Ask HN: How much savings did you have before quitting your industry job? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you plan on quitting your job, don't just follow what people comment here. The actual amount you need should be calculated yourself, based on your plans.

1) How much money do you need to get round per month.

2) Add a chunk ontop of that for unforseen expenses, broken fridge for example...

3) How long do you estimate you'll be working on your project?

4) Add a large percentage to that estimate for unexpected issues

5) Will you need to make investments? Hardware? Designers? Calculate these figures.

6) Add a month (or 2) to the above, if your project fails to start making revenue, you'll need to find yourself a job - well, depending on how easy it is for you to find a good job...

It's an amount you need to calculate. Don't underestimate.

Then you're ready to roll.

<comment><USER3> You should also factor in time to get paid. If in your new venture you are going to be invoicing people directly then you should allow at least a couple of months to be paid.

i.e. you say 30 day payment terms on your invoice, but nobody will pay until that 30 days has elapsed, some people will pay you in the 4 weeks after that, and sometimes even with aggressively chasing you will have invoices which are 2 months overdue (i.e. no money for 3 months after they received the invoice)

<comment><USER2> Also - good one!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On the order of $4,000, though in my circumstances it was less risky than that number would suggest, since I already had covered-the-day-job cash flow from Bingo Card Creator and strong odds of successfully filling a consulting pipeline by that point. (I'm not counting my retirement account, which was in the low five figures, since I wasn't planning on touching it for any reason short of "I'm dying in the snow.")

<comment><USER5> "I'm dying in the snow" hahaha.... Good enough reason, had to comment because it made me laugh right out loud..

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I only had about $2000 (half a month's paycheck at the time), but the change in work was prompted by a multi-month consulting gig that was paying in the low five figures over the course of a few months.

My advice is to start looking for work before you leave your industry job - think if it as though you're doing lean testing on your product, except your product is yourself. If you can't find clients while at your day job, then iterate on yourself (website, services offered, your client pitch, how you're looking for clients, etc) and try again.

<comment><USER7> I have a similar story. I only saved up about $2000 too, but I also had a 1-month consulting gig that would pay me about 5 months' salary. That was enough to spur me to quit my job and start working on my own. I earned over a year's salary in the past 3 months since I quit and haven't looked back since.

<comment><USER7> Also, I'm 35 years old, so not just some kid who could afford to take risks. Just was never able to save up $ on a salary, went through a few periods of unemployment, and a few of my other startups failed. I'm finally on course to make some real dough and it never would've happened if I didn't quit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1 year of expenses including rent,healthcare, food ,etc.

When doing financial planning you should always try to save up to 6 months of all expenses. This is hard to achieve but the recommended number even if you are staying at your industry job. You never know what can happen.

<comment><USER9> Seriously, how do you do this?

My family makes a good income, own a modest home, drive 10 year old cars, have $0 debt ex-mortgage and don't do exotic trips. We put 20% away for retirement.

Our baseline cost to live including mortgage, property tax, food & minimal extras is probably around $45k. Our area has a tight rental market, so owning the house is a net money saver.

Other than cannibalizing retirement, building up that much is tough.

<comment><USER10> When I scored my first job out of school, I moved out into a tiny apartment in downtown Toronto—walking distance from the office. I managed to save about half of my after-tax income for a year and a half which came out to $26k.

No car, no family to support, no travel, no expensive purchases (I remember deliberating for weeks about buying an iPod Nano). Doubt I could have done it with a family to support and multiple cars.

I did have immediately family as a safety net but I covered my own expenses for whatever I needed after moving out, with the exception of a few meals here and there.

<comment><USER11> My situation was extremely similar, though I had a car and half my salary for the year came out to more like 20k. Two years and a lot of raises later I am maintaining the same lifestyle, still have a roommate + a fairly cheap apartment, and putting away around 70% of my salary each month.

Not having any dependents helps...a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> None.

I don't know if it matters but this was in 2000 (and not in SV/SF). I was doing IT/help desk for a UPS call center with a few servers and 75 workstations (on a token ring network!).

We had been doing educational software in our spare time. We landed a couple decent contracts and I decided to quit and go for it (I was also a senior at Cal Poly and quit). At the time, my rent was $400/month and I wasn't married. We found an office for $250/month.

Of course 18 months later things got real tight. After the .com crash, a lot of california colleges got their budgets cut. But we survived long enough to sell the company at the same time a new one started and took off.

I'm sure there's lots of sound advice here and my story shouldn't be a model.

I haven't had a real job since and I'm still a senior ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> About $100k. It lasted me 4 years. Frankly, I sort of wish I'd had a lot less. I never felt any sort of urgency like "This _must_ succeed."

No regrets though. The last 4 years have been a lot of fun. :)

<comment><USER14> Did you spend all 4 years on UsableHQ? And why do you think it failed?

<comment><USER13> About 2 years were spent on Usable, and the other 2 on ... err ... a litany of failed ideas that I didn't much enough effort into. But they were terrible ideas, so nevermind. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had 3 months worth of pay in savings. My plan was to start looking for work if there wasn't enough income to keep me going after month 2.

1 year later and still going strong!

</comment><comment><USER16> $10k liquid + $15k in withheld taxes the government owes me.

At least 5-8x that in an HSA, 401k, SEP, IRAs, Roth IRAs and tax-advantaged government bonds paying 7.5% that I bought a few months after I cashed out of the Janus fund in Dec 1999. (My broker fired me for that)

I'm going to hold on to those bonds as long as I can, and I'd much rather borrow against the equity of the "home" I own at a lower rate. (I bought the home in cash, so this is my "first" mortgage -- I opened the account when I wanted some capital to take a chance at buying an adjoining property at a tax auction.)

One of the first things I did when I quit was write a check from the heloc to the HSA so I wouldn't have to think about making contributions for it.

It's a little more complex than that because I have two houses on one large lot and my wife's riding academy and the rental income creates a financial situation that's so sweet it's almost a scam. I think last year I got $16k of rent, experienced a positive cashflow of around $14k from it, but the IRS says we made $4.5k of income because of depreciation on our property.

(I have no idea why anybody buys a single family house; as much as muggles make a big deal of the mortgage interest deduction, owning a duplex means you can write off half the principal plus you get a cash flow to help w/ the mortgage and property taxes. Maybe you even get a cool neighbor.)

One key to making this work is that I can get a high deductible health insurance plan through COBRA for $500 a month and that will tide me through until Obamacare comes unless the Republicans defund it. That's important because there really isn't any such thing as individual health insurance in NY. (I'd better write that letter to my Republican congressman before I forget.)

Anyhow, it isn't all roses. I pay $4k a year in taxes for a "persistently dangerous" school that my son goes to where probably 1/2 of the parents w/ college educations don't send their kids to because they homeschool. They haven't had a principal last more than two years so long as I know.

The internet sucks out here too. Github works OK, but it took 30 seconds to create a trouble ticket with the off-brand project management software at my last job, which was one of the reasons I quit. Netflix and Amazon instant video work, but I can't really watch Youtube. I used to use Flickr a lot, but with the latest update it is so slow I can't even use my own photographs when I make a presentation because it takes 1 minute+ to load.

<comment><USER17> this is the only realistic post i saw on here. the people who say they saved 2k before starting their venture are probably 18-22 years old and crashing at their parents' pad.

if you're a grown up, i don't see anyway you can start a venture without a year of savings built up or some sort of income (investments, part-time work, etc). let's say you give your venture 6 months and you fail. you'll need a few months to get yourself a paying job again before you're evicted/foreclosed.

<comment><USER16> If you're in that situation (can crash at your parent's pad) you should take advantage of it.

Remember now it's not just about "not getting evicted", it is also useful to have working capital.

I have a project I'm working on that will probably cost $600-$800 of computation in a Hadoop cluster in Amzazon AWS assuming I don't screw it up and have to do it twice.

In my situation I can "just do it".

To make an analogy with Poker, you do not want to be short stacked.

I know many "entrepreneurs" have an idea which they could move forward with personal investments in the $50-$5000 range. Instead of making a cool demo or any kind of prototype, they go talking to angel investors and they wonder why they get nowhere.

Somehow though, they manage to find $150 to give to Time Warner and $150 to give to Verizon every month.

For a while, for instance, I was talking w/ people in NJ, CT (imagine a donut centered around NYC) about applications of text analysis in financial services. Lots of talking to investors, but no demo.

I spent about 40 hours and about $12 (domain name) on a demo over the course of six months, which failed. It's material for a blog post. I can say I didn't know anything at all about the problem when I started and now I know something.

Also you really gotta pay attention to taxes when you're self employed. I lost about a year because I owed the IRS and NY about $15k of estimated tax I didn't pay, so I took a job I shouldn't have taken. I can be philosophical about it because I met one of my competitors at a conference and he was bouncing off the walls because he'd spent a year fighting with the technology transfer (prevention) office at his uni.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wrong question. How much passive income from a side business do you need before quitting your industry job?

