[shreygineer]

As an Asian American myself, I don't understand this notion of discrimination against Asian Americans by Ivy League schools. Per Harvards Class of 2023 Admissions data [1], Asian Americans makeup 25.3% of the admitted class. They're the largest minority group admitted.

[1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

[cambalache]

You dont understand until your kids get rejected despite having straight A, high SAT scores and strong background, just because many other people whose ancestors come from a similar region on earth were as highly qualified too. So your kid is out not because of her fault but because of her race. I suppose many people are OK because deep down they think they will be in the accepted portion but still.

[CapricornNoble]

Just say that your child identifies as [insert popular identitarian group of the day] and put them between a rock and a hard place. They'll either have to accept your kid anyway, or admit that their agenda is BS and watch the facade crumble.

[grumple]

And that person will still get into a great school. It just doesn’t have to be Harvard.

[pnw_hazor]

Not necessarily. I have a niece who is a textbook A-plus Asian student, she didn't get into any top school nor did any UC-school accept her. She is in a CA community college now hoping to transfer later. (She did get into an expensive 2nd tier private college, but since Covid shut everything down she withdrew and transferred to a CC near home.)

Years ago I tried to counsel her parents into letting her do extra-curricular activities that did not fit the stereotypical Asian student profile, but they would not hear it. Piano it was, rather than sports or other non-academic work/volunteering. They did not understand that an Asian girl with a 4+ GPA and years of piano training was not going to get a fair shake when it came to college admissions.

[usaar333]

Top 9% of students in the state have UC guarantee (https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requi...) by pure test scores and grades.

Yeah, you might not get Berkeley, but an A+ student is guaranteed admission to a UC. The profile you describe is far better than the average student at UCR and would be quite competitive at Davis or Irvine.

Did something fall through here? Did she not even apply to a mid-tier "safety school"?

[cambalache]

You can say exactly the same to the candidates who jumped above her not by academic merit but by other nebulous criteria.

[grumple]

When have these schools ever said they care only about academic merit? They explicitly don’t and never have; every high school has a counselor that will tell you that you need to have more on your application than grades and a test score.

[0x00000000]

Anecdote: I had straight As in high school, took every AP class they offered, 98th percentile SAT and got rejected from every single college I applied to except for one state school which I’m pretty sure they were obligated to accept me to for being a resident

[vgtheone]

They make up 25.3% of the admitted class but would probably make up 75-80% of the admitted class in a system truly based on merit. 4 out of 5 strong applicants are rejected simply because they're Asian American.

[usaar333]

Let's not exaggerate things. Comparing UC or Caltech is probably best (granted they use less controversial socioeconomic factors). Caltech is 43% Asian American vs 27% at MIT. Note that the race-neutral number is somewhere in between (Asians disproportionately yield to schools that don't use racial preferences because they are discriminated against elsewhere)

[rayiner]

The competitive admissions high school I went to (which has an SAT average similar to Ivy League universities) has a completely race/SES-blind admissions system and is now 70% Asian.

[usaar333]

That's a function of local demographics as well though. Lowell high school in San Francisco has those numbers but that's in part due to (more affluent than average) whites long fleeing the SF public schools.

[crimsonalucard5]

But whites still are the majority in SF by a huge margin.

[usaar333]

? Have you ever been to SF? That's not true for the general population and even less true for youth. And the white youth that are there tend to go to private schools

https://priceonomics.com/where-are-all-the-white-people-in-s....

[crimsonalucard5]

>Asians disproportionately yield to schools

No Asians go big or go home. They yield to all schools that are prestigious regardless of race-neutrality because all of these school (on the surface) appear to be race neutral.

[shreygineer]

Maybe, but students also want a diverse student body if they're going to an institution like Harvard. I doubt that the top X% of students who get into Harvard want to be surrounded by people just like them. They want diversity and different perspectives from people who are creative intelligent. That's the appeal of institutions like Harvard.

[cyberdrunk]

In a system based on merit, they would get more placements.

[dwaltrip]

Merit is not a perfectly objective concept. Someone has to come up with criteria based on whatever goals and values they think are important.

[nordsieck]

> Someone has to come up with criteria based on whatever goals and values they think are important.

The most obvious criteria is: most likely to graduate.

Some others that aren't bad:

* Highest expected value of future donations

* Highest expected value of impact (publication)

* Highest expected value of future salary

* Highest expected value of holding public office (the weighting here might be contentious)

As long as all of the criterion are achievement based, I expect them to screen for roughly the same people, demographically.

