The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. The stratification is more granular than Asian versus Black or White versus Native America. For example, Jewish students excel beyond the Caucasian average while Cambodian and other Southeast Asian Immigrants perform significantly below the national average for Asian Americans. The challenge for large and heterogeneously diverse nations like the U.S. is to offer an educational system that provides access to quality education regardless of parental involvement. There is also the need to provide quality education to adult learners, a wholly different, but equally important topic in the area of rapid technological change.
> score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically.
Test prep has diminishing marginal returns.
On the flip side that means just 1 hour of prep makes a big impact.
This is what research has found and why a lot of focus is on getting kids to do any studying for anything at all.
Many kids do zero homework and zero studying. Getting them to 1 is the hardest part.
This is the biggest actionable problem for these exams. It doesn’t require race or culture or whatever at all. The research says it requires specialized instruction during school - something to achieve focused studying, as opposed to merely watching the clock go down. Difficult for the hardest students but on average, in aggregates, performs well.
My point is that there are a lot of Asian students at Harvard who did 10 hours of test prep for the SAT. They didn’t go to cram school. There are also students who DID go to cram school. I myself studied about 10 hours for the SAT.
You don’t need cram school to improve test scores. You need some studying instead of none at all.
Right, I think this is true. I scored really well on my SAT despite being a poor student and having parents that did not give a fuck at all, b/c I did just some minor prep for the test.
5-10 hours of test prep may add a couple hundred points to someone’s score, but probably won’t take someone from ann 850 to 1200.
Looking at the math section, you might get a 600 if you don’t study but could know all the material but don’t know how to take the test.
But to get a 600 requires you to know a certain amount of material and know how to take the test. Most kids at my HS couldn’t get a 600 math even with 40 hours of math prep.
Just want to make sure, and correct me if I'm wrong, but is this your argument? "some students did X and their outcomes were good, therefore doing X is all anyone needs to have a good outcome"
It's kind of the opposite. I was a highschool dropout, highest level of math was basic algebra. I was able to change my mind about the whole education thing by buying a "prepare yourself for the SAT" book, studying it for a couple of months, doing well, and getting admitted to college. Ended up doing a math + physics dual major.
(I'm really grateful that that avenue to college existed -- I could not have written an admissions essay, done extracurricular activities, or generally been a "good boy" if my life depened on it.)
Jim Webb who was a Marine officer in Vietnam, a journalist, a novelist, and then a Democratic senator from Virginia saw standardized tests as his route to social mobility from a poor background in the rural south.
Are you suggesting that we should close schools and ship that book to every family? Might have worked for you, but I can guarantee you that it will be disastrous for most students.
SAT math is geometry,a 10th grade class for average students. Scoring below 700 isn't due to lack of "push" it's lack of some combination of intelligence, nurture, health, teaching.
Due to the cost and complexity of transcontinental migration, most Asians in US now, and Jews last generation, come from elites from their previous family homeland who successfully migrated to escape bad government or seeking greater opportunity, when it was tactically hard to do so for the average person. It's a natural filter for smart, capable, effective people who can raise children to be same.
The effect tends to fade over time (shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves, or docks to docks, in three generations). Now that Jewish immigration has mostly ended, their great-grandchildren (and the descendants of previous generations of Asian immigrants) are, as a cohort, not performing academically as well as today's Asian immigrant children and chidren of immigrants.
The math contest winners and teams, deep into the bench, are nearly all children of immigrants (and Polgar-esque homeschoolers who get to avoid time-wasting distractions of school)
> Jews last generation, come from elites from their previous family homeland who successfully migrated to escape bad government or seeking greater opportunity, when it was tactically hard to do so for the average person. It's a natural filter for smart, capable, effective people who can raise children to be same.
The large majority of the US Jewish population came after the 1850s. They were not selected for wealth. Like the Irish immigrants were negatively selected. They were less educated than those who stayed at home, on average. Similarly Italians in the relevant period of mass migration. The middle class were doing well so they were more likely to stay home.
> The effect tends to fade over time (shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves, or docks to docks, in three generations).
This has no basis in evidence. Every psychological trait I’m aware of is strongly heritable, including ones with obvious impacts on earnings like intelligence, conscientiousness and extraversion[1]. Social class is so heritable the only society to make a dent were the Chinese during the cultural revolution[2]. If you want to know more about the extraordinary persistence of social class see Gregory Clark’s work[3].
[1] Genetic Influence on Human
Psychological Traits
> Now that Jewish immigration has mostly ended, their great-grandchildren (and the descendants of previous generations of Asian immigrants) are, as a cohort, not performing academically as well as today's Asian immigrant children and children of immigrants.
Source? Judging by elite college representation [1], they're doing at least as well if not better than Asian Americans (which granted, is not limited to just Asian immigrant children).
Just a quick note on the word 'push'. We all now the 'tiger parenting' trope. Those parents exists and it makes a difference (with clear 'pushing', which I see as a negative).
But with maths I think it's a bit more subtle. Just the tiny things (even just 'talk' math) you do in early education can make a massive return later. There is no 'mean' in maths education even in ages 4-10 (my kids). We live in the Netherlands, that scores quite well in the table. And still I think math education is at least unambitious for the higher percentiles.
With just a few minutes here and there I've managed to get some pretty abstract concepts in their thinking (say: zero and the empty set, that's something small kids understand intuitively / or the first algorithms with russian multiplication or divide and conquer). There's no need for pushing, and still I think I've already help lay a good foundation of math in my 10 year old. No more than 30 hours invested in math his life.
maybe pushing is the wrong word but i would say parents who care about their child's education have children who score substantially higher than children who don't have parents who care. And "caring" is highly related to family stability and the education level of one or both parents. Where education level manifests itself is in how a parent cares. My uneducated mom (who is asian) asked us to study and get good grades (an asian cultural value), but she couldn't really tel if we were actually "studying" since she was uneducated. Now the asian values meant that i at-least got "bare minimum" grades compared to other races of people but i never had enough "care" to excel (which i think i could have done). Now imagine a group of people with neither cultural values emphasizing education nor educated parents who might have their child's best interest and tell them to 'study and work hard' but given the circumstances and how kids will be kids, it is very very difficult for those kids to achieve.
Part of the struggle, at least in the US, is you have parents trying to help their kids with math being taught in ways they never learned.
My wife literally cannot help our 7 year old with her math because we were raised in a school system that taught rote memorization. I was too, but I suck at memorization and have had to rely on fundamental understanding in order to survive in math. So luckily I can help with things.
And parent involvement helps a ton. When our kid got 50% on the practice test I spent a few hours going over the material she didn't understand. She ended up getting 100% on the real test.
I saw a similar effect teaching at a coding school for adults: one of our strongest predictors for success was whether or not the student had someone close to them who was in tech. Having someone outside the system to practice lingo, talk about culture, or give an opinion on what topics matter makes a huge difference. I see no reason why grade school math would be different - I know my parents made a huge difference for me, not by "pushing", but by just being there to talk.
As a non-native English reader, it took me a while to understand that this means: We all know.
I think native speakers hash the words in their brain based on how they sound. And people who learned English at school primarily by reading and writing, hash the words by how they are written. The latter data structure makes it difficult to find that "know" and "now" are almost the same word.
I volunteer tutor teens in the SAT and the problem is a bit deeper than just parents. A few of my students have a similar amount of base intelligence as me, and if they studied as much as I did, they would have no problem with finding a path of least resistance to the upper-middle/lower-upper class. The problem is that even if I'm 100% sure this path exists, they are skeptical because it seems like I'm in a entirely different world from them, so I'm not different than an MLM influencer promising them $10k a week. I knew a lot of people who spent all their time studying and on extracurriculars, but the same isn't true for my students. It would require a Herculean amount of self-discipline to commit yourself to that much work when no one else you know is taking the same path.
This is why (imo), test prep should be a class you take at school. Why should it be a separate thing and a multi billion dollar industry? A lot of the SAT/ACT prep for HS students is about understanding how the tests work and how to approach questions.
We already have a bunch of federally mandated AYP testing (no) thanks to No (ALL?) Child Left Behind, why can't this just be old copies of the ACT or SAT. By the time kids are ready to apply for college, it will be second hand and not another extra thing they have to learn.
