<p>Dbate… are you having difficulty keeping up at Yale?</p>
<p>You say you did an “exhaustive statistical analysis of the decisions posted on CC”. Ever here the phrase, garbage-in, garbage-out? CC is not representative of overall admissions at colleges, and CC self-reported data is unreliable. If you want a statistical analysis of Yale admissions decisions, here’s a link:
<a href=“http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf[/url]”>http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf</a></p>
<p>Yale accepted you and every other student based on what they felt you each would add to the composite class. Your racial background might have been a factor, some other kid’s athleticism might have been a factor, and some other kid’s daddy’s contribution to the Yale endowment could have been a factor. The admission process isn’t about YOU – its’ about YALE and what Yale wants. (And I have news for you – Yale had a bunch of African-American applicants that it rejected or waitlisted. Your race might have been one of a number of factors that Yale considered, but it wasn’t determinative)</p>
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<p>How do you know that the hypothetical applicant who got rejected “because” of you wasn’t black?</p>
<p>I enthusiastically support affirmative action college admission policies even though my kids are getting a terribly short end of the stick - I call them “anti hook” college applicants if you know what I mean. I think we as a society need these policies not for the charity but for the entire society to evolve and move forward.</p>
<p>I believe you amply deserve to be there, and you should do everything in your power to excel. One thing I would like to hope, though, is for you to give back to the society that provided this advantage to you. I won’t expect you to change your mind and become a firm believer of an affirmative action supporter like myself - that would be too much of an attitude change to expect over night. But, how about you contribute to society in such a way that in 20 years, we will no longer NEED affirmative action to begin with. There are a lot of ways to do this. I am sure you can explore different way to contribute to this cause.</p>
<p>Humor time: We hear a lot about candidates with hooks in the admission game. How about we coin a term for a candidate that has absolutely no hooks and if anything everything that is the opposite of hooks. How about a Teflon candidate - not the original political designation of a candidate that suffers no criticism, but a college admission candidate for whom no advantageous hooks exist and no advantage thrown at him/her and will stick. Like an Asian girl from an upper middle class intact family in NJ/NY/CA/MA who went to a magnet or a private school.</p>
<p>Dbate: You are wracked by guilt and a sense of inadequacy, notwithstanding a tremendous load of accomplishments. You have it made, and nothing is good enough. You compromised your simplistic principles in a thoughtful, intelligent, rational way to help your family, and instead of feeling good about that you feel bad, even though you know it was the right thing to do.</p>
<p>I’ve got terrible news for you: You are a white liberal. You might as well embrace affirmative action, gay marriage, and progressive taxes right now, because that’s where you are headed. See you at the barricades, Comrade!</p>
<p>Seriously . . . . I disagree with a great deal of the positions you take, but no one who has followed you here thinks for a moment that you are second-class in any respect, at Yale or anywhere else. I was pleased as heck that you were going to Yale. Don’t denigrate yourself – it’s not attractive on you, and it makes the rest of us feel bad, too. </p>
<p>Looking at self-reported, unverified, skewed-sample anecdotal stats on CC is a ridiculous way of judging yourself, much less doing an “exhaustive statistical analysis” of them, especially when stats are at most about 50% of the Yale equation. I bet there were black applicants rejected with better stats than yours. </p>
<p>And it’s also ridiculous to run down your stats for Yale and in the same breath say you had the stats for Penn or Dartmouth. I got news for you, kid: anyone with the stats for one has the stats for the others. The differences among them aren’t stat-related. It’s the mixture of unjustified self-hatred and unjustified arrogance that makes your position especially silly.</p>
<p>No I am not struggling at Yale at all. I am getting 3 As and 2 Bs right now, the course work at Yale is not difficult and the people here are not any smarter than I am. The reason I believe I got in based on affirmative action is based on my low class rank (13 out of 476), whereas most here were valedictorians. I know I am smart enough to do the work and will get a great GPA (so far I have been above the average are exactly at the average in just about every test I have taken).
