Ivy League Affirmative Action from the inside

[Anonymous]

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/473489.page

Looks like the poster has been outed. I will also post this on the Harvard Asian thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

No. IMO, they aren't wrong but neither is Harvard. Different universities have different constraints resources, and objectives.

The UCs have much larger class sizes, they’re public schools (a fact that has significant political and legal implications), and they haven’t chosen to devote the same kinds of resources to admissions that Harvard has. At which point, of necessity, admissions is going to be a more mechanical process (and, as a result, how race affects admissions will be more obvious).

Caltech is focused primarily on STEM fields where, arguably, standardized tests are more relevant and reliable predictors of college success. Even so, Caltech has made different choices wrt admission than MIT has. I think both choices are legit. But as a student, parent, or faculty member, I’d have a strong preference for MIT’s model over Caltech’s model. These are the perspectives I’ve evaluated colleges from -- I'm not sure what I’d think if I were an employer (it might depend on the type of job and my experiences with grads of each school). IME, the best learning environments are ones in which diverse groups of able students with different strengths, orientations, experiences, and points of view share an interest in a topic and are encouraged to respect, listen to, seek out, and learn from people who think differently than they do. I don’t get the vibe from Caltech, whereas MIT clearly values creativity, collaboration, and even a certain (highly nerdy) sense of playfulness and transgression/risk-taking. That’s certainly how I learn, that’s the kind of student I love to teach, and the kind of adult I hope to see my STEM kid become. But clearly there's a market for Caltech (both among high-performing students and high-paying employers) and important research gets done there. So I'm not saying Caltech is wrong to be Caltech. Just that I'd choose MIT over Caltech if those were my only two options.

[Anonymous]

UC is forbidden by law to use race as a factor. The percentage of Asian gone up when California passed the anti affirmative action law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UC is forbidden by law to use race as a factor. The percentage of Asian gone up when California passed the anti affirmative action law.

Blacks are only 7% of the CA population and are falling (blacks are moving out of CA in droves).

That has a role to play as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:um, I think Obama's kids will have something entirely different going for them than race.

I can't tell if the quotes are from someone who thinks they shouldn't take Black kids or that they shouldn't take those particular Black kids. This ridiculous fear that African Americans are somehow taking over and getting unfair breaks has been circulating in racist circles for ages and yet I look around and its still a white dominated world.

You are not entitled to get into a particular college. It is not your spot. They can do with it whatever they want.

+1000!

To a point. On this issue, they can only do what the Supreme Court allows them to do or, for state schools in CA and MI, what the enacted ballot initiatives allow them to do. Justice O'Connor said, in dicta in the MI case, that she hoped affirmative action would sunset in 20 years (or whatever). Not gonna happen.

I hope that the Roberts court kills affirmative acton once and for all. It's past time to end institutionized reverse racism. And the fact that advantaged kids of black professionals are benefitting from affirmative action is outrageous.

[Anonymous]

Agree with prior suggestion that applicants should always check the mixed race box. Who says that it's not correct genetically and it throws a monkey wrench into affiirmative actio.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The idea that Stanford occupies a higher moral ground than Berkeley because the percentage of blacks in the freshman class is higher than that of Berkeley is just downright vile, evil and revolting . Stanford enrolls blacks out of pure self interest and not love for any altruistic reason and certainly not because they love blacks. Private schools like Stanford are nothing but businesses just like Mcdonald's or Starbucks around the corner hence their primary interest is their financial and economic survival hence their widespread practice of legacy preferences and certainly not to spread justice and fairness in this world.

That garbage " Critical Mass Theory " claims that the more blacks there are in a university, the happier blacks will be , the more likely to graduate and way well into the road of happiness and fulfillment in life. What a bunch of crock. Prop 200 in the State of Washington banned race preferences in the year 2000 more than a decade ago. Blacks make up 2.4% of the undergraduates in the University of Washington- Seattle. In the state of Indiana , at the University Indiana Blooimington, blacks made up about 5.6 % of the undergraduates. For the 2005 freshman class of U of Washington-Seattle, the gap in the 6 year graduation rates was 13%. For Indiana Bloomington and its 2005 freshmen class the gap in the 6 year graduation rates between whites and blacks was a staggering 28%, 7 points higher than that of Berkeley.