<comment><USER14> I made around $60K/month for a good 2 years from a side project, while still keeping my day job.

Nowadays I make close to $8k/month passive income, and I regret not quitting back then. I could've easily made double the amount if I had focused strictly on that.

<comment><USER19> What's your side project if you don't mind me asking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I quit my job two months ago with close to $10k saved up. It's too early to claim success, though. I think location is really relevant. In Pittsburgh, rent is quite cheap, but I'm sure the situation is different elsewhere in the country.

</comment><comment><USER21> Planning on quitting with 6-9 months of burn (assuming I don't make another dollar). But I'm also planning on putting a startup before freelance/consulting so it might be a while before I start breaking even.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wish I knew more about these stories. How __OLD __were you? That 's key to me. It's one thing to quit your job when you are 23; another entirely if you are 51. I'm assuming the average age of the commenters below is 28.

There should be a formula that includes terms for age, likely earning potential on re-entry to job market, savings, debt, assets (like a paid-off house), % completion of the start-up project you're leaving for, monthly influx from startup project when you quit, etc., etc. The formula would pop out a single number, the Gutsy Factor.

</comment><comment><USER23> Number is pretty irrelevant if you're not relating it to expenses. Living with 4 roommates or something for $200 a month is going to take a lot less cushion than if you have a family of 3 and a mortgage.

<comment><USER24> Numbers can be described, as they are throughout the thread, in multiples of monthly expenses or other types of scales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I had about $11,000 USD after working for 20 months at IBM, lasted for about year and a half. Best decision ever. =)

<comment><USER26> What did you do after that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> About $20k, in a mutual fund. Didn't plan to spend it all but I did, quickly. I was working at a grocery store though, so little "risk". :)

As others have said - you need to learn to live cheaply. Savings dwindles amazingly fast when you have no income.

Personally, I dropped my cell phone & cable TV, and got rid of my car. It took about 3 years to get back to "normal" \- would never have made it without slashing expenses.

</comment><comment><USER28> $20k in the bank

$500/mo recurring

negotiating a $15k consulting project

several other potential projects in early talks

Remember that runway = cash/burn_rate. Lowering burn rate was a key enabler: I was able to find a rent-free living situation for a few months and that put me over the edge to quit. I also have a nice safety valve in that at the end of the runway, I don't crash and burn, I walk right back into an industry job __.

Because my burn rate is much lower than my former 6.5k/mo industry pay rate, I expect this to go much further than the 3 months pay I have in savings. That said, I'm being conservative and would only commit myself to 3mo terms at the longest for office/rent.

I don't claim to know anything about the sufficiency here, it was just my best guess. Comments welcome :-)

* There are no guarantees, but I received 3 offers @80k+ in 1mo of searching, so I like my odds. On a related note, always prefer data like this to a gut feel of your employability.

(throwaway -- don't need prospective clients seeing my financials)

</comment><comment><USER29> I had either 3 or 6 months of salary saved up - whatever it is that experts always say. And I'll tell you this, I was super freaked out about money the entire time. I felt like I was just about to go broke almost every step of the way until I landed my first good client. (That took 4-5 months, if I recall correctly.) And I'm a pretty mellow person able to deal with some amount of risk.

If I had to do it again, I'd make sure I had at least one year's salary. Several people have asked, "How is that possible to do?" I wouldn't have been able to do it at the time. Well, all I can say is that it gets much easier as you get older and get better jobs with stock options that are worth something, and if you've been saving for a decade or more. If you're just starting out, it's a lot harder if you aren't incredibly lucky. (Although you also have fewer repercussions if you mess it up.)

</comment><comment><USER30> First time: about two months salary. I'd just been laid off for the second time in two years, and rather than find another job in the same industry, I decided to try doing my own thing for a while. It was a great learning experience and I eventually came out ahead, but I basically lived month to month for several years.

Second time: about a year's salary in savings, and I had enough revenue to live on by the time I quit my day job. I was probably overly cautious, but my wife was pregnant and I didn't want to blow it.

</comment><comment><USER31> About $26k, though a good chunk of it was commissions that were still incoming (with no guarantee of receipt).

That said, I think there is a similar concept to the Minimum Viable Product that I'll call "Minimum Acceptable Savings". If you're going out on your own, your job is to Figure it Out. You need enough to be able to start figuring it out, but any more than that and you're stalling the move and ultimately falling behind.

Don't be scared to sell your couch, y'know?

</comment><comment><USER32> I had almost a year worth of normal income stashed away. Plus my wife's income was also coming in. To be honest that was a really conservative move and not really required. I made a pretty comfortable amount plus had some pretty large side web jobs I helped build up my savings. It was a lot of after hours working though.

Pretty ironic to be talking about this today, because this is a year to the day I left my day job. I still can say it was the best thing I ever did.

</comment><comment><USER33> I had about my annual salary minus taxes in savings. I also had 2 or 3 contracting gigs lined up.

In addition to all of that, I had zero debt.

<comment><USER34> Same boat here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I had about $9k and the expectation that I would do some consulting on the side to help out with expenses. I don't think I'd do the same thing again, because consulting ate up a lot of time that I could've been iterating on my project and that became a large source of frustration for me over time.

</comment><comment><USER36> I quit my day job this September, with €14,000 ($19,000) in savings. But I already have cybranding.com making some money - and very good reasons to think things will move fast now. Otherwise, having a family to support, I would never have done so before raising some money!

</comment><comment><USER37> I was making around $3000 before leaving my job (it's very good money for Turkey) and I had $3000 when I left my company. It's been almost 3 months now and I have $1000 more. My project is ready to sell. And we will start selling next week. I hope I can survive.

</comment><comment><USER5> In my case, I had something like 2,500 saved up before quitting my construction industry related job, moving to Mexico and giving myself 2 months to become a freelance writer. Worked out after all, though it was nerve wracking

<comment><USER38> Sounds like a material for a story in itself ;)

<comment><USER5> Hah.. not too much, it was not as dramatic as seemed with my initial post. Mainly full of lots of stress and working fast to keep from starving... and to learn the language quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think it's better to count in time rather than dollars... I just quit last week with approx 14mo, but I'm just starting so who knows if it was a good move :)

</comment><comment><USER40> I budgeted about $30k for 3 years off (my wife continued to work), made between $10k and $20k/year from my FemCal app, then went back to work when the $30k ran out.

No regrets.

</comment><comment><USER41> I never had an industry job. Except when my startups got bought. Straight to a startup out of college, never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER42> $15,000 in savings $1,600 a month in costs Just quit my job so don't know exactly how long it will last

<comment><USER43> Wanted to wish ur success in ur adventure - go slay some dragons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> 2-3 years worth of living expenses. Should give me plenty of runway to get my business off the ground...

</comment><comment><USER45> $10,000 savings

I could survive on $2,000 per month.

</comment><comment><USER46> savings?

i should make some of those before i quit my industry job... although i was hoping i would get up and running on the side, and not needing any other peoples money...

i might quit after something takes off enough to need full time attention. :)

</comment><comment><USER47> my balance was negative 2k. i had to pay a monthly payment to cover that loan and i still quit my industry job because i realised that time was money too. the pressure helped me find ways to survive and i did.

</comment><comment><USER48> Nothing. I was forced to figure it out quickly or go back to school.

</comment><comment><USER49> $0. I was stupid, but through sheer dumb luck I made it.

</comment><comment><USER50> Why do you want to quit your industry job?

</comment><comment><USER51> $95K. It wasn't enough. My time building my product was cut short by unexpected health problems, which not only accelerated my cash burn, but also made it more difficult than usual to find my next job when I needed it. I landed hard, on my ass, though I eventually got to my feet again.</comment>


For Asian Americans, a changing landscape on college admissions - o0-0o http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html#page=1 <comment><USER2> The language in this article is positively Orwellian.

 _Asian Americans are learning to deal with diversity in the changing landscape of college admissions_

Where diversity means, explicitly, the bureaucracy which enforces academia's racial discrimination.

 _Complaints about bias in college admissions have persisted since at least the 1920s_ \-- this is a newpsaper formulation which they invariably use to take no stance on opinionated controversies that are not conveniently verifiable or falsifiable, like "Republicans feel that they're treated poorly by the media."

But here's the followup to that: "... , when a Harvard University president tried to cap the number of Jewish students."

Shouldn't this sentence read "American universities have engaged in formal racial discrimination against disfavored minority groups since at least the 1920s, when a Harvard University president successfully implemented a formal quota limiting the number of Jewish students." Because that is a historical fact. It happened.

Another historical #()%')#(%ing fact is that Asian Americans have the weird crazy notion that American universities discriminate against them because _the universities have formal policies which spell this out_ and because when challenged on it _they have written words defending those policies on amici briefs to the Supreme Court_.

<comment><USER3> "Orwellian" has become one of HN's least useful snarl words that now communicates nothing aside from "I disagree with this point of view and consequently the way it is framed."

