UMD/UVA Admissions without Affirmative Action

[Anonymous]

All I will say is that "qualified" takes on many forms. I think the admissions people understand how to populate their schools.

Well, they do know how to keep doing what they've been doing, which prioritizes keeping donors happy and staying high in the USeless News rankings as much as anything else. I agree, admissions people know how to admit class after class like this.

But I'm with the page 1 PP who's in higher ed and senses that China and India are going to finally figure out higher ed on their own soil. THAT will be interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ahh...it must be autumn.

The leaves are turning, kids are starting to apply to college, and their parents are on DCUM complaining about how they are so disadvataged compared to the athletes, the legacies and the URM's.

All I will say is that "qualified" takes on many forms. I think the admissions people understand how to populate their schools.

That will be a lot more persuasive when top basketball programs start affirmatively recruiting shrimpy intellectual kids who can't jump in order to provide beneficial "diversity" on their basketball teams! It is funny how diversity arguments apply to the academics but not to sports teams.

And if you think that the shrimpy intellectual kid is competing for a spot at that university against that basketball player - then you do not have a clue as to how it works. Maybe you should have pointed out all the international students in the applied science and engineering programs. That may have made more sense to your argument - but I doubt it!

At a big D1 school the atletes are such a small percentage of students=especially basketball.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ahh...it must be autumn.

The leaves are turning, kids are starting to apply to college, and their parents are on DCUM complaining about how they are so disadvataged compared to the athletes, the legacies and the URM's.

All I will say is that "qualified" takes on many forms. I think the admissions people understand how to populate their schools.

That will be a lot more persuasive when top basketball programs start affirmatively recruiting shrimpy intellectual kids who can't jump in order to provide beneficial "diversity" on their basketball teams! It is funny how diversity arguments apply to the academics but not to sports teams.

And if you think that the shrimpy intellectual kid is competing for a spot at that university against that basketball player - then you do not have a clue as to how it works. Maybe you should have pointed out all the international students in the applied science and engineering programs. That may have made more sense to your argument - but I doubt it!

At a big D1 school the atletes are such a small percentage of students=especially basketball.

The point is not that there are huge numbers of basketball players or that a shrimpy intellectual kid is in fact now directly competing with baskeball players for admission. The point is that we are being always told that there is an important value in not admitting only the best scoring academic kids but that having diversity, even at the cost of actual academics, is good for everyone because while some kids may not be best at academics they can all learn from each other etc etc. If this is true, it would also be a great learning experience for basketball players to experience the benefits of diversity by having kids on their teams who may not be actually able to play basketball well but may have lots of other interesting life experiences to bring to the table. But I don't see coaches or schools making that diversity argument! I wonder why? (and I don't mean to single out baskeball. Same applies to crew or squash or lacrosse or whatever)

[Anonymous]

Not UMD or UVA but here's and article from Princeton Universities Newspaper.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/10/15/31509/

[Anonymous]

Washington Post article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-area-colleges-wary-of-affirmative-action-case-before-supreme-court/2012/10/12/e378c508-13a7-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Why do they bother playing college sports and not just go directly to the professional leagues?

Professional leagues for lacrosse, swimming, squash, crew, skiing, sailing and water polo? The only leagues are SLAC and IVY.

What's the point if you can't become a professional athlete? Why do the schools spend money on these programs?

[Anonymous]

