
Asian-American admissions at Harvard - mathattack
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/06/asian-american-admissions-harvard.html
======
CBLT
Discussed 13 hours ago with 117 comments[0].

[0]:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320360)

~~~
sridca
I wonder why this posting is not getting as much upvotes when there evidently
is so much discussion.

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rdtsc
The linked report (exhibit A) is interesting to read:

[http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-
ssl.com/wp-c...](http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-415-1-Arcidiacono-Expert-Report.pdf)

It would seem at first that Harvard wants to help poor students and race just
happens to be a proxy for socioeconomic status, but it turns out that's not
what they are doing:

> Harvard’s preferential treatment of African-American and Hispanic applicants
> is not the result of efforts to achieve socioeconomic diversity. Rather,
> preferences for African Americans and Hispanics are significantly smaller if
> the applicant is economically disadvantaged.

It seems they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to appear
diverse based on physical features. So if someone takes a picture of the class
and publishes it everyone would say "Look how diverse they are". But they also
don't want poor students because they want donations to keep streaming in.

~~~
doubleunplussed
Yep. Affirmative action has biases of its own, should be blinded to prevent
it. Let it be based on family income only.

In Australia university admissions are based pretty much solely on one number
[1] that represents your high school results (unless you didn't go to high
school in Australia), plus bonus points if you are disadvantaged (for which
race is not relevant unless you are an indigenous Australian or Torres Strait
islander).

No interviews, no essays, just high school results plus some data on
disadvantage. And handled by a separate organisation, not by the university.

It seems like a pretty good system. Loads of disadvantaged people coming
through my university all the time (...I've been here far too long).

Perhaps hard to implement in the US since there is no national high school
curriculum and the country is large and diverse making implementing one
difficult.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Tertiary_Admission_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Tertiary_Admission_Rank)

~~~
ajross
> race is not relevant unless you are an indigenous Australian or Torres
> Strait islander

So... race is relevant, then? I mean, that's a pretty big "unless".

~~~
markdown
Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders make up only 3% of the Australian
population, so it's not that big.

~~~
ajross
Well, sure. Which sort of reduces to "Australia doesn't have a problem with
affirmative action because it very racially uniform". It's not like[1] the US
can adopt these policies by deporting it's minority population in services to
it's approaching-mere-plurality-status white cohort.

[1] No matter how hard the current administration seems intent on trying.

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supernova87a
There was just a story today in the news about the University of Chicago
completely doing away with requiring SAT/ACT for admissions. It seems like
we're bending over backwards to toss out any kind of test or criterion that
could be perceived as discriminatory. With one stated goal to make the student
body mirror the general population.

But that is a flawed premise. Is it even the role of higher education to
remedy the cards that have already been dealt, and even if so what evidence is
there that it actually does what people say it does?

~~~
toasterlovin
To say nothing of the logical contortions required to argue that modern
standardized tests discriminates based on ancestry or skin color.

~~~
tomdell
That is not the argument.

Tests are written by people who talk a certain way, in a way that is easier to
process for people who talk the same way. Different communities use different
language, and this is reflected in how quickly different students process the
problems on standardized tests. There's also the issue that standardized test
scores are higher for students who have the time and encouragement to study
for them - things which are scarce in poorer families where the student might
have to work or help take care of younger siblings. Years of institutionalized
racism (loans not given, redlining, denial of employment opportunities) have
economically crippled some ethnic communities.

~~~
throwawayjava
The diversity thing is mostly a red-herring. Admissions offers are abandoning
standardized tests because of Goodhart's Law.

 _> for students who have the time and encouragement to study for them_

It's not just time and encouragement. SAT/ACT prep is serious industry.
$100+/hr tutoring sessions. Owners of good SAT prep businesses can make six or
seven figures in a few months.

And good prep courses really do work. Tests, like coding interviews, are a
game you can hack with enough time and effort.

The signal is totally washed out; with enough money, you can learn how to take
the test well enough.

~~~
SatvikBeri
The research suggests SAT test prep has an effect of about one seventh of a
standard deviation – about 50 points out of 2400[1]. That's significant but
not huge. Most of the perception of large gains comes from the fact that
people do better as they get older with or without coaching.

(None of the research is great, but better than nothing.)

[1]: [https://www.jefftk.com/p/sat-coaching-what-effect-
size](https://www.jefftk.com/p/sat-coaching-what-effect-size)

~~~
learc83
The College Board released new results in 2017 showing a more than 50 point
increase out of _1600_ versus students who didn't practice.

