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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you listen to any admissions officers’ podcasts, they are all trying to save people. They all sound like lovely humans who mean well, obviously got into this profession to make a difference, but you can tell they are also a little too idealistic and naive (so many sound so young, in their mid to late 20’s, but even the older ones sound idealistic). They talk so much about “distance traveled”, placing a lot of emphasis on helping first-gen, low income, and especially rural kids.

In principle I agree with them too, but it sounds like in reality, a lot of these kids are just not ready when they come on campus. A lot of resources are being spent on outreaching to these kids, flying them in all expenses paid, paying for college prep experiences for them during the summer after they are admitted, and setting aside special mentors and remedial classes for them once they arrive. Professors are complaining, but they also want to help these kids. I support efforts to advance upward mobility (the world is too unfair) and hope some of these kids do come out swinging on the other side, but there will be some who won’t make it. This is not a movie and life is not The Blind Side, but I understand why they try. In the long run, their well-intended crusade could end up fracturing long-standing institutions; you can already see that happening on campuses. I guess to them, that’s a risk worth taking.

America is an idealistic country and a young country so we always try to force things to happen sooner. In general, I tend to think that’s a good thing. In countries that have been around longer and are more practical like the UK, they let poor kids rise to the top on their own and somehow make it to Oxbridge from dirt poor families, but those kids are rare and typically white. Tuition is also much lower there so the economic barriers are not as high if the universities don’t go out of their way to manufacture a special path for the poor kids. [/quote]

FGLI encapsulates the issue.

First Generation - Why would you give a preference to less prepared kids whose parents did not go to college?  If they have the initiative to apply to college at all, there is a college somewhere that will take them. Community college if nowhere else.  And then the next generation after them will reach a little higher on the ladder and the generation higher still until they become UMC parents that start worrying about downward social mobility.  Why does all the social mobility have to happen in one generation?  Why do they need to be represented beyond their ability warrants at the most selective colleges and universities in America?

Low income - I understand that low income students need money to attend college but once again, but why do they have to attend colleges that are more selective than their abilities would warrant?  Why can't this happen over several generations?  Make colleges more affordable, sure, have lower standards based on income?  Why?  Sure it is harder for people with fewer resources to achieve the same level of mastery but they have in fact only achieved their actual level of academic mastery.[/quote] 
Low income students have less options for college, and most colleges are not as cheap as the top colleges will be for them. They also typically can’t take on steep loans, because their parents’ credit is poor. State schools can actually put many into a decent amount of debt compared to going to a top college. There’s also no evidence they are less prepared, that’s just dcum classist nonsense. Please read the privileged poor.[/quote]

DP here. There’s lots of evidence that they aren’t prepared. State testing scores, math and reading levels, placement test results and performance once they are in college. Kids from low performing schools with uneducated parents as a whole don’t catch up once they go to college. The gap in missing skills is too big.

People forget that the path to immigration for Asian immigrants has been graduate school, H1B or E something. This doesn’t mean that all Asians are more intelligent because of their race, far from it! It does mean that the population of Asian Americans in the US has a far higher IQ range than Hispanic Americans whose path was different. If the pathway to the US from Latin American countries was highly educated professional skills rather than manual labor it would be different. This can change over generations but not as fast as the education system is falsely portraying.[/quote]
Once again, please read the privileged poor. You don’t know where these kids are coming from. They’re not just random low income students chosen out of a hat. Most are nowhere near inner city youth either. Please stop assuming you know everything about a population based off of a few statistics. You need to actually research into the class of poor students that are evaluated and chosen to enter Ivy League institutions and the like.[/quote]

Please enlighten us...[/quote]
Well for starters, many come from top magnets and boarding schools. They’re educationally privileged.[/quote]

At least these kids are qualified and can do the work. It sucks for the non FGLI kid who performed better yet got rejected but this is no different than getting bumped for a donor kid.

It used to be that athletes were the only unqualified kids being admitted. There weren’t that many and many schools offered special classes for them.  Most major donor kids had access to private schools and tutors. While they got in over higher IQ middle class kids, they weren’t really dragging down the classes. The unqualified FGLI kids are dragging down the quality.[/quote]

Athletes were never unqualified, they just have skills that your little grinder will never have and you resent that. Some of them may not be at the top of the distribution but they are well qualified at any Ivy, Patriot, UAA, NESCAC, etc. [/quote]
I don't get athletic families' obsession with the idea that they are special. We all have worked in a team, failed, and won. That isn't some unique experience to throwing a ball.[/quote]

There is a difference when you are competing at a very high level.  It's not the same experience as sports at lower levels or the high school science bowl team.  
The stakes are high so there is more pressure and yet at the same time, you have to display good character because there a pretty bad consequences for displays of poor character.
You have to take chances and you have to be OK with failing and the uncertainty that comes with that failure.  "After that loss, am I sure I was ever any good?"

And you can't fake athletic achievement like you can with a contrived non-profit (not that all non-profits are contrived) or pay for play research (not that all research is pay for play).

I KNOW my kid would have had better academics if she didn't have 20+ hours a week practice and so many days off to attend international events.  
Your child had the luxury of maximizing academics and fitting in whatever else they can with their spare time.  My girl didn't.
You can't point at differences in academics and assume your kid is a better student than mine.  
I disagree.[/quote]

This is a poor argument. Most academic kids would be better athletes if they didn't spend 20+ hours a week studying instead with no days off, enjoying the luxury of maximizing sports. By your logic, you can't point at differences in athletic achievement and assume that your kid is a better athlete than they are. Which is ridiculous. Those kids are better students because they worked to be. Just like your kid is a better athlete because they worked to be. And I say this as someone whose DC straddled that divide for a long time, and knows the cost intimately. [/quote]

If my kid spent those 20 hours focusing on academics, she could have been every bit as academically successful as those academic kids.
If those academic kids had spent 20+ hours a week on sports, they could not have been as athletically successful.
[/quote]

Except that it's impossible to prove this. There's a chance that at least some of those kids could have been as athletically successful. There's also a chance that your kid would not have been as academically successful. The higher the level of attainment in either endeavor, the lower the chance that a single individual will excel at both. Few people are outliers in all things. It's wrong to assume that athletics encompasses academics, and that an athletic superstar would have excelled at anything they had attempted whereas an academic kid would not have. In fact it's so wrong it even has a name: fundamental attribution bias.[/quote]

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