"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 11

Applying to College
661

<p>Sotomayor is my hero :slight_smile: </p>

662

<p>I probably really shouldn’t poke my head where I don’t belong, but I mean, the highest African American freshman enrollment rate at most selective colleges is 12% held by Columbia University. Almost everywhere else can range from 3-8%. It’s just, with Affirmative Action, most African Americans don’t really go to college and graduate (although the graduation rate for African Americans has risen to almost 42%), and without Affirmative Action, nothing is really going to change; most African Americans won’t go to college and graduate. I don’t agree with AA solely because I think the most qualified should be accepted, but it still saddens me how low the rates are for URMs. It’s been getting better, especially with the increase of Hispanic enrollment and graduation rates exceeding that of whites, but I feel like without the amount of encouragement that can be given by seeing other URMs successfully go to college and succeed, it won’t get better for those groups. Asians are certainly the most qualified group I can think of for being accepted into the top colleges, but I can’t empathize with their struggle because all I see is how many people like me (African American) don’t succeed in a lot of higher education opportunities anyway.</p>

<p>I guess it’s just kinda hard to accept that the little amount of URMs that go to well-renowned universities should decrease even further, because they don’t rank up to those who also applied for those same schools. I want the situation to get better, for both Asians and African Americans and Hispanics, but I don’t see how it can without one party having to fall because of it. By the way, here are some sources I read on the subject.</p>

<p><a href=“Black Student College Graduation Rates Remain Low, But Modest Progress Begins to Show”>http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“Fast Facts: Enrollment (98)”>Fast Facts: Enrollment (98);
<a href=“The Conversation: For Black Students, College Degrees Are Separate and Unequal”>http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/07/10/for-black-students-college-degrees-are-separate-and-unequal/&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“Hispanic College Enrollment In U.S. Rose 15 Percent Despite Overall Student Population Decline | HuffPost Voices”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/08/31/hispanics-are-now-the-largest-minority-in-college”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/08/31/hispanics-are-now-the-largest-minority-in-college&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

663

<p>

</p>

<p>I minimize time spent on “high V, low M” debate magnets except where clear quantitative issues arise. Such as, in this case: “was there ever any evidence behind the spread of the Skyrocketing UC Asian Enrollment Post-209 meme? Or the UC (Berkeley) Asian Discrimination meme?”.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>The subject I just named. But since you mention past discussions, nailing those down might be fun, since you might have actually learned enough math and statistics by now to understand your errors from the last few rounds. Or not:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>You have not found any problems with sources, much less the points based on those sources, but feel free to keep flailing. Hope springs eternal, and a 0.000 batting average has nowhere to go but up. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Were you under the impression of having said something coherent about A & B’s paper? Wow. You want to discuss it again? I thought 2 more years of grad school might have quietly given you the hint that, to say it very politely, it would be better to actually learn some math instead of “rolling your own”. But sure, if you want to run the M train off those rails again, let’s have a go.</p>

<p>(As you may recall, A & B found evidence, whether or not they were directly looking for it, that of 8 UC schools only UC Davis passed basic tests of the “Asian discrimination” paradigm, which is already very different from the standard memes. Assuming you have learned anything at all since 2012, you might want to review your replies at the time and observe how painfully off the point they were. Or keep blustering and see where that goes, I’m cool with it either way.)</p>

664

<p>I find the cartoon in this blog post quite illuminating. We are up a creek forever if this is the now the interpretation of what it means to be color blind, which I am kind of afraid it is becoming.</p>

<p>The blog is a great read as well; talk about endless twisting and turning by Sotomayor and Ginsburg - discrimination by race forever seems to be their motto. 14th amendment
what’s that?</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/the-constitution-is-still-constitutional-for-now.php”>http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/the-constitution-is-still-constitutional-for-now.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

665

<p>@Lightheart7 you certainly do belong in this discussion. I am sad too about all the students who go to college and don’t succeed, possibly wasting their own time and money and the university’s resources. Perhaps students need to study harder and smarter. I don’t claim to have any magic solutions that haven’t been tried over and over.</p>

<p>But I think it’s fair to say that affirmative action for black students and also hispanic students has been given a fair try, more than that. If their graduation rates were to increase, I think it would have already occurred and I don’t see a reason to think things will get better from here. Graduation percentages will probably stay about the same. Affirmative action has done whatever job it was put in place, temporarily, to do, as well as it can do it. We can’t continue discriminating against everyone else, forever.</p>

