China

[crs223]

46 minutes ago, Sweet said:

Disagree with comments about the US and education.  Not everyone needs to be highly educated.  I think risk taking and entrepreneurial spirit in the US remains strong and they will remain the innovators

 

I think we have both.

 

US strength relative to China is capitalism (although China has plenty of entrepreneurs).

 

Chinese strength relative to US is in discipline/education — although i am totally unqualified to have an opinion on this as I don’t know anything about china except what my biases sources tel me.

 

Both strengths are “fundamental” and “compound”.

[Viking]

1 hour ago, Sweet said:

Agree with Spek, don’t think it is wise to have money in China.  It could disappear quite easily and I don’t need help losing money 

 

Disagree with comments about the US and education.  Not everyone needs to be highly educated.  I think risk taking and entrepreneurial spirit in the US remains strong and they will remain the innovators and leader in the global economy for decades provided the politics calms down.

investors KNOW relations with China are the best they will be with the US/West right now (looking out 5-10 years). In other words, political and economic relations are only going to get worse. So as an investor you are trying to guess how much worse they will get (magnitude) and how fast (timing)… Investing is hard enough without having to overlay those two variables on top of everything else.

Its kind of like an investor after WWII was trying to decide if they wanted to invest in the Soviet Union (yes, sounds stupid today and that should tell people something). After WWII the political and economic relationship with Russia kept getting worse year after year and decade after decade. Good luck with that.

—————

The pact that China and Russia so publicly signed pre-Ukraine invasion could go down as one of the most significant geopolitical events of the next 50 years. Not unlike when the iron curtain came down. China/Russia (perhaps Saudi Arabia) = authoritarian block = have declared game on with the West. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by Viking

[Cigarbutt]

8 hours ago, crs223 said:

 

 

Bullish post about the US (despite some noise)!

In 1988:

It was felt that Japan would overtake the US (GDP wise and all).

In 1988, a book was published (similar to a litany of similar others). The title was Yen!: Japan's New Financial Empire and its Threat to America and included the following:

Growth in Japan in the 80s was led by credit growth linked to centrally driven "window guidance" (very similar to modern China's centrally-driven bank credit growth). The recent Fed-Treasury macroprudential framework is bizarre but is a comparative advantage versus a monopolistic central plan. 

[Spekulatius]

The schools in the US ( I have lived in 3 states and my son went to school in all of them) are not necessarily bad,  but the dispersion is huge. You can find crappy schools and quite good schools in the same town, sometimes even just a few miles from each other. It’s not the funding either. In the town in CA where I lived , i looked at the funding of schools and it often turned out that the schools with lousy stats had more funding than the schools with good stats.

 

Most of the differences is just due to demographics of the students that go there. In California at least, the schools with a high percentage of Hispanic students have low overall grades. It‘s not due to funding either since schools in the same town with less funding often get better overall scores.

 

Besides CA, I have lived in Long Island, where schools have excellent funding and well paid teachers and it shows. There were issues with drugs and bullying however. We are currently living in suburban MA and the schools are funded well, but not as well as LI, However, I prefer the demographics here and the drugs and bullying are much less an issue.

 

Anyways my son has to work quite hard. Plenty of homework too. He is doing some college grade studies in math for example in his honor class in math.

 

It also was mentioned here, that you don’t need to take AP and other tests to get into college. While that is technically true, you can’t really get into a good college that way. Maybe if you excel in some sport that the college is looking for. Otherwise it means probably community college.

 

 

Edited October 20, 2022 by Spekulatius

[Dinar]

36 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

The schools in the US ( I have lived in 3 states and my son went to school in all of them) are not necessarily bad,  but the dispersion is huge. You can find crappy schools and quite good schools in the same town, sometimes even just a few miles from each other. It’s not the funding either. In the town in CA where I lived , i looked at the funding of schools and it often turned out that the schools with lousy stats had more funding than the schools with good stats.

 

Most of the differences is just due to demographics of the students that go there. In California at least, the schools with a high percentage of Hispanic students have low overall grades. It‘s not due to funding either since schools in the same town with less funding often get better overall scores.

