<p>Lapras</p>
<p>Again the majority of the accepted applicant pool to prestigious institutions are not AA students.</p>
<p>Nuclearpenguins…</p>
<p>You continually assert that urm stats are weaker. You have never worked in admissions and stats of admitted students are not published. Admission to any university is based on many factors, some which are not quantifiable by a number.</p>
<p>
You obviously have no idea how AA works. Just try and read some of the previous posts in this this thread right her; West Indies/African immigrants constitute a majority, not a plurality or just a significant amount, of “African Americans” at elite schools. There have been numerous students (several cited in this thread already), showing that the benefits of AA go disproportionately to wealthy URMs. </p>
<p>
Not sure how this makes AA any more or less justified. </p>
<p>
They are, and it would be incredibly naive to assume otherwise. Obviously admissions to these universities is holistic, but as far as objective, quantifiable factors go, the “stats” of URMs are definitely weaker.</p>
<p>Stats are quantifiable and nonquantifiable. You can not separate and choose only the stats that support your arguement. The main quantifiable stat constantly referred to is the SAT. The SAT is a college preparedness test. Once you score above a certain level, you are college ready. For some reason this gets lost on cc. CCers place to much emphasis on this test.</p>
<p>^People who score highly on the SAT/ACT also tend to have better ECs, better recs, better essays.</p>
<p>^ SATs and grades are somewhat linearly related, so when we “put an emphasis on this test” we are also putting an emphasis on their grades and ecs, in general.</p>
<p>it is irritating for whites/asians when less qualified URMs who are not financially deprived get into these top schools when the whites/asians did not. that’s all the argument is.</p>
<p>According to you… urms are less qualified… not according to the admission committee. I believe the admission committee is more qualified than people on this board to make that determination. </p>
<p>It is easier to find fault with the process than to admit to oneself that the college is interested in another applicant. I would like to add that a college is interested in putting together a class that encompasses many different backgrounds. Students who bring diversity to the campus(musical background, geographic location, athlete, national merit semifinalist, etc.) Many CCers think it is just about the SAT, that just is not the case.</p>
<p>Note: It is irritating for urms who constantly have to read the complaints from whites/asians that admission is all about the sat.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This argument suggests that every accepted URM should come from an underprivileged background. How do you think that would play out on campus? </p>
<p>All races are represented at every socioeconomic level for parity.</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Show me where I explicitly said that all URM stats are weaker. I never said that URM’s will have to have lower stats. Notice how I said “weaker” with quotes, not without? And even then I have not been, in your words, “continually” asserting that URM stats are weaker. Do you see 5, 6 posts where all I have been saying is “URM STATS ARE WEAKER LOLOLOLOLOL”? No.</p></li>
<li><p>I never claimed to have worked in admissions. And if anything, you don’t know how things work behind the scenes either.</p></li>
<li><p>You think I’m an idiot or something? Of course everyone knows that getting into college is not just about the quantifiable factors.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If you want, you can look at how admissions offices put factors such as essays and achievement, which typically are considered subjective, with a number out of a 5 point scale in one of the links posted by Canuckguy earlier. Link: [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) The table below, which I have so kindly C&P’d for you, shows you so. This is not my opinion. This is information gathered by researchers at Duke. So don’t take it up with me, take it up with the guys who did the research.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Notice how in EVERY SINGLE CATEGORY (achievement, curriculum, essay, personal qualities, recs, test scores, sat average, and actual first year GPA), Blacks and Latinos score lower? At this point yes, I am asserting that admitted URM’s, in general, are not as “strong” of an applicant as those who are considered ORM’s.</p>
<p>So looks like I have you beat in every single point of your statement.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>smileygerl believes that if you are against race-based affirmative action, you are against holistic admissions. You are against campus diversity, and you are against the admissions committee encouraging any and all forms of it.</p>
<p>This, my friends, is the most notorious strawman argument used by the blind supporters of affirmative action. Let it be quoted and quoted again, so the stupidity of it can sink in.</p>
<p>
Even if you don’t agree, don’t be a jerk about it. No one likes jerks. It just makes you look bad to everyone else.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but some things need to be called out for what they are, or the situation will never change. That’s something CC in general could do better at.</p>
<p>In any case, you don’t think spideygerl is being the jerk dismissing everything that’s been posted, and then coming right in to proclaim the truth to us dimwits who have only been talking about this issue for 13 pages?</p>
