Harvard & UNC lawsuits: LEGACY PREFERENCE

xiggi · December 4, 2014, 2:32am

Here’s a small insight about the data:

When asked about the data supporting the claims of discrimination, TE replied:

because I’ve never actually sat in on an admission committee. But I’m convinced they don’t have an equation like this and say, “OK, if you are Hispanic, you get a certain number of points; if your SAT scores are in this category, you get a certain number of points,” right down the list.

People may read this and want to say, “Oh, because I’m Asian American, my SAT scores have been downgraded.” That is not really the way to interpret these data. Many times people will ask me, “Do your results prove that there is discrimination against Asian applicants?” And I say, “No, they don’t.” Even though in our data we have much information about the students and what they present in their application folders, most of what we have are quantifiable data. We don’t have the “softer” variables — the personal statements that the students wrote, their teacher recommendations, a full list of extracurricular activities. Because we don’t have access to all of the information that the admission office has access to, it is possible that the influence of one applicant characteristic or another might appear in a different light if we had the full range of materials.

Similarly, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed back in November 2009, TE stated that 

he did not think his data establish this bias [against Asians]. He noted that while his formulas are notably more complete than typical test score comparisons by race and ethnicity, he doesn’t have the “softer variables,” such as teacher and high school counselor recommendations, essays and lists of extracurricular activities. It is possible, he said, that such factors explain some of the apparent SAT and ACT disadvantage facing Asian applicants.
At the same time, he said he understood that these numbers would certainly not reassure Asian applicants or those who believe they are suffering discrimination.
“I understand the worry of Asian students, but do I have a smoking gun? No,” he said.

Now, replace TE with Thomas Espenshade, and you might see why TE has distanced himself in numerous occasions, and butted heads with people who were determined to elevate his findings beyond the reasonable. The plaintiffs might want to distance themselves from quoting from Espenshade too liberally!

That or try to find better data and better authors that the ones quoted in their brief.

bluebayou · December 4, 2014, 6:30am

I’m sure H’s defense team is already tee-ing up the quotes above…

Swimkidsdad · December 4, 2014, 2:22pm

Who said anything about the plaintiff quoting Espenshade? Currently Espenshade is unable to say which insistutions provide the data for his studies. What I said was that the plaintiff may decide to use Espenshade methods to analyze the current admission dataset from Harvard and that this analysis would likely show a negative bias against certain ethnic groups using SAT scores. The plaintiffs would then quote Hernanadez and show that SAT scores are important for Ivy league admission. If the defense used the argument that other factors play a role in admissions to Harvard ( which I do not disagree with) they would then have to say exactly what those factors are and how they are used. The plaintiff would probably be able to show that there are no significant differences in the other factors.

Periwinkle · December 4, 2014, 2:41pm

The plaintiffs do cite Espenshade. As he cannot list the colleges he studied, yes, that’s a problem.

Hernandez last worked for Dartmouth, not Harvard. She left Dartmouth in 1997. Do you think someone who worked for a different Ivy League college 17 years ago would be relevant to the suit?

A trouble for the plaintiffs is the ease with which Harvard can collect quotes from people to confirm their approach. It’s not hard. Here, for example, is a CNN reporter, Jeff Yang <a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/24/opinion/yang-harvard-lawsuit/index.html?eref=rss_topstories[/url]:”>http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/24/opinion/yang-harvard-lawsuit/index.html?eref=rss_topstories:</a>

You see, in the course of her job, she was able to gain access to college admissions files, and couldn’t resist pulling her own to see what it said. The file told her bluntly that she had been a “marginal” admit based on her application, but that she was ultimately accepted because she had a brother who was already a student in good standing — that is to say, me.
Incensed, she then pulled my file to see whether I had gotten in on my own merits. And what she shared with me was the discovery that I essentially would have been denied admission, based on scores and grades that were somewhat lower than hers, and an all-too-typical extracurricular career (piano, math team, blah blah blah).
What saved my application was the optional interview I’d done on campus, in which I’d ended up talking about everything that wasn’t in my application: My aspirations to be a writer. The horror movie that I’d scripted and shot in secret at our high school. The subtle differences between anxiety, suspense and fear. The fact that I actually really, really suck at piano.
The interviewer made the case that I had intangibles that made me a potential asset to the student body, and pressed for me to be considered seriously, despite my middling distinction. Someone decided to take his advice. I hope they didn’t end up regretting it.

So, here we have an Asian graduate of Harvard who finds out that he got in due to his individual interests, the parts of his application which were not “all-too-typical.” And oh, yes, his sister got in due to her legacy status.