 

Besides CA, I have lived in Long Island, where schools have excellent funding and well paid teachers and it shows. There were issues with drugs and bullying however. We are currently living in suburban MA and the schools are funded well, but not as well as LI, However, I prefer the demographics here and the drugs and bullying are much less an issue.

 

Anyways my son has to work quite hard. Plenty of homework too. He is doing some college grade studies in math for example in his honor class in math.

 

It also was mentioned here, that you don’t need to take AP and other tests to get into college. While that is technically true, you can’t really get into a good college that way. Maybe if you excel in some sport that the college is looking for. Otherwise it means probably community college.

 

 

Spek, I agree with everything that you are saying except for the last paragraph.  There are different standards for regular kids/white&Asian vs black/hispanic/transgender/gay.  I for one, cannot understand how Stuyvesant HS (a specialized high school in NYC where you need to take a test to get in) in NYC is 1% black when the city is 40% black, while Harvard freshman class is 22% black when the country is 12% black.  

[benchmark]

46 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

The schools in the US ( I have lived in 3 states and my son went to school in all of them) are not necessarily bad,  but the dispersion is huge. You can find crappy schools and quite good schools in the same town, sometimes even just a few miles from each other. It’s not the funding either. In the town in CA where I lived , i looked at the funding of schools and it often turned out that the schools with lousy stats had more funding than the schools with good stats.

 

Most of the differences is just due to demographics of the students that go there. In California at least, the schools with a high percentage of Hispanic students have low overall grades. It‘s not due to funding either since schools in the same town with less funding often get better overall scores.

 

Besides CA, I have lived in Long Island, where schools have excellent funding and well paid teachers and it shows. There were issues with drugs and bullying however. We are currently living in suburban MA and the schools are funded well, but not as well as LI, However, I prefer the demographics here and the drugs and bullying are much less an issue.

 

Anyways my son has to work quite hard. Plenty of homework too. He is doing some college grade studies in math for example in his honor class in math.

 

It also was mentioned here, that you don’t need to take AP and other tests to get into college. While that is technically true, you can’t really get into a good college that way. Maybe if you excel in some sport that the college is looking for. Otherwise it means probably community college.

 

 

This is spot on. 

 

[benchmark]

10 minutes ago, Dinar said:

Spek, I agree with everything that you are saying except for the last paragraph.  There are different standards for regular kids/white&Asian vs black/hispanic/transgender/gay.  I for one, cannot understand how Stuyvesant HS (a specialized high school in NYC where you need to take a test to get in) in NYC is 1% black when the city is 40% black, while Harvard freshman class is 22% black when the country is 12% black.  

This is because Harvard is doing wholistic admission and looking for 'characters/charisma', which asian kids apparently lack  , but black/hispanic and other minorities have plenty. There was a law suit a few years ago on this.

[Spekulatius]

9 hours ago, benchmark said:

This is because Harvard is doing wholistic admission and looking for 'characters/charisma', which asian kids apparently lack  , but black/hispanic and other minorities have plenty. There was a law suit a few years ago on this.

I can speak to Harvard directly as my son is trying to get in (long shot). According to our college advisor (yes these exist) our son needs a mid 1500 AP score and write a couple of essays. They also have an extensive background questionnaire for parents (have yet to see that one).

 

I guess a kind way to describe it is to say that they are looking at intangibles but it’s probably also to balance their admission goals to whatever target they have based on made up fu-fu criteria.

 

I have to say that I like the German system- once you get your Abitur, you can study almost everything and everywhere. Study Physics in Heidelberg - admitted. Free too.

 

But then comes the brutal part - sink or swim. Test are designed to weed out the weak- after 2 Semesters 50% are gone, after 4 (mid term tests) more than 60%. Somewhat wasteful in terms of time lost, but fair, imo.

[Spooky]

14 hours ago, Dinar said:

Spooky, why do you think that this is a good metric?  If Zimbabwe has $500 per capital GDP and spends $50 per capita on education and US has $60K GDP and spends $5K per capita on education, we are underspending?  