If you were black, you might see it as "Orwellian" when someone claims an admissions policy is non-discriminatory when it results in a class that is 6% black and 29% Asian among U.S. students (this is CMU), while blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population and Asians make up 5.3%.

You are trying to cloak your subjective opinion in the veneer of science and objectivity with nonsense about "verifiable and falsifiable," but it doesn't work. In your example - "Republicans feel that they're treated poorly by the media" \- what would be a falsifiable and verifiable statement? "Republicans ARE treated poorly by the media?" How is that or any statement like it falsifiable or verifiable?

Likewise, in what way are questions of racial fairness verifiable or falsifiable? If one policy is "race blind" and results in some minorities being seriously under-represented, is it fair because of its "race blindness" or unfair because of its outcome? If another policy takes race into consideration, is it unfair because it takes race into consideration in admissions or fair because its outcome results in a proportional representation?

It's a question of values, not a question of science. Depending on your point of view you are going to see it very differently from someone else.

<comment><USER4> "To discriminate" means to draw distinctions and act upon them. Establishing a maximum quota of Jewish or Asian students at a university is, factually, discrimination. It may be morally justifiable discrimination, but it is discrimination.

If the freshman class at Harvard University ends up being 30% Asian and 10% Jewish, maybe it's because people in East Asian and Jewish cultures value education more than people in other cultures. In that case, why isn't it fair for an educational institution to cater to individuals who have been raised to value education?

If some minorities (and let's not dance around the issue; we mean black people) are underrepresented at these institutions, that is a wake up call. It means that the public school system in our country has, in aggregate, failed black children and that decades of racial injustice have forced black people into self-perpetuating cycles of generational poverty. It doesn't mean that Harvard is being racially discriminatory.

<comment><USER5> Isn't it in Harvard's self-interest, and the interest of its students, to have a diverse (racially and in many other ways) student body that prepares students for a diverse world?

<comment><USER6> My understanding of Harvard's point of view is they want a particular mix of strivers and old money. This is not the same thing as racial diversity.

<comment><USER5> It need not be mutually exclusive with racial diversity.

<comment><USER7> The point is that they are investing in the growth of their endowment by seeking to maximize future donations from successful alums. With that goal it is straightforward to select exclusively from the two groups most likely to meet it.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure Harvard has more than one goal to balance in their admissions process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want a world where ethnicity, sex, and other body attributes do not matter very much. In that future world, body attributes would matter much _less_ than they do today. So I advocate paying as little attention to them as possible today.

Other people seem to want the same thing, but they advocate a world view that specifically considers ethnicity, and sex, and other body attributes. I feel certain it's well-intentioned, but it's racism, sexism, etc.

Further, that worldview encourages codifying racism and sexism, and making them part of our workplaces. It has become normal for universities to tweak points on admissions applications, and for big companies to publish pie charts about their progress toward diversity. But this is just more racism and sexism. If you have to add an ethnicity column to your employee database and periodically release ethnicity pie charts to show how unracist you are, I hope it is obvious that something is very wrong.

We shouldn't try to use old bad ideas to increase justice. Justice will increase naturally when we discard old bad ideas.

Every day, we're putting down bricks, building the world of the future. Let's put down the kind of bricks that suit the world we actually want.

<comment><USER9> _In that future world, body attributes would matter much less than they do today. So I advocate paying as little attention to them as possible today._

You realize that your first sentence does not imply your second sentence is a good policy automatically, right? It _might_ , but there is no automatic relationship there.

If you are prepared to have an open mind on this, I'd strongly encourage you to watch [https://www.gv.com/lib/unconscious-bias-at- work](https://www.gv.com/lib/unconscious-bias-at-work).

I think that your goal of _a world where ethnicity, sex, and other body attributes do not matter very much_ is admirable. However, in an imperfect world - especially one in which some people explicitly disavow that goal - <AUTHOR> is worth considering what a policy like yours will actually achieve. What that video linked above to find out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some people may find this surprising, but you shouldn't. It's simply how the world works. It's repugnant but life is not fair.

Racial discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg. There's also legacy admission and athletes grade fixing. It's also not uncommon for rich parents to hire a professional ghostwriter for the admission essay. College admission as a whole is extremely subjective even if they try to pretend it isn't. After that there's the rampant grade inflation. We can go on and on.

Make no mistakes though, these aren't just inefficiency that happens by oversight. Someone __always__ benefit. They certainly don't feel sorry for you. They may use fancy euphemism to justify their decisions, but we're all adults here. Nobody really believes that bullshit.

College is a business and the only thing you can do is take your money somewhere else. Until society is ruled by some AI, we'll always have these kinds of problem.

Some things I would recommend if people really want to give away their money and support these evil institutions, 1\. Change your name, first and last 2\. Check a different box when they ask for your race (or any other bullshit like religion, etc.)

Changing your name has _massive_ implications besides college applications. Humans love to judge especially when they have nothing at stake. If you don't believe me, just apply to a few jobs with different names.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think people who complain about discrimination against Asian students in places such as Harvard should ask themselves, why do people want to go to Harvard? It sure as hell isn't because that is the only place you can get an excellent education.

While Harvard is obviously great as an academic institution, people want to go to Harvard for the prestige. Do you think that prestige would be there if they were to allow the place to essentially become an academic ghetto for any given ethic group (Asian, Jewish or any future group)?

Every time a Harvard affiliated person wins the Nobel prize, Pulitzer, Macarthur or becomes the first black president the prestige equity of every Harvard graduate goes up. You don't get that by robotically picking students based on only test scores.

Complaining about not being accepted to a place like Harvard even though you scored a perfect SAT or some other test taking metric shows a misunderstanding of what these highly prestigious institutions are about.

<comment><USER12> We know what top universities would look like if they selected purely for academics. They would look like CalTech.

> Every time a Harvard affiliated person wins the Nobel prize, Pulitzer, > Macarthur .... You don't get that by robotically picking students based on > only test scores.

CalTech has _more_ nobel prizes per capita than any of the Ivies. Dunno if CalTech loses out on Macarthur (maybe) or Pulizer (probably), but if so it's because CalTech is a _technical_ university. There's no reason you couldn't have an all-academically selected university focusing on the humanities.

> or becomes the first black president the prestige equity of every Harvard > graduate goes up.

This is obviously not the reason that Harvard has racial preferences.

Yes, we can agree that it is reasonable for Harvard and other high-prestige universities to select for things besides academics (ambition, social savvy, sports, extracurriculars). But the complaint being leveled is that they shouldn't pick explicitly on race.

<comment><USER11> I think you're making my point, only people hanging out on HN and other similar circles know what CalTech is...Go out there and ask random people about CalTech... :) CalTech is a first-rate academic institution but it's prestige is limited to those who actually know what it is about.

My reference to the "first black president" has less to do with race or racial preference but rather for the sort of social change it represents. When you take the entire social history of the United States, a first black president is a monumental change and the institutions (academic or otherwise) that can claim any part of the credit for that, are falling over themselves to do so.

Again, my point is that the preoccupation people have with Schools like Harvard isn't about academics but prestige.

<comment><USER12> > CalTech is a first-rate academic institution but it's prestige is limited to > those who actually know what it is about...

> Again, my point is that the preoccupation people have with Schools like > Harvard isn't about academics but prestige.

I understand that, which is why I didn't claim that CalTech had the same prestige as Harvard. I was rebutting your claim that Harvard had racial policies in order to get academic awards in order to get prestige.

> My reference to the "first black president" has less to do with race or > racial preference but rather for the sort of social change it represents. > When you take the entire social history of the United States, a first black > president is a monumental change and the institutions (academic or > otherwise) that can claim any part of the credit for that, are falling over > themselves to do so.

Again, this is clearly not why Harvard has these policies, so bringing it up is a distraction. I agree that racial policies affect Harvard's prestige, and I agree that Harvard is driven largely by the pursuit of prestige, but I disagree that prominent racial alumni is a causal link, as you suggested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm one of those Asian-Americans that applied to only "elite" schools due to constant parental pressure and did "enough" to get accepted to most. Although all this happened a decade ago, the challenges these days seem mostly the same, if not trite, in the sense that Asians seem to typically over-value institutionalized education and focus on a narrow set of activities for whatever cultural reason ... leading to racial bias from colleges and conventional life choices from Asians.

For me though, I just enjoyed trying a bunch of different stuff out and was fortunate enough to excel at a variety of things that I guess these colleges weren't expecting from an Asian. These interests include(d) linguistics, journalism, public speaking, student government, graphics + layouts + grids, game design, acrobatics, and somehow even ended up as an Eagle Scout (shrug) ... on top of hyper-accelerated math, science and tech stuff expected I guess of Asian students. Didn't sleep much though.

