My dad thinks I'll get in

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>


Okay, it is much more probable that it was racism rather than AA. I mean, even if AA gets a person into a college, AA doesn't account for how that person does at the school. If an unqualified black man gets to Harvard Business School, that has no bearing on the 3.8 he pulls out of Harvard Business School. so don't tell me that it wasn't racism and that it was AA. It WAS racism.</p>

<p>And as i said on an earlier page discrimination happens to all groups. and i was using my anecdotal evidence to prove that racism can hold people back. your anecdote also proves this. </p>

<p>Oh and btw, i live in southern ohio.</p>

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<p>maybe the other guys had spectacular profiles?</p>

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<p>hmmm, if you read my post, you can see that the other guy was unqualified. he was actually one of my dad's friends (they grew up together and were even college roommates) and as i said, the other guy didn't have a graduate degree, if anything, his undergraduate profile was worse than my father's.</p>

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<p>Hotpiece,</p>

<p>An unqualified black man would have very great difficulty pulling a 3.8 GPA out of Harvard Business School, since he would be ill prepared for its rigor. He could graduate with barely passing grades, though. I'm not saying this is your father. What I'm saying is that people like this cast doubt on your father's legitimacy, which is an accidental and very racist effect that affirmative action has. For example, some of the most liberal people I've talked to have said that given the choice between a white doctor and a black doctor, they'd pick the white doctor because they KNOW he was qualified to attend medical school in the first place, which tends to be a predictor of higher grades in medical school, which tends to be a predictor of how competent a doctor one is. Why do you think there are so many black conservatives who oppose the idea? Because at its most basic level, it furthers the idea that black people are too stupid to be in the same place as white people. Maybe affirmative action isn't completely responsible for what happened to your father, but one thing is certain - there's no way it helped the situation. After all, the job interviewer probably didn't see the transcripts of both the applicants and as such, made unfair assumptions. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that something like this happened in Southern Ohio, as that's not typically a hotbed of racial tension. It's not consistently featured in the Intelligence Reports of the Southern Poverty Law Center, for instance. </p>

<p>And my cousin wasn't held back by racism. He was held back by ultra-liberal affirmative action policies which forced percentage quotas on all employers in the LA area. The employers who turned him down told him they wanted to offer him the job, but that THE LAW required them to hire people of a different race. And this in a city which gets accused of racism! Now that's nonsense.</p>

<p>Also, I would submit to you that the people who are actually furthering the barriers to black success hardly consider themselves racist. I would, in fact, accuse the Hollywood establishment, as well as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (at least one of whom is also anti-semitic) of causing the biggest problems for the black population. Firstly, demagogues like Sharpton and Jackson only further divisiveness with their casting of white people as the scapegoat and the institutions of education as "too white." Secondly, Hollywood produces more basketball/rap success stories per capita (Glory Road, Get Rich or Die Tryin') than academic success stories, though Akeelah and the Bee was a very refreshing break from this trend. If the only public role models which the entertainment industry gives black youth are criminals-turned-musicians and basketball players, then what do you think the black youth of this country is going to overwhelmingly want to become? That's right, rappers and basketball players. </p>

<p>However, that's not to say that black people are utterly devoid of positive role models. Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Bill Cosby and, to a lesser degree, people like hotpiece and yubi make for great role models. Now, you might say those role models are products of affirmative action, but they also come from a time period where affirmative action was genuinely needed, as opposed to now, when the differences between minority and majority applicants are arguably minimal in elite applicant pools.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
An unqualified black man would have very great difficulty pulling a 3.8 GPA out of Harvard Business School, since he would be ill prepared for its rigor.

[/quote]
this depends on your interpretation of "unqualified." the thing being argued throughout this entire thread is that URMs with lower stats than whites and asians are being accepted to elite schools. now, i can and will acknowledge that this happens, but at the same time, how unqualified are these people? i mean a 2100 SAT with a 3.8 uw gpa of a black person is very qualified although it is still lower than the 2310, 4.0 of a white counterpart. so, that black person may very well be able to pull a 3.8 out of harvard.
[quote]
I'm a little surprised that something like this happened in Southern Ohio, as that's not typically a hotbed of racial tension.