I understand that I only got a moderate boost because of AA (I had really good ECs and a 34 ACT) so the difference is negligible but I still feel that were it not for my race I would not be at Yale. </p>
<p>I do not feel robbed by other students who had boosts, I do not care about how others got into the university to me two wrongs do not make a write.</p>
<p>I’m sure that I got hired in an aerospace company nearly 30 years ago because there was pressure to hire more women. So, what. I did my best and earned everyone’s respect.</p>
<p>No I took AP stats so I know I did the math right. The only aspect that was lacking was my class rank, and given the lower class ranks of the white students admitted to Penn and Dartmouth then I would have been a competitive applicant, given my test scores were near both schools 75th percentile.</p>
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<p>In alot of ways I know I am being silly, I personally know of white kids who got in who were ranked 9, 11, and 20 in their respective classes. And in general being in the top 10 people would be legit for Yale, but as a function of my “simplistic principles” I feel that for minorities students to know they got in based on merit they should have stats comparable to the mid range of the rest of the school. My scores and ECs achieved that, but not my rank and that is why I feel as I do. Because after I got into Yale people who were jealous would make fun of me and say I only got in because I was black so I wanted to prove them wrong and show that I could have gotten in otherwise. But my class rank was simply subpar.</p>
<p>Geez 13 out of 436 is a great class rank. My son got into Harvard as number 8. In his case legacy might have been the tipping factor, or it might have been that he was an engineer the year they were announcing that they were expanding the engineering school. Yale is smart enough to know that academically the difference between number 1 in a class and number 15 is likely to be the luck of the draw. My son lost a couple of rank places because of scheduling conflicts numerous years where he got shut out of AP or honors courses he wanted to take and because Latin unlike the other languages didn’t have an honors section until the 4th year. That didn’t make him less smart.</p>
<p>Yale wants a diverse student body. It would be a pretty boring place if it only took valedictorians. (And it doesn’t even if you apparently know more of them than average.)</p>
<p>Dbate, the only way the ridiculousness that is affirmative action will go away is if enough blacks become successful and prosperous that the gap between black and white becomes negligible. Just consider your opportunity and success as a step in that direction. Few of the Yale football players belong there academically, and they aren’t ashamed of wearing Yale on their chests, so don’t let it bother you…you’ve got enough worries without letting this concern drag you down.</p>
<p>Man, WHAT has gotten into you? You took AP Stats, so you know you got the math right when you were looking at a completely useless and corrupt data sample? And did you take into account all the “competitive” applicants who were rejected from all of those schools, because it just isn’t about stats.</p>
<p>That said, of course affirmative action helped you. Big deal. You are probably good looking, too, and if you don’t think that’s a big boost, you have your head in the sand.</p>
<p>This is going to follow you for a long time, by the way, maybe all your life, so start dealing with it. I have a friend who is in a similar position: She hates affirmative action, thinks it stigmatizes her whatever she does, and she has done very little in her life that wasn’t infected by it to some degree. Was she supposed to turn down the Supreme Court clerkship because maybe it wouldn’t have been offered if she hadn’t been the first Navajo clerk ever? The high-level Clinton Administration appointment? Her admission to one of the top JD/MBA programs in the first place, even though she performed brilliantly in it?</p>
<p>Come on! She did her part by advocating against affirmative action, and sensitizing others to how it compromised her. But she never let that stop her from doing the best she could and taking advantage of the opportunities offered to her.</p>
<p>Be more like that. Stop whining. It’s not attractive when Clarence Thomas does it, either. (I notice he didn’t turn down the lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, either. His race had nothing to do with that, of course.)</p>
<p>Yes, mathmom I understand that my class rank is not low by normal standards, but Yale standards are different. I had a lower class rank because of the way classes are calculated at our school so my ECs in band and football class kept me out of the top 10 when it came time for college admissions, although I graduated number 10 in my class. </p>
<p>The point is not that I think I am less intelligent than the other students here or that I am incapable of doing the work, the point is that I had numbers below the average and that is probably on of the worst feelings I could have. It felt the same when I got my Calculus test back and got a B which was the exact average. It is hard to go from being one of the top students at a school to being average in intelligence. And to be below average is absolutely repulsive.</p>
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<p>I understand that, that is why a white girl got in being 20/450 because she had national level accomplishments in literature, and my friend got into Yale being 11/600 because he was the best speaker in the state of Texas and one of the best speakers in the country. I on the other hand had only regional and state level awards, nothing national, so the logical conclusion was that my ECs were not good enough to compensate for my class rank and therefore affirmative action must have.</p>