<p>Just because you’re black does not mean you have to identify primarily as black and expect to see your success as similar to theirs. You could identify with others of your gender, or your major, or your hometown, or those who share your hobbies. All these identities are available. Race is a fact but it’s not the only fact or even the most important fact.</p>

666

<p>Sotomayor’s dissent (joined by Ginsburg) was interesting. There is a line of old cases where the Supreme Court basically said a political process cannot be changed to the detriment of minorities. It can be changed to favor them but not disfavor them. (That seems to encourage greater and greater advantages for minorities as political processes ratchet further and further in their favor when they change at all.)</p>

<p>I haven’t read all the other opinions yet, but my impression is that they give reasons why this case doesn’t match the requirements of those old cases, or in the case of Scalia (joined by Thomas), observes that this is lousy law and nearly facially violates the 14th Amendment.</p>

<p>I am used to Sotomayor’s reasoning. It’s been ever present in our political process during my life. Indeed her opinion is logical from the standpoint of “stare decisis”. But it still bothers me that some people are eligible for special advantages just because of the color of their skin, and this is excused by reference to black slavery, which ended well before any of my ancestors came to this continent
 Therefore I am glad the Court is somewhat removing the cobwebs of this complex accumulation, changed their minds about some things, and starting over on a common sense basis: State voters can pass resolutions that comply with the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment, and they will not be struck down by Federal courts.</p>

667

<p>Oh no, siserune has returned in full force with his inimitable obfuscatory writing style! I am so scared!</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Antonovics and Backes found that relative to whites, the probability of admission for Asians increased at four of the eight UCs: Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, and UCD. siserune’s snark here is really amusing because when he refers to “basic tests,” he is not referring to basic hypothesis testing but rather making “inferences” from eyeballing the magnitude of coefficient estimates.</p>

<p>As for reviewing my comments, [I&lt;/a&gt; recall that you did not even know how to interpret the coefficients in table 3](<a href=“"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #934 by fabrizio - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #934 by fabrizio - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums), [as</a> you had no idea that Antonovics and Backes were comparing the change in admissions probability for Asians to the change in admissions probability for whites](<a href=“"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #932 by siserune - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #932 by siserune - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums). That is what the coefficient on Ban*Asian represents.</p>

<p>But that’s not the main point. The point is that you claimed “NOTHING HAPPENED as a result of the ban on race in California, where white vs Asian comparisons are concerned.” Yet, Antonovics and Backes found that in four of the eight UCs (which were also the four most selective), the probability of admission for Asians increased relative to whites. So no, sis, something happened as a result of the ban on race in California.</p>

668

<p>@Lightheart7 - What I find interesting about your post is how careful, methodical and data-driven it is to start and then in one sentence you reduce to the superficial on-the-surface argument. This reduction to an on-the-surface argument is what I find cripples the entire premise of people who support AA. </p>

<p>And I agree with @oniongrass, you do belong in the conversation because you are looking at the issue with open eyes and not just saying what politics dictate you say.</p>

<p>You honestly lay out some pretty serious effects of AA in your first paragraph. More directly, the people hurt are mainly the supposed beneficiaries of AA. Everyone gets the good intentions thing. However, those effects are real negatives to the people experiencing them and who are being put in environments they cannot handle. The personal toll is high for many, as you illustrate. </p>

<p>Then, in the first sentence of your second paragraph, you dismiss those negatives effects highlighted in the first paragraph and go straight for the superficial. In summary, you state that just the number of URMs in college is important enough for the program to exist and you do not want to see their numbers decrease, even though those very same people are mismatched and their lives turned upside down by massive failure in college. </p>

<p>Please think about this - the greater visible number of URMs on campus by AA is more important than the damage caused to the very same URMs by AA? Do you not realize that is treating people like color-coded marbles? You are judging a certain people’s worth on campus by the color of their skin, not by the actual benefit they receive from being on campus. (And please forget the white people, they are doing just fine and not failing out like mismatched URMs)</p>

<p>I do not understand how it helps URMs to be on a campus where they struggle to graduate at a much higher percentage; are stigmatized, as not as intelligent and required the AA pass to get in; amass huge debt to repay, most often without getting the degree; and not to mention the lost time doing something that gives little return from which they can benefit. From a purely human level, I find this an atrociously high price to pay individually, socially, economically, and time-wise.</p>

