(comparatively) stupid white men at Harvard and Yale

by philg

A friend was asking me about some of her colleagues who had joined Mensa and I said that anyone who hangs around a decent college is already effectively a member because you only need a fairly low SAT score to get admitted to Mensa (turned out to be 1250 if you took the pre-1995 test and the new wimpy test for today’s youth is not accepted at all; see http://members.shaw.ca/delajara/criteria.html).  Then I tried to figure out what average SAT scores prevailed at colleges today and the Web search brought up this interesting page from a 1998 Brookings Institution report.  What I found most striking was the discrimination against Asian-Americans at the elite old-line universities.  Harvard is the 2nd worst offender in this regard.  An Asian kid has to have an SAT score 65 point higher than a white kid to get into Harvard.  Maybe this explains George W’s illustrious career at Yale?  (not listed in the table but presumably similar to Harvard)


[Page 438 of the same study is also interesting.  It concludes that being black or hispanic rather than white at the “most selective colleges” is “comparable to the effect of having … a total SAT score of 1400 rather than 1000”.  So if you are a generic white family and want to get your kids into college it might be time to go down to the courthouse and change your last name to “Hernandez”.  The college admissions staff don’t get deeply into geneaology, do they?  Just learn enough Spanish to say “Here is a check for $40,000 to cover the first year of tuition, room, and board.”  Then your kids could change their names back right after graduation from their last degree, in order not to suffer discrimination from employers who might think “they got in just because they were Hispanic” and to conceal themselves from pesky Alumni Association donation demands.  With a system this heavily based on race and name changes as economical as they are I’m surprised that more families don’t game the system.  Perhaps there is a business opportunity here…]

15 thoughts on “(comparatively) stupid white men at Harvard and Yale”

  1. So if you are a generic white family and want to get your kids into college it might be time to go down to the courthouse and change your last name to “Hernandez”.

    Is this true? I have often wondered. I’ve known kids who were Hispanic, but white as sheets and from rich, well-established families. Yet they checked “Hispanic” on the application and presumably were eligible for affirmative action.

  2. Dubya got into both Yale and Harvard Business School on the basis of alumni preference.

    That said, if you are in one of those privileged classes like middle-class blacks or upper-crust whites who are all but guaranteed admission, it is irrational to focus on academics and more sensible to focus on activities that increase your social potential (and your ability to find the right mate). This explains in great part the racial gap.

    George W. Bush was known as a an indifferent student at best, but he did work on his popularity, such as being the class clown at Andover, unlike his father who clung to outdated notions of “nobless oblige”. This explains in part why he still has nearly 50% favorable ratings despite gross incompetence: many Americans harbor anti-intellectual feelings and find Dubya to be a likeable guy, unlike his colder father.

    Racial discrimination against overperforming minorities is nothing new. Yale’s logo features Hebrew (although they did wimp out and give a Latin translation), but Jews were discriminated against until as recently as 1957:

    http://www.asianam.org/yale's_quotas_against_jews.htm

  3. Ref: “comparable to the effect of having … a total SAT score of 1400 rather than 1000”

    Two points:

    1) This is much worse than it sounds (which is bad enough). Due to non-linearity 1000 is not “71% as smart as a 1400 kid” but rather something like –my estimate– about half as bright.

    2) I personally work for a minority (as described in the blog) who is a graduate of one of this blogs Alma Mater’s. I myself am a second-career (retired from the first career) professional brought in to mentor the company’s mgmt team and have reached this conclusion: A Complete Idiot, pushed through an Ivy League school, is still a Complete Idiot (although he will be a Complete Idiot in a very nice office, with a very nice title, at a very nice salary, and due to Minority status will be absolutely immune from any sort of critical evaluation).

    Should I write a book? Nope, already been done (Bell Curve).

    PS>> I personally know a guy who was a USAF pilot and got out during an airline hiring-slump. Yep. Changed his name (in court; very legal) to Gonzalez and was immediatly hired.

  4. Paul: You’re giving me a dangerous idea. My friends who work at the airlines tell me that being a favored minority or woman does not let you escape the minimum hour requirements. However, if you meet the bare minimums and they like your last name, skin color, or chromosomes, you will be hired automatically (even if that means passing over 1000 white males with superior qualifications, skills, and knowledge as displayed in an interview). I’m getting close to the minimum hours required to work for regional jet airline. Maybe it is time for me to rediscover my Hispanic roots! (Most Jews have at least one ancestor who lived in present-day Spain up to the expulsion of Jews by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492 (see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/expulsion.html)).

