This is the definition of straw man…or at least really unnecessary hyperbole @albert69
@OHMomof2, how is it different from changing your gender identity or religious identity? You said yourself that if a black person wanted to identify as white, it would be totally fine. Or would it be ok only if that black person had some white ancestry?
Personally, I would love for geneticists to identify and manage skin pigmentation component so that anyone could easily change their race and ethnicity if they feel drawn to another one.
First, again, I did not say that it was fine or not fine. I simply stated that the reasons for a black person to pass as white (avoiding slavery, segregation etc) were clear.
@OHMomof2, well, I believe in today’s America, being a member of underprivileged group has very real privileges.
Just like my grandma told my mother she’d have to work twice as hard to get into top college as a Jew in USSR, I think I will end up telling my Caucasian tall heterosexual son (of course, only assumptions on the latter three at this point) that he will need to work twice as hard and achieve twice as much to be able to compete with a minority short transgender girl of the same SES during college admission process in 14 years.
…and with that, I’ll take my exit from this thread.
Good idea, @TheAtlantic. I’m right behind you.
I can see reasons to lie about being black in college admissions. I don’t agree with them but I see them - but short and transgender provide no boost in this case and being a girl usually hurts too.
Beyond that, in life in general, I do not see how being considered black/female/transgender/short gives an advantage vs being considered white/male/straight/tall at all.
Even today.
@OHMomof2, I am talking about being considered “underprivileged” in general - sometimes being of American Indian ancestry can be beneficial to one’s career (hello Elizabeth Warren), sometimes being white means lower chances for career advancement (hello firefighters in Buffalo and New Haven), and sometimes being LGBT means disproportionately large financial awards for what essentially comes down to personal (non-institutionalized) bias. I already mentioned previously when being a girl would be of the advantage - and for a girl in STEM, I think it goes beyond college admission but into job hiring as well.
I don’t think I am getting my point across. I think it is ok for our society to protect and assist those it considers to be underprivileged. I just think there should be equal access, and if someone wants to become underprivileged, it should be their right to do so, as long as it comes with full immersion. I once overheard an interesting conversation between Christian (I assume) mother and daughter, with daughter complaining a friends gets a day off on Yom Kippur, but she doesn’t. Her mom said something along the lines “you are welcome to convert, and then you’ll have Yom Kippur off. But every Saturday you will celebrate Sabbath and that means no phone and no going out.” And all of the sudden the “advantage” of being Jewish is gone.
So if my daughter ever complains about being denied admission so that a poor student, even with worse credentials could take the spot, I can always offer her to come live with her grandma in a 1-bedroom apartment with a tiny closet. But being born white, there is nothing she can do to change her ethnicity.
Interesting example because she gets to be white all the time, but use her bit of native when it suits. And she does have it, just not much, I am guessing.
What’s maybe even more interesting is that so many white people back in the early days of the country had native ancestry and didn’t want that to stop making them “white” according to the one drop rule so got it legally changed.
[quote] For the purpose of this act, the term "white person" shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons.
As a result, Virginians whose ancestry was one-sixteenth Native American or less were declared to be “white” in the Racial Integrity Law of 1924. Whites could not have one drop of black blood, but they could have a Native American grandparent.
[/quote]
http://www.virginiaplaces.org/population/onedrop.html
I’m not really clear on the firefighter advantage (I assume you refer to some form of AA) or big money for LGBTQ people, and girls in STEM have a whole set of challenges before and after they get there.
But I definitely take your point about being “Jewish all the way” if one wants to celebrate the high holy days. Then again those of us who grew up in NYC got the day off school for all of them regardless of our religion 
“I believe in today’s America, being a member of underprivileged group has very real privileges.”
In minor areas, like admission to a handful of elite schools.
Likewise, disabled people are privileged because they get those desirable parking spaces whereas I have to walk across the parking lot. And people in jail are privileged since they get their sheets and ketchup for free while I had to pay for mine. And poor people get financial aid while rich people don’t get any. Gosh, I’d really love to trade places. @@
Sorry, all in all, I wouldn’t trade my white, affluent life and all the opportunities it affords me/my family for all the tea in China - just for a minor thumb on the scale in college admissions. Wow, talk about missing a bigger picture.
