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<p>Yes, Fabrizio, you have at last arrived at the dirty little secret of the Ivy League, the little ivies, and to some extent even the public ivies: they practice affirmative action for the wealthy. I know this goes against the grain of everything that we’ve been told about schools being “need-blind”, but, the sad fact is that if adcoms admitted “the most interesting and compelling” students regardless of financial need, most of them would go bankrupt.</p>
<p>Because, for the third time, the pool is thinner at 2300 for blacks than it is at 2300 for Asians (in my hypothetical). Do you get some delight out of pointing out the SAT discrepancy? Does it make you feel better about yourself?</p>
<p>I give up. I think the only answer that you will accept is “Yarvton’s adcoms secretly hate Asians, so they secretly substitute a floor of 2300, make them jump through more hoops, and deliberately reject the 2400s just to **** them off more.”</p>
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<p>OK, I do see where you’re going, and my apologies for not “getting it” the first time. But are you saying that the whites/Asians whose SAT scores on average are the same as those of admitted "URM"s are all or even mostly low-income? Or they don’t have to be low-income, they just have to qualify for some financial aid (i.e. are not full-pay)?</p>
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<p>I knew it. You can’t answer my question because it is worded to preclude you from using your beloved “SAT isn’t everything” line.</p>
<p>I’m really not talking about the "URM"s. I’m talking about the whites/Asians whose scores on average are the same as those of the "URM"s. It does not matter if the “URM” pool is thinner at higher scores than it is for whites/Asians at the corresponding levels. If the "URM"s are admitted with average scores of X, what about the whites/Asians with the same average scores? Are they really less “interesting/compelling” than the whites/Asians with higher scores? If so, what reason have you to believe that?</p>
<p>To the extent that johnwesley is right that not enough of these whites/Asians are full-pay, his response answers the question. Yours does not.</p>
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<p>I don’t think johnwesley’s explanation is correct. The tippy top universities are need blind. This shouldn’t be a factor. </p>
<p>I believe that Fabrizio is just trying to get Pizzagirl to admit that higher SATs are more valued in admission than lower ones. I believe they are and I believe that Pizzagirl has said that she agrees with this too.</p>
<p>^And yes. I know where you are going with this line of argument.</p>
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<p>But they are. To be more specific, I know for a fact that they DO accept white applicants with lower SATs who are “interesting/compelling.” And I’m pretty sure they accept Asians who fit that category too.</p>
<p>I used to live in a rural state that has few to no prep schools. Per capita income much much lower than the major metro areas; SAT prep is almost unheard of in most school districts. A very small non-white population. While there were some top students who scored above 700, very few scored above 750. I am very familiar with Brown admissions, and I can assure you that there were many white students accepted with sub 750 SATs, even sub 700 SATs. Not a single one was a recruited athlete. And I know that these kids were getting into other schools, because some of them went to HYP et al instead of Brown.</p>
<p>I’ve also been involved in case studies of applicants that have included Asian applicants with so-called “lower” SAT scores – one example I remember was a Vietnamese refugee. This student had sub 700 scores and was accepted to Brown. </p>
<p>I hesitate to contribute this since I’ve been militant about believing that you can’t draw accurate conclusions from anecdotes. But what the hey. Here’s an anecdote for you: one of the best students I ever interviewed, in 25+ years, was “poor white trash.” SATs were probably in the low 600s, maybe even lower. Amazing kid, with a very compelling story. Got accepted to Brown.</p>
<p>^I really like Pizzagirl’s bucket example. </p>
<p>One comment on it thoughts on it though. </p>
<p>In real life the average difference in SAT scores for Whites vs Asians is about 30 points (M+V) according to Collegeboard. If it is true that accepted Asians have more than this 30 point higher SAT total than accepted whites (I have heard 100 point difference thrown around) then something is off in the process of sorting the applicants into these buckets. </p>
<p>So yes it makes sense that if the buckets from which applicants are chosen are skewed then the outcomes will be skewed too. But why are the buckets so skewed to begin with? Pizzagirl uses a 50 point difference between the whites and asian buckets in her example. I have heard that the number is actually higher although I must admit I do not have a source for this.</p>
