<p>a liar is bad...but a snitch is worse. that's just me</p>
<p>if you go out of ur way to snitch on someone, def. tells a lot bout u</p>
<p>i dont mind
i'll snitch
give me the name and the school
lol</p>
<p>I'm just reading this thread and am dismayed and disheartened by the fact that people still believe that by simply checking a box claiming you're an URM will somehow automatically get one into an elite institution. I know MANY competitive African American students who are denied admissions into elite colleges. So, please don't think otherwise. Also, as the parent of a middle-class Black daughter who attends an elite LAC, I can assure you that there are many African American students who pay FULL tuition (such as my daughter) to these institutuions. I think there is a misconception about this on the part of many people. There are programs such as Questbridge that support students of a lower-economic background (of all races). My daughter was telling me just yesterday that most of the AFrican students in her college tend to be upper class, products of private schools and have families in England. She said they tend to be very British and well off. She said she's definitely not met any South Africans from Soweto or any impoverished communities. These are very competive students with means. I think people need to rethink this "poor, unqualified URM who is taking my spot" mentality.</p>
<p>lmpw, do you feel that your daughter and her FULL tuition paying upper class private school educated black classmates at the elite LAC needed special preference at the time of admission?</p>
<p>no, and I don't think any of them received it. I actually think that most of these institutions BENEFIT from having these highly qualified URM who are able to pay their own way. They get the best of all worlds - having diversity without having to pay to have these students in these institutions. In addition, these students "fit" in with the general student body becasue these kids are also world travelled, products of the leading schools in the nation (and world). I haven't witnessed any "special" treatment. I think any highly qualified URM student with the ability to pay full tuition would be very attractive to most institutions. This makes perfect sense. These kids are very, very competitive and can go virtually anywhere. One of my daughter's Black female friends who is graduating from high school this year just got into Yale EA. This kid is the highest achieving student in her predominately white prep school. She is a national merit scholar. She can go ANYWHERE.</p>
<p>I agree that many TRULY disadvantaged URM's are not getting the treatment that they should be getting. Many are getting rejected or cannot attend since they do not have the money to pay for a college education. On the other hand, many advantaged URM's are getting preferential treatment which they may or may not deserve... AA is simply used for adding diversity to the campus, which is not so fair in my mind. If they want to give preferential treatment, they should be giving it to people who actually NEED the help. For example, my private school's URM's do not need this extra boost; however, it's quite obvious when someone gets in with the HELP of this boost. I'm not saying they got in simply because of it, but it sure helps a lot.</p>
<p>I'm truly confused. People complain when they say URM don't measure up, but they also complain when highly competitive students DO get accepted. What URM SHOULD get into these institutions? These students DON'T get any help (financially). These top schools only provide needs based aid which many of the people in my circle of friends (actually ALL of my friends) don't qualify to receive. There is NOT any huge number of Black or Latino students in ANY of these top institutions (and many who are counted are actually international students (African and West Indians). Any URM who can't afford to pay to get into these top school will get plenty of aid. So, that is not the case. The reality is people like me and my husband who are first generation college who have done well professionally can't qualify for aid. I find the constant complaining about URM truly boring. People are SO uninformed on this topic. It really helps those who are not accepted to these incredibly competitive institutions to say the reason they didn't get in was because of URM. NOT.</p>
<p>lmpw- your post #85 provides strong support for my previous argument. I completely agree that there is a substantial number of extremely talented, qualified, wealthy and privileged black and hispanic kids out there in the country and the world. It is this pool of kids that Yale, Harvard etc draw upon to create a "racially" diverse student body. And yes, as you say, these students "fit" in with the general student body.....i.e, their presence does not really add any <em>real</em> diversity, simply skin-color diversity. And since Yale, Harvard etc can count these kids towards their URM enrollment 'goals' (i.e, quotas), there is no need for them to look for those truly disadvantaged minority students who are brilliant but have not been given the opportunities to excel. This subverts the whole point of affirmative action.</p>
<p>bahahaha i knew this was eventually going to become an AA thread.</p>
<p>college is not a meritocracy people...remember this when you make your arguments...</p>
<p>Giving credit to one of my cyberfriends when this discussion came up..</p>
<p>Why do people assume that any attempt to increase the representation of minority students must = "disadvantage" to white/asian students? In order for that argument to be true, we would have to accept as factual that white/asian students are somehow entitled to the seats at these schools as a default. If we except that proposition then yes, any disturbance of that default number would be disadvantageous to whites/asians because we would then be detracting from the number of white students who are "supposed to be" there.</p>
