Admission and Test Scores in Harvard

Would you like a school where everyone came in  with straight As in Math, Physics, Chemistry,  etc. Yes, As in all subjects and nothing but that. It is very unfortunate that U.S. Government under President Trump is siding with Asian-Americans on the case that Harvard University discriminates against Asian students.

The Justice Department offered a public show of support in court Thursday to a group suing Harvard for what it says is discrimination against Asian-American applicants to the elite university.

While we encourage As in academics, but academics is not the summation of life. There are people that make As in football, basketball, music, arts, etc but make Bs in Math and Physics. Harvard belongs to them because Harvard prepares for life and not just academics.

It is always the arrogance in this world when many think that African kids are not smart because they need special law to have opportunities which they were illegally denied. I do not know what they used to accept me in Johns Hopkins but I am aware that my GRE Quantitative was 800/800 and my master’s degree was 4.00/4.00 CGPA. Under fair play, I might not have needed any help [it is irrelevant what they used, I am grateful I got in, period] because those were just as good. And when I got in, I did well.

They call it affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics but for rich kids, it has a sweeter name Legacy. Legacy here means because your parents were famous, you enter first. For blacks,affirmative action looks as special backdoor when the main door was the real Legacy program.

Harvard vigorously disagreed on Friday, saying that its own expert analysis showed no discrimination and that seeking diversity is a valuable part of student selection. The university lashed out at the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, Edward Blum, accusing him of using Harvard to replay a previous challenge to affirmative action in college admissions, Fisher v. the University of Texas at Austin. In its 2016 decision in that case, the Supreme Court ruled that race could be used as one of many factors in admissions.

[…]

Harvard said that the plaintiffs’ expert, Peter Arcidiacono, a Duke University economist, had mined the data to his advantage by taking out applicants who were favored because they were legacies, athletes, the children of staff and the like, including Asian-Americans. In response, the plaintiffs said their expert had factored out these applicants because he wanted to look at the pure effect of race on admissions, unclouded by other factors.

This world needs balance. I have many Asian friends and I know many of them will understand my point. Math can take you to Goldman Sachs while football can take me to Real Madrid: both are professional jobs. And Harvard can prepare everyone for those jobs. That is what Harvard is saying: selecting students should not be based solely on test scores. Life is more than As.

In secondary school, I was brilliant in classroom. But on the sports day, I was nobody. I respected my classmates who could run faster even though they were not good Math students. In classroom, I was the captain but on football fields, I was a substitute. This fixation on test scores and the arrogance that a premier university needs only look at test scores are unfortunate.

Nonetheless, if there are discrimination against Asian kids, that should be looked at. But I do not think the case of As and better academic preparation should be seen as pure discrimination. You cannot expect a Harvard with nothing but a congregation of all As.

Harvard’s class of 2021 is 14.6 percent African-American, 22.2 percent Asian-American, 11.6 percent Hispanic and 2.5 percent Native-American or Pacific Islander, according to Harvard’s website.

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