Regarding the impact on students applying this year and onward, a URM applicant may not be competing against the entire applicant pool but with those in her ‘bucket.’ See this research by Rachel B. Rubin, a doctoral student in education at Harvard University:
“When an applicant has an exceptional talent (e.g. music, athletics) or is part of a severely underrepresented group at the institution, the applicant may not compete for admission against the larger applicant pool. Instead, he/she may compete only among those with the same talent or within the same group. In these circumstances, sets of applications are considered separately based on a university’s institutional needs…”
The students impacted may be African-Americans who are not descendants of the 272 slaves, maybe the children of African immigrants. From post 13: ‘…high percentage of the students who identify as black actually immigrated to the US as children from Africa or the Caribbean or are children of those who did very recently.’ I believe Georgetown will not lower its standards for this admission bucket one bit. The news of this policy will bring a swell of interest and applicants, as it should. It is PR for the school, but the right thing to do, given the documented proof of how the school befitted from the sale of humans. A true agent of change, rather than just renaming buildings in a whitewash of history.
" I believe Georgetown will not lower its standards for this admission bucket one bit. "
They would have the pressure of showing some admits and I am doubtful that there is this large pool of college ready students who are ready to apply this year that fit the guideline. So if there are some this year, they have almost a guaranteed admission if they are doing reasonably well (not necessarily Georgetown standard).
@dstark You write ‘Posters should write their posts anyway they want. Use as many words as they want. Add anecdotes if they want.’ Yet in post 18 you write 'that’s not a secret here, ’ referring to @al2simon’s post 13. Seems that was not not just a recommendation for an edit, but an implication the entire post was unnecessary.
Part of post 13: ‘The percentage of students who are even partially the descendants of US slaves at elite colleges is quite a bit lower than people might think - maybe about 1/2 of what the reports show as the % of African-American students.’ Well, I didn’t know that, and was glad it was posted for dolts like me to read.
“I really like the specificity of their solution versus boiling the ocean and trying to atone for every single instance of slavery. It’s just a good thoughtful principle IMO.”
I agree, although unfortunately this opportunity is probably unique to this instance due to the Jesuits having kept those meticulous records. Most records of slave sales are very skimpy - usually giving little information beyond age and sex of the individuals sold, making identification of current relatives pretty much impossible.
Thus, other colleges also seeking to atone for their slave past are left with the facile gesture of renaming a building and/or the hopeless “boil the ocean” attempt to redress the oppression of all US slaves.
@scipio - I am not sure there would be an issue if the schools decided to accept any descendent in lieu of not knowing their origin. Many of the older schools have some connection to benefiting from slavery but the admissions do nothing to take that into consideration while considering the race.
It’s my hypothesis that when Joe Average who doesn’t follow the world of elite college admissions hears that “G is giving preference to slave descendants” (eg not hearing the whole story), he’s going to roll his eyes. However, I think he’d be less likely to roll his eyes if he hears the specific, targeted nature of this offer compared to any kind of blanket “preference to slave descendants” any other schools might potentially offer. The latter fits into a narrative of PC gone amuck.
“I am not sure there would be an issue if the schools decided to accept any descendent in lieu of not knowing their origin. Many of the older schools have some connection to benefiting from slavery but the admissions do nothing to take that into consideration while considering the race.”
The vast majority of the millions of African Americans in the US are descendants of slaves. So any admissions preference given to all of them is not significantly different from the current admissions program that most schools already have. The schools that benefited from slavery could say, with much justification, that they are already taking steps to rectify the effects of slavery by giving all African Americans the admissions boost they currently enjoy.
It’s the specificity of being able to directly target for extra benefit the descendants of individuals who were affected by Georgetown’s past wrong actions rather than the entire population of all African Americans with a slave ancestry that gives this program its strength.
I was reading some earlier posts from @al2simon and @dstark mentioning that more of the new immigrants seem to benefit from the URM tip currently in place because of the parental emphasis on academics. I don’t know if there are statistics to corroborate that.
And every time there’s a discussion about the “URM boost”, many who are against that boost have no problems with legacy/developmental boosts which notwithstanding one cited study by Scipio…was considered by folks I knew who actually worked in elite/Ivy admissions and a few personal cases I know of firsthand or through extended that the legacy/developmental boosts give far greater boosts to much more academically marginal candidates.
And when I say marginal…that includes some who if they were non-White, from a lower SES background, or didn’t have a parent who was a respected notable accomplished individual/alum would not only have been denied…but would also not have been considered “college material” just 40-50 years ago.
I don’t really either, so I’m not sure how much of boost this will be. Nevertheless I really do like the idea of doing something very concrete. What I’d like to see in addition to this program, is perhaps some program that would provide extra tutoring, or a Prep for Prep like program ( https://www.prepforprep.org/ ) that would ensure that there really is a nice size cohort of students who will be prepared to do well at Georgetown.
As for posting style, I just don’t read posts or I abandon reading posts that get too verbose. That means there are certain posters I often skip.
^^I think the difference is that @dstark was responding to and discussing content, which is what we normally respond to in a discussion–it’s what “discussion” boards exist for, while an earlier post was dissing a writer’s style, which I personally think is unnecessary, borderline rude.
(Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion, ).
How early would this prep start? High school? Middle School, or early elementary…possibly even Kindergarten?
Would Georgetown be willing to fund prep programs within local K-12 schools, provide complete full-ride scholarships to the most academically rigorous/respectable private day/boarding schools, or even a boarding school run under its auspices which it funds tuition and educational/travel/incidental expenses for the descendants of Georgetown’s slaves?
A good question to ask as some have reasonably argued that if one only starts in high school or even middle school, that might be already be too late to address the educational and other gaps caused by mediocre quality K-12 schools in regions where that is an issue, poverty/lower SES, effects of marginalization over generations from slavery/discrimination/racism, etc.
Ideally baby college like the Harlem Children’s Zone provides. Realistically probably later. At least in our towns we lose kids in middle school. But Georgetown knows better than we do whether these kids need an extra leg up beyond providing the legacy boost.
I was just objecting to the secret line but a poster has a right to say it. I had no issue with the rest of the post. If I did, that’s my problem. But for the record I liked the rest of the post.
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