<p>Well, please can you elaborate on how it does work as I am clearly a novice in debating such a subject.</p>
<p>RE: " i mean there was a hispanic guy from my school who got into Harvard but he was an incredibly good guy who worked really hard for every grade and his comparatively average (2140) SAT score. "</p>
<p>That’s why I prefer Oxford and Cambridge admissions - their threshold is not whether you are “an incredibly good guy” but whether you are a scholar. They see their business as being universities, dedicated to discovering and disseminating knowledge for the ultimate benefit of all. They can’t afford to take “incredibly good guys” who just will “add to the mix, etc.”: they want people to actually build knowledge, which means they take scholars. They leave the social engineering to the politicians. No sob story about being raised by a single Mom from Nigeria will pry an admissions letter from their cold twisted fingers; unless the story is accompanied by the equivalent of 2350 SATs and "5"s in at least five the hardest APs.</p>
<p>^and a recent study of the oxbridge student body and admissions slammed them for being extraordinarily un-diverse ([Twenty-one</a> Oxbridge colleges took no black students last year | Education | The Guardian](<a href=“http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/06/oxford-colleges-no-black-students]Twenty-one”>Twenty-one Oxbridge colleges took no black students last year | Oxbridge and elitism | The Guardian)). i understand what you’re saying, and to some degree i agree with the philosophy you describe; to the extent, that is, that admissions should be based almost exclusively on academic merit. on the other hand, oxbridge is a completely different education system from the american one, and there are definitely pluses to the holistic american process. the english system, as you said, is dedicated primarily to disseminating knowledge. i think of the american system more as creating humans. maybe this reflects some general anti-intellectualism in the us, at least as opposed to britain (not saying it necessarily does, just maybe) but i believe the american system uses holistic admissions because the american college experience is itself meant to be holistic. about the social atmosphere and culture as much as the academic. </p>
<p>but back to the lack of diversity at oxbridge. there are a bunch of explanations that the universities have offered up that i can’t precisely remember, but i think it basically comes down to them being almost overprincipled in their strict focus on academics in the process. the fact is, minorities and immigrants are statistically at a disadvantage, and insisting on purely academic admissions will inevitably result in a predominantly, sometimes disturbingly so (see above) student body. </p>
<p>basically, i think people get outraged when they think of AA as, simplistically, a “leg up” for minority students just to make the student body more diverse. i think of it, rather, as an acknowledgement that out of two equally intelligent students with identical academic potential, the one who has it easy in life, goes to a great school, no financial issues whatsoever, etc., will outwardly appear more intelligent and qualified come admissions time than the student who was forced throughout his or her life to deal with financial difficulties, who lived in a tough neighborhood or moved around a lot or had a tumultuous family life. because of the socioeconomic gap, of the lingering opportunity disparity between minority and non-minority and the hardships associated with immigrant life, minorities are statistically more likely to be the second kind of student. to me, the “sob story” you describe is actually a pretty compelling reason to give a superficially underqualified candidate the chance to reach his or her academic potential. and hence we have AA. in my opinion, that oxbridge don’t accept that in the name of completely color-blind academically focused admissions is a bit naive and absolutely setting themselves up for the kind of controversy that occurred earlier this year.</p>
<p>I find myself agreeing with Axel on this one. British universities, Lord bless 'em are designed to teach you, that’s it. But also in Britain, you’ve got lots of gradients to choose from as far as Public schools go, so if you don’t get the seat you wanted at Oxford, you might get it at LSE or Edinborough. In America, College is used to mature young people into normal people. We talk of a “college experience” here; heck, I know a ton of kids who are applying to the local State school just to get that walking home drunk after fainting in a bathtub experience. But, regardless of where you attend, you’ll find it to some extent here. In Britain, schools don’t try to be as much of a community either, they’re very much so a loose confederation of smart people; yes, you’ll make friends there too, but you won’t come away with the band of 100 fellow Eliot House comrades as you would get at Harvard for whom you would do almost anything.</p>
<p>Meritocracy is not the best way to do things, obviously. Heck, most of the brightest people are the most unbearable, true story. Therefore, in order to create cohesion in the community, you need people who are admitted for reasons other than pure merit and to bring the 75% score up. You need people who will chat, socialize, drink, fill seats in silly majors. American schools look for all of these things. </p>
<p>Like a poster before me said, we have not a clue in the world if AA even had anything to do with this admission, but who knows, maybe she was the right female trumpeter they wanted, or something. Maybe she’s the only ED aplicant who would go into Conservation Research, but for whatever reason they chose, they viewed her as a valuable admit to make.</p>
<p>Also, we need to remember that the people who do (without a shred of a doubt) make it into these ultra-selective schools by AA or URM status, generally do cling harder and are more proud of their school than the other kids who got in by being 20+ points above median. These kids, frankly, form the backbone of alumni networks and such as well, and they serve an important function in the University community.</p>
