
Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans - thewhizkid
http://www.wsj.com/articles/asian-american-organizations-seek-federal-probe-of-harvard-admission-policies-1431719348
======
streptomycin
Personally I'm not too concerned about this at the undergrad level. So you
don't get into Harvard and you have to go to a state school or whatever,
that's not really an impediment to your life and career unless you want to
become a congressman or a supreme court justice or whatever.

Where it does bother me is med school. I've seen several of my Asian friends
who were just ridiculously obviously great applicants either fail to get into
med school or struggle to get into med school over several years. I'm not
talking about someone who you see and think "yeah he could be a doctor", I'm
talking about someone who you see and think "wow this person has it all -
smart, charismatic, hard working, intellectual curiosity, top notch GPA, tons
of extracurriculars - this is a no brainer, he'd be a great doctor".

All my friends of other races who seemed similarly qualified to me had no
trouble getting in on their first try. And getting into med school or not is a
big fucking deal. In some cases, we're turning away people who would be
incredible doctors and making them pursue other careers, which is a huge
waste.

Those are just anecdotes of course, but I wonder if anyone else has noticed
the same thing.

~~~
caseysoftware
> Personally I'm not too concerned about this at the undergrad level.

But if you accept it here, why _not_ accept it everywhere?

Either race-based discrimination is bad and should never be done or acceptable
in some cases. If it's bad, Harvard (and others) should stop immediately. End
of story.

If it's acceptable in "some cases" the next question is: Who determines those
cases? And then: Are there a set of fixed criteria or is it a case by case
basis? If it's case by case, who empowers and chooses the group making the
decisions? What oversight and rules are on this group?

The "some cases" scenario is ripe for malfeasance and influence peddling..
which is just another "good old boys club."

~~~
streptomycin
Harvard vs. state school is far less important than med school vs. no med
school.

The broader problem with med school is that we should have more med schools
accepting more students, and then there wouldn't be such a stark "med school
vs. no med school" scenario. So the root cause of that problem isn't racial
discrimination, it's just that racial discrimintation in that context might
have a much bigger impact due to some other unrelated factors.

Beyond the med school issue, racial discrimination in college admissions is
pretty far down the list of issues in society that I'm worried about, because
it just doesn't have that big of an impact.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Harvard vs. state school is far less important than med school vs. no med
> school.

> The broader problem with med school is that we should have more med schools
> accepting more students, and then there wouldn't be such a stark "med school
> vs. no med school" scenario.

Since the bottleneck is _residency programs_ , not the number of people who
receive MDs, all this would do is increase the number of people who have taken
on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt without being able to legally
practice medicine.

There are more people who graduate medical school than there there are
residency slots available, and since residency slots are government-funded
(through Medicare). Establishing new medical schools won't do anything.

~~~
streptomycin
I figured we could use more doctors because doctors are so busy and expensive.
Economics 101 type reasoning. Am I missing something? Would having more
doctors not be a good thing?

Also, what do you mean residency programs are the bottleneck? Do we really
have tons of MDs running around who aren't allowed to practice medicine? Then
we should increase residency programs. Whatever. I'm no expert in the field,
just seems to me like more doctors would be a good thing, same way it would be
good to have more of any profession that's highly in demand.

~~~
chimeracoder
> I figured we could use more doctors because doctors are so busy and
> expensive. Economics 101 type reasoning. Am I missing something? Would
> having more doctors not be a good thing?

I never said that it wouldn't; I said that having more medical schools would
have literally zero impact on the number of doctors practicing medicine.

> Do we really have tons of MDs running around who aren't allowed to practice
> medicine?

Yes, because medical school isn't where you learn to practice medicine;
residency is.

> Then we should increase residency programs.

There are so many political barriers to allocating the kind of funding
necessary for this that it's not a realistic expectation anytime for the
foreseeable future.

> I'm no expert in the field, just seems to me like more doctors would be a
> good thing, same way it would be good to have more of any profession that's
> highly in demand.

Sort of - but the medical field is rather complicated to a degree that would
be tough to summarize in an HN comment. In short, yes, this general principle
is true, but in the case of medicine, there are enough confounding factors
that it's not as simple as "more residency programs → more and better care".
If you could hold everything else constant, yes, that may be the case, but in
practice, this wouldn't happen in isolation, and there would be a lot of other
effects.

~~~
streptomycin
[http://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2014/05/26/Some-
med-...](http://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2014/05/26/Some-med-school-
grads-fail-to-get-residency/stories/201405260083) says this year there were
26,678 residency positions and 412 people who didn't match. Even if we opened
more residency positions, we'd still need more medical schools too, right?
Because 412 doctors isn't enough to make a dent in the status quo. I mean,
we'll need another 412 doctors just to account for population growth in a
couple years.

But the whole system seems weird to me as an outsider.

