Ivy League Affirmative Action from the inside

[Anonymous]

You mean the 43 black male (non athletes) freshman at uCLA?

[Anonymous]

Does anyone worry about the other people at the bottom of their classes in college? why no outpouring of "concern" about the rest of the students at college? You know what the call a C average students. .. A graduate

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you don't think moneyed applicants, development cases don't take up many slots, bothe traceable and untraceable.....

Development cases DO take slots, but you are overestimating the slots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You mean the 43 black male (non athletes) freshman at uCLA?

And those 43 black male freshman can be proud knowing they got their in their own merits and no one will question if 'they belong'.

Furthermore they will be fully successful with their peers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone worry about the other people at the bottom of their classes in college? why no outpouring of "concern" about the rest of the students at college? You know what the call a C average students. .. A graduate

Harvard did -- google "happy bottom quarter."

[Anonymous]

UC campuses still give preference to URMs in more subtle and indirect manner than schools like Harvard which give preference more openly.

[Anonymous]

Wait - URM's don't want to be profiled by police but want to be profiled by admissions officers?

Hypocritical, much?

[Anonymous]

A general goal of diversity (of all types -- geographic, sex, age, race, etc.) is fine. That is actually beneficial to the academic experience. As long as all applicants are similarly qualified.

However, the only PREFERENCE should go to those with a disadvantaged socio-economic background (i.e., poor, first generation to attend college, etc.). Granted, many of those applicants will be minorities and that is fine.

But there is a reverse irony where a well-to-do black applicant who attended privileged prep schools gets in over a poor, white applicant with a better profile who overachieved and is the first in his family to attend college. This actually happens on a fairly regular basis in academia. It is unjustifiable.

[Anonymous]

"The Harvard enrollment changes over the last decade have been even more unusual when we compare them to changes in the underlying demographics.

Between 2000 and 2011, the relative percentage of college-age blacks enrolled at Harvard dropped by 18 percent, along with declines of 13 percent for Asians and 11 percent for Hispanics, while only whites increased, expanding their relative enrollment by 16 percent.

However, this is merely an optical illusion: in fact, the figure for non-Jewish whites slightly declined, while the relative enrollment of Jews increased by over 35 percent, probably reaching the highest level in Harvard’s entire history. Thus, the relative presence of Jews rose sharply while that of all other groups declined, and this occurred during exactly the period when the once-remarkable academic performance of Jewish high school students seemed to suddenly collapse.

Most of the other Ivy League schools appear to follow a fairly similar trajectory. Between 1980 and 2011, the official figures indicate that non-Jewish white enrollment dropped by 63 percent at Yale, 44 percent at Princeton, 52 percent at Dartmouth, 69 percent at Columbia, 62 percent at Cornell, 66 percent at Penn, and 64 percent at Brown."

[Anonymous]

"One datapoint strengthening this suspicion of admissions bias has been the plunge in the number of Harvard’s entering National Merit Scholars, a particularly select ability group, which dropped by almost 40 percent between 2002 and 2011, falling from 396 to 248.

This exact period saw a collapse in Jewish academic achievement combined with a sharp rise in Jewish Harvard admissions, which together might easily help to explain Harvard’s strange decline in this important measure of highest student quality."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"One datapoint strengthening this suspicion of admissions bias has been the plunge in the number of Harvard’s entering National Merit Scholars, a particularly select ability group, which dropped by almost 40 percent between 2002 and 2011, falling from 396 to 248.

This exact period saw a collapse in Jewish academic achievement combined with a sharp rise in Jewish Harvard admissions, which together might easily help to explain Harvard’s strange decline in this important measure of highest student quality."

What do you do? Roll between this thread and the Harvard Asian thread bemoaning the loss of 40 seats to Jews and African Americans? We are still waiting for you to rail against Hispanics and Native Americans. Also noticeable is your absence of sources for your barrage of quotes. Your hatred of Jews and URMs is blantant in both threads and, yes, your fingerprint is obvious.

