> SAT scores have a positive correlation with economic and pre-college educational privilege

True. But it is concerning that this hits Asian kids considerably harder than even whites! Asians still experience some racism in this country, and probably don’t deserve that.

Not all Asians are wealthy. Especially those from Laos, Vietnam, or other poorer countries (maybe they should be classed as URM).
Lower income Asian kids are really getting screwed here. Why should they have to score much higher than others, to get to the same colleges? Because of the color of their skin?

If we need to discriminate at all, if anything, it should be based purely on wealth/income IMO, not race.

Wouldn’t income be a better proxy for privilege, than race? To somewhat counter wealthy peoples ability to afford expensive schools, private tutors, and SAT prep classes.

This would still indirectly favor URM, since they tend to be lower income. But it would better handle cases like poor asian/white kids, or rich black kids.

You’re right that omitting context can be deceptive. Here’s some context you omitted.

The number of extremely high test scores in a demographic is likely proportionate to the number of moderate test scores in that demographic.

These scores exist along a smooth distribution - in the population overall and within each demographic. If one demographic has a higher number of students that beat a particular score, it’s usually because their entire population distribution of scores is shifted rightward. Said another way, they have a higher number of students beating any given score.

Even if there is a large number of outstanding performers among every group, there are likely more outstanding performers among the groups that have better performance at any given benchmark. These groups also likely have the highest performers.

If one demographic has a lower ratio of quantity of high performers to quantity of admissions …

… then, that demographic is required to meet a higher standard of performance to be admitted.

There are arguments that academic performance shouldn’t be the only merit considered.

However, if we expect that these non-academic merits are distributed equally throughout the population … shouldn’t a demographic with higher academic performance have just as much as other demographics?

Shouldn’t those demographics still end up being more qualified overall?

Unless we’re suggesting that academic merit is somehow inversely proportional to other forms of merit … when most trends show the opposite to be the case.

So even considering non-academic merits, the demographics with higher academic performance overall should still have admissions rates proportionate to their performance.

There are arguments in favor of having different standards for historically disadvantaged groups to compensate them for that disadvantage. That’s a position that I respect, as it earnestly seeks justice.

However, there’s not much room for argument that there are not different standards being used for different demographics here.

Further, if a demographic that was until very recently historically underrepresented is now being designated as “overrepresented” because they are performing highly compared to other demographics … is this justice?

It seems to me that there a probably other ways of seeking justice here … particularly, by seeking to improve the entire distribution of test scores of underrepresented groups.

This seems preferable to me to our current practice of effectively using the disprivilege of underrepresented groups to effectively launder the privilege of historic wealth via the elite university system.

This laundering of privilege happens at the ultimate expense of hard-working members of “overrepresented” groups, not all of whom are born wealthy but who now must meet higher standards purely because of their ethnicity.

One of the many ways to twist statistics to suit a narrative is to refuse context and let people run roughshod with assumption instead.

Thoughtful comment. That’s for pointing some of these things out.