[/quote]
it is a hotbed of racial tension, especially in recent years. since 1995, 15 black men have been fatally shot by police officers. many blacks spoke out against these shootings because it was apparent that the Cincinnati Police Department were more willing to use deadly force with black men than white men. this sparked the cincinnati race riots which have heightened racial tension within the city.
[quote]
Also, I would submit to you that the people who are actually furthering the barriers to black success hardly consider themselves racist. I would, in fact, accuse the Hollywood establishment, as well as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (at least one of whom is also anti-semitic) of causing the biggest problems for the black population. Firstly, demagogues like Sharpton and Jackson only further divisiveness with their casting of white people as the scapegoat and the institutions of education as "too white." Secondly, Hollywood produces more basketball/rap success stories per capita (Glory Road, Get Rich or Die Tryin') than academic success stories, though Akeelah and the Bee was a very refreshing break from this trend. If the only public role models which the entertainment industry gives black youth are criminals-turned-musicians and basketball players, then what do you think the black youth of this country is going to overwhelmingly want to become? That's right, rappers and basketball players

[/quote]
i already discussed on another page that african americans are partially to blame for the lack of educated african american youth.</p>

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<p>Alright, I take back what I said about racial tension. There certainly seems to be tension, though whether that tension is justified or not remains to be seen. These 15 shootings sound more like an incidental number than the product of invidious discrimination, but I won't presume to argue that since I don't know all the facts.</p>

<p>As for Harvard Business School, you're right that black candidates are probably almost equal with white candidates at that institution. I was referring more to business school admissions in general than Harvard Business School. And when I said unqualified, I meant wholly unqualified as opposed to "below average." Many below average applicants do well at elite schools, but almost no wholly unqualified students do well there. Sorry again for the lack of clarity.</p>

<p>And I'm glad we at least agree that the African American community is partially to blame for the educational problem. I also would agree with you that there are still civil rights abuses and some degree of racism, though I don't believe that racism is institutional. However, if racism were completely stamped out, there wouldn't be groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center whose purpose is to fight it.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
These 15 shootings sound more like an incidental number than the product of invidious discrimination, but I won't presume to argue that since I don't know all the facts.

[/quote]
i forgot to mention this, but not only were these men shot, they were shot an obscene amount of times. i mean like 10 or more bullet wounds in a lot of these guys. (i.e the obscene use of deadly force by the Police Department).</p>

<p>
[quote]
And when I said unqualified, I meant wholly unqualified as opposed to "below average." Many below average applicants do well at elite schools, but almost no wholly unqualified students do well there. Sorry again for the lack of clarity.

[/quote]
thanks for clearing that up, but i highly doubt that HBS would accept a "wholly unqualified" student, even with AA. so when i spoke of how AA was not the reason for my dad not getting the job, I was discussing a realistic situation. a wholly unqualified student would never be admitted to HBS. so my original argument stands: even if AA gets a student into a college, it has no bearing on how they perform at that school.</p>

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<p>I too doubt that HBS would admit a wholly unqualified student. However, the statistics are against you in your argument that AA has nothing to do with how a student performs in college. Perhaps it has little to do with how they perform at HYPS, but at lesser universities, it has been shown to have an almost crippling effect on how they perform, but I won't get into that, as you've already said you hate affirmative action debates.</p>

<p>And like I said, I have no opinion on the Cincinnati business as I don't know all the facts. The officers' actions were out of line, irrespective of the color of their victims' skin. That's all I'll say.</p>

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[quote]
And like I said, I have no opinion on the Cincinnati business as I don't know all the facts. The officers' actions were out of line, irrespective of the color of their victims' skin. That's all I'll say.

