<p>Haha, mathmom, sometimes it helps to sit out the first 34 pages of a thread and absorb everybody else's good trains of thought! ;)</p>
<p>To mini</p>
<p>Pecvniate obedivnt omnia. Football?</p>
<p>One of the arguments made on this thread is that there is no "Asian stack". It just so happens that Asians do not fill the desirable characteristics-paintball and green hair, but rather the cliched piano-or-violin-playing, mathematically brilliant, type. Why these particular characteristics, which seem quite lovely to me, are negative is beyond me.</p>
<p>Also, imagine this:
a "geeky" kid who plays the violin, does exceptionally well in school, and is a mathematical genius.
Oh, and he's an under-represented minority.</p>
<p>I do not believe that he would be part of the 'undesirable' stack.</p>
<p>"Pecvniate obedivnt omnia. Football?"</p>
<p>Magistri pueris parvis crustula saepe dant.</p>
<p>"Nope" yourself, mini. Exceptional is weighed within the confines of the money expected & the money certain. And quarterback would fit one of the exceptional classications, as cptofthehouse alluded to.</p>
<p>A number of exceptional but low-income students have been accepted to Ivies in recent years. I know plenty of particular cases where legacy, donor, well-to-do, non URM, non athletic students have been passed over for needy students in the same senior class. In those cases, the academic & e.c. profiles of the students were almost indistinguishable, but their pocket-books were not. It was not the people with fat wallets that were admitted: they were waitlisted & rejected. Rather, the same race/same school/same GPA/same score/same e.c. students were admitted who came from poverty.</p>
<p>Furthermore, in some cases you will find overlaps of money with athletics.</p>
<p>""Nope" yourself, mini. Exceptional is weighed within the confines of the money expected & the money certain. And quarterback would fit one of the exceptional classications, as cptofthehouse alluded to."</p>
<p>Money and quarterback are not each "one of the exceptional classifications". They have special slots all of their own (as do sons and daughters of senators, congressman, ambassadors, and local politicians). They are qualitatively different from violinists (dime a dozen), poets, science fair winners, and high school debaters.</p>
<p>Institutions like Harvard and Yale increasingly use the considerable returns on their endowments to fund their operations. As a result, they are less and less dependent on tuition revenues for operations and could certainly go tuition free for all students if they desired without reducing any of their investments in new facilities or programs. Last year, for instance Yale gained nearly $3 billion from their investment portfolio alone, which now approaches $20 billion. So, a capability to pay full tuition is not a factor at all for admissions any more. </p>
<p>This has also meant less leverage by wealthy alumni in getting their relatives into these institutions. I recently met a 7th generation Yale alumnus and also one of the biggest contributors to Yale. Last year, his grandson applied to Yale, was waitlisted and eventually rejected. He was apparently not such a bad candidate as he was admitted to Duke instead. This shows that at the top, great wealth or legacy status is less and less of a hook. You still need outstanding traits beyond these factors for admission. Alumni interviews have even become optional at Yale and don't have much bearing on admission.</p>
<p>The plural of anecdote is not evidence.</p>
<p>The data show that HYP and a large proportion of prestige private colleges are in fact less economically diverse than they were 25 years ago. Legacy admits are for the most part stable, though now that, for the first time, there are a significant number of URM (and female) legacies, colleges have made noises about lessening the legacy advantage.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Last year, his grandson applied to Yale, was waitlisted and eventually rejected. He was apparently not such a bad candidate as he was admitted to Duke instead. This shows that at the top, great wealth or legacy status is less and less of a hook.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Maybe he was also a legacy at Duke. Kids have more than one parent. (And all of you kids whose parents married someone else who went to the same university have the right to be outraged about how they denied you a chance to be a legacy at two institutions.)</p>
<p>Ok, I have no problem with whites and asians having to sacrifice some spots to urms for the sake of diversity/restitution/development of future urm leaders. </p>