There may very well be a bias against applications with high test scores and nothing which stands out to the admissions team. There may be a bias against the sort of resume produced by typical high-pressure parentally-guided child raising. That’s very different from a racial bias. It would be interesting to see if the Asian students admitted to Harvard were mostly “not typical” students.

Pizzagirl · December 4, 2014, 2:57pm

"If the defense used the argument that other factors play a role in admissions to Harvard ( which I do not disagree with) they would then have to say exactly what those factors are and how they are used. "

This is where I wonder how some of you even manage to work in the real world where you hire people. When you interview / hire someone, you don’t have an exact list of factors that are 15% leadership, 10% initiative, 20% specific job competencies, 10% professional maturity, etc. You interview someone and you holistically determine how you feel about them. You take all of these things into account, but you don’t “weight” them in such a fashion. Some people are able to do this intuitively. Other people are completely flummoxed by this concept because they don’t know how to evaluate anyone other than on a specific rubric. Makes you wonder how they choose their friends or fell in love with their spouses.

mathmom · December 4, 2014, 3:18pm

^Harvard I think actually admires that certain confidence and chutzpah that allows someone to say at an interview that they “suck at piano”. My son told the interviewer he hadn’t applied single choice early action because Harvard wasn’t his first choice. They also talked about all the different computer programming things he’d done - teaching himself from MIT’s open courseware, being part of a team of game modders, working on a data base for WHO and a bunch of other stuff along with a couple of school ECs.

bluebayou · December 4, 2014, 3:48pm

I’ll bet big dollars nothing of of the sort. Some H quant jocks will parse the data by geography, intended major, EC’s, athletics, legacies, etc., and voila, run a test for Simpson’s Paradox – which TE could not do since he did not have the full data – and xiggi will be correct:

This case may “likely” show a correlation of negative bias, but no causation.

lookingforward · December 4, 2014, 4:49pm

Hernandez? Thank’s Periwinkle for stating how long she’s been out of the decision-making side. Last time I checked (not long ago,) it seemed she had wiped the web of that lil detail, which used to be right there in her bio.

Face that when Espenshade leaves the room, he takes his methods with him. Take a hard look at xiggi’s quotes from TE (which can easily be googled.) If you need more info to check some purported score bias, then you NEED that more info. You don’t have access to it. Nor will Blum magically “discover” it. If you just go on after-the fact quasi-analysis, some need to face that Asians may find they are disproportionately represented at Harvard.

Kenzaburo · December 4, 2014, 6:15pm

A lot of people here are very critical of the Asian upbringing. They also seemingly believe that they know what H wants. I am curious, why is it that Asians are super over represented at H if the Asian upbringing is so horrible? And how many of the parents here have been part of H’s admissions committee? I see a lot of projection going on here.

What I see here is pretty ugly. How many Asian families do these parents know intimately and how many are mindlessly repeating what they read on media?

xiggi · December 4, 2014, 6:32pm

Hello and welcome. Kenzaburo.

Tperry1982 · December 4, 2014, 6:39pm

mathmom - I understand that, but a certain type of student is just not going to go to MIT, even if they are the best and brightest. Just like a kid won’t go to Yale, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, Georgia Tech, etc. based upon pre conceived notions.

Tperry1982 · December 4, 2014, 6:45pm

Don’t think anyone believes, or said, that Asian upbringing is horrible. I am AA and trust me, I am not about to talk about how another culture raises its children with all the stereotypes abounding about us. But my D went to a school that was full of Asians so I know their parents well and I also work loosely within the admissions arena. My roommate at Yale was Asian and I was very active in the entire minority culture. Any type of generalization is going to miss the mark, but trust me, there are not too many Asian parents paying for their kids to be Classics or Literature majors.

I am getting this from the students themselves who lament about how their parents push them into majors and careers in the STEM area. So yes there may be non STEM Asian students, but they are not the vast majority.

xiggi · December 4, 2014, 6:47pm

The basic problem for the plaintiff is that pushing a part of their complaints ends up hurting them. What if Harvard countered with an argument that states that they see LITTLE correlation between super high SAT scores and a successful education at their school. What if they stated that any student who score above 500 in each section and about 1800 in total has the tools to graduate with a Harvard degree? In fact, with a 98 percent grad rate, it should not be too hard to make that case.

But it does not stop there. Harvard would then say they have a massive amount of correlation between certain attributes and the success (as they determine) at Harvard. For instance, they might value political activism or money raising prowesses and point that student X showed than in the application and went on to do the same while at H. This supports a preference for repeating the adventure with another student. And then they break out that they see NO such correlation between all their 2350+ scorers with some responding to the promises and other simply shining by their absence of meaningful contribution. Yet, Harvard is somehow bound to accept students through a lens that FAVOR high scorers. Harvard should not have much difficulty in showing they do accept high scoring students in greater numbers and others with a certain set of qualities in smaller numbers.

