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<p>Your statement was that using high AIME score as one of many possible additional data whose presence or absence affects the value of an SAT score, would mean unfairly creating a separate admissions category for Chinese girls, and requiring the members of that category to be the absolute top few female applicants in the nation in order to be admitted to the super-elite schools (“HYPSM”). Discrimination!</p>
<p>In fact, the analysis that I posted was race-independent. It also listed many other possibilities besides a high AIME score, as ways to raise the credibility of an extremely high SAT score. There is nothing special about 6+ (or the AIME) except that it is verifiable, because the AMC publishes the names of the students with those scores each year. If there are 30 different activities in which one can demonstrate ability or achievement higher than what is measured on the SAT, and <em>none</em> of them appear on an application from somebody with a 2400 SAT (whether male, female, Chinese, or some other category), that is evidence that the person is probably not in the top few hundred in ability, and this negative evidence is stronger when the applicant is known to have participated in some of the 30 activities. Do you agree that this is true and has nothing to do with being Chinese?</p>
<p>Regarding the Chinese matter, it is true that a race-blind analysis of the supply-and-demand market value of the credentials, or of the estimated ability level given the credentials, will disadvantage US schooled, immigrant Asian females – especially those from some Korean and Chinese subpopulations and communities – compared to people from most other race/gender/geography categories. Belonging to an academically very advantaged and hard striving subpopulation tends to increase test scores and grades at any fixed level of ability, and it also tends to reduce ability level at any measured level of scores and grades. If admissions does not completely account for this effect, the result would be overadmission of Asians relative to actual ability levels. There are many numerical indications that this has been happening for years, such as measurable academic underperformance of Asians relative to credentials on dozens of criteria. The Asian parents and conspiracy theorists on CC should consider the possibility that in real terms the existing system discriminates in favor of Asians relative to a pure ability-detecting or performance-predicting selection, by taking many items on the application at face value instead of discounting scores for likely inflationary factors such as test prep, weekend and afterschool academies, academic summer camps, and the rest of the advantaged immigrant routine. Or it could be a partial discounting, but less than a meritocracy would require. This is, in fact, the only known interpretation of what might be happening that is consistent with all known studies performed by Espenshade and others, including not only the admission regressions, but the ones on academic (under)performance and academic preparation.</p>