~~~
chimeracoder
> this year there were 26,678 residency positions and 412 people who didn't
> match. Even if we opened more residency positions, we'd still need more
> medical schools too, right? Because 412 doctors isn't enough to make a dent
> in the status quo.

Well, for starters, some of that is self-selecting, in that the only people
who feel they are competitive candidates for a residency even apply. Overall,
there are about 15,000 more applicants than first-year residency positions as
of last year - 40,394 total.

Also, that 412 number is looking at the people who didn't _match_ , which
isn't actually the same as saying how many were "unaccepted". Residencies
don't work like undergraduate admissions. The residency matching is a
complicated two-way process that separates by field, so the 412 aggregate
number isn't actually answering the same question. This is implied by the
discussion of primary care residencies halfway down the article you link, but
if you're not already familiar with the process, you wouldn't notice it.

Finally, that is only looking at students _in the United States_ who did not
match. Many residents in the US attended medical school outside the US. In
fact, it's very common for US students who don't get into medical school in
the US to go to medical schools in the Caribbean instead, and then come back
to the US to do their residency so they can practice in their home country.

> I mean, we'll need another 412 doctors just to account for population growth
> in a couple years.

The number of residency programs is increasing, so population growth isn't the
concern. The original topic of discussion was increasing the availability of
doctors - in other words, increasing the number of residency programs by an
order of magnitude, rather than incrementally, as has occurred almost every
year since 1952.

------
ChicagoBoy11
Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-American === Harvard Accused of
Favoritism towards African-Americans/Latinos/etc.

The former just has a sexy title. The latter we've known all along because
these schools openly state that they embrace affirmative action.

The matter of fact is that the school is incredibly strategic in how it makes
its admissions decision, taking into account not only race, but geography, and
a whole host of other factors. The complaint is utterly silly, because it
fails to realize that nowhere is the claim made that the admissions process
seeks to select the best students according to the SAT -- it seeks to select
the students who best add something novel to that year's entering class.

A VERY STRONG argument could be made that race ought to be something which
can't enter into that calculus. And I agree with that. But, from the moment a
school adopts Affirmative Action (and the US supreme court upholds it), then
this is just the sort of thing we can expect to see.

~~~
nodiscpls
Discrimination is a bad thing that should be rooted out and stopped. The most
insidious is of course the very PC "positive or affirmative discrimiation" \-
where a group of people decide discrimination is now ok, just because. It ends
up with parody situations, like here in the UK, there is the joke about a lady
making an absolute fortune, companies being desperate to hire her, because she
is disabled, ethnic, lesbian, has diverse politics - and so in one hire, the
company can tick every positive discrimination category.

Back to the real world though - what a shitty thing to do to someone - to care
so little about them as an individual, but to only give them a place because
they meet this week's PC hiring criteria. For shame all of those who promote
or continue with positive discrimination.

~~~
braythwayt

      > Discrimination is a bad thing that should be rooted out and
      > stopped. The most insidious is of course the very PC "positive
      > or affirmative discrimiation" - where a group of people decide
      > discrimination is now ok, just because.
    

Seriously? "Just because?" The ignorance here is staggering. Or there is
dishonesty. There's lots of room for arguing the theory what should be done
about America's racism problem, or whether anything will work at all, but none
whatsoever for suggesting that people are doing things "just because."

Next, your use of the word "insidious." This means something that appears
innocuous but is actually a creeping evil. There is nothing "innocuous" about
affirmative action. It's not banal. Nobody thinks it makes no difference.

Insidious is something like claiming to strengthen democracy by eliminating
voter fraud, but actually attempting to suppress the votes of African-
Americans. THAT is insidious.

Openly favouring applications of one group while openly claiming that you
believe this will right a systemic wrong is not insidious. You may feel it is
wrong-headeded, but there is no deceit involved.

Finally, you may not intend it this way, but your phrasing is misleading. It
makes it seem as if affirmative action, by being "the most insidious
discrimination," is somehow more dangerous and damaging than the everyday
discrimination minorities face every day in North America and have for more
than a century.

