Yes, that is what should be. But, they have enough graduates and charities to influence the system in their favor.
It’s not fair, but reality.
Peter Arcidiacono Harvard Asian discrimination paper out
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Euro bro here. Just read the paper and I have two questions. I'd love to hear the answers from Asian economists. It's not my field so I can seem a bit naive about it.
1st. My gut feeling is that there is a substantial anti-Asian discrimination. Still, there is something I am not really understanding in the paper. If I got it right, the main finding is that the personal rating depends on race and can be penalising in the admission phase. Am I right?
Now, let's say that the personal rating depends on soft skills that are related to emotional intelligence (on top of education), as much as academic performances depend on hard skills that are related to the IQ (on top of education). If we agree that Asians have on average higher IQ and get better grades than whites, why should we expect that soft skills and emotional intelligence are uniformly distributed across races?
It could be related to genetics or culture, but in both cases I do expect personal ratings to slightly vary across races. Similarly, Italians are much more talkative and outgoing than Swedish and I wouldn't be surprised if the personal rating differs between these two nationalities. Ok, we're talking about Asian Americans (thus Americans), but it's clear that, whether bc of genetics or culture, there is some persistence across generations here. And that's good for Asian Americans if we look at their performances in the exams. Couldn't it be that Harvard values some soft skills that are on average less developed by Asian Americans, and this counts for the personal rating? Does the paper control for this in some way or is it all considered discrimination?
We should be able to distinguish soft skills and discrimination if, for instance, the admission committee could not observe the name of the candidate and the interview was on a phone call without video (ruling out discrimination based on Asian names or Asian traits). But as it is now it seems ambiguous to me. Happy to be contradicted.
2nd. Let's say I got it wrong and the paper is robust. Can someone explain to me why we should blame liberals more than conservatives as some posters suggested? I am simply not understanding it. I thought that Conservatives were more prone to this kind of prejudices. Happy to be contradicted on this as well.Thank you everyone for answering my previous post.
Some of you have mentioned that the high performances in some other indicators could proxy the soft skills. I think this is wrong for most of them, especially for the reference letters, that are usually focused on academic strength. Instead, I think that the main argument supporting evidence for discrimination, as some of you have noticed, is the fact that the personal ratings as evaluated by the Alumni are much higher than those provided by the Admission Committee. I think this is the most disturbing finding and the authors should have investigated more on this. Instead, if I got it correctly, they are assuming that soft skills are uniformly distributed across ethnic groups and that any heterogeneity in personal ratings is caused by discrimination. I think this is not convincing and calls into question their quantification.
Also, they should have probably investigated why there is a premium for African Americans in the opposite direction. Is the Admission committee playing with personal ratings in order to balance the ex-post ethnic distribution of students? This would be quite controversial and it is clear to everybody that Harvard has not been transparent enough about that. Maybe a double-blind admission procedure with no-video interviews could remove the legit doubts.
Finally, but this is just an off-topic random thought, the importance of social skills could be itself a source of discrimination. If the benchmark of the ideal social skills is defined by a specific ethnicity/class, a positive evaluation of them can perpetuate a privilege across g...See full post
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Some of you have mentioned that the high performances in some other indicators could proxy the soft skills. I think this is wrong for most of them, especially for the reference letters, that are usually focused on academic strength.
Because you are a Eurobro, you may be unaware that the forms explicitly ask for assessments of "intellectual promise, motivation, relative maturity, integrity, independence, originality, initiative, leadership potential, capacity for growth, special talents, and enthusiasm."
https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~admisweb/forms/teacher_eval.pdf
Which means the teachers (and counselors) are explicitly asked to assess "soft skills," and Asian Americans on average receive strong ratings on soft skills from their letter writers.
Despite asking the right question
Is the Admission committee playing with personal ratings in order to balance the ex-post ethnic distribution of students?
you are still too wedded to the "bad soft skills" story.
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"Harvard has no bat soup, rat wings or pangolin ribs on the menu. I hate it"
chinabro
kidding aside the "diversity" culture has already killed harvard's reputation a lot.I want to know where I can get some rat wings...that unfettered genetics research must be producing some REALLY exotic delicacies.
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"Harvard has no bat soup, rat wings or pangolin ribs on the menu. I hate it"
chinabro
kidding aside the "diversity" culture has already killed harvard's reputation a lot.I am afraid that's the opposite of what China bros are arguing. The diversity culture aims to balance ex-post ethnic distribution, thus penalising Asian Americans, who instead deserve to be overrepresented since they overperform other ethnic groups. If they are correct, it is precisely the diversity culture the source of their discrimination.
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One could compare the average GPA of Asian Americans vs. Whites vs. African Americans\Latinos, but I doubt Harvard will like the outcomes..
If AsAmericans are admitted at lower than reasonable numbers, we should expect that the admitees had much higher average ability than other ethnic groups and would therefore outperform them in terms of output quality. Do we?
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Could this have to do with lack of empathy?
I have a medical condition that sometimes sends me to emergency room. Over the years and across different jobs, i always Have been surprised how Chinese students/coleagues have difficulty showing empathy and they cannot help to not ask:So when do you we think we can finish project/paper?
And this is given that i always deliver and my track record is perfect, so no worries on longterm prospects.
They just seem to fail to understand I work to live and not live to work. Or it could be the 9/9/6 culture clouding their judgement rather than lack of empathy.
As an interviewer, that is a red flag in terms of fit and my feedbacks always include one part about fit. Maybe same applies to the Harvard applications and you will never see those notes because their are confidential.