> The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically.
I scored very high in both. Believe me, as new immigrants we were completely clueless about the heated race to top spots. In my case, credits goes to my makers (mom and dad :) and the fact that Iran had fairly good public schools.
Culture is important. Two relevant shockers for me (as a very young new arrival to US):
- disrespect for teachers.
- practically institutionalized disdain for the smart kids. I am talking cultural products here.
So I honestly think cultural backgrounds that feature things like special social and personal regard for those who teach, and special regard for individuals in STEM professions (for example "mr. engineer"), are more at play here than merely ambitious parents. And guess what is driving those ambitious parents? Culture has a lot to do with it.
> practically institutionalized disdain for the smart kids. I am talking cultural products here
Escaping this is certainly a piece of why people pursue "good" schools in wealthy areas, gifted programs, and private schools. Obviously it's not a guarantee you can avoid this attitude, but there are obvious differences between educational environments.
I went to a good public school K-8, where I was part of the gifted program (what amounted to a handful of students in my year who had a few special class session per week), and then a top private high school.
One of the biggest differences from a typical American public school that I saw in the gifted program and private school was that being smart/curious/interested/engaged/academically ambitious was generally admired and encouraged. I was endlessly curious but never a particular diligent student, and had a tendency to "coast" in school, but I think being in this environment helped frame things for me in a really positive way.
It got a bit ridiculous at the end of high school as my classmates started aggressively competing for limited slots at top universities, but I feel the environment–being among people who valued ambition and using your brain–was super motivating and raised my internal bar for success in general. I'm reminded of something a tennis coach told me as I was first learning to play: the best way to improve your own game is to play with others more skilled than you.
> disrespect for teachers ... disdain for the smart kids
I've gotten the impression from every high-achieving-country immigrant that I've ever talked to that schools in those countries just kick out the troublemaking kids before they have a chance to disrupt the environment for everybody else. Nobody gets kicked out of US public schools, for any reason - so the kids who don't want to be there and spend all of their time trying to ruin it for everybody else are always there.
If you admit this, you'd be saying one culture is worse and needs to change. One party in the US is against saying anyone but white men (and Karen) can do anything wrong, so the problem is everyone else. But it obviously isn't, some groups have cultures which denigrate learning and the consequence is those groups do not succeed academically or economically.
All of the USA has at least some cultural issues (drunk driving is popular, for example). So who could we really trust to drive cultural change? Current teachers seem to be reinforcing victim mindset in children, the entire educational system is setup to keep kids away from people doing better than them -- grade separation alone, for example, prevents kids from learning from peers who already understand the material. The churches are corrupt and fractionated. Who would have the moral authority to drive cultural change for the better?
My daughter credits the test-taking techniques they taught in her SAT prep course for a big boost in her SAT score. She says the test-taking techniques were orthogonal to how well she knew the material. I'm happy for her but at the same time it seems unfair that my ability to afford the SAT prep course gave her an advantage not available to families with lower incomes.
MY SO is a professional tutor, and she often has clients for standardized testing prep.
From what I have gathered it seems a lot of students really need a confidence boost. Once they realize they are capable to doing well, they tend to improve their performance.
There is also like tricks and gimmicks, but that is a different discussion.
Our [public] school gave a 1-hour class on the basics of the SAT test mechanisms and how to get your score to what I'd call "reflective of your ability". If kids are showing up to the SAT barely knowing how a #2 pencil works, that's bad. If they've had 1 hour on "if you can eliminate even a single answer that you know is not correct, do not leave the question blank" and "D means that no can determine which is greater not that you have no idea which is greater", that puts them in a position to demonstrate their ability and that's well within the reach of any school district that gives half an ounce of care for their students.
If SAT prep was effective, then it would be an educational miracle, because a good SAT prep course is under $1,000. American schools spend 10 times that much money per student every year and barely move the needle.
You can get the same improvement by reading a test prep book. You need to know the 3-4-5 triangle, this list of word definitions, a handful of other stuff. How much time you have. Now take a few practice tests, also freely or cheaply available anywhere. All of it should be a review of methods and skills you already have from school. That is the point of the test after all.
To me, those test prep places always seemed to be struggling with legitimacy. It's not like hiring a tutor to help you learn difficult concepts for the first time.
I legit think that my parents' successfully instilling a strong sense of fair play and honesty in my from a young age hindered me more than a little. The world's simply not like that. The ones who win take every advantage—if a test is trying to measure you, you'd damn well better study its "game", because you're competing against kids who did and they will receive zero negative consequences for doing so, only benefits, even if doing so seems against the spirit of the thing and feels dirty.
... which is part of why having parents who have themselves succeeded at these things is an advantage. Mine were from poor (quite poor, in one case) backgrounds but were worked-hard-and-eventually-did-OK sorts, not early-success sorts. So they taught me fairness and honesty in all things, and didn't know they should clue me in that some things are just bullshit games that you should do whatever you can to beat short of taking too-large risks. I mean, they hadn't even played most of those games, so how could they know?
I bet it would never occur to kids from an upper-middle-class background (doctor parents, lawyer parents, business exec parents, that kind of thing) that test prep is a bit dirty. Wouldn't even cross their minds. It's just what you do, obviously.
> The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically.
Is there any way to prove/disprove this? Also doesn’t this also beg the question as to why non-Asian parents apparently won’t teach their kids to be good academics?
> Also doesn’t this also beg the question as to why non-Asian parents apparently won’t teach their kids to be good academics?
Because they don't value their kids being good at academics.
I've lived in multiple countries. In the non-US ones, people don't brag about being bad at math (even when they are bad at it). As an adult, if you couldn't add/subtract/multiply two large numbers on paper without a calculator, that would not reflect well on you.
Not only that, where one lives can impact the funding available to even provide basic education. We are too comfortable letting poor areas have underfunded schools.
This is a commonly held myth but the numbers don't bear it out. Poor areas tend to be in cities and cities tend to have lots of commercial buildings that pay tax but do not send kids to school. Atlanta, where I live, spends 30%* more per pupil in APS than the surrounding suburban counties do. That's typical for American cities.
This is not the case here, since in Michigan the Detroit Public Schools not only have the worst test scores in the nation, but the highest funding per pupil in the state.
But if the education system provides quality education with parental involvement, doesn't that imply that it provides quality education without parental involvement? You know, since parental involvement is not a part of the education system.
Or, in other words, if parental involvement IS a part of the educational system, then it's impossible for the system to provide good outcomes without parental involvement since, you know, it's part of the system.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm confused why some people seem to blame the educational system for lack of parental involvement in some demographics.
> to offer an educational system that provides access to quality education regardless of parental involvement
That seems very naive to think that school overcome the impact of parenting. If a child doesn't have its physical and psychological needs met then there's not much the school can do. School can't make children do their homework at home either.
The only way I could see your plan of offering identical schooling opportunities for everyone is boarding school, ie taking kids away from their parents. How are you going to stop/force a parent from helping their kid with homework?
I may be the exception to this: my parents did not care at all, and I still scored really well on the SAT. I don't remember exactly what b/c I can't look up the score anymore, apparently, but definitely above 1500.
I also did not care much as a student. I don't think I am remarkable here, I think I just took the test really well. I did do one short practice course that taught some of the small tricks to the test (most common problem patterns, to leave blank if you are really not sure, to come back to the question at the end, etc..) which I think probably helped for like 100pts at least.
Don’t forget apathy. I easily qualified for every college in my state with my scores and out-of-state tuition meant there was no reason to ever push any harder for a better score.
> to offer an educational system that provides access to quality education regardless of parental involvement
This sounds good in theory, but it can have unintended consequences. One way to read what you are saying here is that we should have a system where parent involvement has no impact.
I may be biased (as a parent), but I think parental involvement should be encouraged, not disincentiviezed. Parental involvement is one of the forces of nature. It should not go to waste.
Another factor is parents' choice of where to live. Every real estate web site now prominently displays standardized test scores for the local public schools. Parents who care about academics will sacrifice financially to move near the highest scoring schools (or even cheat with a fake home address), thus creating a positive feedback loop.
