are colleges racist?

Parents Forum
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Of course they should but I was just pointing out a human nature trait. By ‘rightly’ I just meant whether the conclusion, i.e. guess, was accurate or not for the individual - not whether generalizing in this way is the ‘right’ thing to do. Poor wording on my part.</p>

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I’m talking about lowering the academic stats, HS GPA and SAT/ACT, in order to increase the pool for certain target races. If the college is doing that, as opposed to ‘buying’ the person with full rides or otherwise enticing the individual who already is in their target range, then many others will jump to conclusions whether those conclusions are really correct for that person or not. You could replace ‘race’ with ‘sports abilities’ and find the same thing happening for some athletes.</p>

<p>I think a lot of people will consider it justified to lower the academic stats for certain holistic attributes such as some I’ve stated before (working while in HS to support the single parent low income family, etc.) since those stats are likely already skewed because iof these attributes, i.e. if the person hadn’t have had to work they perhaps have higher stats, but a lot of people don’t think that a simple attribute of one’s race justifies it since the race itself isn’t indicative enough of the social attributes for that person - i.e. contrasting the black who grew up in a wealthy household with 2 college educated parents vs. the Asian who grew up in a single parent household with very low income. The race doesn’t tell the story - we’re now back to the subject of generalizations.</p>

<p>But in the context of college admissions - is it being done to provide opportunity for all or to artificially create an environment with some pre-determined racial makeup? I think there’s some of both.</p>

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Yes, after re-reading (which I should probably be doing more before I post) I realized that was what you meant. That’s not really bad wording on your part - hasty posting on mine.</p>

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<p>But you can’t lower academic stats unless you’re working off the premise that a) there are minimum stats and b) the higher the stat, the more “worthy” of acceptance the person is. And while yes, there are minimum stats in the sense that Harvard isn’t accepting kids with 2.5 GPA’s and 1700 SAT’s, there aren’t explicit minimum stats of (say) 3.8 / 2100. Nor is there a perfect correlation or relationship between the level of the stats and the acceptance rate. Colleges themselves tell you time and time again that they look to see whether the person can do the work and that the 3.95 / 2300 isn’t “more worthy” than the 3.9 / 2200 – and yet time and time again on CC, it’s parroted back that when the 3.9 / 2200 is accepted and the 3.95 / 2300 isn’t, a travesty of justice has occurred. </p>

<p>Look - if it’s not a travesty of justice when the 3.9 / 2200 white kid gets accepted and the 3.95 / 2300 white kid doesn’t, then it’s not a travesty of justice when the 3.9 / 2200 black kid gets accepted and the 3.95 / 2300 Asian or white kid doesn’t.</p>

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<p>I don’t just disagree; I disagree strongly.</p>

<p>If what you said were true that Asians have a “HYPSM or bust” mentality, Hunt should not have categorized your alma mater as having the most Asians (19%). Cornell’s shouldn’t have been 15% Asian. And why just the Ivies? Boston University shouldn’t have had a freshman class that was 15% Asian. NYU’s shouldn’t have been 21% Asian. And why just the Northeast? Rice’s and Emory’s both shouldn’t have been higher than 20% Asian.</p>

<p>And why just focus on the research universities? Williams’s shouldn’t have been 11% Asian. Nor should Amherst’s have been. And Swarthmore’s definitely shouldn’t have been 15% Asian.</p>

<p>No, if what you said were true about us, those schools should all have been like Grinnell, Macalester, and Vandy and had Asians make up between 5 and 7 percent of the freshman classes. (By the way, at 7%, Asians are already “overrepresented.” Whoops.)</p>

<p>Of course, to be fair, you said “HYPSM et al.” How loose do you want play the “et al” part?</p>

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<p>Racial preferences are only employed at selective universities. For the most part, non-selective universities admit on a “numbers only” basis. I don’t think it was a surprise that the civil rights initiatives that were most hotly contested were in California and Michigan, both of which have excellent (and selective) flagship state schools as well as non-selective ones. For the opponents of the initiatives, it mattered that "URM"s went to Berkeley instead of, say, Riverside or even San Diego. It mattered that "URM"s started at Ann Arbor instead of Flint.</p>

