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<p>Sure, why not? Elite colleges holistically evaluate applicants’ achievements and potential contributions in the context of their entire upbringing. If an applicant was prevented from participating in conventional activities due to cultural restrictions, why do you think that wouldn’t be taken into consideration?</p>
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<p>Why is it “utterly pointless?” And again, I don’t care what the legal phrase is in Grutter. It’s just misleading to say preferences when it’s about some vague proportionality or inclusive representation. If they’re just as good (capable) as whites and Asians, why should they not be included? Keep in mind that lots and lots of capable students, from many backgrounds, are being excluded due to the competitive qualities of the various applications, the inclusive prioriites (way beyond race) of the Institution in question, the size of that capable applicant pool (easily by a factor of 4), and the limited ability of the college to absorb all those capable applicants.</p>
<p>I’m in favor of a broad student experience, as we all are. However, I’m not sure many students want to feel as though they’re attending college in a foreign country when they’re in the USA.</p>
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<p>You don’t like Indian food?</p>
<p>In the real world, you might end up working at a company with a large number of co-workers from the Indian subcontinent, including those who like to eat spicy curries or wear various kinds of hats. Though they do generally speak English well (including to each other, due to the numerous different languages in the Indian subcontinent).</p>
<p>But maybe it is too much of a culture shock to people used to living in an area that is mostly white and where the most visible minority is black (just like in US history books and television shows). And where the churches don’t look like [url=<a href=“http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2008/10/16/mosque__1224195556_8101.jpg]this[/url”>http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2008/10/16/mosque__1224195556_8101.jpg]this[/url</a>] or [url=<a href=“sikhgurudwarasj.org”>sikhgurudwarasj.org]this[/url</a>].</p>
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<p>Observation: "URM"s are just as good as whites and Asians in the X categories.
Conclusion: "URM"s should benefit from racial preferences.</p>
<p>That makes no sense. Racial preferences in that case are utterly pointless. "URM"s are no less likely to get in than whites and Asians, yet you insist that they benefit from racial preferences? Why? You can’t say that you’d use racial preferences to create diversity because they are NO LESS LIKELY to be admitted. So racial preferences then becomes a method of enforcing equality of outcome. No thanks.</p>
<p>Hunt’s line of thinking, however, is consistent.</p>
<p>Observation: There are not enough high-scoring "URM"s to be admitted in “sufficient” quantities without racial preferences.
Conclusion: "URM"s should benefit from racial preferences.</p>
<p>To the extent that his observation is true, his conclusion makes perfect sense. I would still disagree with the policy, but I would see that it had a point.</p>
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<p>OK, if you don’t like Justice O’Connor’s phrase in the Court’s opinion, I’ll use the dissents’ language: racial discrimination.</p>
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<p>You call racial preferences a straw man, even though Justice O’Connor used the phrase in a case that upheld affirmative action (Grutter). It’s ironic, then, that you use a real straw man here.</p>
<p>When have I said that "URM"s should not be included? I have never said that. Rather, I have argued that to the extent that “they’re just as good…as whites and Asians,” they should be NO LESS LIKELY to be admitted. If they are not admitted in “sufficient” levels due to the sheer competitiveness of the process (and not due to discrimination), uh…why is that a problem?</p>
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<p>You seem to believe that I don’t accept this. I am well aware of this, and I have never denied it. It does not justify racial pref–excuse me, racial discrimination.</p>
<p>You’re saying that "URM"s are “just as good as whites and Asians,” but because the process is so competitive, there might not be “enough” that get through, so we need racial discrimination to make sure “enough” get through. Again, why is it a problem that “enough” may not get through BECAUSE the process is so competitive? I don’t see any problem here.</p>
<p>Re #658</p>
<p>TheGFG, please feel free to speak (write) your mind. But I must comment that your post is no different from what NCL quoted in #540:</p>
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<p>To add fuel to the fire:</p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
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I have to say that I am not sure this is true with respect to URMs–which is why none of the elite schools have URMs (especially black students) at a percentage anywhere close to their proportion in the population. To me, this is proof that these schools don’t take URMs who aren’t qualified. So, to put it plainly, when these colleges are choosing among what qualified applicants to accept, one of the things they consider is making sure that they have some “reasonable number” or “critical mass” of URMs. I don’t think it’s a quota, because it appears to me that they can’t get enough of them to meet a quota. Certainly, my anecdotal observations tell me that URMs who are very highly qualified have by far the greatest success in gaining admission to multiple highly selective schools. They are in demand. Of course, as I’ve indicated before, I think it’s entirely moral for schools to do this, and in fact I think it would immoral for them to fail to do so. I also think it would be bad educational policy (a reason that the Supreme Court recognizes, but I don’t think is really the main reason.) What we have here is a collision of two (or more) moral principles–on one side, the principle that every person should be judged on his own merits, and on the other, the principle that people collectively have to make sacrifices to build a better society. The selective schools have decided to balance these interests by giving preference to URMs, but not so great a preference that it hurts their yield, prestige, or graduation rate.</p>
<p>On sm’s post above</p>
<p>Those are interesting numbers. Note, for example, that there were twice as many Asians who took any AP exam as black students who did so–although there are three times as many black people in the country. And the black students who took APs did signficantly worse on them on average than did Asian or white students. To me, this information supports both things I said in my post just above.</p>
<p>Let’s ask the question a different way.
