki wearing WASPs. That's really what I am trying to point out is how strange it is that only WASPs can ever be criticized. I am not even trying to play a race card and I am strongly in favor of free speech. I am just trying to point out that in my opinion there is misdirection going on and that WASPs are probably being scapegoated in the fight over Harvard. Especially since anti-WASPishness has been the esprit de corps in academia for some time, I doubt they have any real control there. See other commenter's posts for example.
edit: this is a deep topic for sure and touches on a lot of American history. Given that every US president until Kennedy was a WASP, and that Harvard was started by WASPs for WASPs, Harvard's student body was undoubtedly slanted towards WASPs. But I personally doubt this has been true for at least a decade now but probably longer.
It’s not a nuanced argument at all. Harvard and similar universities are WASP institutions run by WASPs. When you have non-objective admissions standards, you have to appeal to their WASP sensibilities to get admitted. That doesn’t necessarily mean they prefer other WASPs. They also like minorities that affirm their worldview (but not so much minorities that don’t affirm their worldview).
The root of your confusion seems to be thinking that I’m using “WASP” to mean “white people” generically. White people aren’t a monolith. Harvard WASPs have nothing to do with folks in Appalachia (who may literally be white and Protestant).
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/09/jhj-changemaker-in-a...
you would have to convince me of this. It was previously a WASP institution but I don't think it is anymore or has been for some time. There are still fencing teams and professors in tweeds but that doesn't make it a WASP institution, maybe one that borrowed WASP culture. The ethnicity of the current president and provost and past few say otherwise. I think WASPs have been defeated in the court of public opinion and Harvard is no exception in fact more sensitive to public opinion because of its global significance.
The root of your confusion seems to be thinking that I’m using “WASP” to mean “white people” generically.
I am not sure it really matters to admissions but I know what the difference is. No one will argue there should be fewer Hispanic or Black students. It will never happen, it is socially unacceptable. There is a lot of momentum to accept more Asians and Harvard can't possibly accept being called racist. The end result will be whites of all groups will be accepted less as the future goes forward in order to appease all the other groups. This is in spite of the fact that whites appear to be within a general SD of Asian test scores[1]. Of course it seems unlikely that the school would deliberately accept fewer Jews because that also seems like a socially unacceptable result given that there was previously a Jewish quota. That could never happen again.
But I think the stereotype of modern WASP as a lazy, corrupt, and dumb legacy admit is nefarious because no one really knows what a WASP is, it's not obvious, so any white student there could fit this. Also WASPs themselves are not necessarily this stereotype. Couldn't they be as hardworking and studious as any other group?
edit: my point here is that Harvard admissions policies and lawsuits just seem like blatant evidence of ethnic conflict in the US and WASPs are a scapegoat who I don't think even have a say in the policies. Also here is the current fencing team[2]. Doesn't look WASPy.
[1]: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/22/asian-american...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Bacow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Salovey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_L._Eisgruber
That doesn't full show the degree to which those institutions reflect the Jewish view of the world, but it gives one an idea.
In a sense all of the above were indeed WASP institutions: Those evil, evil WASPs created them, funded them, and built them into fine schools. But that part of their history is over and now they are controlled by a different group with a different purpose.
A better measure to consider: 4-year completion rates.
At elite universities, Asians tend to have the highest completion rates (even higher than whites) suggesting that you could improve completion rates by admitting a few more Asians, and fewer from other groups (including whites).
On this measure, Asians are the most 'underrepresented' group.
I don't think WASPs have any influence on the admissions policy at Harvard and I have seen no evidence that they are over-represented there. Others have pointed out who are. I could go on about US history, immigration, and WASPs but its better to be brief. I think they lost their power. That better fits the data than the theory that WASPs control Harvard and despite being racist and anti-semitic seem to prefer every racial group but their own. It's really just a racist trope at this point that untalented, privileged, and elitist WASPs are the villain.
I think the WASPs fell from power decades ago. It's almost inexcusable that they could have any power in a hyper race conscious society. I think they are kind of viewed as an archvillain in this country in some sense. As a result, I don't think the WASPs are still in control there. I think the sensibilities you mentioned to get in are not WASPy, but reflect the new elite.