<p>However, there's a prima facie case of racial discrimination when the majority group (whites) have a numerical advantage (50 points) than a minority group (asians) in the college admissions game. In fact, a recent study by some Princeton economists found that essentially every spot given to an underqualified (numbers-wise) urm is taken away from asians, and whites are virtually unaffected. (sorry i don't have a link to this study, but it's well known and i'm sure other posters can provide it.) </p>
<p>Here is the important implication:<br>
1) the moral/political justification of AA lies in the fact that using racial discrimination is not so troubling when the majority group has taken it upon itself to sacrifice some of its advantages to help minority groups: there's much less concern about abuse and corruption. Thus, courts are much less skeptical of these actions and will not strike down this kind of racial discrimination. The goal is worthwhile and the potential for abuse is small (b/c the political/racial majority is the one being diadvantaged. </p>
<p>2) this moral justification falls apart if it turns out that the majority group (whites) are not the ones sacrificing for the program, i.e. if the Princeton study is true. If the program merely helps one group of minorities and the cost of hurting another group, then the program is susceptible to the same kinds of moral and CONSTITUTIONAL problems as the old jim crow laws and de jure segragation. </p>
<p>3) Courts should not worry abot AA when the whites are ones paying the price for helping urms, but they should when it turns out that whites are not doing any sacrificing at all, but instead having another minority group (asians), bear the brunt of the cost. </p>
<p>tytytyty.</p>
<p>Edit: it can be argued that the 50 point discrepancy can be attributed to legacies/athletes. However, at top schools, the justification for legacies/atheletes are almost non-existent. I went to yale, and I can say for a fact that 1) legacies are not needed because yale has a 12 billion dollar endowement, it's even larger at harvard and comparable at other top schools. The point is that they're not hurting for cash from legacies. Also, the legacy argument presumes that an alum is signficantly less likely to contribute money to the school just because the school didn't admit his kid, that's not supported by any evidence i'm aware of, as well as common sense; 2) the athletes (by which i mean RECRUITED athletes at ivies) are laughable: they're not good enough to compete with their peers at big schools that give scholarship money, and they're too dumb to contribute at all to the intellectual atmosphere. Also, no one goes to athletic events (except for the game against harvard), so there's really no school spirit argument.</p>
<p>"However, there's a prima facie case of racial discrimination when the majority group (whites) have a numerical advantage (50 points)."</p>
<p>The problem is that these 50 points do not represent "merit". SATs are not college entrance tests. The authors/creators of the test say all they do is represent a prediction of first-year college performance. No more than that. And the evidence is that, for URMs, they don't even work for that purpose.</p>
<p>So there is no prima facie case.</p>
<p>But it is easy to forget that the point of diversity admissions at prestige private colleges (as opposed to public universities, which have other interests) are there to benefit ALL students, starting with white, rich ones. That they also happen to benefit some few minority students is almost beside the point.</p>
<p>
[quote]
One of the arguments made on this thread is that there is no "Asian stack". It just so happens that Asians do not fill the desirable characteristics-paintball and green hair, but rather the cliched piano-or-violin-playing, mathematically brilliant, type. Why these particular characteristics, which seem quite lovely to me, are negative is beyond me.
[/quote]
Of course they are not negative. They just aren’t that prized after you have already selected fifty dozens of them. A university should be a vibrant community of differences united by the pursuit of knowledge. Think of it as one might think of an orchestra. An orchestra isn’t made up of a bunch of pianists. That’s just some serious boring there. You need percussion, violi, violins, celli, contrabasses, flutes, and at the most only two pianos, if that. In truth, Asian pianist mathematicians comprise something of a metaphorical violin section at most top universities. You can use lots of them, and you can even get some amazing things only with them. But you can’t get the most amazing things only with them. At some point, you are gonna hafta say “Hey! No more violins! Let’s take some trumpets and other stuff now.”</p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, imagine this: a "geeky" kid who plays the violin, does exceptionally well in school, and is a mathematical genius. Oh, and he's an under-represented minority. I do not believe that he would be part of the 'undesirable' stack.
