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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's way past-time to end race based affirmative action, and in time the Supreme Court will end it.  If you're going to have a preference, have it be socio-economic.  The latter would obviously benefit a lot of socio-economically disadvantaged blacks and Hispanics.  But please explain why the African-American, private school offspring of a Big Law partner or surgeon should get a "URM" preference in college admissions over the kid of an Asian dishwasher or of a white unemployed coal miner.  Makes no sense at all.[/quote]

It makes no sense because this is not what happens. Idiots. All of those groups you listed get preferences in admission especially with schools that take a holistic approach. It's not the URM over others. If you want to end affirmative action - you need to end all hooks and preferences - legacies and athletes in particular. You idiots who rail against affirmative action don't even realize that is where the majority of the advantage lies in college admissions, along with the ability to pay full freight.[/quote]

You're missing an important point.  URMs receive well documented allowances in the evaluation process in the for skin color.....250 points on the SAT if you're black, 180 if you're latino, etc.  Legacies and athletes receive a benefit in the admissions process as well but it doesn't come in the form of handicaps, it comes in the form of an extra (albeit heavily weighted) credential in their application.  You're assuming athletes and legacies aren't qualified to gain entry on their own merits but that's erroneous.  Any elite college will tell you that >90% of applicants are qualified, based on their statistics, for admittance. The challenge of course is standing out with non-quantifiable attributes. [b]Athletics and legacies are great ways to stand out but by no means a guarantee of admittance.[/b] [/quote]

Bullshit especially at places like Tufts and Amherst. I've seen this for myself first-hand. Legacy and athletics impact admissions way more than the points given to URMs on tests- which by the way is just one metric for admission. You don't know anything about their grades, talents, recommendations or ECs.

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I think you're half right; Athletes get very large bumps if they're good.  As much as being AA?  Perhaps, perhaps not, but significant all the same.  The legacy bump is much less significant most places unless the parents have thrown a ton of money at the school.  I've seen many, many cases of legacy children with stats above the median getting rejected.

I'd be perfectly happy removing all of these preferences.[/quote]

I'm PP I think its difficult to determine how significant any of these advantages are. My main point is that I believe in terms of sheer numbers there are more students gaining admission due to legacy and athletic admission than there are URMs, simply because more white students apply to these schools. I don't think many URMs apply to these top schools in the first place. [b]Freaking Tufts has 5% black students[/b].

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And that's with affirmative action but so what?  Is there some magic number that you'd like to see?  [/quote]

My point in bringing up the 5% is that people complain about black students taking spots, but they are basically non-existent in many of these spaces.

If you are a parent who has sent your kid to a diverse school for most of their lives, these numbers are disappointing as another PP noted. White students at our high school want diversity in their college experience and are disappointed when they go on college visits.

It's not about percentages, it's about wanting diversity of thought and experiences - not just AA students, but students of all types. So the point I think people miss is that the goal is to try and build diverse classes, that is stated clearly in the materials for all of the top schools we are talking about.  All of you who are so up in arms about affirmative action should actually read the materials from these colleges, they are committed to building diverse classes - that goal is not going away. And you are paying money to those colleges to help them fulfill that goal.

If affirmative action isn't working then how do you get to a diverse class? Models have been run to see what happens if its based on socio-economics and that fails.  Diversity is what students want and that is what the colleges want, the question is how to get there without doing harm to anyone.

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