> The challenge for large and heterogeneously diverse nations like the U.S. is to offer an educational system that provides access to quality education regardless of parental involvement.
It's a challenge, for sure. Should it be the overriding goal? Maybe if we weren't competing with other countries on the world stage.
>> The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically.
What is the equitable solution to this then? You seem to be implying that SAT score differences are not inequitable but we know from recent research this is not true.
Standardized tests aren't perfect but there isn't anything better. There's no better way for a poor kid with high drive to compete with rich kids. That's why MIT decided to bring back scores in admission. There isn't a better solution.
When you talk about some of the least served communities, there is a lot of moving from school to school as people move from one housing solution to another. My wife taught in public school and out of the 35 students in a class there might have been a third to 40% who stayed with her the whole semester. She would have two extra pages of names of students who came and went throughout the year.
Involved parents will likely always improve the scores of students, but the disparity between those who do and don't need not be so dramatic.
It's fun to read biographies of 20th century scientists. Quite a few of them came from humble backgrounds and credited their success to education (and perhaps libraries). They often did not have well educated or motivated parents. Nick Holonyak is one such example. Carl Sagan is another.
And this is even more apparent when I look at the British ones. It's a bit funny given how rigid and uninspiring the British education system was.
Not if the test difficulty stays the same, and you get more 800s and lotteries (or, dare we say it, more seats?!) for next level positions, at college or career. Tides, boats , bars.
> To be fair, I did spend a lot of time thinking about math because I liked it.
Spending childhood doing things you enjoy and which also have economic utility is a secret power.
Most people in the top 5th percentile of academic things also happened to spend a truly absurd amount of their youth obsessing over that academic thing. They may also be gifted, but spending all that free time in youth thinking about things is probably way more important than IQ.
(For me it was programming and law... I was reading legal briefs and slinging code most evenings of middle school through high school, which set me up with a rather absurd advantage over my peers once I got to college.)
BTW: elite unis/programs are looking for those types of people. It's not the extra curricular box checking that interests them, it's evidence of thousands of hours of practice at high value add skills. The practice can be forced with absurd amounts of grit, which is why it's a secret power when it comes out of intellectual curiosity.
I am not saying the US education system is good but there is only so much you can ask from schools to offset a dysfunctional environment. And the solution isn't to take children away from their parents. You need to change the culture, and culture is hard to change. I always refer to Poland which, out of 50 years of communism, is the most religiously and socially conservative country in europe.
> The challenge for large and heterogeneously diverse nations like the U.S. is to offer an educational system that provides access to quality education regardless of parental involvement.
But don’t your stats show that we already do?
We “provide access” to everyone. Otherwise it wouldn’t matter how much the parents pushed the children.
If your argument is that the system should push the children harder, how do you propose that? Give less hard working kids lower grades? I think we’ve tried that and decided it’s unfair.
We don’t provide free access to test prep. We don’t provide equal access to parents and friends who are enthusiastic and pushed to do well on these tests. We don’t provide equal access to a culture that values academics over, say, sports and entertainment.
All the proposals I've ever seen have been to handicap the students whose parents try to give them an advantage. It's a popular sentiment, growing in popularity every day.
We don't provide access to everyone. If you are a kid who doesn't get fed at home, and you don't get a school meal until lunch, do you have the same access?
If your school can't afford state of the art computers or technology, do you have the same access?
If your school has class sizes of 35 and mine has class sizes of 18, do we both have the same access?
This data is certainly stark, but I don’t see how it follows from test scores in Michigan that China is going to do something or other regarding STEM. I guess the core assumption here is that Asian students in America are a proxy for Chinese students in China? As someone who works exclusively with Chinese high schoolers as a college application coach, I find this hard to believe. The thing that Asians very definitely do differently than other groups is parenting. Chinese parents in particular take their kids’ phones away at night. They helicopter over their homework until it’s done. Dating, parties, and many enrichment activities that are part of a “normal” high school experience are usually (not always—nothing is absolute!) off the table. This isn’t genetic, it’s cultural. And it becomes especially obvious once you separate out recent Asian immigrants from longer-term Asian Americans.
To zoom out a bit, I don’t think this post even asks the right question. Why does quantity of STEM major matter, as opposed to quality? The USA is home to the vast majority of leading universities, and no amount of PISA score dominance by Chinese children can change that. If anything, China should be worried about the continuous brain drain of their best, brightest, and most of all wealthiest to Canada and the USA. Not to take anything away from the hard work and ambition of those Chinese people who wish to stay in China, but I just don’t agree that this difference in test scores taken by public high school students is any sort of leading indicator of shifting geopolitical trends.
> The USA is home to the vast majority of leading universities, and no amount of PISA score dominance by Chinese children can change that.
Those leadership placements are measured primarily by academic standards, and particularly research output. In CS, over 60% of PhD students -- the food soldiers of academia -- are here on student visas. Another huge fraction are first gen residents/citizens. I'd guess fewer than 20% of CS PhD students in the US are > 1st gen. Again, those are the people doing the actual work.
> If anything, China should be worried about the continuous brain drain of their best, brightest, and most of all wealthiest to Canada and the USA.
If we get to the point where the USA depends on Chinese out migration in order to compete economically or militarily with China, China may well choose to turn off the spigot. We should welcome immigration but also need home grown talent.
There's also a serious moral issue with the "depend on immigration" path -- we owe it to our citizens to provide them with opportunities.
> If we get to the point where the USA depends on Chinese out migration in order to compete economically or militarily with China, China may well choose to turn off the spigot.
America's biggest advantage over other nations is our immigration system, regardless of the myriad issues it has. The best and brightest are born all over the world, and they immigrate to America. Even if China stops immigration, we still have the other 6/7ths of the world to pull from.
I appreciate this extra insight on the PhD situation and generally agree with your points. I don’t necessarily agree that we (Americans) should worry about those figures. If you believe talent is more or less equally distributed worldwide, and that grad school attendance is at least partly meritocratic, it should be the case that most grad students in all fields come from elsewhere, since most humans live outside the USA.
I do agree strongly that we need opportunities for home grown talent. On the other hand, just because an American is born in the capital of the world economy should not place upon them the burden of rising to become one of its leaders. Not everyone is cut out for that, and that’s okay. As for depending on immigration, almost no American today is descended from the “original” Americans (the white ones that is), and we seem to be doing okay. Obviously past performance doesn’t guaranteed future returns, but I find reason for hope in that fact.
>If we get to the point where the USA depends on Chinese out migration in order to compete economically or militarily with China, China may well choose to turn off the spigot. We should welcome immigration but also need home grown talent.
You're massively overselling the impact of academics. Although they are important, the other machineries of society are more so.
There's no reason to think that these same students would excel or contribute as much at home.
I do somewhat agree with the latter. I think foreign students are more aggressive to meet criteria to get into PhD programs and to slave away for advisors because they have far fewer options than native students.
The Chinese may outnumber the Indians in the US but Indians are also included in the “Asian” number and make a significant percentage so it’s definitely not purely genetic.
I think as a society we need to admit different race, in general, have different culture, values, and strengths. I don't even think that's a radical idea, but somehow it is. I have been watching this football competition youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrbljwLslYI
The fun and athleticism you see is awe-inspiring, but I haven't seen a single Asian person competing or even at the event. My guess is a math competition would look a lot different.
It's not racial, it's cultural, socio-economic, and historical. Things like redlining, jim crow, GI Bill (lack-there-of for black people after WW2) all directly lead to the huge educational/economic inequality we see today. That said, it's clearly not racial based, because you can take a look at various non-American black populations and see big differences in educational levels and cultural values. For example, Nigerian immigrants (both first and second gen) are vastly more educated than the average American. I haven't dug too deep into sources but here's a random article I found https://www.chron.com/news/article/Data-show-Nigerians-the-m... where they cite census data (too lazy to verify but one could do that if interested).
> For example, Nigerian immigrants (both first and second gen) are vastly more educated than the average American
This is not a good example because the immigration process itself is highly selective. For the most part, only best and brightest from Nigeria are able to come to the US. Try comparing the average black American to the average Nigerian in Nigeria instead.
