Admission bias at Harvard

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Kizmet, May 16, 2015.

Loading...
  1. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    One of my former colleagues, a professor of econ, is from China. He went to a very average U.S. school for his PhD, which is fine because it got him where he wanted to go in academia, but was surprising given that he had a great background: experience as an attorney in China before he came to the U.S. and a perfect score on the math GREs. While I know that a perfect score on the quant portion isn't exactly as rare as a perfect score on the SATs or the GMAT, I have to think he'd have gotten the red carpet treatment and acceptance at a flagship university's PhD program if he'd have had a different background, say from Europe, or if he was a woman or was just about anything other than a Chinese man.
     
  2. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

    That's fascinating!
     
  3. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    FWIW, I believe I had at least 760/800 on Quantitative section; I also struggled in the first round of applications. I got into Florida State (and one another school) for Winter semester, having applied to just a few schools - as a trial run before applying again in earnest for Fall.

    In retrospect, in my case, there were issues in my application package that had nothing to do with scores - like professors who didn't know how to write a recommendation letter, poor choice of schools to apply to (funny fact: I didn't know Dartmouth College was both prestigious - ha! - and has tiny graduate class. Results in about 50 applications per opening), and perhaps flaws in personal statement. It is not easy to play the game well as an international applicant.
     
  4. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  5. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

  6. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Sorry, but I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.
     
  7. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    This is what I meant....
    [​IMG]
     
  8. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    If that were true, the percentage of students that are self-identified as Native American would be several times higher. The reality is that there are hardly any Native Americans at Harvard, self-identified or actual.
     
  9. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    Speaking of Elizabeth Warren . . .

    I've posted this elsewhere, but it seems relevant here - a photoshopped version of a what is now a politically incorrect song from the 1950 film version of Irving Berlin's 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun:



    What is interesting about Warren's bar registration is that even as early as 1986, the term American Indian had been replaced in common usage by Native American. I'm not surprised that this would ultimately bite her in the ass.
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2019
  10. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Hmm, ok. So you didn't really mean "half of the white people at Harvard," you meant one person. One. Now the fact that you were referencing Warren specifically is interesting since you didn't name her originally and the Harvard lawsuit has nothing to do with Native Americans but let's run with it anyway.
    The story that Warren has told is that when she was growing up she was told by her family that there were Native American ancestors in the family. I guess this has turned out to be untrue or at least not clearly true. With the advent of personal DNA testing, like at Ancestry.com, 23andme, etc. people have been discovering all sorts of new information about there genetic ancestry. While this is true everywhere I think it's especially true in the US because of the "melting pot" effect. Lots of immigrants being thrown together and a lot of them intent on assimilating and not highlighting their ancestral backgrounds. Is it really surprising that someone might get details about their ancestry wrong? Now you can posit that she lied deliberately and that's an interesting theory but I'm not sure how you'd go about proving it. It seems more plausible that it was a just a mistake, a family legend passed through a few generations and that she was just repeating what she was told. I don't really know and I don't think you do either. It probably comes down to whether you like her politics or not so that if you think she's too far to the left then you're going to assume she's deliberately lying just because it makes you feel better and if you like her politics you're more willing to cut her some slack. I could also point out that considering the lies coming out of the White House every day, focusing on Warren's ancestry story seems a out of place, but that's just me. So, have a good day and give my regards to your Mexican-American kids.
     
  11. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    "Half of the White folks at Harvard University claimed to be Native American. My kids are half White and half Asian; for Harvard admission purposes, they are neither White or Asian; they are Mexican-Americans. :D"

    My comment is mainly a joke!
     
  12. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    Wow . . . I have to admit that even I believed Tekman was being serious. Why? Because we live in an increasingly insane society where the claims people make are sooooooooo whacked out that they might actually be true.

    A few items I've been following, since I tend to be a First Amendment advocate (whether or not I agree with the subjects):

    Two prominent lawsuit stories of the past couple of days indicate how crazy things have become. First, a teacher in West Virginia is suing his school district because they fired him for not using a transgendered student's preferred pronoun when speaking to that student. See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7525847/Fired-teacher-wouldnt-use-trans-students-pronouns-sues.html. (Call me simplistic, but my position has always been that if it has a frank and beans it's a boy, and if it doesn't have a frank and beans, it's a girl. I'm with the teacher all the way on this one.)

    Second, the lead actress for a British production of the musical version of Alice Walker's The Color Purple is suing the production because she was fired, having written a Facebook post several years ago against homosexuality. The actress, Oluwaseyi Omooba, is a Christian who holds a traditional anti-gay position, and was accused of homophobic slurs. Paradoxically, the lead character she was to have portrayed in the show, Miss Celie, is a lesbian. Go figure . . . See https://www.queerty.com/color-purple-actress-sacked-homophobic-comments-sues-termination-20190930. This time, I'm with both parties: Omooba has the right to speak out against gays, and the producers have a right to fire her for doing so. The fun part is that she has alienated herself from both sides - from the theatre community for making homophobic comments, and from evangelical Christians for being willing to play a lesbian on stage in the first place. Talk about a great example of screwing yourself. :D

    Of course, the biggest example of insanity is that the president of one country would call the president of another country and ask him to dig up dirt on his potential rival in the next election. Then would attempt to quash the notion of free speech among his own staff in a cover-up that would rival Nixon.

    Anyway, it's now 12 years since I have owned a television. (When I was driving, I made a conscientious decision never to put a TV on board. I keep up on the news every day thanks to the web, but even on the rare occasion that I stay in a hotel, I never turn the TV on -unless there's something decent on TCM, and even that is rare. And I've never missed it. Even for major news stories or major political debates, I can get a live feed online.) I also rarely, if ever, go to movies. When I read the list of nominees and winners for things like the Emmys and Oscars, I have generally never heard of any of them. Yep, there are some things in which I intentionally choose to keep myself illiterate.

    There might be some who would say that I'm missing a lot of good comedy. Not true - with news stories like these (and even with some of the "Boy, did I screw up" posts here on DI), the comedy is better tha any sitcom on the tube. :rolleyes:
     
  13. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    [​IMG]
     
  14. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    a minor insane twist in this story is that the main qualification BOTH these world leaders used to get elected is TV stardom, one playing a fake President in a sitcom, another playing a tycoon on a "reality" show. These are the days. Thanks to this incident, a clip of Zelensky (pretend) playing a piano with his manhood graced HBO airwaves (which would be a legitimate career accomplishment for him one short year ago).

    Of course, this context makes the situation LESS insane and more probable (both men have no clue what they are doing in office). Can't think of appropriate words to express my feelings (have a few, but they're all unprintable).
     

Share This Page