<p>" Emily Dickinson would be rejected everywhere these days."</p>
<p>Not at all true. Assuming that she had the high verbal board scores and grades that one might expect of her given her obvious genius. she'd be a highly desired applicant to many colleges.</p>
<p>However, her reclusive nature and lack of willingness to share her poetry with others would probably keep her out of colleges like Harvard which seek students who are not only smart, but also will contribute to the extracurricular life of the university and surrounding community. The adcoms would view Dickenson as a person who'd probably study hard, keep to herself and not even participate in things like campus literary journals or share her work with anyone except her professors.</p>
<p>She could probably get into most colleges including top flagship publics, and even possibly places like Amherst and Williams, but not to places like Harvard, Princeton and Yale.</p>
<p>"Obama simply took advantage of an (affirmative action type) disguised quota plan (described as a "non-quota" system that would merely take race and gender into "consideration") - such a plan having been voted on and enacted by the editors in 1981, and in simple terms involved designating a special 5th slot for a minority within the top 25 applicants within the group (or by default a female) for each of 4 groups of 5 people ultimately accepted to the Law Review</p>
<p>Yes, Obama did take the place of some other person - who but for the color of their skin - would have made Law Review "</p>
<p>Oh, please. For Obama to have been editor of Harvard Law Review, he must be an extremely bright, talented and respected person, something that is supported by his graduating from Harvard Law School and reaching the Senate despite the overwhelming odds against black candidates .</p>
<p>For centuires, mediocre white males took advantage of and have been taking advantage of the good old boy system as well as a U.S. system that by law allowed companies, law schools, etc. to disciriminate against women and minorities who were much more qualified than were the white males. Indeed, most white males who are over age 35 were direct benficiaries of such a system. Indeed, they are running our country and virtually all other major entities in our society. If you want to express concern about unqualified people who got unfair advantages over more qualified others, start with white males.</p>
<p>"If Li is so smart, why doesn't he realize he won't win his case for sueing Princeton?"</p>
<p>I wondered the same thing, from the beginning. And whether smart or not, he didn't do his research about this subject, which is more complex than a test score.</p>
<p>I realize many on the LEFT favor selective color-coding and race based admissions and preferences in colleges and universities, however they cannot simply wish away The Civil Rights Act of 1964. </p>
<p>The Dept of Education - Office for Civil Rights, the agency where Jian Li filed his complaint is specifically charged with handling such complaints in regards to programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance from the Department of Education and by way of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964"which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin" </p>
<p>Basically two criteria are required to move this complaint forward:</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton receives such payments of federal financial assistance </li>
<li>Jian Li is claiming the above described discrimination</li>
</ol>
<p>Northstarmom notes,"Unfortunately for the student, that law suit probably will follow him around for years, making it difficult for him to gain entrance into grad or professional schools because he'll seem like an arrogant malcontent who's not a team player even though what he really is is uninformed."</p>
<p>Response: I am not sure this is true. In fact, it could lead to the reverse situation. Haven't you heard the saying, "The greasy wheel gets the grease?" This is especially applicable if he wins!</p>
<p>I have an Indian friend ( Hindu type and not maize eating type) who was discriminated in a promotion for a government job. He sued and agency and won;thus, getting the higher promotion level. This happened again to him. He sued and won again. Now he has been promoted without any need to sue. In fact, he has been approached to apply for even higher end jobs.</p>
<p>Frankly, I am rooting for the Claimant. I certainly understand a school wanting diversity such as economic diversity or geographic diversity or even wanting more gender diversity. I just don't agree that there should be any racial diversity requirement. This hits me very differently than the others diversity needs. If we allow this then we are opening the door to religious diversity too and to quotas. Why not exclude Catholics or Jews if there are too many qualfied applicants these religions? This is what happened to Jews after WWII. Do we really want to allow a form of discrimination under the guise of "diversity needs?" To me, this is a "Pandora's Box" waiting to be opened. I hope the claimant gets a huge award and stops this type of discrimination in its tracks.</p>
<p>Also Madjoy notes,"Admission to top schools is competitive no matter what your race. Rich white students with perfect SAT scores don't always get into Princeton, either"</p>
<p>Response: I don't think he is denying this. His claim is that it is improper to discriminate against a particular race and require a specific race to have higher scores and credentials.</p>
<p>The top colleges do select students based on having a campus with religious diversity. Indeed, Vanderbilt has gone on record saying it wants to attract Jewish students. Even many colleges that are affiliated with religions want to attract students from other faiths (as well as their own) so as to give their students exposure to religious diversity.</p>
<p>I'm sure that being actively involved in relatively unusual faiths like being Mormon (which is unusual at Ivies), Buddhist, Bahia or even Wiccan would be a plus in admission to places like Ivies. </p>
<p>The top colleges also look for political diversity as well as many other types of diversity including gender (which often favors males, including white males. This particulary is true at LACs, which have a hard time attracting males) and sexual orientation as well as things like regional, private/public school background/, etc.</p>
