Asian kid at Irvington, wants to get into a high competition school in the US, needs to differentiate.
Strongly suspect that legally changing his name to ‘Yacouba Aboubacar’, listing French as a language on his application, checking ‘African American’ instead of ‘Asian’, and writing an admissions essay about the challenges of having an African name in a high-pressure academic environment would, dollar for dollar (name change fees might be close to a single sat prep class fee) be a better investment of resources than just about anything else he can do.
His friends would hate him for it, some would imitate, and maybe one or two would escalate by going for estrogen prescriprions in 11th grade and starting ‘transitions’ that they will abandon after submitting college applications.
You may not like the admission bias in the Ivies (I do not, either—the discrimination against Asians is of course especially damning, since Asians do not even share the putative “White man’s burden” of their ancestors having wronged minority ethnicities in the past, that’s often invoked—however dubiously—as a moral justification for “affirmative action”), but the amount of “Yacouba Aboubacar’s” being admitted in any given year is so low in practice that this does not measurably affect the arms race we’re talking about here. Even doubling or trebling the number of admission spots at each Ivy would not change things much!
Exactly, you gotta differentiate. How hard is it really to build a fusor like the Taylor Wilson kid the article references did as a teen?
Just have a hook, make the news, and you’ll be golden. You can’t just be a smarty pants, you have to be a smarty pants and an ‘oh isn’t that interesting’.
When you’re in a terrible game with a perverse incentive structure...either play to win or don’t play. If his blog took anonymous comments, I’d suggest starting an ‘Irvington community college’ with the kids who didn’t want to go to low prestige schools, passing the hat in that community could pay real dividends and in a generation, it might become one of those high prestige schools...I mean, if that kid is average for his high school...
I actually think it’d be probably net-positive if we had people trying to go lots of different routes to differentiate themselves. This seems like the sort of positive competition that leads to good externalities. (There’s an example somewhere where Luke and Scott got into an arms race for writing good articles...)
Anyway, I’m interpreting the above to say that...students at Irvington should go to community college, which will have net benefits in the long run? Not 100% sure I’m parsing the second half of your third paragraph.
I assess that the following statements are true, please correct me if I am wrong:
-Based on your writing samples, you personally are probably capable of handling the academic workload at a high prestige college.
-You are typical in terms of ability in comparison to your peer group
-Race and geographic location may be working against you and your peers in your admissions process
-You and your peers will find yourselves scattered to the four winds attending less prestigious universities that you’re not particularly happy with.
In light of the above, I suggest that you should look into founding (or taking over, I don’t know what the community college landscape looks like where you are) a community college explicitly to serve the interests of members of your community affected by the above truths.
You have the most important ingredient for a successful college, which is to say, you have a cohort of motivated learners. From a business and legal standpoint, founding such an institution is an attainable objective. You are right next door to a lot of companies that need talented people, these companies could be persuaded to invest in infrastructure for churning out a future talent pool. You have enough money in Fremont (pass the hat, do a lottery, it’s there) to rent property, hire instructors, pay for subscriptions to professional journals, and probably build a lab or two.
If you’re not going to get the ‘big name’, stay local, work within your own community, and build something better.
It’s not clear how founding a new college would solve the underlying issue here, which is a demand for educational prestige. There’s plenty of community colleges in the US anyway and most of them are not that bad, the issue is that they’re not perceived as ‘prestigious’ compared to e.g. the Ivy League.
The prestige the ivies have in the eyes of the families of Irvington is misplaced. Anything to promote that community’s pride in itself, rather than investment in a declining institution, is probably a win.
Winning within the rules is obviously taking a toll, the prize isn’t really worth it, so exit is an option, and in my opinion, it isn’t a bad one.
-You are typical in terms of ability in comparison to your peer group
…
which is to say, you have a cohort of motivated learners.
