Why such an emphasis on holistically building a class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All the TO talk makes me wonder - what's the point of creating a specific class to your standards, whatever those standards are? Just a prestige thing?

The fundamental problem is that the United States kidnapped people from Africa, enslaved them, tortured them and did everything we could to wreck their lives for centuries.

But we’re too cheap and nasty to compensate their descendants properly, do anything much to make “the poor side of town” nicer, or even to give kids from the “poor side of town” a 20-point SAT boost when they apply for college.

So, instead of having a simple system to give the descendants of slaves a small affirmative action admissions boost, we have a crazy, Rube Goldberg holistic admissions system, in the hope it might help a few poor Blacks do a little better on their applications.

If we would stop being a nation of racist crackers, we could build the whole college application process around an electronic post card.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:so everyone isn't the same robot STEM kid.
seriously......

balance. a great American college experience is based on diversity of life experiences, thought, interests, background, majors, etc.

also, it allows them to pick students they KNOW will succeed (get jobs, not drop out, etc)

lastly, holistic admissions allows them to make sure they have students in ALL departments.

But why does this matter? I ask this as a engineering graduate from a large university. They didn't care about a holistic class.

Your inability to see why a holistic class might be valuable shows the limits of your non-holistic experience! You could have learned a lot and enjoyed spending times with a bunch of kids with all kinds of backgrounds and interests.

This. OP doesn't understand the benefits of a diverse setting and how it makes you a better thinker and problem solver because they've never had this experience. That's why OP is now getting hung up on something others understand intuitively.

That’s how engineers think probably.

Diversity's primary value is in employee satisfaction. Employees like it enough that it's cheaper to have diversity than to increase pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the TO talk makes me wonder - what's the point of creating a specific class to your standards, whatever those standards are? Just a prestige thing?

The fundamental problem is that the United States kidnapped people from Africa, enslaved them, tortured them and did everything we could to wreck their lives for centuries.

But we’re too cheap and nasty to compensate their descendants properly, do anything much to make “the poor side of town” nicer, or even to give kids from the “poor side of town” a 20-point SAT boost when they apply for college.

So, instead of having a simple system to give the descendants of slaves a small affirmative action admissions boost, we have a crazy, Rube Goldberg holistic admissions system, in the hope it might help a few poor Blacks do a little better on their applications.

If we would stop being a nation of racist crackers, we could build the whole college application process around an electronic post card.

How do you compensate the descendants of slaves without actually inconveniencing white people.
Give hispanics and blacks a preferences almost exclusively at the expense of asians and call it a day.

The most harmful legacy of 300 years of slavery and segregation for modern day legacy blacks is not the fact that they are born poor. It's the fact that the their culture was destroyed and they had to invent and reinvent their culture several times and now they don't have the cultural foundations that immigrants enjoy to guide them out of poverty. The difference between legacy blacks and poor immigrant blacks is largely culture and the achievement gap between the two is pretty stark.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. It's a university deciding that unless they are XPI (tech only school), it's beneficial to have a diverse campus with kids majoring in all areas. Just like it's beneficial to not have 80% male (or 80% female), they want students majoring in Art history, if they have a department.

They also, smartly, value having more than just students from the Top 5% economically. Our country/society will be greatly improved if we value actually educating everyone.

IMO, (and that of both my kids), they don't want to attend school where everyone is "the same carbon copy" of everyone else. They want to meet new people and learn.

Diversity is also beneficial in tech schools, a lot of which is project based teamwork and problem solving that can require a varied understanding of the problem and roadblocks to solutions.

[Anonymous]

because it's a stupid trending thing that AOs think it's cool
to say without stating the obvious: by claiming "holistic" it's a way to throw merit and stats out tge window and engage in social engineering. Hence also the failed test optional experiment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the TO talk makes me wonder - what's the point of creating a specific class to your standards, whatever those standards are? Just a prestige thing?

The fundamental problem is that the United States kidnapped people from Africa, enslaved them, tortured them and did everything we could to wreck their lives for centuries.

But we’re too cheap and nasty to compensate their descendants properly, do anything much to make “the poor side of town” nicer, or even to give kids from the “poor side of town” a 20-point SAT boost when they apply for college.

So, instead of having a simple system to give the descendants of slaves a small affirmative action admissions boost, we have a crazy, Rube Goldberg holistic admissions system, in the hope it might help a few poor Blacks do a little better on their applications.

If we would stop being a nation of racist crackers, we could build the whole college application process around an electronic post card.

Holistic admissions are meant to help privileged Whites by making the process opaque. If the real intent was to help Blacks, they would have passed laws long ago to set aside a certain % of college seats to Blacks and Native Americans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the TO talk makes me wonder - what's the point of creating a specific class to your standards, whatever those standards are? Just a prestige thing?

The fundamental problem is that the United States kidnapped people from Africa, enslaved them, tortured them and did everything we could to wreck their lives for centuries.

But we’re too cheap and nasty to compensate their descendants properly, do anything much to make “the poor side of town” nicer, or even to give kids from the “poor side of town” a 20-point SAT boost when they apply for college.

So, instead of having a simple system to give the descendants of slaves a small affirmative action admissions boost, we have a crazy, Rube Goldberg holistic admissions system, in the hope it might help a few poor Blacks do a little better on their applications.

If we would stop being a nation of racist crackers, we could build the whole college application process around an electronic post card.

How do you compensate the descendants of slaves without actually inconveniencing white people.
Give hispanics and blacks a preferences almost exclusively at the expense of asians and call it a day.

The most harmful legacy of 300 years of slavery and segregation for modern day legacy blacks is not the fact that they are born poor. It's the fact that the their culture was destroyed and they had to invent and reinvent their culture several times and now they don't have the cultural foundations that immigrants enjoy to guide them out of poverty. The difference between legacy blacks and poor immigrant blacks is largely culture and the achievement gap between the two is pretty stark.

How do expect black people reading this post to respond? Honest question. Should we say, yes, we are deficient in every way and have not been good Americans like immigrants have been? We are cultureless, aimless, and stupid?