SFFA doesn't like the Asian American %

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:However in 2024 if you don't think that a significant portion of the kids scoring over 1500 on the SAT are being heavily prepped by very well-resourced parents and schools that seek to maximize standardized test scores of students than you are naive.

1500 is a very good score in 2024, but it's really not that impressive. It basically equates to a 1440 from when most of us took the test 30 to 40 years ago.

This is an interesting point. The test is "too easy" at the top in the sense that, if they augmented it with harder questions, there are a bunch of kids who would be well to the right of 1600. So SAT differences substantially understate the preparedness gap at the top. When you look at, say, Asian American outperformance on the SAT as a group, this outperformance would be much more extreme if the test were appropriately hard.

The changes you are mentioning have exacerbated this effect. It is now much harder to distinguish among top students using the SAT because the scores are so compressed up there. This is probably by design.

I don't think the difficulty has changed much at all. Sure, some types of verbal questions are now gone, but my understanding is that the scoring scale has changed (along with getting rid of any penalty for wrong answers).

The college board issues percentiles and the percentiles have changed. The curve is now a lot flatter than it was in the 1980s.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It's all relative. I didn't give a cutoff number, that was someone else. Standard deviations exist for a reason and so do percentiles. Let's say there are 5000 people above your 1540 (hypothetical score) and only 1000 spots open, of which some percentage of spots are set aside for athletes or legacy or whomever. Then yes, that "1540" is sh!tty. Go find another school where the "1540" is on the other side of the equation.

No this is false because the only person who would actually rank those 5000 students by SAT score is you. Any sane person would view them all as about equal on SAT score (especially since many of them will be literally equal on score because your range is so narrow) and then look at ALL the other stuff that matters secure in the knowledge that any of the kids you pick have an SAT score that is high enough to justify admission. Perhaps a kid with a 1600 or 1590 gets an edge but so does a kid who started a successful landscaping business in the summer or the one who one an international writing competition.

No one who actually works admissions for any of the top schools would actually view a 1540 as a "sh!tty score" even when compared against people who all have higher scores. They would all tell you that a 1540 is an excellent score and would get you in the door to having your application reviewed for admission at even the most selective school unless you had something else that was an automatic ding (very low grades or you lied on your app or whatever).

Why are you so stuck on 1540? OCD much? I said whatever the number is is arbitrary, but how many applicants above you is not. And activities such as "started your own _______" and writing contest or robotics team or something like that needs to be examined further. Much of it is access and general bs. Some are actually real but how are we to know?Only comps and activities that have a real time competition aspect will show if you actually have and can display the skills, and you did it all yourself--no daddy involvement.

LOL test scores are also absolutely gamed by wealthy families who can pay for extensive test prep and private tutoring. And I'm not even referring to superscoring here -- the advantages that wealthy and privileged students have for standardized testing are huge. Not just money for test prep or access to schools that better prep students for exams like the SAT but also access to medical diagnoses that can get them extra time.

The percent of kids who score abouve a 1500 on the SAT with no parental help to get them there is very small. Even when we aren't talking about a Varsity Blues-type scandal where parents are actually just trying to purchase higher scores wealthy parents absolutely go to great lengths to ensure their kids score higher.

I'm sure there are cases like this and I suspect that this is mostly white families trying to get their kid from a 1100 to a 1300 or 1400.
I am also sure that at the top colleges and universities, test scores predict academic performance without regard to wealth.
If what you were saying was a significant factor, you would expect wealthy students to underperform their SAT score and poorer students to overperform and yet this is not what happens.

You think only white families engage in test prep and tutoring in order to game admissions testing. Hmm okay. So students scoring 1560 or 1590 are just walking into the SAT at age 17 and acing it with absolutely no prep whatsoever and not *years* of pushing from parents to prep for the exam or enrollment in schools with curriculums geared toward standardized tests and no use of test prep agencies or tutors. Interesting.

No you dipsh*t, I think it's mostly white families taking their mediocre kids to the doctor to get a note saying their kid can get extra time on the SAT. Asian families make their kids study.

You’re a disgusting racist.

Really? You don't think it's predominantly wealthy white parents doing this for their snowflake kids? Are you fkn kidding?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:You do understand though that income and zip code are often correlated with race?

Often, but not always. The majority of FARMs students at the NY magnet program Stuyvessant are Asian American.

But, pro-affirmative action folks will tell you that those poor Asian American kids (who are typically first gen college) should still take a backseat to the even lower performing URM kids because "diversity".

It's more complicated than that.

If I were an Admissions Officer at a Top 20 school, I would take that kid from Ballou or Eastern with the 1350 any day of the week over the 1580 from Sidwell or TJ.

No one talks about any of this. It's not just race or income. It is culture. That poor first generation Asian American - whether Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian - comes from a culture that values education. That kid coming out of Eastern - 91 percent poor black - is facing some serious headwinds 24/7 every day of the week for 18 years. No one is interning at Goldman Sachs from that neighborhood.