Affirmative action may be misguided, but under no circumstances is it the same
level of threat to our stated principles of equality as the existing systemic
and cultural discrimination minorities face. To use words so carelessly as to
equate the two is irresponsible argumentation.

~~~
alextgordon
Racism is intrinsically wrong because it is discrimination for
discrimination's sake. Races don't exist, they're a fiction.

Ethiopians and Papuans are both "black", Japanese and Indian people are both
"asian", Spaniards and Bosnians are both "white", and nobody can agree on what
the hell "hispanic" means.

None of these people have anything in common, culturally, genetically,
linguistically, you need a bogus concept like 'race' to do that.

It's fine for universities to use a form of affirmative action to correct
society, they're called _grants_.

~~~
jababaloo
So then you're saying that Harvard is being discriminatory right? Because they
are accepting students with test scores WAY below those of the superior test
scores of the asian pacific islander visual demographic. In that way they are
being discriminatory, in other words, they don't want too many asians around
and they have a certain look for the school they wish to achieve or maintain.
So racism. People these days aren't used to hearing about Asian discrimination
because black discrimination is thrown in our face so much it's almost
fatiguing.

This instance is very much a first world problem (I couldn't get into harvard
because I'm asian, but that white or black person did even though they scored
lower.) but it's one we have proof of and it's very much worth fixing to set
an example everywhere.

You read harvard's reply or reasoning that what they do is ok. Actually
depending how you interpret it it could be a complaint by harvard. They said
are following STATE Law. Maybe, if we interpret what they said another way, we
learn they don't like doing things that way and really shouldn't be held
accountable for any so called legal discrimination because they are following
the law. Maybe harvard wants us to blame the law and not them. Maybe harvard
would like to bring on more asians or more whites but can't even though they
perform better and do more research.

Any attempt for harvard or any other school to bring up the holistic student
argument is ridiculous. Because Asian students very much participate in
extracurricular activities here and in asian countries, objectively so. You
won't see a lot on the football or basketball team. You will see a lot of them
in other things sports and clubs of all kinds.

Also what do you mean to affirmative action will "correct" society? In what
interpretation is a society "corrected" if as you said races are a fiction in
your mind? If there's no race, then there's no racism, it's just a bunch of
people interacting with a bunch of other people of various colors and any
"trends" are meaningless.

You can't have it both ways. You can't say it's a fiction but then wish that
any places you go was would be more "correct" if it were more color diverse,
(tossing out all concept of people's personal choice or their capabilities.)

Races do exist because groups of people evolved based on their environments
and their ancestors ability to procreate. We may not know exactly why because
people move and separate and that long span of time has no written record
really. But we do know people look different, their languages are different
behaviors however "anecdotally" are often different. Their prevalence of
various conditions, disease and health are different. Artifacts were different
too. Their capabilities on tests across the world are clearly different.

And if various experiments weren't shunned we'd likely understand more about
race. They acquired various levels of intelligence and physique due to
conditions. The problem is a lot of these things that make people different
aren't studied enough. Because universities fear their reputation because even
true scientific findings can and have been hidden due to political
implications. Thankfully learning about the brain and understanding people are
sciences that won't be stopped. So we'll probably learn more over time about
race. We most certainly won't be able to find ways to boost equality in humans
or find how or where they best flourish if we can't study and be able to
honestly interpret the differences in humans.

------
anon-obviously
_The complaint argues that elite schools “that use race-neutral admissions”
have far higher Asian-American enrollment than Harvard. At California
Institute of Technology, for instance, about 40% of undergraduates are Asian-
American, about twice that at Harvard._

Interestingly, Ron Unz did a lengthy expose on this issue in 2012, and arrived
at similar conclusions: [http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-
myth-of-...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-
american-meritocracy/)

He found ample evidence of anti-Asian quotas at Harvard, Yale, and other elite
institutions, and perhaps more controversial, evidence of what appears to be a
form of affirmative action in favor of Jews:

 _In fact, Harvard reported that 45.0 percent of its undergraduates in 2011
were white Americans, but since Jews were 25 percent of the student body, the
enrollment of non-Jewish whites might have been as low as 20 percent, though
the true figure was probably somewhat higher.51 The Jewish levels for Yale and
Columbia were also around 25 percent, while white Gentiles were 22 percent at
the former and just 15 percent at the latter. The remainder of the Ivy League
followed this same general pattern._

Jews comprise a mere 2% of the population yet a massive 25% of the student
body at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. The contrast with Caltech and UC schools
with more merit-based admissions processes is quite stark:

 _But Caltech’s current undergraduates are just 5.5 percent Jewish, and the
figure seems to have been around this level for some years; meanwhile, Asian
enrollment is 39 percent, or seven times larger. It is intriguing that the
school which admits students based on the strictest, most objective academic
standards has by a very wide margin the lowest Jewish enrollment for any elite
university.

