Ivy League Affirmative Action from the inside

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:After a year of people asking rude, intrusive and downright racist questions to me and my AA son, I have the following to say

1. To assume that all AA candidates are underperforming and no other group has underperforming candidates is truly crazy and flies in the face of common sense. Most successful urm candidates to the top colleges have a set of stats that will allow them to succeed. Even if the are not perfect stats. I'm not witnessing among my friends a plethora of AA kids getting into ivy leagues schools with or without high stats. The ones that are have Very Strong grades and test scores.

2. A previous poster about law school said it right. I used my intellect and hard work to succeed and used others expectations of me to my advantage. I have learned to never underestimate others aNd to not judge a book by its cover.

3. Why do all of these discussions devolve into criticizing AA students, as opposed to International students, development cases, legacy and athletic admissions, which all dwarf AA admissions numbers. Racial animous, bias and hostility is what I believe to be a cause. Especially at this time of the year where college acceptances have been sent out. There has to be someone to blame for your child not getting in. So guess who is to blame? That black kid whom YOU KNOW is not as well qualified as your child.

4. About mr. French's child, again, as the previous poster said, talk to him in 15 years. My middle class son has been stopped by the police, on his way to his fancy private school. People make assumptions about his intellect that confuse him and he does not understand why he has to fight for placement into the top classes in a way that his classmates with similar grades don't have to fight.

5. This year my child is a senior. In order to keep sane and civil, I have had to walk away from (or give a benign responses to) parents and their offspring suggesting my child has it easy because he is black and that colleges were probably rolling out the welcome mat and throwing money at us. In fact, the college process was probably the same for him as I expect it is for many of you--infuriating, disappointing, baffling, arduous, but ultimately, fine.

+ MY AA son has faced the sane treatment.

[Anonymous]

make that same not sane

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After a year of people asking rude, intrusive and downright racist questions to me and my AA son, I have the following to say

1. To assume that all AA candidates are underperforming and no other group has underperforming candidates is truly crazy and flies in the face of common sense. Most successful urm candidates to the top colleges have a set of stats that will allow them to succeed. Even if the are not perfect stats. I'm not witnessing among my friends a plethora of AA kids getting into ivy leagues schools with or without high stats. The ones that are have Very Strong grades and test scores.

2. A previous poster about law school said it right. I used my intellect and hard work to succeed and used others expectations of me to my advantage. I have learned to never underestimate others aNd to not judge a book by its cover.

3. Why do all of these discussions devolve into criticizing AA students, as opposed to International students, development cases, legacy and athletic admissions, which all dwarf AA admissions numbers. Racial animous, bias and hostility is what I believe to be a cause. Especially at this time of the year where college acceptances have been sent out. There has to be someone to blame for your child not getting in. So guess who is to blame? That black kid whom YOU KNOW is not as well qualified as your child.

4. About mr. French's child, again, as the previous poster said, talk to him in 15 years. My middle class son has been stopped by the police, on his way to his fancy private school. People make assumptions about his intellect that confuse him and he does not understand why he has to fight for placement into the top classes in a way that his classmates with similar grades don't have to fight.

5. This year my child is a senior. In order to keep sane and civil, I have had to walk away from (or give a benign responses to) parents and their offspring suggesting my child has it easy because he is black and that colleges were probably rolling out the welcome mat and throwing money at us. In fact, the college process was probably the same for him as I expect it is for many of you--infuriating, disappointing, baffling, arduous, but ultimately, fine.

+ a million. Wish I could give you a big hug. You absolutely nailed it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After a year of people asking rude, intrusive and downright racist questions to me and my AA son, I have the following to say

1. To assume that all AA candidates are underperforming and no other group has underperforming candidates is truly crazy and flies in the face of common sense. Most successful urm candidates to the top colleges have a set of stats that will allow them to succeed. Even if the are not perfect stats. I'm not witnessing among my friends a plethora of AA kids getting into ivy leagues schools with or without high stats. The ones that are have Very Strong grades and test scores.

2. A previous poster about law school said it right. I used my intellect and hard work to succeed and used others expectations of me to my advantage. I have learned to never underestimate others aNd to not judge a book by its cover.

3. Why do all of these discussions devolve into criticizing AA students, as opposed to International students, development cases, legacy and athletic admissions, which all dwarf AA admissions numbers. Racial animous, bias and hostility is what I believe to be a cause. Especially at this time of the year where college acceptances have been sent out. There has to be someone to blame for your child not getting in. So guess who is to blame? That black kid whom YOU KNOW is not as well qualified as your child.

4. About mr. French's child, again, as the previous poster said, talk to him in 15 years. My middle class son has been stopped by the police, on his way to his fancy private school. People make assumptions about his intellect that confuse him and he does not understand why he has to fight for placement into the top classes in a way that his classmates with similar grades don't have to fight.

5. This year my child is a senior. In order to keep sane and civil, I have had to walk away from (or give a benign responses to) parents and their offspring suggesting my child has it easy because he is black and that colleges were probably rolling out the welcome mat and throwing money at us. In fact, the college process was probably the same for him as I expect it is for many of you--infuriating, disappointing, baffling, arduous, but ultimately, fine.

+ a million. Wish I could give you a big hug. You absolutely nailed it.

PPs, This post brought tears to my eyes. I'm really sorry your children (and you) have had to go through this. We're still a long way from being a fair and just society, obviously, but by staying sane and civil, you are helping all of us move in that direction. BTW, my neighbor's kid got into an Ivy. He's AA, and a super student and top athlete. His being AA can't have given him any advantage because he's got so many advantages to start with! Geeze. I can't understand why people cling to racist ideas in this day and age. Such a waste of all our energies. Racism=everyone loses.