[harryh]

Highest expected value of future donations

This. This is the one. If you view everything Harvard does as supporting this goal, it all makes perfect sense.

You don't necessarily want the smartest kids. You want the kids that are most likely to go on to make the most money AND the kids who are most likely to have a strong emotional connection to the university so they write big checks.

[cousin_it]

Not sure that's the right approach. Admitting people who are most likely to succeed is credit-taking in the guise of teaching. To maximize college's benefit to society, I think you should admit people whose success would be most improved by college. It would be a bit counterintuitive though, you would mostly admit average applicants (because top ones will succeed anyway).

[nordsieck]

> To maximize college's benefit to society, I think you should admit people whose success would be most improved by college.

1. I'm have yet to be convinced that Harvard is trying to maximize its benefit to society.

2. Even if we stipulate that Harvard's sole goal is to maximize its benefit to society, it may be that increasing the number of Jeff Deans or Jim Kellers, even by a small amount, is more beneficial to society than better educating a lot of average people.

... or it may not be. My point is that the approach you suggest is not obviously correct.

[kenjackson]

I’d add “most likely to become famous for a good reason.”

Most likely to graduate is interesting. Almost everyone I know who didn’t graduate, it was due to finances. Purely academic reasons, at least anecdotally, seem relatively uncommon now.

[nordsieck]

> Almost everyone I know who didn’t graduate, it was due to finances. Purely academic reasons, at least anecdotally, seem relatively uncommon now.

That's probably true for the Ivy's since they get the cream of the crop.

The community colleges near me have a 25% 6 year graduation rate. I guarantee you that's not all due to finances.

[shreygineer]

Two of Harvard's most famous students: Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't graduate, but the Harvard name still got boosted by the fact that they attended.

[cambalache]

> Merit is not a perfectly objective concept

Perhaps, but sure as hell is better than race to qualify a candidate.

[commandlinefan]

> Merit is not a perfectly objective concept

Well, it used to be, but it isn't any more now that they're rejecting standardized tests.

[cbm-vic-20]

Those kids should then go on to and excel elsewhere with their "Master of Standardized Tests" degree.

[wutbrodo]

It doesn't make sense to assume that the HS student population is uniformly qualified to meet Harvard's admissions bar (absent explicit racial discrimination). There's a reason nobody really accuses the NBA of racial discrimination in drafting players.

[shreygineer]

It's not really fair to compare the NBA to Harvard. The NBA is a for-profit institution in the entertainment business that is interested in drafting the most talented players to get the most views and therefore, the most most money.

Harvard is a non-profit institute that seeks to create a diverse & successful that leave a mark on the world, which therefore upholds the eliteness of Harvard.

[cambalache]

> The NBA is a for-profit institution in the entertainment business that is interested in drafting the most talented players to get the most views and therefore, the most most money.

So exactly like Hollywood who has rightly or wrongly be heavily campaigned against because of discrimination, btw it is ironic but if you check the numbers white women are over represented same as black people, the 2 leading-voices among the minorities, its is Asian- Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Native Americans who are completely sidelined in that industry.

[hejja]

harvard has the right to implement its own standards, to be sure.

but who is implementing this, exactly, and on what agenda?

it's "harvard" the institution, the non-profit business.

instead of having a clear motive: making money, we have to guess what "diverse and successful" means.

does a powerful institution in our society owe us an explanation for this? maybe not.

[polynomial]

This is the most puzzling aspect. Not sure how anyone could claim with a straight face Harvard unfairly discriminates against Asian applicants.

There's definitely something else going on here.

[hejja]

Statistically, Asians have higher than average SAT, ACT scores, this is not contested.

In 1996 California passed prop 209 which banned affirmative action on the state level. All top UC schools have become majority asian despite California being less than 20% asian.

Now considering Harvard, there was a federal case brought against it since asians scoring higher marks than peers were being rejected.

Harvard's defense was that they were scoring lower, on average on "personality" scores -- a qualitative measure on admissions.

By contrast, african americans were scoring highest on these personality scores.

Ultimately, the case was won by Harvard since the intent was not determined to be pernicious.

It's no question Harvard artificially diversifies its student body, but affirmative action does come at a cost.

[crimsonalucard5]

How was personality scored? Was this specified?