[/quote]
And he ought not be in the undesirable stack because history means he will be in very short supply for now. He is like a great harpist. You don’t see many in an orchestra, and in fact there just aren’t that many around, relative to violinists. So you hafta spend a little more effort if you want to get the best ones around.</p>
<p>Because of his experience in America, an experience heavily influenced by race (since America is hyper-race conscious), he is likely to approach mathematics, violin, and even ‘geekiness’ differently. He is not like the fifty-eleven Asians who have been already selected by the school, though he may share many similarities with them. The fact is, this black geek is a son of slaves and is part of a fantastic transition whether he knows it or not. Many people in America will see and be encouraged by it. He brings a very worthy thing to any table of educated people. And none of the Asians will be able to do this, since they have no part of the history and experience.</p>
<p>Once this history no longer affects us so directly, so that when we see a black guy we fail to lump him into some rigidly defined racial group (i.e. thinking toward him like this: “I saw this guy today, with dark brown skin, and kinky brown hair. He was kinda Africanish, I guess, but different. His lips were thicker than mine, but a lot thinner than my friend Okinwale’s, who has some of the biggest lips I have ever seen on any one human. Anyway, this kinky-haired browny carried himself like an American. You know how Americans are. He was wearing a leather jacket and jeans, while everyone else wore tuxes. Crazy.”), when we can feel toward him like that, and when he can think of himself like that, with no weird feelings about race getting in the way, then all this stuff about racial preferences will automatically become obsolete. There will be no need to seek the experience of those in the “African Diaspora” because the group will effectively no longer exist.</p>
<p>Mini: I suspect you don't know what prima facie means. Prima facie doesn't mean the end of the case, it means there's rebuttable presumption for the case. </p>
<p>In the case of SAT scores, it's not a perfect measure true, but it's a reasonably objective measurement of academic/intellectual ability, especially in the context of WHITES V. ASIANs, where social economic factors are relatively equalized. </p>
<p>Unless you have reliable and concrete evidence to show that Asians as a group are categorically less qualified than Whites in OTHER factors like ECs, personality, creativity, etc that matter for college admission, then you cannot rebut the prima facie case. </p>
<p>I suspect/hope that you will resort to sterotypes against asians to supply this "evidence", that would prove my point quite nicely.</p>
<p>EDIT: mini, you also seem to forget that private universities get public funds, as such they are undisputedly government actors who have to follow the 14th Amendment: this means that they can't just do whatever they want, as you seem to suggest. I'm a 2L at UChicago Law, and I can tell you that you've got it dead wrong on the legal analysis, which is pretty rare in a constitutional debate - so, congratulations!</p>
<p>There is no prima facie case because colleges would deny, and the CollegeBoard would directly and explicitly deny, that SATs are a measure of merit. There is no need for a rebuttal, when the underlying assumption means that the evidence isn't.</p>
<p>mini,
The plural of anecdotes is not evidence, but neither are statistics, which are just are a category below "damned lies." You need to get over your love-affair with statistics, trends, & your many assumptions about what upper-levels do & don't value in total. Generalizations (i.e., "statistics") do not cover the particular examples relevant to this thread -- such as how a high-scorer of any ethnic group, without other exceptional factors or athletic promise at the college in question, might stack up against other applicants. Even reading CC & checking out results from one's own local high school will not generate evidence that full tuition students, or even donor families, will be preferred over very-low-income stars, necessarily. There have also been parents on PF citing recent examples of rejections by their own Ivy & other upper-level schools, resulting in their stated disinterest in further generous donations, for which they have a history. </p>
<p>So, I repeat: the recent actual acceptance results, over the last 2-3 yrs. minimum, show that for well-endowed upper-level U's, the low-income but exceptionally accomplished student of any race will tend to have an edge over an equally accomplished student of a similar category but with more money. (Excluding the very, very wealthy and/or celebrity wtih wealth.) That priority has also been stated by the U's, & has had some influence over the decision to let go of ED in some cases.</p>
<p>"So, I repeat: the recent actual acceptance results, over the last 2-3 yrs. minimum, show that for well-endowed upper-level U's, the low-income but exceptionally accomplished student of any race will tend to have an edge over an equally accomplished student of a similar category but with more money."</p>
