<p>^^
haha. The venerable “MidWest” rattled off as if it’s the same as growing up in crushing rural poverty and the projects.</p>
<p>Just kind of funny people’s perception. Rest assured, there’s not much difference from the Northeast.</p>
<p>anyway…moving on.</p>
<p>applejack the midwest and the projects is similar in terms of level of education expected/presented as well as avg family income (nominal) to pay for cornell…</p>
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This is the reason many people will disagree with you - you’re saying Black Americans are less successful not because of racism, socioeconomic class, slavery, etc, but because of their culture. You’re putting all the blame on them and saying Blacks shun education because they don’t give a hoot and think it’s for white folks. And then you’re saying that they should get rewarded for this through AA. </p>
<p>Now, I like AA. even though it’s unfair, I support it just because we need more educated URMs so they won’t be so underrepresented. But as an Asian-American, I find it really hard to wrap my head around this, the idea of a culture rejecting education and looking down on it…why is this? I guess there’s a few obvious answers, but even now, in the 21st century with a part black guy in the white house this is still the idea in mainstream black culture? interesting though, thanks for the insight.</p>
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<p>Further response to CRed2005. But your way, and the specific example you provide is a great example, actually harms the lower class, intelligent person. Standardized test scores and grades are the EASIEST and, IMO, the most important aspect of the application. Under your “holistic” admissions process, the rich kids who can spend their summers in Africa or researching w/ their parents’ friends or having their housewife mother chauffeur them to every extracurricular activity has a HUGE advantage over the lower class kid. But the lower class kid should have plenty of time and innate intelligence to study for the SAT and to outperform the rich kid on that OBJECTIVE measure of ability. (And let’s be real here, the test prep industry perpetrates the biggest fraud on suburban, helicopter parents. Buy two books for 15 bucks each other, use free materials provided by every HS in the country, and search online for the literally millions of practice tests/questions.) </p>
<p>So if Cornell focused more on numbers, the prep schooler whose parents have paid for 10 “life-changing experiences” and donated tons of money to their kid’s school (this, perhaps, giving their children a boost in grades) have all the advantage.</p>
<p>lets not forget that graduating high school is already a challenge for the URM student…</p>
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<p>Somehow we’re talking past each other on this. I’m suggesting that the 1400 SAT student from a middle class Midwest background without any outstanding extracurriculars shouldn’t necessarily be passed over for the 1500 SAT upper-class prep schooler who has been incredibly well-groomed.</p>
<p>I also think you may be overestimating the amount of emphasis placed on SAT prep in middle America. There certainly is a lot of focus in the uppity coastal suburbs, but I think in wide swaths of middle class communities you have a lot of students and parents who don’t think twice about it – the kids may take a practice test or two and then sit for the exam. And I suspect it is the high intelligence kids in these areas who aren’t really given the light of day among the admissions committee.</p>
<p>The question is how much ‘grooming’ is hiding underlying intelligence. And I think at a lot of these schools, there are just a lot of well-groomed kids crowding out high-intelligence kids.</p>
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<p>Wow. I don’t mean to sidetrack this convo since it was just a passing observation, but this has to be corrected. The “Midwest” is a swath of land generally ranging from central Pennsylvania across to the Dakotas, down to St. Louis and up to Canada. It includes places like Chicago (and Toronto if you want to pass borders), the uber-wealthy suburbs of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, St. Louis. It includes coastal vacation meccas like Traverse City, art and culture meccas like Minneapolis, and intellectual hubs like Ann Arbor and Madison and (again) Chicago.</p>
<p>I can assure you the premium on education and expectations is no different when comparing socioeconomic apples to apples. There are tons of expensive private schools stacked one next to another in many areas that feed students into the best colleges in the country. Competition to get in is fierce. They are obsessed with lacrosse and have polo teams and hunt clubs and boarding schools with campuses that would put most colleges to shame. They shop at malls that sell Prada and Gucci and all that crap.</p>
<p>So, yes, it is very culturally similar to the Northeast (I’ve learned that Northeast people don’t like hearing that, but I’ve lived in both). Again - I didn’t have any of this money so I’m not trying to brag or anything. </p>
<p>You should just know that it’s pretty insulting to lump an entire region of the country possessing tens of millions of very happy, successful people in with “the projects”.</p>
<p>Okay - back to the topic at hand.</p>
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What is your geographical definition of ‘midwest’?</p>
<p>maybe i should have corrected that to the rural midwest…</p>
<p>blue collar areas…</p>