Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's such a big leg up so this is mind boggling.

It might not be as mind boggling if the applicant pool demographics were known. Another interesting data point would be the percentage of applicants of each race rejected from each school.

You can see this for black students for some schools here. But I still don't get why it matters:

So african americans are 13.3% of the population but almost all of the schools on this chart, they represent a greater percentage of admitted students...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's such a big leg up so this is mind boggling.

It might not be as mind boggling if the applicant pool demographics were known. Another interesting data point would be the percentage of applicants of each race rejected from each school.

You can see this for black students for some schools here. But I still don't get why it matters:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP I think that's kind of a minor detail. I don't think you're going to see a huge number of AA and Hispanic students even applying to the top schools because for many the type of education they've received up to high school would not make them competitive in the first place.

The really sad data point was some of the data from state flagship schools, especially in states that have a significant AA population. I don't understand what is going on there.

We really need minority populations to go to college and graduate because otherwise we are writing off the portion of our population that needs to be working and productive to keep our country going. I am somewhat concerned about this as a 50 year old and I think we sometimes miss the forest for the trees in this discussion.

I think it's a different problem than college admissions though. It's a high school problem.

Anonymous wrote:I would rather have them than the "got in on daddy's phone call" but still think their kid is superior.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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. Athletics and legacies are great ways to stand out but by no means a guarantee of admittance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This isn't a failure of affirmative action, but of our education system as a whole. Poor, URM kids go to crappy schools, which set them back from the very beginning. If all American children went to comparatively high quality schools, I would bet money that URM would have higher representation and AA would not even be necessary.

It's not entirely a school problem. The parents of these children also have a role here. There is only so much a school can do if the family / parent figures are not supporting the child.

+1 schools are only reflective of the students (ergo, the parents) who attend them. You can try all you want, but teaching students who come from homes where education is an afterthought is HARD.

The educational level of the parents is key. The studies have shown an absolute absence of long-term (i.e., into high school) impact of programs like Head Start for underprivileged kids. The children do better initially, but the effect goes away as soon as the program ends. I say one study (from Harvard, I think?) that looked at a range of programs, and the only program that worked was one that had focused intervention into the homes of disadvantaged students beginning at a very early age, and continuing on through high school, with mentors assigned to individual students and their parents. The problem was that it is incredibly expensive and there simply isn't the manpower to implement it on any kind of scale. The studies on the "word gap" between underprivileged and middle class kids have been extensively covered. Pouring money into the schools isn't going to fix the problem, when so much of the work that goes into preparing a kid for academic success happens between birth and 5 years of age.

First pp here, and I knew someone would have these responses. Obviously parents are the most important factor. Obviously children from the most broken, messed up homes are going to have a harder time.

But largely I think this is a cop-out, or an excuse to ignore educational inequality. "Oh, their parents aren't good enough, things will never get better." There are also studies that show when you put URM kids in a middle class school with a bunch of middle class kids, their results improve. There are so many schools in America that are either mediocre or grossly inadequate. In other words, actual integration is the answer.

It think that's just part of the same thing. I agree that it's absolutely true that the more role models these kids have, the better, whether its parents or other adults or students. Kids do better in middle class schools because they're surrounded by middle class kids, not because the school itself is necessarily "better." Last time I checked, the City of Alexandria and DC spend more per capita than most schools in America. You use the term "inequality," but it seems that you are equating "quality" with the other students, not the "quality" of the teachers, buildings, etc.

Anonymous wrote: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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This isn't a failure of affirmative action, but of our education system as a whole. Poor, URM kids go to crappy schools, which set them back from the very beginning. If all American children went to comparatively high quality schools, I would bet money that URM would have higher representation and AA would not even be necessary.

It's not entirely a school problem. The parents of these children also have a role here. There is only so much a school can do if the family / parent figures are not supporting the child.

+1 schools are only reflective of the students (ergo, the parents) who attend them. You can try all you want, but teaching students who come from homes where education is an afterthought is HARD.

The educational level of the parents is key. The studies have shown an absolute absence of long-term (i.e., into high school) impact of programs like Head Start for underprivileged kids. The children do better initially, but the effect goes away as soon as the program ends. I say one study (from Harvard, I think?) that looked at a range of programs, and the only program that worked was one that had focused intervention into the homes of disadvantaged students beginning at a very early age, and continuing on through high school, with mentors assigned to individual students and their parents. The problem was that it is incredibly expensive and there simply isn't the manpower to implement it on any kind of scale. The studies on the "word gap" between underprivileged and middle class kids have been extensively covered. Pouring money into the schools isn't going to fix the problem, when so much of the work that goes into preparing a kid for academic success happens between birth and 5 years of age.

First pp here, and I knew someone would have these responses. Obviously parents are the most important factor. Obviously children from the most broken, messed up homes are going to have a harder time.

But largely I think this is a cop-out, or an excuse to ignore educational inequality. "Oh, their parents aren't good enough, things will never get better." There are also studies that show when you put URM kids in a middle class school with a bunch of middle class kids, their results improve. There are so many schools in America that are either mediocre or grossly inadequate. In other words, actual integration is the answer.