<p>Likewise, when it comes to private universities, these same folks think that it matters that a “critical mass” (read: quota) of "URM"s end up at HYPSM “et al.” It’s not good enough to attend, say, my alma mater–Georgia Tech. No, it matters that there’s a “critical mass” of "URM"s at MIT. It’s not good enough to attend UConn. No, it matters that there’s a quota–excuse me, “critical mass” of "URM"s at Yale. And so forth.</p>

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<p>Wow, this thread is interesting, but kind of annoys me. Now I know that people (non-URMs) view me as having stolen spots from deserved non-URMs, despite the fact that they don’t know that I actually have an SAT slightly above the Emory average. Also, how low is considered inferior (I’m so glad my friends, which are mainly non-URM, in fact many of them are Indian which does count as Asian, know better). For example, at Emory, I haven’t met many other black students who scored below 1300 (or not significantly below it). I’m willing to bet that the average for URMs here is above UCLA’s 1093, though the research will never be accessible for me to confirm), however a 1300 would put them below average. Is it really wrong to admit to have admitted them if they were between 1200-somewhere in the 1300s. These students do just fine here as far as I’ve seen, even in the sciences. Emory is just a very supportive atmosphere. Perhaps they would be screwed at say Georgia Tech, but I doubt it. I’m betting a 1200-low 1300 SAT person could make it work. Also, URMs here account for 14ish% of the student body. The bottom 25% of HS stats for last year started at 1290(which is lower than the normal 1300 and the 1330 of my year). Do people just assume that we’re all in the bottom 25%? And if so, how come no one cares who else composes it. If it were true, we compose 14% of the 25%. Who composes the other 11% of those in the bottom 25%? Did they steal spots? Maybe all selective schools (including us), should make a cutoff of 1300 for everyone since we are so elite? That would drastically reduce the amount of URMs, while increasing the quality of the student body, and subsequently allowing for more rigor. NOT, for that last part. Increasing SAT scores will not suddenly raise standards, so we’ve essentially gotten rid of many URMs with solid SATs (well above the national average of like a 10 something) for no reason (grade inflation indicates that increased SAT averages across the top schools has resulted in no change in academic standards so as to challenge them more).<br>
Perhaps. If I were use faulty logic and jump to conclusions and use no evidence, I would claim that it maybe the international students (most of whom are Asian), especially for class of 2014. I could say: “Interesting jump in the percentage of international students for this class. What’s the deal w/the decline in SATs”. I could say, “Oh, maybe the international students’ Verbal scores hurt us some” (this is a popular theory about international students from Asia. Very high Math and low Verbal) as opposed to: “Maybe they’re lowering the bar even further for poorer URMs to come in a bad economy”. This stuff gets really tricky. I think admission patterns especially, at top privates is really strange. For example, I really do find the uptick in international students as sketch. It indicates an agenda of the admission’s office to get more revenue (international students have to pay full tuition for a semester up front). I think this really is possible. In such a case, it’s actually possible that some of the international students may be taking spots from others (no matter what the ethnicity is. If I wanted to be facetious, I could say the international Asians are stealing from American counterparts).</p>