Any good, smart student from those circumstances - zero support in life - is extraordinary.

But in reality, URM from Anacostia or Eastern or Ballou don't go to Top 20 schools. It's the well to do at GDS and similar that have been taking advantage of those circumstances. And I think most would agree that it was unfair and it was time to end those advantages and priviliges for another color of rich.

The URM representation at top 20 universities from Sidwell and GDS over the past five years is ridiculous. The URM representation from DC publics at top 20 schools - besides a few from Jackson Reed - is non-existent.

Indeed, there is no reason why a URM from an affluent family should not be held to the same academic standards as white/Asian kids. They have had the same academic opportunities as any UMC Asian/white kid.

I live in a diverse umc neighborhood. Asian, Hispanic, Black, White ... all go to the same HS, join the same clubs. As a matter of fact, most of the black parents around me are lawyers. We are not; we have just lowly bachelors degrees from no name state U. Yet, because of the color of my kid's skin, they are held to a higher standard for college admissions.

Well, the umc URMs from your supposedly diverse neighborhood have the same academic profile as your kid

The harvard case showed they don't. The difference was pretty stark.

And yes, the top colleges will take them - even after the recent SFFA case ruling. It's aggrieved people like you who has a problem with this.

Whether, poor, lower class, middle class, or affluent, the underrepresention of this academically qualified cohort at top colleges has not changed.

The qualifications are stratified by race.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:PP. I agree, there should be a similar number of white and asian students at most of these schools except at the MOST selective schools because at the 1550+ level asians outnumber whites by 2::1

Schools are allowed to decide that, above a certain very high score, differences don't matter for admissions purposes.

But they are not allowed to select the white student over the asians student because they want more white kids.

But if the kind of diversity that they're seeking regarding geography or extracurricular activities has the coincidental effect of admitting white over Asian applicants, that's still allowed.

This.

I think some posters never contemplated that there are reasons why the super high scoring and high GPA Asian American applicants weren't getting spots at all the top schools that had nothing to do with race. Schools don't actually want classes of super intense heavily "pushed" academic achievers. They want a good mix of high achieving students who are naturally curious and intelligent and have a broad range of strengths and interests and also reflect a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. They used to use race explicitly to accomplish this and now they can't so they use other things but their priorities have not shifted.

Start seeing Asian Americans as people.

No YOU start seeing them as people.

Do you actually know any Asian American students who attend top colleges? I do and guess what-- they are not universally top scoring hyper-achievers in academics.

DP here.
Are you daft? The PP is literally admonishing his PP about seeing asians as "super intense heavily "pushed" academic achievers." and how they use race to avoid this.

Also, I know a lot of asians at top colleges and they are almost universally top scoring hyper achievers in academics, sometimes they are recruited athletes but even then their academics are very good. None of them are surprised they got in but all of them were afraid they wouldn't.

They are not all in STEM.

where are you getting the notion that anyone thinks all asians are in stem?

They did not all attend "top" high schools. Like the kids if other races at these schools, they tend to be wickedly smart and hard working while also being well rounded with genuine curiosity in their areas of academic study as well as personal hobbies and passions. They are different from one another and from other students they went to HS with and from of at debts at their university. To my knowledge none if them had over a 1550 on the SAT.

These students -- these Asian American students -- were admitted to these schools not because they are the smartest kids in the country or got the highest test scores. They were admitted because they are the whole package. If say the same thing about the black and Hispanic and white and native and mixed race kids I know at these schools. If you spend a lot of time around students at top schools you come to recognize the type and it becomes obvious why these schools don't just base admissions on test scores.

Which is why your obsession with the test scores of Asian American applicants as compared to other applicants misguided. You are missing the forest for ONE tree.

Why do people act like the princeton review ad is actually true. Doing well on the sat tells you more than how well they can do on the sat. Standardized tests measure a real thing that correlates with pretty much every academic metric you can think of except things like drive and motivation. Standardized tests are probably one the best measure we have of "wickedly smart" GPA is probably a good measure of hard working.

When you see large gaps in SAT scores between racial groups and these caps are persistent and consistent over time, it is natural to be concerned about racial discrimination.
Stop trying to racially discriminate directly or indirectly and these concerns go away. We understand it will probably take years so I hope they keep suing for years until they stop trying to construct classes around race.

Asian recruited athletes?

Which sport?

Soccer?
Basketball?
Football?

🤣🤣🤣

Those are not the only sports at top colleges.

A lot of country club sports. Fencing for example.

https://gocrimson.com/sports/mens-fencing/roster
https://gocrimson.com/sports/womens-fencing/roster

Ok...the sports rich and overrepresented groups writ large have access to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:However in 2024 if you don't think that a significant portion of the kids scoring over 1500 on the SAT are being heavily prepped by very well-resourced parents and schools that seek to maximize standardized test scores of students than you are naive.

