On a weekend when 13 million students register for the
infamous Gaokao examination in China, the question of fair representation, discrimination and affirmative action in University admission continues to be a contested space in the United States. Y Combinator Garry Tan
going in hard on a specific case where an obviously elite student is being incomprehensibly rejected by Universities despite extraordinary high achievement. Begs the question - is going gender / ethnicity blind the way to merit based assessment? Or are all assessments really code for preferred in-groups? The question of whether the identity of the person is information which should be used in assessment continues to confound. Incidentally, the Gaokao - often cited as example of merit based assessment - also has
affirmative action policies…