Also, after attending one day of Harvard's Campus Preview Weekend, my gut said "uh ... no," and went to MIT instead. Very happy about that choice in hindsight, purely based on the people I met and the meritocracy instilled in the students; I doubt I use even 25% of course material in the stuff I work on these days. The most important lesson that I did learn at the end of the day is that general society is led to believe that people should/can master only one or two tasks, a possible relic from industrialism. Instead, people should aim to become polymathic, which becomes exponentially easier by learning across diverse interests and realizing that there are many common threads across seemingly different fields -- a personal and particular implementation of "learning how to learn."

* As a side note, San Gabriel Valley? Never been so can't really guess, but I would bet that Cupertino schools were much tougher. Thankfully, we had a certain neighborhood fruit company that inspired some of us to become pirates instead of joining the navy, and to experiment with Learning Some Divinity (eventually).

</comment><comment><USER14> I find penalizing scores of Asian Americans to be exactly as racist as improving scores of African Americans and other ethnicities. If we, as a society, believe that all people from all ethnicities are equal, why do we do this? I could understand if we boosted scores of people coming from poor families, but changing scores based only on ethnicity? How is that not racist?

<comment><USER15> >all people from all ethnicities are equal

All people from all ethnicities are equal in the sense that they deserve an equal oppertunity to succeed. However, that has not happened. Certain ethnic groups (black people) have been systematically disadvantaged. They continue to be under-represented in higher education and over-represented in the prison system. Affirmative action does a good job at getting black people into college, which generally helps a person later in life when they want to get a good job.

<comment><USER14> It's not black people who are disadvantaged - but people coming from poor, ghetto communities who are. The fact that they are black is secondary. Like I've said, I would be completely ok with them being given extra points due to coming from a very poor/criminal families. No problem here. But a simple system "black? extra points. Asian? negative points" is nothing but racist. Is a black person from a rich family getting extra points? If yes, why? Is an Asian person from a poor family still getting negative points? If yes, again - why? It literally doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER15> You're now shifting the conversation from the broad admissions policy to specific admission merits of individuals. The policy of promoting the admission of black students as a whole has been successful. It's not racism when a minority/disadvantaged group is given a leg up on a group that already has an advantage. The effect is so minimal that it really isn't worth discussing.

<comment><USER14> How has it been successful? Some people got admitted to university on the basis of their skin color, while some other people got rejected based on their skin color. How is this a success?

<comment><USER15> Skin color is not the only factor of admissions, so your reduction of the situation to being one is not appropriate. It is a success in that people who might have previously been unable to attend college are admitted to college, and given scholarships for needy/minority students. We need not worry about the fate of middle class white people like me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's an out of the box idea that doesn't address racism but addresses another aspect of this: may be we should focus effort (research grants and moneys) on non-elite schools and bring the general average university up to a better level, then people, asian or otherwise, wouldn't feel that much less accomplished if they got into a some large public uni that happens not to be an ivy-league school.

It boggles my mind how we have the best schools in the world while at the same time have an average college educated adult who has skills below the average [0]. That could be part of the reason why so many people are shoving against each other on the way to Stanford, because if they get into some random state uni, they know they won't have a quality education. May be if we fixed that, we'd increase N, the number of spots available for everyone, and we wouldn't reach the pigeon-hole limit so quickly that colleges wouldn't have to start discriminating against anyone.

[0] [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults- ran...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults-rank-below- average-global-survey-basic-education-skills)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is not surprising, most asians already know this - I encountered this during admissions when I applied to undergrad for the class of 2006. I was one of the most stellar candidates from the NY tristate area (NYC area) with some of the best test scores & a diverse set of extracurriculars, and a history of excellence in regional/national math competitions & advanced coursework (Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra in 10th grade), but my being Korean definitely hurt (combined with my having wrote a bad essay, which helped give a reason to say no/waitlisted in a year where many colleges lost millions of dollars from the Enron scandal).

In the end, it didn't matter as much since I always had strong confidence in my ability to adapt and to look ahead, and my path turned out to be beneficial in many different ways. Obstacles such as this are difficult to overcome though, and it helped home in that I need to be that much sharper in order to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER18> Don't know what to say other than feeling upset. The losers are more on the middle-class of poor Asians and the Whites obviously. Due to the increasingly large number of the black and the Hispanic voters, these situation will not change, if not getting worse.

Then I read somewhere that for diversity reasons after those students(the black and the Hispanic) are admitted to the top universities, they actually don't have a nice experience at all, most of them simply can't catch up and some of them drop out.

I'm fine with helping the economically disadvantaged students, but manipulating the admission by skin color or race?

Top universities just like NBA, only the best players shall attend, skin color shall not be the reason you can stay there. Not to mention there are so many other public/private universities to choose for everyone.

<comment><USER19> From what I've read most of the black and Hispanic students are not dropping out due to course work, but an inability to pay for it. Furthermore, taking out more loans is often not the best idea since many of the students do not make the connections in those schools to get the best paying jobs and usually end up with similar jobs as their peers that went to less prestigious and cheaper schools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Racial discrimination, neatly quantified: "Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term "bonus" to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth. She points to the first column. African Americans received a "bonus" of 230 points, Lee says. She points to the second column. "Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points." The last column draws gasps. Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission."

<comment><USER21> Note that no school actually penalizes Asian Americans by 50 points or gives 230 points to black applications. This study appears to assume that one's SAT score is the only factor that should be used in college admission and that race is the only explanatory factor for the disparity between admission and scores.

But admissions policies that granted extra "points" based on growing up in a poorly performing school district or the economic status of the parents would also likely generate this sort of distribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> MLK said this in his famouse speech "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." [0]

This is so sad with what many colleges/states are pushing for now. I am all for college admission policy to help out low incoming group, based on his/her economy status, which the children were born into, but not discrimination based on skin color, which the children were born with.

[0] [http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/martinluth115056....](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/martinluth115056.html#meSsLUb8M6r42ETO.99")

<comment><USER23> _MLK said this in his famouse speech_

MLK also said: "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."

 _I am all for college admission policy to help out low incoming group, based on his /her economy status, [..] but not discrimination based on skin color_

The problem is that research has shown that institutional discrimination is not just based on economics, but also on race (for example, Prager's research showing that a white job applicant _with_ a criminal record is more likely to get a job callback than a black applicant _without_ a criminal record). Ignoring race isn't the answer. As for what is the answer, that's a much harder problem which is why we're still wrestling with it.

</comment></comment><comment> throwaway-ofc Is it true that non-jewish whites are more underrepresented than even hispanics or african americans, while at the same time needing higher scores to be accepted?

<comment><USER24> I think that's plausibly true at Harvard, but it's mathematically impossible for that to be true overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points

Compared to what? White applicants, statistically? Why are white people the "default" which everyone else is measured against, do white people not have a race/ethnicity?

There is no 'objective' measure of what SAT score "should" get you into a university. Most universities use things other than SAT scores to decide admissions (things in addition to affirmative action/diversity, I mean, too). Some universities may rely/weight SAT scores more than others. There is no SAT score that is "supposed to" guarantee you admission, "before accounting for race". It doesn't work that way. If you think it would be more "fair" to rely exclusively on SAT scores, you can make an argument for that, but a test is not in fact some objective measure of 'reality', it's just one test.

The idea that it's just a fact that "Asian Americans are penalized by 50 points"\-- it's an under-specified statement, and it doesn't actually mean much.

I think this is an example of the assumptions/biases in the language of this article and those quoted in it, in general.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm married into a first generation Asian family and this is a constant topic of conversation on that side, especially now that their kids are getting ready for college.

The problem ultimately stems from a huge wave of mostly Korean and Chinese immigrants (but by extension other East Asian and Pacific Island nations get penalized as well), who grew up in poor countries (or when their countries were poor), suddenly finding themselves with enough money to immigrate to the U.S. and "escape". They put down roots, work their tails off and start having families.

They don't want their kids to have to struggle like they did (and they want to ensure they set themselves up well in retirement), but they have incredibly unsophisticated views of what 'success' means in America (often as a result of working so much they never really had a chance to integrate well into their adopted country).

However, they understand passing tests, having deep cultural histories around test taking to get ahead in life. So they look for the most prestigious work you can test into.

And bam, at the intersection of hard work, prestige signaling and test taking you get a fairly limited set of occupations, which these parents instinctively laser beam their kids at.

Good schools want extracurriculars? No problem! Let's use the prestige button on that, prestigious schools must want the _most_ prestigious extracurriculars, and those are obviously piano and violin (and sometimes opera). Let's toss in some prestige sports as well, and now these kids and splitting time studying endlessly for tests to become a doctor or lawyer, practicing piano/violin and playing tennis/golf/figure skating.

Repeat until the parents think they're maximizing the fitting function for university acceptance and you end up with entire social networks and minor industries around SAT test taking, piano and violin teachers and tennis/golf/figure skating coaches.

And you know what? For a very long time this worked. Asian Americans have been extraordinarily and consistently "successful", far over-represented in university admissions and in select professions.

