NYTs: if affirmative action goes, say buy-bye to legacy, EA/ED, and most athletic preferences

[Anonymous]

what does "FG" stands for?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what does "FG" stands for?

Oops, too excited and didn't notice the typo

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am fine with that. College admissions needs a massive overhaul.

Depending on what the Supreme Court says, one of the biggest changes will be elimination of any sort of “Women in STEM” outreach programs, preferences, or scholarships.

Be careful what you (ignorantly) wish for.

Then the same would go for the preference boys currently get for anything other than engineering and cs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It will be interesting to see whether the ruling prohibits consideration of gender.

I don’t see why colleges would eliminate preference for athletes if affirmative action is banned. What’s the rationale?

I understand why ED and legacy could be eliminated but it may not be in the colleges’ interests to do so.

Right - I think the OP’s topic headline doesn’t reflect the article. It did refer to ED and legacy admissions being at risk, but not athletic preferences at all. Colleges definitely do NOT look at them the same way.

If anything, colleges are going to rely upon athletic preferences even more because that’s a clear race-blind way that can have the effect of increasing underrepresented minority students.

PP here - except that the VAST majority of college athletes are white. There are a few, disproportionately popular sports where Black athletes are overrepresented, but they represent a small portion of college athletes. Sports like soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, tennis, cross country, squash, fencing, sailing, crew, golf, swimming and diving—they’re all overwhelmingly white. That’s part of why athletic preferences are part of the debate: many privileged, white kids get admissions preferences because of athletics.

At the end of the day, though, athletic achievement IS merit-based (or at least should be outside of Varsity Blues scandal-type situations), which is vastly different than legacy programs that are based on being lucky enough to be born with alumni parents or born into a financial situation where they don’t need to worry about financial aid and apply ED.

My point is that athletic preferences are actually *not* a debate at these colleges. They might be part of the debate on forums like this one for the reasons that you’ve given (e.g. the “country club sports”), but they are NOT being looped into the same category as legacy preferences and ED. Once again, the OP misrepresented the article, which mentioned legacy and ED admissions being under scrutiny but not a single word about athletic preferences being under scrutiny.

It’s not merit-based if the only students who can afford to compete in the sports are the ones whose parents have the resources to support them. Do you think these sports are pretty much all-white because white people are better at them?

And why do college athletics exist? A small number do for financial reasons—football and basketball bring in money (like legacy students and donor kids). Many of the others exist, arguably, to give rich white kids a(nother) path into elite schools. That’s why Varsity Blues was possible; it just took what was already going on over a criminal line.

All I’m saying is…athletics are part of this conversation about, even if the NYT article didn’t focus on it.

PP here - You’re focused on wealthy white students. Those aren’t the students that these elite colleges are trying to depress. It’s the stereotypical top academic Asian students that Harvard has been literally been assigning scores saying that they have worse personalities!

Taking away the lacrosse team at an Ivy school isn’t going to replace that wealthy white student with an inner-city Black student. Instead, what’s actually happening is the Ivy is using lacrosse to enable them to admit a wealthy white student over an academically-inclined Asian student. So, sure, I would concede that removing those “country club sports” could increase diversity, but the “problem” for Harvard and other elite schools is that it wouldn’t create the “right type” of diversity. The actions of all of these elite colleges is that they fear becoming “too Asian” much more than any perception that they’re hospitable for wealthy white students.

To be sure, legacy admissions also disproportionately give an advantage to wealthy white students over Asian students. ED, though, is used heavily by Asian students, which is a downstream effect of Asians being told for the past 15 years that they’re not getting into elite colleges via regular decision.

In any event, once we understand that the real goal of “more diversity” at elite colleges is to be “less Asian” mucb kre than “fewer wealthy white kids”, it stands to reason that ED would be on the chopping block because Asian students use that tool just as much or more than wealthy white students compared to the general population. Legacy admissions might be a small “p” political casualty because, just like race, it’s a characteristic that a person has zero control over and has nothing to do with merit.

Athletics, though, do provide a relatively objective merit-based way for colleges to admit students that is completely outside of their GPAs and test scores. So wealthy white parents have an advantage in setting up their kids here? Yes, absolutely… but we can go down the rabbit hole and say that this is the case for every single part of the college application. Can there be corruption and bribery a la Varsity Blues? Absolutely, but we can say that this has been happening in other forms at elite colleges for generations.

