Asians are suing Harvard and UNC - Chapel Hill for use of quotas

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

And nobody but nobody gets into Harvard or any other Ivy with substandard grades. Period.

AA or Latinos do.

No they don't. You are totally wrong.

Yes they do.

Prove it. You're just making shit up.

12:24 is this a "bitch move"?

[Anonymous]

I actually love the list of big name mediocre students. I think one thing it points out is that the skills needed to succeed in politics aren't necessarily the same as the skills needed to succeed in the classroom. And it sure helps to have a wealthy, connected family. The political leaders who were excellent students invariably came from modest backgrounds (Nixon, Clinton, Obama -- once he got to college). I love the joke told by Bush Sr.

As for Michelle Obama's thesis, I never read it but I was at Princeton when she was and I agree that everyone I knew brought something impressive to the table, regardless of their race or background. The exceptions were two white guys I knew who were alcoholics and just couldn't keep up. They both had to take leaves of absence. Michelle Obama did not just come from an URM, she came from an inner city school. I had a roommate like that and she certainly did struggle. But she made it, went to medical school and is now back home, practicing medicine, and serving the community from which she came. I'm much happier about the place she took in my class than the places taken by folks who went on to Wall Street jobs,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
As for Michelle Obama's thesis, I never read it but I was at Princeton when she was and I agree that everyone I knew brought something impressive to the table, regardless of their race or background. The exceptions were two white guys I knew who were alcoholics and just couldn't keep up. They both had to take leaves of absence. Michelle Obama did not just come from an URM, she came from an inner city school. I had a roommate like that and she certainly did struggle. But she made it, went to medical school and is now back home, practicing medicine, and serving the community from which she came. I'm much happier about the place she took in my class than the places taken by folks who went on to Wall Street jobs,

Unless you bother to read the thesis, and judge for yourself whether it's written in anything approaching college-level English, your comments are irrelevant in a thread about whether other minorities, not drunk white boys, are being unfairly treated in the admissions process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As for Michelle Obama's thesis, I never read it but I was at Princeton when she was and I agree that everyone I knew brought something impressive to the table, regardless of their race or background. The exceptions were two white guys I knew who were alcoholics and just couldn't keep up. They both had to take leaves of absence. Michelle Obama did not just come from an URM, she came from an inner city school. I had a roommate like that and she certainly did struggle. But she made it, went to medical school and is now back home, practicing medicine, and serving the community from which she came. I'm much happier about the place she took in my class than the places taken by folks who went on to Wall Street jobs,

Unless you bother to read the thesis, and judge for yourself whether it's written in anything approaching college-level English, your comments are irrelevant in a thread about whether other minorities, not drunk white boys, are being unfairly treated in the admissions process.

Ok, NP here, but I remember a drunk Asian guy who flunked out. Actually, two now that I think about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As for Michelle Obama's thesis, I never read it but I was at Princeton when she was and I agree that everyone I knew brought something impressive to the table, regardless of their race or background. The exceptions were two white guys I knew who were alcoholics and just couldn't keep up. They both had to take leaves of absence. Michelle Obama did not just come from an URM, she came from an inner city school. I had a roommate like that and she certainly did struggle. But she made it, went to medical school and is now back home, practicing medicine, and serving the community from which she came. I'm much happier about the place she took in my class than the places taken by folks who went on to Wall Street jobs,

Unless you bother to read the thesis, and judge for yourself whether it's written in anything approaching college-level English, your comments are irrelevant in a thread about whether other minorities, not drunk white boys, are being unfairly treated in the admissions process.

Not the PP you're responding to, but you're full of it. What s/he stated was completely relevant to whether URMs in Ivies are underqualified. Just because it wasn't about the one example you want to focus on, doesn't mean it isn't relevant. And I did read the thesis, and it's fine. It's not spectacular, but it's not the worst one you're going to find at an Ivy, even among your supposedly superior Asians.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OMG. No one who reads Michelle Obama's senior thesis can reasonably come away without thinking she deserved to attend an Ivy. I had no idea it was that bad on virtually every level.

Yes, an Asian or Jewish student with higher SATs and a demonstrated ability to compose an English sentence was more deserving of her place at Princeton.

Nor, for that matter, do I. But, then, I didn't.

Should be "No one who reads Michelle Obama's senior thesis can reasonably come away without thinking she did not deserve to attend an Ivy."

And no one who reviews George W. Bush's academic record can reasonably come away without thinking he did not deserve to attend an Ivy.

At least we know that Bush cracked 1200 on his SATs, which made him a viable legacy candidate for Yale back in the 1960s. Michelle Robinson applied to Princeton roughly 20 years later, when admissions were more competitive, but the poor quality of her thesis suggests that she neither belonged at an Ivy nor benefited from an Ivy education. I mean, you can find her senior thesis on-line and read it. It's an exercise in poorly written navel-gazing, not scholarship. A more qualified Asian student surely would have come up with something more impressive.