1500 is a very good score in 2024, but it's really not that impressive. It basically equates to a 1440 from when most of us took the test 30 to 40 years ago.

This is an interesting point. The test is "too easy" at the top in the sense that, if they augmented it with harder questions, there are a bunch of kids who would be well to the right of 1600. So SAT differences substantially understate the preparedness gap at the top. When you look at, say, Asian American outperformance on the SAT as a group, this outperformance would be much more extreme if the test were appropriately hard.

The changes you are mentioning have exacerbated this effect. It is now much harder to distinguish among top students using the SAT because the scores are so compressed up there. This is probably by design.

I don't think the difficulty has changed much at all. Sure, some types of verbal questions are now gone, but my understanding is that the scoring scale has changed (along with getting rid of any penalty for wrong answers).

The college board issues percentiles and the percentiles have changed. The curve is now a lot flatter than it was in the 1980s.

Yes but people now prep for the SATs in a way they didn't in the 80s. Kids today spend more of their lives testing and learning hot to test and multiple choice tests are inherently game-able.

The curve isn't flatter now because they made the test easier. It's flatter because people started working harder to score higher. There's also something of an upper limit on how hard you can make the test and still keep the multiple choice format.

If we *really* wanted to assess aptitude we'd do oral and written exams with more open ended question formats that required students to show their work and explain reasoning. This would of course be prohibitively expensive and there's no way to make it accessible to every high school kid in the country. So instead we have the SAT and that curve will continue to flatten.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You think only white families engage in test prep and tutoring in order to game admissions testing. Hmm okay. So students scoring 1560 or 1590 are just walking into the SAT at age 17 and acing it with absolutely no prep whatsoever and not *years* of pushing from parents to prep for the exam or enrollment in schools with curriculums geared toward standardized tests and no use of test prep agencies or tutors. Interesting.

Why is it so hard for you to believe that there are kids out there who are just that smart?

+1 I mean, if prepping is taking a few sample tests, both free and a book bought on Amazon, then I guess my DC did prep. Took the test once, got 1580.

Yes, DC is that *smart*. Coasted through magnet programs.

Do we "push" our kids to study and get good grades? Insofar as they take their studies seriously, yes. Expecting straight As and super high test scores? No. I'll be happy if DC#2 gets a 1350+.

Perhaps more parents should "push" their kids to get better grades, then the schools wouldn't have to dumb down the curriculum so much.

Yes there are of course kids that are that smart (and also just naturally good test takers). I knew a kid who got a 1600 on the SAT on the first try and they were just smart and didn't do a bunch of extra prep. Also she was from a family with 6 kids and none of her siblings scored that high. They were all bright but she was an outlier.

However in 2024 if you don't think that a significant portion of the kids scoring over 1500 on the SAT are being heavily prepped by very well-resourced parents and schools that seek to maximize standardized test scores of students than you are naive. Also if you spend any time at all looking at the way SAT scores correlate to socioeconomic levels and you'll realize that wealthier kids start of at a huge advantage. If you have two kids with the same natural ability who put in the same level of self-motivated prep but one is working class and the other is upper class then the upper class kid will get a higher SAT score every day of the week. Growing up privileged with educated parents and having fewer stressors in the home and attending better schools will result in higher test scores regardless of how smart you are. And growing up poor with uneducated parents and a lot of stress related to poverty and institutionalize racism and attending failing schools will depress your score even if you are a very smart and hard working self-starter.

And yet studies prove that a 1550 poor kid is academically no better than a 1550 rich kid. If being wealthy unduly elevated test scores, you would expect poor kids to overperform their test score and rich kids to underperform their test score but they don't.

Same ignorant poster spouting nonsense.

Either cite the 'studies" or STFU.

I've cited them here like a hundred times.
https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SAT_ACT_on_Grades.pdf
https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CollegeAdmissions_Paper.pdf

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yes as long as they can't prove you were using geography as an artifice for racial discrimination.

Good luck with that legal theory!

Sometimes there is proof. Emails, texts and other preserved communication.

Proof of what -- wanting to promote geographic diversity because of a belief that it will make students more expansive in their thinking.

You are not going to find emails and texts of admissions committees discussing how their recruitment of a geographically diverse class is just an end run around being forced to admit more asian kids because that's not what it is (except in your own broken mind).

Harvard lost because of evidences and proofs.

This is not correct at all. This was not a gotcha case where the court found that Harvard was secretly biased against asian applicants. Harvard had an explicitly race-conscious admissions system (affirmative action -- you might have heard of it since it was what pretty much all schools have been doing for decades) and the court decided that even though the policies were implemented with good intentions and in good faith (meaning not with the intention of discrimination) they still violated the constitution because according to the court they were not narrowly tailored enough to a "compelling government interest."