<p>I tend not to agree with that logic.</p>
<p>Each school in this nation (with the exception of CA and MI) is free to define its own diverse student body however it sees fit. As long as they are doing this lawfully, who are we to say that their decision as an institution of higher learning to compose their own student body from a qualified pool of applicants is a "disadvantage" to any of us rising to the level of "injustice?" </p>
<p>Remember AA does not force schools to do anything, it merely allows them to consider race as one among many factors in making up its diverse student body.</p>
<p>When you applied to [name your Ivy or other Elite School], along with the 1000's of other[name your Ivy or other Elite School] hopefuls, they took your numbers (which I trust were good) and saw a good couple hundred other people with the exact same score. Now....I wasn't in the ad com room when they made the decision but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there was at least ONE white/asian person admitted in your stead with the exact same figures as yourself. At least one legacy. At least one kid of a wealthy [name your Ivy or other Elite School]donor. At least one ______ [fill in the blank]. But out of all those who were admitted with your scores or less for 100's of different reasons, race is the dispositive culprit that kept you out of the elite college of your dreams??</p>
<p>Now people may hate on this idea or think about it, lets see what happens..</p>
<p>The common application states:
If you wish to be identified with a particular ethnic group, please check all that apply:</p>
<p>Couldn't you identify with a certain ethnic group, but biologically not be a member of it? i.e. Malibu's Most Wanted haha hate to reference that, but yeah.</p>
<p>The other thing is, yes, there are advantages to race, but in the end the OP is wrong to assume his stats weren't anything special and that he only got into columbia by AA. and considering the wording, i don't believe an admissions decision can be recinded on the basis of lying about race, the last thing a school needs is the possible publicity of a student claiming his decisions was recinded on the basis of his self-reported race. this shouldn't be such an intense debate, we've tried our best in high school, thats the only thing we control. happy holidays folks.</p>
<p>Any thread that deals with “diversity,” “under / over” – representation, and so forth will eventually become an AA thread. It’s not surprising given that AA’s supporters so frequently invoke those terms.</p>
<p>Tyler, you say that college is not a meritocracy. What is it then? A place where mediocrity is rewarded? A place where “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” prevails? Please tell me.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Why do people assume that any attempt to increase the representation of minority students must = "disadvantage" to white/asian students?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don’t assume that. Not all attempts to increase the representation of minority students automatically disadvantage non-minority students. (I thought Asians were a minority in this country?) Encouraging minority students to apply and providing test prep for poor students can both be attempts to increase the number of said students without disadvantaging non-minority students. I’m all for these and other nonracial methods.</p>
<p>I'll respond in place of Tyler and guess that he means college selects students for ITS OWN BENEFIT. If it benefits Columbia to diversify their class at the expense of high scores, they're going to do that. He's right, college isn't really a meritocracy. It's in the UK and Asia that colleges are more like meritocracies.</p>
<p>Merit manifests itself in many ways, not just test scores.</p>
<p>Demonstrated achievement in the arts, mathematics, sciences, literature, debate, and so forth are all examples of merit.</p>
<p>When subjective factors come into play in making college admissions decisions, then NO there is no "meritocracy". Selected students are all deemed qualified by a variety of factors. For the hard core people on CC who equate merit solely or primarily with tests scores, they've missed the boat. To suggest that an institutuions recind an offer because someone lied about their racial identity implies that they were accepted solely on that basis. If the person applied for a specific minority scholarship or award and ended up being a fraud, that's a different situation. Otherwise, it's not an issue unless the person wrote an essay claiming a minority status. Checking a box, just means checking a box.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you wish to be identified with a particular ethnic group, please check all that apply:</p>
<p>Couldn't you identify with a certain ethnic group, but biologically not be a member of it? i.e. Malibu's Most Wanted haha hate to reference that, but yeah.
[/quote]
No. They phrase it that way to be considerate of people who may be multi-racial but strongly identify with a select few of their ethnicities.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Tyler, you say that college is not a meritocracy. What is it then? A place where mediocrity is rewarded?
[/quote]
What you said does not make sense. By saying that college is not a meritocracy, Tyler is saying that college is not about rewarding people. So, no, it's not a place where mediocrity is rewarded.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Encouraging minority students to apply and providing test prep for poor students can both be attempts to increase the number of said students without disadvantaging non-minority students.