<p>You’ll never know why you got in and someone else didn’t. You’ll never know if you would have gotten in if you checked the “White” box. So don’t sweat it. Do your best and “Decline to state” when you apply to grad school if it makes you feel any better.</p>
<p>Your stats are great, your current grades are great, and you really shouldn’t be worrying about this.</p>
<p>I have already resolved myself to the fact that I am have to work extremely hard in undergrad because there is no way in heck that I am putting my race down when I apply to medical or law school in the future.</p>
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<p>I perhaps am being a little stupid since my rank is only marginally lower than other students who got in without AA.</p>
<p>Yeah, I forgot to mention how class rank is calculated inconsistently from school to school, and often reflects value systems different from Yale’s. Using class rank as a metric is useless except in very, very broad swaths.</p>
<p>And what’s this about it being disgusting to be below average in intelligence? (1) Who says you are below average? Your class rank? That was about intelligence? (2) What is disgusting about it? Do you plan to avoid all future intercourse with people smarter than you? Great move! (3) In case you didn’t figure this out, getting into Yale may be the last time in your life anyone will care about your “intelligence”, except perhaps for when you apply to law school.</p>
<p>Dbate, I followed your posts when you were applying, and you looked to me like a Yale-admit, regardless of your race. Within the range where you ranked, absolute class rank means little at a school where people can game the system by clever course selection, or lose “bonus” points as a result of schedule conflicts (mathmom’s post just scratches the surface on the possibilities). </p>
<p>I think that a student who takes band and football, even though those choices will cause the class rank to drop, has made choices that Yale admissions would respect. Beyond a certain point, loading your schedule with additional AP’s to raise your weighted GPA stops yielding additional benefits. Furthermore, if a student could take some variety of study hall (with no contribution to the GPA) and wind up with a higher overall GPA than someone who got an A in band during the same period, when they had the same course schedule and grades otherwise, then I think one has to feel that the GPA calculation has actually inverted the true rank, in this case.</p>
<p>So, isn’t this reading period at Yale? Stop worrying about your high school class rank, which is a non-issue, and go back to work.</p>
<p>Yes it is totally up to you how you proceed in the future. Know this, people get where they get in life because of a myriad of reasons. You got where you got honorably. You didn’t cheat your way there, you didn’t lie your way there. Know this, even in the workforce, companies fulfill certain EEO commitments either because they are mandated or they are part of the corporate philosophy. In our company we recruit specific positions for his reason. The person may have been hired because they met a certain group of qualifications but they are promoted and move forward because of their track record once hired. It is what it is at this point in history. You can agree or disagree but it is what it is. Personally, I would not dwell on it. I would “use” those opportunities to do great things whether in a college setting, grad setting or post grad setting. If you feel ‘guilt’ use it as a motivator not as an anchor weighing your down.</p>
<p>Wow. This makes me sad. You should be so proud of your accomplishments. Is there really any difference among the top 20 or so kids who take the most rigorous courseload at any given high school? (That’s what I always told my son–he was 14.) Don’t beat yourself up over this…please.</p>
<p>You must not know the same Yalies I’ve known from my S’s school, only two of whom were African-Americans and both some of the best students in the school–ever. Not all Yale admits were vals or even sals. They did not walk on water, they had not cured cancer (one is currently in Yale Med School, so he may, one day). Some were extraordinary, and some were high achievers. Just like you. The important thing is not how you got where you are. It’s what you make of your opportunity. </p>
<p>Good luck with your exams, enjoy the rest of the year. The only reason you should beat yourself up is if you had a role in the debacle that was the Game this year. :)</p>
<p>Don’t get discouraged: I wouldn’t let anyone let me feel bad for being an African-American. Half the people who say that “you only got in because you were black” would have jumped at the opportunities AA can afford if they themselves had even a little African blood.
I understand that you’re struggling and its frustrating but you’re not the only one who’s had a hard time adjusting in college. You got into one of the most selective universities in the world; that in it of itself is an achievement. Top universities routinely reject 75% of African-Americans… Pick yourself up and focus on doing better.</p>
I feel that for minorities students to know they got in based on merit they should have stats comparable to the mid range of the rest of the school. My scores and ECs achieved that, but not my rank and that is why I feel as I do. Because after I got into Yale people who were jealous would make fun of me and say I only got in because I was black so I wanted to prove them wrong and show that I could have gotten in otherwise. But my class rank was simply subpar.</p>