I Cannot Stress Enough That Grade Point Average is Racially Stratified Too
It’s pretty straightforward. If you’re an elite, Ivy institution whose brand is all about mingling with “future leaders” and the ruling class of tomorrow, the rise of poor and working-class Asian children of immigrants who’ve been absolutely crushing the SATs presents a big problem. If something like half of an incoming class is composed of these students, it makes it difficult for admissions offices to include enough children of the current (largely white) elite, who will go on to be in influential positions in politics, media, finance, etc. in the next generation (and will be donors, influential alumni, etc.). This is not only *not* about admitting more poor black and brown kids, it’s about keeping the “merely” bright kids of laundromat and bodega owners from diluting the social capital of the Ivy league “experience.” It is deeply classist on an axis that is also, alas, racist. It is also about keeping elite college presidents from having to testify in front of the Supreme Court (reputation management – like stock price – being the obsessive goal of any executive board or body).
I Cannot Stress Enough That Grade Point Average is Racially Stratified Too
Quote is a commenter.
yeah…. like it just occurred to me, harvard discriminates against asians seems true because of how asians seem to disproportionately get rejected for “bad personality” or whatever… but President Xi’s daughter went to harvard, and I’m sure her chances of admission were better than others with similar test scores. So maybe the admisions ppl were using asian names as a heuristic, which would be racial discrimination, but it does seem plausible, as the comment suggests, that the purpose of this is as a proxy for wealth/influence of the family
I wonder how these considerations figure into the long-standing Republican project to end racial preferences in university admissions. Like on the one hand, the Republicans is the party of the elite (captains of industry etc), but on the other hand I guess they are generally unhappy with the current institutions of elite production. Maybe it’s a winning move to just wreck some random havoc, and hope that whatever state things settle down in afterwards will be more favorable?
this is basically exactly what Jewish quotas were about back in the day