But there was no secret, it was literally hard screaming, crying, kicking work. There's no cheating. While their other raced peers studied for an hour every night before turning on the XBox. They studied till midnight, every night, and then spent all day Saturday at private school, then studied till midnight again, then spent most of the day on Sundays doing prestige extracurriculars. Their parents were often poor, working crap triple-D jobs, or triple shifts at convenience stores. They lived frugally and invested every single drop of blood in their kids. Even if they were often wrong headed about how they did it, it worked and anybody can do it.

But on the university side, as parents start to find the optimal mix to acceptance, application packets start to look not just virtually identical, but absolutely identical.

Imagine you're tasked with figuring out which 10 of 1000 applications all with the last names Kim, Chin, Hu, Lee, Park, Wang or Choi should be accepted:

\- All have 4.0 GPAs

\- All have AP degrees from High School

\- All have extracurriculars that are selected from the set of {violin, piano, opera, tennis, golf}

\- All went to the best High Schools in their respective areas

\- All submit essays with some story about their parent's difficult immigration, usually involving stories of poverty and unbelievable work hours in menial jobs. Maybe with some kind of "escape from the communists" or "swimming to safety across Hong Kong Harbor" or something. I know 3 Chinese Americans who's parents have almost identical "swimming escape from China and lived in Kowloon Walled City for 3 years before making it to America" stories.

\- All have perfect or near perfect SAT scores

What the universities are of course realizing is that it becomes a random sample at this point. There's no criteria they can use to discern one 'Kim' from another 'Lee'...every applicant literally looks exactly the same. There's no "fair" way to select from this applicant pool, and this pool has quite literally self-grouped.

So, clumsily, the universities are trying to throw big rocks in the pool. These are starting to no longer accept the products of this application optimum, _especially_ if they have Asian-American last names.

It's getting heard, and in the parts of the Asian American community I'm privy to, mothers are stressed out that all those years of forcing their kids to master Bach aren't going to count for much. They're in a mad scramble to figure out the next optimized path, but the universities are smart to it now.

They also don't come from cultures where the notion of cultivating meaningful hobbies is well understood. My niece loves waterpainting and flower arranging. Gifts of art supplies and arrangement books are met with skepticism and sometimes scorn. She won't have time to be forced to practice piano if she's dilly-dallying around with another painting! Yet, a portfolio of prints and some awards from local flower shows would be _exactly_ what the universities are now looking for. The idea that maybe she should be encouraged to develop her own innate interests is lost while he parents look for the next magical prestige signalling instrument for her to be forced to study. My other family back in the home country are trying to understand it better, but they still haven't gotten over the idea that being "a hobby photographer" doesn't have to mean spending $25,000 on pro-level camera equipment.

Coincidentally, the second generation of Asian Americans are having kids and _those_ kids are often growing up without all this mess, but still affected by the continued wave of new first generations. Now Rebecca Choi, who's parents didn't push her through the Harvard funnel is getting impacted by Hee Soo who did. But Rebecca is interested in becoming a writer, has a 3.2 GPA, stinks at math, dyes her hair pink, listens to rock music, is trying to learn to play guitar, volunteers as a drill coach for her local girl's basketball league. Had a pregnancy scare her junior year. Has experimented with drugs a little. Her SATs were above average, but not spectacular.

If she was _another_ minority she might make it into a tier-1 school. If she was white she probably wouldn't. But now because Hee Soo's parents tiger mom'd her through the perceived application optimum, Rebecca, for no other reason than being a Choi, gets a 50 point application deduction. Does this mean the system worked? Rebecca would just be an average white kid if she was Rebecca Smith.

<comment><USER27> Interesting I know that one of the reason well off mainland Chinese parents are opting to send their kids to Public Schools in the UK to get out of the death march style of cramming facts education.

<comment><USER26> That's interesting, I wonder how the emergent Chinese middle class is informing this.

It's really such a difficult and complicated topic. But I think the action/reaction dynamic is largely explainable and understandable.

The people who I really don't get are the ones that know better, the Amy Chua's of the world. Who have the education, the sophistication and the cultural integration to escape it, yet simply repeat the cycle of abuse, mindlessly.

While the "death march" approach has largely worked to get immediately (within a generation) into "prestige" and well paying occupations. There's also a huge number of burned out kids with absolutely shattered parental relationships.

There's several reddits dedicated to basically being support groups for deeply depressed, deeply damaged kids who grew up in this kind of grind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> CalTech doesn't discriminate by race at all: [http://www.mindingthecampus.com/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_...](http://www.mindingthecampus.com/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_class_by_i/)

<comment><USER23> This is not true according to CalTech's Common Data Set filings [0] (see section C7)

[0] [http://finance.caltech.edu/Resources/cds](http://finance.caltech.edu/Resources/cds)

<comment><USER29> This is an issue of some interest. For example, the UC system in California is currently prohibited by law from discriminating by race in admissions. But we know they're doing it anyway by looking at the statistics of the students they keep admitting. When we look at the CalTech statistics, racial biases are not apparent (admittedly, we have to do this in a very rough way because universities will generally fight tooth and nail to prevent researchers from looking into the effect of race on admissions). And the source you cite doesn't actually specify any amount of bias by race - it says that race is "considered", which is the least significance a variable can have before being "not considered".

If we think that other universities are lying when they say race is not considered, based on massive discrepancies between the records of admitted freshmen of different races, why shouldn't we discount CalTech's statement that race is considered, based on a lack of such discrepancies?

<comment><USER23> _For example, the UC system in California is currently prohibited by law from discriminating by race in admissions. But we know they 're doing it anyway by looking at the statistics of the students they keep admitting._

Do "we know they're doing it anyway"? When Prop 209 passed, minority enrollment dropped. And there are any number of factors that the system may consider that are not race, but may be correlated with race. In any event, the numbers I can find show black and latino admissions combined are less than expected based on CA and national numbers.

 _And the source you cite doesn 't actually specify any amount of bias by race - it says that race is "considered"_

I was responding to a poster that said "CalTech doesn't discriminate by race _at all_ " \- CalTech itself disagrees. I was not commenting on the extend or magnitude of that consideration.

 _If we think that other universities are lying when they say race is not considered,_

I'm not sure I accept this premise.

 _why shouldn 't we discount CalTech's statement_

Occam's razor. In any event, we know that CalTech does target minorities via outreach programs [0] so it would not be out of character for them to consider race. And anecdotally (I'm black), I was _heavily_ recruited by CalTech despite my showing no interested in attending and having below (CalTech) average SAT scores (and above average grades/school rank/extra curricular)

[0] [http://diversitycenter.caltech.edu/resources/rfus](http://diversitycenter.caltech.edu/resources/rfus)

<comment><USER29> All right, I think I agree with you on many points. Let me try to summarize my view here:

1\. We can only see the effect of race on admission at a very coarse resolution, because universities try their hardest to obscure it.

2\. Even at this coarse resolution, it's easy to see that at most US universities, race has a massive effect. We see this by noting that when you break down admitted freshmen by race, they show very large group differences on all the characteristics that the universities will admit they're looking for.

3\. Although minority enrollment in the UC system dropped after Prop 209, we still see these large differences. As they are our only way of inferring any effect of race, we conclude that race still has large effects, despite the fact that this is now illegal. Ward Connerly will tell you any number of stories (well, write stories down that you can read) about other UC regents specifically plotting to subvert prop 209 and get minorities in by whatever pretexts they can think of.

4\. We _fail_ to observe significant differences among the racial groups at CalTech.

5\. You are almost certainly correct to estimate that, since CalTech says it considers race, we should believe that it does consider race.

6\. _But_ I, personally, while admitting that in the sense of point (5) CalTech does consider race, still think that it's usefully correct to go around telling people "CalTech, unlike other US schools, doesn't discriminate by race". This is because when we use our own metric, which is what we have to do for other schools, we can't detect any discrimination on the part of CalTech. When we compare it to other schools, it seems reasonable to measure them all the same way.

Put another way, in the wise words of Cecil Adams, what we cannot reliably measure we are entitled to ignore. CalTech has information that we don't, but until it makes a difference that we can see, there's not much of a reason for us to pay attention. Comparing our view of UCLA with CalTech's view of itself is terrible statistics.

<comment><USER23> _We can only see the effect of race on admission at a very coarse resolution, because universities try their hardest to obscure it_

I agree, that we can only see the effects at a coarse resolution, but disagree that universities try to "obscure" that effect. I think the reason for the coarse resolution is that there isn't a simple formula for each individual student. Admissions officials look at each application and weigh factors depending on each student's particular circumstances. This would be consistent with another post in this topic about so many Asian applications being similar (assuming the post was true) which would make it harder to tease out unique factors (I'm speculating here).

 _they show very large group differences on all the characteristics that the universities will admit they 're looking for._

I don't agree with this at all, especially looking at all U.S. universities in aggregate. There are a lot of universities that look for different aspects rather than pure academics, and look to serve different audiences (HBCU's being the obvious example). Can you give an example of a college or university that claims to look for a particular set of characteristics but has a student body that conflict with those characteristics?

