<p>The comments made to the OP were undoubtedly crass, likely intentionally so, and at the core were simplistic and probably made for emotional reasons rather than because of thoughtful analysis. They didn’t pick a black kid for her kid’s slot. They picked a class that didn’t include the kid and gave preferences to a bunch of different groups when deciding what the right class looked like.</p>
<p>Why does this thread strike me as funny? The topic is serious, but having the discussion without looking more directly at what universities appear to be trying to achieve with their admissions policies misses the point. Some people seem to assume that they are trying to get kids who are strongest academically, which means to them usually, GPAs and board scores plus academic honors. Even there, are kids who are strongest academically supposed to be the kids who will win Nobel Prizes or equivalent or the kids who will have the highest college GPAs? It is likely that not all Nobel Prize winners were whizzes at English literature and that we could find well-rounded students who could get higher college GPAs. Like universities’ holistic admissions policies, others argue that the schools objective is to get the most interesting class and not the kids with the highest GPA/SAT combinations and that GPA/SAT on their own do not equate to the most meritorious applicants.</p>
<p>So, let’s back up. Private universities are institutions that live in political and economic contexts. They exist first and foremost to meet their own institutional needs. In the old days, they switched from using grades and board scores to holistic admissions policies (and limited class sizes) because both their donors and their professors were largely aristocratic WASPS and these constituencies were upset that the numbers-based admissions policies was leading to an uncomfortably high proportion of Jewish admits (indeed, if I remember correctly, internal documents cited by Jerome Karabel in The Chosen stated that the class would be all Jewish if they just used grades and board scores). When the 15% quota became politically embarrassing, they devised a new strategy: a holistic admissions policy. In addition to grades and board scores, they used geographic distribution, athletics, extra-curriculars, and other intangibles to limit the proportion of Jews. (They also asked for pictures to suss out possible Jews and had staff looking for Jewish names.) The holistic admissions policies was designed to respond to their constituencies and was used to discriminate and to ensure that their donors and professors (who were anti-Semitic) were not upset. One could argue that the outstanding academic performance of Jews caused HYP to evaluate their true priorities and to recognize that they really cared about diversity (geographic, athletic v. non-athletic, leadership in ECs, etc.) and instituted a holistic policy to achieve their desired diversity, but I think that would be charitable.</p>
<p>In today’s environment, the political winds are blowing another way. Donors still want their kids to get in, so we still have legacy admits. Alums still want to perform well in sports, so we have athletic admits (though, for another thread, query as to why this is valuable to elite institutions or as desirable social policy). Our polity has for 60 or 70 years attempted to respond to the disgrace of slavery and racism in the US, which led with much struggle to affirmative action for black Americans. As a society, we have over time extended a lot of the benefits of AA to other political groups that have mobilized effectively and gotten status as a politically protected group (in large part because of a legacy of discrimination and in some cases like Native Americans a disgraceful history of mistreatment as well but in some cases in part because of growing political leverage). That has flowed into college admissions policies as well. Professors’ kids still get special treatment at some (all?) schools. In that brief period in which university endowments were growing at a magical pace, politicians among others started asking why schools with $40+ billion endowments needed to be treated like charities for tax purposes. Lo and behold, Princeton and Harvard started financial aid policies that meet the estimated need of all kids. These institutions live in a social/political/economic context and need to respond to that context. That doesn’t mean that the holistic policy they adopt to respond is somehow virtuous – it can be vilely discriminatory or socially beneficial.</p>
<p>There is another aspect of the holistic policy that no one has directly addressed. I think elite schools want to produce graduates who occupy elite roles in society, whether partners in Goldman (not as elite this week, but they’ll be back), elected officials or appointed ones, royalty in other countries, scientists who make great contributions, intellectuals who change how people think, best-selling authors, social entrepreneurs and leaders, and hedge fund managers and scions of wealthy families who can give lots of dough to the school. Look at who they claim as alums in their publications. Who do they interview? Who do they write about? It is not the VP at Lower Sasquatch National Bank or the social worker in Cleveland. They are looking to admit those people who are capable of being lauded alumni in their alumni magazine thirty years later. That is why, per NorthStarMom’s comment, they might not take another very smart but not brilliant mathgeek over someone with lesser stats. Stats are only part of what helps predict people who’ll rise to the esteemed category.</p>