<p>I think this is interesting, and fits perfectly into my hypothesis:</p>
<p>[Euan</a> Blair misses out on place at Oxford - Telegraph](<a href=“Euan Blair misses out on place at Oxford”>Euan Blair misses out on place at Oxford)</p>
<p>A few years later, we see this:</p>
<p>[It’s</a> not how Euan got his scholarship, but why - Telegraph](<a href=“It's not how Euan got his scholarship, but why”>It's not how Euan got his scholarship, but why)</p>
<p>I thinks the Blairs have over-estimated their sons potentials. If you are connected enough, however, nothing is impossible.</p>
<p>So, to answer the OPs question, be the scion of the most powerful and you would be a sure-bet.</p>
<p>You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32</p>
<p>Unfortunately, everybody wants to deduce it down to numbers only. The very reason you posted the Duke study. I maintain at a certain level, all candidates are qualified, not that some candidates are more qualified than others. This is what is claimed constantly. Once deemed qualified other factors come into play. </p>
<p>The college is interested in creating a diverse class based on factors not in one’s control. Unfortunately, this upsets many. </p>
<p>You have proved nothing…</p>
<p>By the way penguin, I never viewed us as being in a contest with one of us trying to secure a win. I just get tired of reading the constant urm bashing.</p>
<p>Cormy3…such bitterness is unattractive.</p>
<p>@smileygerl
I’m pretty sure I know the URMs better than an admission committee who spends about 2 hours max each “with” the applicants, seeing as I have gone to school with the URMs for the last 10 years.
@college4three
My argument does not state that at all. I said it is irritating for whites/Asians when LESS qualified URMs who are not financially deprived get into these top schools when the whites/asians did not. If they are more qualified (betters scores, ECs, essays, teacher recs, and what-not) then by all means they deserve it. I am comparing URMs who are in a high income bracket with whites/Asians of the same income bracket. They have the same opportunities as the whites/Asians. Why should these URMs have an advantage? That doesn’t seem fair.</p>
<p>
Exactly! People aren’t saying that URM’s are worse than ORM’s. I’m not bashing URM’s. There are obviously URM’s out there that are just as qualified, even more qualified than other ORM’s.</p>
<p>Smileygerl you have to end up bringing it down to numbers, otherwise people like you will always use the cop out of “well those other factors are intangible, blah blah blah”.</p>
<p>Not sure if this has been said, but an easy way into an Ivy is to live in the town it’s located in. I know Harvard regularly accepts 8-10 kids from high schools in cambridge, and Williams college regularly takes seniors from the local high school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s still not clear to me that Iamright was really ■■■■■■■■ me. After all, his post history is entirely self-consistent - so if he’s been ■■■■■■■■, perhaps he’s been ■■■■■■■■ everybody?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That sounds like the same justification that was historically used to exclude black students from many universities, including nearly all ‘white’ public universities in the South during the pre-Civil-Rights era. W.E.B. Dubois could go to Harvard - and indeed became the first black to earn a PhD from Harvard - but couldn’t study at most mainstream state universities in the South because of his race. Similarly, some Ivy League schools, having originally been founded as denominational training grounds, has a long and dishonorable history of discriminating against non-Protestant applicants, hence spurring the development of Brandeis, Georgetown, Boston College, and other schools that catered to ‘undesired’ religions. And of course for most of their early history, nearly all top universities refused to admit women into their regular undergraduate programs - with many Ivies not becoming fully coed until the 1960’s or 1970’s, and Columbia not until 1984. </p>
<p>So were those historical admissions committees more qualified than we were to make proper judgments about admissions? When the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina, and other public schools, for the vast majority of their existence, fiercely refused to admit any blacks - and indeed would sometimes even require that applicants include photographs of themselves in order to ensure that the school didn’t “accidentally” admit any blacks - were they doing so because the adcoms were making a highly informed admission decision that we should trust? Or when the Ivy League instituted Numerus Clausus during the early 1900’s designed specifically to reduce the number of “undesired” students such as Jews and blacks - Columbia specifically excluded the admission of any blacks - should we automatically confer trusted upon admissions decisions? Maybe Columbia and the Southern white public school adcoms had reason to believe that all blacks were unqualified to attend their schools, right? </p>
<p>If not, then why should we automatically trust the admissions decisions being made now? Why is it fine to provide admissions preferences to certain races now, but not in the past? After all, if it’s perfectly fine for those schools to provide preference to URM’s now, then it should also be perfectly fine for those same schools to provide preference against URM’s in the past.</p>