In other words the court found that Harvard had acted in good faith and the that the goal of the policy was sound but that the policy itself did not match the goal well enough. This is an incredibly narrow ruling and one that 100% leaves room for Harvard and other schools to continue to use a holistic admissions process that emphasizes diversity as long as that process in not explicitly race-conscious. Which means schools can absolutely use geography and high school and background. In fact the SC even says there is nothing to prevent schools from considering race as part of the student's overall background and experience via how it is discussed in for example a personal essay.

Harvard did not lose because of "evidences and proofs." Harvard lost very narrowly because a more restrictive interpretation of the 14th amendment won the day within a divided Supreme Court.

And a year later the court declined to take the TJ admissions appeal so the 4th circuit decision that permit's TJ's holistic admissions approach which has had the effect of greatly reducing the percentage of asian students at TJ while boosting the percentages of black and hispanic students is viewed as the current standard for holistic admissions.

I think someone who is so passionate about ensuring that only people who deserve it gain admission to selective schools should understand what I just described instead of having this childish and simplistic interpretation of the current state of race in admissions.

You don't make any sense.

The US Supreme Court found that "the admissions programs at both universities violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment". This is based on evidences and proofs. They don't just say it because they feel like it.

Well first of all the Supreme Court does not examine evidence because it does not make findings of fact. It can only make findings of law. So no their decision was not based on "evidence and proofs." Like all Supreme Court opinions it is based on a combinaton of historical precedent and a judicial interpretation of the law.

Second to a degree they did say it "because they feel like it." They overturned prior court precedent. That means they were announcing a NEW interpretation of the constitution and how it applies to affirmative action in college admissions. A prior court made a different finding of law and schools operated under that finding for many years before this ruling. So on some level yes that's exactly what it is -- a new set of justices changing the interpretation of a constitutional provision because they feel like it. Sure it's based on judicial and legal philosophies about how to interpret and apply the 14th amendment but this stuff is subjective by definition. Otherwise two Supreme Courts couldn't arrive at different conclusions on the same issue.

But sorry I'm just a lawyer. Go ask some 17 year old with a 1590 SAT and they'll probably be able to explain it better.

You could be a popcorn salesman, it wouldn't make your legal analysis any better.

Where does it say that it is overturning grutter or fisher? They clarified that the precedent never permitted racial discrimination as was being practiced by the colleges and universities.

They of course could have overturned precedent and in my opinion should have explicitly overturned precedent, but they didn't and they are taking a much incremental approach than they should but the direction of the law is clear.

But they still weren't making findings of fact based on the evidence. That happened with the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, which was affirmed by the First Circuit. SCOTUS chose to reverse both, but on legal grounds. Not factual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP. I agree, there should be a similar number of white and asian students at most of these schools except at the MOST selective schools because at the 1550+ level asians outnumber whites by 2::1

Schools are allowed to decide that, above a certain very high score, differences don't matter for admissions purposes.

But they are not allowed to select the white student over the asians student because they want more white kids.

But if the kind of diversity that they're seeking regarding geography or extracurricular activities has the coincidental effect of admitting white over Asian applicants, that's still allowed.

This.

I think some posters never contemplated that there are reasons why the super high scoring and high GPA Asian American applicants weren't getting spots at all the top schools that had nothing to do with race. Schools don't actually want classes of super intense heavily "pushed" academic achievers. They want a good mix of high achieving students who are naturally curious and intelligent and have a broad range of strengths and interests and also reflect a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. They used to use race explicitly to accomplish this and now they can't so they use other things but their priorities have not shifted.

Start seeing Asian Americans as people.

No YOU start seeing them as people.

Do you actually know any Asian American students who attend top colleges? I do and guess what-- they are not universally top scoring hyper-achievers in academics.

DP here.
Are you daft? The PP is literally admonishing his PP about seeing asians as "super intense heavily "pushed" academic achievers." and how they use race to avoid this.

Also, I know a lot of asians at top colleges and they are almost universally top scoring hyper achievers in academics, sometimes they are recruited athletes but even then their academics are very good. None of them are surprised they got in but all of them were afraid they wouldn't.

They are not all in STEM.

where are you getting the notion that anyone thinks all asians are in stem?

They did not all attend "top" high schools. Like the kids if other races at these schools, they tend to be wickedly smart and hard working while also being well rounded with genuine curiosity in their areas of academic study as well as personal hobbies and passions. They are different from one another and from other students they went to HS with and from of at debts at their university. To my knowledge none if them had over a 1550 on the SAT.

These students -- these Asian American students -- were admitted to these schools not because they are the smartest kids in the country or got the highest test scores. They were admitted because they are the whole package. If say the same thing about the black and Hispanic and white and native and mixed race kids I know at these schools. If you spend a lot of time around students at top schools you come to recognize the type and it becomes obvious why these schools don't just base admissions on test scores.

