Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "dont be in the 60th to 99th percentile in income" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to an article in the New York Times that discussed an analysis of college admissions data. According to that analysis, the wealthiest top 0.1% of applicants had a huge admissions advantage, the poorest applicants had a slight advantage, while those in the middle had a disadvantage. The article actually paints a somewhat more complex picture. As one poster, quoting the article, explained, "colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings". While the article mostly focuses on how this system perpetuates the "intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity", posters in the thread were more concerned by the disadvantages suffered by those in the middle that the article illustrated. As the original poster noted, that is where most DCUM posters are represented. Most of the college forum posters have always seemed to believe that college admissions were unfair and that they are particularly unfair when it comes to the forum's posters. So, for many posters, this article simply justifies what they already believed. Some posters ignored the advantages enjoyed by the wealthy and, instead, focused on the slight advantages received by the poorest applicants. As one poster explicitly put it, "there is a clear bias towards the lower half of the income bracket and again sthe upper half (half, not the 0.1%)" But, as another poster pointed out, unlike other groups, poor students are not overrepresented in student bodies. My understanding after reading the article is that there just are not that many poor applicants who meet the admissions requirements. Those that do have a great chance of admission, but there still simply aren't many of them. Ironically, that was almost exactly the same argument made by one of the apologists for the ultra-wealthy who wrote, "who really cares about the very small number of ultra rich?" Like the original poster, most of those participating in this thread are most interested in discussing the disadvantages suffered by those with middle incomes. Some posters even parse the data to show that differences even among varying strata of the middle income segment. But, basically, this is the other side of the coin used to explain the poor and ultra-wealthy advantages. While there are few members of those categories, there are a lot of applicants in the middle and, as such, the competition is fierce. The bottom line described in the article is that there is an entire system of "affirmative action for the wealthy" that includes legacy admissions, admissions of friends and family of large donors, athletic admissions, and advantages provided to private school students that give the ultra wealthy an extreme advantage. As illustrated, an applicant in the 99.9th income percentile would have a roughly 3 times more likelihood of being accepted by an elite college as a student in the 90th percentile.

Yesterday's next most active thread was also posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. This one was titled, "University of Mary Washington- What Am I Missing?" The original poster and her son recently toured several Virginia state universities. They were very impressed with the University of Mary Washington and the original poster wants to know why the school is not more popular. Several posters point out that it was originally a women's college which has left it with a legacy of poor sports programs and a student body that is still largely female. Others say that it has a reputation of being a "suitcase" school, meaning that students tend to go home on weekends which is not the college experience many seek. Several posters who attended UMW posted about having excellent experiences there and few with firsthand experience had anything bad to say about the school. One of the characteristics of the college forum is that several schools have diehard defenders who will brook no criticism whatsoever of their beloved college. There is probably no school with a group of supporters as fervent as the University of Virginia (though the University of Maryland has one crazy supporter who matches the intensity of all the UVA supporters combined). The original poster not only stated a preference for UMW over UVA — an insult of incalculable severity — but described UVA students as "nerds". Offended Cavaliers then filled the thread with defenses of UVA, insisting that they were not nerds. Because the original poster described her son as a "standout baseball player", there is considerable discussion about baseball, especially why he would choose UMW's division 3 team over UVA's Division 1. The original poster also managed to insult James Madison University by describing it as too "woke". This also provoked a number of replies that probably didn't help the original poster but likely felt good to post. Not to be left out, Virginia Tech supporters also made an appearance. The original poster might have done better by leaving out any mention of other colleges and simply asking about UMW. But, then I would probably not be writing about the thread today.

The third most active thread yesterday was titled, "Unpopular truth: If you don't maintain your value, your successful DH will move on" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. This is one of the more bizarre threads in recent memory. The original poster describes a friend whose father passed away about a year ago. In the aftermath, as the friend was dealing with her mother, the friend relied on her husband for support. Her husband is apparently a successful, and busy, law partner. The original poster warned her friend that her husband didn't have the bandwidth to support her and that the friend would have to find an alternative. But, the friend didn't listen to the original poster and now the husband has demanded a divorce. The husband has already found a girlfriend who the original poster thinks will better suit his lifestyle. The original poster wants to reinforce to her friend that she has to maintain her "worth and not go draining people". Not unexpectedly, this thread generated a lot of questions about whether the original poster is a troll. I am fairly certain that the original poster is not a "friend" but the soon-to-be-ex husband of the "friend" in this scenario. Basically, this is the not uncommon story of a couple marrying young and the wife staying home to raise kids while the husband's career blossoms. Then, one day, the husband meets someone who he thinks is better for his now current lifestyle and kicks his wife to the curb. But, he doesn't want the woman he is divorcing to go around "bashing" him. So, he has turned to DCUM to find out how he can convince her to play ball and tell everyone that the divorce was mutual. This must have been one of the worst readings of the room in history. Nobody is interested in offering the original poster advice (despite most posters believing the original poster was actually a "friend"). Instead, almost everyone simply bashed the husband. I guess, if nothing else, the original poster is getting some insight into how people are going to view him if he cannot convince his wife to participate in a charade about why they are divorcing.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. Titled, "FCPS High School Poverty and Enrollment", the original poster provided a list of Fairfax County Public Schools high schools and their percentage of students receiving free and reduced price meals (FARM) and a list showing the current enrollment of the high schools. The free and reduced meal percentage is often used as an indicator of school quality due to the commonly-held belief that lower income students don't perform as well academically and may be more likely to be disruptive of the school environment. Therefore, it is probably no coincidence that the two poorest schools are also the two with the lowest enrollment as families have likely tried to avoid those schools. Many of the posters in this thread are surprised by the FARM percentages and search for explanations. "How are there any FARMs in Langley district?", one poster asks. Only to be told that they are likely the maids' children. Other posters complain that Langley only has a 3% FARMs rate and ask what can be done to spread such students around. The politics of FCPS school boundaries are beyond my understanding and much of the discussion in this thread assumes a requisite knowledge of such things that I don't have. As such, I'm lost for the most part in this thread. Posters propose boundary changes, bussing, and school choice policies that they believe will be better than the current system. But, all of the ideas are met by opposition.