You might want to move this to the Affirmative Action thread. They generally close threads that devolve into this type of debate. I’ll join @TheAtlantic and the others in moving on.
BTW – A big part of the reason Rachel got in trouble was that she lied about her biological father being AA when she had previously been asked if she was white. Her family came forward to say that she lied – if she had been upfront about her reasons for identifying, but conceded that both her parents are Caucasian, she wouldn’t have had quite so much trouble.
@OHMomof2, I agree, claiming ancestry only when it suits you is completely wrong. But that’s not what Rachel D did - she embraced black culture completely, and was treated as black by everyone in her life (except maybe her parents) before the news came out, so that came both with advantages and disadvantages.
When referencing firefighters, I thought of these two cases:
http://nypost.com/2009/06/29/supreme-court-white-firefighters-denied-promotions-because-of-race/
http://www.nationalcenter.org/P21PR-Margerum_010915.html
High discrimination settlements, frankly I was thinking the ones of Christian bakeries refusing to do wedding cakes, but found a link to some other settlements:
http://www.cbdlaw.com/Firm-Overview/Results/Results-LGBT-Rights.shtml
Again, I am not complaining that too many people are using their “underprivilege” to get significant privileges. I am not in these people’s shoes, and if I was, I’d probably find out that resulting privileges are heavily under-weighted by being under-privileged in the first place. But it ticks me off when someone considered to be “under-privileged” says that I can never know what it feels like to be in his/her shoes, while not letting anyone try them on 
@Pizzagirl, I believe it extends far beyond admission - to employment, etc. Not that it’s a bad thing. Btw, when I mentioned being underprivileged, I referred not only to skin color. Being disabled, for example, gives real privileges as well, including free parking, assistance with government employment, etc. But nobody (I hope!) would want to trade places and live a life of a disabled only to get those benefits.
@higheredrocks, I am sorry, I didn’t expect this to turn into affirmative action argument, either. My initial point was that SES should be a strong consideration for colleges, not URM, but when it was pointed out that I would never know how it would feel to be a minority, it hit a nerve. Japanese were interned during WWII, Chinese workers were used as slave labor to build railroads, and I am sure many Asians today face personal bias in everyday lives. But being Asian actually works against many kids during college admissions Where’s fairness in that?
Some of you here reveal absurd, ill-informed thinking.
The thread you need to jump to is called Race in College Admissions. It’s the one place on CC posters are allowed to vent to their hearts’ content.
At the top end, as @OHMomof2 points out, yield is much more steady than acceptance rate. The picture for all colleges as a whole does not matter as much for the point I was making. The cycle of competitiveness starts at the most competitive schools and seeps its way down.
I believe you are getting distracted by the increase in “filler” apps at the less competitive schools, which affects the broad numbers.
Consider today’s USNWR top 20, as analyzed from 2001 to 2013. The average acceptance rate FELL by 47%. But the average yield INCREASED by 7%. So if anything these top colleges are admitting FEWER students, if they are reacting to the change in yields.
