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by yummyfajitas 3849 days ago
Non-AA systems primarily look at grades, SAT, extracurriculars and the like. They tend to also include small alumni preferences and the occasional "this guy's dad donated $20M" preferences. Why do you believe they are not predominantly meritocratic?
2 comments
anigbrowl 3849 days ago
As if everything you mention were equally distributed (quality of academic instruction, affordability of extracurricular activity or exam coaching services etc.), such that everyone had access to more or less the same quality of basic education.

You're an intelligent guy and have taken part in discussions on this sort of topic many times before here on HN, so why do you persist in advancing simplistic arguments whose specious nature has been pointed out many times before?

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dragonwriter 3849 days ago
> Why do you believe they are not predominantly meritocratic?

What is the concrete merit being assessed, and where is the evidence that the measures used provide a race, ethnicity, and gender-blind predictor or measure of the that concrete merit?

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yummyfajitas 3849 days ago
To check that such measures are race, ethnicity and gender blind, just run the following unit test on your admission procedure:

    allow_admission( x.copy(race=a) ) == allow_admission(x.copy(race=b))
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dragonwriter 3849 days ago
That proves that your admission procedure does not consider race separately from the measures (and could be extended to do the same for gender and ethnicity, mutatis mutandis), it does not prove that the measures themselves are race, ethnicity, and gender-blind measures of the concrete merit which they are designed to assess.

If you want to make the case that they are meritocratic, it would be more convincing with a concrete definition of the merit they are intended to measure, evidence that they do measure that merit, and evidence that the manner in which they do is not sensitive to race, ethnicity, and gender.

Assuming that there is an objective, measurable merit being addressed, these are all empirically testable, and the claim can be assessed based on the evidence for it; if there is no such merit being addressed, the claim that they are meritocratic is empty.

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