You would think that since there are more blacks both in terms of percentage and absolute numbers at Indiana Bloomington compared to U of Washington Seattle, the gap in 6 year graduation rates between blacks and whites would be smaller than 13 %, instead what happened was the complete opposite . That is what race preferences does for you. The more a public school practices race preferences, the greater the gap in 6 year graduation rates of blacks and whites will be. That pattern is repeated in every public university in the nation. In states where they have banned race preferences like Georgia or Florida, the 6 year graduation rates of blacks in its public universities are close to, equal to or HIGHER than that of whites in its public universities.

Geez...why do so many of folks on here come for Blacks? Based on your own numbers, Blacks would take up 24 out of a class of 1000 at UW and 56 out of a class of 1000 at IU. That is the magnitude of the impact that folks are arguing about. Instead of worrying about how your kids can get one of those 900+ spots, you guys are focused on the relatively few spots that the Blacks get. My goodness, it is not like half the class is Black.

I think the point was that racial preference in admissions will result in "mismatch' of academics and less on-time graduation for the favored racial group.

And yet the facts don't bear that out. There are many more people capable of doing well at Harvard than get into Harvard.

From the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-painful-truth-about-affirmative-action/263122/

Research on the mismatch problem was almost non-existent until the mid-1990s; it has developed rapidly in the past half-dozen years, especially among labor economists. To cite just a few examples of the findings:

•Black college freshmen are more likely to aspire to science or engineering careers than are white freshmen, but mismatch causes blacks to abandon these fields at twice the rate of whites.

•Blacks who start college interested in pursuing a doctorate and an academic career are twice as likely to be derailed from this path if they attend a school where they are mismatched.

•About half of black college students rank in the bottom 20 percent of their classes (and the bottom 10 percent in law school).

•Black law school graduates are four times as likely to fail bar exams as are whites; mismatch explains half of this gap.

•Interracial friendships are more likely to form among students with relatively similar levels of academic preparation; thus, blacks and Hispanics are more socially integrated on campuses where they are less academically mismatched.

Wow....all this talk about a racial group that is less than 10% of the student population at most PWI's. Out of a class of 1000 people, we are talking about less than 100 people. Seems to me that some of y'all's focus in on the wrong group. Maybe some of you should worry about why your kid can't secure one of the other 900 spots. Your competition is other Whites and Asians, not Latinos and Blacks.

Then why don't colleges just come out and say "there's a big boy table" and "there's a kiddy table" and you are competing at the table we place you at.

Everyone knows (or I thought they did ) that URM's are placed in a different bucket, just like legacies and athletes. If you are not URM, you are not competing with an URM for a specific spot. What people are objecting to is the POLICY" that a "certain number" of spots have to be URM. They want to have more spots that they can compete for.

But explicit quotas (which you state that 'everyone knows') are actually not what universities are saying when they hide behind 'holistic admissions'.

SCOTUS stated an effective quota format is illegal.

WTF does SCOTUS mean?

[Anonymous]

Supreme Court of the United States -- like POTUS or FLOTUS. personally, I prefer The Supremes as their collective nickname.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:um, I think Obama's kids will have something entirely different going for them than race.

I can't tell if the quotes are from someone who thinks they shouldn't take Black kids or that they shouldn't take those particular Black kids. This ridiculous fear that African Americans are somehow taking over and getting unfair breaks has been circulating in racist circles for ages and yet I look around and its still a white dominated world.

You are not entitled to get into a particular college. It is not your spot. They can do with it whatever they want.

+1000!

To a point. On this issue, they can only do what the Supreme Court allows them to do or, for state schools in CA and MI, what the enacted ballot initiatives allow them to do. Justice O'Connor said, in dicta in the MI case, that she hoped affirmative action would sunset in 20 years (or whatever). Not gonna happen.