<p>With such a high price paid, I would think at some point the superficial attention to the number of URMs on campus would recede and more attention to the damage wrought said individuals is given the attention it deserves. It just seems, in the interest of a political program, that too many are willing to sacrifice real people and their respective lives.</p>

<p>How could such a program be deemed humane when so many recipients are actually hurt? </p>

<p>I do not find this humane at all. But, it is interesting that I am called all sorts of names if I take into account what is actually happening to the beneficiaries. However, I am a nice guy if I ignore the damage and say how cool it is to have 10% of URMs on campus. So what if over half of those URMs are actually worse off in the end and the entire group is academically suspect, as a whole, even though a portion do actually belong there.</p>

<p>Therefore, it hard to take supporters of AA, such as Sotomayor and Ginsburg, seriously when in face of the negative effects that you so aptly highlight so many turn a blind eye and just focus on the percentages of a certain skin color on campus. Not too sure how much more superficial and inhumane one can get. But hey, they are liberals, they have good intentions and they care; I guess in their world “I care” is the end all and be all test of efficacy. Although, the real question is care about what because clearly it is not about the people / lives turned upside down.</p>

669

<p>

</p>

<p>“obfuscatory” apparently means “correct math and statistics presented without jargon” (such as presenting the material in a regression table as understandable quantities Before, After, and Change, and a table listing those values, so that anyone interested can see the data and evaluate the argument).</p>

<p>“fabrizio” apparently means “half-baked math and statistics wrapped in obfuscating jargon” (such as using regression coefficients as more forbidding names for Before and Change, and misunderstood technical terms like “differences-in-differences analysis” as unnecessary jargon to create confusion and ambiguity about correct material).</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I defined Before, After and Change as names for the quantities Asian, Asian + Ban<em>Asian, and Ban</em>Asian from the regression table in the paper. That is the correct interpretation of the coefficients and the usual colloquial description of what they are intended to measure. </p>

<p>My prediction is that you will not reveal any specific disagreement with what I just wrote, as it would expose either the accusation (“did not even know how to interpret”) as a sham, or your understanding of the statistical issues as extremely limited. </p>

<p>To assist your “recall” of what I knew or not, here are some extracts:</p>

<p>“Before < 0 [means] regression coefficient “Asian” < 0 

what After means in terms of regression coefficients 
 is the sum (Asian + Ban<em>Asian)

 After > Before [is equivalent to] coefficient “Ban</em>Asian” > 0”</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Really? In the post you linked, where I wrote (in addition to the preceding definitions) "the UC Asian discrimination theory predicts that the Before and After effects (on admission probability, of changing a white applicant to Asian) [
] results are then:</p>

<p>UC-B UCLA UCSD UC-D UC-I UCSB UCSC UC-R
Before -1% +1% +2% -5% -2% +2% -2% -1%
After +1% +4% +4% -1% -4% -3% -2% -2%</p>

<p>change +2% +3% +2% +4% -2% -1% -0% -1% ",</p>

<p>and the “change” row that we kept on discussing (with no apparent miscommunication) was a direct copy of the Ban*Asian line from the regression table 
</p>

<p>
 that would appear to be conclusive evidence that I was using Change to mean exactly what you now say “I had no idea” about. </p>

<p>My prediction, a second time, is that you will not reveal any specific disagreement with what I just wrote, as it would expose either the accusation (“you had no idea what the coefficient represents”) as a sham, or your understanding of the statistical issues as extremely limited. That is, given this golden opportunity to demonstrate my supposed ignorance, there will be a sudden silence.</p>

670

<p>

</p>

<p>No, it means writing like you’re still a sophomore in high school who is memorizing vocabulary from a test prep book: “I minimize time spent on “high V, low M” debate magnets except where clear quantitative issues arise.”</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Setting aside that this is another example of your inimitable preference for obfuscation, two years ago, you said, [“fabrizio’s</a> postings on this mis-stated what After means in terms of regression coefficients. It is the sum (Asian + Ban<em>Asian), not Ban</em>Asian.”](<a href=“"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #932 by siserune - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #932 by siserune - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums)</p>

<p>And what did I state that was supposedly a misstatement? [“
the</a> estimated change in admissions probability for Asians relative to whites after Proposition 209 all else equal”<a href=“referring%20to%20the%20coefficient%20on%20Ban*Asian”>/url</a>.</p>