No matter how you try and whitewash it, Bush was not a viable candidate in comparison to others who were better equipped academically. His father's connection and deep pockets certainly were the major in getting him admitted. You can try and color it all you want but that's the fact. Bush's credentials shouldn't admitted him yesteryear or today. As a matter of fact, Bush has said often he was proud of being a 'C' student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As for Michelle Obama's thesis, I never read it but I was at Princeton when she was and I agree that everyone I knew brought something impressive to the table, regardless of their race or background. The exceptions were two white guys I knew who were alcoholics and just couldn't keep up. They both had to take leaves of absence. Michelle Obama did not just come from an URM, she came from an inner city school. I had a roommate like that and she certainly did struggle. But she made it, went to medical school and is now back home, practicing medicine, and serving the community from which she came. I'm much happier about the place she took in my class than the places taken by folks who went on to Wall Street jobs,

Unless you bother to read the thesis, and judge for yourself whether it's written in anything approaching college-level English, your comments are irrelevant in a thread about whether other minorities, not drunk white boys, are being unfairly treated in the admissions process.

Ok, NP here, but I remember a drunk Asian guy who flunked out. Actually, two now that I think about it.

My point was not that only white people become alcoholics, obviously. It was that the only two people I knew at Princeton who couldn't cut it were white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OMG. No one who reads Michelle Obama's senior thesis can reasonably come away without thinking she deserved to attend an Ivy. I had no idea it was that bad on virtually every level.

Yes, an Asian or Jewish student with higher SATs and a demonstrated ability to compose an English sentence was more deserving of her place at Princeton.

Wow, I just read the thesis and I think you are way out of line. I'm the Princeton alumn and this does not seem worse than a lot of theses. The expositive portions are clunky but no clunkier than a lot of academic writing. She designed a study, carried out the study and analyzed the results. Probably not worthy of being published in an academic journal but how many undergraduate thesis are. Perhaps you should read some other Princeton undergraduate theses before you pass such judgment. Some are extraordinary. Some are really good. Many are fine. This one was fine.

I think you are working very hard to make the point that she didn't "deserve" her spot. And I agree with the PP who suggested that this thread is a great demonstration of attitudes that persist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many people of means should not have gotten into an Ivy or any other top school. Ironically, the smartest one was Richard Nixon who genuinely had good grades. The rest is history.

1. Al Gore
Gore’s the brainiest politician around, right? Possibly, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at his Harvard transcript. Gore apparently spent quite a bit of time loafing during his sophomore year, and some of his grades weren't very good: a D, a C-minus, two C’s, two C-pluses, and a B-minus, marks that put him in the lowest fifth of his class. Strangely enough, the D came in a class that sounds like it would be right in Gore’s wheelhouse: Natural Sciences 6 (Man’s Place in Nature).

2. George W. Bush
Gore’s foe in the 2000 presidential election takes a lot of ribbing for his intellect, but his college grades at Yale were more mediocre than embarrassing. Through his first three years at Yale, Bush’s grades averaged out to 77 on a 100-point scale. He only received one D during his college career, in an astronomy course.

3. John Kerry

Like Bush, Kerry attended Yale. And he had some really rotten grades, particularly during his freshman year. As a Yale frosh, Kerry rang up D’s in geology, two history classes, and – strangely enough for a future Senator – political science. While Kerry’s 2004 campaign presented him as a more cerebral alternative to Bush, the two men’s grades at Yale were roughly equivalent.

4. Dan Quayle
Quayle’s academic struggles didn’t start with his infamously ill-fated attempt to spell “potato.” According to a 1988 Cleveland Plain Dealer story, he wasn’t a bang-up student at DePauw University, either. Quayle’s grades were so lousy that he wouldn’t ordinarily have been able to earn admission into Indiana University’s law school, but he secured a spot thanks to an equal opportunity program. During the 1988 presidential campaign a Quayle spokesman explained that high marks were simply hard to come by at DePauw.

5. George H.W. Bush
When Quayle’s middling college grades became a story during the 1988 campaign, running mate George H.W. Bush defended his eventual VP and revealed a bit of his own classroom struggle. Bush joked, ''I refuse to release my high school transcript because I failed chemistry and I don't want anyone to know that.''

6. John McCain
McCain excelled at a lot of things during his time at the United States Naval Academy, including boxing. McCain’s classes knocked him out, though. His grades were so poor that in his graduating class of 899, he earned spot 894 in the rankings.

7. Joe Biden
By all accounts, Biden wasn’t the world’s greatest student, but he made up for his academic shortcomings with sheer likability. Biden ranked 506th out of 688 students in the University of Delaware’s class of 1965, but a professor still recommended him for law school “on grounds of personality and general promise.” The future VP didn’t exactly turn on the jets once he got to law school, either. He finished 76th in his class of 85 students at Syracuse, and admitted to plagiarism in his first year of law school. But again, a dean recommended him for a job on the basis of his “confidence,” “general physical appearance,” and “general speaking ability.”