 _Although minority enrollment in the UC system dropped after Prop 209, we still see these large differences._

California has a population that is (as of 2011) 40% white, 7% black, 14% Asian and 38% Latino. [0]

The U.C. System (undergrad) is currently 30% white, 4% black, 34% Asian and 18% Latino. [1]

Are the "large differences" you're referencing referring to the overrepresentation of Asians and underrepresentation of everyone else?

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#Raci...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#Racial_and_ancestral_makeup)

[1] [http://www.cpec.ca.gov/StudentData/StudentSnapshot.ASP?DataR...](http://www.cpec.ca.gov/StudentData/StudentSnapshot.ASP?DataReport=UCEth)

 _We fail to observe significant differences among the racial groups at CalTech._

CalTech (undergrad enrollment) is 2% black, 30% white, 42% black and 10% Latino.[2] That's a lot closer to the UC system than to CA's population.

[2] [http://finance.caltech.edu/documents/198-cds2014_final.pdf](http://finance.caltech.edu/documents/198-cds2014_final.pdf) table B2

<comment><USER29> > [I] disagree that universities try to "obscure" that effect [of race on > undergrad admission]

You can't be serious. Universities selectively deny access to their admissions data based on the politics of the researchers asking for it. They've been known to agree to allow access and then welsh after hearing the proposed topic of the paper. They're acting with overt malice, here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > "But there's an important part of their college applications that they can't > improve as easily as an SAT score: their ethnicity."

As an asian american myself this is offensive. Why would I want to IMPROVE my ethnicity? Furthermore I personally believe a 'holistic' application review process is fair, if diversity in the workplace is valued shouldn't diversity in universities be similarly valued? Yes I know this undoubtedly hurt Asian American applicants but they will no doubt adapt and this community is the furthest from believing that a 2400 on the SAT or 5.0 GPA is indicative of success

</comment><comment><USER31> Is not racial discrimination illegal in US?

<comment><USER2> Title VI, a federal law, prohibits discrimination by race in, most prominently for the present discussion, any federally funded university, which is substantially all of them due to how America does research budgets and federal student aid. Many universities are government institutions, and in the United States government cannot generally discriminate on the basis of race due to the Equal Protection clause of the US Constitution (in the 14th Amendment) and/or the Due Process clause (5th Amendment). Both are generally pretty toothy.

 _However_ , a contentious series of Supreme Court cases (Bakke, Gratz, Grutter) have held that universities are allowed to racially discriminate if they do so with the intention of achieving compelling educational interests and as long as their institutionalized racial discrimination is not a crass point system but rather a "holistic" evaluation of applicants which uses race as "one part of" the decisionmaking process.

Racial discrimination is pervasive at US selective universities, public and private. It is described as a minor, marginal policy, but all players understand that abandoning the formal racial discrimination policies would cause instantaneous hits to enrollment of favored racial minorities of roughly 50% or more, as has indeed happened when particular formal racial discrimination policies were found illegal. For example, the Gratz decision illegalized a points system used by the University of Michigan, where 100 points were required for admission and being a member of a favored racial group was worth 20 points. (For comparison: the best essay they received in a year was worth 3 points and winning a gold medal in the Olympics was worth 5. )

Some states have explicitly "No-we-really-mean-it-this-time" illegalized racial discrimination in public education, a policy which commands a supermajority of support with American voters. California is a prominent example. The universities threatened massive resistance. (That phrasing would be understood by educated Americans to be a grave insult. It is a callback to a particular phrase used by a Southern politician refusing to comply with federal laws prohibiting discrimination against racial minorities.) Enrollment by favored minority groups declined by roughly half. Over the same period, Asian enrollment (as a percentage) increased markedly and white enrollment was roughly constant or declining.

<comment><USER32> _It is described as a minor, marginal policy, but all players understand that abandoning the formal racial discrimination policies would cause instantaneous hits to enrollment of favored racial minorities of roughly 50% or more, as has indeed happened when particular formal racial discrimination policies were found illegal._

It's marginal for the majority population. Not for the minority group. Its like handicapped parking. If you were to remove them, your parking situation only sees a marginal improvement, but for the handicap it's probably a big deal.

<comment><USER31> Are asians part of majority population or minority group?

<comment><USER32> The minority population. The small percentage of Blacks in college doesn't impact greatly the percentage of Asians at Ivy League schools. It's a red herring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Of course people shouldn't be rejected by their race.

But according to the article, "all" asians have the same profile. If this is true, I can understand why some of the similar profiles are rejected in the name of diversity.

Once an SAT score is sufficiently high, it makes sense to look at other things. I can see why a college would want 50/50 gender, and a wide spread of social backgrounds.

If I was teaching a class and I had to choose between 2 students for the last seat, I might choose the one with the (insignificantly) lower score if that student seemed more fun to be around.

<comment><USER29> > If I was teaching a class and I had to choose between 2 students for the > last seat, I might choose the one with the (insignificantly) lower score if > that student seemed more fun to be around.

This doesn't bear any resemblance to current admissions policies. Discrepancies between races in average SAT score at a given college are in the hundreds of points, not the low tens.

<comment><USER3> The article and the person you are replying to are specifically talking about disadvantages faced by Asian Americans, and they have an SAT penalty of 50 points, according to the article and the paper it references: [http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/files/webAdmission%20Pre...](http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/files/webAdmission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20Walling%20Dec%202004.pdf)

Without making a judgment one way or the other on the core issue - given that this paper is looking at "highly selective private research universities" with average SAT scores of over 1300, a 50 point difference is not very big and probably within each individual student's margin of error. When you are in that scoring range, each incorrect answer has a magnified score penalty to maintain the normal distribution.

<comment><USER29> So, two points.

1\. Asians suffer a penalty of 50 points _relative to whites_. We can equally say, using the numbers from rjdagost's comment, that whites themselves suffer a penalty of 230 points.

2\. The entire concept of the normally curved scores is that one 50-point difference is just as significant as any other 50-point difference. That's why we use standard deviations to compare things. It is true that scores at the very high end are more volatile, since most of the test's "space" is devoted to distinguishing between people in the middle of the range, but 1300 does not seem to be at a level where that worry would make sense; the data I have to hand is a score report from 2000 saying "on average, a person with a math score of 710 loses 2 points on a second testing", which is pretty reliable. And regardless, while an individual student might easily lose 30 points by retesting, group averages don't move so easily.

<comment><USER29> > "on average, a person with a math score of 710 loses 2 points on a second > testing", which is pretty reliable

On thinking about this further, I've grossly misused the word "reliable". What that quoted bit says is precisely that while an individual's score may vary from test to retest (and is thus not necessarily reliable), the average score of a group is highly stable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So throwing away meritocracy for vote appeasement? Nice

<comment><USER35> You might be surprised to learn that "meritocracy" was word coined in the process of satirizing the idea of meritocracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The study at the core of this article appears to make the assumption that SAT scores are the only factor that ought to be considered when making college admissions decisions. But I don't think that's right. Certainly the mission of these universities is not solely to educate the best test-takers in the world.

And unless I missed it there's also no evidence that the schools studied actually do use race in their admissions decisions. There are a variety of other factors that could be considered which would end up skewing the admissions results on the basis of race. Should colleges not be allowed to give extra consideration to students from poorly performing schools simply because doing so might have the effect of giving "bonus points" to African American or Hispanic applicants?

</comment><comment><USER36> Aren't you allowed to abstain from declaring race on college applications?

<comment><USER37> Maybe, but you certainly aren't allowed to abstain from declaring your name.

<comment><USER38> Which is why a lot of people have legal western names while using an ethnic name at home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I was part of a program that changed to graduate admissions based solely on subject GRE score. The first such resulting class was 88% Chinese, 4% Taiwanese, and 8% white American. Did they do that well as a class in graduate studies or in academia? No. Some were great, some were terrible, just like every other year. The years where admission was done based on prior math research instead resulted in a more interesting group of students, although again some were great, some were terrible.

It's well-known that in subject GREs Chinese students score very well compared to American students of any racial or ethnic background. (As a Chinese friend asked, "Why don't you Americans just study for it, like we do?") However, subject GRE scores are not that predictive of success in a graduate program. Research skills, writing ability, grit, and the simple capacity to get stuff done are not well-predicted by multiple choice exams. It is useful to know that students who do well on, for instance, the math subject GRE can do triple integrals quickly. That's about it.

So, since subject GREs don't predict graduate success, and SATs are not that well-correlated with college success either [1], admissions committees use other factors to evaluate students. In fact, a number of schools do not require any standardized test [2]. These other factors range widely and include high school grades, which are most predictive of college success, volunteer work, interestingness, etc. And they do include race and geographic origin. Small colleges in the Midwest are currently targeting California, Texas, and Florida for recruitment because of their huge numbers of graduating seniors, and the coastal schools let in some token Midwesterners to provide some leavening to their provincial views of flyover country.