Let us next turn to the five most selective campuses of the University of
California system, whose admissions standards shifted substantially toward
objective meritocracy following the 1996 passage of Prop. 209. The average
Jewish enrollment is just over 8 percent, or roughly one-third that of the 25
percent found at Harvard and most of the Ivy League, whose admissions
standards are supposedly far tougher. Meanwhile, some 40 percent of the
students on these UC campuses are Asian, a figure almost five times as high.
Once again, almost no elite university in the country has a Jewish enrollment
as low as the average for these highly selective UC campuses_

(Unz himself is Jewish, in case you're wondering.)

~~~
trynumber9
It's partly location. Asian-Americans are more heavily concentrated on the
West Coast (hence Caltech and UC's high Asian admissions). Jews are more
heavily concentrated on the East Coast (hence Harvard, Yale and Columbia's
high Jewish admissions).

~~~
argonaut
Not really. Harvard is 20% Asian. Stanford is 22.6% Asian. (according to their
respective official websites)

------
Bahamut
This doesn't surprise me, as an Asian American myself. I went to a high school
that, while it wasn't the greatest in my county, routinely sent a student to
Harvard every year - it was one of those schools that Harvard & other Ivy
League schools tended to cherry-pick its minorities from (over 70%
black/hispanic I was told the statistics were, in one of the wealthiest
counties in the US).

I had extremely strong credentials overall - generally strong standardized
testing scores (1250 on the SAT in 7th grade with a 740 Math/510 Verbal split,
800 on the SAT II Math 2C in 8th grade, 780 SAT II Biology, 780 SAT II
Physics, 750 SAT II Chemistry, 750 SAT II Writing, 1450 on the regular SAT
with a 750 Math/700 Verbal split), college math & physics credits while in
high school (Calculus III/Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential
Equations, etc.), lots of extracurriculars & achievements, and a
recommendation from an Ivy League physics professor. However, I slipped up on
my essay since I wasn't a good writer then (which clicked for me the summer
before college strangely enough) - that slip up was all it took to get
deferred rejection from schools like Harvard in a year where a lot of the
private colleges were weakened by the Enron scandal & consequently took 3/4th
of the normal enrollment.

On the flip side, in just the class before mine, there was a girl who had
nowhere near my scores or achievements (in fact, I heard her SAT score was a
1320) who was accepted to Harvard - the kicker was that she was half latino.

At the time this happened, I was extremely angry/bitter - I ended up attending
a public university, which ended up being a blessing in many ways. I ended up
learning a lot in non-academic aspects, but a lot of that was from force of
character as someone who pushes himself to break barriers and challenge
himself to succeed on difficult situations. I still believe those schools made
a bad mistake, but I've accepted that admission is not necessarily a merit
based decision for these schools, and to concern myself with what I can
control.

~~~
MollyR
I have a story very similar to this as well. I'm glad you got over the
anger/bitterness, but I and many of my friends have not. It's tough when your
friends and family still consider you to have failed. I'll never forget the
shame and disappointment after sacrificing so much of my life. It makes life
hurt when you have to work an order of magnitude harder to achieve the same
result.

------
octottoman
I'm not even going to post this with my real account. I wonder if we'll even
be able to have a discussion about this without me getting downvoted into
oblivion.

Asians have the highest GPAs and SAT scores, followed by whites, followed by
Hispanics, followed by blacks. As such, blacks are given the benefit of the
doubt, where as Asians are judged more harshly.

Statistically, these groups have differing average IQs in the same order that
I just described, with Asians at the top (actually Ashkenazi Jews at the top,
followed by Asians) and blacks, sadly, at the bottom. This isn't to say a
black individual can't have a high IQ or an Asian individual can't have a low
IQ, just that on average they cluster around certain numbers, so a black with
genius-level IQ is rarer than an Asian one.

Whether or not you believe IQ measures intelligence accurately or
comprehensively, the fact is that it correlates strongly with academic
performance and SAT scores. I also will concede that "race" has questionable
biological validity, and it gets really fuzzy when one is the offspring of one
or more "mixed-race" parents". Still, race/IQ statistics in all of their
generalities are a source of existential depression for me. Most of the data
is touted boldly by people I despise and used to bolster viewpoints that I
find deplorable, but there seems to be at least some truth to it.

The idea of discriminating based on one's race seems unfair if we lived in a
world where literally everyone has the same capacity to succeed but merely
chooses not to. But what if that's not the case? If Asians generally can
attain high test scores and high GPAs due to an innate advantage, could that
mean the admissions standards _should_ be stricter for them and more lax for
other groups? The alternative is that certain groups completely dominate
academia with ease, while other groups are barely represented at all -- which
is probably already the case to a large extent.

I don't think there are any easy answers. Trouble arises with an Asian
individual with a relatively "average" IQ faces the admissions process, and
trouble arises because the black individuals who manage to get in have above-
average IQs. Still, I support the _idea_ of affirmative action for the reasons
that I previously described.

Asians might have a harder time while other groups get a bit of a head start,
but if you have a high IQ you will ultimately have the capacity to carve out a
high-paying career in ways that someone with a relatively lower IQ never will.