8. Franklin Pierce
It’s not just modern politicians who goofed around in college. When Pierce attended Bowdoin College, he spent so much time hanging out with friends, including a young Nathaniel Hawthorne, that at one point he was ranked dead last in his class. He eventually found some motivation and worked his way up to fifth in his class.

9. Richard Nixon
Unlike the other names on this list, Nixon was actually an excellent student. After Whittier College, Nixon went on to Duke Law, where he graduated third in his class in 1937. He also served as president of the Duke Bar Association. But we're including him because his good grades didn't earn him much respect from his alma mater.

In 1954, a committee recommended that then-VP Nixon be given an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, and Nixon agreed to be the graduation speaker. However, after vociferous debate, a faculty panel voted down the recommendation, and Nixon bailed on the commencement address.

Over a quarter-century later, Duke President Terry Sanford pushed to build Nixon’s presidential library on campus, even meeting with Nixon himself to work out the details. However, a similar faculty committee killed the idea. The Nixon Library ended up in Yorba Linda, California.

Is this a filibuster? Because, otherwise, it proves nothing other than that many politicians were weak academically.

If these were AA and Latino students, you'd be using this as an example why affirmative-action doesn't work.

On the contrary, this list says volumes that those who have the gold make the rules.

[Anonymous]

^^Or the right pigmentation. Biden has never had money, and I like him regardless.

[Anonymous]

As long as there are quotas, there will be URMs admitted who are lesser qualified than other candidates. As long as this occurs, some people will reasonably wonder if their race gave them the edge in admissions.

We has an AA law clerk from Harvard who came across as less than intelligent & ended up not being offered a job. I hated myself for it, but I couldn't help but wonder if her race got her admitted. She was quite unimpressive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As long as there are quotas, there will be URMs admitted who are lesser qualified than other candidates. As long as this occurs, some people will reasonably wonder if their race gave them the edge in admissions.

We has an AA law clerk from Harvard who came across as less than intelligent & ended up not being offered a job. I hated myself for it, but I couldn't help but wonder if her race got her admitted. She was quite unimpressive.

OMG, and one time, I knew this white guy who went to Yale and he's a total loser, so I think that means that Yale lets in dumb white guys. Also, when I was at Harvard, there was this Asian guy who seemed insane and creepily took up-the-skirt and while-we-were-jogging pictures of me and my other female friends without us knowing and I think that means that Harvard lets in mentally ill Asian guys.
Oh, for the love of God. "As long as there are quotas"? First of all, there are no strict "quotas". What there is is a holistic approach that looks at the whole applicant. Not just a number. What you're calling "lesser qualified" is just code for "lower test scores". It's entirely possible to be MORE qualified than another applicant while having lower test scores, based on other criteria. And, really, we're only talking about high test scores when you're talking about Ivies. It's just degree of high -- high versus super-high.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm an Ivy grad and I'm uncomfortable with policies that explicitly limit acceptances based on racial identification. I'm equally uncomfortable with policies that explicitly privilege admissions based on racial identification.

My children are half Caucasian, half non-Caucasian. If the other half is Latino or African-American, they get a leg up. If it is Asian, they get discriminated against. Seems wildly un-American to me.

Would it be more American to have the Elite colleges consist of 50 percent Asians, 48 percent whites, and two percent combo of AA and Hispanics? In a country that looks nothing like that?

I guess the nba and nfl..you know NATIONAL basketball association and NATIONAL football league should change their names to negro basketball association and negro football league.

Afterall each league is 75% and 67% black respectively. In a country that looks and will never look anything like that.

QUOTAS IN SPORTS, NOW!

After all, the NATIONAL Hockey league is 90% white in a country that and will never look anything like that. QUOTAS IN SPORTS, NOW!

i agree - there needs to be more color in nhl - quotas please

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:admissions committees will say they use a 'holistic" approach; like X played they bagpipes and we don't have a bagpipe player so she got the nod over Y who had slightly higher grades and SATs but only played the violin, and we have tons of those. The courts will not tell Harvard what criteria it must use in shaping its classes.

Kinda sounds like using "fit" in hiring decisions. Excellent way to continue discrimination.

Not really. That's what the current law is. The Supreme Court will never ban affirmative action,

it'll be overturned before the end of the century.

it's being chipped away at - just slower than what many would like it. but it is definitely rolled back slowly but surely

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As long as there are quotas, there will be URMs admitted who are lesser qualified than other candidates. As long as this occurs, some people will reasonably wonder if their race gave them the edge in admissions.

We has an AA law clerk from Harvard who came across as less than intelligent & ended up not being offered a job. I hated myself for it, but I couldn't help but wonder if her race got her admitted. She was quite unimpressive.

Oh, please. And you think non-URMs are all qualified? If there physical label wasn't obvious, you wouldn't be questioning their qualifications based on race. There are many Ivy law clerks who aren't shining beacons.

Quotas are not restricted to URMs.