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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]URM harping wrt Ivy admissions always fascinates me, because it is clear to me that most people don't fully understand or appreciate the pool of applicants. Just doing a little bit of math can actually illuminate things dramatically.

Harvard being Harvard has their pick of any and all applicants, black, white, latino or asian. Now the US Dept of Ed estimates that there are about 12 million college students in the US, of which about 15% are black. So there are roughly 1.8 million black college students. Of those, the College Board tells us that the 99% for college bound black SAT takers is a score of 2100. That means that there are 18,000 black college students in the country with a score at least 2100, if not higher.

According to the Princeton Review, 2110 is the 25th percentile for admitted SAT scores, while Harvard self reported a mean SAT score for the class of 2017 of 2237.

So taken at face value, there are at least 18,000 black college students with SAT scores at Harvard's 25th percentile or higher. Which I would deem to be standard minimum qualifications.

However, Harvard has an undergraduate student enrollment of about 7200, of which 12% is black. Therefore, there are about 1080 black students at Harvard, which is 6% of the 18,000 black college students with minimum standard qualifications for enrollment. And it cannot be farfetched to assume that these are the absolute cream of the crop, with an expectation that their test scores would be significantly higher than the 99th percentile of SAT scores for black college students.

So stop it with this undeserving URM nonsense already.[/quote]

Actually, if you look at the statistics it's not anywhere close to that number.

"If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above on both the math and verbal SAT — a level equal to the mean score of students entering the nation's most selective colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and CalTech — we find that in the entire country 244 blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 33,841 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 30,479 scored at least 750 on the verbal SAT. Therefore, black students made up 0.7 percent of the test takers who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1.2 percent of all test takers who scored 750 or above on the verbal section."

So, there are probably a few hundred Black students who scored at or above the mean score for Harvard.   [/quote]

I am 18:28.  The above post (that went up while I was typing mine) is a statistical view of the source of the skepticism I referred to in my post.  I know the counselors at my DC's school told us that unless DC had at least 750 or above on each part of the SAT (esp. on math and reading), our DC -- who was at the time likely to be one of the two top ranked students in the class -- would not be sufficiently competitive for top ivy league schools to even bother applying.  Throughout the college process, we were told that unless DC was closer to 75% (obviously, better if above) he would not be a strong academic at candidate at these schools.  So there you have it.  The first poster above highlighted the number of AA students "qualified" because they were at or above the 25%.  Our white DC was told he needed to be at or above 750 on the key SAT parts and that he should focus on that 75% number in thinking about being a competitive candidate.  To put this in some perspective, at some top ivy league schools that 75% number is an SAT score approaching (or even reaching) 800.  His counselors would not have deemed him competitive at 700s.  Now, one can have a debate -- I don't have the facts/figures to prove it t either way -- whether there is much difference in the classroom between the 700 and 800 SAT kid on average.  Anecdotally as a parent from I know of my DC's friends from high school,  I would say there is a substantial difference in academic ability that tends to be associated with a difference in that 100 points but I can't prove it.  So [b]while I wholly agree that some white families spend to much time angsting about the unfairness of racial considerations in college admissions, I do appreciate the source of those feelings and telling white parents to essentially "get over it" is no more constructive than telling black parents that their kids should "get over" a building named after a former slave owner on campus.  [/b] Unless and until colleges explicitly remove race as a factor in admissions or transparently explain how it will be used to promote diversity in a way that does not undermine perceived "fairness" of the admissions process. it will continue to divide students and their families of different races.   I feel terrible for any minority students who feel they have any greater burden to justify their place on any college campus, or even if they don't feel it are aware that some of their classmates might not think they belong there. [/quote]

Yes, there are certainly parallels between being denied admission to an Ivy League school and the legacy of slavery. Wait, what?[/quote]

I get that this is an attempt at sarcasm, but it can be read in very different ways depending upon whether the denial of admission to which you refer is of a white student or a black student.

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