Go for a run if you don't get into your choice college.

[Anonymous]

Affirmative action does boost minority students into the top schools even if they are under qualified academically. That is the point— in the service of righting systemic and historical inequity. At the same time, is still rude and antisocial to point out that any individual person may have gotten in through AA.

Im South Asian, a liberal, and feel very mixed about AA, not only because it discriminates against Asian students but also because it creates the unfair dynamic where other minorities are seen as having gotten in with lower standards, which is unfair to those who are highly qualified. I think these students need a lesson in graciousness and how to cope with disappointments rather than more indoctrination in why AA is the only way.

[Anonymous]

[vimeo]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Race is a “hook” for college admissions just like being an athlete or from an under-represented part of the country. Unless you are Asian, but that is another thread . . .

Or being rich enough to go to GDS.

Not for elite schools. Rich enough to endow a chair isn’t even enough anymore.

Being rich has been a hook a lot longer than being a URM and certain URM’s aren’t even a hook at the local independent schools anymore. Idk about colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Affirmative action does boost minority students into the top schools even if they are under qualified academically. That is the point— in the service of righting systemic and historical inequity. At the same time, is still rude and antisocial to point out that any individual person may have gotten in through AA.

Im South Asian, a liberal, and feel very mixed about AA, not only because it discriminates against Asian students but also because it creates the unfair dynamic where other minorities are seen as having gotten in with lower standards, which is unfair to those who are highly qualified. I think these students need a lesson in graciousness and how to cope with disappointments rather than more indoctrination in why AA is the only way.

Nobody is getting in that is under qualified academically. That is what people just can’t get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pp here—takeaway for me—if you can’t have this tough conversation at GDS then where can you have it?

Nowhere. Individual white and Asian students are routinely and systematically discriminated against in the college admissions process; those doing so believe this unfairness is acceptable collateral damage to attain equity; even so, this is so obviously unfair to these students as to be optically hard to defend; admitting that this is going on will cause resentment that will be an obstacle to equity; so people are expected to just shut up about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[vimeo]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Race is a “hook” for college admissions just like being an athlete or from an under-represented part of the country. Unless you are Asian, but that is another thread . . .

Or being rich enough to go to GDS.

Not for elite schools. Rich enough to endow a chair isn’t even enough anymore.

Being rich has been a hook a lot longer than being a URM and certain URM’s aren’t even a hook at the local independent schools anymore. Idk about colleges.

Do you think that top colleges care at all about the average GDS family? Unless they are leading a building drive, just rich isn’t rich enough. Meanwhile, URM from somewhere like GDs is an enormous hook. These schools love to talked about equity, but god forbid students point out the logical result of equitable admissions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Affirmative action does boost minority students into the top schools even if they are under qualified academically. That is the point— in the service of righting systemic and historical inequity. At the same time, is still rude and antisocial to point out that any individual person may have gotten in through AA.

Im South Asian, a liberal, and feel very mixed about AA, not only because it discriminates against Asian students but also because it creates the unfair dynamic where other minorities are seen as having gotten in with lower standards, which is unfair to those who are highly qualified. I think these students need a lesson in graciousness and how to cope with disappointments rather than more indoctrination in why AA is the only way.

That’s Orwellian: affirmative action is absolutely critical to attaining diversity, but it doesn’t actually contribute to any individual student getting in. Doublethink.

[Anonymous]

This is what happens when you have a CCO that purposefully withholds data and specializes in generalizations. As a parent, I would have loved to have my kids attend a teach-in about affirmative action with data, rather than assume that 1) the kids understand the real complexities of affirmative action and college admissions, and 2) not have any questions about the changing landscape of college admissions.
Of course saying that certain kids got into top schools because of race is boorish and disrespectful. But if the CCO or the 12th grade dean or even a history teacher, maybe Sue Ikenberry who teaches politics, had pre-emptively had a frank discussion about affirmative action and how it affects college admissions, this whole episode could have been avoided. For goodness sakes, Ketanji Brown Jackson was a GDS parent! The school has resources to have a compelling conversation about affirmative action and college admissions. Why not also talk about factors like full-pay, legacy, sports recruiting, first-gen, and URM status as potential "hooks" in the college process? Why not discuss the very real disparities in standardized test scores across racial categories and the challenges those numbers present for college admissions? Why not discuss the problematic umbrella of "Asian" in college admissions?
I'm not surprised that the purposeful lack of transparency in college admissions at GDS is backfiring. Kids are applying to schools with so little real guidance. Visiting one of the college counselors at GDS is like visiting the oracle at Delphi--you ask questions and hope to get a response that provides some clarity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[vimeo]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Race is a “hook” for college admissions just like being an athlete or from an under-represented part of the country. Unless you are Asian, but that is another thread . . .

