Discussion: Complaint Alleges Harvard Admissions Biased Against High-Scoring Asian Students

[system1]

Discussion for article #236434

[mrcomments]

Whites always complain that they get screwed by affirmative action, but the ones who really get screwed are definitely Asians.

[judie_vc]

I wouldn’t be surprised if true. White applicants for the most part are de facto beneficiaries of automatic white privilege affirmative action. AA got W into his dad’s ivy league school as many whites get automatically accepted into schools their parents graduated from. But nobody discusses white AA which is the majority of affirmative action going on for centuries.

[whit]

The notion that admissions should be based on test scores and grades, rather than on being a fully-rounded human being with broad curiosity and creativity, rewards those from cultures where only test scores and grades are valued. With advances in computing, the sorts of “intelligence” that correlate with the larger part of test scores can be taken over by machines. The unique human role is to be curious and creative.

There’s nothing wrong with Western universities being aligned with Western, humanist values, rather than with Asian values. It is well-known in sociology and academia that Asian cultures typically do not cultivate either curiosity or creativity in their students. For diversity’s sake, we should nonetheless welcome Asian students to Western universities, and do, well out of proportion to their presence in our population. But the notion that their test scores should privilege them above students of Western cultural backgrounds is, to put it plainly, unintelligent.

[trippin]

These people are making the same mistake white males make when they complain about lower-scoring applicants getting jobs over them: it’s not just about a test score.

If about 5% of the US population identifies as Asian and Harvard has a 21% Asian student body, I’d say Asians are exceedingly well represented. And, if affirmative action policies were banned as they desire, I suspect the number of Asians admitted would in fact go down, not up.

There is no way any institution is going to turn over their application process to a strict ranking of scores on a test. Human potential cannot be so measured.

[judie_vc]

@Trippin

If about 5% of the US population identifies as Asian and Harvard has a 21% Asian student body, I’d say Asians are exceedingly well represented. And, if affirmative action policies were banned as they desire, I suspect the number of Asians admitted would in fact go down, not up.

There is no way any institution is going to turn over their application process to a strict ranking of scores on a test. Human potential cannot be so measured.

Too true.

[judie_vc]

@whit

There’s nothing wrong with Western universities being aligned with Western, humanist values, rather than with Asian values. It is well-known in sociology and academia that Asian cultures typically do not cultivate either curiosity or creativity in their students. For diversity’s sake, we should nonetheless welcome Asian students to Western universities, and do, well out of proportion to their presence in our population. But the notion that their test scores should privilege them above students of Western cultural backgrounds is, to put it plainly, unintelligent.

I agree with the diversity part.

Not so sure about generalizing that many Asian people as not appreciating creativity and solely being interested in the mechanics of academia just to advance academically. That can’t be true.