~~~
mrowland
There's evidence[1] that there's no difference in intelligence between races
at a very young age, and that tested differences only emerge later. This
suggests that the IQ differences seen later are a result of societal factors
and not something innate.

1:
[http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/testing_for_rac...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/testing_for_racial_differences_in_the_mental_ability_of_young_children.pdf)

~~~
octottoman
That's interesting; I didn't know that. I should like to read that document in
its entirety.

~~~
throwawayaway
Science's Last Taboo

c4 docmentary
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao8W2tPujeE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao8W2tPujeE)

(someone with the opposing viewpoint has cunningly put a video up with the
exact same name on youtube.)

------
whybroke
So if the Ivy league schools are not actually choosing the best students,
wouldn't that mean that Ivy League graduates do worse after graduation than
alumni form other schools that don't use the Holistic admission process?

More simply, if the SAT is the perfect determinate for intelligence and
energy, and success in life directly relates to intelligence and hard work
then the SAT alone should be the prefect predictor of success after graduation
regardless of which university you graduate from. Particularly if, as alleged,
employers don't care about your school after you've been in the work force for
a number of years.

If Ivy League's continue to generate the most successful people then their
holistic approach is better at choosing the best candidate than the SAT or...

Or the ivy league diploma works like a tile of nobility to a great degree
nearly guaranteeing success in life to all its holders regardless of wit. In
this case the argument really is what proportion of races should get these
titles, each person looking to advantage their own.

~~~
yid
> More simply, if the SAT is the perfect determinate for intelligence and
> energy

Nobody, including the College Board, has ever made a claim remotely close to
this.

~~~
whybroke
The article only mentions "very subjective Holistic admissions" and only
mentions SAT scores, citing them alone as proof of discrimination. By looking
at that nothing else, the article is implying SAT scores should be the sole
criterion for admission selection. Giving the benefit of the doubt to the
author, I assume he believes it corresponds to talent and post graduate
success and these are the reasons for selecting candidates.

~~~
asdfologist
The article isn't implying anything. It's reporting on a complaint, and the
author isn't taking sides.

~~~
whybroke
Then change the word "article" above to "complaint" if you want. Correct the
spelling and the grammar too if you wish. It makes absolutely no difference to
the point at hand.

And by the way, the choice of what to and not to report on is itself a bias.

------
crimsonalucard
There's bias against Asians everywhere. The difference is remarkably
pronounced between asian men and asian women. Hollywood, for example: Asian
women? Minority. Asian men? nonexistent.

~~~
MollyR
My younger brother feels this a ton. I wish I could do something for him.
Lately he's found some peace in some korean tv shows and movies.

------
solve
Have to wonder if it forms a feedback loop:

\- Asians are getting higher scores than others, so they're required to get
higher scores to be admitted.

\- Parents of the next generation know that their children need even higher
scores, so they force their children to work continuously harder.

~~~
letitgo12345
I think the problem is that in addition to affirmative action, asians are
being compared against other asians rather than against the candidate pool at
large (thus effectively having quotas).

------
freyr
I knew it! I had near-perfect SAT scores and a very high GPA, but I was
rejected by many schools that accepted my friends with lower scores. Now it
makes perfect sense. Except I'm white and my high school classmates were Asian
and Indian. I'll never understand the admissions process.

~~~
Garbage
Aren't Indians Asians?

~~~
cbd1984
> Aren't Indians Asians?

Depends on what variety of English you speak whether the term Asian normally
includes Indians or not.

For Brits, Asian primarily means "From the Indian Subcontinent" which includes
Pakistan for them, IIRC.

For Americans, Asian primarily means "From East Asia" which is China, Japan,
Korea, and Southeast Asia.

