SCOTUS decoupled the Harvard and UNC cases this week so Justice Jackson can participate in the UNC case (she has to recuse herself from the Harvard case). So, a possible increased potential for different outcomes on these cases.
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Isnât the relevant question how those figures compare to the recent high school graduate demographics for that state?
This can be interesting. I can see a split decision with Roberts as the swing vote. Perhaps saying that UNC as a public school cannot consider race under the 14th amendment but that Harvard as a private university can do so. I donât predict that but it is a possibility
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Roberts is no longer a swing vote. Not sure anyone deserves that mantle, but it might be Kavanaugh.
Trying to avoid a potential 4-4 split in the combined case.
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If they ban affirmative action, some schools will just not consider SATs at all.
That will accomplish what they want.
How could that happen? One assumes that the new justice is likely to favor affirmative action, given the president and party that chose her. So a 4-4 Harvard decision (however unlikely) would turn into a 5-4 UNC decision in favor of affirmative action.
Thereâs nothing really to read into this beyond courtesy in ensuring that she isnât excluded. One will be 5-3 or 6-2 and the other 5-4 or 6-3 (likely depending on whether the Chief Justice wants to write the opinion).
We donât need someone to check a box to tell if they URM. K-12 is very segregated in this country so you will probably be able to tell the students race by their zip code and HS.
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How so?
One way they can fulfill their URM/low income/first gen spots is to increase the number of applicants they are accepting via college access organizations. Just take more students via Questbridge, Posse, Chicago Scholars, College Possible et al.
Agreed. Add in the school profile and CollegeBoardâs Environmental Context Dashboard (which many schools pay for) and itâs not that difficult for colleges to find what they are looking for.
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Itâs why the UC system eliminated the SAT - to enroll more unerrepresented minorities and reduce high scoring Asians. Itâs their alternative since they couldnt base admissions on race.
âThe committee remained concerned about the racial and socioeconomic disparities that affect standardized exams in general. It claimed that using the state exam to make admissions decisions might help some underrepresented students who test well but have lower grades, but it would disproportionately favor Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and could reduce admission rates of Black, Latino and low-income applicantsâ
Without testing requirements, Drake added, UC attracted a record-breaking number of freshman applications for fall 2021 â more than 200,000 â and admitted the most diverse class ever. UC admissions officers have said they were able to thoroughly evaluate the flood of applications without test scores, using 13 other factors in the systemâs review process, such as a studentâs high school grade-point average, the rigor of courses taken, special talents, essays and extracurricular activities.
The number of freshman applicants from several underrepresented groups continued to rise this year, even after unprecedented increases in 2021, driven in part by UCLAâs community partnerships and outreach efforts, as well as the removal of standardized testing as a requirement for admission. UCLA continues to receive more applications from African American, Chicano/Latino and Native American students than any other campus in the UC system.
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I think we can predict Thomas will be against affirmative action everywhere and that Roberts is against it at least in public institutions The 3 liberals will be for it. Alito , Kavanaugh, Barrett and Gorsuchâs positions on private institutions are unknownâat least to me.
Regarding UCs and CSUs, I believe the percentages for Blacks and Whites match the state demographics, while Hispanics are lower and Asians higher, e.g. Asians are about 15% of HS grads and 35% of UC undergrads.
âItâs why the UC system eliminated the SAT - to enroll more unerrepresented minorities and reduce high scoring Asians.â
It was the ELC that actually limited the number of Asian in the UCs, if you were in the top 9% of your class (as based on previous yearâs index), even in a low-performing high school, youâd be guaranteed admission to a UC, it could be Merced of course. This typically meant that students who missed the cutoff in high performing high schools were Asians and Whites.
Thatâs a little misleading, the 2021-22 class was not different from other classes wrt diversity, African American enrollees went from 4.1% to 4.4% and Latino/a population went from 25% to 26% from the previous year.
â13 other factors in the systemâs review process, such as a studentâs high school grade-point average, the rigor of courses taken, special talents, essays and extracurricular activities.â
These will also favor wealthy applicants and high schools that offer the rigor needed for a higher weighted GPA, again favoring Whites and Asians. Of the 13 points that are considered, only two or three, favor low income and URMs.