> That said, it's clearly not racial based, because you can take a look at various non-American black populations and see big differences in educational levels and cultural values.
There are big differences in educational levels and cultural views within every racial group. Is that relevant to the question of whether there are significant mean differences between racial groups on the population level?
Well, given that track and field is brutally dominated not just by black Africans/Caribbean Islanders, but that they tend to come from only a handful of ethnic groups, I tend to think that direct race has at least some influence.
Most body builders intuitively understand that being black is an advantage in building muscle.
It is racial in the sense that's the way people have been grouping things. Else we wouldn't even have this conversation. There would be no inequality of races because the grouping wouldn't exist in the first place.
I hesitate, to think obstacles are the reason why things are the way they are. Again, going back to sports. Black people faced all the same obstacles in the sport arena and still came out on top. Also, Asian people also faced discrimination too. Don't forget concentration camps.
And yes, all those other things you mention cultural, socio-economic, and historical are true too. Even within the Asian "grouping" there are groups that don't live up to the "stereotypical" standard of success. John Oliver talked about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29lXsOYBaow
> different race, in general, have different culture, values, and strengths
The coarse divisions that we call "race" don't help much here, either - there's a lot of variance between different groups of asians as well as different groups of whites (think of how different italians are from irish). The way we're lumped together is actually very arbitrary (and changes depending on how the lumpers are trying to score political points).
Exactly. I've made this point before in this forum, but there's no reason at all to believe that the distribution of interests, values, and strengths between different ethnic and cultural groups should be identical. The classical liberal idea that "all men are created equal" is a beautiful one, and should not be perverted to mean that everyone is literally equal to each other in every respect.
>The classical liberal idea that "all men are created equal" is a beautiful one
Is it even really "classical liberal"? I'm fairly certain it's religious in nature. If the sky daddy made us all 6,000 years ago then we are in fact all the same.
The problem arrises when science discovers that humans co-evolved over millions of years and that we are a hybrid of multiple species _with no single common ancestor_. Even "modern" humans have had geographic isolation for tens of thousands of years in very different climates/selective pressures.
Nigerian immigrants to the US have significant rate of achievement compared to African American and they both would be classified under the "same race". I think "cultural" groupings would serve better.
There are traits individuals can have, some of which are immutable, and some of which correlate with what we call "race". But race itself is, even taking the most benign meaning possible, at best a surrogate.
The sooner we get rid of that awful meme the better.
I agree it isn't "race." However, there are groups of people who have similar characteristics where it might be beneficial to look at the group as a whole not just individuals. For example, it may be that a certain group of people, with a common background and in a particular geography have specific notions about whether they trust that education will work or that health care will be honest. It might help to look at those communities and have discussions about what can be done for them at large. I think it would be very difficult to only look at individuals. Obviously, we then get the problem of group labels and stereotypes being used for malicious purposes...
Isn't it true though that you can tell someone's race by their genome, skeletal structure, and other physical traits apart from skin color? Additionally, is it not also the case that race is generally agreed to result from geographic isolation, and that if that persisted long enough, speciation might occur?
Not stating this is reality. I'm genuinely curious what the science is on this.
I think I'm mostly surprised to see how many of the "White" scores are so low, and so far behind "Asians," after years of hearing that the test is biased towards white / Anglo / native-English speakers raised in Western culture.
I'm also reminded that I (like probably most people commenting on Hacker News) exist in a really small bubble in which everyone I closely associate with was in the top two bands (after going off to college, being recruited from those colleges for careers, and ending up in the same neighborhoods...).
Shitloads of whites come from disadvantaged backgrounds and have terrible lives. This is part of why one party is able to capitalize so well on lazy and loose rhetoric from the other about race and inequality. "The fuck I had unfair advantages! They want special treatment because their skin's a different color, they can go to hell! I'm voting for the other guy!" (this is not an endorsement of that attitude, but an explanation—and, confounding matters, you get similar reactions from people who did have advantages but are either deceiving themselves or are idiots)
There was an episode on New York Times - The Daily, I believe it was "(6/24/22) One Elite High School's Struggle Over Admissions", in which one side of the debate argued that the over-representation of Asian's was actually an instance of white supremacy.
You'll notice the same thing if you look at arrest rates for white men or the percentage of people killed by police who are white men. That demographic cohort is over-represented in both. Asian males and women of all races are under-represented. Not exactly the common wisdom despite the data being widely available.
I was surprised that Asians only make up 4.6% of the total students, where Whites are nearly 69%. I'm not sure that we can make too many observations about Asians when the sample is so low.
Universities across American have been racially discriminating against Asians for decades. It's so bad that a case against Harvard has now been accepted by the Supreme Court (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...). There is a good chance that the case finally abolishes the longstanding practise of institutional racism against Asians, and any other race which might otherwise be granted admission in excess of their general population composition.
> after years of hearing that the test is biased towards white / Anglo / native-English speakers raised in Western culture.
Media bias/lies. It's similar for the GRE, many people coming in from China score extremely high on the English portion even though they do not speak English properly. I learned to stop listening to these divisive media outlets that have a clear agenda to tear down the fabric of society.
It has a lot to do with culture and expectations. And what you are willing to put your children through. One of my good friends is from Korea and told me about how awful it was to go to school all day, then be off for an hour or two, then go back to a private tutor until 9 or 10pm at night. Rinse and repeat. This is inhumane by American standards but apparently normal in Korea. That type of culture and mentality does not disappear when people immigrate to western countries.
Sure... but I went to a public high school, got a 1590, and did not spend day and night studying nor did my parents have any expectation of me to perform well in school. I was just really lucky to go public schools with teachers who cared and peers that cared.
You’re an outlier. That’s great. Most people are not scoring that high without a lot of effort, and a basic public school education, regardless of the quality, is not going to get them there. They will need additional resources within the home and outside of normal schooling.
I did get a little confused from how we went from Asians doing well in Michigan means the PRC is going to dominate the engineering sector. There seems to be an implication that these are connected. Its my understanding that these demographic data would represent South, SE, and East Asia as part of the same demographic.
Also, his top observation:
> In the top band there are many more males than females.
Seems like it could be within a margin of error (3 v 5%). Also, there are more males in the bottom band than females (18 vs 14%). This seems spurious at best.
> 2. The Asian kids are hitting the ceiling on this test.
> 3. There are very few students from under-represented groups who score in the top band.
I also suspect that taking his next two observations together imply that he might have a bias against out-groups and in favor of his own in-group. Especially considering much of the topics in the comments section focus on the upcoming SCOTUS trial over affirmative action.
> I did get a little confused from how we went from Asians doing well in Michigan means the PRC is going to dominate the engineering sector. There seems to be an implication that these are connected. Its my understanding that these demographic data would represent South, SE, and East Asia as part of the same demographic.
No, I think his observations about Asians doing well on the SAT in Michigan is unrelated to his point about China. He's saying that since China generally gets high scores on international math tests, and they have a greater population, there's just going to be many more qualified STEM grads than in the US. It's a higher proportion of talent multiplied by a higher population.
This makes sense intuitively. But I'm unsure how reliable these international tests are. Is the test being given at an elite school in Shanghai or in a small rural village? Is it representative of all of China? Do higher scores translate to more innovation down the line? Are high scorers likely to also come up with creative ideas for solving problems? Lots of questions.
if it's any help, Gaokao is a much, much harder test than SAT, and there's only 1 test in a year, so an average Chinese (or Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese,... as they all have the same thing) in general would do much better than your average American in SAT
There is if you are missing more than 10% and trying to make extrapolations. Also, there is variations between individuals between tests. You’d need to make multiple samples to reduce noise from the test itself.
As someone with East Asian ancestry in North America, you quickly learn that hard work will only rarely help you find opportunities with institutions that have a huge demand of qualified applicants but not enough seats.
This includes universities, high-prestige schools like medical schools, and a lot of creative industries (mentorship opportunities and scholarships just aren't there for you). This is unfair, but it's difficult to discuss this openly non-Asian people due to a lot of skepticism about disadvantages.
