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I intentionally did not mention Simpson's Paradox as it would be distracting. The fact that the Berkeley case is a good example of the paradox is mostly a cool artifact. My point would be as valid if in every department the admission rate was roughly equal. In terms of the actual lawsuit, the issue was that there was no bias - or rather, the bias was in the preferences of women/men, not in the admissions process. Men opted for departments where admission was easier. I'm not claiming Simpson's Paradox here. I'm commenting on the observations IvyAdmissions made (which was also my observation when I was in school). If what he says is true, the bias doesn't appear to be entirely from the admissions committee, but from the fact that Asian Americans are targeting a few professions (e.g. medical school) in a much higher proportion than other races. Although I did not go to an Ivy league, I did go to a top school, and I saw pretty much the same thing. I hung out a lot with the Asian students, of which there were many. The Asian undergrads with top grades (South or East) were very reliably predictable: They either aimed for medical school, an MBA, or law school. The motives were all similar: These were high paying jobs. Almost none of them showed any passion for any of these fields. None of them wanted to become a lawyer to fight for worthy causes - they all wanted to go work at a law firm to get high pay. The pressure from their parents to go into one of these was strong - so much so that some of them did exhibit a passion for something, but they abandoned that passion and went into one of these career paths for grad school due to parental pressure. There were exceptions, but they stood out. If this is reflective of the reality, it's understandable why Harvard is not admitting many of them. This was quite a few years ago, and anecdotally I do see differences in the latest batch of Asian students - they are much less prone to the pressures of "must go be a high paying doctor/lawyer/businessperson". I do see a lot more creativity, variety and entrepreneurship, so things probably have changed. Of course, all the usual caveats of relying on anecdotes apply here. |