<p>Yeah, the burden of proof would be on someone who wants to show that different things are equal in some way. Why would we assume two different things, while looking different are the same in certain factors, in this case the factors happen to be we can't physically see, and the ones we value most, how convenient.</p>
<p>We all agree there are trait differences between different groups of people. Pick any specific trait and there is a good chance there will be a cultural difference. The fallacy is expanding this to the total cognitive ability of large groups. While I am unable to "prove" that races are the same, ( there is data to show this as well as the opposite), there is plenty of evidence that many prior studies proved what they wanted to find. Stephen Jay Gould's book 'The Mismeasure of Man' speaks far more eloquently on this issue than I ever could. I especially enjoyed the WW1 IQ test for illiterates he gave his Harvard class- 10% scored in the lowest intellectually marginal category. Intelligence is a very complex thing, to say there are gross cultural differences is the easy way out.</p>
<p>To say there are none is also an easy way out -- maybe easier given the political climate on this issue at elite institutions.</p>
<p>By the way -- I intended to say this earlier, but didn't want to pile on too many things at once -- I think I'm having a little difficulty understanding your view on this issue. Since your answer to large SAT score differences was just to pretend they don't exist by rescaling, what kind of evidence could convince you of real differences in intellectual ability across groups? Would your response to any test which showed gaps in the means be to say "Well, we'll just assume parity and adjust the experimental results accordingly?"</p>
<p>That's certainly a tenable response, in some sense, but then the question of whether races/genders/whatever differ in intelligence is a faith-based issue for you, not an empirical one.</p>
<p>If I'm wrong about this, could you say what kind of test or experiment would satisfy you, and why you wouldn't subject it to your rescaling procedure a la SAT scores?</p>
<p>This is the heart of the problem. By what measure may we test the East African nomad, the European field laborer, the Asian bank executive, the South American gaucho and so on that will reliably indicate base intelligence and cognitive ability? It is certainly not determined by IQ or SAT tests nor should it be based on my "faith" in equality. I know of no single test that would satisfy either you or I as to the nature of intelligence and the statistical variation or lack thereof worldwide.
In the end my '"faith" is, given the lack of real empirical data proving the absence of equality, that we as a society had better err on the side of diversity. Using criteria that puts forth a face not found in society as a whole perpetuates undesirable stereotypes. You have said yourself something to the effect that often the admitted wait list student performed better academically than higher rated students.</p>
<p>Even if I am completely wrong on this issue the differences would be minor and a diverse campus made up of motivated students would be a great thing to see... while eating my Boston Red Sox hat.</p>
<p>kevtrice: You say "Let's assume that we are talking about advantage on a point scale." Why should we do that? I'm talking about MIT Admissions, not all the various ways AA can be implemented. I do know that one way MIT Admissions implements AA is to intensively recruit qualified URMs to apply. Another way, that isn't just about AA, is to look at "context". I believe that Ben Jones has explained the concept of context pretty thoroughly in the past, though if people don't understand what I mean when I say it, I can re-explain.</p>
<p>I do not believe based on current knowledge that any of MIT's admissions policies lower the admissions standards for URMs. Why not? Simple, MIT doesn't need it. They get plenty of apps from qualified URMs. Note that I said nothing about any AA or admissions standards in any other context.</p>
<p>In general, a major philisophical reason for some kinds of AA is to overcome the effects of people's unconscious racial and gender schemas. If we're going to talk "points", the theory is that blacks already lose a few points for being black, so giving them a few free points is just giving those points back. See this study: <a href="http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/names2.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/names2.htm</a></p>
<p>To get back to the original question...werunthis, can you tell us a little more about yourself so that we can give you better answers?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I do know that one way MIT Admissions implements AA is to intensively recruit qualified URMs to apply. Another way, that isn't just about AA, is to look at "context". I believe that Ben Jones has explained the concept of context pretty thoroughly in the past, though if people don't understand what I mean when I say it, I can re-explain.</p>
<p>I do not believe based on current knowledge that any of MIT's admissions policies lower the admissions standards for URMs.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Jessie, if you mean that, in evaluating applications, race is used by MIT only for judging the context and opportunities of a student's education, you are unfortunately incorrect. But don't take it from me -- take it from MIT. In a court filing in the now famous Grutter v. Bollinger affirmative action case, MIT explicitly rejected the notion that the purpose of using race in admissions is to provide context and judge disadvantage. The relevant quote and link to the entire brief can be seen in my original post on this [url="<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=177096%22%5Dhere%5B/url">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=177096"]here[/url</a>].</p>