Which is why your obsession with the test scores of Asian American applicants as compared to other applicants misguided. You are missing the forest for ONE tree.

Why do people act like the princeton review ad is actually true. Doing well on the sat tells you more than how well they can do on the sat. Standardized tests measure a real thing that correlates with pretty much every academic metric you can think of except things like drive and motivation. Standardized tests are probably one the best measure we have of "wickedly smart" GPA is probably a good measure of hard working.

When you see large gaps in SAT scores between racial groups and these caps are persistent and consistent over time, it is natural to be concerned about racial discrimination.
Stop trying to racially discriminate directly or indirectly and these concerns go away. We understand it will probably take years so I hope they keep suing for years until they stop trying to construct classes around race.

Asian recruited athletes?

Which sport?

Soccer?
Basketball?
Football?

🤣🤣🤣

Those are not the only sports at top colleges.

A lot of country club sports. Fencing for example.

https://gocrimson.com/sports/mens-fencing/roster
https://gocrimson.com/sports/womens-fencing/roster

Ok...the sports rich and overrepresented groups writ large have access to.

Yes, this is asians playing by white people rules. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
We'd change the rules to be more meritocratic if we could but everyone seems super focused on getting a benneton ad into every classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:However in 2024 if you don't think that a significant portion of the kids scoring over 1500 on the SAT are being heavily prepped by very well-resourced parents and schools that seek to maximize standardized test scores of students than you are naive.

1500 is a very good score in 2024, but it's really not that impressive. It basically equates to a 1440 from when most of us took the test 30 to 40 years ago.

This is an interesting point. The test is "too easy" at the top in the sense that, if they augmented it with harder questions, there are a bunch of kids who would be well to the right of 1600. So SAT differences substantially understate the preparedness gap at the top. When you look at, say, Asian American outperformance on the SAT as a group, this outperformance would be much more extreme if the test were appropriately hard.

The changes you are mentioning have exacerbated this effect. It is now much harder to distinguish among top students using the SAT because the scores are so compressed up there. This is probably by design.

I don't think the difficulty has changed much at all. Sure, some types of verbal questions are now gone, but my understanding is that the scoring scale has changed (along with getting rid of any penalty for wrong answers).

The college board issues percentiles and the percentiles have changed. The curve is now a lot flatter than it was in the 1980s.

Yes but people now prep for the SATs in a way they didn't in the 80s. Kids today spend more of their lives testing and learning hot to test and multiple choice tests are inherently game-able.

The curve isn't flatter now because they made the test easier. It's flatter because people started working harder to score higher. There's also something of an upper limit on how hard you can make the test and still keep the multiple choice format.

If we *really* wanted to assess aptitude we'd do oral and written exams with more open ended question formats that required students to show their work and explain reasoning. This would of course be prohibitively expensive and there's no way to make it accessible to every high school kid in the country. So instead we have the SAT and that curve will continue to flatten.

The curve didn't flatten gradually over time. They flattened with a re-centering in 1990s and again when they went to the 2400 scale and again when they moved back to the 1600 scale, each renovation flattened the curve and broadened the tails.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes as long as they can't prove you were using geography as an artifice for racial discrimination.

Good luck with that legal theory!

Sometimes there is proof. Emails, texts and other preserved communication.

Proof of what -- wanting to promote geographic diversity because of a belief that it will make students more expansive in their thinking.

You are not going to find emails and texts of admissions committees discussing how their recruitment of a geographically diverse class is just an end run around being forced to admit more asian kids because that's not what it is (except in your own broken mind).

Harvard lost because of evidences and proofs.

This is not correct at all. This was not a gotcha case where the court found that Harvard was secretly biased against asian applicants. Harvard had an explicitly race-conscious admissions system (affirmative action -- you might have heard of it since it was what pretty much all schools have been doing for decades) and the court decided that even though the policies were implemented with good intentions and in good faith (meaning not with the intention of discrimination) they still violated the constitution because according to the court they were not narrowly tailored enough to a "compelling government interest."

In other words the court found that Harvard had acted in good faith and the that the goal of the policy was sound but that the policy itself did not match the goal well enough. This is an incredibly narrow ruling and one that 100% leaves room for Harvard and other schools to continue to use a holistic admissions process that emphasizes diversity as long as that process in not explicitly race-conscious. Which means schools can absolutely use geography and high school and background. In fact the SC even says there is nothing to prevent schools from considering race as part of the student's overall background and experience via how it is discussed in for example a personal essay.

Harvard did not lose because of "evidences and proofs." Harvard lost very narrowly because a more restrictive interpretation of the 14th amendment won the day within a divided Supreme Court.

And a year later the court declined to take the TJ admissions appeal so the 4th circuit decision that permit's TJ's holistic admissions approach which has had the effect of greatly reducing the percentage of asian students at TJ while boosting the percentages of black and hispanic students is viewed as the current standard for holistic admissions.