There is discrimination against Asian Americans in admissions in the US. It's not written into policy explicitly: it's just like discrimination against women and blacks today, taking the form of discussion of "fit" or subjective evaluation of how interesting someone's work is. It should stop, and the comparison to the "Jewish quotas" is apt. At the same time, test-based admissions are ludicrous, and evaluation of extracurricular activities and accomplishments given the student's environment are necessary. I had friends at Caltech who went to high schools that didn't offer calculus: smart people come from all sorts of backgrounds.

[1] [https://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Validity...](https://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Validity_of_the_SAT_for_Predicting_First_Year_College_Grade_Point_Average.pdf)

[2] [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/19/study- finds-l...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/19/study-finds-little- difference-academic-success-students-who-do-and-dont-submit-sat)

</comment><comment><USER40> Sending affluent students to volunteer in poor neighbourhoods to get them into college is disgusting.

<comment><USER41> When I was in 12, I volunteered to help feed the poor at a soup kitchen. When I was in high school, there was a mandatory volunteer requirement of 40 hours just to graduate. Volunteering isn't disgusting, it's valuable experience. It's no different than putting volunteer experience on a resume to get a job. Volunteers are in short demand; it'd be much more disgusting to deny help just because their intents aren't purely altruistic. Heaven forbid you help someone and help yourself at the same time.

<comment><USER42> Uhh its not volunteering if its mandatory...

<comment><USER43> This.

Volunteer has to be free from pressure.

But we have a society that try to push "moral"values instead of freedom and pursuit of your OWN happiness (obeying laws).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> _"I don 't want to be racist or anything," Lawrence said. "Everyone works hard and struggles. But there's this feeling that it's going to be harder for us."_

No, it's going to be harder for someone who's parents can't afford tutoring academies named "Little Harvard", tennis lessons, violin lessons or 4 hours of extracurriculars a day.

This sounds like someone who has been given every advantage in life complaining about not being given more advantages. Maybe more of them should do volunteer programs in poor communities so they can think about how difficult it would be for _those_ kids to get into Harvard. After seeing what a life of poverty is like, having your SAT score adjusted down by a couple of points will seem like quite a bargain.

<comment><USER45> According to you, it's even more racist then. Because, what about the asian students that come from poverty? Why is the adjustment (still can't believe they do this) based on ethnicity and not on the parents income or bank account?

<comment><USER46> This occurs in Brazil with racial quotas at university. The only problem is that most Brazilians have some African blood (some say one drop is enough to claim they are black). It'd make more sense, as you mentioned, if it were based on income.</comment></comment></comment>


Delphic Maxims - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_maxims <comment><USER2> There is some repetition but it's pretty interesting how most of the maxims have a timelessness to them (probably all that don't involve religion).

It seems pretty indicative of how little we've changed in fundamental levels in thousands of years.</comment>


Here Comes 'The Journal of Controversial Ideas' - <AUTHOR> https://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-Comes-The-Journal-of/245068 <comment><USER2> I'd be more than a little concerned that this will turn into the "journal of not considering confounds around race/gender" and/or the "journal of old eugenics ideas that were already rejected years ago". There are certainly parts of certain fields that suffer from too much groupthink or trend chasing, but I feel that this is putting the cart before the horse: ideas don't gain merit because they're controversial, they have merit despite or irrespective of that fact.

It's also worth noting that several large and reputable publications have already set up subcommittees dedicated to handling controversial ideas. So the idea of a venue for controversial ideas isn't really all that novel.

And while I've seen pubs get rejected from one venue or another for being controversial, I've never heard of a solid scientific pub getting blackballed from everything. Anything with even the slightest bit of rigour can almost certainly find a venue somewhere - there are a lot of second and third tier publications out there already without a lot to lose.

<comment><USER3> > journal of old eugenics ideas that were already rejected years ago

Why were such ideas rejected? Is there a scientific case for rejecting them?

Science is an ongoing process, there is no central authority to reject sinful ideas which is what your comment indicates that you would like, which underlines the need for such a journal.

<comment><USER4> There's no scientific case supporting eugenics. Eugenics is not a scientific idea.

<comment><USER3> > Eugenics is not a scientific idea.

can you give the definition of eugenics that you're using?

<comment><USER4> Eugenics is basically applying selective breeding or even genetic engineering to humans in order to grow towards a "better" human population. This uses scientific concepts such as genetics to implement a political or ideological goal.

Eugenics is not science whichever way you carve it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > One unusual feature of the journal will be giving authors the option to use > a pseudonym (though the journal's editors say they hope most will feel > comfortable using their real names). The thought is that such a policy would > allow an untenured academic to publish a controversial paper, and perhaps to > claim it later when he or she is on firmer career footing. Or maybe just to > put it out there, and never claim it at all.

That seems like an interesting, but perhaps ultimately bad idea. I'm uncertain --- it's certainly interesting.

I see that a founder is Peter Singer, who has sometimes in the past suggested that it may be better for a family (financially and happiness-wise) to kill a disabled child and have another [1]. He considers this from an ethical perspective.

I can imagine it being frustrating to want to consider hard, taboo ethical quandaries from a neutral standpoint.

[1]: [https://www.chronicle.com/article/Arguments-That-Harm- and/24...](https://www.chronicle.com/article/Arguments-That-Harm-and/242543)

<comment><USER6> What's the use of pseudonyms when it is easy to deanonymize writing? If the writer is a well known academic it shouldn't be too hard to at least identify a probable author.

<comment><USER7> Probbable is defence enough I'd say.

<comment><USER6> What's the point of a pseudonym, then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is necessary.

Yes there will be ideas discussed at the quality of eugenics.

However, there may also be ideas like the earth orbiting the sun.

Example topics that should cause too much controversy for open discussion are: * The Palestinian apartheid

* How Carolyn Bryand Donham fits into the #metoo movement

* Supply side economics is the root cause of Facism

* How long should a peaceful protests be ignored before it can morally be violent?

* The United States was violently founded on "Taxation without representation". The same situation is happening now with gerrymandering and outdated Senate rules.

* Cloning is going to happen, and it is going to get weird

* AI is going to happen, and it may be scary

I am NOT opening these ideas up for discussion. What I am saying is that all these are worthy of open, thoughtful discussion. Sometimes to say they are not a thing, sometimes to change perceptions. Mostly they are going to make a lot of folks angry.

<comment><USER9> Almost none of these bullets describe ideas that are going to be discussed in this journal. They're just random inflammatory political topics.

<comment><USER8> Correct, they are exactly random inflammatory topics.

So what examples would you suggest?

The examples from the post were: * Euthanizing disabled babies * The positive side of colonization * Choosing ones race like one chooses ones own gender identity

Those also seem to have a political bent.

Also to be clear not advocating for or against any of these ideas, some of them make me VERY uncomfortable even thinking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Economist has been doing anonymous articles for about 100 years, I think the only difference is they are not controversial.

<comment><USER11> Not the same thing.

Economist articles, with the exception of special reports and the farewell article by the editor in chief, are _not bylined_.

The reason being that the newspaper wants to speak with one voice.

In addition, and being certified and proud opinion journalism, I wouldn't exactly call TE uncontroversial.

Not having a byline is very fundamentally different than writing under pseudonym.

<comment><USER10> The distinction would be interesting. The controversial journal is the single voice in this case, and the question of whether the pseudonyms are anonymous, or linkable by the editors to a real identity is the difference.

How would you describe the difference as fundamental? Is it of who a reader has recourse to?

Separately, TE isn't exactly provocative or brave.

<comment><USER11> _How would you describe the difference as fundamental?_

I don't think you can really compare a journal, which solicits articles from third parties (even if they're controversial) with a general interest, political, economics, arts, news and lifestyle newspaper, which is published by a number of salaried editors and an editorial board hired by a single publication.

 _Is it of who a reader has recourse to?_

The editors of The Economist are not unknown entities. Each section has its editors known by the paper, the only thing being that their articles are not bylined.

The journalists may not be known to you, but they're absolutely not anonymous and you have every recourse towards the paper and by extension towards the responsible editor.

As a matter of fact they're quite good in printing corrections or publishing letters to the editor by an offended party.

 _Separately, TE isn 't exactly provocative or brave._

Ahem, I introduce evidence #1 [1]

In a cover story they made a forceful argument for Gay marriage.

That was in 1996.

I, for one, wouldn't exactly call that a mainstream opinion in January 1996.

As a matter of fact this is pretty much the definition for provocative and brave.

[1] [https://www.economist.com/node/2515389/print?story_id=251538...](https://www.economist.com/node/2515389/print?story_id=2515389)

<comment><USER10> 22 years ago, TE was brave, because at that time transgression against middle class values was a big part of the elite they represented. The cultural obligation for the privileged to voice principled dissent is no longer a thing. We buried it with Christopher Hitchens.

TE is a group of editors who assign to a large pool of contributors, many of whom are freelancers. Not unlike the controversy journal, which will also publish third party material without direct individual attribution.

I would argue the controversy journal allowing pseudonyms for writers is exactly the same as non-bylined articles.

