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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33915 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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On one level, because there is such an enormous pool of applicants with stellar academic credentials you are invariably going to need to rely on other criteria, and the criteria you choose is equivalent to choosing a demographic pool.

Easy peasy, a lottery system that picks X students out all applicants with test scores/GPAs higher than Y threshold.

Ok, so you end up with an entirely Indian/Chinese student body in the Ivy League.

That does beg the question: if they have the most merit why are they the ones seeking access to our institutions and not the other way around?

Ok, so you end up with an entirely Indian/Chinese student body in the Ivy League.

No, there will still be whites (and blacks and hispanics) over the threshold for the lottery too, just fewer per capita. That said, I would wholeheartedly support severely restricting the amount of student visas we hand out to prioritize American students (and similar solutions).

But why do you support restricting Visas if you care so much about meritocracy? The reason you wouldn't just give every slot to the top N of the world with no visa restrictions shows that it's not all about "meritocracy." There are other, important considerations.

None of the Ivies / other elite colleges have obscene numbers of international students; the great majority of eg. Asian admits are US citizens.

Because they prioritized, and therefore optimized for, getting into those institutions more than others (arguably too much, because Goodhart's law will always have its due).

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