1590 SAT scorer, working at PhD level role at Google at 18, sues Cornell and other schools over racial discrimination.

balanced class wrote:

Where there\'s smoke ... wrote:

Ha. Did not take to running but was Captain of football team and got a few looks from D2/D3 schools. Was not interested in playing past HS because of demanding major. Zero red flags on his app other than things he could not control like the color of his skin and his gender. We joke that if he would've transitioned to a female pole vaulter and soared 15', the UCs would've welcomed him with open arms.

Something was wrong with his app.

Biology not really considered a demanding major. It is an 'in demand' major as the typical pre-med gateway.

Do you even have to apply by major at Cal schools?

Assuming male, it's now harder to get in as a female, so no gender bias.

No reason he could not have said he planned to walk on for football in college. Changing his mind upon arriving on campus is his choice. The "I won't do activities, so I can concentrate on my demanding major", sounds great but hurts chance to be admitted.

Sounds like it worked out though. Academic money at out of state school not an awful option.

I bet he's doing well at current school.

Rasnip wrote:

The plaintiff claims he was rejected for non-meritocratic reasons (racial discrimination), and offers as proof his 1. GPA and SAT scores (very good but hardly singular in the elite applicant pool). 2. A few intangibles. "See? I'm a great coder! I even got a job for it!"

There is no way to boil down intangibles into numbers, plug those numbers into an equation, and yet that the result of that equation be representative of an idealized concept of "meritocracy." The people who make the equation might claim that they're being quantitative and objective, but their biases can't be separated from the result. i.e., "What matters for determining the applicant's quality is what I believe should matter."

Ultimately, measuring merit can never be done with absolute precision, so long as it's other humans determining the criteria. We would would need an AI with beyond-human intelligence. Something that can look at the totality of who we are and what we can become. Something that knows us far better than any human can know another human. (a chilling concept to me, but whatever)

So...what do we want here? Do we want to revolve all college admission and the course of a person's entire life around a single test, like the Chinese gaokao? Asian-style test structures become all-consuming and are probably a major contributor to the collapsing birth rates over there. We've never had that in the Western educational environment. Or most of the rest of Western society for that matter.

Or do we want to continue to consider intangibles, like we always have? Legacy admissions, athletic admissions, race-based considerations. Should they all go? Personally, I see some value to all three, from a financial standpoint, a cultural standpoint, or both.

brodephmodeph wrote:

Rasnip wrote:

The plaintiff claims he was rejected for non-meritocratic reasons (racial discrimination), and offers as proof his 1. GPA and SAT scores (very good but hardly singular in the elite applicant pool). 2. A few intangibles. "See? I'm a great coder! I even got a job for it!"

There is no way to boil down intangibles into numbers, plug those numbers into an equation, and yet that the result of that equation be representative of an idealized concept of "meritocracy." The people who make the equation might claim that they're being quantitative and objective, but their biases can't be separated from the result. i.e., "What matters for determining the applicant's quality is what I believe should matter."

Ultimately, measuring merit can never be done with absolute precision, so long as it's other humans determining the criteria. We would would need an AI with beyond-human intelligence. Something that can look at the totality of who we are and what we can become. Something that knows us far better than any human can know another human. (a chilling concept to me, but whatever)

So...what do we want here? Do we want to revolve all college admission and the course of a person's entire life around a single test, like the Chinese gaokao? Asian-style test structures become all-consuming and are probably a major contributor to the collapsing birth rates over there. We've never had that in the Western educational environment. Or most of the rest of Western society for that matter.

Or do we want to continue to consider intangibles, like we always have? Legacy admissions, athletic admissions, race-based considerations. Should they all go? Personally, I see some value to all three, from a financial standpoint, a cultural standpoint, or both.

Best comment in the thread