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Court: TJ's New Admission Policy Does Not Discriminate
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Anonymous
Harvard sent out mailers to states that don't send a lot of kids inviting students to apply. They sent the mailers to kids who scored at least 1300, but to Asian kids they sent it to those who scored at least 1450. |
Anonymous
How do you know this? |
Anonymous
They don't. It's just more grievance conspiracy theory nonsense |
Anonymous
. " The trial began Monday, and has so far only included testimony from dean of admissions William Fitzsimmons. He said Harvard sends recruitment letters to African-American, Native American and Hispanic high schoolers with mid-range SAT scores, around 1100 on math and verbal combined out of a possible 1600, CNN reported. Asian-Americans only receive a recruitment letter if they score at least 250 points higher — 1350 for women, and 1380 for men. Fitzsimmons explained a similar process for white wannabe students in states that don’t see a lot of Harvard attendees, like Montana or Nevada. Students in those states would receive a recruitment letter if they had at least a 1310 on their SATs. " ----- trial testimony from Harvard University dean of admissions William Fitzsimmons "a black student who scores 1000 on her SATs would have an equal chance of admission as a white student who scores 1310 or an Asian-American student who scores 1450" ---- Princeton sociologists, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandra Radford in book "No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life" |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
This is exactly why schools are going away from using standardized exams even when they might be of some use in building a class - because the data gets twisted and misused to create a false narrative. From my work in admissions, it is broadly true - not with respect to EVERY student, but broadly - that the strongest part of the application for many Asian-American applicants are their exam scores. This is less the case for other groups by a significant margin. Consequently, because what gets those students into the school is their exam scores, Asian Americans who are admitted tend to have higher exam scores than other groups. For others it might be their essays, or their community service, or their course rigor compared to availability, but for Asian students AS A GROUP, it is their exam scores. And this shouldn’t be surprising given the pride with which parents on these fora and others discuss their children’s exam performance. But the end result is that bad-faith actors look at comparative exam scores and see that, for example, the average Asian student at Harvard got a 1480 (I’m making this up) while the average white kid there got a 1420 and they use that as evidence of discrimination… when the reality is that the Asian students more frequently were admitted because of their exam scores while other students were perhaps admitted in spite of their exam scores and because of some other outstanding trait. |
Anonymous
Finishing up on this… that’s a non-zero part of why schools are moving away from exams. It’s because, as a relatively simple statistical data point, it’s too easy for people operating in bad faith to use it as evidence of discrimination when in reality, it’s one of many dimensions that one group leverages more than others to create admissions outcomes. |
Anonymous
It’s better for the kids at those schools, too. There is no replacement for existing in an academic environment with students from diverse backgrounds. There will be fewer students experiencing culture shock after graduating from TJ now than there used to be. |
Anonymous
You have a crystal ball to tell you SCOTUS will grant a cert petition that hasn’t even been filed yet? That’s convenient. |
Anonymous
| People who say that Asian Americans get in largely because of their test scores and not well rounded applications which may be why others get admitted are doing a great disservice to all the Asian American students who participate in activities such as Advanced music, Quiz bowl, Science Bowl, Robotics teams, DECA, History Bowl, Volunteering etc.... on top of good grades and excellent test scores. They do all this and are still at a disadvantage because they are Asian American. |
Anonymous
This is simply not true. The students who are at a disadvantage are the ones who have the excellent test scores and NOT all of these other things. And it's a greater number than you would expect. But it's worth mentioning as well... You're only going to see a small number of students admitted who have each of those activities on their resume. Elite universities don't need hundreds of kids who participate in DECA - they need a few. Same for all of the others you mentioned. |
Anonymous
Responses like this betray a desire for a foolproof formula for getting into an elite university. Parents seem to want a roadmap to where they can simply place their child into XYZ exam prep academy and ABC extracurriculars, achieve a certain level of excellence on each and be guaranteed a space for their child at the college of their dreams. If such a roadmap existed, it would destroy the fabric of the schools themselves as well as the lives of the students who were wedged into the form that the roadmap mandated. And that's what was happening at TJ and in Northern Virginia for many years. Three cheers to FCPS for ceasing the destructive practice of rewarding cookie-cutter childhoods. Parents still have the right to raise their children this way if they want - it's just so refreshing that they can no longer expect to be rewarded for it. |
Anonymous
TJ isn’t an elite university nor is it realistic to think a public school system with 200 schools can replicate the secondary school equivalent of one when using an increasingly opaque and subjective admissions process. At worst, the SB may be deemed to have violated the Constitution in adopting the current process; at best, they will have led a large segment of the community to believe they do not accord Asian children the same respect they accord other children and refuse to treat them as individuals. |
Anonymous
There is no sense in which FCPS would have "led" a large segment of the community to believe that they don't respect Asian children. It bears repeating - AGAIN - that Asian students were the only cohort in the new process who fared significantly better against their percentage of the applicant pool than they should have expected. They continue to constitute a majority of offers - and a significant majority, at that - even though they are no longer a majority of applicants. If FCPS is intentionally keeping Asian students down in the new process, they're doing an awful job of it. |
Anonymous
Yep. The people who would have "led" the Asian community to believe this are the wealthy folks behind Coalition 4 TJ who are aggrieved because it's a lot harder for them to use their resources to put their thumbs on the scales now. |