But the nice thing is that the private sector truly doesn't care as much. So long as you can help make a company money, they will be eager to hire you. This includes FAAMG, Jane Street, and other companies - I personally know East Asian friends who had no difficulty working there, whereas others with similar or stronger work ethics faced a far more uphill battle getting into medical school. There is a lot of room for success at the most pragmatic and practical organizations, and there are plenty of other applicants for people doing do-good work that directly benefits society (hence the rejections despite hard work).
If you really still want to contribute, effective altruism via donations to effective charities is still an option, along with entrepreneurship for good via founding your own company.
I’ve got a friend applying to med schools, he’s a little older (late 20s vs early 20s) so he took the spray and pray approach and applied to 60 MD and DO schools. He said by and large he’s the only or one of ~3 non-minorities in any of the MD group interviews, additionally Asians aren’t well represented there either. DO group interviews on the other hand are mostly white/asain.
The Harvard university president has stated many times that admissions are weighted and if you are Asian, will have a much harder time getting accepted.
It seems racism is accepted in academia, when it affects a demographic you deem 'problematic'
I see this brought up a lot and it always makes me wonder - what is the "correct" number of black people who should be admitted to Harvard? Like if you removed any racial consideration, what would be the results?
As a NYC public school parent now with kids in college, who sees mono-white, mono-asian and mono-black school cultures (all 3 of which NYC unfortunately has lots of) as abhorrent, there is nothing wrong with not wanting a mono-culture in a community.
(Go ahead. Downvote. It does wonders to change my mind lol).
I'm having trouble coming up with the right words to make my point. But, to me, this application says "my parents made me do a lot of shit" more than it says that this person is exceptional. What's this kid's resume if he's born in the hood to a single mom instead of a Boston suburb to an associate partner at IBM?
IMHO it's sour grapes from someone that tried to game the system but didn't get the prize they wanted.
It's a real shame that this guy posted his son's resume non-anonymously, but I have to agree.
Aside from grades and AP scores, it's a lot of "showing up" dressed up as accomplishment. JV track explains itself, the debate stuff is the equivalent of getting third place in one track event at one regional meet, and Eagle Scout is impressive but IMO doesn't show anything that doing well in school doesn't already show.
Everyone applying to CMU CS or Harvey Mudd has high GPAs, high standardized test scores, and lots of 4s and 5s on AP tests. So the extra curricular stuff really does matter, because there are way fewer seats than people with good grades and test scores. And in this applicant's case, the ECs just are not there.
The applicants who are setting themselves apart via debate are consistently doing well at the best national tournaments in the most demanding and competitive formats for years; not getting 3rd place in Congressional at one regional tournament. The ones setting themselves apart with track are participating in Varsity at least a few years, doing well at State, and a likely courting at least D2 athletic scholarships. The ones who are setting themselves apart via scouting are going way beyond the minimum requirements for Eagle Scout.
Also, Northeastern and Amherst have fantastic CS programs and getting into CS programs like those at Harvey Mudd or CMU is probably harder than getting into ivies these days.
>I'm having trouble coming up with the right words to make my point. But, to me, this application says "my parents made me do a lot of shit" more than it says that this person is exceptional. What's this kid's resume if he's born in the hood to a single mom instead of a Boston suburb to an associate partner at IBM?
Try: speculative, imaginary, and unsubstantiated by evidence. Stereotypical, if you’re feeling adventurous.
That stood out to me too. For all the self-appointed power that higher education institutions have given themselves to balance the proverbial scales of justice, I wonder if they ever take the time to consider the moral hazards of their decision making.
Will the presidents, chancellors, board of governors, or deans of these institutions ever have to compete for these seats? Obviously no, and their own children will likely benefit in some form, whether it is legacy status or academic nepotism/networking, from their parents’ existing positions of power.
So on whom does the burden of balancing the scales, not in theory but in practice, fall? Not white students at the nation’s elite schools, whose enrollment numbers even after various forms of affirmative action have been implemented have remained steady. Not black, latino/a/x, or Native American students whose enrollment numbers have benefited from targeted recruitment. Not international students, whose full-tuition payments have ensured their enrollment numbers have only increased with the decline of public funding (in the case of public institutions) and budgetary restructuring (in the case of private institutions).
From a racial dimension, the primary group paying for higher education’s experiments in educational racial composition have primarily been Asian-American students, among whom there are prospective students (as we can see in the linked comment) with top-percentile scores in their respective areas of study, high-level achievement in non-academic pursuits, and a widely dispersed range of target schools.
For all the moral certainty that higher education likes to presume, they have a dumbfounding lack of self-awareness when it comes to the moral hazard of making others pay for the consequences of their self-appointed mission.
This is, of course, assuming they aren’t fully aware and satisfied with the results they’ve produced.
It is actually a fascinating study and I wonder why the results were not studied closer. If anything, the approach that it seemingly disadvantaged asian applicants and benefited black applicants had the opposite effect due to cultural norms, which only forced asian parents to, apparently, force their kids to study even harder.
Full disclosure. I am mostly done with affirmative action. Standardized testing all the way. It is not perfect, but its better than 'whose ancestors suffered the most recently'. Otherwise we will continue to see a steady degradation akin to students voting a chemistry out for tough grades ( recent news that is making rounds on social media ).
He applied for Computer Science, so I looked at the University of Michigan's Engineering School SAT scores, and he was just a bit over the median score for the engineering school. Since admissions at these schools is slammed with applications its not unreasonable that he just didn't get in because he was in an ocean of similar applications.
Would it not be fair to look at the median score for different racial groups, since we know that many universities do in fact discriminate on the basis of race in admissions?
The kid got accepted to UMass Amherst and Northeastern University. Those colleges are really highly-rated for CS, and Northeastern in particular has recently become really selective.
The college rejections are weird, yes, but I don’t feel bad for him
With life experience and age, you really appreciate the opportunities like UMass Amherst and Northeastern for CS. But if you're a high school senior, it's really common that you don't really realize that in the moment, and feel hugely demotivated or even end up depressed at the start of university.
A lot of these people spend hours a week studying for the SATs and courses with the dream and imagination of getting into an Ivy League. You could say it's a misplaced effort, that these kids should lower expectations, and that these people should be happy with the opportunities they have, and there's merit.
But in the moment, it's a huge blow to feel like hard work just won't pay off, and it certainly caused depression among a few people I knew. This can be mitigated by good mentorship and parenting, but not all people end up with good mentors, and parents who didn't experience the process might not understand it either.
Those are decent schools, though I may be biased as they are my undergraduate and graduate schools respectively.
Getting something out of College is a lot of what you put into it. At Umass we had students who didn't go to class and did rather poorly. Many left. We had some who worked really hard and went on to Ivy league grad schools. Northeastern had the Coop program which was really useful for friends that went there undergrad to get work experience. Some of college is luck (who you end up meeting, if classes give you background on work. My CS Operating Systems class was invaluable for me in my first post grad school job)
Yeah, an Eagle Scout who did debate and very well academically going to a pretty good public school for computer science isn't some travesty. I am a little surprised at some of the results but I guess admissions have become more competitive over the past decade
I'm a current sophomore at Harvard, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. But those ECs and stats really aren't impressive enough to even qualify him for admission at any Ivy or T20.
UIUC and UT Austin I agree, little surprising, but again, the CS program is very competitive, and it doesn't surprise me he didn't get in. Stats are irrelevant for Asians - if you have a 1500+ you're considered "good", you can't gain anything by having a 1580 vs. a 1520 for example. It really does come down to your essays, extracurriculars, and overall 'package'. Which I genuinely believe is the most fair way to accept folks into college.
Kind of useless in isolation. Who knows how competitive the CS classes are at the places they were rejected. I mean CS is probably the most competitive of any Major currently and they were rejected from arguably the top undergrad programs in the world. Out of state students are also at a disadvantage so that didn't help their case. Also seemed to lack any CS related extra curriculars, when they're applying against kids who won IOC's or have been building software since they were 12. Probably would have done fine applying to USC, Duke, JHU and other elite privates or in any other major.
That comment is wild, and as such -- remember, don't believe everything you read on the internet. Who knows if this is accurate or not. Disinformation campaigns and anger-boosting campaigns (aimed at both sides of the ideological aisle) from all corners of the internet are very sophisticated these days.