[/quote]
yeah, i don't really know all the facts cuz i was young at the time. but from what i read on the internet that is the gist of the situation. and yeah, i know nothing about AA at lesser universities.</p>

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<p>I am against Affirmative Action. I am for Socioeconomic Action.</p>

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<p>hmmm, interesting study i happened across. it backs up what ICArgirl said in her first post.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S11/80/78Q19/index.xml?section=newsreleases%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S11/80/78Q19/index.xml?section=newsreleases&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>but one detail many colleges fail to include is that the impact would fall PRIMARILY on ASIANS...the subtitle, which says that it would have "virtually no effect on white admissions" is correct...a more accurate title would be that ending affirmative action would have "virtually no effect on white admissions, but a significant effect on the admission of Asians."</p>

<p>Also, this only substantiates my claim that Blacks and Mexicans who are admitted under AA are underqualified, aka unqualified...and that these applicants don't have "reasonable" stats and couldn't have gotten in without AA. </p>

<p>Also, is the percentage of minority admits who drop equivalent to the percentage of poor minorities at HYPS? I think not...I would say more than HALF of the minorities who apply to HYPS are above the nation's median income line. That means even the minorites who are RICH benefit from AA and even those Blacks and Mexicans/Latinos are unqualified/relatively mediocre applicants.</p>

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<p>"Asian students would fill nearly four out of every five places in the admitted class not taken by African-American and Hispanic students, with an acceptance rate rising from nearly 18 percent to more than 23 percent"</p>

<p>My last point was in regard to the link posted above. Although the admission of Blacks and Hispanics would drop more substantially than the gain for Asians, there are still ethical implications...is it true that the minority applicants "would have gotten in without AA," or that "AA only provides a minor boost" for minority applicants? Obviously, the boost is major enough to cut back the admissions of Blacks from 34% to 12%. </p>

<p>And you said that AA is not an open door policy? Let me get this straight, out of the 75 Black applicants who ORIGINALLY applied to UC Berkeley's Law School, 61 would not have made it without AA? Do you even realize that that's 81%? That means 81% would not have made it if they were not BLACK? Wow...the color of one's skin does not only have a marginal effect, I see. The VAST majority of the class would NOT have been admitted if it weren't for the color of their skin. That means these people, when they were originally admitted, were unqualified.</p>

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<p>Yes, and thanks to one of my sources, Ward Connerly (who, ironically enough, is black), Berkeley no longer follows such disgraceful practices in admitting students. And frankly, I do not care if white applicants get anything out of the package. What interests me is that the most qualified applicants who display the best demonstrated fit at a school get in no matter what, which apparently is what would happen were the patently unfair policy of affirmative action abolished.</p>

<p>And monkey, I agree wholeheartedly. Socioeconomic factors actually lead directly to disadvantage, as opposed to race, which is incidental to disadvantage.</p>

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<p>I think the reference to Berkeley is pretty helpful... since Berkeley doesn't perform AA, 40% of the student body is Asian!!! YEA 40%!!! I think everyone can see that AA makes a HUGE difference!!! The black/hispanic applicant pool in general is WAY weaker than the asian/white one... I don't see how some ppl can still assert that everyone is treated equally... lol its a joke</p>

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<p>Hotpiece, you've indicated in another thread that you are still not sure how or why you were even accepted to Harvard. Some other people who were not accepted, yet may have had better stat's than you are probably wondering the same thing. Just as you are convinced that your father was the victim of racism with regard to his job, others probably believe they were the victims of "reverse racism" when they were not accepted to Harvard and you were. However, because none of us are privy to ALL of the information an Adcom or a hiring manager might be looking at, I think it's unfair of anyone to fall back on the racism card. You obviously had things in your application that none of us know about, yet the adcoms found those things interesting enough to invite you to attend their college. The white man who took your father's job may have had some "interesting" things in his file as well, that made him the better fit for this position.</p>

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<p>pro-Gatsy: I don't believe the survey substantiates the claim that most minorities are unqualified at all. My argument was never that most blacks and hispanics would have been admitted without AA. I merely think that, in an applicant pool so strong that many, possibly even the majority of rejectees are "qualified," qualified URMs are much, much more likely to get in than qualified whites or asians because they are rarer. </p>

