But the admissions committee does have a formula or close enough, that is in the record. There is something like an algorithm that translates specific academic achievements into a score. Same with extracurriculars. These things can be measured somewhat objectively, perhaps not with surgical precision but pretty accurately. The difference between a 1 and 2 seems to be based on whether your achievements had local, regional, national or even global significance.
OTOH, do you measure things like integrity, likability and courage objectively for the typical applicant?
The pro-affirmative action argument is basically an appeal to consequences. “You need to let us do XYZ, or else we’ll end up with a student body that’s almost entirely white and Asian.”
Nobody applies that in other contexts. You never hear anyone say, “The NBA must practice affirmative action, or else it’ll be 80% black.”
Harvard has created a process for the purpose of diversity. 3 of the 4 categories you listed are subjective in order to achieve this goal. They are using race as a criteria for admission.
Since you’re part of the process where are Asians in the diversity goal? They represent half number of Black people in the US and should be sought out in order to be more diverse.
Courage integrity likability are some of the elements of three personal score. When they taste the personal score they are not just treating personality, they are rating character as will. Asian students are not only impersonable, they lack character compared to other applicants.
WOW. That’s an amazing bit of cultural insensitivity. Replace “Asian” with “black” with such a statement. Black students are not only Impersonable, they lack character compared to other applicants.
Asians are overrepresented relative to their population in the USA. Is that bad for the country? Is it worth a bit of race based discrimination to achieve better representation.
The supporters of anti Asian discrimination think so and they do not consider themselves racist because they do not believe their discrimination is driven by antipathy against Asians.
There it is in a nutshell. Race based discrimination. What if Harvard decides they need more Native Americans and Black people are displaced because they are not only impersonable, they lack character compared to other applicants?
This is important from a legal standpoint. If allowed to continue it opens up a precedent allowing discrimination as long as it serves people’s prejudices.
Right now in China the government assigns a value to each person. it is a citizenship score. Things like their political posts, purchase of Chinese products, trustworthiness etc… They penalize people who don’t meet their subjective standards.
Sound familiar? If subjective criteria is used to disqualify someone there is no real limit to the abuse it will create.
Thank you for saying this. I understand what Harvard is trying to do. I just think it’s a legal minefield.
Yes, it does sound debatey. I’m not sure how the original topic isn’t really something to be talked about in terms of it’s merits. It’s a about a legal issue.
I’ve said about all there is to say without repeating myself so I’ll leave it here. Maybe the Mods will move it in the future.
I am hoping they don’t. I have posted in MPSIMS several times and someone comes along and gets the thread moved to another forum where they can accuse me of racism.
The instructions given to the alumni interviewers are completely race-neutral. I don’t think race is mentioned anywhere.
Harvard isn’t just trying to admit students who are at the top academically. They want to admit future successful politicians and leaders of industry, too. It makes sense that they try to judge the character of applicants.
And my understanding is that the average alumni ratings of Asian applicants are similar to alumni ratings for White applicants.
Of course it isn’t. That would be an instant lawsuit.
No it doesn’t make sense. A school is there to teach. Students who work hard toward educational excellence have the “character” of future leaders. We have a congress with the moral fiber of pudding and the fiscal responsibility of Imelda Marcos. 40 of them are from Harvard.
Since the rating system is subjective that statement has no meaning. It’s being used to discriminate. You are in effect, saying a race of people statistically have more “character” than another race based on a subjective test designed toward a goal of racially altering admissions.
The legal ramifications of this are significant. Imagine job applications, housing, loans or other situations that used a subjective rating system like this. It would a step back to a time of discrimination.
Just an observation but I don’t think politicians have a whole lot of character and integrity. The democratic process is what keeps most of them even a little bit honest.
I don’t think leaders of industry are particularly morally gifted or imbued with character. IIRC, CEOs and other “leaders of industry” exhibit psychopathic traits at much higher than normal frequencies
What these groups seem to have in abundance is a combination of ability and hard work.
In my experience, asian Harvard alumni were the most ardent supporters of Harvard’s admissions process, not because they got in but because they thought they had access to special information (they were getting a peek behind the curtain) and they were more capable of understanding and appreciating the nuance than the people criticizing Harvard’s process. It looked very fair and nuanced from their perspective and were convinced that people saw discrimination because they couldn’t see or appreciate the nuance in the admissions process. That changed for a lot of them when the data about the personal score came out.
I suspect that if Harvard told every interviewer which of their interviewees got accepted and which did not, they would be similarly shocked and they would see a pattern develop over time.
I think the main point he is making is that alumni did not rate asians lower than whites. It was the admissions committee that did this. It was Harvard the institution and not its alumni that did this.
Would be interesting to know how many of them were themselves preference as opposed to unassisted merit admits.
But no, puzzlegal is right. Harvard is very much not merely “a school that is there to teach”.
That in fact has been discussed before in writings about these cases: the myth of the meritocracy. You can be just as “educated” in a score other institutions; more in fact, depending on your major. But Harvard and other “top schools” are not just about teaching and learning but about setting you up to later on in life maximize the Harvard/Yale/Stanford/whatev network advantage so that then they can tautologically point to it and say: “See? If you go to Harvard/Yale/Stanford/whatev, you’ve made it!”
From their POV, being brilliant at academics and organized extracurriculars is merely a baseline expectation. They want someone they may some day be able to use as Poster Person for how great Harvard is.