Of course, in an academic context, Asian means "Anyone from the Asian
Continent" which includes _some_ but not all Russians, all South Asians, all
East Asians, all Central Asians, all Middle Easterners (except Egyptians), and
whoever else depending on how certain lines get drawn.

~~~
lnkmails
This confuses the hell out of me as an Indian living in America. Mostly it's
me wondering if I am included in the stereotype or not. Otherwise I don't
really care.

------
lordnacho
Isn't Harvard allowed to do this as a private institution? What's the
education department going to do about it?

~~~
letitgo12345
Harvard is subsidized by the govt (in the form of low interest loans to
students) and via grant money for research.

~~~
beaner
re, the first part: So you're saying that if I run some private business, and
the gov't gives a loan to somebody else to buy the product I'm selling, that
makes me a publicly funded business and forces me to abide by rules for
businesses that are publicly funded? I don't think that makes sense.

~~~
argonaut
Government financing / backing / regulation of student loans is much more
complex and closely bound to colleges than you are making them out to be.

------
reader5000
American uni system is so incredibly obsolete.

95% of why a college degree is valuable is for the signal "hey I went to uni
of X degree of prestige [and therefore am probably of Y degree of
intelligence/ambition]".

Why do young Americans need to spend $100k just to signal their iq level to
employers?

Why do young Americans need to compete with each other to do so?

Maybe to get into Harvard you need iq > 130\. As the population grows, there
are more kids with iq > 130, but # of Harvard seats does not increase.

There needs to be a low cost and widely accepted way to signal iq that does
not create unnecessary competition and cost for people starting out.

Also with AI coming along the corporate obsession with iq will be obviated as
well. Nobody gives a shit how well you did on the SAT when goddamn Skynet can
diagnose 5000 medical conditions per second with quadruple human accuracy.

------
pervycreeper
I wonder what the basis of their complaint will be considering that race-based
preferences in admissions has already been upheld in the US supreme court.

------
thrcp971
This focus on affirmative action is sort of like people who say they are
against "government handouts", and focus on welfare, while ignoring corporate
subsidies.

It's misplaced attention on what "minorities" are (or should be) getting,
while overlooking the benefits that the wealthy receive. Also, many people's
understanding of the minority groups at Ivy League institutions seems flawed.*

The reason affirmative action exists is only partially as a benefit to
minorities. Sure, they benefit (as do some whites and Asians), but
_affirmative action also acts as cover for legacy benefits in the admissions
process._

You see, the day affirmative action falls, lawsuits will be filed to remove
legacy preferences. If you're going to get rid of preferences, the argument
will say, then get rid of them all! Do you think that wealthy donors will have
the incentive to lay heavy money on the endowment if they don't receive some
benefit for their children in the form of legacy admissions?

Or, as Sandra Day O'Connor said in the oral arguments in one of the
affirmative action cases related to a state school: "I want my sons to go to
Stanford" (paraphrased), her alma mater. Did I mention that the Supreme Court
justices attended Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Northwestern?

If you think this is primarily about minorities, think again. Wealthy people
will protect themselves, but in this case, people are so focused on race that
nothing need be done--legacy clauses continue to fly under the radar.

You can expect to see Affirmative Action end when the wealthy are prepared to
give up the benefits their children receive.

How long do you think that will take?

*In terms of African-Americans/Latinos, consider the following:

1 - Many of black students admitted to Harvard aren't black Americans, they
are Africans, with test scores and grades on par with Asian-American students.

2 - The first black student graduated from Harvard in 1869. Over the past ~150
years, there have been enough black graduates such that a fair number of black
applicants now have the legacy boost to their admissions.

3 - Affirmative Action was meant to rectify the disadvantages minorities
received. Such as denying black soldiers access to the GI bill, while white
soldiers used it to receive an education. Was that fair? And how much does
education impact the future of a family? Multiply that by a few generations
and you see why Affirmative Action still exists.

~~~
throwawayaway
> 1 - Many of black students admitted to Harvard aren't black Americans, they
> are Africans, with test scores and grades on par with Asian-American
> students.

i've heard of african immigrants doing better, economically. but never
students, any sort of supporting link to this point?

------
trhway
reminded - our professors at the University love their Asian students (Russian
Universities got a lot foreign Asian(China) students in the recent decade)
because, as one professor put it, "they are hard-working and eager to learn,
not lazy arrogant bums like you people were back then".

------
aphexairlines
The population continues to grow while people continue to value a handful of
schools with fixed campus sizes. What a nightmare it must be to be a parent or
a high schooler these days.

------
peterchon
What would be interesting to see if we replace all applicant's informations
were anonymous and everyone got reviewed strictly based on merits.

