Wow... I wonder what the Ivies would look like if admissions were 100% merit.
No legacies. I think there would be FAR fewer trust-funders.
And MIT's 'Chocolate City'...pretty much gone.
I suspect they would be very Asian places with a smattering of Jewish students. I think I can see why they would give ... say ... a Colorado snow boarder a few extra points. I think there is something that he brings to an Ivy campus...though I can't quantify it.
> A combined SAT score of 1470 (the 99th percentile by national standards) placed an entering Caltech freshman at only the 25th percentile among his fellow students. (At Harvard and Princeton, by contrast, the 25th percentile is reached by a score of only 1380)
> Only 4 percent of the U.S. population, Asians made up a whopping 40 percent of the incoming freshmen class in 2008, a slightly larger proportion than the 39 percent figure for whites.
Caltech explicitly looks for the top science/math/engineering students. These tend to be students with heavy focus on academics, and in particular these students universally score very very well on the math section of tests like the SAT. Harvard and Princeton, by contrast, look for students who excel in a much wider range of skills. Many of my most brilliant classmates at Harvard came in with abysmal SAT math scores. A brilliant actor, painter, entrepreneur, historian, debater, or even naturalist who can’t hack it in a calculus or physics course is never going to get into or survive Caltech, but might be entirely successful at Harvard or Princeton.
There’s nothing wrong with Caltech’s admission criteria (engineers and scientists are lovely people! I am one!), but it’s pretty stupid to boil down human ambition and accomplishment to the results of the SAT test.
Harvard and Princeton, by contrast, look for students who...
Cut it to the chase. The ruling class of tomorrow is the current class of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. (And maybe Wharton). The end. The current class wants a ruling class that looks like their idea of utopia. This means a very Kosher group of whites, a hefty dose of divide-and-conquer "diversity", and a minimum of technocrats. Obviously, Asians are left out of that utopia.
They aren't going to spell that out in words, but their actions are clear as damnation.
This is really the gist of these suits. If it were the case that by law colleges could only consider SAT score, then there is strong evidence for anti-Asian and anti-white discrimination. But since not all schools are Caltech, nor want to be, these suits are without merit. It is entirely possible that a legitimately race-blind admissions process would produce lots of 2600SAT asian kids not getting into the elite unis.
That said, race-blind admissions policies are not current law nor necessarily even the optimal policy. For example, we can't have a nation with a persistent racial underclass. In as much as college effects class mobility (which is probably small), race-aware policies allow for this.
For example, we can't have a nation with a persistent racial underclass.
Why not? As long as the racial underclass remains an underclass due solely to non-discriminatory processes, what's the problem?
A related question: suppose we don't divide humans into subgroups by race, but instead divide them by some other factor. (E.g., height, good looks, intellect, whatever.) Would it be wrong if one of those subdivisions were a "persistent underclass" due solely to a meritocratic process?
I'd bet P[At Google | Caltech degree] is greater than P[At Google | Princeton degree], but it's mostly explained by P[interested in CS | Caltech degree] >> P[interested in CS | Princeton Degree].
While this is definitely changing, Caltech graduates have tended to be heavily focused on academia in the past, and in that particular regard, the data definitely show success later on in life. The percentage of Caltech undergrads who earn PhD's is well above everyone else: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/?govDel=USNS...
In terms of other measures of success, Caltech might lag behind some other schools. As a current CS undergrad, I only know of a handful of startups run by Caltech grads. As I said, this is changing, but it goes to show the impact of choice of metrics.
from the article:
"The fact that 17 of its student alumni and 14 of its faculty have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, and six of its alumni have won the prestigious Turing Award in computer science, surely says something about the institution and what it stands for. Despite its small size, Caltech was chosen by NASA to be the center for its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and in the past was a major venue for visiting scholars of the rank of Heisenberg, Einstein, Lorentz, and Bohr. In more recent times its undergraduate alumni have gone on to be founders or co-founders of such leading-edge American companies as Intel, TRW, Compaq, and Exploratorium."
For example, are there proportionally more Google employees from Caltech or more startups in YCombinator with Caltech graduates?
Since they are all based in California now, I would think yes. But since Larry and Sergey Bin are both from Stanford, I'd expect a disproportionate number of Stanford grads at Google.
In any case, one way universities market themselves is by looking at the average income of their alumni. Since Harvard grads often end up on Wall Street, I would not be surprised if Harvard comes up on top.
But you could argue that's just the financial industry connection. What if you restrict your search on science and engineering majors? Well then we already know MIT and Caltech are better.
Maybe financial industry salaries would change these rankings if they considered averages rather than medians, but a reasonable number of Caltech grads end up on Wall Street as well.
Here's a parallel situation at the high school level.
At Stuyvesant High School here in NYC admissions is 100% test base, meaning the only criteria for acceptance is your test score. Here's a quote about their acceptance policy (from an article called "Paper Tigers" in NY Mag last year):
"Entrance to Stuyvesant, one of the most competitive public high schools in the country, is determined solely by performance on a test: The top 3.7 percent of all New York City students who take the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test hoping to go to Stuyvesant are accepted. There are no set-asides for the underprivileged or, conversely, for alumni or other privileged groups. There is no formula to encourage “diversity” or any nebulous concept of “well-roundedness” or “character.” Here we have something like pure meritocracy. This is what it looks like: Asian-Americans, who make up 12.6 percent of New York City, make up 72 percent of the high school."
Not sure if this article ever made Hacker News, but it's worth reading if you have a chance. It's long-winded, but being Asian-American myself there's a sort of poetic-truth to it:
That's a great article. The same situation has developed here in San Francisco, where the magnet public high school that admits based solely on test scores is Asian by a large majority.