How reliable is your data anyway?  Spending does not equal quality, why do you think so?  In Newark NJ (USA), spending per pupil was tripled and the outcomes did not change.  

A lot of people send their kids to private schools, is parental spending  captured in the statistics you have sited?  If so, how?  Universities in the US are mostly either tuition or privately funded, how do you adjust for that in your statistics?  

Bottom line: 

a) Statistics you site are very likely to be grossly incorrect

b) Your assumption that if one spends 1% of his income on education and someone with 100x the income spends 0.5%, the latter underspends is hard to justify/understand

c) Your assumption that more money equals better outcomes is questionable, to say the least.  I will bet you that one thousand dirt poor Chinese/Indian/Russian immigrants going to a crappy schools with falling plaster will drastically outperform a high income private school in the US.   

 

You do not want to get political but you parrot the talking points of the left and the teachers' unions without thinking.  If you do not want to get political, do you research, and use critical thinking that you rightly state schools should teach rather than advocate policies that the left has argued for, implemented and saw fail for decades in the US.  

Hi Dinar,

 

Thanks for your response. I'm not parroting anyone's talking points - I'm just looking at the data. I just showed the public spending on education of the US as a % of GDP as one data point which fits in with the broader picture (ranked 65th). At the end of the day I agree that it is not about the spending level but the effectiveness of the spending / outcomes being achieved which is why my previous post mentioned measuring the ROI of this investment. The fact remains that the US is lagging behind China (and many other developed countries) in reading, science and math https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA 2018 Insights and Interpretations FINAL PDF.pdf. 

 

With respect to private / public spending - the data I saw from a quick google search is that only 9%-12% of US students attend private schools. This means roughly 88-91% of students are going through the public system. Given the population disadvantage the US has relative to China, is it in the US' long term interest to stratify education so much? The US also lags behind other developed countries in terms of social mobility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index).

 

I guess my overall point is that effectively competing on the global stage in the future will require more skilled labour since unskilled labour / tasks will be automated away. The countries that recognize this and are able to train their workforces most effectively will be long term winners. 

[Dinar]

32 minutes ago, Spooky said:

Hi Dinar,

 

Thanks for your response. I'm not parroting anyone's talking points - I'm just looking at the data. I just showed the public spending on education of the US as a % of GDP as one data point which fits in with the broader picture (ranked 65th). At the end of the day I agree that it is not about the spending level but the effectiveness of the spending / outcomes being achieved which is why my previous post mentioned measuring the ROI of this investment. The fact remains that the US is lagging behind China (and many other developed countries) in reading, science and math https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA 2018 Insights and Interpretations FINAL PDF.pdf. 

 

With respect to private / public spending - the data I saw from a quick google search is that only 9%-12% of US students attend private schools. This means roughly 88-91% of students are going through the public system. Given the population disadvantage the US has relative to China, is it in the US' long term interest to stratify education so much? The US also lags behind other developed countries in terms of social mobility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index).

 

I guess my overall point is that effectively competing on the global stage in the future will require more skilled labour since unskilled labour / tasks will be automated away. The countries that recognize this and are able to train their workforces most effectively will be long term winners. 

I agree with your last paragraph.  I would not trust wikipedia statistics - as an immigrant who came to the US at the age of 13 and went to public schools with a lot of immigrants who all became doctors, lawyers, financiers, et cetera it is hard for me to buy into the narrative pushed by wikipedia.  Sure as hell not true in NYC, anybody who works hard gets ahead.  Seriously, social mobility is worse in the US than in Portugal?  Why are there so many Portuguese immigrants in the US?  Malta?  France?  Have you seen unemployment in France for young people vs US?

[Castanza]

"Math is racist" 

 

No budgetary changes will fix that. If you want to fix education in the US get rid of the teachers union and tenure. Increase the pay and make it competitive. Bring in skill focused learning at the High School level. If you're good at math or coding increase the elective count for those types of classes. It's completely absurd to me that Typing "keyboarding" is still taught at a high school level (or in general). I thought it was ridiculous I had to take it over a decade ago. 

