<p>After reading this thread, I just want to offer my $0.02:</p>
<p>a) I don’t think colleges should categorize applicants based on their ethnicity… in fact, by doing this, these highest upper echelons of American culture are furthering the idea that race can be used as a differentiating concept among people… it’s a very Third Reich kind of idea, though of course there is no Social Darwinism present.</p>
<p>b) I think that since some URMs are in higher income strata, colleges should look not at races and ethnicities, but rather at the socioeconomic backgrounds. This will allow them to get a better understanding of an applicant’s background, circumstances, and also enable them to place students’ accomplishments in perspective (see Post #38).</p>
<p>It would be awesome to elimination affirmative action, it has done nothing to eliminate the education gap between African Americans/Hispanics and their white/Asian counterparts and instead creates tensions. As an African American (as well as someone who comes from a fairly financially able bodied family) I feel confident that my gpa and standardized test scores will gain me entrance to the university of my choice, not my skin color.</p>
<p>Which is more worthy; a magnificent, carefully tended specimen in a greenhouse, or a single blossom pushing up through the asphalt of an urban playground?</p>
<p>This is false. Obviously you haven’t been to many robotics competitions, especially FIRST ones, or science fairs. Almost everyone is Caucasian – I would say only a quarter to a third of participants are Asian. The Asian majority at math competitions holds though.</p>
I truly don’t think that is how it works. Harvard accepts 4 students from my local high school every year, no exceptions. As long as you are in the top 10/600 in that school, you have a very good chance to be accepted. Harvard enrolls about 60 students from New Jersey every year, and that high school is one of the two schools sends 3-4 kids to Harvard ever year ( usually there is always one who does not go – 75% yield?).</p>
<p>so it’s not as impressive to do math and sciencey things if you’re Asian than if you are a URM? I can’t help the fact that I’m asian or that I happened to enjoy math and science.</p>
<p>lol although it’s interesting why many asians pursue math and science, my Penn interviewer told me that Asians are good at math because of the way they farm rice. They have complex rice farming methods… (not sure whether this is true but ok XD )</p>
<p>But in history, haven’t Asians been discriminated too? the anti-Asian movement that led up to Chinese Exclusion Act and then internment camps after Pearl Harbor</p>
<p>Also not all Asians are the same, other yes China has a history of placing emphasis on education, there are countries like Cambodia where the educational system is a work in progress.</p>
<p>And also not all Chinese people put an emphasis on education for their kids. But of course, under the umbrella of “Asian” it doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>@DwightEisenhower
I know that… but it shouldn’t be used to differentiate people past their appearance. That is all. Of course, there are studies about the intellectual capabilities of one race vs. another, but colleges should not be playing into that game.</p>
<p>If you want to understand how the admissions process came to be the way it is at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, please read The Chosen by Jerome Karabel. The book’s subtitle is “The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.”</p>
<p>The issue of merit - what it is and how to evaluate it in students applying to these 3 colleges - has been around for more than a century. You can’t understand the present without some knowledge of the past. The book is long - but it is very enlightening. The author plowed through piles of private correspondence from various top administrators at these schools over the past century, and he has documented how “holistic” admissions came to be - at least at these 3 schools.</p>
<p>I know what you’re saying, but it’s a cousin of the “if you don’t talk about race, race won’t be a problem” argument which is a bad argument. Race has been used to differentiate people for thousands of years but only in the last 40 or so years has there been de facto equality for races in only a subset of the world’s population. It’s unreasonable to expect a few decades to simply remove race’s huge relevance in society. Not to mention that the vast majority of nations are effectively monoracial so economic inequality, cultural differences, language, political power etc still fall highly along racial lines. </p>
<p>Yes, to continue to ask (albeit optionally) “what race are you?” Harvard perpetuates an artificial construct that has no significant biological basis but to say “we no longer recognize race as a pertinent issue” is hugely out of touch with the state of society.</p>
<p>Until all races perform at an equal level allowing colleges to only focus on test scores, grades, and LORs, affirmative action will never go away, and the race that outperforms the others will be held to higher standards. In essence, we will always have this system because there will never be racial equality due to the massive quantity of people with differing aspirations and priorities in life (which is why we need less human beings, but that’s another issue…)</p>
<p>In light of this thread’s lack of imagination in solutions to this problem, it is safe to say that we have a VERY long time to go before any solution can be evolved (probably never.)</p>
<p>racial designation in itself is unequal! Not all Asian countries put emphasis on education. And not all people of a typically education-emphasizing country strongly emphasize education. </p>
<p>Not all blacks are descended from slaves… See if affirmative action is to compensate for the educational setback with slavery, I wonder how many people are helped that fit in such a category. As from what I learned in history, there were some tribes in Africa that would capture other people to sell into the slave trade. (here comes my reasoning that may or may not have happened in history but what I believe could’ve happened) Now those Africans rich from the selling other Africans into slavery would be able have more opportunities than the descendants of slaves -because they have the money (and because of many other things too). Their descendants would be better off, yet just because of skin color, they qualify for affirmative action. Not saying you should punish these descendants because we all know we can’t help our ethnicity but to use race as a way to make thing “equal” is not going to work.</p>
<p>Do you have a better way of designating who we are in terms of family roots? All I see in this thread is a bunch of nagging rather than suggestions for how to make things better. You fail to understand that while human beings are unique as individuals, there are too many of us for colleges or any other institution to give us a comprehensive, individualized look. Colleges provide essays for you to explain why you are different from your racial group, which is why counselors always emphasize the importance of the essay.</p>
<p>Yeah “there are too many of us for colleges or any other institution to give us a comprehensive, individualized look” but since “Colleges provide essays for you to explain why you are different…”</p>
<p>Colleges have to read the essays anyways to see why we are different, so why use race at all? In terms of family roots race is not a good designation. Where you came from is better. Maybe you’re black but your family has settled in Europe for many years. Maybe your Asian but your family has settled in South America for many years. Maybe you lived in a tough neighborhood, on the streets… etc… And so on. Your background is going to be different even if your race is the same. Anyways if you want to go all technical for in terms of family roots, we are all related and we all originated in Africa. Why do we need affirmative action then? They can make the holistic decision off that.</p>
<p>Another interesting thing to mention is that I know a hispanic mother who has to bubble nonwhite hispanic for one of her kids and white hispanic for the other. They were raised under the same roof, why does race have to divide them?</p>
<p>You’re assuming everyone wants to write about where they came from in their essays… You’re also assuming that just because a person was born in another country, they don’t retain the culture of their own people through family customs that go back to their origins (I did and so did most of my other friends who are first or second generation immigrants). In addition, college admissions is all about differentiation; what good would it do the admissions committee if everyone was seen as originating from Africa -__- “Family roots” are therefore defined within centuries, not millenia… Race saves essential time and if you are particularly worried about being defined within a bubble that says “White” or “Asian-American” just write about your unique ethnic situation in your essay.</p>
This would be ideal in theory, but we don’t live in a utopia. If adcoms only admit high achieving low income kids, then their endowment will decrease. They don’t want that. They simply won’t bite the hand that feeds them.</p>
<p>They won’t be the only admitted applicants: this kind of system will be only for the URM-minority quota they’re aiming to fulfill. Keep in mind that I’ve resigned myself to the fact that they will differentiate based on race no matter how we slice it.</p>