You are a contemptible, small minded person who obviously did not get onto an Ivy, and the admissions office correctly called it. You and your faux idea of your ethnic superiority have no place in those regal halls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A general goal of diversity (of all types -- geographic, sex, age, race, etc.) is fine. That is actually beneficial to the academic experience. As long as all applicants are similarly qualified.

However, the only PREFERENCE should go to those with a disadvantaged socio-economic background (i.e., poor, first generation to attend college, etc.). Granted, many of those applicants will be minorities and that is fine.

But there is a reverse irony where a well-to-do black applicant who attended privileged prep schools gets in over a poor, white applicant with a better profile who overachieved and is the first in his family to attend college. This actually happens on a fairly regular basis in academia. It is unjustifiable.

I think there are probably soft quotas for all of these types and categories -- e.g. African-American students from prep schools, first generation white college students -- and they're generally not competing directly against other types -- more often within slightly broader categories and/or within regions. So an African-American student from a prep school may be competing against an African-American student from public school and that competition won't be based strictly on tests and scores. Sometimes the kid with higher grades/scores will win; sometimes she or he won't.

Basically, there are a bunch of different goals that highly selective private universities are pursuing simultaneously -- they're betting on future winners (i.e. they want tomorrow's elite -- in a host of different fields -- to have ties to the school), they're trying to create a diverse educational environment, they're trying to increase their endowment, they're trying to provide a vehicle for upward mobility for some groups, they're trying to be/become/remain a go-to source for employers in various fields, etc. Note that identifying or educating the smartest kids isn't necessarily a goal on this list. It's often on the faculty's wishlist, but faculty don't do undergrad admissions. Undergrad admissions is geared toward enhancing the school's status/brand/power/resources.

To pursue these institutional goals, admissions officers have to sift through a huge pile of applications with limited data over a short period of time. The "objective" data (tests and GPAs) are useful but not determinative. For one thing, SATs don't do a good job distinguishing AMONG the brightest kids in a 16-18 yo cohort. They help with the rough sort (disqualifying and probably deterring lots of applicants) and provide a broader context for interpreting GPAs, but they aren't really useful for rank-ordering candidates. There's no reason to believe that a kid with a 2400 is smarter, more knowledgeable, or a better student than a kid with a 2340. So unless the institutional goal is to raise or maximize the median SAT score(s) of the student body, SAT scores aren't going to be the admissions officers' primary benchmark of academic worthiness. And, unlike SAT score, the other numerical indicator -- GPA -- doesn't provide commensurability.

So, basically, the logic here is (a) intelligence or capacity for learning or intellectual achievement isn't the only thing we're trying to rank and (b) to the extent that it is, grades and scores are inadequate measures. Let me quickly say that I'm responding to the post I've quoted and the model of admissions it seems to assume -- and not to the lawsuit itself. I think that the lawsuit is legit given recent rulings on affirmative action in higher education. I understand that the argument is that even when non-academic criteria (e.g. extracurriculars) are taken into account, the racial disparity exists. And I believe (as a Harvard alumn) that this is discussion worth having. But I'm not sure that the plaintiffs should prevail. Abstractly, I believe in holistic admissions, but I also see how the process could lead to conscious or unconscious racial discrimination. Whether that's what's happening here is, to me, an empirical question.

In the end, I think that the bottom line is that there isn't a single accessible-to-all formula for getting into highly selective schools. The challenge is to stand out. Grades/scores/ECs don't enable most high-performing kids to do that in these applicant pools. And in environments/cultures where there's strong and sustained pressure to perform, it's easy to "forget to be awesome." You're so busy doing the needful, there's not much time left over to explore or experiment or develop your own interests. That just looks irresponsible or self-indulgent or risky.

[Anonymous]

^^^ oops, wrong thread -- sort of. The two seem to have run together in lots of ways.

But now that I realize context, I'll add what was probably already implicit in my last post. I think it'd be a really undesirable out come (on so many levels and for so many reasons) if the result of the Students for Fair Admission suit was increased reliance on SATs and GPAs in both public and private college admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A general goal of diversity (of all types -- geographic, sex, age, race, etc.) is fine. That is actually beneficial to the academic experience. As long as all applicants are similarly qualified.