Of the values of the last decade that are now held above public criticism, I doubt TE has issued a compelling challenge to any of them, discretion being the better part of valour these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I fully support this idea, but I wonder if it will impair the ability to collaborate academically.

<comment><USER13> > I fully support this idea, but I wonder if it will impair the ability to > collaborate academically.

We've solved that idea a few times on a technical level, most notably using public-key encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18437066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18437066)

</comment><comment><USER15> []

<comment><USER16> Could you please stop creating throwaways to break the guidelines with? We'll ban the main account if you keep on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As soon as I saw Peter Singer, I knew what kind of controversial ideas they would be. Check out the writings of Bertrand Russell for more of the same.

It's likely to be the old, regurgitated fantasies from the British Empire and early 20th century eugenicists.

<comment><USER18> I think your comment wonderfully demonstrates the utility of publishing under a pseudonym. Rather then confront the actual merits and problems with this or that specific argument, a straw man is contructed and immediately doused with ad hominem.

If the writer is anonymous, fallacious and time wasting ad hominem reasoning is prevented.

<comment><USER19> yah conflating Singer's ideas with imperialism and eugenics is just silly. Arguing about the person-hood of disabled babies is not the same as killing babies of other races because of some pseudo-science white supremacy bullshit

<comment><USER17> If you don't see the similarity, I don't know what to tell you. The thing they have in common is arguing against personhood.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tech fail: Gruesome video still on social media hours after attack - rwx<comment> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/15/tech/new-zealand-shooting-video-facebook-youtube/index.html </comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please change the title to what the article has.

Why should they censor? We the people need to see these things to understand how horrible they are. If you censor this and things like children getting hit by shelling, war becomes OK. And war is never ok.

<comment><USER2> 1) People have the right not to have their corpses, and their spouses' and children's corpses, rubbernecked by a billion people, a significant minority of which will take the opportunity to make jokes about the video.

2) The videos themselves can be seen as a kind of propaganda, both for the violence a person might be capable of and the attention they might get for it. This I'm less sure of: I'd be curious to see if there's a contagion effect.

<comment><USER3> Why do people have that right? I don't feel that right on behalf of my corpse, and I'm not aware of any legislation indicating as much. What I DO think people have a right to is to not see that content, if they so choose.

As far as being right wing propaganda, the video could be seen as propaganda for all kinds of agendas, but that doesn't automatically call for censorship. Jussie Smollet case is a good example of how right wing violence is jumped on by left wing activists as a means to demonize their opposition, in much the same way an uninformed "Social Justice Warrior" screaming that "all heterosexual intercourse is rape" is more likely to bolster right wing opposition than encourage other leftists to follow suit.

<comment><USER4> The corpses of adults is probably fine to show.

But corpses of minors is almost certainly against the law to show. I know there are a bunch of American laws regarding privacy protection of minors that don't apply to adults (but IANAL so...). That's something I remember from my journalism class: you can almost do any reporting you like on adults, but if children are involved its way, way more legally difficult to stay in the clear.

For example: if a minor commits a crime and is charged as a child, you are NOT allowed to publish the name of the child. This is to protect their permanent record, so that they have a better chance of reform as they grow up. If they're charged as an adult, I think the rules are different.

This also happened outside of the USA. The US has its own laws, while other countries have their laws. I'm sure details are different.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Automatic Node.js Clustering with Log Aggregation - <AUTHOR> http://strongloop.com/strongblog/automatic-node-js-clustering-with-log-aggregation/

<comment><USER2> Dump the #node.js log frameworks eh ?

<comment><AUTHOR> That about sums it up, ya. All the ones I looked at did so much more than necessary, and the really simple ones had no way of adjusting the one or two formatting features that were useful.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What technologies to use for new startup ideas? - <AUTHOR>

I have many good and bad startup ideas. I took a web dev bootcamp but am a much better product manager (The Lean Startup blew my mind). I want to use oDesk to get some prototypes up. I want to think of each startup idea pretty meta, merely each as experiments to better learn the product market fit process of tech startups. Obviously I believe my best ideas are ahead of me, through hard pivots or otherwise. (Yet I also believe the technologies used for both each startup now and a future iteration of fresh ideas need to be the same as much as possible.) Lastly, I am aware marketing is a big factor to measure these experiments that I am leaving out of this right now.
My concern is over best technologies to use. Is it obviously just node + react? Other thoughts are meteor + maybe react.
Here are the factors I believe matter: -freelance dev knowledge of tools -future tech debt -resources (libraries and documentation, and stack overflow questions) -quickness in hacking out new features
Thanks <comment><USER2> Just use the tool that you know and that you can deliver with. No need to jump on the bandwagon of the new shiny language/framework/methodology of the week. If you can ship software in php, use it. If you can ship with node + react, use it. Focus on building.

And stay away from oDesk, elance, freelancer.com, etc. If you want good technical help, go with gun.io. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, other than being a freelancer on their platform. You will pay more for sure, but you'll end up with something useful rather than a broken pile of hacks.

<comment><USER3> Exactly my thoughts. If your project gets to a point where the language you've picked for first release is slowing you down you should also be at a point where you're ready to bring in people smarter than yourself to keep it afloat long term.

When you're ready you can build v2 in the hot new language of the month or the old tried and tested, but for now that's not your concern. Walk before you run, crawl before you walk. There's no rush.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IMHO: If your plan is to outsource these projects, the _most_ important factor is _your_ level of comfort with the code. Outsourcing is tricky, and you might need to be very hands on (for code reviews, bug fixes, project planning, etc). You don't want to be building prototypes that you couldn't maintain/troubleshoot yourself.

I say that all to say: go with what you know.

Sure, the differences between certain platforms and technologies do matter (especially at scale)... But if your only present-concern is getting products out the door, then your comfort-level should trump all other concerns.

</comment><comment><USER5> Out of all the technologies out there right now I would say Meteor is the fastest to learn to get a prototype out the door quickly. Rails is also always a good option since it's so popular.

If your priority is building a prototype (and not becoming a developer) I would focus on being practical, as opposed to spending months finding and learning the "best" possible technology.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't waste your money hiring contractors to build your product, especially off of oDesk.

Personally, what I'd recommend is find someone local (yes it'll cost more), and say that what you want to do is pair program with them with the intention of bringing up your skill and comfort level with programming.

</comment><comment><USER7> Rust, Go, or any other new technology. Hell, maybe even some React, (Angular.js is old school)

</comment><comment><USER8> Agree with Meteor, trying out RamNode now too for VPS</comment>


Ask HN: Which services would you pay a little for? - <AUTHOR>

The best way to start something is to scratch your own itch, the 2nd best way is to ask what the users want. So what do you wish exist so you can pay for and solve your problems? Otherwise, which service you're using that you wish for alternatives? <comment><USER2> Very similar brainstorming from 2 weeks ago led to a couple cool ideas [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8721379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8721379). Of course that shouldn't keep anybody from adding more ideas here.</comment>


Cruise (GM) demos autonomous driving on SF streets - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/19/14327954/gm-self-driving-car-cruise-chevy-bolt-video <comment><USER2> Gotta hand it to GM. Early on when all the car companies, as well as Uber, Apple and Tesla were in a mad scramble to get their autonomous ducks in a row, GM made some very smart plays. It's great to see some evidence confirming my suspicion the GM/Cruise/Lyft arrangement is a serious contender. That's the most action packed L4 demo we've seen, it's like an edge case obstacle course.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't see the steering wheel, but assuming that this was a full self-driving video without human interference, this was very impressive. Driving in SF is very challenging with cars, electric buses, pedestrians, cyclists etc. In addition, there are some really complicated intersections which are difficult to navigate for even humans. We also saw a few instances of delivery trucks blocking one lane. Hoping that they can move this to production sooner rather than later.</comment>


Show HN: Online IPTV M3U Playlist Editor - <AUTHOR> https://m3u-editor.com <comment><AUTHOR> The playlist we got from our IPTV provider half a year ago, contained way too many channels for our Raspberry Pi Kodi box to be happy, and way more than we needed. So in May, I built a v0.1 of what is m3u-editor.com today.

Turns out there are more like me, who had found and started using my software. Last month, I gave it a complete rebuild and made the dashboard as user friendly as possible. With hundreds of new weekly users, I figured this might interest the HN community as well.

<comment><USER2> The issue with m3u lists is now the cool software has the VideoClub option. You should try to build something for Windows that can utilize that. That's a big windows pain point.</comment></comment>


Twitter Fighting Pennsylvania Subpoena Seeking Names of 2 Tweeters - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/technology/21twitter.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> As expected, Corbett says the subpoena is not because of the blunt criticism of these two but in relation to the ongoing investigation about misusing state funds, known as Bonusgate. I think there is no way Twitter can fight this off since it's a criminal investigation, but it's good that they are at least showing some effort.

The attorney's office alleges that casablancapa is Brett Cott, a former Democratic legislative aide; however, Cott has already been convicted.</comment>