<p>I will quickly summarize MIT's rejection of this "context" notion. MIT said race is not an effective proxy for educational disadvantage, and vice versa. Race is the only effective proxy for race, and the explicit goal of affirmative action is to balance the race ratios to reflect population averages, so only race really matters. And, anyway, the majority of students who benefit from race-based affirmative action at MIT don't come from educationally or economically disadvantaged households. They come from households that look very much like the middle- and upper-class households of most successful white and Asian applicants. None of this is me talking -- it's all in MIT's brief, and most of it is in a particularly damning two paragraphs, which I quote fully in the above-linked post.</p>
<p>But don't feel bad. I, too, was led to believe that racial AA focused most on context and disadvantage. Nevertheless, when it has to, MIT is apparently quite prepared to reject this justification for AA and emphasize that the really important thing is the color of people's skin.</p>
<p>akadaddy,</p>
<p>
[quote]
By what measure may we test the East African nomad, the European field laborer, the Asian bank executive, the South American gaucho and so on that will reliably indicate base intelligence and cognitive ability?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That is the true question -- and it quite a deep scientific riddle. One idea (obviously a thought experiment at this point) would be to take a random sample of children of different races and educate them together from birth in the same environment on a faraway island (probably without parents would be easiest), with teachers assiduously tested and trained to be free of racial bias. It is a pity that you could never really do it, but at least it is an empirical suggestion in principle. (Studying children adopted at an early age by parents of the opposite race might be a start, though of course non-household factors will continue to be an issue.)</p>
<p>One more thing before I stop bringing up new things. In a post which was nuked in the wholesale nuking, you suggested that Bershawn "had SAT scores [effectively] 180 points higher", though the numbers were identical, because blacks score 180 points lower, on average, and we should rescale scores to put the racial means at the same point.</p>
<p>Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I accept the idea of renorming tests so that the averages for various groups match up. There is still the huge question of "which groups"? To classify Bershawn as a "black male" seems arbitrary, to say the least. Why pick that group in particular as opposed to one of the many other groups he legitimately belongs to? Why not put him in a group based on his socioeconomic class? Obviously, if you classified that way, groups would also have different score means and you could perform your rescaling procedure. Why not classify by home state? Again, means differ!</p>
<p>It seems race is sometimes utterly irrelevant to how we should interpret someone's score. What if Bershawn was adopted and raised by lily-white parents with 22 years of education apiece in a neighborhood so rich that being black didn't predict anything about your class. (I know people from certain parts of LA fitting pretty much this exact description, so I'm not making it up.) Then Bershawn is much closer to white than black in any way that matters, but you'd still add 180 points to his SAT score because of the color of his skin.</p>
<p>You can see why I think this is racism of a quite insidious kind. To note that someone's skin absorbs a lot of light or that someone has ovaries and then add N points to their scores for those reasons is to assume that, just by virtue of dark skin or ovaries, the should be judged by different standards in some dimension. If I had dark skin or ovaries, I would be pretty mad at you.</p>
<p>Ben, I sincerely thank you for providing a link to the amicus curiae brief. It's an interesting read and quite informative. :)</p>
<p>I read the whole brief (yeah, I'm a fast reader), and I have to say that my reading of it is a little different from your summary of it.</p>
<p>I see a lot of explanation of why racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity is important in the sciences and engineering. This is good info to have, though it doesn't say anything about MIT's specific AA policies, other than to say that "Neither MIT nor Stanford makes admission decisions to compensate for past wrongs. Instead, they seek diversity in part because in order for these science and technology leaders to develop products and services to improve the lives of people in our diverse world, they must be trained in a heterogeneous environment and be responsive to the needs of each segment of the population." Okay, so MIT believes that racial and ethnic diversity is an important value. That much, I knew.</p>
<p>The brief has some interesting general quotes about the MIT admissions process, including a basic explanation of context and a denial that MIT uses quotas or formulas to achieve a certain racial makeup...</p>
<p>"MIT regularly denies admission to individuals
with very high grades and scores who lack the other
distinctive qualities it seeks. MIT considers all aspects of
each candidates background, including racial and ethnic
factors among many others, in the belief that such an
individual assessment of each applicant within context is the
best way to evaluate a candidates talent and potential. In
selecting the students who will be admitted, MIT does not
use any quotas, targets, or mathematical formulas."</p>
<p>...and here's one to refute the idea that MIT admits unqualified applicants because of their race. I know that's not necessarily what Ben was talking about, but it's certainly what some people believe when they hear the phrase "affirmative action".</p>
<p>"Both MIT and Stanford confine in-depth consideration to
candidates likely to have strong prospects for academic
success at these institutions by first setting a high threshold
level of intellectual ability and achievement. Both schools
discern this required minimum level of qualification from a
number of indicators, which include grades and test scores
and do not include race."</p>
<p>Later, we get more explanation of how race and ethnicity are part of context because they contribute to life experience.</p>