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Could this have to do with lack of empathy?
I have a medical condition that sometimes sends me to emergency room. Over the years and across different jobs, i always Have been surprised how Chinese students/coleagues have difficulty showing empathy and they cannot help to not ask:
So when do you we think we can finish project/paper?
And this is given that i always deliver and my track record is perfect, so no worries on longterm prospects.
They just seem to fail to understand I work to live and not live to work. Or it could be the 9/9/6 culture clouding their judgement rather than lack of empathy.
As an interviewer, that is a red flag in terms of fit and my feedbacks always include one part about fit. Maybe same applies to the Harvard applications and you will never see those notes because their are confidential.Indians are asians, koreans are asian, filipinos are asian.
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Yeah but i never had such that experience with non chinese asians. Japanese and korans are extremely empathic and polite. Indians are somewhat too dramatic ( somewhat on the other side of the spectrum).
And before jumping at me calling names, these are averages. There are many empathic chinese and etc (e.g. dude who stood up to tanks in 1991 - probably executed at the scene)
Could this have to do with lack of empathy?
I have a medical condition that sometimes sends me to emergency room. Over the years and across different jobs, i always Have been surprised how Chinese students/coleagues have difficulty showing empathy and they cannot help to not ask:
So when do you we think we can finish project/paper?
And this is given that i always deliver and my track record is perfect, so no worries on longterm prospects.
They just seem to fail to understand I work to live and not live to work. Or it could be the 9/9/6 culture clouding their judgement rather than lack of empathy.
As an interviewer, that is a red flag in terms of fit and my feedbacks always include one part about fit. Maybe same applies to the Harvard applications and you will never see those notes because their are confidential.Indians are asians, koreans are asian, filipinos are asian.
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Yeah but i never had such that experience with non chinese asians. Japanese and korans are extremely empathic and polite. Indians are somewhat too dramatic ( somewhat on the other side of the spectrum).
And before jumping at me calling names, these are averages. There are many empathic chinese and etc (e.g. dude who stood up to tanks in 1991 - probably executed at the scene)Could this have to do with lack of empathy?
I have a medical condition that sometimes sends me to emergency room. Over the years and across different jobs, i always Have been surprised how Chinese students/coleagues have difficulty showing empathy and they cannot help to not ask:
So when do you we think we can finish project/paper?
And this is given that i always deliver and my track record is perfect, so no worries on longterm prospects.
They just seem to fail to understand I work to live and not live to work. Or it could be the 9/9/6 culture clouding their judgement rather than lack of empathy.
As an interviewer, that is a red flag in terms of fit and my feedbacks always include one part about fit. Maybe same applies to the Harvard applications and you will never see those notes because their are confidential.Indians are asians, koreans are asian, filipinos are asian.
Your not understanding that the asian category lumps all of them.
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One could compare the average GPA of Asian Americans vs. Whites vs. African Americans\Latinos, but I doubt Harvard will like the outcomes..
If AsAmericans are admitted at lower than reasonable numbers, we should expect that the admitees had much higher average ability than other ethnic groups and would therefore outperform them in terms of output quality. Do we?
You fundamentally misunderstand Harvard's business model. Think of Harvard as maximizing its endowment. Why do you think Harvard cares about soft skills and not just test performance?
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don’t but you genius might understand that lump=china+RoW is correlated with china or do you only understand regression.
Now if you are chinese and your feelings are hurt, thats a different story. But it does not invalidate my argument. See thats how people like yoh fail the “fit” test and you never get it for life of yours how you work like a cow but still far behind the other dude thst works half as much as you and you attribute that to discrimination agains chinese or whatever ethnicity you are.Yeah but i never had such that experience with non chinese asians. Japanese and korans are extremely empathic and polite. Indians are somewhat too dramatic ( somewhat on the other side of the spectrum).
And before jumping at me calling names, these are averages. There are many empathic chinese and etc (e.g. dude who stood up to tanks in 1991 - probably executed at the scene)Could this have to do with lack of empathy?
I have a medical condition that sometimes sends me to emergency room. Over the years and across different jobs, i always Have been surprised how Chinese students/coleagues have difficulty showing empathy and they cannot help to not ask:
So when do you we think we can finish project/paper?
And this is given that i always deliver and my track record is perfect, so no worries on longterm prospects.
They just seem to fail to understand I work to live and not live to work. Or it could be the 9/9/6 culture clouding their judgement rather than lack of empathy.
As an interviewer, that is a red flag in terms of fit and my feedbacks always include one part about fit. Maybe same applies to the Harvard applications and you will never see those notes because their are confidential.Indians are asians, koreans are asian, filipinos are asian.
Your not understanding that the asian category lumps all of them.
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This post looks like a post that is typically deleted on EJMR due to violating the moderation policy. Please reconsider the language you use. If you are quoting an existing post you will also have to consider the language in the quote. Your post was this: Oe8e, you take some anecdote about your chinese experiences and extrapolate that to a variable that at best would be a weak correlation. I don\'t even know if chinese are the majority of Asian applicants, it could be indian Americans. You bring up regressions trying to justify a story to fit your priors. Have you thought that your actions influenced the actions you received? Typical reg monkey attitude make up a story to justify my priors
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Could this have to do with lack of empathy?
...
As an interviewer, that is a red flag in terms of fit and my feedbacks always include one part about fit. Maybe same applies to the Harvard applications and you will never see those notes because their are confidential.You think "lack of empathy" explains why Asian Americans receive the highest or 2nd highest average ratings on 3 letters of recommendation and alumni interviews?