<p>Well said!</p>
<p>blah blah blah im asian so everyone can ****</p>
<p>: D</p>
<p>Wow. I just wrote a really long post and then cc goofed on me and logged me out. But yeah creon, I'm on your team. And I am from an extremely privileged background but I am a great supporter of affirmative action.</p>
<p>AndreaMSkate, I'll tell you why colleges are impressed by first generation applicants: because parents who went to college have more money than those who don't. More money to spend on SAT prep courses, review books, and private college counselors. Meanwhile the children of less-educated parents are unable to provide these things, and have to send their kids to schools that are less equipped to help them get to college. These parents also aren't able to help their kids navigate the admissions process. Thus, first-generation college hopefuls have to do all this more independently than the children of college grads. That's why their 4.0 GPA is worth more than that of a kid from a more educated background. I don't see why this information isn't obvious.</p>
<p>I couldn't agree with you more.
Even though I'm not first gen., my parents went to College in India and it's whole lot different. It's crazy talking to them about college stuff.</p>
<p>They thought that visiting colleges is a waste of time, and it was so hard to get them to let me visit some of the schools I applied to. I got deferred then waitlisted by my 'first choice' (university of chicago), and I was never able to visit there.
Oh well, life goes on :-)</p>
<p>My parents were both the first generation in their family to go to college, and both of them went to a nearby community college - they never even considered the possibility of going to another school. They also happened to have a relatively low socio-economic standing. Because they went to college, they now live substantially more economically secure lives than their parents did. When it came time for me to apply to college, none of us had any idea what to do because my parents had never really gone through the application process. I think things would have been a lot smoother and I would have more easily found schools that matched me if my parents knew more about colleges and admissions and such.
MY POINT is that first generation students going to college have severe disadvantages when it comes to college admissions because 1) they do not have their parents to guide them and 2) they probably do not have the economic resources that other students have to prepare for tests, applying, etc. I'm not saying that if a kid is poor and dumb he should get into universities anyway, but sometimes people well-qualified for a school get rejected because of some small reason, and being a first-generation should make up for that.
I know this is a long post, but I just have one more thing to say. My uncle is super-smart - he just retired from his job in engineering and now works part-time for an alternative energy company. Having parents who did not go to college and coming from a lower economic standing than other applicants might have helped him get into UPenn (though maybe they didn't follow similar policies when he applied, I don't know), and because of his education there he was able to become highly successful and a valuable member of society.
I'm not sure where I stand on affirmative action - it has it's pros and cons, to be sure, but I do believe that colleges should give consideration to applicants whose parents did not go to college (and whoever said could not or
"would not" is missing the point because not going to college is more about your personal history/situation than about choice).</p>
<p>Thanks for reading my rant. Sorry it's so long.</p>
<p>That's a good point. You don't find many people who have the means to attend college and refuse to. Why would they? Everybody knows that their chances of living a financially secure life are greatly increased by going to college.</p>
<p>It's interesting how someone here mentions it. I'm Asian, btw, so racial affirmative action doesn't benefit me. But I'm not against racial AA coz of that. I support socio-economic AA because I'm have "certain socialist tendencies"---if you know what I mean. If you look at history, why were slaves brought to the Americas? Coz slave ship captains have nothing better to do than to sail the great oceans to show the whole world what big fat racists they are? Maybe for some, but most were trying to make economic profits. Racism often only played a supplemental role to economic greed. However, the problem with socio-economic AA is that you cant say that all economically well-off family were capitalist oppressors and hence gotten their money unjustly; there are those who worked hard and honestly for their wealth. The solution to this is rather easy though; just dont call it AA, call it merit points instead. Surely, a kid who had to help make money to support his family has more merit, assuming all other credentials are equal, than an aristocratic boy who had every opportunity handed to him on a silver platter.</p>
<p>But still, there's another historical factor that must not be overlooked. While the new Irish immigrant choking of factory chemicals working 12 hours a day with 5 minute lunches is just as miserable as the Black tenant farmer, eventually the Irish family will have much easier process of assimilation into mainstream white culture and will not face say, Jim Crow laws. Similiarly, Latinos found more discrimination coz of their skin color than poor European immigrants.</p>