I think someone who is so passionate about ensuring that only people who deserve it gain admission to selective schools should understand what I just described instead of having this childish and simplistic interpretation of the current state of race in admissions.

You don't make any sense.

The US Supreme Court found that "the admissions programs at both universities violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment". This is based on evidences and proofs. They don't just say it because they feel like it.

Well first of all the Supreme Court does not examine evidence because it does not make findings of fact. It can only make findings of law. So no their decision was not based on "evidence and proofs." Like all Supreme Court opinions it is based on a combinaton of historical precedent and a judicial interpretation of the law.

Second to a degree they did say it "because they feel like it." They overturned prior court precedent. That means they were announcing a NEW interpretation of the constitution and how it applies to affirmative action in college admissions. A prior court made a different finding of law and schools operated under that finding for many years before this ruling. So on some level yes that's exactly what it is -- a new set of justices changing the interpretation of a constitutional provision because they feel like it. Sure it's based on judicial and legal philosophies about how to interpret and apply the 14th amendment but this stuff is subjective by definition. Otherwise two Supreme Courts couldn't arrive at different conclusions on the same issue.

But sorry I'm just a lawyer. Go ask some 17 year old with a 1590 SAT and they'll probably be able to explain it better.

You could be a popcorn salesman, it wouldn't make your legal analysis any better.

Where does it say that it is overturning grutter or fisher? They clarified that the precedent never permitted racial discrimination as was being practiced by the colleges and universities.

They of course could have overturned precedent and in my opinion should have explicitly overturned precedent, but they didn't and they are taking a much incremental approach than they should but the direction of the law is clear.

But they still weren't making findings of fact based on the evidence. That happened with the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, which was affirmed by the First Circuit. SCOTUS chose to reverse both, but on legal grounds. Not factual.

It was on the standard being used by those lower courts to reach their decisions. The trial court didn't find racism be causer it was using the wrong standard. The circuit court thought the trial court used the correct strandard and the supreme court told them "nope, racism is not constitutional"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP. I agree, there should be a similar number of white and asian students at most of these schools except at the MOST selective schools because at the 1550+ level asians outnumber whites by 2::1

Schools are allowed to decide that, above a certain very high score, differences don't matter for admissions purposes.

But they are not allowed to select the white student over the asians student because they want more white kids.

But if the kind of diversity that they're seeking regarding geography or extracurricular activities has the coincidental effect of admitting white over Asian applicants, that's still allowed.

This.

I think some posters never contemplated that there are reasons why the super high scoring and high GPA Asian American applicants weren't getting spots at all the top schools that had nothing to do with race. Schools don't actually want classes of super intense heavily "pushed" academic achievers. They want a good mix of high achieving students who are naturally curious and intelligent and have a broad range of strengths and interests and also reflect a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. They used to use race explicitly to accomplish this and now they can't so they use other things but their priorities have not shifted.

Start seeing Asian Americans as people.

No YOU start seeing them as people.

Do you actually know any Asian American students who attend top colleges? I do and guess what-- they are not universally top scoring hyper-achievers in academics.

DP here.
Are you daft? The PP is literally admonishing his PP about seeing asians as "super intense heavily "pushed" academic achievers." and how they use race to avoid this.

Also, I know a lot of asians at top colleges and they are almost universally top scoring hyper achievers in academics, sometimes they are recruited athletes but even then their academics are very good. None of them are surprised they got in but all of them were afraid they wouldn't.

They are not all in STEM.

where are you getting the notion that anyone thinks all asians are in stem?

They did not all attend "top" high schools. Like the kids if other races at these schools, they tend to be wickedly smart and hard working while also being well rounded with genuine curiosity in their areas of academic study as well as personal hobbies and passions. They are different from one another and from other students they went to HS with and from of at debts at their university. To my knowledge none if them had over a 1550 on the SAT.

These students -- these Asian American students -- were admitted to these schools not because they are the smartest kids in the country or got the highest test scores. They were admitted because they are the whole package. If say the same thing about the black and Hispanic and white and native and mixed race kids I know at these schools. If you spend a lot of time around students at top schools you come to recognize the type and it becomes obvious why these schools don't just base admissions on test scores.

Which is why your obsession with the test scores of Asian American applicants as compared to other applicants misguided. You are missing the forest for ONE tree.

Why do people act like the princeton review ad is actually true. Doing well on the sat tells you more than how well they can do on the sat. Standardized tests measure a real thing that correlates with pretty much every academic metric you can think of except things like drive and motivation. Standardized tests are probably one the best measure we have of "wickedly smart" GPA is probably a good measure of hard working.

When you see large gaps in SAT scores between racial groups and these caps are persistent and consistent over time, it is natural to be concerned about racial discrimination.
Stop trying to racially discriminate directly or indirectly and these concerns go away. We understand it will probably take years so I hope they keep suing for years until they stop trying to construct classes around race.

