<p>So he’s saying that differences, over a short period of time, are irrevocable and insignificant.</p>
<p>I could agree with that.</p>
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<p>That may be true, but for UPenn Law or any other law school to include LSAT in its admission schemes, the LSAT must mean something. UPenn Law must pay application to these abstract differences or else admit everybody.</p>
<p>The LSAT may not (at least not directly) help a taker make friends or beat others in a game of Monopoly. </p>
<p>But it does matter in college admissions, which, considering the location of his speech, amazes me that he never brought it up.</p>
<p>From the many college decision threads I have been to, I have witnessed the most ridiculous happenings. For example: applying to MIT is an ideal Chinese applicant with perfect SAT’s and 4.0 WGPA, along with a bunch of extracurriculars; he gets rejected. Then, an Africanese applicant with SAT’s barely reaching the 2000 borderline and 3.7 GPA and much less extracurriculars, gets accepted… </p>
<p>Sure, the Africanese guy may be black, but that doesn’t they’re less intelligent than the many other races. The Chinese guy should’ve been accepted because I’m sure he must’ve worked his ass off to obtain those scores. Admissions should be based off hardwork and determination, not race!</p>
<p>Race as a factor in college admission absolutely disgusts me. Even if you leave your ethnicity box blank on the application, the colleges will still see your true ethnicity on your high school transcript. We might as well dye our skin black so we can have a better chance in admissions.</p>
<p>We ORMs understand fully your frustrations, but it all works out in the end.</p>
<p>MIT was my dream school. I applied EA and was deferred (I withdrew my app before I heard a final decision). My numbers are very high. A URM in my school district that I tutored for three years was accepted EA. To have someone who came to you for help for three years get accepted while you were not was hard to swallow initially, but I got over it. The good news is that when you score high and have good ECs, etc., many of the top schools will accept you. I ended up being accepted to Princeton, Dartmouth, Penn, Amherst, Chicago, and Duke, while being waitlisted at Yale and deferred at MIT. </p>
<p>So although frustrating, it’s OK. I will still receive a great eduation, and the girl I tutored will be given the chance to go to MIT. So it worked out for both of us. AA is not a big deal when you look at it this way.</p>
<p>And it usually is that the Chinese guy was forced to work hard and do well by their parents, which usually ends up in them losing site of focus for why they are working hard in the first place. Colleges dont want kids who not only work hard, but has an eventual purpose or goal in life.</p>
<p>Proposition 209 passed in 1996, 55-45. I was only a child then, but archived articles show that there was a lot of loud, public opposition to 209 that in the end overstated the level of opposition to the proposal. You’re saying that it’s not an issue now. I must ask, in which year between 1996 and 2010 did it become a non-issue?</p>
<p>And even if it is a non-issue in California, which I doubt, it was not a non-issue in Michigan as recently as four years ago, since Proposal 2 successfully passed 2006. It wasn’t a non-issue in Nebraska, either, since Proposal 424 passed in 2008. In both states, millions of dollars were spent trying to convince the public that passing either proposal would result in the sky falling down for protected minorities, &c–the usual hyperbole.</p>
<p>What’s more, as recently as last year, people in Michigan were still trying to argue that Proposal 2 was un-Constitutional, resorting to arguments as inane as if black Michigan residents pay taxes to fund the University of Michigan, then they are entitled admission.</p>
<p>As Hope Full said, if you are indeed a strong applicant on multiple dimensions, you may still get one (or in his case, six) nice surprises come April.</p>
<p>Having said that, if you are opposed to the practice of using racial classification in admissions, there may be something that you can do. See if you can get a civil rights initiative started in your state. If passed, the initiative would restrict public universities from considering racial classification. California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska have already passed such initiatives.</p>
<p>But of course, the non-Chinese guy must be a driven, highly self-motivated, highly ambitious person who will change the world for the better, right?</p>
<p>That’s illogical. Affirmative Action isn’t a federally mandated program. That is, not in the sense that it’s discussed here - having a certain number of minorities or having a certain student body make up, or giving certain students some kind of admissions advantage to attract more of them. If Harvard likes it’s African American representation at 11%, it will stay that way whether Affirmative Action stays in effect or not. Harvard chooses that number, not the government. NYU and BU, for example, are both Affirmative Action institutions (they have to be) but are only about 4% African American.</p>
<p>Well affirmative action should never be about “having a certain number of minorities” or “having a certain student body make up,” as both of those reasons were ruled un-Constitutional by Justice Powell in Bakke. SCOTUS has approved one and only one rationale for affirmative action in higher education: the promotion of “diversity.”</p>
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<p>Wait, let me get this straight. You’re saying that if Harvard practices affirmative action as it currently does, it’ll have a student body that’s about 11% black, but if it dumps affirmative action as it is currently practiced, it’ll still have a student body that’s about 11% black?</p>
<p>Please tell me I misunderstood you, because I don’t think you want to be asserting that affirmative action has zero impact.</p>
<p>That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that the “affirmative action” as Harvard practices it is a choice. There’s no law or mandate saying that Harvard has to do whatever you think Harvard does. Harvard chooses its admissions practices. Harvard chooses this practice. If it changes its practice, obviously, the make up of students could change. But no law or bill is going to change that.</p>
