<p>Ok just to summarize my thoughts, affirmative action of any type is honestly unfair. However unless you have any other solutions to ensure that the poor or minorities are receiving the same opportunities as the rich white or asian what are we supposed to do? Adopt a strictly merit based admissions and watch minority and the poor acceptance rates drop even further? See, there is no easy answer to all of this and AA just happens to be the lesser of two evils. Don’t complain unless you have a reasonable alternative. Arguing gets us nowhere.</p>
<p>Also @fabrizio that’s my point! Although it may sound odd we won’t stop discriminating on the basis of race until race is no longer important and doesn’t exist. There’s just too much guilt and emotion tied up with race in this country that you can’t just say okay everybody let’s not see race anymore. Although it would be ideal I just don’t see it happening anytime soon.</p>
<p>I agree that there is no easy answer and that the situation is complicated. In all honesty, I do not know of a solution to solve the entire problem. What I do know is that affirmative action is not the right policy for reasons I’ve already explained.</p>
<p>How about Dalton Conley’s socioeconomic preference proposal? Base the preference on family WEALTH, not INCOME. Since the typical poor white family still has between $15,000 and $20,000 in net worth while the typical poor black family has negative net worth, you can easily set a bar such that most of the beneficiaries will be “underrepresented” minorities.</p>
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<p>How can race cease being important if it’s always been used in racial preference programmes?</p>
<p>Fabrizio, it is so easy to hide wealth and income. My uncle lives in a $3 million home that his company owns and pays for, including the utiltiies. His company pays for his gardener and his cars. He only owns 2% of the company. The remaining 98% is owned by a trust. His income is $50,000 a year. Even though he is the richest man I know, my cousins qualified for FA. </p>
<p>My dad is an engineer who makes around $150,000. My mom is a teacher who makes around $50,000. Our house is worth about $450,000. We didn’t qualify for any FA. Trust me when I tell you that my uncle’s family is at least 20 times more wealthy than we are, just not on paper. </p>
<p>A system based on socio-economic factors would be very easy to abuse for some people. </p>
<p>As for “what’s wrong with a school of only Asians and whites,” I suppose one school like this is nothing to be worried about, but if a majority of the elite institutions in this country were made up of whites and Asians, then I think the harm is that we would be terminating a lot of hope for those not white or Asian. In this country, where you graduate from school largely determines how successful you will be in life.</p>
<p>So, what’s the relationship between your uncle and this mysterious trust?</p>
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<p>I didn’t say “only”; I said “mostly.” Even so, how is the hope “terminat[ed]” by having a mostly white and Asian set of elite schools?</p>
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<p>Ah, the infamous “Yale or jail” argument. If this is in fact true, then no one has any right to judge Asians for allegedly being “bitter” or “hateful.”</p>
<p>The proportion of blacks and hispanics at Harvard and colleges in general is much smaller compared to the overall population. This fact and any number of other statistics leads most to conclude that the overall structure of society is biased against URMs.</p>
<p>Now Harvard and the like can’t solve all of society’s problems, but if they want to take countermeasures against this bias, one might think that would be a good thing. But in our current selfish and angry day and age, helping one group even a little bit is twisted as attacking another, even though URMs are still URMs even at Harvard, and the rest still get more than their proportion.</p>
<p>Many posters here are not satisfied with the advantages they already have. They want more, and they are angry that they didn’t get it. Their message is URMs don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve good schools and good teachers, especially not Harvard! If URMs wanted the advantages of good schools and good teachers and good SAT scores, they could get a book! This is a really stupid argument. Suffice it to say, that if books could really substitute for all that, we wouldn’t
need any schools or teachers.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t like AA for admission decisions either. Ideally, it wouldn’t be needed. Apparently, it could be improved for various subgroups (such as poor whites). The anger for more advantages and more privilege is too much hypocrisy for me, though.</p>
<p>Who are these “many posters”? I’d like to read some direct quotes, please.</p>
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<p>I most certainly did not say that, and quite frankly, I amazed as to how my statement has been completely misunderstood.</p>
<p>I made a simple request: I asked if anyone had any evidence that the expensive test prep classes from Kaplan, Princeton Review, and so forth teach “secrets” that aren’t revealed in the vastly less expensive books from the aforementioned companies. NO ONE gave any evidence. nbachris2788 mistakenly interpreted my post to mean that I don’t believe that wealth disparities build up over time; I do. Prepveteran continuously referred to the successes of his own daughter with expensive private test prep but offered no evidence that the test prep taught “secrets” that couldn’t have been found in the books that the parent company sold.</p>