<p>Consider the people in my graduating high school class who applied to Princeton. There were, I believe, seven of us, all Jewish or Asian. While only two of us got in, at least three of the other five applicants were, objectively, equally strong applicants. If any of them had gotten in over the two of us who had been accepted, no one would have been surprised. Even the other two, while people would have been regarded them as more "reach" applicants, they were both fine students who would have likely done fine at Princeton. The 5 now go to Brown, Northwestern, Swarthmore, Tufts, and Wellesley.</p>

<p>My point is, if the first three, and maybe even the other two students, were URM, they would have almost certainly been accepted. Now, if this meant that I didn't get in, I would have been dissapointed, and, admittedly, bitter. However, Princeton would still have been getting great, qualified students - plus racial diversity. Without AA, they would have been rejected, as did my classmates in real life. But that doesn't imply that they are not qualified, just that they wouldn't have gotten in - as the vast majority of qualified applicants don't.</p>

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<p>a) We have different definitions of "qualified." Obviously you had something (however subtle) over the other applicants from your school...given that you are not a minority.
b) If you took your classmates who applied to Princeton, and cloned them (and the rest of the Princeton applicant pool) one hundred times, and then conducted "admissions" rounds, I would bet that each of your classmates, if they are "qualified" would get in AS many times as a clone of you would have gotten in. That is, if we are to work with the assumption that you are AS qualified as they are, then it is simply a matter of chance that you got in over them (in the ACTUAL "admissions round"). My question: if we conducted one-hundred "admissions rounds," would those Blacks and Mexicans have gotten in as often as you would have? No. So, hence they are less qualified than you are.<br>
c) You said that your classmates had close-to-equal objective stats as you did. Blacks and Hispanics, on average, have substantially lower stats, and are therefore not qualified.
d) You said that no one would have been surprised if your classmates had gotten in over you. BUT if the Blacks and Hispanics from my school had gotten in over me, and NO ONE knew that they were Blacks and Hispanics, people would have been damn surprised.
e) If qualified merely means having stats that are "high," what makes people qualified? Given the average EC's at Princeton, I would say qualified would be 1500s or above. BUT, who is to say that qualified applicants are not merely 1400 or above? Or 1200 and above? By the standards of 1200 and above, the Bush niece would be "qualified." So...who are you to say the Blacks and Mexicans are "subjectively" qualified? The only objective way to say they are EQUALLY qualified is to say that their stats (and EC's) are equivalent to those of the rest of the applicant pool.</p>

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<p>There was a lovely article about this in this week's Newsweek by George F. Will. It is entitled "White Guilt, Deciphered."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12995478/site/newsweek/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12995478/site/newsweek/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>An especially piercing quote:</p>

<p>"The dehumanizing denial that blacks have sovereignty over their own lives became national policy in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson said: 'You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race and say, 'You are free to compete with all the others'.' This, Steele writes, enunciated a new social morality: No black problem could be defined as largely a black responsibility. If you were black, you could not be expected to carry responsibilities equal to others'."</p>

<p>Responsibilities such as surviving in a college applicant pool without unfair advantage, I suppose, falls under the same heading? The rest goes on to describe the condescending attitude of LIBERAL America towards African Americans. Do give it a read.</p>

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<p>oh lord are we on this chapter about black people AGAIN? gosh, this is annoying. can someone please explain to me why everyone is so obsessed with black people? its rather unhealthy. anyway, i would come up with a quick snap but i have a life to attend to... so ill just sum it up with a story: my friend and my cousin both applied to harvard. my friend was pretty smart: 97 average at one of nyc's top specialized high schools, extracurriculars like swimming and snowboarding, 2400 on SATS and some other high scores on AP exams and SATIIs, an ap scholar with honor and a bunch of other stuff and she was black. my cousin on the other hand had everything my friend had and MORE. my cousin had so many awesome ECs that it was like impossible to compete with her. naturally, she got in and my friend did not. but they both ended up going to columbia. the point of this story is that the standards for URMs have really been raised. there are plenty of URMs applying that have really amazing extracurriculars. its also not fair that everyone assumes that asians are smarter than other URMs. my nyc specialized high school is 50% asian but i've got the highest average and im black. :-)</p>