I have interviewed scores of job applicants, and i assure you that we make lots of subjective ratings about the character of the applicants. Do they seem responsible? Hardworking? Easy to get along with? Will they bring a different perspective to our department? Will they be an asset on the department softball team?
There are a lot more restrictions about what you are allowed to ask job applicants, but the goals are very similar. And frankly, so it’s the methodology.
You mis-read me. I’m saying that a race of people is apparently statistically identical to another race of people based on a subjective test. The alumni ratings are the same. It’s the admissions department ratings which are different. Which is why Harvard is likely to lose this lawsuit. But from the alumni perspective, the process looks pretty fair, and makes sense.
We do know that. But the number of candidates who get admitted is so small that none of us can make that kind of inference. From my tiny sample set, if you ignore athletes, Asians are slightly over-represented among kids I’ve interviewed who got accepted.
Harvard aspires to much more than that. No, it’s absolutely not all about academics.
No, I didn’t mis-read you. You are inferring one race is better than other races using subjective reasoning as a means of using that for admission standards. But you don’t seem to understand this is being done to racially discriminate against applicants in order to achieve an admissions goal.
That’s a lofty statement to make. If Harvard isn’t about academics then replace their over-paid staff and turn it into a city college that everybody can afford. They can use the space available from empty malls as classrooms. But that’s not going to happen because we both know it’s about academic standards.
How would you feel if they decided there needed to be more (pick a minority) and their subjective tests suddenly skewed African Americans further down the admissions ladder due to those efforts?
I would expect African Americans to object to it and for good reason. The explanation that “it’s absolutely not all about academics” isn’t going to fly.
I’m not following your logic here. How does the amount of money Harvard charges relate to whether or not it’s “all about academics?” City colleges provide a “college experience” that’s easily affordable. Harvard provides a “college experience” that’s extremely expensive. Why can’t Harvard’s market be an upscale version of what city colleges are providing?
So they tell you which of your interviewees get accepted and which do not? Hrmm. I was led to believe that absent digging into the names of the entering class, this information is not sent to you. But I get your point about small sample sizes.
The problem is not that Harvard is considering things other than academics, the problem is that Harvard is racially discriminating. Harvard has been giving a preference to athletes/legacy/dean’s list(donor)/staff.
“43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard University were recruited athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or on the dean’s interest list — applicants whose parents or relatives have donated to Harvard.”
I think this is an issue for non-profit status but it does not appear to be a constitutional issue. Discriminating on the basis of race is.
Yes, the woman who coordinates interviewing for our little local region gets the list shortly before the students are contacted, and she forwards it to us. We are encouraged by the admissions department to contact anyone we interviewed who was accepted to offer congratulations and encourage them to accept. (And we are told when we can do that.) So I guess i know who is accepted among all our candidates, although i generally don’t know their race unless i meet them.
Yes, of course academics matter. No one is accepted who doesn’t meet Harvard’s academic standards. As i think I’ve said several times, I’d guess that 2/3 of the applicants meet those standards, and only about 3% (? I forget, it keeps going down) will be accepted. So all the other stuff is to select among the qualified applicants.
Yes, I missed a word. It wasn’t deliberate but I agree it changes the meaning. I doesn’t change the fact Harvard uses a subjective admissions system to change the racial makeup of the student body.
I don’t think anyone believes that subjective standards are per se impermissible. What appears to be impermissible is that the subjective standard is being used to camouflage racial discrimination.
It is one thing to accuse standardized tests of being racists because you have disparity in test results. It is another thing to say that a subjective standard is racist because there is disparity in on things like integrity, honesty, courage and likability.
If the academic standards are only weeding out 33% of applicants and some other criteria is weeding out 95% of the remaining applicants and those non academic, non-extracurricular criteria seems to weed out asians at significantly higher rates than other races, what are we supposed to make of that?
Anyways this is all guesswork until scotus issues an opinion.
You misinterpreted my statement. Probably 2/3 meet the academic qualifications. That doesn’t mean that exceptional academic performance doesn’t help an applicant. But “exceptional academic performance” isn’t about GPA, it’s often about some exceptional interest, depth of investigation, insight, etc. For instance, i submitted a mathematical research paper i did in my spare time in high school. In retrospect i didn’t break any new ground or anything, but i suspect that my unusual interest and enthusiasm for math helped my application. I also learned a lot of real analysis in my spare time, and my calculus teacher probably mentioned that in his recommendation. Interviewers are supposed to mention if the applicant seems unusually insightful talking about academics, as well. And that stuff often shows up in teacher recommendations. Really, gpa is an extremely coarse estimate of academic ability.
Also, there’s no “floor” for extracurricular activities (in fact, interviewers are supposed to document if the student has family responsibilities that prevent them from participating in ordinary extracurricular activities) but that’s certainly a common distinguishing characteristic. I’ve read that if you want your kid to be accepted by a competitive school, you should have them play tuba. It’s not a popular instrument and every school wants tuba players for their marching band. I suspect that’s solid advice. Anyway, the extracurricular activities are a major portion of that additional winnowing.
But what should we make of fewer Asians being accepted? It could mean any of several things. It might mean that Asians are more likely to apply, and so are on average weaker candidates. It might mean the admissions department is intentionally keeping out Asians. There might be something else going on. There might be all of those going on.
I wouldn’t hang my hat on what SCOTUS rules, though. I mean, it obviously has legal weight, but it might or might not reflect the underlying situation accurately. After all, a couple of decades ago, SCOTUS gave a ringing endorsement of Harvard’s race-aware methodology and told other schools, “this is the way you should do it.”
And in all that time you never noticed the disconnect being highlighted between the alumni view of applicants and who the admissions committee admits? The alleged discrimination has been going on at least as long as you have been conducting interviews. It never seemed strange how the asian population tripled (as did the asian applicant pool with noticable no dilution of objective applicant quality, unless you have noticed a slow but sure degradation of asian applicant quality over the last 20 years that almost exactly matched the asian immigration rate) and yet the percentage of asian admits never changed by very much? You seem to be comfortable with math and I understand that these things do not provide dispositive proof of anything but at some point, doesn’t that make you suspicious?
That endorsement was actually from 45 years ago in Bakke and then was repeated in Grutter based on Powell’s approval in Bakke. It seems likely that the court knew as much about Harvard’s admissions process as you (or any other alumni) did. Everything seems non-discriminatory and leads you to believe that the reason some people might see bias is because they do not understand the nuance.
I know plenty of Harvard alumni that were critical of harvard in many ways but always defended their admissions process because it appeared so comprehensive and deliberate to them. Then they heard about the racial disparity in personal score and it seemed to change their view on the subject.
I would suggest that the court’s approval of the harvard model was the result of having an outsider’s view (or alumni view) of the harvard admissions model.
We have yet to see what the opinion has to say but I doubt it will blindly point to something they don’t understand and cast it as the model for constitutionally permissible racial discrimination.
Correct. I interview 2-6 candidates per year. It’s unusual for me to interview a candidate who is accepted. That’s what the math predicts.
Honestly, the disconnect isn’t nearly as large as you seem to think it is. I have a decent track record of predicting which of my candidates will be accepted. The only candidate that i really thought they would accept who wasn’t accepted was a Black girl who seemed really socially vibrant and academically interesting. There was also a Russian immigrant who i thought had made an awful lot out of less-than-stellar opportunities, that i really wanted them to accept, but i wasn’t really surprised when they didn’t, just disappointed. I was disappointed that they accepted a boy i interviewed once, but he was a really strong athlete, so i wasn’t really surprised by that, either.