 

The US got complacent and comfortable with education while other countries adopted new methods. US allowed the teachers Union to run the show and it has rotted the public school sector. Teachers who are good teachers are hamstrung by dumb ass curriculums. The system has a lot of rot. 

 

I had an AP Anatomy teacher in HS who took the curriculum and threw it out the window. He put his own time and money into the course and worked with a friend who was a Bio prof at Penn State. He got us as high schoolers access to human cadavers, more labs, etc. We even had a local brain surgeon come into class and walk us through a surgery he did with a video. One of my favorite classes by far and it wasn't even an area of interest career wise. When my wife took Anatomy in university for BSN she was way ahead of her peers. But the school board put an end to that type of teaching. So back to 20 year old textbooks with doodles. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by Castanza

[maplevalue]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-18/full-text-of-xi-jinping-s-speech-at-china-20th-party-congress-2022

 

Bloomberg's translation of Xi's landmark speech.

[Spekulatius]

Title says it all. i don't think it's in the cards, but apparently some people do:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/10/20/china-could-invade-taiwan-end-year-us-warns/

[sleepydragon]

9 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Title says it all. i don't think it's in the cards, but apparently some people do:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/10/20/china-could-invade-taiwan-end-year-us-warns/

Even chairman mao failed to invade Taiwan after his victory of taking the whole China. imo, if Xi invades Taiwan that will be good thing for the world because it will ends CCP in months if not a couple of years.

 

 

[Libs]

As noted upthread- Xi would have to be insane to invade Taiwan. China is not self-sufficient in food and other essentials. The countries exporting to China would stop, IMO. China would be in a world of hurt, quickly. Not to mention the mind-boggling complexities of actually pulling off a successful invasion.

Is Xi going to risk everything against these odds? I doubt it. China will choose slow strangulation ( see Hong Kong).

[WayWardCloud]

That is true if you assume rationality... The problem is autocrats tend to surround themselves with people who are so terrified to speak up they only tell them what they want to hear. Let's say whatever general overseeing the Taiwan area studies the military option for months and concludes it's a terrible idea. He gets fired for contradicting Xi's holy word and replaced by someone who will have a plan for success, even if that plan is widely unrealistic. That's exactly what happened with Putin and Ukraine.

 

I don't think either Putin or Xi are "insane" taken individually. They have just surrounded themselves by an echo chamber of people through their paranoia and purges. The apparatchiks most willing to bend reality for career advancement get selected year after year until eventually a terrible decisions is made based on the false intel. In general, I don't think arguments appealing to rationality against wars starting hold water because war is almost always the worst choice for everyone involved, yet they happen.

 

I would like to add that I hear a lot of hubris recently coming from us the cobf community about both economic competition with China (eg semi-conductors) and a potential war over Taiwan. Could be a recency bias due to the Russian army and logistical abilities being so much worse than initially assumed. China isn't Russia. Not saying that US/Europe/Japan/Australia wouldn't eventually prevail in a long conflict but that the efforts required and the cost in lives and wasted capital would be unlike anything we've seen since WWII.

 

I think humanity's best bet remains by a far margin to focus on avoiding the Thucydides trap by maintaining an honest diplomatic dialogue, by helping to organize those - both inside the country and outside within the gigantic Chinese diaspora around the world - who want democracy and by providing small inconsequential face-saving concessions to the leader once in a while to bide our time until a regime change. Of course we should stand our ground strongly on tech protection and military preparation just in case, but if we truly believe free markets are the superior model for developed economies (I do) and that demography is destiny, then this whole regime should eventually face plant on its own anyway. Look at them shooting their own two feet already with zero-covid policy plus the biggest real estate bubble in history. For once with China, time is on our side. I've started feeling like my point of view is losing ground as I read more and more articles and comments casually mentioning war, including from people who used to be much more moderate. I worry we are dramatically underestimating what that path would require from us.