<p>So again, I ask for the evidence. I've shown you mine. (The actual number of enrollees in the mid and second upper quintile, not low-income, but $40k-$92k, at these colleges is miniscule, and a large percentage of them are recruited athletes. I won't give you all the percentages again.)</p>
<p>mini: your misunderstanding of the debate is astounding. </p>
<p>Racial discrimination does not rest on whethter SATs are a measure of merit, all that's required is that SATs are a factor for admissions for the particular university. In a legal case, you can ask the college to enumerate every factor for admission they have: SATs, GPA, class rank, EC, essays, letters of rec, etc. Then, you can show, statistically, that for one factor, Asians as a group are required to have a signficantly higher number (50 points on the old SATs). This is a prima facie case for discrimination. You can dispute the case for discrimination by showing that Asians as a group have lower numbers on the other factors, which offsets this higher number on the SATs. Are you purposely pretending to not understand this or are you really not capable of comprehending this simple argument? </p>
<p>Here's a really really simple analogy. Say a kid is going to pick between two flavors of ice cream (vanilla and rocky road). There are supposedly two factors for his choice: taste and texture. Now, it turns out that the kid chooses vanilla despite admitting that he likes the taste of chocolate better. However, there's no evidence, and the kid does not admit, that he likes the texture of vanilla better. In this case, then it's logical to suspect that there's another reason that the kid chose vanilla aside from the factors of taste and chocolate, maybe color?</p>
<p>"The data show that HYP and a large proportion of prestige private colleges are in fact less economically diverse than they were 25 years ago."</p>
<p>And that is precisely why today, and in the previous 2 cycles, the economically disadvantaged person of any ethnicity will tend to be preferred over an equally accomplished person of greater means, contingent upon the U in question having assured itself of thriving Accounts Receivable from other sources, plural. It takes awhile for a calculation of a discernible trend to be registered: lag time in policy changes, acceptances, enrollments, reporting of changed numbers, and the achievement of measurable change. </p>
<p>So they are "less economically diverse" because of the reporting period, not because HYP are increasingly de-selecting for poor students. Quite the opposite.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Mini: I suspect you don't know what prima facie means. Prima facie doesn't mean the end of the case, it means there's rebuttable presumption for the case. </p>
<p>Mini, you also seem to forget that private universities get public funds, as such they are undisputedly government actors who have to follow the 14th Amendment: this means that they can't just do whatever they want, as you seem to suggest.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ikki, in case you missed it, this is not exactly a court room. Why not focus on making your arguments instead of lecturing others about prima facie, presumption, and other arcane legalese that only satisfy an aspirant legal eagle. In addition, I would happily wager that Mini has forgotten more about the 14th amendment and the use of federal funds by private institutions than you still have to learn. </p>
<p>And, since you brought up the need of using concrete and reliable evidence, you may start by doing some research on the "studies" and facts you quote so freely. The Espenshade studies and especially the CEO bogus research are far from being conclusive. </p>
<p>In the meantine, feel free to cling onto the smallest "evidence" of discrimination and try to elevate mythical tales and misinformation to the level of "evidence."</p>
<p>And, by the way, since you seem so intent to display your knowledge of discrimination cases in admissions, would you kindly list the successful cases brought against the elite private schools in the country. Heck, add the public schools, if you wish. Prima facie and all! And while you are laboring at that elusive quest, you may ask yourself why the Jian Li complaint was originally dismissed by the OCR.</p>
<p>"Racial discrimination does not rest on whethter SATs are a measure of merit, all that's required is that SATs are a factor for admissions for the particular university."</p>
<p>Nope. Suppose they simply used SATs as a cutoff point (meaning that a 2400 and 2100 are the same, if the cutoff is 2090). Or suppose they simply used SATs as a way to confirm strength of curriculum (i.e. usefulness of GPA). I can think of several dozen other ways that SATs could be used as a "factor of admission" without a difference of 50 points being relevant to a particular admissions decision (and regardless of whether race is involved.) </p>
<p>(Or suppose they decided to count the number of times one took the test as a surrogate for wealth....;))</p>