<p>“believe that Fabrizio is just trying to get Pizzagirl to admit that higher SATs are more valued in admission than lower ones. I believe they are and I believe that Pizzagirl has said that she agrees with this too.”</p>
<p>Yes, I just said so, and it’s not a function of agreeing or disagreeing because it’s FACT that those with higher scores have a higher acceptance rate.</p>
<p>However, there is a difference between “a higher SAT is associated with a higher admissions rate” and “therefore, when I hear of an Asian with a higher score being rejected and a black person with a lower score being accepted, it’s evidence that either lowered a standard for the black person, raised the standard for the Asian person, and it would have been the other way around if only schools didn’t consider race.”</p>
<p>Hockey is over. Boston deserves the victory.</p>
<p>In no particular order, here are some of my comments.</p>
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<p>These French scholars must be influenced by David Hume, because they see the world pretty much the same way I do.</p>
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<p>As mentioned by another poster, acceptance rate means little unless you are comparing student groups of comparable ability. Here is a graph of one elite private’s admits, based on group affiliation. Make of it what you will:</p>
<p>[News:</a> Testing for ‘Mismatch’ - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/20/mismatch]News:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/20/mismatch)</p>
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<p>You are asking one arm of the ruling class to charge another? I wrote on CC a few years back that Jian Li has no chance of winning. It is like asking the government to charge Wall Street for creating the financial disaster. Not a chance.</p>
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<p>If you would look at page 13, exhibit A, you will see ““Poor white students tend toward lower achievement than rich white students. Whites, meanwhile, significantly outperform blacks and Latinos at each income level. In fact, white students from the second income quartile perform about the same as rich black students””</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.mckinsey.com/app_media/im...gap_report.pdf[/url]”>http://www.mckinsey.com/app_media/im...gap_report.pdf</a></p>
<p>Reality sucks.</p>
<p>"If you would look at page 13, exhibit A, you will see ““Poor white students tend toward lower achievement than rich white students. Whites, meanwhile, significantly outperform blacks and Latinos at each income level. In fact, white students from the second income quartile perform about the same as rich black students””</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.mckinsey.com/app_media/im...gap_report.pdf[/url]”>http://www.mckinsey.com/app_media/im...gap_report.pdf</a></p>
<p>Reality sucks."</p>
<p>What do you mean? Can you spell it out? What are the implications? Get a new name if that helps. </p>
<p>Here’s what I think you mean. Income does not explain the difference in whites vs blacks and hispanics in “performance”. How about Asians vs white?</p>
<p>Therefore…what?</p>
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<p>Well then, it looks like Jian Li might have a chance:</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. Govt. Sues Goldman Sachs - CBS News Video](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6404178n]U.S”>http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6404178n)</p>
<p>The Mismatch article at Duke is fascinating; thanks for sharing. That’s a different argument – don’t give preferences to URMs because you’ll just boost them into an academic environment they can’t handle (which is different from “it’s not fair, they now get to enjoy the access to power and success I wanted / deserved”).</p>
<p>However, the income data there is substantially different from the Duke Campus Life survey that Fab linked to, and indicates that indeed the URMs at Duke are economically disadvantaged, not the “boarding school kids of two physicians.” What to believe?</p>
<p><a href=“CanuckGuy:”>quote</a> Here is a graph of one elite private’s admits, based on group affiliation. Make of it what you will:</p>
<p>News: Testing for ‘Mismatch’ - Inside Higher Ed
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<p>(Hello and sorry about that hockey cup.)</p>
<p>The Duke study was not about group admissions comparisons, but about
testing whether admissions officers’ or applicants’ private information had predictive power for assessing student academic performance. The conclusion was that applicants’ private information had no predictive power (believing that you, your friends or your children are highly qualified has no import); but that admissions officers did possess useful information. </p>
