The Chosen
The author presents the findings of his survey of admissions at Princeton, revealing a century of exclusion that cuts to the core of the American experience, while raising questions about the stratification of higher education in America.
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What Hacker News says
- Why is the analogy ridiculous? You should read The Chosen, by Karabel, which is probably the best history of elite college admissions. Much of what we do in college admissions today are remnants to reduce the number of Jewish people at Ivy League schools -- and then later a focus on meritocracy. Colleges have historically taken stock of the "type" of people they accept and adjust to their liking.
- There are many moving parts to this case and the issue(s) it concerns.
Highly recommend people read (about) the following book by Jerome Karabel: The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion At Harvard, Yale, And Princeton.
Would also recommend Daniel Golden's The Price of Admission.
Prof. Frank Wu's insight might also be useful here (from ~1:10 onward): https://youtu.be/PrDbvSSbxk8
- It was definitely an explicit goal. There's a great book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/The-Chosen-Admission-Exclusion-Prince...
Here's a quote from a summary:
> At one point, [Harvard President] Lowell wrote to a Harvard philosophy professor to explain that enrolling a high number of Jewish students would "ruin the college" by causing elite Protestant students to attend other schools, according to Karabel's book. Harvard would be ruined "not because Jews of bad character have come; but the result follows from the coming in large numbers of Jews of any kind, save those few who mingle readily with the rest of the undergraduate body," Lowell wrote in the letter.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-di...
- The move from pure standardized testing towards the more "holistic" approach to admissions was deliberately designed and implemented to limit the number of Jews at elite universities. See Jerome Karabel's excellent "The Chosen" for more analysis (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chosen.html?id=1Nf3... there was a time when testing and grades were a large portion of admissions, but that let too many hard-working undesirables into Ivies. Open racial quotas would be too controversial even then, so universities started asking for essays and extra-curriculars, judging on the basis of "character" to weed out non-WASPs. It's an interesting study in how meritocracy can cut in unexpected ways.
That said, no one who's been to Japan or South Korea thinks that increasing the focus on standardized testing is that great of an idea. Taken too far, standardized tests also favor the rich, who have the time and resources to train and cram, and the SAT frenzy in American suburbs is already pretty high. Lets try to be more meritocratic while keeping an eye on our teen suicide rates.
- I don't really see how signally is bullshit from the examples you've given. Harvard College does make a a decision to cultivate a class composed of the best students, that's sort of the entire point. Acceptance to Harvard College ends up being a signal for those things it selects for, not necessarily those things one actually learns. The gateway is admissions, not what Harvard actually imparts.
Since the admissions standards of Harvard Extension school are lower, it doesn't matter that the students can do the same work. It matters that the students weren't selected in the same way. Selection itself matters to the signal that the education is sending.
As for Harvard (etc) not selecting for Jews and Asians, very explicitly throughout the first 60 years or so (Anyone particularly interested in the topic should read Karabel's The Chosen), that's also, exactly as you point out, a signal sent if you went to Harvard in those years. That doesn't make the policy right or wrong, it just means that if you graduate from Harvard in 1930 you're likely a WASP, and, indeed, that item on you resume is signally to all sort of employers that a good Harvard WASP interviewed you and deemed that your character is fit, that saves a step when they want to hire you at their White-Shoe law firm circa 1935.
- > So the policy was abandoned for a more rounded approach.
This was the exact pretext used by Harvard in the early 20th century to reduce the number of Jews in attendance.
> As the sociologist Jerome Karabel writes in “The Chosen” (Houghton Mifflin; $28), his remarkable history of the admissions process at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, that meritocratic spirit soon led to a crisis. The enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically. By 1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvard’s freshman class. The administration and alumni were up in arms. Jews were thought to be sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of wealthy Wasp alumni, which did not bode well for fund-raising. A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president in the nineteen-twenties, stated flatly that too many Jews would destroy the school: “The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate . . . because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also.”
> The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior to everyone else. Lowell’s first idea—a quota limiting Jews to fifteen per cent of the student body—was roundly criticized. Lowell tried restricting the number of scholarships given to Jewish students, and made an effort to bring in students from public schools in the West, where there were fewer Jews. Neither strategy worked. Finally, Lowell—and his counterparts at Yale and Princeton—realized that if a definition of merit based on academic prowess was leading to the wrong kind of student, the solution was to change the definition of merit. Karabel argues that it was at this moment that the history and nature of the Ivy League took a significant turn.
> The admissions office at Harvard became much more interested in the details of an applicant’s personal life. Lowell told his admissions officers to elicit information about the “character” of candidates from “persons who know the applicants well,” and so the letter of reference became mandatory. Harvard started asking applicants to provide a photograph. Candidates had to write personal essays, demonstrating their aptitude for leadership, and list their extracurricular activities.
