Minority really isn't that big of a deal...

<p>"“There are plenty of other ways that one could find out definitively (moreso than just % admitted) about racial preferences, like (theoretically) an disgruntled employee, actual notes/marking that show a preference, whatever.”</p>

<p>-Oh yea, name these ways. Please do tell me how you know that a random private school uses racial preferences."</p>

<p>Dude, do you even read my posts? Or do you not know what the word theoretical means?</p>

<p>"-So, acceptance rates should be artificially equal for everyone? That doesn’t make any sense. Dare I say that URMs could be <em>gasp</em> seen as three times as qualified as non-URMS for a given year?"</p>

<p>Possible, but highly unlikely or else AA wouldn't even exist.</p>

<p>"- Prove that this happens. Prove to me that all elite schools do what you claim they do. If a school decides what gets a person into the school, then who are YOU to argue that some have more “talents” than others?"</p>

<p>Did I ever say that all elite schools do this? or that I am the one that decided who has more talents? </p>

<p>I've got to leave because the bank is closing soon, so, in closing, your arguments are absolutely pointless and consist of you asking for proof of things I never asserted to begin with.</p>

<p>yet another debate about AA...</p>

<p>Someone asked for the study I was talking about:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/050547.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/050547.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
The results for three special groups of applicants—underrepresented minority students, legacies, and recruited athletes—stand in sharp contrast. Members of each of these groups have a decidedly better chance of being admitted, at any specified SAT level, than do their fellow applicants, including those from low-SES categories. The average boost in the odds of admission is about 30 percentage points for a recruited athlete, 28 points for a member of an underrepresented minority group, and 20 points for a legacy. For example, an applicant with an admissions probability of 40 percent based on SAT scores and other variables would have an admissions probability of 70 percent if he or she were a recruited athlete, 68 percent if an underrepresented minority, and 60 percent if a legacy. Applicants who participate in early decision programs also enjoy a definite admissions advantage—about 20 percentage points at the 13 institutions for which we have data.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You have to scroll down the page a bit to see that.</p>

<p>"Dude, do you even read my posts? Or do you not know what the word theoretical means?"</p>

<p>Dude, I'll ignore your insult and yet again ask for these ways. You say there are "plenty" of ways to tell if a school is using racial preferences short of the school saying it overtly, and I want to know what these "plenty" of ways are - not just some theoretical nonsense about disgruntled employees (also note that that would still be considered the <em>school</em> saying that it uses racial preferences, as the person in question would have been an official of the school). </p>

<p>"Did I ever say that all elite schools do this? or that I am the one that decided who has more talents?"</p>

<p>-Fine then. Which private schools do this? Which private schools admit people because of their skin color and not their talents? After all you did say:</p>

<p>"what matters at me is that people are admitted because of their talents and not the color of their skin." </p>

<p>Yet you have no way to prove that this already isn't happening, now do you?</p>

<p>
[quote]
well look at that right there.</p>

<p>alumni students have a 40% admit rate. </p>

<p>If the admission rate for non-alumni whites is 7.1%, and the average admission rate comes out to 10%, then </p>

<p>625 white non-alumni, non international 7.1% admit rate
200 Alumni children 39% admit rate
(princeton has about 17% black/hispanic)
300 black/hispanic & 490 asian 13%
175 international 6% </p>

<p>If we assume that asians have the same admit rates as non-hooked white students, 7%</p>

<p>Then the admit rate for black and hispanic students INCLUDING athletes is 22%. Without athletes it would probably come out to something like 16%-18%. So yes obviously affirmative action increases admit rates. But only at about 8% for non-athletes. </p>

<p>Now if you compare them non black/Hispanics you come out to them having roughly an 8% admit rate. </p>

<p>The ones who get the real boost here are the almost exclusively white alumni children who get a 32% admissions boost when compared to non-hooked applicants. That's more than twice as large as the 14% (including athletes) increased rate that urms experience.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Tyler,</p>

<p>I request a more detailed statistic analysis. Namely, how’d you get 22%?</p>

<p>"Dude, I'll ignore your insult and yet again ask for these ways."</p>

<p>It seriously was a question considering that you responded like you completely were ignoring the word theoretical and that I was speaking of a specific event.</p>

<p>"also note that that would still be considered the <em>school</em> saying that it uses racial preferences, as the person in question would have been an official of the school"</p>

<p>One employee is not speaking the voice of an entire school.</p>

<p>"-Fine then. Which private schools do this? Which private schools admit people because of their skin color and not their talents?"</p>

