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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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I suspect a large part of the reason that so many Asian kids did poorly in Harvard's personality evaluation is because so many of them came out of a Tiger Mom culture where their dad played by Vivek Ramaswamy gave them a list of things they needed to do to get into Harvard and made damn sure they spent every available moment of their childhood ticking off the boxes.

I echo @Jiro's suspicion that so many Asian kids did poorly in Harvard's personality evaluation because Harvard wanted and needed them to do poorly in the quest for racial balancing. One could make the opposite argument ex-ante, that kids from Tiger Mom cultures would be expected to have "better" personalities, as their greater likelihood in having experiences at being (multi-instrument) musicians, (multi-sport) athletes, multilingual, and exposure to different cultures gives them greater depth and worldliness than someone from a non-Tiger Mom culture who maybe plays one instrument or a sport or two, while speaking one language (maybe two if they're latino) and spends their increased spare time dicking around, browsing TikTok and Instagram.

And furthermore, alumni interviewers rated the personalities of Asian candidates similarly as they did white candidates. It was the admissions office, which often didn't meet the candidates, that would give Asians the worst personality scores among any racial group. Harvard's attempt at jiu-jitsuing their way out was to imply It Just So Happens it must be the case that Asians have worse essays and recommendations:

Alumni interviewers give Asian-Americans personal ratings comparable to those of whites. But the admissions office gives them the worst scores of any racial group, often without even meeting them, according to Professor Arcidiacono.

Harvard said that while admissions officers may not meet the applicants, they can judge their personal qualities based on factors like personal essays and letters of recommendation.

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