<p>Concerning the data table in the study, I posted some calculations in an earlier thread, which at the time silenced the vociferous remarks from the usual suspects (the calculations have not been challenged since the posting). The additional Duke data linked in this thread, from the survey of the entering classes in 2001-2, confirms some of the key assumptions in that calculation, such as differences of more than 10 percent in the white and Asian rates of athlete and legacy status respectively. The effect of such differences on the observed SAT averages has been quantified to some extent in the Avery, Zeckhauser and Espenshade regression studies measuring (crudely but informatively) the admissions effect of legacy status, early admission and such as virtual SAT points added to an applicant’s actual score.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/790609-do-elite-colleges-discriminate-against-asian-students-49.html#post9004686[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/790609-do-elite-colleges-discriminate-against-asian-students-49.html#post9004686</a></p>
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<p>Reread what you quoted, please.</p>
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<p>I never said those students weren’t being admitted. I said why aren’t more of them admitted so that the white/Asian average SATs are the same as those of "URM"s. The whites/Asians with higher SATs on average really are so much more “interesting/compelling” than their slightly lower scoring peers?</p>
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<p>That’s why I said the next time you chew someone out for overemphasizing the SAT, you should castigate him if he implies that a higher SAT means better qualified, but you should also grant that “a higher SAT is associated with a higher admissions rate.”</p>
<p>I don’t think HYPS care at all whether an applicant is full-pay or not. I think that has no bearing on acceptance. If fact, I think being economically disadvantaged is a boost.</p>
<p>That said, I think being mega-rich at the level of significantly impacting the endowment is a big boost. Merely being affluent is not.</p>
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<p>[Working</a> Paper Version of the “Mismatch” Study](<a href=“http://econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/mismatch.pdf]Working”>http://econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/mismatch.pdf)</p>
<p>The data comes from the Campus Life and Learning project. The authors of the “mismatch” study, however, wisely broke income into three categories: less than $49,999; $50K to $99,999; and above $100K. That information was not released in the CLL report.</p>
<p>We see that most whites, Asians, and Latinos came from families that earned above $100K at 71%, 57%, and 54%, respectively. The corresponding figure for blacks was 37%, a plurality but not a majority. (Note that while more Asians than Latinos came from families that earned more than $100K, the overall average income for Latinos was higher than that for Asians. What does that tell you?)</p>
<p>Blacks were the most evenly distributed among the three categories. For the lowest income category (<$49,999), whites, Asians, and Latinos formed 10%, 19%, and 22%, respectively, while blacks formed 32%. For the middle income category ($50K to $99,999), whites, Asians, and Latinos formed 19%, 24%, and 23%, while blacks formed 30%.</p>
<p>Though “only” 37% of all blacks in the two years surveyed (my mistake from earlier–it’s two school-year observations) came from families earning more than $100K per year, the overall average income for blacks was $118,316 > $100K. This suggests that the lowest and highest income categories did not “cancel” each other out in the averages. Rather, the highest income category blacks were dominating the average.</p>
<p>Moreover, when it came to private schools, 25% of blacks came from them, exactly the same as Asians, but less than both whites and Latinos at 31% and 39% respectively. So there is no contradiction, though the additional broken down data sheds more light.</p>
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<p>It is a different argument, but it’s opposed by the same people. If you check the references section of the “mismatch” paper, you’ll find that the authors cited “The Real Impact of Eliminating Affirmative Action in American Law Schools: An Empirical Critique of Richard Sander’s Study,” which was co-authored by none other than William C. Kidder, the same one who criticized Espenshade and Chung for conflating “affirmative” and “negative” action (while not disputing the infamous “-50” finding).</p>
<p>In case you did not know, the “mismatch” hypothesis was first set forth by Richard Sander, a UCLA law school professor who has some “skin in the game”: his son is half-white, half-black. The data Sander used was at the law school level.</p>
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<p>Ah, siserune self-promoting again. You know, the last time we discussed, which was on the massive Race VIII thread, you referred to some labor studies which apparently proved your points. But when I asked you to tell me the names of these studies, you…disappeared.</p>
<p>Care to try again?</p>