<p>Just in case you took my original quote to mean a school that admits solely on the color of one's skin with no attention to talent (as far as I know no school does this), I'll rephrase, I'm opposed to any school that considers race in admissions.</p>

<p>"Princeton has joined with seven other leading private colleges and universities in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold affirmative action policies ... In addition to Princeton, the signatories on the amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief were Harvard University, which prepared the brief, and Brown University, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University."
<a href="http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/03/0224/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/03/0224/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"Yet you have no way to prove that this already isn't happening, now do you?"</p>

<p>What in the world are you saying? Why would I want to prove that AA is not happening?</p>

<p>"What in the world are you saying? Why would I want to prove that AA is not happening?"</p>

<p>Your quote was:</p>

<p>"what matters at me is that people are admitted because of their talents and not the color of their skin."</p>

<p>And I said: </p>

<p>"Yet you have no way to prove that this already isn't happening, now do you?"</p>

<p>You've since clarified your point, so this is all moot. </p>

<p>"One employee is not speaking the voice of an entire school."</p>

<p>-No, but an admissions official is, for the purpose of admissions, a representative of the school. Thus, this would still be the <em>school</em> saying that such a practice happens.</p>

<p>"Princeton has joined with seven other leading private colleges and universities in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold affirmative action policies ... In addition to Princeton, the signatories on the amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief were Harvard University, which prepared the brief, and Brown University, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University."</p>

<p>-What exactly is all this? These schools like AA..... ok...?</p>

<p>"I'm opposed to any school that considers race in admissions."</p>

<p>-Well then, to which criteria SHOULD schools limit themselves when considering admitting students?</p>

<p>"What exactly is all this? These schools like AA..... ok...?"</p>

<p>They're schools that support AA (since you asked for proof about 20 times), specifically ones that signed a brief that asked the Supreme Court to uphold affirmative actions policies when the University of Michigan was challenged over AA in 2 cases. These schools have, by signing the brief, shown that they definitively support/practice AA, since apparently the only word you'll believe is the school itself.</p>

<p>"-Well then, to which criteria SHOULD schools limit themselves when considering admitting students?"</p>

<p>... Pertinent things beside race, why would it matter what else I think a college should consider?</p>

<p>"They're schools that support AA (since you asked for proof about 20 times)"</p>

<p>Again... here is what I said: </p>

<p>"You say there are "plenty" of ways to tell if a school is using racial preferences SHORT OF THE SCHOOL SAYING IT OVERTLY, and I want to know what these "plenty" of ways are"</p>

<p>I know schools practice AA. What I said is if the schools today said they no longer practice AA how would you know any different, and you responded by saying that there are "plenty of ways" to know. What I want is not another overt statement from the schools, but to see what these "plenty" of other ways you mention are. </p>

<p>"Pertinent things beside race, why would it matter what else I think a college should consider?"</p>

<p>-You clearly think racial diversity is not "pertinent" to college life, so I want to know which things you believe are in fact relevant.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I know schools practice AA. What I said is if the schools today said they no longer practice AA how would you know any different, and you responded by saying that there are "plenty of ways" to know. What I want is not another overt statement from the schools, but to see what these "plenty" of other ways you mention are.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I’ll give my opinion.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Tech schools, particularly private ones, would start to look like Caltech or Georgia Tech. Instead of the 45/55 MIT-style gender ratio, we’d see a 28/72 Caltech-style gender ratio or a 31/69 Georgia Tech-style gender ratio. All of these schools are “affirmative action / equal opportunity” employers, but I would guess that MIT considers gender in a different way than either Caltech or GT.</p></li>
<li><p>I would expect top-tier public universities to have fewer so-called “under-represented” minority students. (See: Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan after a Court ruled that they had to comply with Proposal 2.)</p></li>
<li><p>I would expect “under-represented” minority enrollment to increase at less selective public universities.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>As far as I know the only universities which have explicitly stated that they do not use race are the publics of Michigan and California, and as far as I know there have been no proven cases of these colleges being definitively caught practicing racial preferences. The two theoretical examples (or something else along those lines) that I already stated are the only ways that a university can be without a doubt caught practicing racial preferences, but a large disparity in admittance rates and stats can cast doubt on a university, to say the least, though I have no idea whether it is enough for a lawsuit, if that's what you mean by proof. For example, from the Daily Bruin, speaking about UCLA: "In fall 2007, black applicants’ SAT scores were on average 293 points lower than those of white and Asian students, and Latino applicants’ scores came up 249 points short." <a href="http://www.discriminations.us/2007/05/the_measure_of_preference_at_u.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.discriminations.us/2007/05/the_measure_of_preference_at_u.html&lt;/a> (also has a lot more on AA and the UCs, but I didn't want huge walls of text)</p>

