<p>@xiggi It has a lot to do with their ranking. Using the great words of your old hometown boy and my fellow Texan, they have the luxury of USNWR ‘misunderestimating’ them consistently with a rank of 4 to 6, giving them the luxury of flying under the radar. I hope the next rank from USNWR puts them at 10 so they will never get such lawsuits.</p>
<p>Now about Luck and them sisters and the other baseball boy - Texas has given number 1 pro picks to Stanford in 3 different sports. They need to reciprocate by admitting a lot more Texas kids who might want to serve their communties. </p>
<p>I just perused chapter 3 of the e-book Mismatched that someone here posted a link to several pages back (thank you!). I can’t help but wonder if the underperformance of black kids in STEM at elite institutions (versus their better performance at lower ranked colleges) has more to do with their discouragement in the face of all this talk about how they don’t belong/ don’t measure up, etc. and less to do with their actual abilities. Malcolm Gladwell speaks about the problem of the little fish in a big pond–how kids of all stripes, including whites and Asians, who are in the middle or bottom of their classes at elite colleges become discouraged by their relative standing and so tend to drop out or underachieve relative to their higher ranked peers. I think many black kids who attend ivies and other top schools are similarly discouraged, and this may explain part of the dropout and/or major-switch rate out of STEM. </p>
<p>^^ I have seen Thomas Sowell rant about this issue where perfectly great performing URM kids go to elite Us where they are brainwashed into majoring in African American studies or Hispanic studies and so forth. I don’t believe Harvard is all that hard for someone to be STEM major irrespective of their skin color.</p>
<p>Btw - I do believe Cornell engineering is hard irrespective of one’s skin color.</p>
<p>By building a career in the arts, being especially gifted with management skills, an aesthetic sense, the ability to schmooze donors, being memorable, having great communication skills, finding the right mate, and luck. And then years of hard work. </p>
<p>There are many good points brought up on both sides of this discussion. I can’t get too excited about any of it because I tend to fall into the camp that wonders why there is such an obsession with Harvard and its ilk. And no, I absolutely do not limit this obsession to Asians. </p>
<p>Two things especially strike me. First, that there is a pervasive notion that all Asians are high scoring, academically driven, and STEM-oriented. Really? I live in an area that has a strong Asian population and many are first generation. You wouldn’t make that sort of blanket statement if you met these kids. There are parents who shake their heads about other parents and call them “crazy.” There are kids who are athletes, there are kids who are social leaders, there are kids who write poetry. It’s too big and too varied a group to make these sorts of snap judgments about “all Asians.” This persistent idea that all Asians are the same and all Asians are “robots” who do nothing but drill for high scores is a myth and it’s offensive. I’d agree that there is an emphasis on achievement in my community but it isn’t a whole heck of a lot different from what I saw in my prior whitebread, educated academically-oriented community. Maybe it was a bit more hush hush there but the same phenomenon was decidedly present.</p>
<p>Note: I am not Asian and my point above has nothing to do with the issue of acceptance rates for various groups. I just find that the above argument runs throughout this thread and I object to it.</p>
<p>Second. Are we all in agreement that Harvard engineers its class? The sticking point seems to be that one group is applying in greater numbers and it isn’t fair to that group that its acceptance rate is being artificially limited in order to maintain the balance of the class. Why is there no similar outcry about female applicants? Isn’t it the same essential issue? Too many women apply each year, the schools that can do so, reject women in greater numbers in order to maintain a balance. Maybe I missed the uproar on that point? Or is gender discrimination more palatable to those reading and commenting here?</p>
<p>Zekesima Your welcome. I posted it to show that there might be a disadvantage to academically mismatched students who have a desire to obtain STEM degrees. With all the good intent of Harvard to try to foster diversity, it might not be all that effective at least for those URM students wanting STEM degrees. Going elsewhere might be a better bet and cheaper financially given that Harvard admittees would be strong candidates for large merit scholarships at other universities. </p>
<p>Please don’t get me wrong, academic mismatch can be overcome with hard work, so if you child is up for the challenge and knows what he is in for then the likes of Cornell or any other top school should not be dismissed. But mys sense is that this bit of info is not well presented as indicated by the previous posts on this thread.</p>
<p>By the way, you know, I wouldn’t get too tied up in the URM medical school dropout rate vs. the Asian success rate, at least in discussing this topic.</p>
<p>Gender discrimination against females is not evident at top 40 universities, and that is the focus of cc. Males are not outnumbered in the statistical tail encapsulated by top 40 university applicants. I am not sure what goes on at liberal arts colleges except for Kenyon College, which seems to like to trumpet its gender discrimination.</p>
<p>The case at UNC will have nothing to do with OOS. UNC is one of the few states that still seriously limits the OOS students and so it won’t make a tiny bit of difference.</p>
<p>That said, as I have repeatedly said, I think the UNC case stands a chance, not the Harvard. For the same reason OOS stats have no bearing on the case, because it is a state public, I think it may have merit for instate students. We have the california system as an example of this being the case.</p>
