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Comment by janalsncm | Hacker News Reader

Without knowing a few basic facts it’s impossible to do more than speculate.

What is the base level of variance in college applications? How often do applicant counts decrease y/y? Was last year’s especially high, and thus a drop is just a return to mean?

What were the demographics of the applicant pool this year compared with prior years? Is it related to the Supreme Court decision? The school’s response to Hamas attacks?

If the latter is true we should expect similar drops at MIT and UPenn which gave similarly unpopular answers to Congress.

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> Is it related to the Supreme Court decision?

The decision would have two potential effects, which go in opposite directions. On the one hand, some students might decide they don't have a shot at getting in without official race-based admissions policies, and choose not to apply this year.

On the other hand, there would be some students — particularly Asian students — who didn't think they had a good shot under the old system, but who might stand a chance in the wake of this case.

Importantly, Harvard immediately made clear their dedication to diversity following the SCOTUS decision, signaling to applicants that Harvard would not simply do away with overtly racial criteria and leave the rest of the process the same. This would tend to mitigate both effects, until we see how things shake out. Either way, I doubt that the 5% drop could be based on the net effect of these two opposing forces.

The effects on the absolute number of applicants might be counteracting, but the distribution of applicants is not, which is why it would be so useful to see the demographics of the applicant pool.

That said, the SCOTUS decision alone doesn’t explain why Harvard would be affected differently than Yale. Whatever the affect is, Yale has to follow the same laws. Perhaps I should’ve left that hypothesis out.

Not just Asian, but also straight-while-males.

If you're a poor white male student in America, you're kinda screwed from both sides. America is divided by class, but responds by addressing race. The end result is that poor white kids get held to the higher standard as if they had the advantages of their rich white peers, magnifying the discrepancy between merit and privilege even further.

If even a tiny percent of the discouraged and disenfranchised white students in flyover country believed they had a fair chance at admissions and scholarships to elite schools, that could be a huge increase in applications.

That’s true, if admissions is made much more class-based, it would make it much easier for poor white kids to get in. I would disagree on sex though — my understanding is that most top schools (save MIT and Caltech) have a female-enriched applicant pool. Private schools are allowed to discriminate based on sex (at the undergraduate level only), and some admit to doing so.

That said, I am somewhat hesitant to ascribe much impact to the poor-white-kid effect. I doubt that most of these kids would even be aware of the recent changes. Maybe in a couple years word will get out (if in fact selective colleges do implement more class-based affirmative action, which is still an open question).

> What is the base level of variance in college applications?

Yes, none of the other questions or speculations even matter until this is sorted out. The article even mentions Columbia's applications increased 10% in the same season.

That an entire news article can be written about a simple percent change without including a confidence interval is poor reflection of our collective data literacy.

I kind of wonder if "It's the economy, stupid"¹ is part of the equation.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_the_economy%2C_stupid

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