<p>"-You clearly think racial diversity is not "pertinent" to college life, so I want to know which things you believe are in fact relevant."</p>

<p>No, I don't. Academic record, things that may have affected academic performance, ECs, things someone can contribute to a college outside of just what they look like, crapload of other things that I probably missed.</p>

<p>A recent NYtimes article might shed some light on what may soon be the common demographics for many universities across the country and provides a response to:</p>

<p>
[quote]
But if Princeton were to just accept whites and Asians how would that make a diverse student body? Diversity is important on in any institution of higher learning and in any workplace, so I do not think that there proportions would be considered illegal.

[/quote]
</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/education/edlife/07asian.html?ex=1332475200&en=6570007ef4e33f29&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/education/edlife/07asian.html?ex=1332475200&en=6570007ef4e33f29&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]

"Spend a few days at Berkeley, on the classically manicured slope overlooking San Francisco Bay and the distant Pacific, and soon enough the sound of foreign languages becomes less distinct. This is a global campus in a global age. And more than any time in its history, it looks toward the setting sun for its identity.</p>

<p>The revolution at Berkeley is a quiet one, a slow turning of the forces of immigration and demographics. What is troubling to some is that the big public school on the hill certainly does not look like the ethnic face of California, which is 12 percent Asian, more than twice the national average. But it is the new face of the state’s vaunted public university system. Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at its nine undergraduate campuses."

[/quote]

The article goes further to show that Asian populations should be even higher at private universities (especially the Ivies).</p>

<p>
[quote]
"Asians have become the “new Jews,” in the phrase of Daniel Golden, whose recent book, “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,” is a polemic against university admissions policies. Mr. Golden, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is referring to evidence that, in the first half of the 20th century, Ivy League schools limited the number of Jewish students despite their outstanding academic records to maintain the primacy of upper-class Protestants. Today, he writes, “Asian-Americans are the odd group out, lacking racial preferences enjoyed by other minorities and the advantages of wealth and lineage mostly accrued by upper-class whites. Asians are typecast in college admissions offices as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science.”</p>

<p>As if to illustrate the point, a study released in October by the Center for Equal Opportunity, an advocacy group opposing race-conscious admissions, showed that in 2005 Asian-Americans were admitted to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, at a much lower rate (54 percent) than black applicants (71 percent) and Hispanic applicants (79 percent) — despite median SAT scores that were 140 points higher than Hispanics and 240 points higher than blacks."

[/quote]
</p>

<p>[Moderators: the quoted material, 357 words, is less than 10 percent of the article (article has 3799 words).]</p>

<p>We can see that minorities not only appreciate higher admittance rates at top colleges (see Harvard study), but that they also (generally) have lower SAT scores as well. Of course, SAT scores are only one measure of proficiency. However, we must realize that SAT scores have a larger role (as indicated by the Harvard study *1) in admissions than many seem to believe on CC, and that Asians, despite their exemplary achievement, are left locked out at the gate.</p>

<p>*1

[quote]
...an applicant with an admissions probability of 40 percent based on SAT scores...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>At least AA will become less and less of an issue as the socioeconomic gap lessens and the gap between white and urm scores becomes almost nonexistent.</p>

<p>But that is the problem, the socioeconomic gap is only getting bigger.</p>

<p>Really? (No sarcasm) I would've thought otherwise</p>

<p>Actually, socioeconomic preferences are the new AA.</p>

<p>If you admit more students from the lowest income brackets you, by default, admit more hispanics and blacks.</p>

<p>so? in a capitalist society there will be rich and there will be poor. economics indicate that equality comes at a cost of efficiency. you can't simply assume a larger socioeconomic gap as a bad thing</p>

<p>Well, to an extent</p>

<p>Yes you can in a country like America, that is a very terrible thing. A country cannot solely run on economic principles because economic theory has no emotion, it is not human.</p>

<p>well obviously we all now know where you're coming from firefox. </p>

<p>You're one of the people who are like "thats life, deal with it". If racism establishes a lag of urm education that would be impossible to close w/o societies help, screw em. If banks are discriminating against those in poverty thus continuing the endless cycle of poverty, screw em. If schools consist of almost purely white and asian students, leaving certain groups virtually excluded from elite education which has shown lead to elite employment opportunities, sux for them. </p>

<p>Ses, do you not think that colleges have thought of that???</p>

<p>the problem is that it doesn't help ENOUGH, it doesn't do enough to attack the problem that it hopes to solve.</p>