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Comment by vertnerd | Hacker News Reader

American society aspires to be classless. Harvard wants its mini society to be classless, too. If it uses strictly objective, quantitative standards like SAT and GPA in its admissions process (in addition to legacy admissions), then it will have a mini-society that consists almost entirely of rich white and Asian kids. Since this looks like racism, they take the easy way out and use racial quotas to nudge the admission demographics in the right direction. Since this is literal racism, we find ourselves in today's situation: how do you untangle the societal damage done by enslaving a single race for hundreds of years?

The answer is that admission standards need to be changed to focus on the human qualities that schools are seeking in a way that is race-blind and does not give rich families a way to game the system. Doing so will be difficult, and there may be a few years of adjustment before they get it right, but it will get sorted out.

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The problem for Harvard, and the reason this case [1] was brought in the first place is that the admissions staff were singling out Asian American students for exclusion. Despite having the highest test scores and extracurricular activities, Asian American students were given the lowest “personality” scores, making them the least likely to get in. This despite the fact “alumni interviewers (who, unlike admissions officers within Harvard, actually met individual applicants) gave Asian Americans personal ratings comparable to white applicants.”

I don’t know how to characterize this as anything other than a racial bias against Asian American applicants [2]. This is old hat for Harvard, which previously used antisemitic quotas to keep Jewish students out of the school [3]. This gives a lot of weight to the argument that you can’t solve racism by putting your thumb on the other side of the scales. That all discrimination on the basis of race is wrong, regardless of who you’re trying to help.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...

[2] https://archive.is/2023.06.29-203214/https://www.nytimes.com...

[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/harvards-jewish-quotas-cited-i...

I bet that if they really wanted to try to maintain what they have while not basing it on race specifically they could just base it on zip code or poverty metrics and still predict race correctly about 80-90% of the time.

I'm not sure places like harvard want rich families to not be able to game the system, in some ways I think that's why they exist. I think rather it's closer to how pay-to-win mechanics work in games, if people can realistically earn what was paid for many will confuse their spending for skill, if it can only realistically be achieved via payment then it becomes a thing to mock because the only way it translates to success was by opening the wallet and there is no skill to be praised. By making an ambigious merit based system that can also be gamed by the wealthy it makes the wealthy seem they are entering due to merit rather than wealth, thus making it praisworthy while also meeting the needs of the wealthy, and in many ways I think that's the real point of most colleges.

Not sure there is a way out through admissions policies alone. Those with more resources are always going to be better able to game the metrics.

It seems like the way to solve it is at the societal level, by policies that favor those with fewer resources (e.g. progressive taxation, social safety net programs, etc.).

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