<p><a href=“%5Burl=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13615320-post480.html]#480[/url]”>quote</a> …But if the race question is eliminated, then those who suspect will have an even more difficult time proving their cases. The federal race inquiry in college and workplace applications exists to protect applicants, so that admissions/hiring practices can be scrutinized for unlawful discriminatory patterns.
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<p>If all individuals availed themselves of the right to not self-identify then those who suspected discrimination would have an **impossible<a href=“both%20statistically%20and%20philosophically”>/b</a> task to prove any ‘racial’ discrimination exists.</p>
<p>The very act of not self-indentify by all applicants (college or employment) would be a message to “Evaluate me on my merits, not on some misconception of ‘race’.”</p>
<p>^ but the people of California STILL complain. About holistic admissions, about illegal aliens, about discrimination against Asians, about out of state admissions, about being poor, being middle class, and about being rich.</p>
<p>Not saying they shouldn’t , just saying I’m not sure if there is a way to make people happy.</p>
<p>That may be the applicants’ goal, but it hands the truly bigoted employers/colleges an open invitation to pick and choose whomever they want or don’t want, with no accountability.</p>
<p>Just how do you pick entirely based on merit? What is merit and who merits that admit slot? I think this is the question behind the question. </p>
<p>Can there be a national standard? No.
If scores can be affected by privilege, grades can be inflated, one’s family finances can impact the high school, the ECs one kid can pick, participate in- and even the level of leadership- and different communities we live in enhance or limit academic and other possibilities, etc, then, are we back at square one? Who has more merit for, say, an Ivy? You, with your stats or me, with mine? Which of us has more successfully proven out? By what standard? Do they take two of us from, say, TJ or one from N. VA and one from WY? Me, with my service or you, the left-handed bassoonist? Hmm, a kid with traditonal Wasp upbringing or, oh, let’s make the next one someone with a different background? Or, uh-oh, we let the private colleges define their identity, what sorts of kids they want and need?</p>
<p>Except no, it’s not. You always return to a straw man of “Anyone who opposes racial preferences must support ‘numbers only’ admissions.”</p>
<p>Subjective criteria are fine. But there’s no need to consider racial classification, especially when you even acknowledge that it’s merely a sociological construct with no biological basis.</p>
<p>Fab again, you miss the point.<br>
We let private colleges self-assess their identity and choose what sorts of kids they want and need. Remember, the institution’s goal (which some do not share)is to maintain its self-identity and that includes variety of various sorts. </p>
<p>“Anyone who opposes selecting” a balance of backgrounds and perspectives would suggest colleges choose by what standards? Limited to what factors? Tell me how they achieve variety/diversity or some semblance of a student body that’s representative of our population, while ignoring some aspects? --I continue to think the keyword in your position is “race.” That you do not feel “racial” diversity has merit. Or?</p>
<p>You can’t keep using this as an excuse to justify classifying people by what you yourself admit are arbitrary sociological constructs.</p>
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<p>Colleges achieve diversity through the consideration of subjective criteria: extracurriculars, essays, and recommendations. Was this meant to be a challenging question? Really, what kind of answer were you expecting? </p>
<p>And why do they have to mirror the population’s demographics? How is that not a quota?</p>
<p>I fail to see how someone who ostensibly believes that racial classification has no basis in biology nevertheless approves of categorizing people based on racial classification. You really don’t see a contradiction there?</p>
<p>They don’t “have” to. They want to, and they want to because such breadth of origins and location is preferable to their incoming freshman class vs. an annex of the local high schools. And it is legal. They get to determine how and whom they admit, among those they decide are qualified. </p>
<p>And they can also do the opposite: they can decide, to heck with all 50 States and some representation of the globe as well. They used to do precisely that. The Ivies/Elites used to be overwhelmingly populated by certain segments of the country.</p>
<p>It seems we keep returning to just one diversity category to be eliminated: what has been called here “race” and what the CA calls identity. </p>
<p>How can one allow for a boost to a female STEM, because the college wants and needs more gender balance there- or a boost to a kid from an underrepresented state, to achieve some geographic mix- or other ways they seek to build the variety they wish and fill needs they see – and not find it acceptable that they may wish a similar balance in ethnic representation? </p>
<p>The question was: [if a colleges wishes a balance of backgrounds, one would] suggest colleges choose by what standards? Limited to what factors? Not, from which parts of the CA. </p>
<p>ps. Don’t know if I mentioned here, but the CA also considered adding a category to the demographics/identity section: LGBT. Tabled, for now.</p>
<p>To me, the quota that these colleges have to complete is the most racist program active today. I’m very sick of seeing blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, etc get into top ranked schools with a 1800 or even below and whites can’t even get in with a 2200. The schools must realize that they should only accept the best. If the best means accepting all whites then so be it. But a hard working white should not be put to the side for an underachieving minority simply because of skin color. It really makes me think if everyone is really being treated fairly and equal.</p>