<p>The holistic policy inherently advantages some groups vis-a-vis others. I don’t think there is any disagreement about that. Legacy tips help the sons and daughters of alums and their chances of admission are increased relative to the chances of admission of the identical kid whose parents did not go to Esteemed University. The same is true for kids classified as URMs or kids who are recruited athletes. Their chances of admission because of this special characteristic are higher than they would be if they did not have that characteristic. In the admissions flavor of the decade, elite schools want kids who demonstrate passion for something. Picking people who have the determination to go beyond good grades to accomplish something may be a predictor of what such folks will do in the future. </p>
<p>The objective function of the university has a number of attributes and thus it is misleading to conclude that whenever they pick a kid with lower grades/scores over a kid with higher grades/scores that they have picked a kid who is less qualified (less qualified for what). </p>
<p>It is also simplistic to assume that because the school admitted kids that all of them are of the same academic caliber. I know a guy who has donated a chair to his alma mater, an elite university, and is likely a continuing donor. His oldest kid was wild partier in middle and high school and was admitted to a special program in which the kid agreed to take a gap year and was guaranteed admission thereafter. The kid was an indifferent student at best and I think her main qualification was Daddy’s donations. I know several other kids admitted under the same program who were just fine as students there and would be of an appropriate academic caliber (though none will likely be academic superstars), but I think not all are. The tipped groups may well not perform as well in courses. I think CC posters have linked to articles showing that athletes don’t perform as well in class. I have been told by a reliable and apolitical professor at an elite law school that has blind grading that minority law students had a much lower graduation rate than non-minority students, though I have never seen any data to confirm or disconfirm. </p>
<p>So, I think the real question here is about what the goals of these private institutions should be and whether we are comfortable with their goals as reflected in their admissions policies…</p>
<p>As some other posters have noted, the comment by the mother that started this post probably can be classified as racist because she focused solely on the racial tip and not others. She didn’t say, "My kid’s spot was given to the alumnus’s son or the celebrity’s daughter or the lacrosse player from that Baltimore prep school,” but instead focused on race. NSM, what percentage of Harvard’s class is African-American and what percentage legacy?</p>
<p>Two final thoughts. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>You regularly hear university presidents boast about their policy of increasing diversity. They are generally politically correct to a fare-the-well. I’ve heard this speech at several schools, one attended by my son where the president proudly pronounced their accomplishment of reducing white Americans to less than half of the class (49.8% I believe). They don’t boast about boosting the legacy admit or athlete admit pile, so the mom in question might have some justification in focusing on URM tips instead of others. </p></li>
<li><p>What kind of diversity we value is politically defined and whether it is desirable or not is also a political question. In US liberal circles, we reflexively think of things in terms of race because of our history. In Canada, while they also talk about diversity at schools, racial diversity does not seem to be high up on their list of considerations. The categories they use (and the affirmative action they allow) reflects attendance by Francophones (their word for French-speaking Canadians) and First Nations and other aboriginals (the other groups, including Metis and Inuits, sometimes seem to have a lesser claim but as the spouse of a Canadian, I haven’t fully absorbed all the ways of my Canadian brethren). I have seen Canadian Medical schools that have explicitly state on their website lower GPA minimums First Nations than for other applicants, for example. vig180 gave a link to a review of Espenshade and Radford’s book No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal. The reviewer Russell Nieli, who seems to be of the conservative persuasion, notes that while university diversity policies advantage non-whites, they do not appear to also advantage poor kids generally. In fact, Espenshade and Radford say (I haven’t read the book and am hoping the reviewer is reliable) that socio-economic status is positively correlated with chances of admission for URMs but negatively correlated for whites. Poor whites are not considered a positive from the Gods of Diversity Definition. “Poor whites are apparently given little weight as enhancers of campus diversity, while poor non-whites count twice in the diversity tally, once as racial minorities and a second time as socio-economically deprived. Private institutions, Espenshade and Radford suggest, ‘intentionally save their scarce financial aid dollars for students who will help them look good on their numbers of minority students.’” As NSM points out, this probably doesn’t apply to the schools that meet financial need. But the schools certainly appear not to want white kids who are officers in Junior ROTC or Future Farmers of America or have military experience. An argument made repeatedly on this board is that we should value diversity in part because elite students should be comfortable working with all types of different people. I’ve been unpersuaded by that justification for diversity, but if it is valid, it should be equally valid for the poor white kids with military experience who seems to be underrepresented at elite schools.</p></li>
</ol>