zone4114 months ago
The Supreme Court decision was toothless because it allowed universities to create race proxies, and they're exploiting it to make the decision irrelevant. It's even perfectly fine to discuss race in college essays, for example: "Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”" (https://apnews.com/article/college-application-affirmative-a...). They'll fine-tune them to achieve the exact racial makeup they want eventually. The bigger surprise is that a few schools haven't done it (yet?).
rufus_foreman4 months ago
>> The Supreme Court decision was toothless because it allowed universities to create race proxies
It most certainly did not.
From the decision:
"despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today..."[W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows," and the prohibition against racial discrimination is "levelled at the thing, not the name." ... A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual - not on the basis of race".
-- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
The Supreme Court decision is not toothless because it explicitly disallows universities to create race proxies.
zone4114 months ago
As your own quote states, it's merely the opinion of part of the Supreme Court that they won’t be able to use proxies. This is not established law that has been tested and the other part of the Court disagrees.
They simply have to smart about it. In addition to the explicit statement from Chief Justice John Roberts: "Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life," there are simple ways to use factors others than merit. Some are listed here https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-affirmative-action-...: preferences for lower-income students, accepting fewer early admission applications (which are more likely to come from white students), giving preference to first-generation college students, placing less value on test scores and more on high school class ranks, basing admissions on zip codes, and devaluing high school quality, etc. Many more strategies will surface if colleges go through discovery. In the name of surface-level diversity, all of them result in students who will perform worse in college than if admissions were based solely on merit.
conartist64 months ago
"all of them result in students who will perform worse in college than if admissions were based solely on merit."
How rude. It's also straight wrong. The merit of a student is in what they could do with education.
apricot4 months ago
Maybe those few schools haven't done it because they don't want to have a racist admission policy.
wodenokoto4 months ago
But aren’t they aiming for particular racial makeups so not to offend other minority protecting rights groups?
addicted4 months ago
It is obviously the increase in those who haven’t checked boxes. There have been so many articles about this and nearly every article has a comment from an Asian student saying they work to ensure their essays don’t reveal their race. Clearly the college admission advisors are telling Asian students to not mention their race.
Also, I’m not sure if international students count here but there’s likely been a drop in Asian students applying to US universities which if they do count may affect the numbers as well.
bitxbitxbitcoin4 months ago
Unless the apps are blinded, the last names are a pretty clear sign for Asians and Asian Americans.
egberts14 months ago
It is not hard to understand if you flood your student body with underachievers thus risking institutional reputation.
For me, I no longer pick medical specialists who graduated from Harvard since 2017. Others at various later date. And I felt vindicated after reading
gopher_space4 months ago
There’s really no difference between students at this level.
sandspar4 months ago
According to the AAMC's own data, the standard deviation difference between Black and Asian medical school students' MCAT scores is around 1 standard deviation. For the 2023-2024 cycle, the average total MCAT score for Asian matriculants was 514.3, while for Black or African American matriculants, it was 505.7, which reflects a difference of about 0.87 standard deviations.
If you're going in for surgery, would you say there's no difference?
Denzel4 months ago
You don’t provide any data to support your premise. There’s an intervening 10 years between acceptance into medical school and showing up at a surgery table. Show the connection between MCAT scores and surgery outcomes.
ramblerman4 months ago
> You don’t provide any data to support your premise
lol, The burden is not on the world to prove that 10 years of med school can turn anyone into a good doctor.
It's on the people that decided to not take in the best students in the first place.
jackTheBuilder4 months ago
Ive met a few bipoc Ivy docs over the last few years.
Some of them basically felt burned by the education system that accepted them into undergrad where they performed at bottom of class as they were let in with lowest standards. Then this process repeated as they felt burned by med school again as they were let in with lowest scores. Some of them would assume, these schools let me in hoping i would fail out so their diversity numbers look good, instead i graduated at bottom of my class and jad a terrible experience.
The psychological effect of being at the bottom of your class at an Ivy, vs top of your class at a public state university, is an interesting way to start your career in any field.
reverius424 months ago
Surely the number of people at the bottom of their class at an Ivy didn’t change though? Just (possibly) the race of those at the bottom? So any psychological effect of being at the bottom seems… constant?
jackTheBuilder4 months ago
Of course there is always a bottom 20% of the ivy league class. What differs is:
if u lower academic metrics to admit racially diverse students, these students will all be in bottom 20% unless university changes other factors.