The problem is, in the drive to get perfect grades and test scores, the drive for knowledge and life skills is lost somewhere along the way. And in the end, many asian students simply never get the skills needed to actually create things or execute at a job that doesn't have very rigid guidelines.
I think the larger picture issue is optimizing for grades and tests does not optimize for achieving in the real world. And elite colleges in the US have acknowleged that, and brought in the use of subjective factors. And while that may be an imperfect system, it is less imperfect than choosing solely on scores and grades.
Plus, standardized test scores have a significant income bias. Affluent kids get SAT prep and can take the SAT multiple times if they're unsatisfied in their scores. And I don't have any data, but my guess is that there's a negative correlation between how many hours per week that you are employed while attending high school and your GPA.
These factors may be part of the consideration when accounting for lower quantitative admissions requirements for black and hispanic applicants, and those from lower income brackets in general.
Merit can include a consideration of race. One factor of merit is being an outlier of your group. There are many ways to analyze a given population that reveals different clusters. Being an outlier of this cluster is a factor in merit. The question is, is race a relevant dimension to consider? At face value, the answer is no. But in the US at least, race is a proxy to many other factors that are extremely hard to quantify. These hard to quantify factors are relevant in determining who "deserves" a spot at your prestigious school. Thus a consideration of race within specific contexts can be relevant, college admissions being one of them.
That isn't at all what I was saying, but the idea that two IDENTICAL students with nothing other than one being white and the other being asian would require 200 more SAT score points to get in is inaccurate.
As a class, the students who applied who happened to be asian are probably lacking in other areas as well if this BIG of a bias is being seen. Perhaps there aren't enough participation in volunteering/jobs/sports. Perhaps there isn't a good relationship in the alumni interviews, who knows. There may STILL be a racial bias on top of that, however I'm guessing not 200 points worth of pure racial bias.
Extracurriculars are another dog-whistle for that sort of thing. A heuristic like "Deduct 150 SAT points for violin or piano" would be pretty predictive.
While this is true, I don't see why this can used as justification to keep name and ethnicity showing. There will always be ways to guess an applicant's ethnicity but since it (supposedly) has no bearing on admissions, why keep it in the application?
Not once it becomes known - I imagine Amy Chua types would stop forcing their kids to learn it, and applicants would stop mentioning it on applications (unless they are applying to Juilliard).
You're correct. Precision is important. It would have been more accurate to say "...100% academic merit..."
The material point is the same though, I really can see where the hypothetical snowboarder might have something to offer the Ivy community even if there are others more qualified academically. But again...I can't attach a number of points to that. I don't know what that number would be.
To the issue...I do think there should be more taken into account than just academics. I just can't think of a way to take those things into account AND be fair.
College is a place where students learn far more things than can be learned in classes or even books.
In terms of teaching students to live in the real world, the value of racial and economic diversity in the student population of a college is often underrated.
EDIT: Given both downvotes and upvotes, I guess what I have said is controversial. For the record I am south-asian myself .
the value of racial and economic diversity in the student population of a college is often underrated.
Then why are colleges fighting for the right to discriminate on race alone (I've seen nothing suggesting that they're looking for economic diversity)?
The claim is that a multiracial student body enriches the educational experience, and there's truth to that. But having representatives of many races actually does little. Having a wife of a different race, I think I'm qualified to claim that racial differences make up the smallest of differences between people. Far more important, in real life as well as outlook on the world, are factors such as religion, urban/rural living, size of family, and more.
I don't see schools concerned about the portion of the student population of Buddhists relative to Catholics, or that there are enough kids who grew up on farms. So long as they are pursuing only racial diversity, I think that their claims about the value of diversity are a sham.
That's not quite true. From personal experience at two different Ivy Leagues schools, I can say that these schools and probably top schools in general are completely obsessive about fulfilling certain stated or unstated "requirements" for students. Yale, for example, where I went for undergrad, prides itself in having students from all 50 states--I can pretty confidently say that, if you're from a state with a smaller population, or simply a smaller number of people who are interested in attending a school far away, your chances of admission are substantially higher (think Montana versus New York).
As others have pointed out, although admissions is need-blind (it is not relevant whether you're rich or poor), I'm sure that socio-economic factors are also evident from where the student went to school, recommendation letters, information about parents and their professions/education (which are often asked on applications), and so on. So, while race may be the most obvious "discrimination" point, this is really, in my experience, not the case. And given these multifactored assessments, it is enormously difficult to "prove" that schools are discriminating based on race: it is NOT the case that the school gives everyone a number, and then increases or decreases that number based on your race, wealth, etc.: compare Gratz v. Bollinger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger) (point allocation system where underrepresented minorities received more "points" on their application illegal) with Grutter v. Bolilnger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger) (less-rigid race-based affirmative action permissible).
Elite colleges are far more diverse than elite employers. Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey are dominated by whites and Asians, especially outside of entry-level jobs.
I also don't buy the idea that college is a way to teach people how to live in the real world, given that going to college is an alternative to working in the real world. That just sounds like the sort of thing college administrators would say in order to defend the status quo.
Assuming that is true, where do non-white non-asian (= black/hispanic?) students of elite colleges go, if they're not going to elite employers? Do they fail to graduate? Do they go into the public sector? Do they start more businesses? Do they go to non-elite employers?
And there's also the question of how meritorious high marks in classes and nominal positions of leadership in common high school organizations are. If everyone can do it, it's not exceptional.
No legacies. I think there would be FAR fewer trust-funders.
And MIT's 'Chocolate City'...pretty much gone.
I suspect they would be very Asian places with a smattering of Jewish students. I think I can see why they would give ... say ... a Colorado snow boarder a few extra points. I think there is something that he brings to an Ivy campus...though I can't quantify it.