<p>eh i wouldn’t commend the UC system.</p>
<p>They didn’t eliminate AA, they were FORCED to, and then proceeded to reconstruct their admissions process so they could do it anyway.</p>
<p>Please stop whining over Affirmative Action, if you got in, you got in, if you didn’t, too bad, move on!</p>
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<p>Quoted for strenuous disagreement. I want to make clear that I think </p>
<p>a) minorities do NOT have more power than the majority ethnic group in the United States, plainly not, </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>b) James Earl Ray doesn’t deserve to be anyone’s hero. </p>
<p>You are fortunate to live in a country where the Constitution protects the right to engage in odious speech about public issues.</p>
<p>Whoosh as intelligent discussion goes out the window.</p>
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<p>Ive never appreciated this type of comment. Life is unfair as-is, so why support a policy that makes it even less fair?</p>
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<p>“Do it anyway”? Proposition 209 has not been overturned by the people of California. As such, UC is still barred from considering race in admissions.</p>
<p>A Daily Princetonian article reporting on a study of one aspect of this contentious policy issue: </p>
<p>[Affirmative</a> action stigmatizes minority students, study finds - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/04/02/23248/]Affirmative”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/04/02/23248/)</p>
<p>Well, this may seem like a despicable thing to ask, but I’ve truly been wondering about it: Is African-American considered (by admissions offices) “more” of a URM than multiracial? I’m 1/2 African-American, 1/4 Indian and 1/4 Caucasian.</p>
<p>Having a moral dilemma about even asking this question, ha.</p>
<p>Everyone: kindly ignore my last question. Don’t need an answer.</p>
<p>While I believe that affirmative action has gone to far in so much as it is actually hurting some minorities (asians), I do believe that it is necessary to some extent. If you look at the history behind affirmative action before there were any AA programs highly selective colleges only had a handfull of applicants who had the grades and test scores to be considered for admission. I respect the fact that these universities realized how important it is to incorporate diversity into thier campuses. Look at it this way at most college minorities account for less than 10% of the class so every once in a while a white kid will get screwed, but for the most part if you didn’t get in it’s not the minoritiy’s fault.</p>
<p>Thanks, tokenadult, for the article linked in post 247. It confirms what I have believed for some time, which is that SAT scores discriminate in favor of whites and asians.</p>
<p>As confirmed in the article, the problem with AA actually lies with SAT scores. If test scores would be eliminated from the college application process, then there would probably be much less discord among student racial populations, as evaluating whether a minority student “deserved” to be there would no longer be based soley on his/her numerical score on a 3-hour test. Those scores have proved to be unreliable in predicting a student’s achievement in college.</p>
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<p>No, they have not. According to [Inside</a> Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2009/03/26/sat]Inside”>http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2009/03/26/sat), “The study found that, as the College Board has long argued, the SAT is a good way to predict the first-year academic success of students.”</p>
<p>Also, I’d like to point out that the study-in-question was conducted by Espenshade and Chung. (Yes, the Espenshade and Chung, the ones who wrote the notorious “+230/-50” paper.)</p>
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<p>The article certainly doesn’t say that all by itself. I’ll have to take a look at the study mentioned in the article to see what its methodology was. </p>
<p>After edit: I see from the link that fabrizio kindly shared that the new study has not been released in its full text yet, so other researchers have not had an opportunity to examine its methodology. It does appear, from the press releases so far, that the researchers may have neglected to look at other possible consequences of the policy shift considered by their study.</p>
<p>Fab - I recall from a citation posted here on cc, that the predictive value of the SAT goes away after Freshman year. (Sorry, I don’t have it handy).</p>
<p>It’s more a matter that most studies don’t look beyond the freshman year, because after the freshman year students take different major sequences, so that their G.P.A.s become less comparable. There is citation to other research in the VERY LONG thread </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/377882-how-do-top-scorers-tests-fail-gain-admission-top-schools.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/377882-how-do-top-scorers-tests-fail-gain-admission-top-schools.html</a> </p>
<p>including, especially, links to a fairly detailed University of California study and spin about what that study means, along with thoughtful discussion of what the study actually shows. </p>
<p>I just did the digging through that multi-page thread for you, to find a link kindly posted by kluge, </p>
<p><a href=“Publications | Center for Studies in Higher Education”>Publications | Center for Studies in Higher Education; </p>
<p>which is a more recent UC study on admissions factors than the one that first prompted adding the writing section to the SAT.</p>
<p>Affirmative action doesn’t stigmatize minority students, people with racist tendencies stigmatize minority students. Those same people would be racist no matter what, because they would still feel superior enough to “stigmatize” an entire race of people if given the opportunity.</p>
<p>I’m not a big fan of using race in decisions; I think economic position should have the biggest weight in terms of this kind of stuff. Though obviously there is a correlation between the URMs and economic status.</p>
<p>well this conversation is so repetitive, you hate it, you love it, you don’t care you just want everyone to stop whining
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How about a new convo? :o
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What would it be like with no affirmative action?
or
Why was affirmative action put into effect, what was the reason? you all know it, but you sometimes forget</p>
<p>hi, i’m mostly filipino but my great grandmother was spanish.</p>
<p>does this mean i’m asian or pacific islander? can i also claim to be hispanic or would my percentage be too minimal?</p>
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<p>I’m not going to answer this question exactly, however, I am going to delve into Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action started because schools were not accepting minorities, in some cases because of lower academic indexes of minority students because the minorities generally had fewer opportunities.</p>
<p>AA is the wrong answer to the right problem. The problem is that some students are disadvantaged. These students are disadvantaged because of their socioeconomic position. Race is, in some cases, tied to socioeconomic status, but the two are not mutually exclusive. AA needs to target socioeconomic levels, not race. The students that are disadvantaged to not have the same opportunities as their middle and upper class peers - for example, time to participate in ECs (because of working and family obligations), money to take and re-take the SATs and ACTs, money for test prep books/courses or AP exams, and quality of schools. They don’t go to prep schools or solid public schools; in fact, many of them go to academically and financially poor city and rural schools. They don’t have the money to pay for college (even in-state - I’m not talking private, here), but they want to end the cycle of poverty and lack of education in their families. Socioeconomics extend far beyond the bottom levels I’m explaining here.</p>
<p>AA, if better implemented, is important. Colleges and Universities are money-making institutions. If nothing else, they have to break even. Many of them also want to accept only the best students. A student who gets a 4.0 at an inner-city Baltimore high school is probably not working on the same academic level as a student who gets a 4.0 at Stuyvesant, even if the two students are equally bright. Not only is the disadvantaged student coming from a lesser institution with, possibly, a weaker application (but he or she is no less bright), he or she also has to apply for financial aid. Even if the student’s weaker application did make it through the admissions process, financial aid would become a huge issue - I’m sure that most of the colleges and universities in the United States would accept far more full pay and almost full pay students given the opportunity; colleges are businesses, after all. I don’t blame them. However, if the United States is not going to fund a national higher education program akin to European countries, not the measly “public school” system we have now, it is necessary to give equal opportunity to disadvantaged students. AA focuses on race when it should focus on socioeconomic status. I think AA is the right idea, but it is executed badly.</p>