Asian recruited athletes?

Which sport?

Soccer?
Basketball?
Football?

🤣🤣🤣

Those are not the only sports at top colleges.

A lot of country club sports. Fencing for example.

https://gocrimson.com/sports/mens-fencing/roster
https://gocrimson.com/sports/womens-fencing/roster

Ok...the sports rich and overrepresented groups writ large have access to.

Also the sports that families obsessed with elite college admissions will push their kids into. At this point college admissions is so gameified that there are layers and layers to it. Poor kids and kids in inner city schools started taking up country club sports to boost their odds of getting athletic scholarships to college. At the same time you have wealthy families send their kids to inner city publics or moving to rural fly over states to give their kids an admissions boost. Because every factor that could possibly help a kid nab one of these highly coveted and incredibly rare spots at a top school is discoverable on the internet people keep changing the game by trying to hack it. And AOs have noticed. They get fewer and fewer applications that just feel like an authentic reflection of who a kid is -- applicants are so curated by the time they submit that the job is harder than ever. And there's no metric you can look at objectively. Grades are subject to grade inflation and the varying test re-take and grade boosting policies of various schools. Test scores are relatively objective but only a snapshot and don't tell you whether a student will be a beneficial addition to seminar discussion or whether they have the aptitude or passion for lab research needed to excel in certain fields. And yes test scores can be gamed too with enough resources especially when you are looking at differences of 10-30 points above the 1500 benchmark.

Increasingly elite college admissions are kind of a joke. At this point the smart play is to go with a state flagship and expend your energy on scholarships and merit aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:However in 2024 if you don't think that a significant portion of the kids scoring over 1500 on the SAT are being heavily prepped by very well-resourced parents and schools that seek to maximize standardized test scores of students than you are naive.

1500 is a very good score in 2024, but it's really not that impressive. It basically equates to a 1440 from when most of us took the test 30 to 40 years ago.

This is an interesting point. The test is "too easy" at the top in the sense that, if they augmented it with harder questions, there are a bunch of kids who would be well to the right of 1600. So SAT differences substantially understate the preparedness gap at the top. When you look at, say, Asian American outperformance on the SAT as a group, this outperformance would be much more extreme if the test were appropriately hard.

The changes you are mentioning have exacerbated this effect. It is now much harder to distinguish among top students using the SAT because the scores are so compressed up there. This is probably by design.

I don't think the difficulty has changed much at all. Sure, some types of verbal questions are now gone, but my understanding is that the scoring scale has changed (along with getting rid of any penalty for wrong answers).

The college board issues percentiles and the percentiles have changed. The curve is now a lot flatter than it was in the 1980s.

No one cares about the 1980s.

It's a new day for college admissions. Get with the times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:However in 2024 if you don't think that a significant portion of the kids scoring over 1500 on the SAT are being heavily prepped by very well-resourced parents and schools that seek to maximize standardized test scores of students than you are naive.

1500 is a very good score in 2024, but it's really not that impressive. It basically equates to a 1440 from when most of us took the test 30 to 40 years ago.

In 2024 a 1500 is a good score. 🙂

And 1440 was a GOOD score 40 years ago.

So what?

You must be old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP. I agree, there should be a similar number of white and asian students at most of these schools except at the MOST selective schools because at the 1550+ level asians outnumber whites by 2::1

Schools are allowed to decide that, above a certain very high score, differences don't matter for admissions purposes.

But they are not allowed to select the white student over the asians student because they want more white kids.

But if the kind of diversity that they're seeking regarding geography or extracurricular activities has the coincidental effect of admitting white over Asian applicants, that's still allowed.

This.

I think some posters never contemplated that there are reasons why the super high scoring and high GPA Asian American applicants weren't getting spots at all the top schools that had nothing to do with race. Schools don't actually want classes of super intense heavily "pushed" academic achievers. They want a good mix of high achieving students who are naturally curious and intelligent and have a broad range of strengths and interests and also reflect a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. They used to use race explicitly to accomplish this and now they can't so they use other things but their priorities have not shifted.

Start seeing Asian Americans as people.

No YOU start seeing them as people.

Do you actually know any Asian American students who attend top colleges? I do and guess what-- they are not universally top scoring hyper-achievers in academics.

DP here.
Are you daft? The PP is literally admonishing his PP about seeing asians as "super intense heavily "pushed" academic achievers." and how they use race to avoid this.

Also, I know a lot of asians at top colleges and they are almost universally top scoring hyper achievers in academics, sometimes they are recruited athletes but even then their academics are very good. None of them are surprised they got in but all of them were afraid they wouldn't.

They are not all in STEM.

where are you getting the notion that anyone thinks all asians are in stem?

They did not all attend "top" high schools. Like the kids if other races at these schools, they tend to be wickedly smart and hard working while also being well rounded with genuine curiosity in their areas of academic study as well as personal hobbies and passions. They are different from one another and from other students they went to HS with and from of at debts at their university. To my knowledge none if them had over a 1550 on the SAT.