<p>Again, this is just conjecture. I’m just trying to make the point that college admissions are more complicated and have less predictable implications than what happens if Affirmative action is used to admit a URM below the school’s HS stat. average (given all of the grade inflation at top schools, a pretty large range of SATs could be quite successful if they work reasonably hard and use support services. Heck, even top students use these). Other admissions patterns could possibly have some unexpected consequences often in context of race, yet we only care about how we URMs steal spots and are slated not to succeed once we get here. I think there are many more admissions patterns that we can “whine” (lol) about, especially, at selective private colleges, outside of AA for URMs that have racial and socioeconomic implications.<br>
Like I said, we have in excess of 30% Asian freshmen coming in each class for the past 3 years or so, so I really don’t see how AA is so hurtful.Doesn’t seem to have hurt my friends (unless, gasp! They were prevented from going to much better schools such as HPYSM by “my people and our sub-par preparation”, as opposed to being denied admission simply b/c hardly no one gets in and most of the applicants are extremely similar). I would leave it at: People get into reach schools all of the time: Some happen to be URMs. I mean, seriously, what about the others in the bottom 25%? Oh, they’re okay b/c they didn’t get in b/c of AA (basically, they aren’t URMs). This just seems really confusing to me.
Fabrizio: I don’t know why a place like Tech or a great public U wouldn’t be preferred, at least I didn’t know until I sat in one of the classes over there at Tech (like gen. bio had like 200+ people in it, and ours has between 75-85 in a much smaller auditorium w/more interaction and some sections are discussion and case-based, so the prof. takes a much more active role in learning). It was much larger and felt much less supportive. I think some studies have shown that URMs (and women) especially benefit from a smaller, more personalized environment, especially in the sciences, where URMs tend to struggle disproportionately (again, I and many/most of my URM friends here are certainly beating the odds. Can’t prove it’s the environment, but my experience tells me that it’s the case for me). It’s simply much more nurturing in a sense. It’s also why many URMs choose the HBCUs.</p>

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I’m sorry, but I see an amazing inability to grasp the atmospherics of the situation. As I’ve repeatedly noted, black students are represented at Ivy League schools at a rate of less than half of their representation in the US population–and Asians are represented at a rate three or four times their representation in the population. How many Asians do you think Columbia should have? If it was 30%, would that be enough for you to be less suspicious? Even at Vanderbilt, where we are saying that there are so few Asians, there are still more than their representation in the population, and there are still less black students than their representation. For Asians to be complaining about blacks taking their places just seems mean-spirited and selfish to me–sorry. It’s especially offensive, in my book, coming from recent immigrants and internationals, who could have observed the issues of race in this country before coming here. Don’t like affirmative action? Live in a country that doesn’t practice it.</p>

<p>Again, I have to distinguish this from the idea that Asians are being disadvantaged as opposed to whites on racial grounds alone. I remain skeptical that this is actually happening at the Ivies. Columbia, at least, isn’t doing a very good job of keeping the numbers down. I would think that if the schools really wanted to keep the numbers down, double the representation in the population would be plenty.</p>

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<p>There’s a price for everything - if a boost is given to a group, then isn’t it reasonable that people will assume any individual benefited unless s/he proves otherwise? eg. if a univ has 10% AA and 20% Asian, and the basketball team decided to use a holistic approach to ensure diversity in the team resulting in several Asians with worse quantifiable stats being selected, isn’t it reasonable to feel that Asians stole slots even if one of them was actually better than average?</p>

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<p>True, this is a cost of affirmative action. It’s also a cost of legacy admission and athletic recruiting, by the way. But it is in fact true that these preferences do cause colleges to admit people that it otherwise wouldn’t admit based on their other qualifications alone. All you can do about that is perform at a level in college that causes other people to recognize that you belong there.</p>

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<p>I am not saying Columbia has done anything wrong. Rather, I am expressing my disagreement with the users on this thread who tell Asians that they should look beyond “HYPSM et al” while telling "URM"s that those are the schools they need to be at. I am further expressing my skepticism that their reasoning is based on Dale and Krueger’s paper.</p>

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<p>Some Asians may be complaining about that. I’m not one of them.</p>

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<p>Please cue the late Heath Ledger’s Joker laugh and play it on loop for five minutes. Hunt, isn’t this a wonderful way to approach controversial issues? Don’t like apartheid, k-word? Live in a country that doesn’t practice it. Don’t like Jim Crow, n-word? Live in a country that doesn’t practice it. How easy things would be! </p>

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<p>You really don’t seem to get it, fabrizio. You certainly are complaining that blacks are taking the place of Asians (and whites, I guess). But you seem to have no appreciation for why that is. To compare it to Jim Crow is really stupefying.</p>

