If Harvard admitted students solely on academic scoring, the ethnic composition would look like this

White -6%

Black -94%

Hispanic - 84%

Asian +108%

 

Guess thats why Harvard is being sued by Asian students

I heard a while back that the reason universities in the US started looking at extra curricular activities was specifically because of the over-representation of asian-americans

pretty sh*tty situation if true

Why can't you change your race?  I wonder if this will ever happen. People will self-identify as a different race . maybe have a medical procedure. or just make a claim?  If you were Asian but had, say, a white grandparent, you'd massively increase your chances by identifying as white

 

https://www.city-journal.org/racial-balancing-by-colleges-16237.html

This week, after more than four years of pretrial litigation and sifting through 160,000 documents, Students for Fair Admission will get its day in a Massachusetts federal district court on allegations that Harvard University discriminates against Asian-American applicants. The trial is expected to last for at least three weeks. Based on the evidence that SFA presented in pretrial motions, Harvard—whether it wins or loses in court—is in for a long, embarrassing slog.

The case is the latest in the federal courts’ tortured consideration of affirmative-action policies in higher education. (Harvard, as a private university, is not subject to constitutional requirements that apply to public universities, but because it accepts federal funding, it is subject to Title VI, the civil rights law that replicates much of the constitutional structure.) The law governing affirmative-action practices is a complete mess. Racial classifications in college admissions, the Supreme Court has said, must be “narrowly tailored” to achieve “compelling” educational interests. A school’s interest in a racially diverse student body is seen as a compelling interest, but schools can’t simply institute racial quotas. Rather, they must first consider whether there is any non-discriminatory means to achieve diversity. If none can be found, schools can use race as a “plus factor” in order to achieve a “critical mass” of minority students. And the schools must engage in a “holistic” review of applicants’ files, taking race into account without unduly focusing on it.

“Holistic review” sounds healthy, like something you pick up at the farmer’s market. But the Supreme Court never defined the operative terms—“plus factor,” “critical mass,” “holistic”—leaving it to admission offices to determine whether their practices comport with legal requirements. The structure is a blatant invitation to gamesmanship, creating incentives to paper over the use of racial quotas and hide intent to discriminate within “holistic review.” Taking the Court’s cue, colleges have been mouthing bromides about “crafting a diverse student body” and “reviewing the whole file” ever since.

Whether it wins or loses, SFA has done a public service by highlighting just how ugly this process can be. In June, the group filed a 45-page summary-judgment motion, accompanied by a 97-page statement of facts, outlining its evidence about what “holistic” means in practice at Harvard. The school assigns applicants a rating of 1 to 6, with some files afforded plus or minus ratings to indicate strength or weakness relative to others in that band. On the objective portions of this scheme—grades and SAT scores—Asian-Americans outperform every ethnic group handily. They score nearly as strongly in less objective but still reasonably measurable areas such as extracurricular activities and teacher recommendations.

Where they fall far behind other groups, however, is in the entirely subjective “personal” rating. Harvard admission officers, SFA found, “assign Asian Americans the lowest score of any racial group on the personal rating—a ‘subjective’ assessment of such traits as whether the student has a ‘positive personality’ and ‘others like to be around him or her,’ has ‘character traits’ such as ‘likability . . . helpfulness, courage, [and] kindness,’ is an ‘attractive person to be with,’ is ‘widely respected,’ is a ‘good person,’ and has good ‘human qualities.’” What’s striking about this disparity is that Harvard gives two personal ratings—one assigned by the admissions office, and one assigned by alumni interviewers who actually meet the applicants. With the alumni, Asian-Americans score as high as any other ethnic group, and much higher than blacks or Hispanics. But among campus-bound officers, who review a paper record, Asian-Americans score far lower on personal ratings than any other racial group. This factor, SFA alleges, depresses the overall ratings of Asian-American applicants and substantially reduces their chances at admission: An Asian-American applicant with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 35 percent chance if he were white, a 75 percent chance if he were Hispanic, and a 95 percent chance if he were black. SFA’s analysis concluded that “[r]ace plays such a decisive role in the admissions chances of Hispanics and African Americans that the percentage of Asian Americans admitted to Harvard would increase by 40% if all racial preferences and penalties were eliminated.”

Harvard fought successfully to withhold a broad sample of individual student files that would have permitted more in-depth review of applicant ratings, but SFA was able to access some of these files, as well as internal documents on which reviewers entered comments about individual applicants. SFA’s motion and accompanying statement of facts include huge chunks redacted for privacy, but based on the context, it’s clear that many of these redactions quote communications between admissions office reviewers about individual files. The trial will likely shed harsh light on the internal racial sausage-making.