These students -- these Asian American students -- were admitted to these schools not because they are the smartest kids in the country or got the highest test scores. They were admitted because they are the whole package. If say the same thing about the black and Hispanic and white and native and mixed race kids I know at these schools. If you spend a lot of time around students at top schools you come to recognize the type and it becomes obvious why these schools don't just base admissions on test scores.

Which is why your obsession with the test scores of Asian American applicants as compared to other applicants misguided. You are missing the forest for ONE tree.

Why do people act like the princeton review ad is actually true. Doing well on the sat tells you more than how well they can do on the sat. Standardized tests measure a real thing that correlates with pretty much every academic metric you can think of except things like drive and motivation. Standardized tests are probably one the best measure we have of "wickedly smart" GPA is probably a good measure of hard working.

When you see large gaps in SAT scores between racial groups and these caps are persistent and consistent over time, it is natural to be concerned about racial discrimination.
Stop trying to racially discriminate directly or indirectly and these concerns go away. We understand it will probably take years so I hope they keep suing for years until they stop trying to construct classes around race.

Asian recruited athletes?

Which sport?

Soccer?
Basketball?
Football?

🤣🤣🤣

Those are not the only sports at top colleges.

A lot of country club sports. Fencing for example.

https://gocrimson.com/sports/mens-fencing/roster
https://gocrimson.com/sports/womens-fencing/roster

Ok...the sports rich and overrepresented groups writ large have access to.

Yes, this is asians playing by white people rules. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
We'd change the rules to be more meritocratic if we could but everyone seems super focused on getting a benneton ad into every classroom.

Recruited Asian athletes for...fencing?

Please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes as long as they can't prove you were using geography as an artifice for racial discrimination.

Good luck with that legal theory!

Sometimes there is proof. Emails, texts and other preserved communication.

Proof of what -- wanting to promote geographic diversity because of a belief that it will make students more expansive in their thinking.

You are not going to find emails and texts of admissions committees discussing how their recruitment of a geographically diverse class is just an end run around being forced to admit more asian kids because that's not what it is (except in your own broken mind).

Harvard lost because of evidences and proofs.

This is not correct at all. This was not a gotcha case where the court found that Harvard was secretly biased against asian applicants. Harvard had an explicitly race-conscious admissions system (affirmative action -- you might have heard of it since it was what pretty much all schools have been doing for decades) and the court decided that even though the policies were implemented with good intentions and in good faith (meaning not with the intention of discrimination) they still violated the constitution because according to the court they were not narrowly tailored enough to a "compelling government interest."

In other words the court found that Harvard had acted in good faith and the that the goal of the policy was sound but that the policy itself did not match the goal well enough. This is an incredibly narrow ruling and one that 100% leaves room for Harvard and other schools to continue to use a holistic admissions process that emphasizes diversity as long as that process in not explicitly race-conscious. Which means schools can absolutely use geography and high school and background. In fact the SC even says there is nothing to prevent schools from considering race as part of the student's overall background and experience via how it is discussed in for example a personal essay.

Harvard did not lose because of "evidences and proofs." Harvard lost very narrowly because a more restrictive interpretation of the 14th amendment won the day within a divided Supreme Court.

And a year later the court declined to take the TJ admissions appeal so the 4th circuit decision that permit's TJ's holistic admissions approach which has had the effect of greatly reducing the percentage of asian students at TJ while boosting the percentages of black and hispanic students is viewed as the current standard for holistic admissions.

I think someone who is so passionate about ensuring that only people who deserve it gain admission to selective schools should understand what I just described instead of having this childish and simplistic interpretation of the current state of race in admissions.

You don't make any sense.

The US Supreme Court found that "the admissions programs at both universities violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment". This is based on evidences and proofs. They don't just say it because they feel like it.

Well first of all the Supreme Court does not examine evidence because it does not make findings of fact. It can only make findings of law. So no their decision was not based on "evidence and proofs." Like all Supreme Court opinions it is based on a combinaton of historical precedent and a judicial interpretation of the law.

Second to a degree they did say it "because they feel like it." They overturned prior court precedent. That means they were announcing a NEW interpretation of the constitution and how it applies to affirmative action in college admissions. A prior court made a different finding of law and schools operated under that finding for many years before this ruling. So on some level yes that's exactly what it is -- a new set of justices changing the interpretation of a constitutional provision because they feel like it. Sure it's based on judicial and legal philosophies about how to interpret and apply the 14th amendment but this stuff is subjective by definition. Otherwise two Supreme Courts couldn't arrive at different conclusions on the same issue.

But sorry I'm just a lawyer. Go ask some 17 year old with a 1590 SAT and they'll probably be able to explain it better.

Nope. You are wrong.
The Supreme Court considers evidences in cases.