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<p>Why not? You’d be hard pressed to prove it has much of an impact. I personally don’t believe it has “zero impact,” but I know that Affirmative Action isn’t what it’s espoused to be on these boards in particular.</p>
<p>Am I talking to two different people? In all seriousness, I do not see how it is fair to expect me to interpret your “…it will stay that way whether Affirmative Action stays in effect or not” statement to mean, “…obviously, the make up of students could change [if Harvard changes its practice].”</p>
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<p>If it has zero impact, then why did so many supporters of the policy spend so much money to keep it alive in California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska?</p>
<p>Look, guys, it’s simple: people don’t protest and donate money to PACs over policies that are “dead” or don’t have “much of an impact.” I acknowledge that people aren’t always rational, but to presume that they employ these behaviors to keep programs that are ineffectual is not giving our species a lot of credit.</p>
<p>^ Moreover, the University of Michigan explicitly conceded that it applied “two different standards” to the class that was admitted as it dropped its attempt to nullify the voter initiative in Michigan. Its former system had one standard, and the system without consideration of race had a different standard. Most students admitted to Michigan in any one year would have been admitted in any other year, I suppose, and perhaps most students rejected in any one year would have been rejected in any other year. But for a few students at the margins, the differences in policy made a difference in result. That’s always the case when a federal court finds jurisdiction for a lawsuit about college admission policies.</p>
<p>A second coming of Heart of Atlanta v United States might give the federal and state governments jurisdiction over AA, even at a private institution like Harvard.</p>
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<p>I don’t think that Harvard so much chooses to practice than that if it were to suddenly axe it, there would be public outrage (and support).</p>
<p>I think Harvard and its peers may instead choose to gradually decrease the scope of their AA programs, eventually eliminating it.</p>
<p>We may not be noticing the effects because the application pool has grown in size, but it is a plausible theory.</p>
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<p>I fail to see how the success stories of 2 applicants–one former and one future–suggest that the effects on the applicant pool at large are negligible.</p>
<p>I did a few quick calculations from [Michigan’s</a> CDS](<a href=“Office of Budget and Planning”>Office of Budget and Planning) to find the percentage of “underrepresented” minority freshmen for the incoming classes in years 2004 to 2009, where “underrepresented” means black, Native American, and Hispanic.</p>
<p>410 + 38 + 255 / 5550 = 12.67% (03-04)</p>
<p>350 + 61 + 264 / 6037 = 11.18% (04-05)</p>
<p>443 + 57 + 312 / 6113 = 13.28% (05-06)</p>
<p>330+52+274 / 5386 = 12.18% (06-07)</p>
<p>334+50+267 / 5992 = 10.86% (07-08)</p>
<p>374+31+199 / 5783 = 10.44% (08-09)</p>
<p>289+21+224 / 6058 = 8.81% (09-10)</p>
<p>I bolded the year 2006-2007 since that was the last year that Michigan was allowed to consider racial classification in its admissions. 2007-2008 was the first year that it had to employ a race-blind admissions process. The result? A 1.32 percentage point decrease in “underrepresented minority” enrollment.</p>
<p>It’s not at all clear that Harvard has a target number of students in each race category each year. In any event, Harvard has to follow the law, </p>
<p>and that law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race by any college that receives federal funds (including allowing students to pay their tuition bills with federal student aid). So Harvard is not permitted to discriminate on the basis of race by federal law. (I’m sure it’s not permitted to discriminate on the basis of race by Massachusetts state law either.) If an applicant to a college has a basis for believing that the college discriminates on the basis of race in its admission process, the applicant may file a federal civil rights complaint, </p>
<p>which is then investigated by the federal Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. </p>
<p>I note with interest that in recent years Harvard has admitted quite a few students whom it reports to the federal government as “race/ethnicity unreported,” </p>
<p>so it seems possible for a student to be admitted to Harvard without filling out the optional ethnicity and race questions on the Common Application.</p>
<p>I feel like since antonioray questioned my motives for supporting AA due to my URM status, I have the right to do the same: are you fervently against AA because you were not benefited by it during your admissions process?</p>
<p>I can’t tell, fabrizio, if you are just dense or if you are purposefully misunderstanding my post. I’m saying that Harvard chooses its admissions practices, and therefore chooses what students to admit or deny. Thus, if Affirmative Action in its federal form were somehow abolished, Harvard wouldn’t change its practices. Harvard would change its practices if and only if it chose to do so.</p>
<p>There are already laws on the books outlawing the use of racial quotas and the like in admission. That in and of itself hasn’t changed Harvard’s magical “comfortable” number of minorities. Harvard is free to choose its practices. Lest a law be passed that forbids students from putting their race on an application or being seen, there’s no reason Harvard would change it’s admissions practices regarding race - whatever those practices may be.</p>
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<p>I actually disagree 100%. People donating money to a cause does not mean that the cause is actually happening. What I mean by that is that support does not lend credibility to the cause. There are plenty of people on this board who are convinced that their son or daughter was rejected directly because of minorities. No matter how you look at the admissions process, that’s not what’s happening. Those people might donate to their cause, but that doesn’t make it any more valid.</p>