~~~
learnstats2
Sure, but children from poor (or inexperienced) communities have fewer
opportunities to do what Harvard considers to be merit.

------
ausjke
Affirmative Action is to care for minorities, aren't Asian Americans
minorities in this country? What's the definition of Minority in US? Why are
so many blacks in NBA?

The best solution is to set up a few Asia-American self-funded private schools
across the country, where academics becomes the major admission criteria and
your race does not matter, of course this has to be stated carefully otherwise
you still could be sued for "discrimination" becomes some group of people will
be least represented as expected.

Affirmative Action will not make those who can take advantage strong, as
strong comes from serious competition only, they will make that group stay
weak for good. It's simply unfair to those kids who spent most of their time
learning, what a shame to Harvard and the Supreme Court.

------
madengr
Go to any engineering school in the US, especially grad school, and it's
almost all Asian. Out of 28 students in my DSP class, 25 were Asian, and that
was 20 years ago, although maybe it has changed.

------
iaw
Yeesh. The basis of their complaint seems to be rooted in test score (and
possibly grade analysis) but they neglect the increased homogeneity that it
represents. Asians may have a tighter distribution of metric based qualities
with a mean at the higher end of the spectrum when you cut by race but it's
quite possible that there are other deficits that cannot easily be highlighted
through a metric based comparison alone.

It's hard to form a full opinion without the type of information you'd only
have access to as a member of the admissions comittee.

~~~
chroma
Would you defend Harvard if they had a de-facto quota for Jewish applicants?
This is a trick question. Harvard (and other Ivy League schools) _did_
discriminate against Jews[1], and their justifications were quite similar to
what we're hearing today. These universities switched from grades and test
scores to a more "holistic" evaluation, allowing them to surreptitiously limit
the number of Jewish students. The game is the same, only the names have
changed.

Use all the rationalizations and euphemisms you want, but the truth is this:
Ivy League schools are rejecting many of their most-qualified applicants
solely because of their race[2]. These policies need to end.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States)

2\. [http://www.theamericanconservative.com/wp-
content/uploads/20...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/asians-large.jpg)

~~~
iaw
I responded to another comment below[1]. I understand that it is easy to view
these policies as racism but if you think about the people that spots are
being freed for there is a larger net social gain.

I knew this would be unpopular when I posted it, and I am personally biased,
but I don't think one can make the argument that Asian's lack socioeconomic
mobility in the same way as some of the other races.

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9557216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9557216)

------
seiji
This is the same problem as the housing crisis.

What happens when you have limited resources (housing, dorms, teachers) and a
group of people who are superior in some way end up wanting to use all your
resources (buy all housing, be smartest and get admitted everywhere)?

With money, we end up with capitalism doofus blindness and say "you got money,
you _EARNED_ that money, clearly, so do whatever you want" even though in
modern "foreigners buying real property" practices, it's corrupt/graft money
breaking SF/London/NYC/LA/Seattle/Vancouver housing markets in a worldwide
government sanctioned oligarch money laundering scheme.

With intelligence/capability, it's trickier. The popular belief is every human
brain starts as a blank slate with unlimited capability. By that logic, if you
don't get accepted somewhere, it's your own damn fault. But, that's so
obviously wrong. I know plenty of people who are physically smarter than me.
In certain problem-solving capacities, they think faster, better, and in more
immediately creative ways than I do (what I lack in immediate ability I make
up for in long-term effort). And so do their siblings and their parents and
their grandparents going back many many years. But, just because I'm lesser,
should I be thrown to the gutter while _only_ high quality education goes to
the "truly smart" people?

Then that's where race rears its ugly head. If you only select people with a
certain strand of hereditary smarts, you end up with a campus with a majority
of people from background X where X feel "at home" there and welcome, but then
your minorities C, D, E, F, G, H feel, well, minority. A popular solution to
the "too many high achieving people from the same background" bugaboo is to
try and make the minorities less minority by boosting their numbers though
allowing sub-perfect acceptance (not sub-par, just sub-not-the-absolute-best-
ever). But, you have a fixed resource to allocate (class sizes, dorm rooms),
so that kicks out some of the (glut) of perfect achievers you would have
otherwise accepted.

Then it comes down to politics. Conservative = "me me me, i'm perfect me me
me, kill the lessers." Liberal = "we're all in the together, so maybe you
should step aside from this opportunity to let others advance too."

