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Rising Star
Y’all love the narrative of Black and brown stealing college admission slots. Obsessed with it.
A1 uhhh how is racism against white people not a thing? In Europe plenty of white people are racist to one another, even in America. Racism literally means to negatively perceive through actions onto someone because of their race. You can be racist against towards anyone
Same stuff happens during MBA admissions. I was part of admissions committee during b-school, and Indians had by far the highest GMAT scores. For an Indian to get in with 700 was almost impossible, unless they belonged to LGBTQ. Average for Indians was over 750.
On the contrary so many Black and Hispanic students made it with less than 700 score.
Just a fact that many of us have accepted in the name ‘affirmative action’
Disagree PM1. Who one has a beer with is very relevant. And that choice should be based on life experiences. If I was an admissions counselor for an Ivy League school I wouldn’t use ONLY test scores to create my “perfect class”. I’d use a mixture of things which may mean that...yes at times people of all colors with lower scores will get in vs those with higher scores. Unfortunately, people here only want to focus on black people with lower scores. I hear no one complaining about white students with 620s sitting in Harvard and Yale. And I bet there are more of them then the Black students y’all swear are taking away your prescious slots Hmmm 🤔
Before someone starts on how under qualified AAs get preferential treatment, please note the article specifically says these are all students with “comparable academic records”. So don’t start with AAs are “taking something away “
Additionally Yale’s acceptance rate was 6.2%. The article seems to imply that the justice department believes Yale should admit Asian Americans and White students in proportion to their applicant base. I disagree. Just because more of one set of students apply doesn’t mean more should be accepted.
Rising Star
@A4 is basically saying “all these other nonwhites are doing EXTREMELY well! What’s wrong with US Blacks?” This is called the model minority myth and it is in fact, just that.
Loves talking about college admissions... doesn’t want to talk about the racial bias in treatment in police units, the court system, service industries, dating, hiring, the workplace, medical settings, daily interactions with ignorant people, or housing and loan applications.
If you complain this much about one bias against you at a private university... imagine how POC feel about everything else.
Chief
SA1 come on man.. the “extremely small portion” argument is such a cherry-picked cop out.. Argue by principle not by degrees. It’s like saying killing people is wrong but if it’s just one or two it’s okay.
Either enforce diversity everywhere (classroom and sports team) or enforce it nowhere. You either believe in the principle or you don’t. It’s not a buffet where you get to pick only the dish you want.
Lastly, your entertainment vs. wellbeing point is just silly. I’ll let you think about that before I rebut.
Rising Star
Dang, Universities aren't a meritocracy? Even when defined by academic scores meant to prop up the wealthy? 🤯🤯
Forreal though, if all qualified students applied to schools that fit their intelligence, half of the people on this app wouldn't be on this app 🤷
Pro
JA1, not 100% sure what you mean, but if you look at score percentiles, 90th and 99th are vastly different scores, so it would seem unfair to provide no benefit to the person getting 99th just because he was born to a doctor.
Probably what I’d do if there were a weird system taking of taking giant amounts of points to equal the playing field so much that, if I make a top 1% income, my kid’s score will be deducted from to the point where people in the bottom 1% income have an equal score, is temporarily divorce lower earning spouse for admissions process, then get back together after he receives the ridiculous overreaching benefit. I would game the sh*t out of a system like that, and my kid would go to Harvard with his 1400 and mom with 0 income (I’m absentee dad for application, so family income for kid is 0.).
Not saying you’re advocating the overreaching, but just saying too much of a leveling out based on income is very unfair, not to mention would not produce a qualified student body.
"The Justice Department asked Yale for 10 years worth of detailed admissions data; the school so far had produced three years of information, according to a person familiar with the investigation." Hardly definitive and will likely be challenged in court
Pro
Definitely will be challenged
Ivys don’t easily give up on any issue - see for example rights of women that they fought against for so long (eg women’s rights Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue was the first gender-discrimination suit Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg).
Pro
I’m in favor of affirmative action in college admissions, as the deck is stacked against African American and Latino Americans in many ways. However, to deny the extreme preferential treatment in their college admissions is to be ignorant or in denial of obvious facts that have been well known for quite some time now. All of this is old news though. What’s strange to me is people being surprised when this type of news surfaces. Here’s one article from way back that already explored the matter. (Summation: For University of Michigan (a standard reasonably elite institution) Black and Hispanic applicants with a 1240 SAT and 3.2 GPA had a 92% and 88% chance of admission, respectively, and Asians and whites with the same background and credentials had 10% and 14% chance, respectively.)
Source: https://www.ceousa.org/attachments/article/548/UM_UGRAD_final.pdf
It’s not something that should suddenly be amping people up or that should come as a new surprise by any means.