We should really question what "meritocracy" means in our society. And how do we even judge the markers of meritocracy? Somehow we have to take a student's preparation and circumstances into consideration. (And I'm not necessarily talking about race.) And we should question the whole notion of legacy admissions. There are so many considerations at this point in time. In addition to the issues of very high performance by certain ethnic groups, females are performing better than males, but colleges don't want their numbers to be too skewed in favor of females. So, consideration is being given to male applicants that might be disadvantageous to some female applicants. And as a PP mentioned, colleges do make efforts to have all sorts of diversity, including geographic. Colleges try to create the study body they feel is best for the goals of their institution. A lot of tough and serious issues are involved. It's really hard to know the answer, but I think the idea of merit in our society is very loaded and needs to be looked at closely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We should really question what "meritocracy" means in our society. And how do we even judge the markers of meritocracy? Somehow we have to take a student's preparation and circumstances into consideration. (And I'm not necessarily talking about race.) And we should question the whole notion of legacy admissions. There are so many considerations at this point in time. In addition to the issues of very high performance by certain ethnic groups, females are performing better than males, but colleges don't want their numbers to be too skewed in favor of females. So, consideration is being given to male applicants that might be disadvantageous to some female applicants. And as a PP mentioned, colleges do make efforts to have all sorts of diversity, including geographic. Colleges try to create the study body they feel is best for the goals of their institution. A lot of tough and serious issues are involved. It's really hard to know the answer, but I think the idea of merit in our society is very loaded and needs to be looked at closely.

The schools should admit at least 63% females to make up for the $0.87/$1 discrepancy of wages based on sex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We should really question what "meritocracy" means in our society. And how do we even judge the markers of meritocracy? Somehow we have to take a student's preparation and circumstances into consideration. (And I'm not necessarily talking about race.) And we should question the whole notion of legacy admissions. There are so many considerations at this point in time. In addition to the issues of very high performance by certain ethnic groups, females are performing better than males, but colleges don't want their numbers to be too skewed in favor of females. So, consideration is being given to male applicants that might be disadvantageous to some female applicants. And as a PP mentioned, colleges do make efforts to have all sorts of diversity, including geographic. Colleges try to create the study body they feel is best for the goals of their institution. A lot of tough and serious issues are involved. It's really hard to know the answer, but I think the idea of merit in our society is very loaded and needs to be looked at closely.

The schools should admit at least 63% females to make up for the $0.87/$1 discrepancy of wages based on sex.

And then women would flood the traditionally "female" professions such as teaching and nursing, and drive the wages in these professions even lower. Instead, maybe we should focus on making the workplace, especially those in Fortune 500 companies, friendlier to working women. And on attracting more women to STEM professions.

[Anonymous]

interesting and thought provocating sting. Remember, "affirmative action" is not PC, try "affirmative access."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We should really question what "meritocracy" means in our society. And how do we even judge the markers of meritocracy? Somehow we have to take a student's preparation and circumstances into consideration. (And I'm not necessarily talking about race.) And we should question the whole notion of legacy admissions. There are so many considerations at this point in time. In addition to the issues of very high performance by certain ethnic groups, females are performing better than males, but colleges don't want their numbers to be too skewed in favor of females. So, consideration is being given to male applicants that might be disadvantageous to some female applicants. And as a PP mentioned, colleges do make efforts to have all sorts of diversity, including geographic. Colleges try to create the study body they feel is best for the goals of their institution. A lot of tough and serious issues are involved. It's really hard to know the answer, but I think the idea of merit in our society is very loaded and needs to be looked at closely.

The schools should admit at least 63% females to make up for the $0.87/$1 discrepancy of wages based on sex.

wtf are u talking about females get paid exponentially more for sex.

[Anonymous]

I have heard from some admission people that they have to "lower the bar" for the male students. There are just so many more qualified female apps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:interesting and thought provocating sting. Remember, "affirmative action" is not PC, try "affirmative access."

I'm 11:16, who you're responding to. I actually see a purpose to affirmative action, if it's used to give disadvantaged minority opportunities their families aren't able to give them through good schools, tutoring, extra curriculars and the like. My post was actually directed to the person who suggested people hire more women, and because I assumed that suggestion was a bit flip, my response was a bit flip.

[Anonymous]

i don't thnk there are enough asians in the dmv area to turn uva and umd into berkeley, ucla, and uc-irvine in terms of asian demographics.

So people, calm down, those schools aren't going to get TJ'ed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What does "point taken" mean? If it's 85% Asians, so be it.

no, I really don't want Dc in a basically all-Asian enclave. School should be so much more than just an academic grind.