Edited October 22, 2022 by WayWardCloud

[plato1976]

5 hours ago, WayWardCloud said:

That is true if you assume rationality... The problem is autocrats tend to surround themselves with people who are so terrified to speak up they only tell them what they want to hear. Let's say whatever general overseeing the Taiwan area studies the military option for months and concludes it's a terrible idea. He gets fired for contradicting Xi's holy word and replaced by someone who will have a plan for success, even if that plan is widely unrealistic. That's exactly what happened with Putin and Ukraine.

 

I don't think either Putin or Xi are "insane" taken individually. They have just surrounded themselves by an echo chamber of people through their paranoia and purges. The apparatchiks most willing to bend reality for career advancement get selected year after year until eventually a terrible decisions is made based on the false intel. In general, I don't think arguments appealing to rationality against wars starting hold water because war is almost always the worst choice for everyone involved, yet they happen.

 

I would like to add that I hear a lot of hubris recently coming from us the cobf community about both economic competition with China (eg semi-conductors) and a potential war over Taiwan. Could be a recency bias due to the Russian army and logistical abilities being so much worse than initially assumed. China isn't Russia. Not saying that US/Europe/Japan/Australia wouldn't eventually prevail in a long conflict but that the efforts required and the cost in lives and wasted capital would be unlike anything we've seen since WWII.

 

I think humanity's best bet remains by a far margin to focus on avoiding the Thucydides trap by maintaining an honest diplomatic dialogue, by helping to organize those - both inside the country and outside within the gigantic Chinese diaspora around the world - who want democracy and by providing small inconsequential face-saving concessions to the leader once in a while to bide our time until a regime change. Of course we should stand our ground strongly on tech protection and military preparation just in case, but if we truly believe free markets are the superior model for developed economies (I do) and that demography is destiny, then this whole regime should eventually face plant on its own anyway. Look at them shooting their own two feet already with zero-covid policy plus the biggest real estate bubble in history. For once with China, time is on our side. I've started feeling like my point of view is losing ground as I read more and more articles and comments casually mentioning war, including from people who used to be much more moderate. I worry we are dramatically underestimating what that path would require from us.

Well said

[Spekulatius]

On 10/19/2022 at 11:15 PM, Dinar said:

Spek, I agree with everything that you are saying except for the last paragraph.  There are different standards for regular kids/white&Asian vs black/hispanic/transgender/gay.  I for one, cannot understand how Stuyvesant HS (a specialized high school in NYC where you need to take a test to get in) in NYC is 1% black when the city is 40% black, while Harvard freshman class is 22% black when the country is 12% black.  

The Harvard freshman‘s  are 15.2% black, not 22%. So slightly over represented. I am sort of interested because my son will apply for next year.

https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

Edited October 23, 2022 by Spekulatius

[Dinar]

1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:

The Harvard freshman‘s  are 15.2% black, not 22%. So slightly over represented. I am sort of interested because my son will apply for next year.

https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

Spek, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/harvard-college-accepts-1968-to-class-of-2025/ it was 18% for class of 2025.  You seem to be missing my point: when objective statistic/merit is used (Stuyvesant test), the ratio is 1% when population is 40%.  When a "combination of factors" is used, then it is 15-18% versus 12% for the population as a whole.  See a problem?

[lnofeisone]

On 10/19/2022 at 11:15 PM, Dinar said:

Spek, I agree with everything that you are saying except for the last paragraph.  There are different standards for regular kids/white&Asian vs black/hispanic/transgender/gay.  I for one, cannot understand how Stuyvesant HS (a specialized high school in NYC where you need to take a test to get in) in NYC is 1% black when the city is 40% black, while Harvard freshman class is 22% black when the country is 12% black.  

The answer to they Stuy vs. Harvard question boils down to how schools are set up in NYC and self-selection of college process. In NYC, most students will attend their zone schools and the demographics of those zone schools will reflect the zone they are in. For example, PS 150 Christopher is located in Brownsville that's about 60% black and the school has roughly 60% black population. You can fairly quickly figure out the demographic of Lincoln High School near Brighton Beach. Stuy is a select school, as you mentioned, with an exam to get into so only top students across the city will get in.