This was with just 20 hours of practice. Many high achieving students practice
for 5+ hours per week.

South Korean cram school style 2-3 hours per day is in a completely different
league than a standard SAT prep course, but much of the research that shows no
result counts them the same.

~~~
barry-cotter
This phenomenon is known as the practice effect. It has a ceiling in terms of
IQ tests, just like it does in terms of physical tests. IQ tests are designed
to be as close to ungameable as possible.

This is like pointing out that I can make large gains in my 100m sprint time
by practicing for half an hour a day for a month and predicting that I can
make the Olympic team if I put in a thousand hours practice. Novice gains are
real and significant but they peter out pretty quickly.

~~~
learc83
IQ tests are gameable to a degree. They are accurate across large populations
largely because most people don't practice, not because they are actually
ungameable.

SATs are different in 2 respects.

1\. There is a large incentive to practice.

2\. It isn't an IQ test, it only correlates fairly strongly with scores on IQ
tests.

SATs are highly knowledge based--most of the math questions can be answered by
memorizing algorithms, and the verbal section depends heavily on vocabulary.

>This is like pointing out that I can make large gains in my 100m sprint time
by practicing for half an hour a day for a month and predicting that I can
make the Olympic team if I put in a thousand hours practice. Novice gains are
real and significant but they peter out pretty quickly.

It's unlikely you could become an Olympic sprinter, but with enough practice
you could probably move into the top 1% of everyone in your age group because
the vast majority aren't going to spend that much time practicing.

The SAT equivalent (for the 2018 test) would be somewhere in the 1500-1550
range.

~~~
barry-cotter
The SAT is highly g loaded and it correlates with tests that are designed and
marketed as IQ tests at levels sufficient that saying it isn’t one is
quibbling. The lowest estimate I found for IQ SAT correlation was an r^2 of
0.76.

SATs are more knowledge based than a test designed to be culture fair, like
Raven’s Progressive Matrices but they’re not meant to be culture fair either,
they’re for testing educated English speaking Americans. The test population
are in high school but there’s nothing on the test that you wouldn’t have
known by the end of middle school.

As far as algorithms and vocabulary go, most people have limited ability to
follow complex algorithms because that requires a lot of working memory, which
correlates with... Intelligence!

~~~
learc83
Vocabulary correlates with IQ about as strongly as SAT score, yet vocabulary
can clearly be hugley improved with practice.

Even if correlation with IQ somehow proved score durability, a correlation of
0.76 or even .8 is low enough to allow for huge swings away from IQ in a very
large percentage of the population.

A big chunk of students practicing and increasing their scores 200-300 points
could easily be hiding in that 0.76 correlation.

>As far as algorithms and vocabulary go, most people have limited ability to
follow complex algorithms because that requires a lot of working memory, which
correlates with... Intelligence!

Most algorithms at that level are designed to be written out step by step
explicitly to reduce working memory requirements.

Part of SAT prep is learning algorithms for solving word problems that reduce
working memory load by memorizing patterns in the questions and writing down
the components in a standardized form.

You said

>As far as algorithms and _vocabulary_ go

And then never mentioned vocabulary.

It has nothing to do with working memory and most definitely can be improved
dramatically with practice.

One more thing. The SAT was rewritten in 2016 to be far more content based, so
the correlation with IQ will likely fall even further.

------
KKKKkkkk1
There's an article in the NYT about this story. Here are key quotes:

 _Alumni interviewers give Asian-Americans personal ratings comparable to
those of whites. But the admissions office gives them the worst scores of any
racial group, often without even meeting them, according to Professor
Arcidiacono._

and then

 _At the end of the admissions process, the class of applicants is fine-tuned
through a so-called “lop list,” which includes race. Almost the entire page in
which the plaintiffs describe that fine-tuning has been blacked out. Mr. Blum,
the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, said Friday that it was
“disreputable” of Harvard to complain that information was being taken out of
context while at the same time insisting on significant redactions of the
evidence._

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-
enrollme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-
applicants.html)