"Omitted variable bias" is what is going on here and is a statistical term that everyone needs to understand because it is causing so many race issues in America. The feature that is missing in this simplistic model of intelligence is cultural values. I am definitely not a racist but I am a "culturalist". Some people have a set of personal values (culture) that express themselves as doing better or worse in standardized tests and in life in general. If you were to add in the average weekly time studying variable into this model I can guarantee you the race effect would get washed away. Anyone who has a basic understanding of statistics know about omitted variable bias and it is frustrating to me that society breaks down these issues into simplistic race terms because they are too dumb to do any kind of root cause analysis deeper than the color of your skin.
OK, assuming you are correct, what's the root cause of difference in time spent studying? If the primary cause is less study time spent by black and brown students, how do you address that?
Cultural values. Cultural values are more complex than genetic make up. Part of it comes from generations of values that lead to success of previous generations. An overlooked reason I believe there is such a statistical discrepancy of African Americans is that slavery effectively cut the cultural heritage of values from earlier generations of Africans. Slavery broke up families and with that erased generations of successful values that were passed down.
Why can't Asian and Black cultural values be different? Asians are over-represented in academic pursuits. Blacks are over-represented in athletic, musical, acting, and fashion pursuits. The only surprising thing to me is the lack of Black leaders and owners in enterprises with majority Black talent. It means less of a Black person's economic output is kept within the Black community.
Readit News
Test prep has diminishing marginal returns.
On the flip side that means just 1 hour of prep makes a big impact.
This is what research has found and why a lot of focus is on getting kids to do any studying for anything at all.
Many kids do zero homework and zero studying. Getting them to 1 is the hardest part.
This is the biggest actionable problem for these exams. It doesn’t require race or culture or whatever at all. The research says it requires specialized instruction during school - something to achieve focused studying, as opposed to merely watching the clock go down. Difficult for the hardest students but on average, in aggregates, performs well.
My point is that there are a lot of Asian students at Harvard who did 10 hours of test prep for the SAT. They didn’t go to cram school. There are also students who DID go to cram school. I myself studied about 10 hours for the SAT.
You don’t need cram school to improve test scores. You need some studying instead of none at all.
Looking at the math section, you might get a 600 if you don’t study but could know all the material but don’t know how to take the test.
But to get a 600 requires you to know a certain amount of material and know how to take the test. Most kids at my HS couldn’t get a 600 math even with 40 hours of math prep.
(I'm really grateful that that avenue to college existed -- I could not have written an admissions essay, done extracurricular activities, or generally been a "good boy" if my life depened on it.)
Due to the cost and complexity of transcontinental migration, most Asians in US now, and Jews last generation, come from elites from their previous family homeland who successfully migrated to escape bad government or seeking greater opportunity, when it was tactically hard to do so for the average person. It's a natural filter for smart, capable, effective people who can raise children to be same.
The effect tends to fade over time (shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves, or docks to docks, in three generations). Now that Jewish immigration has mostly ended, their great-grandchildren (and the descendants of previous generations of Asian immigrants) are, as a cohort, not performing academically as well as today's Asian immigrant children and chidren of immigrants.
The math contest winners and teams, deep into the bench, are nearly all children of immigrants (and Polgar-esque homeschoolers who get to avoid time-wasting distractions of school)
The large majority of the US Jewish population came after the 1850s. They were not selected for wealth. Like the Irish immigrants were negatively selected. They were less educated than those who stayed at home, on average. Similarly Italians in the relevant period of mass migration. The middle class were doing well so they were more likely to stay home.
> The effect tends to fade over time (shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves, or docks to docks, in three generations).
This has no basis in evidence. Every psychological trait I’m aware of is strongly heritable, including ones with obvious impacts on earnings like intelligence, conscientiousness and extraversion[1]. Social class is so heritable the only society to make a dent were the Chinese during the cultural revolution[2]. If you want to know more about the extraordinary persistence of social class see Gregory Clark’s work[3].
[1] Genetic Influence on Human Psychological Traits
https://utahpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/bouchard.0...
[2] Persistence Despite Revolutions
http://davidyyang.com/pdfs/revolutions_draft.pdf
[3] https://faithandheritage.com/2017/06/the-heritability-of-soc...
Source? Judging by elite college representation [1], they're doing at least as well if not better than Asian Americans (which granted, is not limited to just Asian immigrant children).
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24166064
But with maths I think it's a bit more subtle. Just the tiny things (even just 'talk' math) you do in early education can make a massive return later. There is no 'mean' in maths education even in ages 4-10 (my kids). We live in the Netherlands, that scores quite well in the table. And still I think math education is at least unambitious for the higher percentiles.
With just a few minutes here and there I've managed to get some pretty abstract concepts in their thinking (say: zero and the empty set, that's something small kids understand intuitively / or the first algorithms with russian multiplication or divide and conquer). There's no need for pushing, and still I think I've already help lay a good foundation of math in my 10 year old. No more than 30 hours invested in math his life.
My wife literally cannot help our 7 year old with her math because we were raised in a school system that taught rote memorization. I was too, but I suck at memorization and have had to rely on fundamental understanding in order to survive in math. So luckily I can help with things.
And parent involvement helps a ton. When our kid got 50% on the practice test I spent a few hours going over the material she didn't understand. She ended up getting 100% on the real test.
As a non-native English reader, it took me a while to understand that this means: We all know.
I think native speakers hash the words in their brain based on how they sound. And people who learned English at school primarily by reading and writing, hash the words by how they are written. The latter data structure makes it difficult to find that "know" and "now" are almost the same word.
We already have a bunch of federally mandated AYP testing (no) thanks to No (ALL?) Child Left Behind, why can't this just be old copies of the ACT or SAT. By the time kids are ready to apply for college, it will be second hand and not another extra thing they have to learn.
I scored very high in both. Believe me, as new immigrants we were completely clueless about the heated race to top spots. In my case, credits goes to my makers (mom and dad :) and the fact that Iran had fairly good public schools.
Culture is important. Two relevant shockers for me (as a very young new arrival to US):
- disrespect for teachers.
- practically institutionalized disdain for the smart kids. I am talking cultural products here.
So I honestly think cultural backgrounds that feature things like special social and personal regard for those who teach, and special regard for individuals in STEM professions (for example "mr. engineer"), are more at play here than merely ambitious parents. And guess what is driving those ambitious parents? Culture has a lot to do with it.
Escaping this is certainly a piece of why people pursue "good" schools in wealthy areas, gifted programs, and private schools. Obviously it's not a guarantee you can avoid this attitude, but there are obvious differences between educational environments.
I went to a good public school K-8, where I was part of the gifted program (what amounted to a handful of students in my year who had a few special class session per week), and then a top private high school.
One of the biggest differences from a typical American public school that I saw in the gifted program and private school was that being smart/curious/interested/engaged/academically ambitious was generally admired and encouraged. I was endlessly curious but never a particular diligent student, and had a tendency to "coast" in school, but I think being in this environment helped frame things for me in a really positive way.
It got a bit ridiculous at the end of high school as my classmates started aggressively competing for limited slots at top universities, but I feel the environment–being among people who valued ambition and using your brain–was super motivating and raised my internal bar for success in general. I'm reminded of something a tennis coach told me as I was first learning to play: the best way to improve your own game is to play with others more skilled than you.
I've gotten the impression from every high-achieving-country immigrant that I've ever talked to that schools in those countries just kick out the troublemaking kids before they have a chance to disrupt the environment for everybody else. Nobody gets kicked out of US public schools, for any reason - so the kids who don't want to be there and spend all of their time trying to ruin it for everybody else are always there.
If you admit this, you'd be saying one culture is worse and needs to change. One party in the US is against saying anyone but white men (and Karen) can do anything wrong, so the problem is everyone else. But it obviously isn't, some groups have cultures which denigrate learning and the consequence is those groups do not succeed academically or economically.