<p>I did not say the coefficient on Ban*Asian represented “the admissions probability for Asians relative to whites after Proposition 209 all else equal.” I said it represented THE ESTIMATED CHANGE in “the admissions probability for Asians relative to whites after Proposition 209 all else equal.”</p>

<p>[url=<a href=“"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #934 by fabrizio - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #934 by fabrizio - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums]After</a> pointing out that your “correction” was mistaken,](<a href=“"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #919 by fabrizio - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>"Race" in College Admission FAQ & Discussion 9 - #919 by fabrizio - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums) you disappeared. Two years later, you’re back, and you still don’t understand that your “correction” was mistaken.</p>

671

<p>

</p>

<p>Cut, omit, paste. Nine important words are strategically omitted in fabrizio’s (mis)quotation. It’s not likely that I have ever made the sorts of speculative assertions about UC admissions that are presented in the misquote, or that fabrizio will be able to defend it by pointing to the full version of anything that I did post.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>As I explained in 2012, “Change > 0” is only part of the test for a race-specific effect predicted by the Asian 209 theory. Only UC Davis met the basic consistency check: a negative Asian effect before 209 and most of that effect gone afterward.</p>

<p>At the other schools, the small positive Change effects are meaningless (or totally indecisive without further examination) for the Prop 209 discrimination discussion. Many race-neutral changes to the admission occurred after 1997, intended to partially substitute for affirmative action, and these helped Asians quite a bit. For the A&B regression it presumably means, since they didn’t account for the changes in weight of the admission factors in the table, that the Asian coefficients overestimate any hypothetical race-specific (removal of discrimination) effect by as much as a few percent, and the URM coefficients underestimate the size of the pre-209 race effects by several times that. In other words, if they had run a separate regression for every year and obtained the Before and After coefficients by an averaging process from the different years, the Change coefficients for Asians would be smaller and quite possibly negative.</p>

<p>There was probably also a higher admission weight on verbal SAT for the old test that accounts for a third to a half of the Before data, which would have come out in the regression as a small but fake anti-Asian effect before 209 at some of the high-SAT schools, and correcting this could reduce or flip the Before effect at UC Berkeley. Between that and the change in admission criteria, neither of the Berkeley numbers is automatically credible just by “eyeballing the regression coefficients”. In fact, both numbers are suspect, for reasons that I explained already in 2012.</p>

672

<p>

</p>

<p>O
K
I don’t see how I’m omitting that when I linked to a post where I repeated those remarks.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>No, Berkeley also satisfied your own criteria for “the basic consistency check.” Of course, this is where you will say
</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>
which is just embarrassing. The statistically positive (at conventional levels) coefficients on Ban*Asian at 4/8 UCs is inconsistent with your prediction that they should be zero, so what do you do? Wave your hands furiously and say that we should ignore the results of basic hypothesis tests and trust your eyeball judgments.</p>

<p>To say that Antonovics and Backes didn’t consider certain things is fine. To disregard their results because they didn’t conform to your priors and to do so by merely eyeballing their estimates is a joke.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>So you think the outcome variable - the probability of admission - exhibits no serial correlation?</p>

673

<p>The Berkeley estimates, as explained in the original discussion:</p>

<ul>
<li>did not satisfy the repeatedly stated consistency check, that the post-209 effect should be smaller in absolute value than the pre-209 effect. (The greater the ratio of |Before|/|After|, the more credible the idea that a race effect was eliminated. Conversely, if After is the same size as Before, that is a demonstration that non-racial effects are strong enough to cause the negative value of Before. This demonstration is what is seen in the Berkeley coefficients, and was explained back in 2012.)</li>
<li>did not satisfy another basic premise of the “skyrocketing Asian enrollment” narrative, that the supposed pre-209 effect was not only negative, but large.</li>
<li>did not reach p < 0.001 significance level despite over 100000 observations. This is somewhat atypical for “real” effects as opposed to modeling artifacts. I don’t have the original paper handy but as I recall at least one of the two Asian coefficients for UCB was at 5 percent significance. (Not an important point, but a contributing factor to the lack of support for the 209 narrative.)</li>
<li>have small magnitudes for both the Before and After estimates that are within the range of modeling noise such as running linear regression instead of probit and logistic (which are more typically used for probability models), or allowing more predictors formed from the academic variables, such as nonlinear terms with (SAT)^2, or min(SATV,SATM), or many other modeling choices. That is, it can be measuring what happened in the researchers’ office and not the Berkeley admissions office. </li>
<li>have a before/after change, 2 percent, that is small enough to be consistent with the race-specific part of the change being zero, or negative (i.e., slightly worse for Asians after 209, as far as the A&B methods can detect) after taking into account the increases from known race-neutral effects such as higher weight on low-income, first-generation, etc. As explained already, the authors could, and perhaps should, have done this by running single year regressions or at least a separate pair of regressions for Before and After (equivalently, interact everything with Ban). This is another example of the regression measuring the researchers and not the data.</li>
<li>overestimate the known change in aggregated admission ratios from 1997 to 1998, of about 0-1 percent, when normalized to the 1-in-3 domestic admission rate at Berkeley. The regression predicts a 3-9 percent jump in the Asian/White admission ratio, because when taking possible rounding error into account, the regression’s estimated value of Change must lie between +1 and +3 percent and the normalization triples that.</li>
</ul>