<p>"Although ones race does not dictate ones views and this is part of what
diversity on campus teaches race, ethnicity, and national origin do contribute to ones experiences and opportunities in life, adding relevant perspectives."</p>
<p>And an acknowledgement that in general URMs don't do as well in the grades/test scores arena than non-URMs. Though if you recall, they already said that anyone they take, URM or not, meets MIT's standards of qualification.</p>
<p>"MITs and Stanfords ultimate selection of students for
admission, from the large group of applicants initially
determined to be well qualified and highly capable, is not
based only on grades and test scores. If it were, minorities
would be even more significantly under-represented than
they already are in the fields of science and engineering."</p>
<p>And then there's the quotes you cited in your old post on this subject. Well, they make a valid point, race isn't the same thing as socioeconomic category and doesn't have the same effects. See both my previous comment, where I link to the study on the detrimental effects of having a "black" name, and the study by Claude Steel cited somewhere in the brief that provides evidence that fear of confirming negative racial stereotypes is part of the reason for the lesser performance of URMs on things like standardized tests. Both of these studies have to do with the effects of race and ethnicity specifically - neither has to do with socioeconomic status. With this sort of evidence, it seems reasonable that race would be taken into consideration...as it would to take any other factor, and there are many, into consideration, that might shape an applicant.</p>
<p>"Context" and "disadvantage" (by which I assume Ben meant socioeconomic disadvantage) aren't the same thing at all.</p>
<p>So what I'm seeing from this brief is pretty close to what I said before; MIT cares about all elements of context and the effects of that context on your life. Admittedly, I somewhat oversimplified this in my original response to the OP, but the point still remains that being black will not get an underqualified person into MIT. It could also be argued that a black person who gets the sort of top-notch scores that make them qualified in the first place has already achieved something impressive by overcoming the "stereotype effect" from Steel's study, but I think my comment is long enough. :)</p>
<p>Jessie,</p>
<p>Your points are well-taken, especially about stereotype threat. But let me complain very briefly about an illegitimate little slip I often see in these debates (and which came up in the quotes you cited above). It is not the case that there are two kinds of people in the world -- qualified for MIT and not -- and that is the extent of the academic differences that really matter. It is often said that about 70% of applicants could survive academically at MIT. If that's what "qualified" means, why is the bar so low? Surely, some students in that 70% chunk of the applicant pool are academically better than others. So why pretend that a scale that is really continuous is divided into artificial discrete pieces?</p>
<p>So, to be brief about it, I reject the notion that everyone who is seriously considered is "qualified" and so affirmative action doesn't really have significant academic costs for that reason. It seems the burden would be on proponents of AA to explain what qualified means, why they draw the line where they draw it (and not higher, for example), and why academic differences within the categories are less significant.</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>I think that it's 6:20 in the evening where I am, that I've been at work almost nine and a half hours, that I'm hungry, and that I'm going to start my 2.5 mile trek home after this comment and eat dinner. :p</p>
<p>As far as what I think about your comment goes...I do understand and acknowledge your point. The problem is that it's incredibly difficult, in most cases, once you get to the level where people are decisively capable of doing the work, to determine who is "more" qualified than who. I mean, you've already got people from wildly different backgrounds - I have a friend at MIT who was poor and went to a poor school in a poor district, who was horribly abused and beaten by her father, who in fact applied to MIT while she and her mom were on the run and living in people's basements, and whose high school didn't offer physics. How do you determine in a fair way whether she is more or less deserving of a spot than a sheltered, wealthy student who went to an elite school? (not that the latter is undeserving by virtue of being privileged, it's just a difficult comparison). </p>
<p>And then you have people who are interested in different fields...on one hand you have the AMC/AIME/IMO superstar, on the other hand you have the kid who, for instance, has been reading college-level chemistry books and doing mad science experiments in her basement for years but has low math grades/scores, still on the other hand you have the kid whose stats are not especially good for the applicant pool but who demonstrates in his app that he's an analog circuit hacking genius of startling proportions. Who is more deserving? How does one decide such a thing?</p>
<p>I suspect that the definition of "qualified" as in "minimum level of qualification" has something to do with all of ones stats taken in combination - higher stats in one aspect will offset lower stats in another, marginal cases get another look, etc.</p>
<p>Jessie, yes this is argument the best justification foir affirmative action I have seen:</p>
<p>"In general, a major philisophical reason for some kinds of AA is to overcome the effects of people's unconscious racial and gender schemas. If we're going to talk "points", the theory is that blacks already lose a few points for being black, so giving them a few free points is just giving those points back. See this study: <a href="http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/names2.htm">http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/names2.htm</a>"</p>