All of the USA has at least some cultural issues (drunk driving is popular, for example). So who could we really trust to drive cultural change? Current teachers seem to be reinforcing victim mindset in children, the entire educational system is setup to keep kids away from people doing better than them -- grade separation alone, for example, prevents kids from learning from peers who already understand the material. The churches are corrupt and fractionated. Who would have the moral authority to drive cultural change for the better?
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From what I have gathered it seems a lot of students really need a confidence boost. Once they realize they are capable to doing well, they tend to improve their performance.
There is also like tricks and gimmicks, but that is a different discussion.
What did help is that I was encouraged to read a lot from a young age, which seems fairly accessible to most families.
Support your local libraries.
To me, those test prep places always seemed to be struggling with legitimacy. It's not like hiring a tutor to help you learn difficult concepts for the first time.
... which is part of why having parents who have themselves succeeded at these things is an advantage. Mine were from poor (quite poor, in one case) backgrounds but were worked-hard-and-eventually-did-OK sorts, not early-success sorts. So they taught me fairness and honesty in all things, and didn't know they should clue me in that some things are just bullshit games that you should do whatever you can to beat short of taking too-large risks. I mean, they hadn't even played most of those games, so how could they know?
I bet it would never occur to kids from an upper-middle-class background (doctor parents, lawyer parents, business exec parents, that kind of thing) that test prep is a bit dirty. Wouldn't even cross their minds. It's just what you do, obviously.
Is there any way to prove/disprove this? Also doesn’t this also beg the question as to why non-Asian parents apparently won’t teach their kids to be good academics?
The SAT is an IQ test, and IQ is mostly inherited from your parents.
Because they don't value their kids being good at academics.
I've lived in multiple countries. In the non-US ones, people don't brag about being bad at math (even when they are bad at it). As an adult, if you couldn't add/subtract/multiply two large numbers on paper without a calculator, that would not reflect well on you.
*Or so. I'm going off memory.
Explain Baltimore.
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2019/comm/larg...
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Or, in other words, if parental involvement IS a part of the educational system, then it's impossible for the system to provide good outcomes without parental involvement since, you know, it's part of the system.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm confused why some people seem to blame the educational system for lack of parental involvement in some demographics.
That seems very naive to think that school overcome the impact of parenting. If a child doesn't have its physical and psychological needs met then there's not much the school can do. School can't make children do their homework at home either.
I also did not care much as a student. I don't think I am remarkable here, I think I just took the test really well. I did do one short practice course that taught some of the small tricks to the test (most common problem patterns, to leave blank if you are really not sure, to come back to the question at the end, etc..) which I think probably helped for like 100pts at least.
This sounds good in theory, but it can have unintended consequences. One way to read what you are saying here is that we should have a system where parent involvement has no impact.
I may be biased (as a parent), but I think parental involvement should be encouraged, not disincentiviezed. Parental involvement is one of the forces of nature. It should not go to waste.
It's a challenge, for sure. Should it be the overriding goal? Maybe if we weren't competing with other countries on the world stage.
What is the equitable solution to this then? You seem to be implying that SAT score differences are not inequitable but we know from recent research this is not true.
I do wonder if this is possible. If you up the baseline of school provision, won’t involved parents provide a further advantage over and above that?
It's fun to read biographies of 20th century scientists. Quite a few of them came from humble backgrounds and credited their success to education (and perhaps libraries). They often did not have well educated or motivated parents. Nick Holonyak is one such example. Carl Sagan is another.
And this is even more apparent when I look at the British ones. It's a bit funny given how rigid and uninspiring the British education system was.
To be fair, I did spend a lot of time thinking about math because I liked it.
Spending childhood doing things you enjoy and which also have economic utility is a secret power.
Most people in the top 5th percentile of academic things also happened to spend a truly absurd amount of their youth obsessing over that academic thing. They may also be gifted, but spending all that free time in youth thinking about things is probably way more important than IQ.
(For me it was programming and law... I was reading legal briefs and slinging code most evenings of middle school through high school, which set me up with a rather absurd advantage over my peers once I got to college.)
BTW: elite unis/programs are looking for those types of people. It's not the extra curricular box checking that interests them, it's evidence of thousands of hours of practice at high value add skills. The practice can be forced with absurd amounts of grit, which is why it's a secret power when it comes out of intellectual curiosity.
But don’t your stats show that we already do?
We “provide access” to everyone. Otherwise it wouldn’t matter how much the parents pushed the children.
If your argument is that the system should push the children harder, how do you propose that? Give less hard working kids lower grades? I think we’ve tried that and decided it’s unfair.
All the proposals I've ever seen have been to handicap the students whose parents try to give them an advantage. It's a popular sentiment, growing in popularity every day.
If your school can't afford state of the art computers or technology, do you have the same access?
If your school has class sizes of 35 and mine has class sizes of 18, do we both have the same access?
To zoom out a bit, I don’t think this post even asks the right question. Why does quantity of STEM major matter, as opposed to quality? The USA is home to the vast majority of leading universities, and no amount of PISA score dominance by Chinese children can change that. If anything, China should be worried about the continuous brain drain of their best, brightest, and most of all wealthiest to Canada and the USA. Not to take anything away from the hard work and ambition of those Chinese people who wish to stay in China, but I just don’t agree that this difference in test scores taken by public high school students is any sort of leading indicator of shifting geopolitical trends.
Those leadership placements are measured primarily by academic standards, and particularly research output. In CS, over 60% of PhD students -- the food soldiers of academia -- are here on student visas. Another huge fraction are first gen residents/citizens. I'd guess fewer than 20% of CS PhD students in the US are > 1st gen. Again, those are the people doing the actual work.
> If anything, China should be worried about the continuous brain drain of their best, brightest, and most of all wealthiest to Canada and the USA.
If we get to the point where the USA depends on Chinese out migration in order to compete economically or militarily with China, China may well choose to turn off the spigot. We should welcome immigration but also need home grown talent.
There's also a serious moral issue with the "depend on immigration" path -- we owe it to our citizens to provide them with opportunities.
America's biggest advantage over other nations is our immigration system, regardless of the myriad issues it has. The best and brightest are born all over the world, and they immigrate to America. Even if China stops immigration, we still have the other 6/7ths of the world to pull from.
I do agree strongly that we need opportunities for home grown talent. On the other hand, just because an American is born in the capital of the world economy should not place upon them the burden of rising to become one of its leaders. Not everyone is cut out for that, and that’s okay. As for depending on immigration, almost no American today is descended from the “original” Americans (the white ones that is), and we seem to be doing okay. Obviously past performance doesn’t guaranteed future returns, but I find reason for hope in that fact.
You're massively overselling the impact of academics. Although they are important, the other machineries of society are more so.
There's no reason to think that these same students would excel or contribute as much at home.
I do somewhat agree with the latter. I think foreign students are more aggressive to meet criteria to get into PhD programs and to slave away for advisors because they have far fewer options than native students.
The fun and athleticism you see is awe-inspiring, but I haven't seen a single Asian person competing or even at the event. My guess is a math competition would look a lot different.
This is not a good example because the immigration process itself is highly selective. For the most part, only best and brightest from Nigeria are able to come to the US. Try comparing the average black American to the average Nigerian in Nigeria instead.
There are big differences in educational levels and cultural views within every racial group. Is that relevant to the question of whether there are significant mean differences between racial groups on the population level?
Well, given that track and field is brutally dominated not just by black Africans/Caribbean Islanders, but that they tend to come from only a handful of ethnic groups, I tend to think that direct race has at least some influence.
Most body builders intuitively understand that being black is an advantage in building muscle.
But don't trust me, trust a study that also points this out: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26298766_Ethnicity-....
I hesitate, to think obstacles are the reason why things are the way they are. Again, going back to sports. Black people faced all the same obstacles in the sport arena and still came out on top. Also, Asian people also faced discrimination too. Don't forget concentration camps.
And yes, all those other things you mention cultural, socio-economic, and historical are true too. Even within the Asian "grouping" there are groups that don't live up to the "stereotypical" standard of success. John Oliver talked about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29lXsOYBaow
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The coarse divisions that we call "race" don't help much here, either - there's a lot of variance between different groups of asians as well as different groups of whites (think of how different italians are from irish). The way we're lumped together is actually very arbitrary (and changes depending on how the lumpers are trying to score political points).
are those differences just because of race
or they are made because of external factors due to race?