674

<p>(That should be p < 0.01, not 0.001, as the p-value threshold not attained with 150000 or so observations. As stated, it is a minor point that is meaningful only when taken together with all the others.)</p>

675

<p>

</p>

<p>This “consistency check” only arose because you refused to acknowledge that the statistically nonzero and positive coefficients on Ban*Asian at 4/8 UCs contradicted your claim that, quote, “NOTHING HAPPENED as a result of the ban on race in California, where white vs Asian comparisons are concerned.”</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Was it large? That’s subjective. Was it statistically nonzero at conventional levels and negative? Yes. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>This is pretty pathetic. The conventional cutoffs at 10%, 5%, and 1%. One of the coefficients (Asian) was significant at the 5% level, and the other (Ban*Asian) was significant at the 1% level. That contradicts your claim, so what do you do? Raise the bar arbitrarily to 0.1%.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>This is you saying that your eyeball “inferences” (thick quotation marks there) count for more than basic hypothesis testing. Again, pathetic.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>As I asked you and you did not reply, you think the outcome variable - the probability of admission - exhibits no serial correlation? </p>

676

<p>Food for thought:</p>

<p>** [I&lt;/a&gt; Don’t Need Affirmative Action To Succeed – And Neither Do You](<a href=“I Don’t Need Affirmative Action To Succeed – And Neither Do You | The College Fix”>I Don’t Need Affirmative Action To Succeed – And Neither Do You | The College Fix)**:</p>

<p>

</p>

677

<p>Why doesn’t this come back to socioeconomics instead of color?</p>

<p>Working class = working class. Poor = poor. Single parent = single parent. Bad HS = bad HS. No APs available = no APs available.</p>

<p>The diversity of a rich black kid and a rich white kid is pretty much zero. And I just heard a story on NPR about how the African diaspora (yes, like Mr. Obama traces his lineage to) is taking “African-American” spots. Rich Africans immigrating to the US, and taking advantage of affirmative action. Even white South Africans doing the same.</p>

<p>Check out the FAFSA. Check the parents’ marital status. Check out the HS. Check out the comparative opportunities. </p>

<p>But don’t ask if the kid is black or white or Asian, or multi-racial for that matter. That’s not where diversity lies. </p>

678

<p>@rhandco‌ </p>

<p>There are several reasons why socioeconomic status isn’t the criteria rather than race for affirmative action.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Blacks/Hispanics realize that if socioeconomic status was the primary criteria, their enrollment numbers would drop significantly because contrary to urban legend, there are actually a lot of low-income Asians and Whites out there that have the drive to succeed.</p></li>
<li><p>The rich and powerful like race-based affirmative action. Their kids will get in regardless because they are rich and have connections, and they have a portion of the population that are below non-URM standards to lower the curves. This way rich kids will get better grades.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>If it weren’t for the support of two large demographic groups as well as the rich, race-based affirmative action would have given way to the fairer and more practical income-based affirmative action.</p>

679

<p>Why are people even concerned about diversity? Diversity is just an euphemism for discrimination, whether it’s by race, gender or income. It’s inherently UnAmerican, as it deviates from meritocracy.</p>

<p>People who are smart and hardworking will succeed from any background. </p>

680

<p>Wait, America is a meritocracy? If there were intelligence tests applied to those who seek power in this nation, we wouldn’t have so many problems.</p>