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<p>I think I’ll start looking at some of the international Asians and say: “I wonder if they deserve to be here, Emory probably only wanted their money” :stuck_out_tongue: . Kind of puts the shoe on the other foot.
Hunt: Fortunately, that’s exactly what I’m doing w/my bio and chem. double major. Seems as if I’m doing as well or perhaps better in many science courses than non-URM peers (same could be said for many of my pre-med URM friends). I also generally tend to be able to handle much tougher courses than my friends take. Many of them resort to fluff pre-med courses that look hard when you see the course title, but in reality, the prof. is awfully easy for a science course. I take a very minimal amount to none of such courses as I’m not pre-med. I learn first, and worry about the grade later. Normally the two go well together w/o me having to water down my education (learn plus decent grades). I’m really shocked that the international students aren’t really coasting like I would expect (in fact many of them flat out do poorly, especially international Asians vs. American counterparts). Maybe the language barrier? </p>

<p>Either way, much of us URMs over here are doing just fine. I generally don’t worry myself over such issues. I try to expect the best of my Emory peers until they prove otherwise. I assume them to be qualified in some capacity. Up to them to live up to their admissions decision. Also, I know that many students w/great entrance stats. struggle a lot (I remember my freshmen hall, many w/higher SATs than mines, struggling as much or often much more in the science and math courses). Needless to say they were white, Asian, and Indian (yes I am separating Indian and Asian). Point is, I don’t know if these quantitative entrance stats mean too much when you’re in rigorous courses at a top college of any kind. Ask a Tech (below, on average, above average, w/e. Technically everyone is far above average nationally) student how much HS prepped them for physics and calc. there. Or how much did HS prep. people here for orgo. and bio and mid level math classes.</p>

<p>I was never told I needed to go to a selective school. I chose to apply and got extremely lucky when I saw the fin. aid (many top schools have great fin. aid, so if you know about them, it doesn’t hurt to apply if you think you apply). When I was applying to college, I had no concept of how AA worked and just applied to HBCUs, Mercer in Macon, and had to be convinced that my stats. were high enough to get into Emory. My stats. indeed fell well into the mid-50, but I assumed they wouldn’t really want me when looking at the demographics and admit rate. I was convinced to apply at the last minute. I took a gamble and won. I really believed may chances were as dire as everyone else’s, and in fact lower because I’m black (Emory was 7-8ish% black when I applied, and it remained the same for my class and over 20% Asian). I’m gonna guess that despite AA, most URMs are denied admission just as most whites and Asians (duh, the admit rate indicates that 72% and this past admission cycle 74% are denied admission). 8-9% black vs. 33% Asians? I’m really surprised this doesn’t intimidate URMs.<br>
Honestly, w/low (yes, I know 25-28% isn’t low for those considering most selective schools, but it is to me) admit rate places, one can hardly bank on AA, part of it is still luck. Never did I assume, I’m simply competing against other URMs.
Most URMs have communities or mentors that are impressed or pleased with them simply graduating (honestly most of the people my age on my street did not, and those who did went no further) or even going to college. Period. I don’t know where the heck you got that. Most of us are told no such thing regardless of what advocacy and civil rights groups. Let’s just not go there.</p>

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<p>It’s just weird to me that people are still equating diversity with racial composition. I don’t think my kids do. They just don’t see race as meaningful. </p>

<p>In a strange way, I sometimes think the most ardent supporters of AA are the most racist among us. There is a patronizing aspect to it that I sometimes wonder about.</p>

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<p>I’ll go out on a limb to speculate that top colleges generally have fair policies on race, and that these policies generally have little to do with social engineering. Each of these schools is acting in its own more or less enlightened self interest by trying to craft the most interesting class of students it can get from the available applicant pool.</p>

<p>Ask yourselves this: If you were on an admission committee in a truly color-blind process, would you prefer a parent-pleasing robot with near-perfect grades and SATs … or a funny, unusual kid with scores 100 points lower (still pretty high) and an interesting personal story to tell? </p>

<p>Browse through some of the “chance me” posts submitted by kids fixated on prestigious, top 20 schools. Even in a truly color-blind admission decision, top schools would reject many of them despite their stellar credentials. For better or worse, this is a country where many educated people tend to value risk-taking, creativity, and individualism over perfect performance. The interesting personal story, combined with real competence (social and intellectual), is more unusual and harder to pull off convincingly than stellar stats and activity lists alone. There is no formula for it, you just know it when you see it. When you try to get access to a tippy top college by following a formula, you have to do it unusually well before academic achievement becomes interesting in its own right.</p>