<p>I’m not entirely sure, Fabrizio. What I know I’ve learned from my cousin. I think my grandfather owns the trust. I do know that my uncle becomes in charge of the trust when my grandfather dies, and that my mom doesn’t get any of it. </p>
<p>My point wasn’t about my uncle, however. My point is that people who own successful businesses can hide their wealth and limit their income to realtively low levels. Also, I’ve read that relatively modest people who own farms often appear to be rich on paper, especially if the land has been passed down, even if their income is low. How would your socio-economic plan adjust for these two groups of people?</p>
<p>The local prep school in my area charges $1,200 for its Math II class. This price includes an HP calculator with specfic formulas programmed into it. In the class, the students learn how to use the calculator to answer specific questions. They boast that 95% of their SAT II students who take Math II get an 800. Assuming this is true, that’s an advantage that poor students couldn’t match by using a book or two.</p>
<p>If a person with a “successful business” wants to live frugally by hiding his wealth such that it is not easily discoverable OR accessible, well, that’s his choice. Is he gaming the system? Not really, as he has made a decision: forgo a life of comfort in exchange for potentially better financial aid for his offspring.</p>
<p>As for families with low-income but high net worth, I don’t know. Good point.</p>
<p>I think it’s a good thing that poor families can’t afford to be ripped off by your local prep school. Charging families $1,200 to teach their students how to use a $100 calculator sounds like a horrible deal to me.</p>
<p>Facetiousness aside, it has been almost half a decade since I took the IIC exam. I bought a Kaplan book that I sold after I took the exam, and I am pretty sure that it covered calculator tricks. Did it come with the $100 calculator? No. If you want to talk about the $100 calculator being prohibitive for some families, then you are talking about a need for SOCIOECONOMIC PREFERENCE, not racial preference.</p>
<p>I don’t want to beat this point to death, but I do want to be clear. The people I am thinking of don’t “forgo a life of comfort.” Their comforts (home, cars, etc.) are simply owned by a company, not by them. They still enjoy these comforts as much as one who owns them individually, however.</p>
<p>So my point remains: The current system of affirmative action results in some inequities, but so would any other system. Often in life there are no flawless answers, and we are forced to accept that path offering the most benefits with the least amount of harm. To me, the current system accomplishes that better than any other system I can think of. It’s not perfect, of course, but until someone offers a better system, we simply need to “suck it up” or “rub dirt in it” or whatever else you want to say about dealing with the negative consequences.</p>
<p>The calculator retails for $200, and that’s without the formulas. Those are worth more than the calculator itself, as least to those who scored a 800. Those formulas weren’t calculator tricks. Rather, they are designed for specific problems. Once you recognize the type of question being asked, you pull up the formula for that question type, and then plug in the data. Personally, I think this is wrong and takes advantage of the fact that the College Board doesn’t check the calculators used by students. As for being ripped off, the class has a waiting list. If you believe in the effeciency of the marketplace, I think the consumer feels anything but ripped off.</p>
<p>If you can provide a statistic detailing how many people like that are in our country, that’d go a long way toward showing the (in)effectiveness of a wealth-based socioeconomic preference programme.</p>
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<p>I fail to see how a system that “overrepresents” second-generation black Americans by over 300% is the best of all flawed but possible systems.</p>
<p>Strictly speaking, I “asked if anyone had any evidence that the expensive test prep classes from Kaplan, Princeton Review, and so forth teach ‘secrets’ that aren’t revealed in the vastly less expensive books from the aforementioned companies.” Nevertheless, evidence is evidence, and I thank you for answering my question.</p>
<p>Now, let’s focus on your good example. How does it suggest a need for racial preferences? Your argument is that not everyone can afford a $1,200 class. Isn’t that a socioeconomic argument?</p>
<p>I’m sorry, what is a “ringer”? I couldn’t find any definition after quick googling that made sense in context, and if you googled “Yale or jail,” you’d see that I didn’t create the phrase.</p>
<p>Harvard accepts URMs with strong academic potential (though weaker than Asians’, collectively), as its 20% (not the exact percentage but it simplifies matters) URM studentry embodies.</p>
<p>What I want to know is as follows:</p>
<p>In the top 10%, or 30%, or even 50% of GPA’s, are URMs represented porportionately, i.e., 1 in 5?</p>
<p>I’m not making any assumptions, I mean for all I know, 7 of the top 8 Harvard Class of '10’s were URMs. Does anybody have any data?</p>
<p>True, URMs don’t fail out at higher-than-average rates, but it’s pretty hard to fail out of any university, even one like Harvard. I remember this one poster who was at Harvard and decided to transfer out into Stanford because she couldn’t stand Harvard and ended up with a 2.67 gpa through her short tenure at Harvard. Despite being frustrated, uncomfortable, miserable or whatever feeling she felt at Harvard, she still floated above failing marks by a fair margin. </p>
<p>Now, while we’re on the subject of “Yale or jail,” it’s no secret that your college GPA plays a bigger role in your job prospects than does high school GPA or SAT scores.</p>