<p>Also, I again agree with Axel above that the outward measures of mettle (ie SAT) are really just a sort of voodoo magic, some kids score really well, other quite poorly. For example, one of my good friends is actually quite brilliant, but every time she takes a test, she gets an anxiety attack, precluding her from doing well on the SAT or ACT, but her IQ tests were, now I’m going off of faith in here, rather high. The point being, though, and there actually is scientific proof that African-American students when told they are taking a test will perform rather significantly worse that Indo-European students told the same thing. Perhaps it is a vestige left in their culture from slave times? To be frank, I do not have any idea. However, I see it as highly error-prone just to judge her without viewing the entirety of her work.</p>
<p>Too often we forget that undergraduate admissions is not about admitting the folks with top GPAs and test scores; rather, the goal is to create a community of talented and smart individuals who will succeed academically while adding to the college community, in the short run, and the world community, in the long run. The goal is not to create a meritocracy based on numbers attached to individuals. In the current culture, where “all youngsters deserve a trophy,” it’s easy to forget that universities are not obligated to hand out trophies to all.</p>
<p>I’m reminded of a recent lecture presented by an African-American woman professor at an Ivy League business school. Extremely charismatic and intelligent, she confessed in her lecture that she scored a 900 (combined CR and Math) on her SAT. If the admissions staff had not divined her potential contribution to “community” when she applied to her (non-Ivy League) alma mater, thousands of future business leaders would have missed out on her contributions.</p>
<p>dammit I wish I was an eskimo</p>
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<p>That doesn’t sound like AA to me. It sounds like one student had a tougher home life. Maybe of these two equally intelligent and qualified applicants, the one with the tougher home life was a white or Asian kid and the one with an easy home life was black or Hispanic. So then we should admit the white kid who comes from a tough background over the privileged black kid, right?</p>
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<p>If we’re using “minority” as a stand-in for “low socioeconomic status,” why not just cut to the chase and give a boost to poor kids? Otherwise you risk admitting the middle-class black kid over the poorer white kid.</p>
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<p>Many minorities have been in the US for a long time. Many whites and asians are children of immigrants, or immigrants themselves.</p>
<p>
Again, if the goal is just to seek out “the second kind of student,” why not do directly that? Why instead use race as a proxy, and a poor one at that, for underprivileged, disadvantaged and poor?</p>
<p>AA just makes no sense to me. Racism, pure and simply.</p>
<p>^all that is true. there are plenty of generalizations that AA depends on. i encourage you to read my other post, where i do talk about how AA is an extremely crude system and effectively makes no allowances for exceptions like that. i do actually agree that it has somewhat evolved to just artificially creating campus diversity. but the original intent, i feel, is what i describe, and why it remains necessary.</p>
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<p>agreed. but you must at least accept that sadly it remains more likely that the worst schools will be in areas of high minority population and that there is still a significant income gap: “In 2004, a typical black family had an income that was 58 percent of a typical white family’s.” (NPR: [Income</a> Gap Between Blacks, Whites Expands : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16257374]Income”>http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16257374)). that’s not a trivial disparity. as adgeek said, you can’t build an argument against AA. rather, you need to look at statistics, which continue to show that minorities are *more like<a href=“i’m%20not%20saying%20always”>/i</a> to be the second kind of student describe. </p>
<p>the other problem is that admissions officers are trying to contextualize an application with relatively little information. they can’t actually a families income. unless an applicant with a rough family life or other extenuating circumstances explains them in his application (which of course he should) ad officers must again rely on general trends.</p>
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The goal is not to seek out the second type of student, but to recognize them so as to better understand an application.</p>
<p>I read and participate in these debates all too often, so I’ll leave with this one point: Many CCers in this thread say that an affluent URM shouldn’t be given the same admissions boost as poorer ones, or poorer people in general. I’m going to very loosely paraphrase a point Admissionsgeek once made (albeit less eloquently). If only poor URMS are given a boost it would create a huge socioeconomic divide between races. No doubt this divide already exists to an extent, but I don’t think colleges want a school where every URM is poor. Admitting affluent URMs creates some diversity within races, which, believe it or not, is needed to have a cohesive class of students.</p>
<p>Yes, I support affirmative action, but I also understand it is an imperfect system. I have once read it could be compared to a doctor breaking an already broken arm so that it heals correctly. Do with the analogy what you will. I am also biased because, if accepted to a top tier university, I will no doubt have to thank affirmative action for the boost it provided. That said, I have also overcome the typical “inner city, bad school, teenage mom, drugs, gangs etc” all of which has made it A LOT harder for me get to this point. I thank you for reading my post and I hope that people on both side of the issue take the time to understand the counter argument. God Bless</p>
