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<p>Who was talking about quotas or “structurally different processing?”</p>
<p>Let me repeat what I wrote in a previous post: the charges that asian students are disadvantaged and discriminated against (compared to whites) at elite colleges are largely based on anecdotal and circumstantial evidences. I dont know if these charges are true today and unlike some posters, I dont claim to know how the adcoms parse, rank, weigh, and evaluate all the data and info in all applications. The only way to refute these charges is to have more transparency for the admission process.</p>
<p>The Espenshade et al. (2004) study was based decade old data (1983, 1994, and 1997) and its conclusions may or may not be valid today. But its results have not been refuted: when available info (ethnicity, legacy, recruited athlete, SATs) was considered, asian students were significantly disadvantaged compared to whites. This was not affected by re-centering of SATs: the disadvantage grew larger from 1983 (0.857) to 1994 (0.684) to 1997 (0.678). When more info (high school GPA and class rank) was considered, the disparity grew even more.</p>
<p>It is completely possible that when more data (such as essay, EC, recommendation, 1st generation status) are factored in, a similar study may reach a different conclusion for todays applicants. (I dont believe verb vs math SAT scores would make much difference. Among the many asian students I know at HYP, none has a combined score less than 2350. Of course, this personal observation belongs to the anecdotal heap.)
Again, I believe that it is always better to have more information and transparency. Then people can analyze the data instead of attacking each others intentions and believes. </p>
<p>Isnt it ironic that in all situations (not limited to college admission) it is always those who claim there is no evidence refuse to look at more data?</p>
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<p>By definition, an anecdote is not considered credible evidence. But there are plenty circumstantial evidences pointing to different treatment of asian students at elite colleges. For example, as a group, asian students have lowest acceptance rate, accepted asian students have the highest stats, with increasing number of asian applicants over the last 15-20 years the numbers of admitted asian students have nearly remained constant. Again, circumstantial evidence is not proof and can be refuted with more data and nuanced facts.</p>
<p>However, many past (1980s) allegations of discrimination against asians at top colleges (Brown, Standford, UC Berkeley, and UCLA) mainly based on circumstantial evidences have later proved to be correct. And Jian Li’s complaint based on anecdotes and circumstantial evidence has been deemed strong enough by the Justice Department to merit an investigation.</p>
<p>For all of the people claiming that admission data can’t be made more transparent without risking privacy issues, admissions really aren’t that complex. Many colleges, such as Duke, Wesleyan, and Dartmouth, all use assign a numerical value to different things that are taken in consideration. While that might not show the “whole picture”, it can give a good general view of differences in admissions between groups.</p>
<p>My GPA and scores are pretty on-par with a lot of the schools I am applying at.</p>
<p>Do you know if any schools in the Top-50 list minority status (I’m hispanic) as “Very Important?” As in, I as a minority would have a higher chance of being accepted than a non-minority with identical stats?</p>
<p>I know its not exactly “fair”… but I guess that is how the game goes…</p>
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<p>“Many” is not all. In fact many also do not assign numerical values to every aspect. News flash: not all elements of excellence can be quantified.</p>
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<p>Your question was merged into the FAQ and discussion thread on ethnicity in college admission. As you can see from the recent posts, it’s not entirely clear which colleges have what policies in this regard. If you are Hispanic by the current federal definition, you are certainly welcome to say so by answering the federal ethnicity questionnaire. In general, any college applicant with any characteristic that might be desirable to a college is well advised to mention that characteristic on a college application. But colleges don’t always provide good data on how much difference one admission factor rather than another makes in the admission process. </p>
<p>Good luck in your applications.</p>
<p>I start to see the development of a new tactic under the “catch me if you can” strategy that I would simply call “the block”. Any suggestion of a solution would be met with a "Can’t " because, well, the solution is not perfect.</p>
<p>If, for the sake of balance, the adcom are held to the same standard (same standard of proof that I suggested in an earlier post), we may see the following exchange:</p>
<p>Ad Officer 1: “I like this one. Great Sat scores, GPA, impressive EC, great recommendations”.</p>
<p>Ad Officer 2: “Yes, but not every aspect can be quantified. Why not wait until we have perfect information”?</p>
<p>Fifty years later,</p>
<p>Ad Officer 1: " Are we ready to make up our mind now"?</p>
<p>Ad Officer 2: “No…no. There are still aspects to the applicant I am not certain about”.</p>
<p>Look. Decisions made under conditions of uncertainty is a fact of life. Look at all available data, come up with a hypothesis that can explain them. If further evidence does not support the theory, make adjustments to it, or if necessary, come up with a new theory. </p>
<p>All this calling for religion-like certainty tells me folks are not looking for an answer, but to prevent the search for one. How is their personal self-interest served by this? I am very curious.</p>