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yashevde
"A group that claims Harvard puts quotas on Asian-American applicants contends
the university scores them higher than students of other races on academics
and extracurricular activities but ranks them lowest in a "personal" category
covering such traits as likability and 'attractive to be with.' " \-
[https://cnn.it/2ldoPd1](https://cnn.it/2ldoPd1)

That last parameter - "attractive to be with" \- is aggravating. What is this,
a matchmaking institution or something? It's just bizarre that they would have
the gall to feature engineer that..

~~~
lotsofpulp
Yes, it is. At the higher end of the socioeconomic scale, your network becomes
extremely important, and who you marry will certainly form a huge part of your
network.

Many people don't realize, but that actually is a core purpose of selective
higher education institutions. Biology and physics is the same at a community
college versus Princeton, but you don't get the opportunity to meet the kids
of diplomats and board members etc.

You also want to sprinkle some natural, hard working geniuses in there and you
have a good recipe for a network that can take advantage. Usually for their
own monetary gain.

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pessimizer
Let's be honest here; bias towards blacks and hispanics is intended to address
larger societal inequities, and assumes a rough justice is to aim for
representation of those groups at their proportion of the population. Bias
against Asian admissions is aiming for the same outcome - maintaining white
proportion in the student body at a similar level as the wider population,
though without the aim of addressing societal ills, but instead simply to
preserve white majority.

That's where "diversity" arguments lead you. The real argument for bias toward
disadvantaged groups is that discrimination in society leads to members of
advantaged groups looking better on paper than they really are, and following
the results of a biased system blindly would both predictably lead to a lower
quality of student and recursively contribute to the original bias.

Separately: minorities face material discrimination at every income and wealth
level. I understand that it's tough for some white people to support anything
positive that they're left out of, but racial bias in college admissions is
meant to be a counterbalance to other, negative things that white people were
also left out of, at every income and wealth level.

But Asians were also suppressed by force of US law, and by angry, murderous
mobs. If anything, they should be favored instead of pushed out, regardless of
their level of achievement.

~~~
int_19h
> Separately: minorities face material discrimination at every income and
> wealth level. I understand that it's tough for some white people to support
> anything positive that they're left out of, but racial bias in college
> admissions is meant to be a counterbalance to other, negative things that
> white people were also left out of, at every income and wealth level.

Thing is, it's just not sustainable. No matter how it is justified in the
grand scope of things, for an individual that was rejected over someone on the
basis of race (or any other trait they have no control over), it will feel
unfair, and rightly so. In aggregate, this creates long-term resentment that
is focused on the very traits you're trying to mitigate discrimination over.
Eventually, you get pushback - and since the group pushing back is the
majority, it can get really nasty (indeed, to some extent, we're already
observing it).

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throw1471
If Harvard admission criteria leave out the best applicants to other colleges,
and they go on to create powerful companies like Google in large number, will
Harvard’s prestige decrease despite continued support from the elites?

Doing very well in tech entrepreneurship needs intelligence more than great
personality and political connections (they should be above a level but you
don’t need a very high level of them).

Politics is still the most direct route to power but billionaires are also
powerful and have longer influence. If next generation moguls are educated
elsewhere, the colleges with more merit based criteria can emerge as more
elite. By merit, the criteria may include other objectively useful metrics in
addition to academics.

~~~
prakashnu
Edit: I read the article, and it makes sense that colleges are seeking to
maximize their future revenue stream.

~~~
throw1471
Note my last sentence above.

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randyrand
> "It is incorrect to call it “racism,”

Citation needed.

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gnodar
For those interested in Harvard's point of view:

[https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2018/defending-
divers...](https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2018/defending-diversity)

[https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-
education](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/diverse-education)

~~~
wallace_f
I like how Harvard sings praises of opportunity and diversity from ivory
towers while literally discussing their will to hold up barriers to entry to
education.

There's no good reason to hold education hostage. The goal should be to create
as much opportunity as possible.