<p>All that said, there are always special considerations when it comes to a southern state and affirmative action. So, it may turn out to be a wash.</p>
<p>Hey guys without naming names it’s pretty weak thinking to say that whatever Harvard is doing (right or wrong) is fine because they are smart and can hide it well. It’s even weaker thinking to say that people who don’t like Harvard should just go elsewhere. Harvard takes Federal money so can’t do anything illegal and all taxpayers have an interest in what it does.</p>
<p>Hey xiggi, it’s good that you are not (or seem not to be) arguing that high stats Asians must be weak in some other way compared to relatively lower stats URMs, and instead are arguing straight up in favor of AA. Trouble is, mate, you are not thinking from the perspective of a Asian kid and how that comes across to them. So let me role play, eh? I am paraphrasing what you said, in a caricature, so take it with some humor please. We all gotta laugh at ourselves, eh?</p>
<p>Ok, so, some whites oppressed some blacks and some Hispanics came in to USA dirt poor and without a good academic culture, which is also shared by the blacks. Hence there should be an upper limit on how many Asians who study their heart out can be admitted to elite schools.</p>
<p>How logical does that sound, eh?</p>
<p>It would be more logical to me at least if there was no cap on Asians and instead there was a cap on Whites (non-Jewish, because the Jews have been persecuted too). But I am not suggesting that. I am frankly not suggesting anything other than let the case proceed and let the chips fall where they may per the U.S. constitution. No one, not even Harvard should be above the law, yeah?</p>
<p>VOR, regarding your comments in #309, how do you think my daughter got a Classics degree without a typical Classics curriculum? Pretty sure Amherst doesn’t hand out degrees that were half done. She didnt get some kind of pass because she also took med school prereq’s.You seem to think any degree that is not STEM is less demanding but many STEM majors complain of the difficulty of their non STEM classes…what is easy for one can be grueling for another. I find it sad that you obviously equate the size of ones paycheck to success. My daughter would hardly be a failure as you see it if she had decided to pass on medschool and instead teach High School Latin. And FWIW, my URM daughter did not steal somebody’s spot. :-S </p>
<p>@periwinkle: From what I hear, people who had low MCAT scores and/or grades have trouble in med school classes and also with the board exams that they take after 2 years of med schools. And I have seen at least one study showing that board exams were inversely proportional to the number of malpractice suits. </p>
<p>Note that I’m not arguing that these intrinsic differences are the cause of these disparities. However, med school is fast and there is a great volume of work. I don’t see how “additional support” can really help anyone at that point. You don’t necessarily have to have an extensive background in biology before you get there, but you do have to know the fundamentals of science and your ability to read, comprehend, and absorb a great deal of material. </p>
<p>Again, you are advancing opinions and attempting to pass them as facts. Perhaps you have different definition of wjat is considered a “better qualified student” and now this academically mismatched student. </p>
<p>I pointed you to the graduation rate of Harvard being steady at 97 to 98 percent. How much better do they have to be? People do not complete their degree for various reasons and an attrition of 2-3 percent is plain remarkable. Albeit a bit less remarkable considering the accept the very best students, but that is an issue you see to reject by presenting the case of “mismatched” and I assume poorly prepared students. </p>
<p>Again, what is the comparison to the “models” where Asians are highly represented? What is Berkeley’s graduation rate? In the end, those are numbers and facts! </p>
<p>@collegealum314: there’s no evidence of gender discrimination at the top 40 universities? The college counselors at the high school my kid attends handed out a chart showing an artificial 50-50 balance for the top 20 or so and then a * steep * dropoff after that, with women sharply outnumbering men. It’s common wisdom that given their greater numbers and greater qualifications, women have a harder time gaining admission to top schools unless the school they seek out is MIT or CalTech. </p>
<p>Do you think STEM classes are more difficult at Harvard than they are at Emory or Johns Hopkins or any other university where the average SAT score is 2100 rather than 2235? Seriously?</p>
<p>Well, right now I’m thinking that a school with no affirmative action (like a UC or Rose-Hulman) might be a safer place for him to tackle engineering. That subject is challenging enough, and he doesn’t need the added pressure of constantly having to deal with people’s assumptions about his relative abilities because of the color of his skin. Believe me, that can be a heavy burden to bear.</p>
<p>It’s possible. However, I haven’t seen this data. And also, at the top SAT ranges men tend to outnumber females, so it would be surprising to me that there would need to be affirmative action in favor of males. In contrast, the mean scores of females is higher. So I wouldn’t conclude that the 50-50 balance for the top 20 is “artificial”.</p>
<p>Possibly it is more widely accepted that a gender balance is desirable than it is that a racial balance is desirable?</p>
<p>Girls have a tougher time of it in admissions, no doubt (except in a handful of engineering schools). But even these girls are often very clear that THEY don’t want to attend a school where they make up 75% of the class so they are OK with competing with each other for 50% of the spots in order to have a balance?</p>
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