Race in college admissions is back in front of the Supreme Court Oral Argument on Oct. 31 (Monday)

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11/04/2022 12:58

Subject: Re:Race in college admissions is back in front of the Supreme Court Oral Argument on Oct. 31 (Monday)

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Anonymous

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We get that is the argument, but what is the solution that is more fair? I see both ways but tests are at least somewhat objective. And I have been on BOTH sides of the aisle here, growing up poor, first gen, no test prep options vs. what I can now offer my kid.

"more fair"?

Basketball players are judge by how well they play basketball
Dancers are judged by how well they dance
Legacies are judged by how well they help fund the school and if they will provide connections to current students
Some kids are judged by SAT scores
Some kids are judged by the fact they started a movement after somebody shot up their school

If you want to be in the top 5% there are many ways to do that and GPA and SAT is only one way. Stop using that measure to say the other kids were not qualified.
If 20 kids are great basketball players the coach picks the 5 he wants, you don't have to understand why he picked those 5 kids. I don't care if you scored more baskets than the 5 he chose.

The core issue is that those schools that have been practicing holistic admissions still weren’t getting the “desired” diversity that they wanted when looking at all of those factors you’ve mentioned without directly looking at race. As a result, at least Harvard systemically and artificially reduced totally subjective personality scores on Asian applicants at the admissions office level. Let’s stop with the trope that Asian applicants were just robots studying for grades and test scores - the Harvard disclosures showed that Asian applicants also had leadership positions and extracurricular activities in line (or better) than all other races. The one factor that changed was the admissions office that never met these applicants putting in lower personality scores for Asians. THAT is patently unfair no matter how much one believes in a desired outcome.

We know it’s patently unfair because if you replace “Asian” with any other race (or religion or sex or sexual orientation), it would be recognized as racist right away. If Black students were getting the best grades, garnering the highest test scores, and had extracurricular activities and interview scores that were in line with every other race… but then the Harvard admissions office assigned a totally subjective personality score to Blacks that were lower than all other races because they were worried that Blacks would be too overrepresented at Harvard, that would rightfully be called out as racist immediately. If you applied Jewish people in that hypothetical, it would rightly be called antisemitic immediately (and that’s actually what happened at elite schools in the middle of the 20th century - it’s why holistic admissions exist in the first place). For some reason, people either don’t recognize that the fact this pattern is happening to Asians is racist or, arguably even worse, effectively know that it’s racist but think that the ends justify the means, it appalling to me.

By and large, I’m a liberal on cultural issues. I volunteer for the Democratic Party and will be voting for them on Tuesday up and down the ballot for many reasons. However, on this particular issue, too many liberals seem to have a complete blind spot. I firmly believe in DEI efforts as a goal, but they simply can’t use racist policies (against a minority group, no less) to achieve such goals as that defeats the idea behind DEI initiatives in the first place.

Our work decided to meet certain markers for diversity one being hire more Veterans and part-time workers, so we ran number and realized we did not have any Veterans (or maybe it was .1%). So we found out where Veterans look for jobs, we reached out to colleges that veterans attended, and we worked with the VA to get qualified Veterans.

What we realized is that our advertising process was inadequate to find veterans that were qualified. It was our process, not that there are NO qualified veterans.

If you only advertise a job in Potomac, MD guess what, you might not get a diverse application pool

Have you ever thought that perhaps people look at their selection criteria and think, wow we are underrepresented in certain areas we need to do better through outreach, advertising, etc. Advertisers do it all the time. It's not racist to reach out to an underrepresented group, because you have designed a flawed outreach program.

It's odd to me that everybody is soooooooooo disturbed by African American's being courted by schools because the schools feel they are clearly missing out on an opportunity based on the way the system works. Why would AA be underrepresented? Do you think as a whole group of people there are no qualified AA's that could attend Harvard/UNC?

This is definitely a critical issue that many are overlooking. For the sake of argument, let’s say that there is a set of specific characteristics that correlates with “doing well at Harvard”. For a variety of reasons — including wealth and academic experiences — these characteristics are not evenly distributed in populations of HS seniors when racial variables are examined. My guess though, is that for Black students and Latino students— the number and percentages of students even aware of Harvard, let alone are motivated to apply is a lot smaller than both the numbers and percentages of other groups who are both aware of Harvard, have the resources to apply, and view Harvard as being a good fit for them.

Whatever happens with the Supreme Court, clearly recruitment will remain a critical issue — and it needs to begin focusing on prospective students way before they enter senior year.