Or being rich enough to go to GDS.

Not for elite schools. Rich enough to endow a chair isn’t even enough anymore.

Being rich has been a hook a lot longer than being a URM and certain URM’s aren’t even a hook at the local independent schools anymore. Idk about colleges.

Do you think that top colleges care at all about the average GDS family? Unless they are leading a building drive, just rich isn’t rich enough. Meanwhile, URM from somewhere like GDs is an enormous hook. These schools love to talked about equity, but god forbid students point out the logical result of equitable admissions

Nobody is talking about paying your way into a school.

But being rich gets you all types of entitlement that even put you in a position that you might get into a top school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[vimeo]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Race is a “hook” for college admissions just like being an athlete or from an under-represented part of the country. Unless you are Asian, but that is another thread . . .

Or being rich enough to go to GDS.

Not for elite schools. Rich enough to endow a chair isn’t even enough anymore.

Being rich has been a hook a lot longer than being a URM and certain URM’s aren’t even a hook at the local independent schools anymore. Idk about colleges.

Do you think that top colleges care at all about the average GDS family? Unless they are leading a building drive, just rich isn’t rich enough. Meanwhile, URM from somewhere like GDs is an enormous hook. These schools love to talked about equity, but god forbid students point out the logical result of equitable admissions

Nobody is talking about paying your way into a school.

But being rich gets you all types of entitlement that even put you in a position that you might get into a top school.

This. It’s true that what’s happening to these kids is unfair. It’s also true that, of all the ways the world is unfair, 99% of them favor the kids at GDS—healthy, talented, affluent kids receiving the best education money can buy in the nicest quarter of the capital city of the greatest country in the history of the world. These kids should be grateful that the world is unjust. The inability of the students, parents, and school to show any perspective about this makes them all look ugly and entitled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[vimeo]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Race is a “hook” for college admissions just like being an athlete or from an under-represented part of the country. Unless you are Asian, but that is another thread . . .

Or being rich enough to go to GDS.

Not for elite schools. Rich enough to endow a chair isn’t even enough anymore.

Being rich has been a hook a lot longer than being a URM and certain URM’s aren’t even a hook at the local independent schools anymore. Idk about colleges.

Do you think that top colleges care at all about the average GDS family? Unless they are leading a building drive, just rich isn’t rich enough. Meanwhile, URM from somewhere like GDs is an enormous hook. These schools love to talked about equity, but god forbid students point out the logical result of equitable admissions

Nobody is talking about paying your way into a school.

But being rich gets you all types of entitlement that even put you in a position that you might get into a top school.

This. It’s true that what’s happening to these kids is unfair. It’s also true that, of all the ways the world is unfair, 99% of them favor the kids at GDS—healthy, talented, affluent kids receiving the best education money can buy in the nicest quarter of the capital city of the greatest country in the history of the world. These kids should be grateful that the world is unjust. The inability of the students, parents, and school to show any perspective about this makes them all look ugly and entitled.

100% this.

[Anonymous]

You read through these boards and it’s clear the kids get it from their parents. Some how it’s the 6-8% of the spots taken by blacks that has kept your kids out. No it’s your grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Affirmative action does boost minority students into the top schools even if they are under qualified academically. That is the point— in the service of righting systemic and historical inequity. At the same time, is still rude and antisocial to point out that any individual person may have gotten in through AA.

Im South Asian, a liberal, and feel very mixed about AA, not only because it discriminates against Asian students but also because it creates the unfair dynamic where other minorities are seen as having gotten in with lower standards, which is unfair to those who are highly qualified. I think these students need a lesson in graciousness and how to cope with disappointments rather than more indoctrination in why AA is the only way.

Thank you for your nuanced explanation. I'm more anti-affirmative action than you. I do not believe the children of today should be discriminated against because of the sins of a minority's forefathers. There are millions of people in America right now whose ancestors were nowhere near America during those benighted times, and who contribute economically and culturally to this great nation. Coming to the USA is not an implicit agreement to shoulder the guilt and shame of racist white slaveholders and Amerindian murderers, or anyone else who forced Chinese laborers to build railroads, or who interned Japanese families in concentration camps.

I greatly appreciate living here in a liberal part of the country, since it's less worse than living in a conservative part of the country, but from where I'm standing, Asians are perpetually discriminated against.

- east Asian

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pp here—takeaway for me—if you can’t have this tough conversation at GDS then where can you have it?

Nowhere. Individual white and Asian students are routinely and systematically discriminated against in the college admissions process; those doing so believe this unfairness is acceptable collateral damage to attain equity; even so, this is so obviously unfair to these students as to be optically hard to defend; admitting that this is going on will cause resentment that will be an obstacle to equity; so people are expected to just shut up about it.