 

Colleges do a great job of self-selecting. Everyone has to go and complete HS, not so with colleges. Only 70% or so go to college out of high school. This hits differently across various demographics but what ends up happening is schools that are over-represented on minority will lose a lot of non-viable candidates. Other schools, such as Stuy or Bronx Sci, will over-represent this same minority group. This becomes a wash at a national level and that's why you see schools like Harvard having minority split that's reflective of national demographics (roughly 15% black). Sure, one can argue preferential treatment, which could cause minor over-representation but it's a minor factor. The only demographic where this doesn't work is Asians. 

[UK]

Not good: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-23/xi-stacks-china-leadership-body-with-allies-cementing-control?leadSource=uverify wall

 

President Xi Jinping stacked China’s most powerful body with his allies, giving him unfettered control over the world’s second-largest economy. Xi, 69, put six close associates with him on the Politburo Standing Committee, including former Shanghai chief Li Qiang, who appears set to become the next premier after Li Keqiang retires. The move effectively puts all of Xi’s men in key positions responsible for running the government, tearing down divisions between party and state instituted following Mao Zedong’s chaotic rule that ended with his death in 1976. The new lineup signals a greater emphasis on ideology over pragmatism in policy making for China, which now has fewer voices at the top to question Xi’s policies of Covid Zero, tighter control over the private sector and a more assertive foreign policy. In opening the party congress last week, a defiant Xi offered China up as an alternative to the US and it allies while calling for self-sufficiency in advanced technology.

[lnofeisone]

Just to put some color on the Stuy application process, rough back of the envelop calculations. There is roughly 90k freshman across NYC high schools. 30k of them applied to Stuy and 800 got in. Because the acceptance criteria include a test, the 30k that do apply will probably have a skewed distribution wrt to the population, i.e., more white and asian applicants will qualify.

 

There is roughly 10,000,000 college applicants every year. Of these, 60k apply to harvard. Of those 60k, 11% were black. There is bound to be 6k very strong and competitive black students (you are starting with a 10M pool) who think their credentials are strong enough to be viable candidate and apply. So 0.06% (6k/10M) of students are qualified students that are black. 

 

Of the 6k that applied to Harvard roughly (1984 (current size of Harvard accepted class * 0.15) = 298 are black. So the acceptance rate for black students is roughly 298/6000, which is roughly 5%. 

 

Going back to the Stuy analysis, If you start with a population of 90k 8th graders applying to Study and let's assume the same 0.06% of qualified black student applicants, you only have 54 eligible students that would qualify to apply to Stuy. Only 800 total students get in into Stuy, and you said 1% of them are black, that equates to 8 students. The acceptance rate then is 8/54, which is roughly 15% (curious number given the population composition). 

 

So statistically, Stuy is less selective than Harvard when it comes to qualified students who are black. Of course, what I'm ignoring here is the fact that we did this analysis using vastly different populations and sample sizes. 

Edited October 23, 2022 by lnofeisone

[Dinar]

8 minutes ago, lnofeisone said:

Just to put some color on the Stuy application process, rough back of the envelop calculations. There is roughly 90k freshman across NYC high schools. 30k of them applied to Stuy and 800 got in. Because the acceptance criteria include a test, the 30k that do apply will probably have a skewed distribution wrt to the population, i.e., more white and asian applicants will qualify.

 

There is roughly 10,000,000 college applicants every year. Of these, 60k apply to harvard. Of those 60k, 11% were black. There is bound to be 6k very strong and competitive black students (you are starting with a 10M pool) who think their credentials are strong enough to be viable candidate and apply. So 0.06% (6k/10M) of students are qualified students that are black. 

 

Of the 6k that applied to Harvard roughly (1984 (current size of Harvard accepted class * 0.15) = 298 are black. So the acceptance rate for black students is roughly 298/6000, which is roughly 5%. 