At the end of the day, athletic preferences give colleges a tool to directly admit an underrepresented minority in that sole achievement in a way that pretty much no other method can. At the same time, once we take the truth serum that a white lacrosse player is taking the spot from a “normal” Asian or white student as opposed to a Black or Latino student, the athletic preferences can absolutely be used as an important tool for college DEI goals where Affirmative Action is banned for the purposes for admissions. Those lacrosse players are the “right types” of white students that those colleges want and eliminate the “low personality” Asian (and to a lesser extent white students) that they don’t want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It will be interesting to see whether the ruling prohibits consideration of gender.

I don’t see why colleges would eliminate preference for athletes if affirmative action is banned. What’s the rationale?

I understand why ED and legacy could be eliminated but it may not be in the colleges’ interests to do so.

In many schools (basically everything no engineering or hardcore STEM), consideration of gender benefits men. Schools like WM struggle to get enough qualified men to be even 40/60. This SCOTUS won’t strike down something that benefits mediocre white males.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And even with the end of those preference programs, it may not be enough to to stave off a rapid decline in URM enrollment. Zip codes of residence will become much more important for building diverse student bodies that are not uniformly UMC.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/15/us/affirmative-action-admissions-scotus.html

I am generally a liberal and used to support affirmative action but I have come to oppose it because I think the changes in this article will be better for society than keeping the current unequal system and then putting an affirmative action band-aid on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am fine with that. College admissions needs a massive overhaul.

This.

Test everyone based on same criteria. No double standands based on bs this or bs that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It will be interesting to see whether the ruling prohibits consideration of gender.

I don’t see why colleges would eliminate preference for athletes if affirmative action is banned. What’s the rationale?

I understand why ED and legacy could be eliminated but it may not be in the colleges’ interests to do so.

Right - I think the OP’s topic headline doesn’t reflect the article. It did refer to ED and legacy admissions being at risk, but not athletic preferences at all. Colleges definitely do NOT look at them the same way.

If anything, colleges are going to rely upon athletic preferences even more because that’s a clear race-blind way that can have the effect of increasing underrepresented minority students.

That’s a myth at top colleges. Look at pics of he LAX, squash, water polo, swimming/diving, field hockey crew, golf, etc teams. Even football at an Ivy has more white kids than you would suspect. Lots of very white niche sports at IVys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am fine with that. College admissions needs a massive overhaul.

This.

Test everyone based on same criteria. No double standands based on bs this or bs that.

BS like in-state versus OOS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am fine with that. College admissions needs a massive overhaul.

This.

Test everyone based on same criteria. No double standands based on bs this or bs that.

BS like in-state versus OOS?

No. State colleges (esp. land grant colleges) exist primarily to serve the students of the state. And are supported by the taxpayers of the state, who also subsidize in state tuition. There are legit policy reasons that have nothing to do with a protected class to give an in state preference. This argument is over protected classes, like race, gender, region and national origin. State of residency is not a protected class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It will be interesting to see whether the ruling prohibits consideration of gender.

I don’t see why colleges would eliminate preference for athletes if affirmative action is banned. What’s the rationale?

I understand why ED and legacy could be eliminated but it may not be in the colleges’ interests to do so.

Right - I think the OP’s topic headline doesn’t reflect the article. It did refer to ED and legacy admissions being at risk, but not athletic preferences at all. Colleges definitely do NOT look at them the same way.

If anything, colleges are going to rely upon athletic preferences even more because that’s a clear race-blind way that can have the effect of increasing underrepresented minority students.

PP here - except that the VAST majority of college athletes are white. There are a few, disproportionately popular sports where Black athletes are overrepresented, but they represent a small portion of college athletes. Sports like soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, tennis, cross country, squash, fencing, sailing, crew, golf, swimming and diving—they’re all overwhelmingly white. That’s part of why athletic preferences are part of the debate: many privileged, white kids get admissions preferences because of athletics.

