<p>There are millions of kids my age more qualified than me in China and Korea, smarter than me, worked harder than me, but I'm going to a top 50 school in the US and they're not because I was born here! I love this country!</p>
<p>yes, i know the system changes for grad school, no, i'm not saying we should let a bunch of internationals in for undergrad.</p>
<p>Do schools have to foot the bill or something for student visas like businesses do for visas (or do they not?)? If so that might have to do with it.</p>
<p>tbh this thread seems silly</p>
<p>i love affirmative action too because i’m white and upper middle class and got an awesome merit scholarship for my college’s women in science program! now I can graduate debt-free!</p>
<p>:P gee, isn’t it fun being white americans?</p>
<p>Actually, poor white Americans get pretty screwed by affirmative action… hence why I’m more in support of economic affirmative action, not racial affirmative action. Well-off people of any race do fine, middle class people of any race can make something of themselves, but the poor do often get the short end of the stick.</p>
<p>…that was kind of my point. people on CC often go on about AA because they think it screws over “more deserving candidates” while giving undeserving minorities the upper hand on something. I think LogicW and I were trying to point out that this theory is crap.</p>
<p>for example, I attend college on a merit scholarship specifically for women; this is gender-based AA. All the women in this scholarship program happen to be white/asian too. Most of us were chosen based on research programs like Intel Siemens, which doesn’t attract low-income candidates either :/</p>
<p>To be fair, it’s 1:09AM and I’ve been up since 8AM and briefly napped on the Metro and then gave myself a temporary afterburner boost with an Iced Venti Nonfat Caramel Machiatto which worked for a bit but then caused me to crash and burn. :'(</p>
<p>The thing is I don’t think AA has anything to do with international students, unless a school was trying to increase the number of international students. Like I said I think that has more than anything to do with schools having to sponsor a student visa if student visas work like business visas.</p>
<p>But yes, I’m glad we’re all on the same page.</p>
<p>As an Asian male, I must say I am quite screwed in the modern AA system lol
Then again, who decides which race are benefited in the AA system anyways? I mean come on, asians have long been discriminated against(ex. chinese exclusion act, japanese concentration camps…). No offense to anyone but what has the US ever done to the Hispanics? O.o</p>
<p>Anyways, at this point, I wouldn’t bother ranting lol, just disappointed at the somewhat unfair college admission system eh?</p>
<p>@zala2022 um, a lot has been done to Hispanics. How about the fact that we took a LARGE chunk of Mexico away so that suddenly Mexicans in that area were living in a new country? As much as you hear about blacks being lynched, Hispanics were often lynched in the 1800s as well especially in Texas where the fallout of this entire annexation took place. The US has also tried to “peaceably” deport Hispanics on several occasions to fix population and economic issues. Not to mention the nasty stereotypes that almost every Hispanic group has to suffer through in modern times, from the name calling to the illegal immigrant accusations and more. They are shoved into some of the worst school districts. Every ethnic group has been discriminated against in this country except for WASPs, and even they I’m sure have had their hardships.</p>
<p>i definitely do not like affirmative action.</p>
<p>Being an Asian male like zala2022, I agree that AA has screwed me over as well. lol</p>
<p>@DHC, international students have to pay for their own visas. And at the end of the process it ends up costing close to $300, at least for me.</p>
<p>I don’t care since I can’t affect it</p>
<p>You don’t have to rub it in their faces ;).</p>
<p>I don’t particularly care about AA as it relates to education. I think AA is ridiculous as it relates to employment.</p>
<p>Basically, I think the smartest thing for every company is to do is have a racial minority be their CEO. My CEO is a black woman and this fact has saved us countless dollars. Let me explain:</p>
<p>In NY and NJ - I don’t know if it is like this in other places - it is basically impossible to fire someone if they are a “protected class” without incurring huge legal and government fees. </p>
<p>My parents run their own business. They are white (Jewish, but that’s white these days, yes?). They have many minority groups represented by their employees. Nevertheless, EVERY SINGLE TIME - literally, every time - they have had to fire a minority employee because the person was totally incompetent, this person sues them because they want to claim that they were fired because of their race (which is nonsense, but everyone always tries to take advantage of the system and play the race card. Welcome to reality, college kids). This costs my parents a lot of money in legal fees - win or lose. The irony of AA is that it is actually making it become a huge legal liability to employ someone who you may have to part with further down the road, kind of like how the apprentice program is working out in France.</p>
<p>So if they hired someone who is now over 50, a woman, and black - good luck firing them without losing all of your profit for that year in legal fees and mandatory government checks for these “protected” classes of people.</p>
<p>At my company, however, my CEO/President is a black woman. 75% of the people in the industry I work in are women. We have fired people who have claimed that we were being discriminatory and racist, and they were basically laughed out of our offices. My boss - because she is A) black and B) a woman - will never have to deal with a former employee suing her over racial prejudice being a reason for separation. It is genius.</p>
<p>A company I know used the recession as a way to fire an incompetent minority employee after they found out she sued her last employer for discrimination. The process of firing ended up being drawn out, but it was successful.</p>