 

Going back to the Stuy analysis, If you start with a population of 90k 8th graders applying to Study and let's assume the same 0.06% of qualified black student applicants, you only have 54 eligible students that would qualify to apply to Stuy. Only 800 total students get in into Stuy, and you said 1% of them are black, that equates to 8 students. The acceptance rate then is 8/54, which is roughly 15% (curious number given the population composition). 

 

So statistically, Stuy is less selective than Harvard when it comes to qualified students who are black. Of course, what I'm ignoring here is the fact that we did this analysis using vastly different populations and sample sizes. 

I am sorry, but I do not get your point.  My point is that when objective criteria is used, blacks are under-represented by a factor of 40.  When unclear criteria is used, they are overrepresented by a large margin (18 or 15.2% is a big deal vs 12-13%. ) That leads to certain conclusions.  

By the way, your own data hints at the problem: % of black applicants enrolled in Harvard - 5%, while overall acceptance rate = 3.19%.  Also, this data actually understates % of blacks admitted to Harvard, since not 100% of accepted students actually enroll.  So according to your own data, a black student has roughly twice the likelihood to be accepted to Harvard than a typical applicant, and more than twice than non-black applicant.  

Edited October 23, 2022 by Dinar

[Spekulatius]

@Dinar Sorry for leading the thread OT (college admission)  it was just a point I was interested In personally. I think adding racial criteria rather than objective measures to school and college admission criteria leads to rabbit holes that should be avoided.

 

I absolutely think that being a black or Hispanic gives you better chances than being white or even more Asian at the same level of qualification currently. My son is half white and half Asian technically and we for sure won’t identify him as Asian in his college application process.

 

I wrote this just to debate your numbers for Harvard (22% black admissions when it‘s in reality 15.2%). I do agree that even these numbers could indicate racial preference to the admission process.

 

On the other hand does anyone really think that Chinese Colleges are better than US ones ? Does anyone know of a Chinese American sending their kids back to a Chinese college?

[dealraker]

Our perfect SAT score pure white boy (he ain't ours but we have him) got into all of them, then chose based on his ever evolving sense of self.  It worked.

 

We too had our biases...you know that perfectly rational thought pattern of parents with children applying to the tough schools...but instead of focusing on the race unfairness given we have an interracial family (also "loaded" with a married gay couple...so much for being conservative any longer) we chose to focus on the money-for-admission bunch.

 

Our next door neighbor's child didn't get into their prefered school, did the black/Hispanic dance (not saying it isn't accurate)...but later transferred in successfully.  Oh my, but then when they tried to get in the med school thing?  Well it was a merger with us so-to-speak...they chose to fault the money'd bunch, the donors/alumni as there simply weren't any blacks/Hispanics in sight by then.

 

Of course being cynical.  Our nieghbors child then transferred yet again to High Point University in High Point, NC.  There they found the ultimate "lean to the passenger side" (in the US) school with token amounts of dark skin.  But the story got even worse there because the incredibly famous president of that school, and where he has taken it, makes no amends about it whatsoever.  It is simply: We run this school for those who give us the most money and we make NO apologies for this model.  The girl of the grievance family?  She gave up her dreams.

 

Life is great...if you can stand it.  We also raised dark skin kids.  We gave them the non-college lecture: "Do not, in any way shape or form, expect the law officer to treat you fairly....do you understand?"  I haven't been stopped by law enforcement in 50 years here, nor has our white kid.  Our dark skin kid?  You don't even want to hear about it.

 

Yea, we all have our biases.  They differ of course depending on the industry you're in.  

 

Don't take me too seriously.  I'm not extreme I just find what we focus on quite entertaining.

 

Addendum: My wife who does local admissions interviews for Duke (where 13 members of my family went) says, "Oh...remind everybody that 10% admitted are athletes and 90% aren't football/basketball...and what percent are qualified?"  She adds, "At Duke its somewhere around 13% alumni...and what percent get in that are qualified?"  She sums by saying, "Statistically if you are pre-grieving their reject it might be more accuract to focus on non race issues."  

 

Edited October 23, 2022 by dealraker
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