At the end of the day, though, athletic achievement IS merit-based (or at least should be outside of Varsity Blues scandal-type situations), which is vastly different than legacy programs that are based on being lucky enough to be born with alumni parents or born into a financial situation where they don’t need to worry about financial aid and apply ED.

My point is that athletic preferences are actually *not* a debate at these colleges. They might be part of the debate on forums like this one for the reasons that you’ve given (e.g. the “country club sports”), but they are NOT being looped into the same category as legacy preferences and ED. Once again, the OP misrepresented the article, which mentioned legacy and ED admissions being under scrutiny but not a single word about athletic preferences being under scrutiny.

It’s not merit-based if the only students who can afford to compete in the sports are the ones whose parents have the resources to support them. Do you think these sports are pretty much all-white because white people are better at them?

And why do college athletics exist? A small number do for financial reasons—football and basketball bring in money (like legacy students and donor kids). Many of the others exist, arguably, to give rich white kids a(nother) path into elite schools. That’s why Varsity Blues was possible; it just took what was already going on over a criminal line.

All I’m saying is…athletics are part of this conversation about, even if the NYT article didn’t focus on it.

Athletics exist because of the concept of a sound body and mind being desirable. Schools like the Ivies have always valued athletics and physical fitness. My family does not hve any recruited athletes, but I do see the value in promoting education leading toward being fit physically and academically. This is the Ivy tradition. There are many other schools that may not have that tradition, so maybe pick one of those if it more closely aligns with your values.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am fine with that. College admissions needs a massive overhaul.

This.

Test everyone based on same criteria. No double standands based on bs this or bs that.

BS like in-state versus OOS?

No. State colleges (esp. land grant colleges) exist primarily to serve the students of the state. And are supported by the taxpayers of the state, who also subsidize in state tuition. There are legit policy reasons that have nothing to do with a protected class to give an in state preference. This argument is over protected classes, like race, gender, region and national origin. State of residency is not a protected class.

Exactly.

[Anonymous]

Athletics exist because there is money to be made in college sports.

[Anonymous]

Relying on tests only for admission would shut out many qualified students. Due to the pushing of “differentiated instruction” in schools nowadays, students are often able to demonstrate their knowledge in different manners: via a traditional written test (be it multiple choice, or essay), poster, add, video, etc…. Not all students do well on multiple choice exams/standardized tests.
I taught for many years, and some of my smartest/problem solver type kiddos would do amazing projects, but struggled on multiple choice exams. Teaching in schools is going more and more in the direction of offering choices to show knowledge. One test, one day will never give you the whole picture. GPA, course rigor, letters of rec and essays should weigh more in admissions, in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It will be interesting to see whether the ruling prohibits consideration of gender.

I don’t see why colleges would eliminate preference for athletes if affirmative action is banned. What’s the rationale?

I understand why ED and legacy could be eliminated but it may not be in the colleges’ interests to do so.

Right - I think the OP’s topic headline doesn’t reflect the article. It did refer to ED and legacy admissions being at risk, but not athletic preferences at all. Colleges definitely do NOT look at them the same way.

If anything, colleges are going to rely upon athletic preferences even more because that’s a clear race-blind way that can have the effect of increasing underrepresented minority students.

That’s a myth at top colleges. Look at pics of he LAX, squash, water polo, swimming/diving, field hockey crew, golf, etc teams. Even football at an Ivy has more white kids than you would suspect. Lots of very white niche sports at IVys.

Please see my response to this same point at 12:52. In summary, that’s understood, but the reason why elite colleges lean on those sports is that they’re worried about being “too Asian” much more than being “too white and wealthy” in the event that they eliminate athletic preferences. That white lacrosse player is replacing a “low personality” Asian student as opposed to a Black or Latino student, so athletics help provide the “right type” of diversity in the eyes of those colleges. Whether that’s right or wrong is very fair for debate, but I can’t emphasize enough that being “too Asian” is the greater fear for these places than being “too wealthy and white” as of now.

At the same time, athletic preferences are possibly the clearest legal race-neutral way to *directly* admit material numbers of underrepresented minorities in the non-country club sports. They aren’t going away at all - anyone that thinks otherwise needs to understand that being “less Asian” (not “less wealthy and white”) has been the aim of all of these shady application processes like totally subjective personality scores.