It's likely that if explicit racial discrimination is taking place, it's more for pragmatism. The Black and Hispanic student body % shall not be reduced. The country is still ~60% white but the white student body % has been reduced dramatically over the last decade. That trend will continue but it's not pragmatic to do it all at once. Nothing like the scale of immigration in the US has happened ever in history. The top 0.01% of populations > 1B in Asia can move to the US and within one generation achieve elite status and that's still more than enough to fill every spot at Harvard.
Meanwhile, Harvard remains a seat of major power in places like DC and corporations and law schools and science. There are far more elites on the planet than there are seats at Harvard so it's likely to cause major tension in the future and my best guess is Harvard is being pragmatic and slowly reducing the white population as it increases the Asian %. Who knows what the Jews do? Maybe claim victim status and get a guaranteed seat. Since Harvard is a gateway to power, it's likely this is going to be a source of major tension in the future.
a lot like another distinct tribe
When I was in high school we were advised, in no uncertain terms, that the mixed race students should not hesitate to identify with their Non-White ancestry on their application and that doing so gives them an advantage.
Universities and Colleges are all about diversity and I can’t imagine the admissions department being an exception to this. Diversity scores also factor into university rankings and I can’t imagine there are many schools that are actively trying to be less diverse in their admissions process.
I don’t follow the logic of needing social capital in order to get involved in charitable or social activities. I can’t really think of a local charity that would turn down volunteers because they aren’t WASP-y enough.
One important caveat to this - I am not quite sure this would accomplish the desired effect if the other parent of such a kid was asian. Listing themselves as an asian instead of white for pretty much all top schools would almost definitely decrease their chances.
Asians are a pretty big and diverse group but I would say there's pretty strong support the lawsuits that will soon dismantle affirmative action.
Objective metrics can easily be gamed, and usually are, at the moment they are chosen. Metrics are almost always imperfect proxies, and the choice of metric is almost always driven by chosing the one that produces the most desirable results to the decision maker that can be sold given the notional purpose.
(East) Asians that support these measures get the media platform. In East Asian dominant neighbourhoods I've been in, opposing these measures are one of the few things that has politically activated the community in decades.
None of the colleges I applied to asked for my family's tax history or income level, except for on the separate financial aid application.
I’m being clear when I am saying there really aren’t any EC options . In poor areas , there’s no money because school funding comes from property tax . Where I went, the funding was so tight they had to fire the foreign language , art teachers and music teachers . If they can’t afford regular instructors , where is the money coming from for the ECs?
The Boy Scouts didn't run on money. A chess club, book club, drama club, dance club, photography club, math club, etc., don't require money.
Besides, creating something from nothing is going to look a lot better on an application than following a course that is laid out by instructors and papered with cash.
In the United States in the 2020s being able to walk yourself to and from school without A) having your life in grave danger from motor vehicle traffic and B) having someone call CPS or the police on your parents is an incredible luxury.
The neighborhood where I grew up was built in the early 90s and its elementary school and middle school are on the opposite side of an eight lane highway that has no crosswalks or sidewalks (on the school side) for at least a quarter mile. The town believes so strongly that no one should walk or bike to school that they zoned the school and built out the roads such that attempting to do so would sooner or later result in certain death.
High schoolers can walk around unattended. Even a quarter mile, both ways. It's not a big deal. In the summer I often try to get in 5 miles a day of running/walking.
> incredible luxury
Don't overstate your case.
The irony in this thread is all the complaining about "can't do things that will look good on a college application" just means that another student who does find a way around obstacles is going to be the one admitted. Surmounting obstacles makes one a standout candidate.
Extremely location dependent. Where I live today, in Virginia very close to DC, I commute by bike and do lots of biking/walking for fun and to run errands. What you are saying about walking around as a means of getting from place to place is just completely untrue in many parts of the United States.
I made a specific point about my ES/MS because of how egregious it was to have them at a half mile's walk away but with unacceptably dangerous terrain, in the very place I grew up. My HS was a couple miles away and, until ~2010 when they built a protected ~800ft long MUP, would have required walking/riding on the highway to reach without a car as well.
The point of that is that if you live in an area like this and your parents work, you are extremely handicapped in what you can do by yourself. You would need a third car to get yourself around and if you cannot manage that then you are completely subservient to your parents' availability and your local school bus schedules for all of your transportation needs. Which has repercussions on clubs, extracurriculars, your social life, really the full range of experiences you can have growing up.
