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<p>Sorry, you’ll need to speak with the University of California. That is their designation…</p>
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<p>Indeed, and UC gives bonus points for such applicants.</p>
<p>if you want to save some keystrokes … here is a 315 page discussion on the topic … <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1155321-colleges-racist.html?highlight=jian+l[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1155321-colleges-racist.html?highlight=jian+l</a></p>
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<p>You need a few more classes in logic and in history. Today’s Asian’s would be analogous to Jews in the '20s and pre-Civil Rights Blacks IF they were being almost entirely denied access to these schools. That is not the case. The percentage of Asians in the Ivies and other top schools is generally much higher than their representation in the US population. NOT at all the same case as the truly-discriminated against groups of yesteryear.</p>
<p>It’s such a complex issue all the way around and there are no easy answers or solutions to the various issues/questions posed.</p>
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<p>Actually…in the case of the 1920’s Jews and other “undesirables”,…the discriminatory admission policies at the Ivies and many peer elite colleges were enacted AFTER their respective presidents found “too many Jews/undesirables” were gaining admission in the first two decades of the 20th century. </p>
<p>Due to a mix of anti-semitism and the fear the “deluge” of Jews and other “undesirables” would scare off wealthy WASP applicants they preferred for social and alumni giving reasons…the Presidents of the Ivy league universities actually held some meetings to hash out and enact those very policies. Incidentally, these polices created what we now know as the modern college application and “holistic admissions”. </p>
<p>In fact, the section on Columbia’s application requesting a photo originated from those policies and the photo was mandatory back then due to the unfortunate fact that like many establishment figures in Western Europe and the US…many admission officers/university officials heavily bought into the very pseudoscience known as physiognomy which was widely revered by the Nazis and discredited by their horrific anti-semitic/anti-anyone who’s non-“aryan” and defeat in WWII. </p>
<p>In fact…this is one reason why I’m surprised there are still colleges which do mandate photos on college apps considering this horrid history.</p>
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<p>Pardon me, but I disagree; I don’t find that “impressive.” I agree, it provides diversity and boosts the application, but such students are BORN into that situation and are forced to work their entire lives, supporting their family.They don’t have a choice. It’s not like they were born into an average American family and then left to live their life (up to college) with a poor, rural family in order to work and help support them.</p>
<p>I have absolutely no idea as to what point you’re trying to make in post #46.</p>
<p>^^^I think he’s saying because they don’t choose that life (it’s inflicted upon them), it’s not that impressive. They weren’t altruistic, just unlucky. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>“they’re today’s 1920’s jews and pre-civil rights blacks.”</p>
<p>You need a history lesson if you’re throwing around comparisons to pre-civil-rights era blacks. Unless you see Asian-American students hanging from trees and being dragged from rivers for trying to exercise the right to vote, this kind of rhetoric just makes you sound ignorant.</p>
<p>Actually, I agree with 46 – because it does present an uneven playing field problem. The problem with saying 'we gave so and so a bump because her parents are incarcerated/a nontraditional family/handicapped/mentally ill, etc. is that the admissions people are in fact practicing discrimination by saying that there is some number of spots that will be distributed according to circumstances rather than achievement. That is, unless you’re born into that particular arrangement, you can’t EVER earn those spots – There is no possibility for anyone else to compete for those spots, the way you might compete for an academic spot by, say, studying harder. I know my kids have figured this out, as have their classmates – That’s why you hear them joking that “they only way I’ll get into Harvard is if I convince my parents to get divorced, marry people of the same sex and commit a crime.”</p>
<p>Momzie, I’d like to repeat a point I’ve made in other discussions like this that might help: admissions to top schools like Harvard isn’t competitive; it is selective. That’s a pretty important distinction, I think.</p>
<p>I find the recent turn in the discussion to be quite surprising. It isn’t that some good students get a boost because they just happened to come from a difficult environment, but rather that they get the boost because they were good students in spite of that challenging environment. If runner A, carrying a heavy extra weight, and runner B, with no extra weight, take some endurance test and both run a lengthy distance in the same time, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that A performed better than B, or at least that A had more potential to perform at a higher level in the future. Now if B finished way ahead of A, then it would certainly be reasonable to conclude that B outperformed A and B had more potential. A kid who hasn’t had the “advantage” of overcoming terrible circumstances need only put in the same effort as the “lucky” kid did in meeting challenges and overcoming obstacles and everything should work out.</p>
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<p>Yes, they really do (under holistic admissions). (UCSD automatically adds points to the admissions file.) Where they finally end up depends on their grades and the rest of their package.</p>
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<p>Probably not the example you really want to use, bcos at the finish line, the gold medal is given to the runner who finishes first, regardless of what extra baggage s/he may be carrying (or not).</p>