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<p>No, I am not. Find where in this thread I have expressed “outrage” that an Asian’s “seat” was “stolen.” You won’t have any success. And no, I have no appreciation for racial preferences. At best I will say that it is a misguided but well-intentioned policy, and even that’s stretching it, as the “well-intentioned” part means I have to temporarily ignore the paternalistic aspect.</p>

<p>And as for “stupefying,” well, don’t say stuff like “Don’t like X? Live in a country that doesn’t practice it.” And don’t act like “your people” have any more (or any less) right to criticize racial preferences than “my people.”</p>

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<p>To state the obvious, students want to attend a college where they feel socially comfortable. For that to be the case, the atmosphere cannot be drastically different from what they are used to, or from mainstream American culture as they’ve personally experienced it. No one wants to feel alienated by being a tiny minority. When any one group is too dominant a majority, there will be alienation. For what it’s worth, there are schools in my region that people say are “too white.” Villanova is one. </p>

<p>My kids are of mixed race (not Asian) and attended an ethnically diverse public school district which happens to have a high percentage of Asians. For the most part, they felt comfortable, but there were times when they didn’t. 99% of my son’s high school friends were Chinese. Problems arose with dating (not on our end) and in certain social settings. For example, there were numerous times when the group would be hanging out together and would all start speaking Chinese, or would make jokes in Chinese. My D was often the only non-Asian in her AP classes. It usually didn’t matter, but she was also the only one who played sports. So she was not ever part of study groups and thus friendships, since the other girls would meet after school when she had practice. Also, some of the Indian girls had parents who did not trust American kids.</p>

<p>So I think for my kids, social discomfort would only arise if one particular group forms a strong, self-segregating culture on campus.</p>

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<p>You’re not alone, and I don’t think it’s strange at all. The most ardent supporters are those who are least capable of looking beyond race as it is so important to them for whatever reason. </p>

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<p>The “funny, unusual kid.” I love interesting personal stories. I don’t even see the controversy here. What, is the punchline supposed to be that he’s "URM? What do I care if he’s "URM? The interesting personal story is what got me.</p>

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<p>Absolutely. I have never contested this, and I have always stated that this is no reason to keep racial preferences.</p>

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What, you think it’s some mysterious coincidence that the standardized test scores of black students lag so far behind those of white and Asian kids? I don’t know how old some of the posters here are, but some of us are old enough to have a more direct understanding of the situation, especially if you grew up in an area of the country with a big black-white divide, like the South.</p>

<p>tk21769, I wish I thought you were correct, but I don’t think so. There are plenty of interesting white and Asian kids with high scores and grades. If you’re just looking for interesting, hard-working people, you don’t need to lower scores. But you do need to lower scores if you want to admit more than a handful of URMs. That’s just the sad fact, and the reason for it is the very history that I’m referring to.</p>

<p>And I don’t feel any need to back down from my complaint about immigrants and internationals who want to come to this country for its education, and then complain about how admission to colleges is done in the U.S. Affirmative action is practiced in this country for historical reasons–of course, if you are a recent immigrant, you have no reason to feel responsible for the past wrongs of this country as part of your heritage–but that’s something that you simply have to accept if you want to come here. I feel the same annoyance when people come from countries where stats alone determine college admissions, and complain that admissions here are holistic.</p>

<p>And finally, the idea that affirmative action for URMs is some kind of huge injustice is just mindbending to me. I guess it shows some progress, in a perverse way, because the young people of today don’t have experiences that show them why it’s still needed.</p>

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<p>I don’t think my own kids are really conscious of race. They seem to be very free flowing across racial lines in their dating and friendships. A number of times a very important figure in their iives has been a member of a urm and we have only learned of it thru happenstance. They just don’t seem to register race at all in the way that it is being discussed here.</p>

<p>The notion that my white kids need a critical mass of white kids at their college to feel comfortable is just not right at all. They don’t care what color of skin their friends have. Not at all. </p>

<p>I’m sorry that some kids seem to be acutely conscious of race still. I think many truly are not.</p>

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<p>^ Most kids are acutely conscious of race.</p>