The Process vs the Result

Published by

Clarissa

October 17, 2026

If you oppose DEI consider the following:
Student 1’s GPA is 3.9 but has rich parents, world class schooling & tutors
Student 2’s GPA is 3.8 but is poor & his neighborhood is filled w/ crime & bad schools
Should 2’s circumstances at least be considered in admission decisions?

https://x.com/RedmondBarry7/status/2111283548397195698

This does not exist anywhere on the planet. The whole situation is completely invented. However, I still want to answer the question as a matter of principle.

No, the “circumstances” should not be considered. When you sit down at a restaurant table, go into a hospital for surgery, take a seat in an airplane, or engage in any professional encounter with other people, you do not consider their “circumstances.” You don’t read everybody’s life story before buying tomatoes, renting an apartment, picking up a book, or scheduling a dental exam with, by or from them. It doesn’t matter how hard anybody tried. Only the result matters.

This is actually a great thing. It’s very liberating. It liberates us from the hubris of believing we can judge people’s lives on the basis of a couple of superficial characteristics. It liberates us from using other people as screens onto which we project our ego concerns. Having a boundary between the public and the private, the process and the result, is a great thing.

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14 responses to “The Process vs the Result”

el

October 17, 2026

The idea is that student 2 is much smarter than student 1, but because of his hard situation his grades are a little lower.

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1. methylethyl
  
  October 17, 2026
  
  GPA is meaningless. Show me their SAT scores.
  
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el

October 17, 2026

You would want student 2 as your doctor or pilot, but w/o DEI would get the mediocrity of student 1 instead of student 2’s excellence.

// This does not exist anywhere on the planet.

Why?

Re DEI, it does exist in Israel, which results in many Arab students being admitted to study medicine in Israeli universities.

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1. Clarissa
  
  October 17, 2026
  
  The talented student in a crime ridden neighborhood is a fantasy. Also, grades at a crappy school are worth less than grades at a good school. It’s possible to be completely illiterate and graduate with Honors from a crappy school. I can link to real cases of this:
  
  https://www.fox10tv.com/2025/02/28/former-high-school-honors-student-who-says-she-cant-read-write-sues-district-where-she-graduated/?outputType=amp
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    October 17, 2026
    
    “grades at a crappy school are worth less than grades at a good school.”
    
    Exactly… he might get a 3.8 average because he was only absent 50% of the time and never shot anybody in class or tried to set a teacher on fire.
    
    GPA is a meaningless metric in the US.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      October 17, 2026
      
      Teachers have to pass somebody. They can’t fail the entire class. The result is that there are schools where, in spite of exotically high funding, no students are proficient in reading and math.
      
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  2. cliff arroyo
    
    October 17, 2026
    
    “The talented student in a crime ridden neighborhood is a fantasy”
    
    And if such did exist you’re not going to do them any favors by putting them into an elite university. Starting at a Community College and then transferring to the closest/most feasible state school is a much better option.
    
    As I always say, imagination and flexibility are key to getting the most out of higher ed in the US and not hollywood fantasies about a misunderstood ghetto genius.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      October 17, 2026
      
      Exactly. We work with students from East St Louis at my university. We do great work with them. It’s a very important mission but it doesn’t exist in a way described in the quoted tweet. We need reality and as much of it as possible.
      
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2. Avi
  
  October 18, 2026
  
  @el
  
  That’s because Arab Israelis do not have to serve three years in the IDF army. That’s a big advantage considering how long training to become a doctor takes.
  
  As far as I know there is no specific DEI policy in the State of Israel. Since you live there, you might tell us more about specific policies that make it easier for Arab Israelis to get into medical school there.
  
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Anonymous

October 17, 2026

The problem with the quoted example is that the difference between 3.9 and 3.8 GPA is essentially meaningless. What kind of admission are we talking about, graduate or undergraduate? Is that GPA from the same school/program? The 0.1 different in GPA simply does not determine admission decisions, there is more that goes into it and the example is disingenuous.
random reader

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blackbeard2391

October 17, 2026

Exactly right.

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oldcowboy3

October 17, 2026

LOL, Kid, DEI is simply the latest term for the insane policy of awarding a position to an applicant based solely on privileged identity. The primary beneficaries have always been women, and most particularly white women.

Now supposedly under the Trump administration, federal laws enforced by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act were to make all such discriminatory policies strictly illegal. Chair Andrea Lucas has publicly stated that such practices and initiatives violate the Civil Rights Act. But I will believe it when both public and private bureaucracies face the same penalties that they have forced upon others.

The Great White North cannot change such policies without a constitutional amendment to remove subsection 2 of Section 15, the “equality” clause of our Charter — I do truly detest feminism with the heat of a thousand suns ;-D

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methylethyl

October 17, 2026

If we were talking SAT scores it might mean something.

GPA is not something that can be meaningfully compared across schools, and is probably right up there with “top 10% of your class” in terms of metrics that mean nothing without knowing anything about the school. My sister (a mediocre student at best) was valedictorian of her class. She could legitimately say she was in the top 1%. She was the whole top 50% actually. And her classmate (in a graduating class of 2, the first graduates ever of a small parochial school), so close in grades and performance as to make no difference, would’ve ranked 50th percentile by the same metric! Poor fellow. They actually flipped a coin for valedictorian. But sure, let’s pretend those metrics actually meant something 😀

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1. oldcowboy3
  
  October 17, 2026
  
  Yeah, the problem with the AA nonsense is the reality that small employers cannot afford to discriminate because ignoring superior applicants allows your competitors an opportunity to hire them. Our employees were always a fairly diverse crowd.
  
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