<p>^ I don’t think that admissions committees give gold medals but instead are trying to judge, in a holistic sense, which student performed better and had more potential. That is why I intentionally did not use the terms “race” and “winner” and instead used “endurance test” and “performed better.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, the analogy rests on the assumption that the track is infinitely long and everyone can actually run as far as they can. In reality, the highest score on the SAT is 800, the highest GPA is 4.0. Therefore, if the kid with the tough family situation gets a 720 or a 3.8, the admissions people can say to themselves “he would have had the same scores as Joe the Rich Kid if only his family situation were better.” But there’s no way to take into account that maybe Joe the Rich Kid might have had a 900 or a 5.0 if the situation had allowed. </p>
<p>(The other problem with that thinking is that if we decide that the kid with the tough situation is amazing because he’s the concertmaster of the high school orchestra, while the Rich Kid would have to be the concertmaster of the Regional Youth Symphony for these to be equivalent, it also means that the Rich Kid’s family is therefore COMPELLED to spend large amounts of additional money beyond the fees at school in order to compete with the kid with the tough family situation, as well as putting in vast amounts to time to take kid to said activities, purchase additional lessons, etc. And if Joe the rich kid has siblings or other aspects of the situation that the admissions committee isn’t aware of, he might not actually be able to pay for the youth symphony or get a ride there because both parents work, etc. I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that one kid just needs to get A’s in science while the other kid needs to win the Westinghouse competition to be considered equivalent.)</p>
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<p>Since when was selection ever based upon ‘achievement’ and not STRONGLY impacted by one’s circumstances? If your parents are well off, you grew up in a great school district, and your parents are well educated providing an enriched home life and enriched childhood of travel, investment in extra curriculars, SAT coaching, possibly tutors…and the list goes on and on and on. </p>
<p>AS IF it a kids college resume was somehow magically just from their own making. People are born into extremely different circumstances and the kid who has had all the cards stacked against him or her but still looks great is far far far more accomplished and likely showing their own innate abilities than the kid who (like my own) were born with silver, if not gold plated, spoons in their mouths through sheer luck.</p>
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<p>Yes there is - there are numerous other ways to show off your academic talents other than through SAT scores and GPA. If you look around CC for a bit, you may find them.</p>
<p>Believe you me, I am plenty aware of all the extra ways one can show off one’s additional achievements. All of my time in addition to my full time job goes to chauffering and most of my money goes to financing the additional camps, and tutoring, etc. But my point is that the equation that says local achievement and top marks are insufficient for anyone who isn’t impoverished and that more is necessary is that it succeeds in making the kid a “group project” – since a 14 year old can’t actually drive himself to any of the non school-based activities. I think once you set it up that anyone who isn’t impoverished is ONLY considered as a group project, you end up doing ALL kids a disservice, since it’s no longer about the kids but about the families.</p>
<p>At a highly selective college, by far the largest portion of time and energy on the part of the admissions committee goes into quickly determining whom they DON’T want. They are given an institutional mission and in trying to meet its LONG-TERM requirements, they have to figure out (and quickly!) which applicants are not likely to help them.</p>
<p>With rare exceptions (developmental admits and a few legacies), admissions has nothing to do with individuals, and everything to do with the class(ES) they are building. They know that 50% of the students are going to come from the top 5% of the population economically (most from the top 1%), and so the question really is what can they do to enhance the educational experience for this majority of students and serve their long-term mission? (keeping the money coming, etc., etc.) So the question then becomes how to serve the interests of this majority/plurality of students? And the answer is to provide them with interesting classmates - classmates from everywhere, who play lots of musical instruments well, who play sports well, who perform theater, who write novels, who speak critical languages (and will bulk up certain departments), and who look different than the majority/plurality of the other students and come from different environments (but not too many!)</p>
<p>Oh, and then defend the long-term interests of the institution (which might mean admitting a less-than-stellar student in order to please the GC at a feeder school, and rejecting the top student at a big public high school, which only enhances the institution’s reputation), accepting the sons and daughters of legislators who write tax and educational policy, the sons and daughters of ambassadors so that the college will good long-term connections to various countries, etc., etc. </p>
<p>Very little of this has anything to do with any particular student’s individual achievement, or competition among applicants. That’s just the part we think we see. We think there is a “playing field” - that’s not the way admissions offices work.</p>
<p>It’s probably best to refer further discussion of the news story, which has led to much discussion of a chronically contentious issue, to the FAQ thread (as has been done by other members of the volunteer moderator team recently in other CC forums). </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html</a> </p>
<p>After posting this link, I’ll close the thread here. Feel free to read the initial posts in that thread for links out to official sources of information and then feel free to join the discussion there.</p>