<p>And it seems to me that you don’t see a contradiction between arguing that racial classification is a sociological construct with no basis in biology and advocating for preferences (or to use your euphemism, “special consideration”) based on racial classification.</p>
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<li><p>I don’t support gender preferences, and I say that as a male graduate of a school where students in mechanical engineering could look up during lecture and see at most two female faces in a class of fifty. At the same time, my opposition is unconditional; I don’t support gender preferences for males at universities that are less focused on STEM fields. If the future of such campuses is 60% women, 40% men, fine.</p></li>
<li><p>I support geographic preferences. It’s a race-neutral way of obtaining real diversity.</p></li>
<li><p>Because as you’ve already (ostensibly) acknowledged several times, racial classification has no basis in biology; it’s purely a sociological construct. So why categorize people based on it?</p></li>
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<p>Moreover, the Supreme Court has deemed racial classification to be a “suspect class,” the use of which requires “strict scrutiny.” So arguments like “what about geography or gender? It’s the same” don’t fly.</p>
<p>Are you saying that there’s no overlap between “factors” and “parts of the CA”?</p>
<p>My answer remains. If a college wants a person with talent / interest X, then there’s nothing wrong with admitting a person for that reason. Just don’t admit a person because he belongs to arbitrary racial classification Y.</p>
<p>Try to follow your own statements, fab. You asked about geographical considerations in post 487. I replied to that question directly. I did not give you a “racial classification” answer. </p>
<p>If they denied geographical considerations, they would in fact be admitting from the “local” (regional) prep schools, which is precisely how they used to do it, in fact not very long ago. And during that period (up until relatively recently), the Elites looked very white.</p>
<p>Who cares about what you personally prefer (or “oppose”) and what I (and my family) personally prefer or “oppose”? The institutions prefer gender balance when they can get it, maximum geographical balance when they can get it, ethnic variety when they can get it. And they can get it abundantly because the well-qualified pool of applicants in the 21st century is rich in such possibilities. </p>
<p>This year there might be some imbalances among the qualified, which is also fine. Maybe there’s only one top candidate from Wisconsin amd none from Montana but 4 irresistible ones from Kansas. They very well may take all five. The other thing that you seem not to understand is that private colleges – like private K-12 schools – consider the proportion of applicants with respect to categories. Thus, in the year my D was admitted there were I believe 4 States that had larger than usual admission rates to that college based on population considerations. TX, Maryland, CA, and one or two others saw significant increases in their admissions for that particular year, based on number of applicants.</p>
<p>What does biology have to do with it? Race is self-identified for college app purposes. Are sociological constructs unimportant? Wealth, geography, academic merit, definitions of diversity and even gender according to some, are societal constructs.</p>
<p>Did I? That’s funny. I didn’t use “geograph-” anywhere in #487. Let’s not get disingenuous here, epiphany. You know perfectly well what “some semblance of a student body that’s representative of our population” means: student body’s demographics by racial classification must ‘look like America.’</p>
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<p>Are you saying that students that do not attend these “‘local’ (regional) prep schools” cannot compete with graduates of those schools without geographical preferences? That’s a pretty strong indictment of U.S. public education, epiphany; I didn’t know you felt that way.</p>
<p>I, for one, don’t believe that without geographical preferences, nobody from the state of Georgia can be admitted to “the Elites.”</p>
<p>To answer several questions recently posted to this thread, the reason that “race” is a special category in United States law is that race is mentioned as a category that should not deny anyone “equal protection of the law” under the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution. And the reason that the amendment was added to the Constitution after the Civil War is precisely because of the historical observation (then a current-events observation) that race categorization has great power to cause mischief in federal law and in the law of the various states. Thus the fourteenth amendment was a historically early example of rolling back the power of state governments through a direct constitutional prohibition of state action. </p>
<p>I might comment, based on international comparisons, that banning legal enactment of pervasive race distinctions is not only the law, it is a good idea. I have commented previously </p>
<p>that the numerically numerous generation of Americans that includes people born in the decade I was born grew up with an aspiration of the United States becoming less race-conscious, not more. The Supreme Court cases on this issue hint at a future refinement of today’s controlling law in the direction of further disfavoring race-based policies on almost any ground, including the diversity ground that currently permits LIMITED race-conscious college admission practices under strict scrutiny analysis (as regards state university practices) and strict statutory construction analysis (as regards private university practice, by dicta in the current precedents).</p>
<p>I agree with the factual statement made above the students of any “race” you care to name can rise to meeting the standards of admission at as tough a college as you care to name. I have a particular student whose family I know who is now enrolled at Caltech in mind as I make this statement. Getting into any of the superselective colleges is not easy for anyone, but young people of any race can develop all the desirable characteristics any highly selective college desires, irrespective of race.</p>