I would fight tooth and nail for the white and Asian kids who it seems are getting the short end of the stick, if we did the same for all the other groups who made an impact on the construction of the United States. We have groups that built this country with free labor for hundreds of years, have been a permanent underclass for hundreds of years, there have been no provisions put in place to pay them back for their suffering. Then, we pay people reparations for unfortunate incidents that happened in Germany and Japan.
Now, some of you expect us to feel sorry for you because you think kids belonging to socioeconomic groups that you have systematically oppressed for longer that a half century, don’t have anywhere near the resources you have, and are still underrepresented, we’re able to get a spot at a school you would have liked to have? This is unreal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not very kind of GDS students to act with such racism. The social justice side of GDS is all fine and dandy until college decisions come out and then the true racism peaks through. I say this as a liberal, this is why we are ridiculed all the time. Liberals talk about equity etc but with something is perceived as interfering with your white privilege, it’s a problem.

The school just got done lecturing seniors about why it’s not cool to say black students are getting into college because AA and they have the audacity to hbe the following reaction:

Holder said students were talking about the meeting in the hallways after it ended. “My friends were talking about it like ‘What just happened?’ and ‘Why did we need that? It was unnecessary,’” she said.

After all these years at GDS, these students don’t know the inherit value of their rich families with elite colleges than they are born with they start off at first base yet they yell outrage when a Black student gets hit by a ball and can walk to first.

This is pathetic. I’m outraged. Why would any family want their kid at this pretentious and fake environment, yet alone pay $50K+?

I think the quotes you are including here is misleading. The article made clear that the people who organized the meeting did a poor job of explaining what incident prompted the meeting, and then started rambling about the history of affirmative action. It sounds like there was no meeting agenda provided at the start, and many students were legitimately confused about what the meeting was meant to accomplish. In the thread about the Auger Bit’s coverage of GDS teachers’ use of Chat GPT for report card comments, I shared this take from a student which I find quite thoughtful (though it doesn’t make most of the meeting organizers look good):

Freeman said at one point, Livelli said that since you don’t know what goes into people’s college processes, you can’t attribute a person’s acceptance or rejection from a college to their race. “It felt like the implication was—certainly, that’s true—but the implication was ‘You can’t act like it’s a factor at all because you don’t know,’” he said. “It seems like the outburst that caused the whole controversy was somebody acting like it was the one singular factor, which obviously doesn’t make sense—that’s wrong. But what’s equally wrong is pretending like it’s not a factor at all. It affects admission; it just felt a little disingenuous.”

Freeman added that comments from college counselors essentially told students to “discontinue” negative thoughts they had when they were faced with rejection—thoughts like “I didn’t get in, and it’s because of this.” He said they “spoke extremely euphemistically about it, which also, I didn’t like,” and added that he thought the college counselors’ comments made it seem like they didn’t regard students’ discontented feelings during the college process as valid.

“It’s understandable you would be upset that you didn’t get in. It’s not understandable that it came out that way,” he said of the comments that prompted the meeting, “but you need help working through it. And I think the decision to just be like, ‘Oh, hey, just don’t talk about it at all’ or ‘Just pretend like you’re happy when you’re not’ is definitely not the solution. To me, it feels like bottling it up like that is what’s going to lead to the hurtful outbursts, as opposed to the healthy expressions of your own disappointment.” He added that he agreed with an idea Wong shared that students should try to work through their emotions in a healthy way, by doing something like going on a run, if they feel disappointed with results they receive from colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Affirmative action does boost minority students into the top schools even if they are under qualified academically. That is the point— in the service of righting systemic and historical inequity. At the same time, is still rude and antisocial to point out that any individual person may have gotten in through AA.

Im South Asian, a liberal, and feel very mixed about AA, not only because it discriminates against Asian students but also because it creates the unfair dynamic where other minorities are seen as having gotten in with lower standards, which is unfair to those who are highly qualified. I think these students need a lesson in graciousness and how to cope with disappointments rather than more indoctrination in why AA is the only way.

Thank you for your nuanced explanation. I'm more anti-affirmative action than you. I do not believe the children of today should be discriminated against because of the sins of a minority's forefathers. There are millions of people in America right now whose ancestors were nowhere near America during those benighted times, and who contribute economically and culturally to this great nation. Coming to the USA is not an implicit agreement to shoulder the guilt and shame of racist white slaveholders and Amerindian murderers, or anyone else who forced Chinese laborers to build railroads, or who interned Japanese families in concentration camps.

I greatly appreciate living here in a liberal part of the country, since it's less worse than living in a conservative part of the country, but from where I'm standing, Asians are perpetually discriminated against.

- east Asian

Well you fled your own country and came to a country that owed these people. Think of it like a lean on a house you volunteer to buy. You want the benefits of owning that house, then you need to pay off the debt.