<p>I actually do think that quantifiable systems work for the vast majority of colleges, U’s in this country that do not receive the number of highly similar (in achievement) applications from all over the country that HYPSCM do. Certainly many LAC’s (Wesleyan, Williams, Amherst, etc.) also receive overflow numbers of qualified applicants relative to space available; however, the breadth of regional representation and the total volume of well-qualified applicants does not match the most competitive list. </p>
<p>The problem with HYPSCM is the number of sheer ties, no matter how quantified in many cases. Even within smaller parameters – such as regionally, there are statistical and qualitative ties, by the dozen, often. Ties could be dramatically reduced by a system that I and a few other posters suggested several years ago on CC, which is a two-way match system within consortia of those U’s (or segments of those U’s), combined with EDI (with FA guaranteed), followed by EDII (with FA guaranteed) admission. The shotgun application approach now used is extremely inefficient, overwhelms the underpaid admissions officers well noted by siserune, and results in angst about decisions on all ends.</p>
<p>I can tell that some posters here, perhaps more than one, have never lived in a region of any country where the pool of talent exponentially exceeds the numbers of jobs, for example, with openings for such talent. The same situation is repeated there. Employers have to turn away equally qualified candidates routinely because of oversupply. That has been true for 20+ yrs. in my region, long before any national financial meltdown.</p>
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<p>I have no objection at all to any college making its admissions decision information public if it wants to, so long as it does not violate the privacy of the applicants.</p>
<p>But private colleges are also competitive private businesses, so I do not see any reason why they should feel compelled to disclose any private data unless there is a court-order or legislation requiring them to do so. As far as I know, there is no requirement that private businesses publicize the results of their employment application procedures and results, unless there is a bona fide allegation of discrimination being investigated by appropriate government agencies or they are the subject of a righteous lawsuit.</p>
<p>If the OCR or federal courts order Princeton to release all of its data, then I expect that it will do so, unless it has a legal basis upon which to refuse.</p>
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<p>Colleges are certainly permitted under current law to keep many kinds of data in their files private. There is a body of federal law, from regulations cited in the first few posts in this FAQ thread, requiring colleges to make efforts to gather self-reported ethnicity data from applicants and from enrolled students, and to provide aggregate data to the federal government. </p>
<p>[U.S</a>. Department of Education; Office of the Secretary; Final Guidance on Maintaining, Collecting, and Reporting Racial and Ethnic Data to the U.S. Department of Education [OS]](<a href=“http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/other/2007-4/101907c.html]U.S”>http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/other/2007-4/101907c.html) </p>
<p>(Then the colleges provide the same aggregate data about enrolled students, voluntarily, to the private Common Data Set Initiative.) There doesn’t seem to be any official publication, anywhere, of the ethnicity data self-reported to colleges by applicants, although another participant in earlier iterations of this thread has cited a journal article from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education </p>
<p>[JBHE[/url</a>] </p>
<p>showing a comparison of number of applicants to number of enrolled students for black students and all students at some example universities. Common Data Set ethnicity reporting is based on enrolled students, with no information about applicants. </p>
<p>The general regulatory hook on colleges that requires them to report certain data to the federal government is the receipt of federal funds. If a college wholly refrains from receiving taxpayer dollars in any form (which is a very rare practice among all the colleges in the United States), then some federal regulations would not apply to that college, but as the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights points out, </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/know.html]Know”>Know Your Rights]Know</a> Your Rights](<a href=“http://www.jbhe.com/firstyearenrolls.html]JBHE[/url”>http://www.jbhe.com/firstyearenrolls.html) </p>
<p>the Department of Education also has enforcement authority for some federal statutes that are not linked to the receipt of federal funds.</p>
<p>[The</a> Declining Use of Race in College Admissions Decisions](<a href=“http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucdsoc/declinerace/]The”>The Declining Use of Race in College Admissions Decisions):</p>
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<p>“consideration of race/ethnicity in admissions appears to be a widely institutionalized practice”</p>
<p>Is there a single place (e.g., USNWR) that shows a tabulation of many schools’ Common Data Set section C7’s line “Racial/ethnic status”? If memory serves, most schools check “Considered” and I wonder which, if any, schools check a different column.</p>
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<p>Which colleges don’t? Of all of the college admission insider books I’ve read (for Wesleyan and Dartmouth), that was part of the system they used. Granted that’s a small sample, but I still haven’t heard anything to the contrary. I’m fairly sure they use some sort of numerical system in the UC system too.</p>
<p>I admitted that numbers don’t tell everything, but it can tell a lot. I’m sure a lot of the unquantifiable things could be covered with income comparisons.</p>