<p>HEY YA’LL CHECK OTU THIS THREAD LMAOOOOOOO</p>
<p>my friend showed it to me…idk if its ■■■■■ or not but this stanford EA admit claims to have put “african american” as his race when he was asian and got in lololololol and then they rejected him after they found out lawl</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/1051370-i-got-accepted-scea-ohgod-i-accidently-put-my-racial-ethnicity-african-american.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/1051370-i-got-accepted-scea-ohgod-i-accidently-put-my-racial-ethnicity-african-american.html</a></p>
<p>^^^^^^^^^^
It was a ■■■■■. Definitely a ■■■■■.</p>
<p>woops, just glancing through my post again, meant to say “as adgeek said, you can’t build an argument against AA with anecdotes.”</p>
<p>To the OP…just be thankful you’re not an international student. You can’t even begin to imagine the amount of competition we have to face.</p>
<p>Guys, check this link out:</p>
<p>[Affirmative</a> action bake sale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_bake_sale]Affirmative”>Affirmative action bake sale - Wikipedia) </p>
<p>If I end up at an Ivy League School (or MIT or Stanford), I would SOOO do that exact same bake sale at the exact same prices for each ethnicity/gender in front of the admissions office. Do you think they would kick me out if I did? :)</p>
<p>That bake sale is a stupid, simplistic, and reductionist misinterpretation of affirmative action policies and the general importance of context in holistic admissions. It’s a publicity stunt designed to make people upset and uncomfortable. The conservatives at Columbia tried it four or five years ago; most found it in poor taste, and some were deeply offended, though many just laughed it off. Honestly, I don’t think that the sentiment behind it is racist; I think the conservatives are trying to satirize decisions based on race in order to show why race should never be a factor in any policies or decisions. That’s a remarkably ignorant and na</p>
<p>saints… that’s horrible O__o</p>
<p>sigh…affirmative action again. Heres a quick rambling of my thoughts and how I’ve come to perceive this topic after coming across it every year in high school debate lolz</p>
<p>1) The reason why aff action was first implemented was to serve as a redemption for past wrongs (prejudice and discrimination) against AA’s. Obviously, today that original reason has largely shifted (thus you see AA’s with no perceived disadvantage - my friend who drives a BMW with a doctor dad and a surgeon mom, fx - getting the benefits of checking off AA in elite college admissions)</p>
<p>2) the reason for AA still (I’m sure many of you know this already)? Diversity. According to studies (from “A is for admissions” … a quick google search will do too lol), each year, more than 40 something k (or a super high number like that) of Caucasian applicants score the “optimal” on the SAT/ACT to be considered for elite colleges. At the same time, only about 1-2k AA score that, and 11k + asians. If elite colleges make decisions based on objective merits like that, obviously there would be a very low proportion of AA students on campus, making the campus pretty homogenous in terms of race.</p>
<p>3) Thus, admitting by merit alone stems all benefits that flow from racial diversity. In the long run, the effects of a homogenous atmosphere is largely detrimental. Studies (too lazy too look up cards I cut for debate…) have shown that many high school students enter college with little to no previous encounters with other cultures, and thus college serves as a crucial time, since its a stepping stone into society for many and opportunities to experience diversity in a conducive environment like schools before going into the “real world” is pretty much nonexistent after college. Thus, college diversity is crucial</p>
<p>4) students who experience more college racial diversity tend to be more developed (w/e that means…), less prejudiced (makes sense), and more open to ideas (or something like that lol), especially in a increasingly globalized world.</p>
<p>5) so even tho many of you are complaining about aff action barring you from the school of your dreams, just know that its there for a purpose. If admitting on merit alone was better, don’t you think colleges like harvard or yale or columbia would have ditched Aff action a long time ago…</p>
<p>6) personal reflections…idk about ya’ll, but my old school was pretty homogenous (very, very asian lol). I attended this one summer program in my soph year, and I was really surprised at first that it was mainly AA. I was pretty reserved at first, since I never really hanged out around them much, but after those 4 weeks, I really thought some of them were pretty awesome, and it definitely made me a more versatile person today. That’s just 4 weeks…Of course, there may be some of ya’ll that come from big schools (like in NY) and attend schools where diversity is pretty much everywhere. But keep in mind that A LOT of schools in places (no offense) like Idaho or South Dakota where diversity isn’t very prevalent, and getting to be around ppl of other races/cultures in colleges is pretty important experience</p>
<p>7) if you still think Aff Action sucks, just remember, the world isn’t always fair. lol.</p>
<p>Wow, being half Jewish and half African-American I am outraged by this post. You just sound like an angry nerd with no respect for anyone else. I have seen people like you and you are the reason that racism still exists in US. I am appalled to see that you would make this kind of post. </p>
<p>Affirmative action is good for all people and it has no proven adverse effects. If you feel so strongly you should head to the KKK meetings in your redneck town.</p>
<p>Moses, I hope that youre not referring to me, because I agreed with Affirmative Action…</p>
<p>^ I think he was referring to the OP</p>