If you want to see something really crazy, look up acceptance rates of Jewish people at Elite institutions. Not only do they make up >20% of the incoming class at several ivy/elite schools, outnumbering Asians (despite being less than 2% of the US population and 1% of the world population),
The academic performance is not commensurate with this outsized representation, with only 8% of NMS finalists being Jewish and the ratio falling in recent years.
Nobody is complaining about that - apparently its ok to be racist against blacks, latinos and asians, but happy to ignore this fact.
Also the famous Jewish quota of 15%, aside from being higher than the current implicit Asian quota, still guaranteed that Jews are overrepresented by a factor of 10x compared to their US representation
Sources: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
Corroboration of certain facts from other perspectives
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tabletmag.com/amp/sections/news/articles/the-vanishing-ivy-league-jew
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.jta.org/1967/04/18/archive/doors-of-ivy-league-colleges-reported-wide-open-for-jewish-students/amp
I know this is a dead thread but please dont assume all jews are white or wealthy/powerful. The first is ignorant, the second is blatantly anti Semitic, and both deeply harm poor and POC jews. Also, stop trying to put minorities against each other.
Interesting article, but light on the details (maybe DOJ hasn't released much yet?). I was surprised they included white students in the final report.
Yale makes a point that they want a diverse student body to support learning. My MBA program intentionally placed us in diverse classrooms (mix of races, countries of origin, professional backgrounds etc.) And I learned more than if it had been haphazard or less diverse...But not sure how they ensured that diversity during applications...
Ultimately, this isn't shocking. I recall some article years ago that said certain colleges had an SAT modifier based on applicant race (as opposed to considering economic or education inequality): -50 SAT score if they were Asian, no change if white, ~100-200 points added if you were from a couple less represented groups.
Student loans aren’t gifts, they’re.... loans
Pro
Would be true if the rate were set by the market. The rate doesn’t consider the high default rate - especially by those going in for arcane degrees or online degrees or other forms of education.
A combination of false advertising, financial illiteracy and administrative bloat within universities to justify the dramatically increasing costs results many not being able to make payments - this is not factored into the interest rate so - it IS a gift.
However I would argue it is a gift to the universities and their management rather than students as the rising cost of higher Education is not tied to improvement in quality. I would argue an unnecessary and increasing societal burden.
Chief
Honest question - wouldnt it be better for affirmative action to take account of things like income level, etc. rather than race?
Honest answer: because right now (yes right now) the most diverse experiences are had by different races and cultures being in a shared space. So if I’m a director of admissions at an ivy and I want a diverse class from different backgrounds, cultures and experiences than no...Income won’t cut it. And it’s a leap to say that the difference is socioeconomic only. It’s cultural. White, Asian, Hispanic and black have more in common with their cultures (however you define it) vs people of different races at the same socioeconomic status.
Why don't we stop giving money to universities and give it directly to the individual?
I am advocating student grants (not loans).
E.g. if universities are given $100 per US citizen...just give that to the student in the form of a grant and make the university compete for that student.
Are students with lower credentials at admission - low SATs / GPAs - do as well as other students or do they perform worse on average during their time in College?
If the students end up doing as well, one could say the current policy is fine. If they end up doing worse, one has to wonder why they are getting admitted if they won’t do well
Even if what you say is true, maybe they do worse because:
1. They are constantly being judged or regarded as merely a ‘diversity’ case by their peers, professors, TAs, interviewers and not given the support their white peers are
2. They are victims of identity contingencies and identity stress which lowers performance (see Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele for a detailed explanation)
3. They do not have the strong support (old boy) network, mentors, and professional champions that white (and to a far lesser extent Asians) do.
Systemic racism is pernicious and inescapable, and sadly invisible to those who do not face it every second of their lives
Some of you clearly don't read enough and form opinions on matters WAY too early. Getting into a prestigious school does not = success. Read David and Goliath by Malcom Gladwell and you'll see affirmative action is detrimental to those it is intended to help.
Fundamental subject matter tutoring is different - something of which higher ed should not control for because then these students would then have a learning gap to make up. The logic is if you were not given the opportunity to learn to add, why should I accept you into my school and throw you into a situation where you'd be solving for equations? Is it then my responsibility to catch you up?
Going to drop this here because, irrespective of your take on the college admissions process, it's important to be reminded of the structural inequality that exists in this country.
https://youtu.be/YrHIQIO_bdQ
Rising Star
Ben Shapiro automatically disqualifies you from this discussion lol
0ks
And they take 2 years to investigate this????
They love to focus on test scores when it's been proven that the wealthy and privilege have a huge advantage there. When has college admissions been based purely on test scores?
Pro
Actually, it was based purely on scores originally. The initial reasoning behind taking other things into account was actually propelled by the fact that using scores alone was making the schools have far too many Jewish students for their liking.
Just thought I’d provide this interesting fact given your statement. Not really relevant to OP’s post though.
... in other news, water is wet.
Pro
The water is racist