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I would just like to point out that, again, people are ignoring large proportions of low income families. Around 1/4 of all Asian families in CA are low income, and are not attending well-supported high schools that serve wealthy communities. To talk about how policies that affect kids from wealthy families as though they affect all Asian families is to both ignore these families.
This pattern repeats itself. âAsiansâ is used as though there is single group, and as though that group all has the same experience. That isnât true, and, among other outcomes is that there is little in policies that are supposed to help Americans of Asian origin that actually provides any support or aid to these low income Asian families.
In CA, around 1/4 of all Asian families are low income:
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Yes, in our Midwestern state, the majority of âAsianâ students are not high performing, but rather are low performing. They belong to an ethnicity that was persecuted in their country of origin and did not have a written language. They came to the US as refugees, and continue to struggle with poverty. From what I have heard in our state however (not sure about other states) admissions officers understand this background and regard them as URMs not ORMs.
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Apparently the âAcademic Senateâ appointed by UC president Michael Drake does not distinguish wealthy Asians from poor Asians or make distinctions among various Asian groups.
For them, itâs binary:
Group 1: Asian Americans
Group 2: Blacks, Latinos and low income.
Are low income Asians in Group 1 or Group 2?
Racial disparities?
"In April of this year, new UC President Michael V. Drake tasked a committee of the Academic Senate with the question of whether the statewide assessment used for California public school students, known as Smarter Balanced, might serve as an acceptable replacement to the SAT and ACT.
The committee report was completed in October and it delivered a clear, unanimous answer: no.
The committee remained concerned about the racial and socioeconomic disparities that affect standardized exams in general. It claimed that using the state exam to make admissions decisions might help some underrepresented students who test well but have lower grades, but it would disproportionately favor Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and could reduce admission rates of Black, Latino and low-income applicants."
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Itâs worse than that, since âAsiansâ doesnât actually mean âAsiansâ in any geographical sense either. People from Western Asia, like Levantine people or people of the Arabian Peninsula, arenât considered âAsianâ. Nor are Iranians, and Iâm not sure about Afghanis. People from Pakistan, on the other hand, are generally considered âAsianâ, even though the borders between Pakistan and Iran were created by European Colonial powers. So, because the Brits drew the border where it is, people whose parents immigrated from the village of Pishin are considered tp be âIranianâ, and generally considered to be âWhiteâ, and are generally clumped with Europeans, while the kids of people who were born less than 10 miles away, in Mand, which is now in Pakistan, are âAsianâ.
Now, clumping Iranians with Europeans has some justification, but to clump the people of Pakistan with, say, Koreans? Makes no sense whatsoever.
At very least, if they are going to look at the ethnic and historical backgrounds of people, that would make a little bit of sense, but clumping âAsiansâ together is absolutely ludicrous. I mean, forget about the lack of sense in clumping people of India and of China. They are clumping people like the Uyghurs, with centuries of being persecuted, with the Japanese, who have a long history of their own imperialism and colonialism. They are clumping the kids of poor Hmong refugees with the kids of immigrants from India who came with advanced degrees and wealth.
As for treating âPacific Islandersâ as one group, and clumping them with Asians? Moreover, treating them as ORMs? Man, that is truly messed up. Treating the indigenous people of Hawaiâi and Samoa, who make up around 50% of Pacific Islanders, and who have been treated as badly as every other indigenous people in the USA, as though they are immigrants, is, to begin with, criminal. Then, to treat them as ORMs, even though they are not even closely overrepresented, ramps that up a notch into the âI canât believe that he actually said thatâ territory.
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Totally agree. Our family is Central Asian, which is not even a category on the Common App. Annoying enough, but the examples in your post are completely offensive. If weâre going to differentiate by ethnicity on college apps, I think the space should be blank for the applicant to fill in how they choose.
Am I being offensive or am I pointing towards offensive examples?
No! Not you at all. So sorry 
The points in your post are excellent.
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I also totally agree. But I would think that lumping all Europeans together (the Finns, Germans and the Albanians as an example) and putting them in the âwhiteâ box (I have some very not-white âwhiteâ Spanish and Greek friends, the Mediterranean basin has been a crucible of genetic mixing for millennia) is equally non-instructive. Same thing probably goes for Black and Hispanic people. I have not looked into the history of these types of race/ethnic boxes, and would think that they must help on average for them to be so widely used. But maybe not.