Let’s suppose everyone who applies to our elite university is academically qualified enough (per however the school defines it) … No one in the applicant pool is “unworthy.”</p>
<p>Does the proportion of the applicant pool who is a given race obligate the school to make the freshman class that same %?</p>
<p>Let’s say the freshman applicant pool of 30,000 at Harvard is 20,000 Asian kids (because every smart Asian kid applied to Harvard), 9,000 Caucasian kids (while there are more Caucasians in the country, a whole host of them were fine with their state u and never bothered applying to Harvard), and 1,000 black kids (because so many smart black kids weren’t even aware that Harvard was a possibility). Remember, everyone here in this pool is qualified “enough.”</p>
<p>Is H obligated to admit in these same proportions and have a class that is 2/3 Asian and with only a relative handful of blacks?</p>
<p>In other words, can H “correct” for the fact that relatively few smart blacks apply by accepting a great deal of them, and for the fact that oodles and oodles of Asians apply by accepting only a relative few of them? Or does the composition of the applicant pool mean that they HAVE to align their applications? So if tomorrow, every Asian high school kid applies to Harvard and they become 90% of the applicants, they’d better be 90% of the admitted?</p>
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Well, I think some folks would feel that H should just admit the “best qualified” and let the chips fall where they may without consideration of race at all.</p>
<p>Well, those same people tend to think best qualified is measured by highest SAT scores.</p>
<p>"
I’m in favor of a broad student experience, as we all are. However, I’m not sure many students want to feel as though they’re attending college in a foreign country when they’re in the USA."</p>
<p>Americans of Asian descent such as fabrizio are not one bit less American than Americans of Caucasian descent such as myself. Americans of Asian descent are not obligated to never speak their ancestral languages ever again. I might not want to attend a college that is 50% Asian American because I want more diversity than that, but not because I think a place with 50% Asian Americans is “like a foreign country.”</p>
<p>fabrizio, it should be noted that my posts have all been against the policy of racial preference in admission. The purpose of the post you quote in #667 above was to explain why I think adcoms, and perhaps many people in the general population, believe there’s a need to cap Asian admissions specifically. That is the subject of this thread, not other groups. Regardless of what might have been true in the past for Jews, CURRENTLY Asians can and sometimes do present themselves in a way as to be perceived as “foreign.” American blacks and non-Orthodox Jews don’t.</p>
<p>Oh, I think you’re going down an awful slippery slope there, THeGFG. I also don’t think it’s the task of an adcom to determine if a given Asian American student comes across as “foreign” or not and reward the ones who don’t appear as “foreign.”</p>
<p>The US has a multiplicity of cultures. Rural whites from Appalachia don’t share a culture with High WASPs from Kennebunkport just because they are both white.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus–did you read my posts? I do not live in an area that is mostly white. It is so non-white as to be starting to appear like East Asia. What I was trying to address is the concept of crtiical mass in an ethnic sense. People seem to have some idea of how many people “like them” there have to be for them to feel comfortable based on their own life experience. Some Jews might want Brandeis, some blacks might want Howard, and some whites might want BYU or Washington & Lee. Others want more diversity, and in general it seems they are comfortable with percentages that do not greatly exceed the levels found in the national population. So if the Asian population at a college were to go above, say 60%, I think there’d be a lot of non-Asians who would feel uncomfortable attending. That does not mean I think it’s good or right. It just is that way and colleges, as a business, probably need to deal with that.</p>
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<p>That is how I feel. If we are operating under the assumption that there is no qualification gap between "URM"s and whites/Asians on X categories, then it seems to me that a “URM” is not any LESS LIKELY to be admitted than a white or Asian student. Why not let the chips fall where they may without regard to racial classification? Because we might not get “desired” racial percentages?</p>
<p>I accept that several users here value “diversity.” I do, too, but not so much that I would advocate for using racial preferences just because without them, I might not get what I “want” racially.</p>
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<p>For the 102nd time, I’m not one of these people. I don’t even think “best qualified” is measured by stats in addition to the SAT. I’m for extracurriculars, essays, and even recommendations. To the extent that there is no qualification gap among multiple categories, however, I see no point in applying racial preferences.</p>
<p>re #677–the colleges obviously don’t have an obligation to do anything. Yet, they seem to want to maintain certain diversity levels year after year. One category is “international.” So while technically many American Asians will be grouped into the Asian portion of the national statistics, they will be perceived as “international” and so the desired balance will be off. That’s all I’m saying.</p>
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