To prevent bottom 20% from all being racially preffered students, the univ or professor has the choice of either lowering level of education to allow racial students to compete, just give them better scores for being racial, or just let them be the bottom 20% of class because they cant keep up with the other academic merit based students.
Some Ivy professors such as Amy Wax have discussed this, mentioning racially admitted students are always in bottom of class, the current process sets them up to fail rather than pushing them to state school where they might be top of class,racial students have never been in top of her classes, as expected the university is trying to revoke her tenure.
jackTheBuilder4 months ago
Pushing then to state schools where they might be top of their class has psychological benifits for the student, if i am #1 in level 2 math vs the worst student in level 1 math, i can take pride in my academic success, this will encourage me to study more rather than feeling like the worst student in class. If i knew my high school put me in level 1 math intentionally knowing i would be the weakest student, i would be mad at the high school.
gopher_space4 months ago
> It's on the people that decided to not take in the best students in the first place.
The reason all students at this level look exactly the same is that everyone in the pool at this point has essentially unlimited potential.
Denzel4 months ago
Relax, you're on the internet not in a courtroom. u/sandspar made a claim, and it's well within reason to point out that their claim has no basis in the data they referenced.
[deleted]4 months agocollapsed
j454 months ago
Presenting diversity as allowing weaker candidates to be chosen is a trope.
It's about people who are qualified or over qualified who are never considered but should be. At the expense of the rich buying their kids way in..? Maybe.
Still, institutional reputation risked is because of diverse underachievers? Seems like they are doing it to themselves independently.
- 8 outrageous details from the U.S. college scam court documents https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-college-scam-court-cheating...
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/12/us-col...
- College admissions scandal paints Yale in “Varsity Blues” https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/05/22/college-admissions...
- Yale revokes student's admission over '$1.2m bribe' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47709546
- Bribes to Get Into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/opinion/college-bribery-a...
- Frequently Asked Questions Related to Admissions Fraud Scheme https://president.yale.edu/frequently-asked-questions-relate...
j454 months ago
I will take all downvotes for pushing back on the delusion that diversity is somehow less quality candidates.
It's only quality candidates that never get a chance.
What's one reason why?
The contrary evidence to the idea that diversity is bad, when the rich are doing the same instead by using money to get privileged access to university at the expense of qualified students.
WCSTombs4 months ago
> Among the variables shaping the current numbers is the jump in the percentage of students who chose not to check the boxes for race and ethnicity on their applications. At Princeton, for instance, that number rose to 7.7 percent this year from just 1.8 percent last year. At Duke it rose to 11 percent from 5 percent. Universities may not know whether the “unknown” number includes more white and Asian American students.
Well that's pretty significant. And ironically, there could be a link between the increased focus on race in admissions and applicants "opting out," so to speak.
SweetestRug4 months ago
hindsightbias4 months ago
Meritocracy. Some folks keep saying that word, but I don’t think it means what they think it means
“We estimate that Asian American applicants had 28% lower odds of ultimately attending an Ivy-11 school than white applicants with similar academic and extracurricular qualifications. The gap was particularly pronounced for students of South Asian descent (49% lower odds).”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55119-0#:~:text=W....
novolunt4 months ago
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blackeyeblitzar4 months ago
The UC system wasn’t allowed to consider race or implement affirmative action, at least in the past. As I recall they had significantly higher rates of Asian students compared to the private universities (like Ivy leagues) where affirmative action policies racially discriminate against Asian students
AtlasBarfed4 months ago
Ah, and an entire comment section not mentioning the new white whale of college admissions affirmative action:
The white male college student
noobermin4 months ago
Isn't the ask here contradictory? They're asking for affirmative action but in their direction.
recursivecaveat4 months ago
Basically their general position is that Asian American applicants are held to a higher standard and admitted at a lower rate than would be the case if you say, only admitted the X highest scoring SATs. If the acceptance rates are falling after affirmative action was outlawed, their interpretation is that this system of everyone writing a little essay about their racial background and we judge the essays is just the old affirmative action system with a wink and a nod.
fhdsgbbcaA4 months ago
It’s almost as though the SAT score is not the only thing considered in admissions.