<p>However, as noted in the popular book Freakonomics, the author talks about how it's hard to say whether the prejudice is against people with "poor" names versus "rich" names.</p>
<p>An even better study for affirmative action for that reason is <a href="https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/%5B/url%5D">https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/</a>, which makes tests on whether people have unintentional, automatic biases against certain groups.</p>
<p>Ben pretty much addressed the other points I have, about colleges giving advanteges to minorities by default and that the burden of proof is on sometone who thinks two different groups, performing at different levels, are actually the same in that area and it's all cultural biases.</p>
<p>wow, yall are sure writing a lot for a simple question....</p>
<p>I hate affirmative action policies, 'cause they are racist and not fair
why have them? can't minorities be just as smart?</p>
<p>quickflood: i am a hispanic now-senior and i live in a district where it is almost completely white, there is barely any variation at all. i am currently the valedictorian of my class and i have worked hard to get to where i am. however, i dont think you know what its like to be as outnumbered as many people are. for instance, in the private school where i transferred from, i took heat from some teachers, some parents, and even other students at times. what did i do to deserve it? i was born. affirmative action is not giving points to certain races for the hell of it. its recognizing that not everyone has it as easy as the average joe who doesnt get made fun of for things out of his control. it takes a lot of character to overcome that, and that is what usually shows, its not the being a URM, its being someone who has overcome difficulty, i know personally im first-gen in the USA and first-gen going to college, my dad's foreign, his business crashed after 9-11. so please, before bashing AA and saying its not fair, try and see the other side. thank you.</p>
<p>werunthis08, this is why should not play the race card your inquiry. Your thread has been hijacked!</p>
<p>"Black and female" are not your primary hooks, though they may be important enough help you over the edge. Without knowing more about your stats and ECs, people on CC don't know how to respond, so they endlessly banter back and forth about AA issues.</p>
<p>They only see you as black and female, not as an intelligent, articulate individual with a contribution to make to the MIT community.</p>
<p>If your application only announces that you're a black female with a 3.9 GPA, you won't get into MIT or many other high profile schools! How you choose to communicate and how you represent yourself in those communications will take you a lot farther.</p>
<p>I do know a black female here in Silicon Valley who was accepted last year to UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford and MIT, and just completed her freshman year at Harvard majoring in Applied Mathematics, but I don't know her stats. She did have a stellar academic and community service record, who probably never used race as her primary angle.</p>
<p>But demonstrating that she was articulate, intelligent and commited to her community, along with being black and female, probably opened doors for her!</p>
<p>courtjestr19:
I'm sorry for bashing AA, but I also want to tell you that I am a minority too. I came to this country in 6th grade without knowing any English. I lived in Michigan, went to a public school where white is the dominate race. my school treated me very good, the school even hired a translator for me during the first few weeks. Some students made fun of me because I was virtually the only one representing my race in the school, some I made good friends with. Almost all of my teachers were nice to me (too nice actually). They gave me many breaks because of my background. I didn't like how my teachers treated me differently. I would say that being a minority gave me more advantage academically. Now I'm living in a different state and attending a more competitive school. I have a GPA of 4.5+ and a relatively high SAT score(2100+). I don't see how am I disadvantaged as a minority. if anything, being a minority have already given me many special treatments during high school, there is no reason for any more sheltering during college. but I can only speak for myself. Maybe your community is not as friendly as mine.
by the way, my mom also lost her job many times due to the bad economy. We moved many times and I went to three different schools during my freshmen year. I'm not complaining and seeing this as because of my race.
No where in the world can you achieve perfect equality. America is as good as it gets. Don't ask for more than what is already given.
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country"- JFK</p>
<p>I like you, quickflood. Not all minorities have had it as good as you have, and they deserve help to compensate for their actual disadvantages (poverty, lack of education in family, whatever), but you're a good illustration of the fact that minority status alone does not equal disadvantage. I am glad that it's not just me who finds it a little insulting when it's implied that you should be judged differently just because of where your ancestors came from --- a practice which wonderful institutions like MIT are certainly perpetuating today.</p>
<p>The only real problem with AA is when the wrong people get the boosts. Quickflood didn't want a boost for being Hispanic. I didn't want one for being female. Probably, we both got one. Either way, it's almost a mute point because I'm sure we've both been told "oh, you only got in becauve you're ____". Many of the people I know simply didn't NEED one - perfect SATs aren't usually an indicator of disadvantage. On the other hand, the kind of minorities and females that actually get into MIT have, objectively speaking, beaten out a LOT of white and Asian males to do so. I'm just saying... if there was an option to not disclose gender on an application like there is with race, I for one would have checked it enthusiastically.</p>
<p>I like you also!</p>
<p>:-D</p>
<p>Ben Golub. I defy everything you have stood and will ever stand for.</p>