The publicly available material is often stunning in its cynicism, and makes clear that Harvard admission officers employ stereotypes of Asian-Americans as conformist, obedient, and indistinguishable—or, as one applicant was described, as “busy and bright,” but “need[ing] to fight it out with many similar to [him or her].” The memo also describes Harvard’s initial identification of prospective students through the “lop list,” a measure by which the university “fine-tunes” the racial composition of its class once early acceptances start pouring in. One striking piece of evidence is the annual meeting of admissions officers of 17 elite and Ivy League colleges, at which they sit in a room and, one-by-one, read the percentage of admitted students from each of seven racial categories and then discuss (without taking notes). Harvard officials describe this process as “educational”; to the eye untrained in the finer points of holistic review, it looks an awful lot like collusion.

The result of this multistep process is a striking consistency in the percentage of Asian-Americans in Harvard’s entering class every year—ranging between 18 percent and 20 percent. Based on academic qualifications alone, it should be 40 percent or more. No apparent natural explanation exists for this consistency; in an echo of Harvard’s shameful history of depressing the admission of Jewish students in the mid-twentieth century, it appears to be blatant racial engineering to prevent “too many” Asian-Americans from being admitted.

Lost in the abstract discussion of numbers and trends is the fact that the victimized students are real people, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, with their own legitimate aspirations built on years of sterling academic achievement. The most poignant section of a motion bristling with statistics and regression analysis is an excerpt of deposition testimony from a college admissions counselor at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. Admissions to Stuyvesant are race-blind and based on test scores—at least for now, though Mayor Bill de Blasio is advocating for a “holistic” admissions review there as well. Seventy percent of Stuyvesant students are Asian-American, and Harvard admits at least ten Stuyvesant students per year, though less than half of that group is Asian-American, generally. When the director of college counseling at Stuyvesant was shown SFA’s analysis in her deposition, she broke down in tears:

Q. Have you ever seen statistics like this before?

A. No.

Q. What’s your reaction to them?

A. My first reaction is that, mathematically, it looks like there’s discrimination.

Q. Do you think that something like—do you think that discrepancies that big could—Sorry—

A. (Witness crying.)

Q. I’m sorry this is upsetting you. Would you like to take a break?

A. (Witness shakes her head no.)

Q. You want to keep going? You want to tell me why this is upsetting to you?

A. Because these numbers make it seem like there’s discrimination, and I love these kids, and I know how hard they work. And these just look like numbers to all of you guys, but I see their faces.

SFA’s goal at trial will be to get courts and the public to see the faces of the Asian-American students who are the losers in an ugly system of racial balancing practiced by Harvard and other elite colleges. Affirmative-action proponents recognize the profound challenge that this case poses to the tottering edifice of the policy: the district court has been inundated by amicus briefs extolling the virtues of diversity and holistic review. Expect to see this case coming to the Supreme Court in a future term.

Justin Torres is an attorney at King & Spalding LLP in Washington, D.C. The views expressed here are his own.

 

It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out if it makes it to the Supreme Court. Until then, and on the face of it, it's hard to escape the conclusion that some students are more equal than others...

Has a similar issue been identified with Asian admissions to Oxbridge?

You do know that Elizabeth Warren is part Indian don’t you and that Trump now owes $1m to a charity of her nomination?

Although of course he now ‘can’t remember’ making the wager (even though it was only 2 years ago, made in front of a large crowd and televised).

Not strictly relevant to the clase, but what about the Jews' score?  The article qouted says their numbers were historically "depressed" but I assume that is no longer the case and I think they are usually over-represented at top unis.  

plonymus, do you mean over-represented by reference to academic scores or over-represented by reference to some other criteria?   [I've no idea the answer to your question, either way]

There's no doubt Harvard has an unofficial quota (although that is illegal so they'll have to defend it to the death in court). 

The more interesting question is the policy ones - *should* there be racial quotas in the name of diversity? If there shouldn't be racial quotas, should there diversity based on other criteria? Which ones? Should admissions be purely academic? If not academic only, then what other factors should count? Note that Asian Americans are about 5% of population and 20% of Harvard, and if admission was only academic, they would be 40% of Harvard. I haven't checked the percentages for black Americans but they are severely underrepresented..what should be the goal?

To me, that kind of policy question is far more interesting than whether Harvard has an "Asian quota", which it plainly does for all practical purposes 

Stru, check out the article posted above. According to it, Asians are generally also scored highly on extra scored highly on extra-curriculars.