For example:
You're successful because of X race
or
You're successful because you were treated differently than if you had Y race
Is it even really "classical liberal"? I'm fairly certain it's religious in nature. If the sky daddy made us all 6,000 years ago then we are in fact all the same.
The problem arrises when science discovers that humans co-evolved over millions of years and that we are a hybrid of multiple species _with no single common ancestor_. Even "modern" humans have had geographic isolation for tens of thousands of years in very different climates/selective pressures.
There are traits individuals can have, some of which are immutable, and some of which correlate with what we call "race". But race itself is, even taking the most benign meaning possible, at best a surrogate.
The sooner we get rid of that awful meme the better.
This may be true, but I find it interesting that white people are the only ones who think this way.
Every other group has in-group racial bias, and actively organizes to that end.
Not stating this is reality. I'm genuinely curious what the science is on this.
Tell that to the medical community, who routinely give different interventions based on race.
I'm also reminded that I (like probably most people commenting on Hacker News) exist in a really small bubble in which everyone I closely associate with was in the top two bands (after going off to college, being recruited from those colleges for careers, and ending up in the same neighborhoods...).
Might be interesting to see how those demographics compare in CA where Asians are 16.91% of the population. (https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/asian-popul...)
Media bias/lies. It's similar for the GRE, many people coming in from China score extremely high on the English portion even though they do not speak English properly. I learned to stop listening to these divisive media outlets that have a clear agenda to tear down the fabric of society.
It makes a huge difference.
I did get a little confused from how we went from Asians doing well in Michigan means the PRC is going to dominate the engineering sector. There seems to be an implication that these are connected. Its my understanding that these demographic data would represent South, SE, and East Asia as part of the same demographic.
Also, his top observation: > In the top band there are many more males than females.
Seems like it could be within a margin of error (3 v 5%). Also, there are more males in the bottom band than females (18 vs 14%). This seems spurious at best.
> 2. The Asian kids are hitting the ceiling on this test. > 3. There are very few students from under-represented groups who score in the top band.
I also suspect that taking his next two observations together imply that he might have a bias against out-groups and in favor of his own in-group. Especially considering much of the topics in the comments section focus on the upcoming SCOTUS trial over affirmative action.
No, I think his observations about Asians doing well on the SAT in Michigan is unrelated to his point about China. He's saying that since China generally gets high scores on international math tests, and they have a greater population, there's just going to be many more qualified STEM grads than in the US. It's a higher proportion of talent multiplied by a higher population.
This makes sense intuitively. But I'm unsure how reliable these international tests are. Is the test being given at an elite school in Shanghai or in a small rural village? Is it representative of all of China? Do higher scores translate to more innovation down the line? Are high scorers likely to also come up with creative ideas for solving problems? Lots of questions.
There is no margin of error when your sample is the entire population.
https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2022/10/sat-score-distribution...
This includes universities, high-prestige schools like medical schools, and a lot of creative industries (mentorship opportunities and scholarships just aren't there for you). This is unfair, but it's difficult to discuss this openly non-Asian people due to a lot of skepticism about disadvantages.
But the nice thing is that the private sector truly doesn't care as much. So long as you can help make a company money, they will be eager to hire you. This includes FAAMG, Jane Street, and other companies - I personally know East Asian friends who had no difficulty working there, whereas others with similar or stronger work ethics faced a far more uphill battle getting into medical school. There is a lot of room for success at the most pragmatic and practical organizations, and there are plenty of other applicants for people doing do-good work that directly benefits society (hence the rejections despite hard work).
If you really still want to contribute, effective altruism via donations to effective charities is still an option, along with entrepreneurship for good via founding your own company.
It seems racism is accepted in academia, when it affects a demographic you deem 'problematic'
(Go ahead. Downvote. It does wonders to change my mind lol).
IMHO it's sour grapes from someone that tried to game the system but didn't get the prize they wanted.
Aside from grades and AP scores, it's a lot of "showing up" dressed up as accomplishment. JV track explains itself, the debate stuff is the equivalent of getting third place in one track event at one regional meet, and Eagle Scout is impressive but IMO doesn't show anything that doing well in school doesn't already show.
Everyone applying to CMU CS or Harvey Mudd has high GPAs, high standardized test scores, and lots of 4s and 5s on AP tests. So the extra curricular stuff really does matter, because there are way fewer seats than people with good grades and test scores. And in this applicant's case, the ECs just are not there.
The applicants who are setting themselves apart via debate are consistently doing well at the best national tournaments in the most demanding and competitive formats for years; not getting 3rd place in Congressional at one regional tournament. The ones setting themselves apart with track are participating in Varsity at least a few years, doing well at State, and a likely courting at least D2 athletic scholarships. The ones who are setting themselves apart via scouting are going way beyond the minimum requirements for Eagle Scout.
Also, Northeastern and Amherst have fantastic CS programs and getting into CS programs like those at Harvey Mudd or CMU is probably harder than getting into ivies these days.
Try: speculative, imaginary, and unsubstantiated by evidence. Stereotypical, if you’re feeling adventurous.
To me, it says that a kid had ambition, intelligence, determination, and conscientiousness, but to each his own.
Getting good grades is "gaming the system" now?
Will the presidents, chancellors, board of governors, or deans of these institutions ever have to compete for these seats? Obviously no, and their own children will likely benefit in some form, whether it is legacy status or academic nepotism/networking, from their parents’ existing positions of power.
So on whom does the burden of balancing the scales, not in theory but in practice, fall? Not white students at the nation’s elite schools, whose enrollment numbers even after various forms of affirmative action have been implemented have remained steady. Not black, latino/a/x, or Native American students whose enrollment numbers have benefited from targeted recruitment. Not international students, whose full-tuition payments have ensured their enrollment numbers have only increased with the decline of public funding (in the case of public institutions) and budgetary restructuring (in the case of private institutions).
From a racial dimension, the primary group paying for higher education’s experiments in educational racial composition have primarily been Asian-American students, among whom there are prospective students (as we can see in the linked comment) with top-percentile scores in their respective areas of study, high-level achievement in non-academic pursuits, and a widely dispersed range of target schools.
For all the moral certainty that higher education likes to presume, they have a dumbfounding lack of self-awareness when it comes to the moral hazard of making others pay for the consequences of their self-appointed mission.
This is, of course, assuming they aren’t fully aware and satisfied with the results they’ve produced.
Full disclosure. I am mostly done with affirmative action. Standardized testing all the way. It is not perfect, but its better than 'whose ancestors suffered the most recently'. Otherwise we will continue to see a steady degradation akin to students voting a chemistry out for tough grades ( recent news that is making rounds on social media ).
The college rejections are weird, yes, but I don’t feel bad for him
A lot of these people spend hours a week studying for the SATs and courses with the dream and imagination of getting into an Ivy League. You could say it's a misplaced effort, that these kids should lower expectations, and that these people should be happy with the opportunities they have, and there's merit.
But in the moment, it's a huge blow to feel like hard work just won't pay off, and it certainly caused depression among a few people I knew. This can be mitigated by good mentorship and parenting, but not all people end up with good mentors, and parents who didn't experience the process might not understand it either.
Getting something out of College is a lot of what you put into it. At Umass we had students who didn't go to class and did rather poorly. Many left. We had some who worked really hard and went on to Ivy league grad schools. Northeastern had the Coop program which was really useful for friends that went there undergrad to get work experience. Some of college is luck (who you end up meeting, if classes give you background on work. My CS Operating Systems class was invaluable for me in my first post grad school job)
UIUC and UT Austin I agree, little surprising, but again, the CS program is very competitive, and it doesn't surprise me he didn't get in. Stats are irrelevant for Asians - if you have a 1500+ you're considered "good", you can't gain anything by having a 1580 vs. a 1520 for example. It really does come down to your essays, extracurriculars, and overall 'package'. Which I genuinely believe is the most fair way to accept folks into college.
Probably lots of fraud the other direction. E.g.: A white person claiming to be Native American.
Colleges definitely look to the other way a bit to hit metrics / numbers, but what about the other direction?
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