In a way, Harvard could claim that the SAT scores represent a SMALL indication but thay they consider the scores as a ticket to participate in the final cuts. In that case, the plaintiffs who based their entire statistiscal analysis on test scores would end up with … not much to argue.

And that is something that many around here understand and know.

lookingforward · December 4, 2014, 6:52pm

Nothing inherently wrong with Asian applicants. But the insistence, from some sides, that there’s discrimination is, in an odd way, its own projection. Assuming this is all about stats and race simply isn’t the broader and deeper (critical) thinking, awareness, exploration, and energy Harvard asks for.

Harvard (and a growing number of others) tells us some of what they consider. <a href=“What We Look For | Harvard”>https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/application-process/what-we-look</a>

Kenzaburo · December 4, 2014, 6:58pm

Whatever H looks at, that results in Asians being 5% of the population and 20% of the student body. No other race even comes close. So Asians are likely doing something right in meeting H’s standards.

bluebayou · December 4, 2014, 7:01pm

Please point to a post number (as an example)…

Swimkidsdad · December 5, 2014, 7:18am

Parsing data can lead to errors in interpretation caused by subgroup analysis. In order to avoid these errors the following rules should be followed ( from Brookes et al):

While it is generally recognised that subgroup analyses can produce spurious results, the extent of the problem is almost certainly under-estimated. This is particularly true when subgroup-specific analyses are used. In addition, the increase in sample size required to identify differential subgroup effects may be substantial and the commonly used ‘rule of four’ may not always be sufficient, especially when interactions are relatively subtle, as is often the case. CONCLUSIONS–RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SUBGROUP ANALYSES AND THEIR INTERPRETATION: (1) Subgroup analyses should, as far as possible, be restricted to those proposed before data collection. Any subgroups chosen after this time should be clearly identified. (2) Trials should ideally be powered with subgroup analyses in mind. However, for modest interactions, this may not be feasible. (3) Subgroup-specific analyses are particularly unreliable and are affected by many factors. Subgroup analyses should always be based on formal tests of interaction although even these should be interpreted with caution. (4) The results from any subgroup analyses should not be over-interpreted. Unless there is strong supporting evidence, they are best viewed as a hypothesis-generation exercise. In particular, one should be wary of evidence suggesting that treatment is effective in one subgroup only. (5) Any apparent lack of differential effect should be regarded with caution unless the study was specifically powered with interactions in mind. CONCLUSIONS–RECOMMENDATIONS FOR RESEARCH: (1) The implications of considering confidence intervals rather than p-values could be considered. (2) The same approach as in this study could be applied to contexts other than RCTs, such as observational studies and meta-analyses. (3) The scenarios used in this study could be examined more comprehensively using other statistical methods, incorporating clustering effects, considering other types of outcome variable and using other approaches, such as Bootstrapping or Bayesian methods.

It is unlikely that this analysis will survive strict scrutiny by the plaintiff using the recommendation for subgroup analysis and their interpretation.

<a href=“5”>quote</a>Any apparent lack of differential effect should be regarded with caution unless the study was specifically powered with interactions in mind.

[/quote]

Swimkidsdad · December 5, 2014, 7:30am

The plaintiff no longer needs Hernandez, the CNN article shows that SAT scores are a very important for admission decisions. Any attempt to use subgroup analysis of the SAT data by Harvard would probably not survive strict scrutiny by the plaintiff (see post # 336). After demonstrating a negative SAT bias the plaintiffs would probably force Harvard to clearly articulate how admission decision are made including which factors are used to make a decision and how these factors are used.

xiggi · December 5, 2014, 8:14am

Is there a different CNN article? I think that there are more salient points in the one quoted above than showing the importance of the SAT. Listening to the writer with closer attention might help understand why there is so little support for this lawsuit among reasonable people, and this including from the exact community the lawsuit pretends to help.

In a way, the fixation on Harvard’s greatness might be justified. After all, students such as the oped writer are showing that they DID learn something at the prestigious school. It’s remarkable to read a nice combination of logical reasoning and altruistic thoughts. Who knew that this what exactly what tiger parents had in mind!

sorghum · December 5, 2014, 8:26am

The discrimination against Asians (or for other groups) is NOT a matter of stats. The issue is that given the same or higher stats, the Asian EC or essay or LOR will be unfairly discounted. It is ridiculous to think that all the low-stat admitted students just happen to have a great way with words when it comes to admission essays, etc. Harvard and others are aiming at demographic targets which are very very close to quotas, if not actual quotas.

Harvard & UNC lawsuits: LEGACY PREFERENCE

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