I hope that the Roberts court kills affirmative acton once and for all. It's past time to end institutionized reverse racism. And the fact that advantaged kids of black professionals are benefitting from affirmative action is outrageous.

Not going to happen. It was tightened up, somewhat, but colleges rejoiced because they can still do the soft quota, holistic thing. As I recall--I could be wrong--Justice Thurgood Marshall indicated affirmative action would be needed for centuries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Supreme Court of the United States -- like POTUS or FLOTUS. personally, I prefer The Supremes as their collective nickname.

+1 glad to see some people still have humor on this forum

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Supreme Court of the United States -- like POTUS or FLOTUS. personally, I prefer The Supremes as their collective nickname.

LOL!

[Anonymous]

Re how long affirmative action would be needed for. It's important to remember how recent affirmative action is -- basically, it's been around for about a generation. Bakke was decided as I was entering college (and my kid hasn't started college yet). I was in the first class where Harvard offered equal access admissions to women (before that it was 4:1 male to female; my class was about 2:1; now it's 55:45. And systematic attempts to break down economic barriers are even more recent (less than 20 years old).

Meanwhile, there are elites whose families have had access to Harvard for many generations. Especially if concepts like "mismatch" are going to be invoked to undercut affirmative action, then it's really important to give these programs a few generations to work. The first generation may well go in under-prepared but benefit enough to give their own kids a better start. Once we're at a point where the group competes successfully, then the need for protection goes away.

Kind of like the logic of protecting infant industries

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:um, I think Obama's kids will have something entirely different going for them than race.

I can't tell if the quotes are from someone who thinks they shouldn't take Black kids or that they shouldn't take those particular Black kids. This ridiculous fear that African Americans are somehow taking over and getting unfair breaks has been circulating in racist circles for ages and yet I look around and its still a white dominated world.

You are not entitled to get into a particular college. It is not your spot. They can do with it whatever they want.

+1000!

To a point. On this issue, they can only do what the Supreme Court allows them to do or, for state schools in CA and MI, what the enacted ballot initiatives allow them to do. Justice O'Connor said, in dicta in the MI case, that she hoped affirmative action would sunset in 20 years (or whatever). Not gonna happen.

I hope that the Roberts court kills affirmative acton once and for all. It's past time to end institutionized reverse racism. And the fact that advantaged kids of black professionals are benefitting from affirmative action is outrageous.

...but parental preference is fine??? Go back in your hole. Affirmative Action is not the enemy. People with your attitude are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Re how long affirmative action would be needed for. It's important to remember how recent affirmative action is -- basically, it's been around for about a generation. Bakke was decided as I was entering college (and my kid hasn't started college yet). I was in the first class where Harvard offered equal access admissions to women (before that it was 4:1 male to female; my class was about 2:1; now it's 55:45. And systematic attempts to break down economic barriers are even more recent (less than 20 years old).

Meanwhile, there are elites whose families have had access to Harvard for many generations. Especially if concepts like "mismatch" are going to be invoked to undercut affirmative action, then it's really important to give these programs a few generations to work. The first generation may well go in under-prepared but benefit enough to give their own kids a better start. Once we're at a point where the group competes successfully, then the need for protection goes away.

Kind of like the logic of protecting infant industries

Sandra Day O'Connor said 20 years at the Michigan case, didn't she?

[Anonymous]

What O'Connor wrote was that Powell's opinion in Bakke, which embraced the Harvard model, was written 25 years ago and we expect that, in another 25 years, this approach to achieving a diverse student body won't be necessary. So it was a prediction (and one based on rhetoric rather than analysis) -- not a ruling or a requirement.

Interestingly, it looks like the more selective the institution (even in the context of public universities), the more compelling the interest in a diverse student body may be. That's part of the explanation why Michigan's law school admissions process was upheld while their undergrad admissions process was struck down. The logic was that Michigan's law school is forming the elite not just providing individuals with an education, and that made its interest in creating a diverse class compelling. Admissions process was different (more holistic), but even that's tied up with selectivity (e.g. smaller numbers, more attention to the applicant as an individual).