I would actually put myself in the top 95 percentile of people at my school in terms of cognitive ability and general awareness. This may impact your analysis. I would say that the sort of “staring at the system and trying to optimize” attitude I have is fairly uncommon, and it’s often hard to get my peers to do the same.
(Hence part of the motivation for writing this essay that tries to be appealing to the high school demographic.)
Also, there have been efforts locally to try and stir up the college scene. I’m also a little skeptical of the whole plan, as this sounds good in theory, and I’d expect that many things can go wrong. (There seems to be lots of things in the whole causal chain that need to go right). I’d also not trust myself at this point to run anything of the sort. (Having the relevant experience seems very useful for such an endeavor.)
Edit: By which I mean bogus’s comment, which does nothing beyond insulting lifelonglearner. Also, I’d guess quite a few commenters on this website are in the 95th percentile of (say) IQ at their school.
Strongly agree: bogus’s comment was stupid and well out of order. Yes, Dunning & Kruger found that some incompetent people think they’re good. That doesn’t mean that everyone who thinks they’re good is incompetent. I bet lifelonglearner is absolutely right about being in the top 5% in his school.
(Perhaps bogus is just saying “hahahaha, he said “top 5 percentile” where he should have said “95th percentile” but sorry, that too is stupid; lifelonglearner’s words were perfectly clear as they were.)
Ignore that comment. If you want, post whatever evidence you have of your ranking in your school, but don’t feel pressured to do so. Internally, to yourself, I’d recommend an outside view of this number—your ranking on various dimensions (intelligence, scholastic achievements, etc.) and what evidence you have to support or disconfirm those beliefs.
Top 5 percent is incredibly easy to believe on this site. But you should double-check often. You should also be aware that top few percent on one of these dimensions doesn’t make you particularly special by itself. There are roughly 15 million high-school students in the US alone, so 750,000 5-percenters.
Asian kid at Irvington, wants to get into a high competition school in the US, needs to differentiate.
Strongly suspect that legally changing his name to ‘Yacouba Aboubacar’, listing French as a language on his application, checking ‘African American’ instead of ‘Asian’, and writing an admissions essay about the challenges of having an African name in a high-pressure academic environment would, dollar for dollar (name change fees might be close to a single sat prep class fee) be a better investment of resources than just about anything else he can do.
His friends would hate him for it, some would imitate, and maybe one or two would escalate by going for estrogen prescriprions in 11th grade and starting ‘transitions’ that they will abandon after submitting college applications.
I believe that the lawsuit mentioned here has merit, I don’t know where it is now, and look forward to seeinf it wind its’ way through the courts: https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/updates/
You may not like the admission bias in the Ivies (I do not, either—the discrimination against Asians is of course especially damning, since Asians do not even share the putative “White man’s burden” of their ancestors having wronged minority ethnicities in the past, that’s often invoked—however dubiously—as a moral justification for “affirmative action”), but the amount of “Yacouba Aboubacar’s” being admitted in any given year is so low in practice that this does not measurably affect the arms race we’re talking about here. Even doubling or trebling the number of admission spots at each Ivy would not change things much!
Exactly, you gotta differentiate. How hard is it really to build a fusor like the Taylor Wilson kid the article references did as a teen?
Just have a hook, make the news, and you’ll be golden. You can’t just be a smarty pants, you have to be a smarty pants and an ‘oh isn’t that interesting’.
When you’re in a terrible game with a perverse incentive structure...either play to win or don’t play. If his blog took anonymous comments, I’d suggest starting an ‘Irvington community college’ with the kids who didn’t want to go to low prestige schools, passing the hat in that community could pay real dividends and in a generation, it might become one of those high prestige schools...I mean, if that kid is average for his high school...
Hey, author of the article here.
I actually think it’d be probably net-positive if we had people trying to go lots of different routes to differentiate themselves. This seems like the sort of positive competition that leads to good externalities. (There’s an example somewhere where Luke and Scott got into an arms race for writing good articles...)
Anyway, I’m interpreting the above to say that...students at Irvington should go to community college, which will have net benefits in the long run? Not 100% sure I’m parsing the second half of your third paragraph.
