[IvyAdmisions]

I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college.

I promise you your application was viewed as "well, here's another really smart asian kid who's otherwise unremarkable from the other 1000 we'll see". Meanwhile, hers was treated like precious gold.

[sizzle]

So what's the solution to the problem of not enough seats for x ethnicity when filtering out academic performance metrics?

[MR4D]

Replace the name, ethnicity, and gender of the person with a number.

If admissions can never see that information they are much less likely to be able to discriminate against it.

Of course, if someone doesn't like the result, and not enough black/asian/jewish/white/whatever kids get in, then someone sues.

But to me, this is the only way of making it on the merits. As soon as you introduce that information into the process, bias takes over.

[IvyAdmisions]

The asians will still get rejected. They're not rejected for racial reasons. They're rejected because they submit uninspiring, cookie cutter applications en masse. This may be because of something in the asian culture. That's outside my expertise.

[bedhead]

There is a natural follow-up question: why might other races get rejected at high rates, albeit not for racial reasons (similar to your point)? I think there are questions that many people simply don't want the answers to.

[sizzle]

socioeconomic reasons

[IvyAdmisions]

Not touching that!

[naveen99]

but asians are over represented at harvard...

[IvyAdmisions]

And they'd be WAAAAAY more overrepresented if the "Great Academics, Boring eveything else" applicants got in.

[IvyAdmisions]

Lawsuits like this, I'd imagine.

Also, waaaaaay more asians need to be running for Congress. It's getting better but they're still underrepresented slightly (4.8% of reps are asian while 5.6% of americans are).

[bedhead]

Asians evidently are too smart to want to get involved in politics. Gotta respect that. (not joking)

[gspetr]

But Jews aren't?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_American_politi...

3/9 of the Supreme Court Justices are listed as Jewish.

Not sure what your argument is. The definition of "smartness" seems to be very subjective in this case.

[siosonel]

This reply demonstrates the problem that an admission process is trying to address. The reply makes it seem like Ivy league admission is like a game to master for some students. Whereas graduates of top schools like Harvard are generally expected to become leaders who care about bigger issues, to have been informed by historical patterns and long term trends. These future leaders must know how to emphatize and care about much more than just getting ahead. (I'm an Asian, btw, if that helps inform the reader of where I'm coming from.)

[IvyAdmisions]

Agreed. Here's how I put it elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17336374

[bedhead]

It was a comment about the quality of people that go into politics, nothing more. There is little incentive for smart, ambitious people to enter anymore.