Below are the individual numbers:
Princeton:
Admit rate went from 12.5 to 7.4
Yield rate went from 68.2 to 65.5
Harvard:
Admit rate went from 10.7 to 5.8
Yield rate went from 77.1 to 81.1
Yale
Admit rate went from 16.2 to 7.1
Yield rate went from 64.9 to 66.4
Stanford
Admit rate went from 12.6 to 5.7
Yield rate went from 67.2 to 76.0
Columbia
Admit rate went from 14.0 to 7.4
Yield rate went from 60.7 to 59.9
UChicago
Admit rate went from 43.7 to 8.8
Yield rate went from 33.1 to 53.4
MIT
Admit rate went from 17.0 to 8.2
Yield rate went from 57.6 to 72.0
Duke
Admit rate went from 26.3 to 13.4
Yield rate went from 44.0 to 42.0
UPenn
Admit rate went from 21.6 to 12.2
Yield rate went from 57.9 to 63.2
Johns Hopkins:
Admit rate went from 34.3 to 18.1
Yield rate went from 32.4 to 35.9
Caltech
Admit rate went from 15.3 to 10.6
Yield rate went from 41.6 to 42.6
Northwestern:
Admit rate went from 32.8 to 15.3
Yield rate went from 39.1 to 41.5
Dartmouth:
Admit rate went from 21.4 to 9.8
Yield rate went from 49.7 to 48.6
Brown:
Admit rate went from 16.2 to 9.2
Yield rate went from 51.1 to 58.1
Cornell
Admit rate went from 25.9 to 15.6
Yield rate went from 45.5 to 51.8
Vanderbilt:
Admit rate went from 46.4 to 12.7
Yield rate went from 34.5 to 40.7
Washington University at Saint Louis:
Admit rate went from 23.5 to 15.6
Yield rate went from 51.1 to 58.1
Rice
Admit rate went from 23.4 to 16.7
Yield rate went from 41.8 to 37.9
Notre Dame
Admit rate went from 35.6 to 22.3
Yield rate went from 61 to 52.6
UC Berkeley
Admit rate went from 26.4 to 18.0
Yield rate went from 42.5 to 37.5
Hi @inn0v8r I see you are correct, and I’ll happily concede I was wrong as it applies to ‘top’ schools.
I guess my point applies just to the mid range and lower schools.
One thing still does not completely add up for me: IF more top kids are applying (and being accepted) to more top colleges, then why isn’t yield going down? The kid can still only enroll one place. It must be that these kids are not getting into more colleges (a point you raised) or maybe there is a bigger proportion of Early applications, or perhaps there really aren’t that many kids applying to 8+ top colleges, or ???
It is still an interesting puzzle.
Thanks @pickpocket ,
From what I have seen, the students who are accepted across the board are relatively rare (but they catch our eye and we remember them because they are salient).
I think there are the masses of tippy-toppy (but not international champion) students that are affected by the randomness, and get into fewer schools individually as acceptances rates fall, unless they apply to more and more schools.
Suppose there are 10 schools that a student applies to and the admission rate for those schools is 20%. Then the expected value of schools they get into is 2. Now suppose ALL students (including the one I am referring to) double how many schools they apply to, and so the admissions rate halves everywhere. Then the expected value of acceptances stays the same: 20 schools *10% = 2. So each college is still handing out the same number of acceptances. As long as the acceptances aren’t clustering in a few students hands, this works.
I believe the colleges work very hard to find people to accept that fit the best, to help keep a steady yield. Not necessarily to help their rankings, but to try to ensure a predictable class size. Otherwise the balanced class they so carefully targeted might not come to fruition. So at the top, schools are picking people who are the best match relative to other schools. They may give up a little bit on an absolute sense to get the student who really would appreciate and benefit from what their school has to offer. Which means less cross-acceptances, and so less of the affect you were worried about.
If we could get our hands on Naviance data aggregated across the US, we could really learn a lot.
Good points @inn0v8r . I do follow your mathematical argument. I find it a bit harder to understand why there is not more clustering. First of all, superstar applicants will be seen as desirable by most of the 10 or 20 schools they apply to. Second of all, I don’t really see the ‘match’ point you are making – it seems to me that Yale is looking for the same range of qualities in an applicant as Princeton and Stanford are.
@pickpocket to understand why there is not clustering / cross-admission I think you have to appreciate how large the pile of really awesome candidates is for these schools. It is much larger than the number of yield-adjusted spots they have. If you sift through the Stanford result thread, the Harvard result thread, and cover up the results, it is fairly difficult to predict which students are getting in and which are not. And honestly, it is not so easy to rank order the kids, and these schools do have different things they emphasize at the margin. It is to THEIR BENEFIT to ferret this out. If they have heavy cross-admission with other top schools for most of their candidates, their yield has nowhere to go but down.
What in the … however did this thread go off like this?!