    There is nothing in http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_68188.htm that would seem to preclude the average Jew from identifying as Hispanic on a college admissions form or employment application.

  5. Philip…

    Checking the regs on such things, it appears “checking the Hispanic box” may not be enough. The rule is “Hispanic SURNAME Americans”. If you can get either your father or mother to change their name too, you have –in total compliance with Federal regs– morphed into a 100% legal-by-law Hispanic SURNAME American (after which I would submit that your quest for an airline job is stupid). Harvard/Hispanic qualifies you as CEO in a small company, a stepping stone to CEO at a larger company etc etc. In 5 years, buy your own jet or better yet offer yourself as not only a CEO/Hispanic but “cheap too!” as you can eliminate one position in the company (corporate jet pilot) and just fly the G-III yourself.

    Now, I’m not being ludicrous here… But here’s a suggestion…

    1) Get a really good all-over tan
    2) Vacation in L.A. around Mexicans (accented English is good; Mexi-slang is bad)

    Note that Mexicans themselves nationality-change with great frequency…

    1) In Hawaii, a very high percentage of what tourists believe to be “native Hawaiians (sp)” are in actuality Mexicans (FWIW Hawaii has the best welfare in the world applicable only to “native Hawaiians” and actively discriminates against Mainlanders i.e. the dual-fare inter-island pricing scheme which truly sucks. Hawaiians fly cheap, haole’s now pay $200+ per inter-island leg).

    2) In L.A. lots of Mexicans wanting to enter certain social strata become “Phillipino” or better yet “Brazilian”.

    OK I’m done with this thread (for health reasons; my blood pressure is rising).

  6. Upon further reflection it occurs to me that we have a person in the news right now who has benefitted quite handsomely from a family name change. I always figured that John Kerry was an Irish-American and probably a lot of folks who voted for him to become senator in Massachusetts did too. It seems unlikely that “John Kohn” would have gotten this far in the Bay State.

  7. “Hispanic” is not a real ethnic group, but the creation of Nixon-era bureaucracy.

    What is interesting is that the descendants
    of white Europeans like Cameron Diaz and Jorge Ramos are elegible for preferences over descendants other of white Europeans (particularly English). And we all know that the Spanish Conquistadors always treated the natives well and established countries like the United States and Canada that have been beacons of individual liberty and civil rights for hundreds of years.

    http://www.isteve.com/WhoWantstoBeaMinority.htm
    http://www.vdare.com/sailer/pondering_patterson_6.htm
    http://www.vdare.com/sailer/ramos.htm
    http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/07/images/jorgeRamos.jpg

  8. Philip’s sister here. My oldest son, who’s Philip’s oldest nephew, is now a senior in high school. He and his friends certainly concur with Philip’s description of the “new wimpy test”. With the benefit of prep courses/private tutors (our son refused to follow suit and just took the test once after a couple of practice tests from books), many of the kids in his high school get scores between 1550 and 1600.

    This test has been WAY curved in the last few decades. It used to be a rare feat to achieve a perfect 1600 and now it’s somewhat commonplace. Elsewhere in Philip’s blog, there’s reference to Dan Smith, a legendary 1600 scorer back in the late 1970s, who graduated Harvard but was wandering around the Science Center for years afterward with no apparent direction.

    I think it’s almost impossible for colleges to distinguish among these applicants, when droves of them have stellar SATs and virtually all of them have perfect 4.0 GPAs, the latter because the teachers are too afraid of being sued or harassed by the parents if their kids don’t get an “A.”
    Any other parents out there feel getting into college has become a bit of a circus thanks to inflated scores/grades?

  10. Just dropping by, especially now that I’ve got a nephew in the MIT PhD program …

    My wife is an eighth indian. What is interesting is that her family did not register, so that various benefits are excluded. While her sister looks very American Indian, my wife ended up with the blond genes in the family … so never thought it fair to use the check marks.

    Have a friend who went to Harvard’s MBA who is a quarter indian. They did not count him as American Indian in order to use the slot for someone else. He did quite well, yet in their statistics is counted as White.

    Wish our local school gave inflated grades, though my daughter will graduate with two years of AP physics.

  14. Interesting story, but i cant find the updated play version. Looking forward to it.

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