Reply to AP Classes to be Eliminated by 2022

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Elite colleges, in many cases, are private colleges and need money.  And the tuition they charge means, inevitably, people with wealth will be significantly over-represented in these schools.  To the extent that private school kids get preference over rich public school kids, that’s because (a) their parents have demonstrated willingness/ability to pay for education and/or (b) the particular school has a track record of [b]providing well-prepared students[/b] who do well at the college, contribute $, encourage others to attend.

I’m not saying it’s fair.  Just pointing out that the system is more capitalistic than meritocratic.  And if it were designed to be truly meritocratic, entrance exams for elite colleges would look nothing like the SATs.[/quote]

The part that is bolded above (well prepared students), while may be true it doesn't negate that some public school students are also at least equally well prepared.  Unless students from those public schools are recruited in sufficient numbers consistently year after year, those public schools have no way of producing track record.  Also, only the bolded part (well prepared students) has something to do with[i] holistic approach [/i] touted by Harvard and other elite colleges.  So either Harvard and other elite colleges drop the mask of[i] holistic approach[/i] and come out clean as to how biased their admission process truly is or make the process as unbiased as it can be.  The courts will certainly give their verdict in time and we shall see how that will affect the composition of incoming students to these elite universities.[/quote]

There’s no mask.  These schools have a variety of different goals ($, diversity, access to power, advancing knowledge, their own prestige, alumni loyalty, high retention rates) and choose kids whom they expect to further some combination of those objectives.  Different kids get in for different reasons.  There’s no formula — each kid comes as a package/bundle of attributes and the decisive factor in one case won’t prove decisive in another.  That’s why/the sense in which the process is holistic.  It’s also subjective and time-pressured.  That doesn’t mean anything goes, but it does mean that, in the absence of clear evidence of intent, it’s hard to prove racial discrimination, especially against a group whose representation in the undergraduate population meets or exceeds that of its representation in the country’s population.  Which doesn't mean the system is unbiased, but nor does it mean that the system is designed to hide some nefarious intent.  I take your point that, in the absence of such intent, an institution acting in good faith should take steps to ensure that its approach is unbiased.  What, in this context, do you think Harvard should do?  [/quote]

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