There is also a dual 'personal' score rating soft skills etc. One from an interview with alumni, where generally they do well, and one applied by the admissions office.

The latter appears to be where the special secret sauce is added to the mix, as they get hammered on that rating.

 

Johnny yes - I have no doubt that a huge number of the rejected Asians absolutely deserved to go to Harvard and were more deserving on individual merit than many of the people who went in their stead. 

But that’s what affirmative action *is* - you disadvantage a dominant group (could be race but also religion etc) and give benefits to another group to redress historic disadvantages and injustices. As a principle I support that (not necessarily every implementation of it) but we can’t lose sight of the fact that by definition some members of a dominant group who should have got in on merit will be rejected in favour of people from another group who are individually less deserving. That is the point of the exercise. The question is how should it be structured and parameters set?

struandirk19 Oct 18 00:19

The more interesting question is the policy ones - *should* there be racial quotas in the name of diversity?

No! 'reverse' racism is still racism. This is the view of the black supreme court judge, Thurgood Marshall, who was a beneficiary of affirmative action but was outspoken as to its unfairness.

If there shouldn't be racial quotas, should there diversity based on other criteria? Which ones?

- Like socio-economic background? no! Do you start requiring students from good schools to have higher grades to get in? what about students from families that are still together? what about students with healthy diets? what about students with a higher IQ? where does it end? i'll tell you where, disaster. The only criteria a student should be judged on is their academic credentials, or those credentials that are relevant SPECIFICALLY to their chosen course

Should admissions be purely academic? If not academic only, then what other factors should count?

See previous answer

Note that Asian Americans are about 5% of population and 20% of Harvard, and if admission was only academic, they would be 40% of Harvard. I haven't checked the percentages for black Americans but they are severely underrepresented..what should be the goal?

- The goal of a university is not social mobility, it is to educate and research. 

But that’s the point LF. If you accept your last sentence as a basic premise then everything you said follows naturally from that. But not everyone will agree with that premise. 

I agree with that Lord F. You are not really doing them any favours either, because in those places it soon becomes obvious which students are struggling academically.

In many of them, they ask the bottom 5% - 10% whether whey might be happier elsewhere. You can imagine the minefields there.

 

Gotta look at the bigger picture Chambo. Even if the affirmative action admits struggle at Harvard (I don’t think they do actually because the gulf between the AA admits and regular admits isn’t that much - you see it much more in places which have rigid quotas) they would still have taken themselves and their family into a different class of society and their children will grow up to be fully integrated members of the middle class or whatever er. 

The thing is, with the exception of those directly affected, many people (me included) had probably not given a lot of thought to the truly zero sum nature of affirmative action, particularly as it's playing out here to the massive detriment of another group that represents an ethnic minority in the US. 

As it stands, this policy does seem rather...racist. 

And how exactly is one to set the appropriate parameters for redress vis-à-vis the US Asian community and why should we even do so? Is disadvantage warranted here because Asians are an intellectually dominant group? If so, it needs to be expressly stated that what is required is a specified degree of equality if outcome, not equality of opportunity, so admissions track population demographics more closely. 

 

 

I don’t agree with the idea of AA in universities as a method of social engineering. 

But I don’t think it’s as simple as judging on pure current academic credentials. 

I am in favour of the take we have on it in the UK where the objective should be to find the best people for the course - accepting that a persons background may mean that they are the best person even though their academic achievements to date are less impressive than someone from a more fortunate background. 

Though actually implementing that is much harder as shown by the ridiculous cost per pupil of the Oxbridge access program. 

I think some sort of positive discrimination is fair enough, if a specific group is under-represented, as long as that quota is reasonable. By the same token though, kids of big donors should be allowed a pass, as should top sportsmen etc. It makes for a more interesting, more diverse, and more normal spread of society than simply picking people because they do exams well.

Dux- I see what you’re saying, but ridding the world of that discrimination is the solution, not amending outcomes to reflect how you would like the world to look if there was no discrimination. 

I have heard it said that without discrimination , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would be 100% Chinese/ Japanese 

What's happened to this case. Has Harvard promised to 'do better' ? 

I don't want to comment on the debate, but I hope roffers realise that most competitive-entry schools (both state and private) in the South-East of England have the same issues as Harvard?   

They are besieged by Asian candidates with excellent academic scores and corresponding deficits in the  other qualities normally assessed on competitive entry because they have spent all their time on their books.  

There is no easy answer to this.