<p>"Indeed, most white males who are over age 35 were direct benficiaries of such a system. Indeed, they are running our country and virtually all other major entities in our society."</p>
<p>Yes, I think of myself as a regular Puppet Master pulling the strings </p>
<p>Gee. I guess some of the pro AA types in here are actually now conceding Obama would not have been on The Law Review w/o affirmative action? Well, at least that is progress</p>
Whoa there, buddy. Do NOT put words into my mouth. In no part of my post did I connect math/science and pre-med/law with Asians. If you chose to connect the two in your own mind, what does that say? </p>
<p>My point goes back to what I said about choosing a class rather than a bunch of qualified individuals. Biology, psychology, and economics are the most popular majors at most colleges. Wanting to major in these areas or having ecs in these areas won't really make your app stand out; even RSI participants aren't guaranteed the golden ticket of admissions like they used to be. Why do you think Wharton is more competitive than Penn A&S? Expressing in interest in, say, philosophy or archaeology, with strong ecs to back it up, would help your app to stand out- this goes for anyone.</p>
<p>anyways I only link back to it because it was ~1000 words long so I won't post it all here, it won't format right anyways.</p>
<p>here is my one paragraph synopsis of it I guess, ha ha:</p>
<p>
[quote] So, here is what it looks like to me, at first glance: Li has a 2400 SAT and great stats overall, and is waitlisted at then rejected by lots of good schools before two also very great schools accept him (Yale and Caltech). What happens next I dont understand. HYPSM are known to reject plenty of perfect scorerswhere exactly the basis for discrimination comes in I dont understand, because these schools do not operate on the basis of stats alone. They care about extracurricular and leadership and all these things. I can see a plausible concern in general, but not one stemming from his case alone.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>so... yeah. I'm going to write another part today / tonight / tomorrow about AA ramifications from my perspective as a jewish african american, plus relating it back to the problems faced by jews in the past. gooood times.</p>
<p>i'll also throw in some of the controversy I see stewing here on cc, mind you. : )</p>
<p>Perhaps Princeton did a good job in rejecting him before he started "filing an official complaint"
about a Princeton professor giving him an A while giving a URM an A+,
or about a water fountain in his Princeton dorm for breaking down whenever he's thirsty but happens to work for a URM,
or the janitor who accidentally trips him but not the URM standing next to him. </p>
<p>Maybe the Princeton committee saw through much better than Yale or Caltech.</p>
<p>You are right we don't know why Li was rejected. For the most part he had the quantitive factors bring him into the admissions committee. Then it would be anyone's guess. the one thing about admissions calculators they can not access the qualitiative aspects of a person's application. Apparently Li is a good student, however it seems like he did not fit in (for whatever reason) the niche that the school was trying to fill. As I stated in one of my other post, what ever is in his application was not an isolated incident as other schools also saw something that they found lacking in Li's application as a result did not offer him admission.</p>
<p>Last night I went to a meeting where I had the opportunity to speak with some GCs and a few admissions counselors. The GCs overwhelming said that what happened to him could happen and sometimes it is not out of the ordinary. Each one began taling about a couple of students on their case loads while extremely smart and had good test scores, were socially inept, did not get along with others, were not perceived as team players and could be condescending toward others. Some have even admitted writing evaluations stating that may be a student would no be the best fit for a school. OP could have had essays the admissions committees were turned off by. Keep in mind overall the college builds a class of students and a community of learners that is aligned with its institutional mission.</p>
<p>Yes, I think of myself as a regular Puppet Master pulling the strings</p>
<p>Gee. I guess some of the pro AA types in here are actually now conceding Obama would not have been on The Law Review w/o affirmative action? Well, at least that is progress
Now you're just being offensive. If you'll take the time to read the thread, you'll see several posts asking you to provide SOME kind of evidence before making a blatantly racist claim like "Barack Obama is a minority and thus doesn't deserve the accomplishments he's achieved in his life."</p>
<p>If you can't argue on-topic by providing evidence to support your outrageous claim, then you need to just shut up, because racism is pretty offensive.</p>
<p>You really can't give an accurate evaluation of Jian Li's chances without knowledge of his essays. Of the schools at which he was rejected, I know that Stanford places a large emphasis on the essay. He very well could've come off as bland or arrogant or bookish in his essays, which would essentially doom his application. There's really no way to speculate on his chances if you don't know this vital piece of info, and I think there's really no reason to continue speculating why he was rejected.</p>
<p>In any case, Mr. Li's personal stats are somewhat irrelevant here. He is NOT suing Princeton to say that he should've gotten in. His complaint claims, instead, that Princeton discriminates against Asians - which is, in a sense, true (at least Asians vs. URMs). Like someone else said previously, for all we know, the result of his complaint could just be putting him "higher up" on the rejected list.</p>
<p>Mr. Li's example is a fairly crappy one to prove discrimination with, because nobody can pinpoint exactly why he was rejected. But the basic argument of his complaint, that certain races have an innate advantage over Asians in the admissions process, still applies.</p>