[Anonymous]

Meanwhile, even full-pay status cannot save masses of cheating Asians from expulsion from American colleges...
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/american-universities-are-addicted-to-chinese-students/394517/
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/29/chinese-nationals-indicted-elaborate-cheating-scheme-standardized-admissions-tests

[Anonymous]

You do realize that article you cited is for international student. We are talking about Americans here. Your xenophobia is palpable.

[Anonymous]

I'm all in favor of some kind of affirmative action for low SES kids. That will necessarily pick up a lot of racial minority kids. But I fail to see why the kid of a successful African-American doctor or lawyer should get an admission preference based on race, when they have had a more advantageous start in life than the first-generation college applicant from a blue collar background in Kentucky who happens to be white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm all in favor of some kind of affirmative action for low SES kids. That will necessarily pick up a lot of racial minority kids. But I fail to see why the kid of a successful African-American doctor or lawyer should get an admission preference based on race, when they have had a more advantageous start in life than the first-generation college applicant from a blue collar background in Kentucky who happens to be white.

+1. based on SES not race.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm all in favor of some kind of affirmative action for low SES kids. That will necessarily pick up a lot of racial minority kids. But I fail to see why the kid of a successful African-American doctor or lawyer should get an admission preference based on race, when they have had a more advantageous start in life than the first-generation college applicant from a blue collar background in Kentucky who happens to be white.

This verbatim comment was on College Confidential. You get around, don't you? Or is it some people just like to keep shit going.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all in favor of some kind of affirmative action for low SES kids. That will necessarily pick up a lot of racial minority kids. But I fail to see why the kid of a successful African-American doctor or lawyer should get an admission preference based on race, when they have had a more advantageous start in life than the first-generation college applicant from a blue collar background in Kentucky who happens to be white.

This verbatim comment was on College Confidential. You get around, don't you? Or is it some people just like to keep shit going.

Touchy? Looks like you don't want to lose your AA privilege.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Actually, Asians are targeted more than blacks on here.

Really, where are the negative stats about how Asians perfom in college? I will admit that Asians are targeted on many academic threads "on here." But when the discussion is Affrimative Action, Blacks bear the brunt of that criticism.

Umm, Asians do NOT benefit from affirmative action. It's harder to get into a lot of places as an Asian than even a white person.

[Anonymous]

Princeton was male only until 1969. When they added women they expanded the size of the class to ensure that the female admits would not reduce the number of white guys, and especially legacy white guys. When they increased minority enrollment, they expanded the class size again. The larger classes beginning since 1969 yielded even more legacy applicants in the next generation, so Princeton had to expand the class size again to protect the legacy share of admissions. The bottom line is that the minority admits have not come at the expense of white students but have been added on. I would guess that other universities also expanded their enrollment to add minorities without reducing the numbers of white students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all in favor of some kind of affirmative action for low SES kids. That will necessarily pick up a lot of racial minority kids. But I fail to see why the kid of a successful African-American doctor or lawyer should get an admission preference based on race, when they have had a more advantageous start in life than the first-generation college applicant from a blue collar background in Kentucky who happens to be white.

This verbatim comment was on College Confidential. You get around, don't you? Or is it some people just like to keep shit going.

Touchy? Looks like you don't want to lose your AA privilege.

First generation college candidates also get special consideration and, if white, are not likely to be competing against URMs for admission. So this is a bogus trade-off. Elite schools can and do admit both kinds of students.

As for why it's legit that the kid of an AA professional may benefit from affirmative action, there are a whole series of considerations/issues you're ignoring. First, it's not clear who had the more advantageous start in life. A white boy from rural Kentucky may have had an easier childhood/adolescence than an African American boy from any of a number of U.S. cities. Racism shapes life chances as much as (and in some cases/at some stages, more than) socio-economic status. And certainly post-college, to the extent that anyone is aware of his class background, the white kid will be seen as extraordinarily talented for having gotten into/graduated from an elite school, while the African American grad will constantly have to deal with people assuming he didn't really deserve to go -- regardless of his credentials prior to admission. Secondly, as a society, we're still falling very short of the ideal of creating a culture in which leaders emerge from all kinds of demographics. That's important both in shaping aspirations and in shaping how power is exercised. To the extent that the goal is creating a diverse elite, it's important not only to admit URM kids from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, but also to admit kids who have the background to excel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all in favor of some kind of affirmative action for low SES kids. That will necessarily pick up a lot of racial minority kids. But I fail to see why the kid of a successful African-American doctor or lawyer should get an admission preference based on race, when they have had a more advantageous start in life than the first-generation college applicant from a blue collar background in Kentucky who happens to be white.

+1. based on SES not race.

If you based it on SES vs. race it would drastically lower the number of AA and Hispanic students at top universities. The children of the poorest white and Asian families score the same on the SAT as the children of the most affluent AA families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all in favor of some kind of affirmative action for low SES kids. That will necessarily pick up a lot of racial minority kids. But I fail to see why the kid of a successful African-American doctor or lawyer should get an admission preference based on race, when they have had a more advantageous start in life than the first-generation college applicant from a blue collar background in Kentucky who happens to be white.

+1. based on SES not race.

If you based it on SES vs. race it would drastically lower the number of AA and Hispanic students at top universities. The children of the poorest white and Asian families score the same on the SAT as the children of the most affluent AA families.

The color of skin is more important than the content of their mind.

Got it