Thank you for the reply. I’ll rephrase.
I assess that the following statements are true, please correct me if I am wrong:
-Based on your writing samples, you personally are probably capable of handling the academic workload at a high prestige college.
-You are typical in terms of ability in comparison to your peer group
-Race and geographic location may be working against you and your peers in your admissions process
-You and your peers will find yourselves scattered to the four winds attending less prestigious universities that you’re not particularly happy with.
In light of the above, I suggest that you should look into founding (or taking over, I don’t know what the community college landscape looks like where you are) a community college explicitly to serve the interests of members of your community affected by the above truths.
You have the most important ingredient for a successful college, which is to say, you have a cohort of motivated learners. From a business and legal standpoint, founding such an institution is an attainable objective. You are right next door to a lot of companies that need talented people, these companies could be persuaded to invest in infrastructure for churning out a future talent pool. You have enough money in Fremont (pass the hat, do a lottery, it’s there) to rent property, hire instructors, pay for subscriptions to professional journals, and probably build a lab or two.
If you’re not going to get the ‘big name’, stay local, work within your own community, and build something better.
It’s not clear how founding a new college would solve the underlying issue here, which is a demand for educational prestige. There’s plenty of community colleges in the US anyway and most of them are not that bad, the issue is that they’re not perceived as ‘prestigious’ compared to e.g. the Ivy League.
The prestige the ivies have in the eyes of the families of Irvington is misplaced. Anything to promote that community’s pride in itself, rather than investment in a declining institution, is probably a win.
Winning within the rules is obviously taking a toll, the prize isn’t really worth it, so exit is an option, and in my opinion, it isn’t a bad one.
I would actually put myself in the top 95 percentile of people at my school in terms of cognitive ability and general awareness. This may impact your analysis. I would say that the sort of “staring at the system and trying to optimize” attitude I have is fairly uncommon, and it’s often hard to get my peers to do the same.
(Hence part of the motivation for writing this essay that tries to be appealing to the high school demographic.)
Also, there have been efforts locally to try and stir up the college scene. I’m also a little skeptical of the whole plan, as this sounds good in theory, and I’d expect that many things can go wrong. (There seems to be lots of things in the whole causal chain that need to go right). I’d also not trust myself at this point to run anything of the sort. (Having the relevant experience seems very useful for such an endeavor.)
That’s beautiful. We need a “Dunning–Kruger quote of the month” thread for this sort of stuff!
We need downvotes for this sort of stuff. ^
Edit: By which I mean bogus’s comment, which does nothing beyond insulting lifelonglearner. Also, I’d guess quite a few commenters on this website are in the 95th percentile of (say) IQ at their school.
Strongly agree: bogus’s comment was stupid and well out of order. Yes, Dunning & Kruger found that some incompetent people think they’re good. That doesn’t mean that everyone who thinks they’re good is incompetent. I bet lifelonglearner is absolutely right about being in the top 5% in his school.
(Perhaps bogus is just saying “hahahaha, he said “top 5 percentile” where he should have said “95th percentile” but sorry, that too is stupid; lifelonglearner’s words were perfectly clear as they were.)
Yikes! Edited the above comment to more properly reflect things.
Ignore that comment. If you want, post whatever evidence you have of your ranking in your school, but don’t feel pressured to do so. Internally, to yourself, I’d recommend an outside view of this number—your ranking on various dimensions (intelligence, scholastic achievements, etc.) and what evidence you have to support or disconfirm those beliefs.
Top 5 percent is incredibly easy to believe on this site. But you should double-check often. You should also be aware that top few percent on one of these dimensions doesn’t make you particularly special by itself. There are roughly 15 million high-school students in the US alone, so 750,000 5-percenters.
Seems good. I don’t really feel like add’l validation would be useful here, so I’m fine leaving the claim as-is.
Thanks for the general note about epistemic hygiene.