<p>I have to say though, for LAC's (other than swarthmore, amherst, williams, pomona, and the other super competitive ones) being asian probably helps in the decision process.</p>
<p>well, that's true for Colby where it's 80% White. On their letter they said "Colby values diversity" and when I checked their students' demographics, I knew what they meant. lol. they were nice enough to offer me model minority recognition.</p>
<p>Haha yeah, that's the reason i'm going to be at wesleyan this fall and not colgate or lafayette (which are both awesome schools, but just didn't feel right).</p>
<p>Wow, the OP reads a statistic and makes assumptions when he knows absolutely nothing.</p>
<p>have you ever taken economics? do you even know what supply and demand is?</p>
<p>The number of black kids that have the stats to get into williams, have the same stats to get into HYPS. This pool of such qualified black students, which I bet you dont realize, is exceedingly small.</p>
<p>Do you think that most admitted black students pick Williams over HYPS? To help you out, most dont. Williams has to accept more of these rare students to even enroll a good qualified amount into their class. (fyi, black yield at williams is around 20 %)</p>
<p>I always find it funny when people like the OP who have barely any knowledge about these issues, jump to conclusions and start claiming "discrimination against whites"</p>
<p>Are you serious? I hope you do realize that the majority of LAC's is filled with white students from priviledged backgrounds. And it's been that way for generations.</p>
<p>WHOA just because the Irish were assimilated eventually did not mean that they didn't have a hard time doing it. I know it sounds stupid to other people, but I've heard the Irish-discrimination history so many times...
Just because someone is white does not mean they "fit in." In our American History AP class our teacher spent some class time on Immigration - immigration quotas started to keep eastern european immigrants out of America, as well as Asians. Eastern Europeans and the Irish had a tough time because 1) they were generally Catholic and 2) they were generally poorer than previous immigrants had been. And though maybe they weren't as bad as Jim Crow laws in your view, zhong, it used to be extremely common for employers to hang "NINA" in their windows - No Irish Need Apply.
Yeah, we did assimilate pretty well and now more people claim to be Irish than anything else so I sound like a broken record or something, but don't belittle what any group of people had to go through to overcome prejudices. The whole "my people have gone through more than your people" thing kinda annoys me.
Sorry I sound like a tool, but that comment bugged me.</p>
<p>"my people have gone through more than your people"---some times this is relative and not that clear. But at other times, it's pretty clear cut. If Blacks vs. Irish is unsatisfactory to you, compare the sufferings of Irish vs. Native Americans. Can you honestly say they're sufferings were roughly equal? Yes, Irish Americans were terribly discriminated against; that was part of my basis for supporting socio-economic AA argument, so I don't deny it. But did the federal government massacre hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants? Unless, you argue that death=liberty from pain, and is hence a good thing, I don't think...</p>
<p>It's like, both the French people and the Jewish people suffered during World War II, and no one's hardship/suffering should be belittled. But I think there's a pretty clear answer to who suffered more. Again, the purpose of all this is to provide a possible counter argument to socio-economic AA, which is what I generally support.</p>
<p>
<p>The acceptance rate at williams is 50% for Black Americans, 70% at middlebury, 50% at amherst...this is incredible.
</p>
<p>got link to that article? thanks</p>
<p>This is a lame discussion to be having.
People throughout history have been persecuted. So we should all get AA.
WOOOO!!!!</p>
<p>Goldie, I've read it too. It exists...</p>
<p>Has anyone considered the numbers behind all of this, think about them, yeah 50% of African Americans are accepted at Williams, but consider this: in 2005, the total undergard enrollment was 1974 w/ 9% of those students being African American, thus there is only 177/178 students who are African Americans. Divide that by four to get the average in each graduating class to get about 44/45. Then consider that 47% of applicants accepted actually attend so so based on idealistic numbers (that obviously can fluctuate) that about 88/90 African American students had been accepted that year, and since apparently Williams accepts 50% of African Americans that means that only 176/180 African Americans students had applied that year, get this, out of 5,341!!!!! Thus, it's rather ridiculous to be bringing up these numbers of a 50% acceptance when the ideal percents of African Americans that had applied was only 3.4%, and considering what a self-selective pool Williams is known for, this completely tosses the claim that AA has been used excessively. Basically, just think of it reasonably, it's like the difference between saying I came in the second place or that I came in last out of two people.</p>
<p>Also, using the same logic for Amherst with your numbers of 70%, it would appear that African Americans only made up about 2.50% of the applicant pool of the 5631 that had applied. So....</p>