<p>Duke even has a category for “personal qualities.” (Whites scored highest in that)</p>
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<p>I’m not saying anyone is entitled to this information, but since many colleges have some sort of stated goal to increase social equality, I think it would be a good idea to follow up on that by doing so.</p>
<p>Duke has already done so, and I don’t see any consequences of them doing it. If I wanted to go to Duke, it wouldn’t have stopped me from applying there.</p>
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<p>Which practice don’t you find defensible — presuming that wealthy prep school students are “advantaged” educationally (i.e., treating them as members of a category, or using mere correlation rather than certain knowledge that advantages are substantial for any given individual in the category, or using that category as part of a “profile”) and discounting their SAT scores? As I recall, your erstwhile CC interlocutor AdOfficer mentioned, in a similar earlier discussion, that he expects such students to “score big” because they “had every advantage” and evaluates their SAT results accordingly. Is that indefensible discrimination? Similarly, do you consider preferences for low-income or first-generation college applicants to be indefensible, given that they reward or punish students for who their parents are? Or is there some difference you see between the coarse categorization, inexact correlation, and analysis of an applicant’s lineage that occurs with these practices, and that which occurs when considering race?</p>
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<p>There are way more college insider books than for Wesleyan and Dartmouth. The others – not to mention articles published in various periodicals – do not always use a numerical system for every single trait. But what is more important (third time I’ve said it now) is the number of true ties for HYPCSM.</p>
<p>The only reason for a large number of “sheer ties” is because they have deliberately not gone out far enough on the tail end of the curve. The math portion of the SAT is simply too easy, for example, allowing too many students to hit the ceiling. If they would re-calibrate it so the score distribution resembles the verbal portion, you will see that a lot of the ties are not ties after all.</p>
<p>This is just one data point. The elites can do so on many more. They won’t, of course, because this suits them just fine.</p>
<p>…except that they do not choose to weight the SAT as a pre-eminent indicator of ability to perform in college and beyond. It is academic performance along a spectrum, combined with non-academic areas of achievement, that determines the highly qualified pool. SAT, recalibrated or not, is just one element along that spectrum.</p>
<p>I have no disagreement with recalibrating any scores of any standardized test, or all of them. If collegeboard were to do this, it would, yes, refine the comparisons a little more, but it still would not change the previous paragraph. It is not as if there are lots of ties among mediocre students. </p>
<p>Several of us, on previous threads, have gone much farther than this, stating that the SAT is too broad to begin with – as a measure of academic promise. Such dissenters include many people – students and parents – who, or whose children, did in fact get into Elites but understand the limits of the SAT (regardless of scoring methodology, simply the content itself).</p>
<p>Re #435</p>
<p>I like how originally, the discounting of “wealthy prep school students”’ SAT scores was an auxiliary claim, but now, it has become the primary claim on which you base your question. The original two paragraphs were as follows:</p>
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<p>Hmm, “by the way.” I wonder if that signifies the auxiliary claim…</p>
<p>In any case, I don’t feel “discounting [anyone’s] SAT scores” is a defensible practice regardless of whose scores are being manipulated. To me, it is merely another way of saying, “You only scored well because you studied.” I find it absolutely hilarious that the word “meritocratic” is being used to describe this practice. There is nothing meritocratic about punishing people for doing well because some assumptions might be true, particularly if those assumptions are as lousy as “more time spent studying” and “parents excusing students from summer or afterschool work obligations.”</p>
<p>Does anyone here honestly believe that admissions officers can genuinely tell whether Taro Yamada has spent more time studying for the SAT than Cletus Spluckler based solely on their application information? Unless you monitor the applicants 24/7 for a certain period of time, I don’t think it can be ascertained.</p>
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<p>I have already answered this question. It is poorly posed, for it assumes that race is “no different” than any other factor considered. It most surely is not. There is a reason why racial classifications are subject to strict scrutiny whereas preferences based on socioeconomics and first-generation are not. I am of the opinion that racial classifications have caused so much harm in our nation’s history, so why continue with them?</p>
<p>You’re asking an empirical question: Is making assumptions based on socioeconomics and first-generation status more accurate than making assumptions based on race? My guess is a resounding YES, but I would need data to answer that question, and given my personal biases on the issue, I don’t think the Right Honourable Dr. William Bowen would be very willing to give me the information that would so help me answer that question. Pity.</p>
<p>“Is making assumptions based on socioeconomics and first-generation status more accurate than making assumptions based on race?”</p>
<p>I don’t know whose question this is, but what does it have to do with accuracy? Colleges don’t consider race/ethnicity in order to be accurate.</p>