You end up with a spectrum from top-down solutions ("no more than 20% of
people from X background") to a bottom-up solutions ("only compare people of Y
background from other Y background, then start acceptance from non-majority
application piles first"). Neither is "fair" to the other, but if you don't
pick a society-optimal fairness system (which is inherently unfair to those
rejected), you get a completely unfair system of privilege boosting privilege
(inherent privilege obtained by upbringing or genetic lottery). (Completely
ignoring the other soft acceptance categories of "will this student eventually
give us (or will their children eventually give us) lots of money in donations
or bring us fame as a legacy.")

There's no actual solution to preventing the over-allocation of fixed
resources in the presence of superior consumers; all we're left with is
compromises on the spectrum of "superiors only" versus "helping everybody in
society."

Thought experiment: if space aliens (superior consumers) landed and offered to
sell us antigravity fabric and replicators for $9 trillion USD ('fixed'
resources), would we just give them all the money? (Extension: what if they
wanted $1 trillion USD worth of bitcoin and you can't even generate that much?
Fiat wins again!)

~~~
jababaloo
You've got a couple problems in your argument here. Your "thrown in the
gutter" argument is pretty silly. People not accepted at harvard (if harvard
actually were more honest about qualified admissions) would't fall down a
slope into a gutter. They would find their place and ranking elsewhere. Just
like you said, you aren't the smartest quickest, you work hard to attempt to
make up for it. Clearly you have a place, maybe not at an elite environment
where the smarter quicker will save a life or solve a critical failure or set
up an infrastructure more efficently. And sure academic testing is flawed and
outcomes are chaotic but a school accepting based on various rankings should
do so honestly.

The next thing is this. You say, well people of other races might feel
uncomfortable if it's too much asian on that campus. So the white or black
will feel out of place. But you're being a sort of coddling racist with that
kind of thinking. You know what will make somebody out of place in an elite
school? Somebody who didn't actually measure up to the standard and got in
anyway. Somebody who starts to suspect they don't really deserve to be there
and realizes they don't fit and they will take a lot more personal and school
resources and probably won't fit much better and so are really a drain on
others rather than a contributor.

Because a person who achieves something honestly will have the confidence that
they belong and even if the first few days feel weird to them, their work and
intelligence will quickly bring them into the fold with their academic peers
and teachers. The current biased admission methods will inevitably create
tensions too and a bad long term result. If harvard is now confirming a bias,
then they leave an elephant in the room. The asians at harvard will look
around and notice, say on of their latino classmates is clearly not capable.
And that asian will think "my cousin is WAY better than him / her" and she
couldn't get in with me. Who is this clown? And so it breaks down their own
belief in the school they got into and a tension with their classmates. A non-
biased academic admission would mean that conflict or tension like this would
be dissolved, the asian would give the latino the benefit of the doubt

It also breaks down the reputation and brand of harvard and so people of
minority races with harvard might be suspected as lucking their way in due to
color.

------
avalonalex
The article is not true, Chinese president Xi Jingping's daughter goes to
Harvard and many her high school class mates in China think she is just an
average student.

------
paulhauggis
"It cites third-party academic research on the SAT exam showing that Asian-
Americans have to score on average about 140 points higher than white
students, 270 points higher than Hispanic students and 450 points higher than
African-American students to equal their chances of gaining admission to
Harvard. The exam is scored on a 2400-point scale."

It's odd that affirmative action is basically basing everything on color of
your skin and not the content of your character. I was under the impression
that it was supposed to prevent this.

~~~
adventured
The entire point of affirmative action was to provide unearned opportunities
based on the color of your skin. With the theory being that over time it would
help boost the well being of minorities (at the time mostly African
Americans). That by forcing open opportunities, the next generation would do
better, and the generation after that would do even better, and so on.

~~~
calibraxis
"Affirmative action programs" differ. But in general, they're to control the
racism of gatekeepers, these bureaucrats who choose who gets a decent
education.

There are better solutions. For instance: free lifelong quality education to
all. But naturally, elites would rather waste society's wealth on wars
(international killing) and prisons (the most jailings in the world)... than
silly things like knowledge and healthcare.

Affirmative action is a modest, successful effort to chip away at the self-
destructive inequalities of society. Naturally, many try to attack it to claw
back more unearned white privilege for themselves.

~~~
cbd1984
> Naturally, many try to attack it to claw back more unearned white privilege
> for themselves.

Since when do Asians have white privilege?