Unlike many Asian countries, the US doesn’t have some big single exam that determines your life outcome.
Remind me of where the best universities in the world are again? The places that do admissions solely on test scores? Or these “unfair” places that use more than one metric?
josephh4 months ago
> It’s almost as though the SAT score is not the only thing considered in admissions.
That's exactly the problem these Asian countries want to avoid/address: as soon as you deviate from the standardized test scores, you lay yourself open to potential biases and discrimination.
> Remind me of where the best universities in the world are again?
Quality of Bachelors programs (which is what's being discussed here) has pretty much zero bearing on how universities are ranked.
__rito__4 months ago
> Remind me of where the best universities in the world are again? The places that do admissions solely on test scores? Or these “unfair” places that use more than one metric?
Maybe not the undergrad students, but grad students and many professors of research universities come from the countries where admissions are done solely on test scores.
Having a big single exam that determines one's life outcome is bad on principle, but, it removes corruption, and is the most transparent method, ever.
carlmr4 months ago
>Having a big single exam that determines one's life outcome is bad on principle, but, it removes corruption, and is the most transparent method, ever.
Couldn't we have multiple big exams and do some averaging? Maybe even take the median to discard outliers? This would keep the meritocratic fairness aspect and take the pressure from performing in one single exam determining your fate in life.
__rito__4 months ago
These are ideas worth discussing. Many countries are moving away from ONE exam- once, or in a narrow time frame. For example, the research entry test, CSIR NET, in India is now taken twice a year, as opposed to once earlier, medicine entrance test did away with the age limit, and attempt limit. From this year, the final school exam at Senior year (12th standard) in my state becomes semester based, two tests- as opposed to one test once.
What I absolutely despise is having metrics on the admission that are highly, highly skewed against the poors, like lifelong A's, school presidency, music performance, other co-curriculars, and so on.
And the focus on increasing diversity at the cost of ability.
I know many who could climb the socio economic ladder due to test based admission. And in significant numbers, not like the ~5 taken by Harvard in each meaningful program a year.
noobermin4 months ago
It doesn't remove corruption. Here's an example of stealing positions in the gaokao in china:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3090774/chin...
__rito__4 months ago
That's an execution problem, not a principle problem.
All humans are biased. Holistic admission has many more inherent flaws than test-score based admission.
fhdsgbbcaA4 months ago
Those grad students are evaluated on far more than test scores, and the essays matter a ton. US university admissions are even more holistic at the graduate level.
The candidates who have good test scores and nothing else get cut in the second round, it’s one of the easiest steps in doing the cull.
kelipso4 months ago
The essays are about the actual research they are interested in doing, it's more like a part of a technical interview. Unlike the tell me about your life, do you play lacrosse, bs that undergrad college applicants have to go through.
fhdsgbbcaA4 months ago
There is always a personal statement and they matter.
kelipso4 months ago
Depends on the department I guess. In my CS department, it's more like a job interview than some personal essay bs.
impossiblefork4 months ago
There are many good universities in all sorts of places.
I like the exam-only entry. Here in Sweden that was why I got to go where I went. The alternative is a bunch of hoop-jumping which, at least for me, would feel oppressive.
WCSTombs4 months ago
Yeah, I'm going out on a limb and predicting there's probably no case here, and if brought to court this lawsuit would be borderline frivolous, if not outright. These numbers fluctuate from year to year for many reasons apart from changes to admissions policy. What the plaintiffs most likely did is take the top few dozen schools, find a few where the numbers didn't go the way they wanted (which are statistically guaranteed to exist, practically), and point their fingers at them.
VoidWhisperer4 months ago
'Lets end affirmative action!'
'We are going to sue you for something that affirmative action helped avoid'
I know i'm likely oversimplifying it but I am trying to highlight the ridiculousness of it
bdjsiqoocwk4 months ago
Lol you have it backwards. There's so many Asian students in universities that universities are making up obstacles to prevent their numbers increase further. So if the numbers drop that evidence the universities haven't fixed anything.
[deleted]4 months agocollapsed
sandspar4 months ago
You don't understand the situation. The schools are flouting the law. The Asian students are asking them to follow the law.