However, the only PREFERENCE should go to those with a disadvantaged socio-economic background (i.e., poor, first generation to attend college, etc.). Granted, many of those applicants will be minorities and that is fine.

But there is a reverse irony where a well-to-do black applicant who attended privileged prep schools gets in over a poor, white applicant with a better profile who overachieved and is the first in his family to attend college. This actually happens on a fairly regular basis in academia. It is unjustifiable.

I think there are probably soft quotas for all of these types and categories -- e.g. African-American students from prep schools, first generation white college students -- and they're generally not competing directly against other types -- more often within slightly broader categories and/or within regions. So an African-American student from a prep school may be competing against an African-American student from public school and that competition won't be based strictly on tests and scores. Sometimes the kid with higher grades/scores will win; sometimes she or he won't.

Basically, there are a bunch of different goals that highly selective private universities are pursuing simultaneously -- they're betting on future winners (i.e. they want tomorrow's elite -- in a host of different fields -- to have ties to the school), they're trying to create a diverse educational environment, they're trying to increase their endowment, they're trying to provide a vehicle for upward mobility for some groups, they're trying to be/become/remain a go-to source for employers in various fields, etc. Note that identifying or educating the smartest kids isn't necessarily a goal on this list. It's often on the faculty's wishlist, but faculty don't do undergrad admissions. Undergrad admissions is geared toward enhancing the school's status/brand/power/resources.

To pursue these institutional goals, admissions officers have to sift through a huge pile of applications with limited data over a short period of time. The "objective" data (tests and GPAs) are useful but not determinative. For one thing, SATs don't do a good job distinguishing AMONG the brightest kids in a 16-18 yo cohort. They help with the rough sort (disqualifying and probably deterring lots of applicants) and provide a broader context for interpreting GPAs, but they aren't really useful for rank-ordering candidates. There's no reason to believe that a kid with a 2400 is smarter, more knowledgeable, or a better student than a kid with a 2340. So unless the institutional goal is to raise or maximize the median SAT score(s) of the student body, SAT scores aren't going to be the admissions officers' primary benchmark of academic worthiness. And, unlike SAT score, the other numerical indicator -- GPA -- doesn't provide commensurability.

So, basically, the logic here is (a) intelligence or capacity for learning or intellectual achievement isn't the only thing we're trying to rank and (b) to the extent that it is, grades and scores are inadequate measures. Let me quickly say that I'm responding to the post I've quoted and the model of admissions it seems to assume -- and not to the lawsuit itself. I think that the lawsuit is legit given recent rulings on affirmative action in higher education. I understand that the argument is that even when non-academic criteria (e.g. extracurriculars) are taken into account, the racial disparity exists. And I believe (as a Harvard alumn) that this is discussion worth having. But I'm not sure that the plaintiffs should prevail. Abstractly, I believe in holistic admissions, but I also see how the process could lead to conscious or unconscious racial discrimination. Whether that's what's happening here is, to me, an empirical question.

In the end, I think that the bottom line is that there isn't a single accessible-to-all formula for getting into highly selective schools. The challenge is to stand out. Grades/scores/ECs don't enable most high-performing kids to do that in these applicant pools. And in environments/cultures where there's strong and sustained pressure to perform, it's easy to "forget to be awesome." You're so busy doing the needful, there's not much time left over to explore or experiment or develop your own interests. That just looks irresponsible or self-indulgent or risky.

Well, the data in the Michigan lawsuits were pretty revealing. But O'Connor wanted elite schools to be elite and diverse, so that's where we are today, and where we'll be for the next century: holistic admissions with a thumb on the scale. In other words, society as a whole benefits. With the exception, of course, for ballot initiatives limiting affirmative action in MI and CA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^ oops, wrong thread -- sort of. The two seem to have run together in lots of ways.

But now that I realize context, I'll add what was probably already implicit in my last post. I think it'd be a really undesirable out come (on so many levels and for so many reasons) if the result of the Students for Fair Admission suit was increased reliance on SATs and GPAs in both public and private college admissions.

Do you believe Cal, UCLA, and Caltech are in the wrong?