<p>Anyways, OP, now that you got in your precious US universities, now try to get into Beijing University of technology and see how you fare against the non-Americans.</p>
<p>I know, as a mexican girl going into engineering, I should be happy for affirmative action. Except in the case where people assume I’m just an affirmative action case and don’t deserve to be where I’m at. Because, honestly, if someone told me years back that I could go to college for just being a girl and mexican I wouldn’t have worked so damn hard in high school. Dude, IB is annoying and why did I ever study? Apparently all I need are boobs and a last name ending in Z. Why did I even bother?</p>
<p>Affirmative Action should be for poor and first generation people. Why? Because they are the ones with the hard start, they can’t afford the tutors or the SAT classes. They might not be able to be 100% involved like they want to because they have to come home to tend to the household.</p>
<p>A rich black person has a HUGE advantage over a dirt poor white person.</p>
<p>The only problem that I have with Affirmative Action is that people (in general) only think that you get into certain places because of Affirmative Action. I think it’s unfair how URMs have that stigma placed on them automatically by people. People fail to realize that we come from different backgrounds, have different life stories and have different upbringings. Yes they are some undeserving URMs who benefit from AA but that’s not all URMs though. </p>
<p>Just to speak out loud, I’m proud of all the schools that I got into and all fot he opportunities that I had in my life. I know that just being black didn’t get me into the colleges that accepted me and some of the internships that I got. It’s because the type of person I am, what I overcame and my incredible life story that hooked these colleges/people.</p>
<p>Cowman is correct, AA should be for the poor and for the first generation. Most of the beneficiaries of AA today are more affluent minorities (80K and above). The reason for that is because the minorities that make very little money are not even informed about the academic world out there, and most likely live in a poor neighborhood with a horrible public school in their district. Affluent minorities on the other hand are completely informed, and most likely make more money because they have also gone through higher education. I’m not naive enough to believe that universities don’t put all of this into context however, I’m sure they do.</p>
<p>Now, I won’t say that there should be AA for women and minorities in general though. Particularly in the case of women. Statistically, women do not enter certain fields because of social conventions. What better way to lure in more women than by telling them they have a better chance than others to break a barrier in the field? Any black female competent enough to attend a top university that wants to major in Aeronautical Engineering would get a free ride in my book.</p>
<p>There are a few things not taken into consideration however. The most important being this: how will we fix the flagrant disparity of ethnicities? AA is simply the modern “40 acres and a mule” that was given to colored people after passing the 14th amendment.You guys must understand that minorities need a helping hand, and sometimes that will come at the cost of others. That is unfortunately a consequence of hundreds of years of oppression. To those who say racial AA should be scrapped; how will you fix the problems plaguing the minorities while not unbalancing fairness?</p>
<p>I would also like to add this: it is true that Asians often do come from impoverished countries and are not as wealthy as many of the other college bound students. But from my experience, education is something deeply sought after ingrained in Asian culture. The same is not true for people of other countries, and that’s why while Asians are also from indigent background, they have a culture that encourages academic excellence. Simply looking at the “Asians are good at math stereotype” reinforces my point. That, and also statistics. Asians are only 4 percent of the american population, however they are a substantial percentage of the students matriculated in college today. This may be wrong, but it is what I have observed.</p>
<p>I’m hispanic and a first generation american. None of my parents went to college. I live in a poor neighborhood. I come from a low income family which can be seen by my $0 family contribution in my financial aid package to duke. Whereas in most american families it is expected to at least go to community college, in my family it is a big deal if you get your GED or have not been pregnant by the time you were 18. I feel that i’m the kind of person who affirmative action was designed for. Even though I admit that affirmative action has helped me, I believe that affirmative action should not be a racial policy, but an economical policy because 2 groups of people unfairly benefit:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Rich black/Hispanics- They basically have all of the advantages of middle-class and even rich whites. They often live in good neighborhoods, have an educated family, and can afford luxurious such as SAT tutors. I do not understand the disadvantage they have by being a minority.</p></li>
<li><p>People who are half/ a quarter or less hispanic or black- This does not relate to all people who have some URM in them, but teh ones who have no connection to their URM culture. I know many people in my school who are half or a quarter hispanic who know nothing about their hispanic culture. They were brought up as an average white american, but they list themselves as hispanic because they have an hispanic grandmother.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I may be wrong, but I feel that a majority of URMs in elite schools fall into the above two categories. If AA were to be economically based, many URMs would benefit anyway because a large group of poor Americans are URMs. The right URMs would benefit as would poor whites and asians whom also have a huge disadvantage, especially compared to the two groups above.</p>