~~~
arcturus17
Harvard is one of the founding partners of edX and has a ton of high-quality
courses there. It also has the Harvard Extension School, which offers high-
quality degrees at a fraction of the cost of the other schools. Probably
unfair to say that they hold educatio hostage.

~~~
wallace_f
I know, but what I'm trying to say is that this whole discussion is misguided
and ridiculous.

The shame is that those "49%" of students who are, according to Harvard, fully
qualified, are not given access. The whole discussion should be about how to
give every qualified person--and in fact, every person: barriers to entry will
always be deleterious to competitive results--access to their degree programs.

But that's not how the world works. Harvard sells prestige and privilege, and
profits from limiting access to it. So we end up in these ridiculous
discussions about who should get access to that prestige and privilege.

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abby_cohen_221
There's a similar issue going on at the NYC elite public schools like
Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. This guy discusses it in this Youtube video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QixRuK68lk4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QixRuK68lk4)

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Teeer
Harvard, along with most other private universities, use racism in their
college admissions. It's very sad that we still have to deal with this, after
history has showed favoritism towards certain races has never ended well.

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rdl
With computer based testing, we should be able to make a far better test than
the SAT -- something where being able to master it would actually be solid
evidence of both "g" and knowledge.

~~~
zeth___
You mean something that throws out g completely?

~~~
rdl
No, something that has multiple parts -- "g" (i.e. not requiring demonstrating
external domain knowledge already known before the test), tests of domain
expertise in whatever common body of knowledge a university wants, and a
section which demonstrates previous effort to study/prepare. All 3 of these
are worth knowing independently -- for some degrees programs, IQ alone would
likely be sufficient. For others, a moderate level of IQ and a high level of
willingness to study. For short certificate type programs, showing extensive
pre-existing knowledge could be a big factor.

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bsaul
And then one day they'll just create an asian university, full of high scoring
asian students, flipping the finger to politically correct universities
walking on their heads.

Or simply , with time, universities applying those kind of discrimination will
fall behind the ones that don't in rankings.

------
pwaai
why does america systematically discriminate minorities? ex. media
emasculates/villifies minority men while fetishizing minority women.

~~~
specializeded
Don’t lump minorities together under that single banner, it’s gross and shows
ignorance.

The situation you’re talking about applies almost purely to Asian (south/east)
Americans. It’s the complete reverse in regards to black folks, and
nonexistent in Hispanic Americans (look up intermarriage statistics).

~~~
pwaai
how is it ignorant to suggest amerikkka has a racist past and it's still being
pushed today as you've described casually.

So blacks and hispanics are not villified at all in your view? being grouped
into economic apartheid that is repeatedly paraded on media as thugs,
gangbangers and of low intellectual capacity?

For example, it is generally accepted in mainstream american culture that
making fun of blacks, as a result of slavery, is very taboo but other
minorities tend to get a pass. I've encountered this many times in the so
called "liberal and mutlicultural society" powerhouse of the West. You are
either Black or White in America I've been told. People in between don't
matter.

~~~
specializeded
I’m addressing:

 _media emasculates /villifies minority men while fetishizing minority women._

Black men face issues of fetishization and hyper masculine caricatures, while
black women are villified and systemically unwanted by other races,
intermarrying at lower rates of any other group save Asian men. It is _quite
literally_ the opposite of what you’ve stated.

Hispanic men and women don’t have any significant differences in
intermarriage, and at that have the highest rates of intermarriage (because
>50% are white probably).

I do hope you’ll note the absurdity of preaching Amerikkka while lacking a
basic understanding of the racial dynamics within it. It’s reminiscent of JS
only devs decrying strong typing, and carries about as much weight!

------
forapurpose
Almost all discussion of racism is not about the facts of discrimination, it's
about politics of the 'culture war', including here on HN:

1\. Consider whether you can predict with high accuracy a person's attitude
toward a racial discrimination issue, while being blind to that issue's facts,
based solely on the political beliefs of the person and on the race of the
alleged victim. (You can do the same with politicians and, very sadly, with
U.S. Supreme Court justices.) For example, I had no doubt what the parent
article's position would be based on the publication's politics and the race
of the alleged victims.

2\. In the U.S., by far the most prevalent amount of discrimination
historically and currently has been against African-Americans. Yet I can't
remember the last time such an issue was on the front page. To a degree, that
could be for lack of novelty, but that doesn't nearly explain the vast
omission.

~~~
ralusek
Because the white people who take issue with _actually verifiable_
discrimination against Asians, purely on the basis of their race, have so much
to personally gain from speaking out against it. Your world view is so
unbelievably flawed.