When I was in K-12 my life consisted mainly of school, sleep, and playing video games in the basement. Now that I am in a city and can go wherever I want whenever I want I find I am extremely active and social and have many different hobbies.
Most parents with kids try to pick places to live that are reasonably kid friendly. Real estate people know that, and advertisements emphasize things like walkability and distance to schools.
In the United States today it is the norm for middle and upper middle class parents to raise their children in car-dependent suburbia. Particularly in the last half century, most new residential developments have been exactly this. The defining features of these places are sprawling circuitous developments of detached single-family homes, massive parking lots, impassable highways, and strip malls.
If you'd like an example, please come visit Loudoun and Fairfax counties. I grew up in that area. They are some of the wealthiest counties in the country, a common destination for families in the DMV, and you will see how much walkability and proximity to schools that money has bought them.
My schools were never within walking distance, and my parents wouldn't have been comfortable with the type of roads I'd have to traverse even if they were, even when I was in high school.
Your assumption that everyone -- or even most kids -- have a situation like you had is just flat-out wrong.
> Surmounting obstacles makes one a standout candidate.
This is just hogwash; being in a position to surmount obstacles is privilege too. And you seem to be ignoring the fact that some kids didn't have obstacles, and so it was easier for them to participate in all these other activities: they started out with a built-in advantage. Even if you do have obstacles, and are able to overcome them, you're still going to have a harder time than the kids without the obstacles. And not in ways that are obvious to admissions departments such that your experience would give you a leg up.
Lower middle class. Pretty ordinary.
> in a position to surmount obstacles is privilege
I presume you live in America. That makes you just as privileged. Consider all the millions with nothing that are desperate to get into America. They see something you're missing?
> you're still going to have a harder time than the kids without the obstacles
Well, yes. Overcoming obstacles makes for a more compelling candidate.
> And not in ways that are obvious to admissions departments such that your experience would give you a leg up.
The opportunity to bring how you surmounted obstacles to the attention of the admissions people is through your application.
Not sure how much was teachers volunteering, but we did have old instruments, old computers, etc.
Actually people who love our Constitution got them kicked out.
There was no religious requirement for being a Boy Scout, there were never any religious ceremonies at meetings, religion was never even mentioned in any of the activities or meetings.
The only thing was one requirement for the Eagle Scout.
The religious thing was just a convenient excuse for the people who hated the Scouts.
And how did students get home after the club meetings were over, since the school buses weren't running anymore?
> The Boy Scouts also met within walking distance.
Is it really that hard to understand that many people don't live within walking distance of their school, or of where clubs might meet?
Or at least safe walking distance; the last house I lived in before college was certainly within walking distance of quite a few things, but that would require walking along sidewalk-less, shoulder-less, limited-visibility, twisty roads with cars zipping around corners at 45mph. Even if my parents would have allowed me to walk along those roads (they wouldn't), I don't think even my "invincible" teenage self would have felt comfortable with that.
I was lucky that my mom was available to drive me to and from places after school, and on days when she wasn't, I could sometimes find a neighbor, or a schoolmate's parents to help. But many kids just don't have that option. More kids than it seems you realize.
True. You can say anything at all about people, and there will be many exceptions.
Parents with kids tend to make an effort to be within range of the local school.
> More kids than it seems you realize.
I'm aware I have a different perception of walking distance that is quite a bit further than most parents, based on how far from the local schools I see kids walking to/from. It peters out to about 0 at the half mile mark.
Both my immigrant parents worked crazy hours so I spent my evenings playing with friends and in various clubs.
Computer Club, Orchestra (early morning practice), various sports like tennis and soccer.
None of it cost my parents a penny, it was all free. Even school uniforms were free. I know generally in public schools, things are almost always free. If they aren’t, there are pathways to pay for it.
Obviously that's not the point, as I'm sure you understand. It's that children lower-income families tend to have a harder time succeeding in school or participating in extracurriculars (maybe they don't have transportation, maybe they need to help with chores and cooking because parents work two jobs, maybe they don't have educated parents with free time to help with homework, etc etc etc), while higher-income families can afford all the help. Note that of course the same problem applies in myriad other situations: children in unstable households, with parents victim of domestic violence, with parents with mental health or drug addiction issues, etc.
This (correlation between parent's income and educational success) is both intuitively clear and also amply documented.