[/quote]
The problems with this argument are that our country's standardized test scores essentially prove nothing so what would good is it to have students waste time bettering their scores? The second problem is that the disadvantages that underpriveleged minority students face is much more complex than not having adequate test prep or not applying to colleges. Those are just symptoms of underlying problems. </p>
<p>The problem that economically disadvantaged students, regardless of race, is the inability to build sound academic foundations when they are young. This is mainly caused by poor schools. The second problem, which mainly affects minorities, is the negative stereotypes these students face which hurt their self-esteem and often prevent the from reaching their academic potential. (Students with low self-esteem act out and spend most of their academic careers in trouble rather than in class.) This problem is caused by society.</p>
<p>I see no reason why a person who is “biologically” a member of group Y should be forbidden from “identifying” with group X. If Gerald, who is white, thinks that acting “black” is cool and consequently decides to listen almost exclusively to rap, sag his pants half a foot, and sit with black students at lunch, is it wrong for him to claim “identity” as black? Since his claiming to be black does not hurt anyone, I say let him.</p>
<p>Given that college is not a meritocracy because it is "not about rewarding people," what is it about?</p>
<p>Standardized test scores essentially prove nothing, I see. I guess we have finally reached the point where an A in AP Calculus at high school X is the same thing as an A in AP Calculus at high school Y. Oh, wait, I’m describing an alternate reality where socialism actually works. In this country, a student can make an A at high school X and a 2 on the exam while another student makes an A at high school Y and a 5 on the exam. A score of 2 on the AP Calculus exam indicates that less than 40% of the total possible points were earned. Did the A-from-high-school-X student really learn the material to warrant an A? Even if he did not learn the best ways to answer the AP questions, an A in the class suggests that he should have mastered the material to where he’d be able to answer most of the multiple choice questions correctly and earn more than 50% of the partial credit on the free response section.</p>
<p>The whole purpose of standardized tests was to account for the vast discrepancies in grading in our nation’s high schools.</p>
<p>So, how do you propose to fix the poor schools? The negative stereotypes? Please tell me. I'm interested.</p>
<p>Test taking is a skill that can be improved by prep. This is true now even for AP courses (most of the class is spent preparing for the TEST). So, increasingly in this era of off the chart scores of students (that are COACHED), other factors have become more important. In most places, admissions isn't given just to the highest test takers (otherwise, there would be no need for essays, interviews, etc.), simply enroll those who made the highest test scores. Most American colleges and universities don't operate that way. There is a range of factors. A person with a 2380 SAT score doesn't equate to a better student who perhaps has a 2180 or even less. But, it would be hard to convince the former.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I see no reason why a person who is “biologically” a member of group Y should be forbidden from “identifying” with group X. If Gerald, who is white, thinks that acting “black” is cool and consequently decides to listen almost exclusively to rap, sag his pants half a foot, and sit with black students at lunch, is it wrong for him to claim “identity” as black? Since his claiming to be black does not hurt anyone, I say let him.
[/quote]
Wow. What you just said there is highly offensive. Your statement is filled with many degrading stereotypes about African-Americans. I am going to pretend that you did not make this statement... and please refer to the Terms of Services so that you do not make any more offensive comments in the future. Also, please refer to tokenadult's post where he or she explains what ethnicity is.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The whole purpose of standardized tests was to account for the vast discrepancies in grading in our nation’s high schools.
[/quote]
Yes, that statement is true whether or not it actually does this is debatable especially when talking about the SAT I or ACT. Also, another goal of the standardized tests is to predict success in college yet no correlation between test scores and college success have been found.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So, how do you propose to fix the poor schools? The negative stereotypes? Please tell me. I'm interested.
[/quote]
To fix poor schools: Hold teachers more accountable, provide resources, educate parents about the importance of academics. This is a pretty complex issue to address. In order to resolve the issue completely it will take many minds to address.</p>
<p>To fix negative stereotypes: Encourage people to interact with people of different ethnicities in a meaningful way, call people out when they use/promote degrading stereotypes like you did in your post, etc. Again pretty hard issue to address but I think that if everyone works together the issue can be resolved.</p>
<p>I do not doubt that “test taking is a skill that can be improved by prep.” A student who knows what format a test will be in has an advantage over a student who doesn’t know how the test will be structured. The ladder builds.</p>
<p>I know from experience that “preparing for the test” is essential to success on an AP exam. Not being proficient in net ionic equations or not knowing how to use primary sources can be catastrophic for students taking AP Chemistry or AP History, respectively.</p>
<p>Even so, I would be wary to conclude that all these “of the chart” scores are the result of coaching. My SAT score was not high by CC standards, but it placed me at least in the middle 50% of every Ivy League school. Was I coached? Depends on whether you consider buying books tantamount to hiring private tutors.</p>
<p>I don’t argue in favor of a “tests only” or a “numbers only” system. I favor a “race-blind” system. That means “don’t consider race.” Simple as that.</p>