"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion 12

Applying to College
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This is not sour grapes. In fact, my oldest child is merely 11 years old and isn’t ready to start the college application process for a few more years. My niece is a white, Christian, middle class senior from Long Island who, like many on this site, applied to all eight Ivy League universities, along with several other matched schools and some safeties. My niece scored 2380 on the SAT and scored 5’s on all 11 AP courses that she took throughout her high school career. I know, there are many like her and who could blame her for not getting accepted to any - she was wait listed at Cornell BTW. What I find horribly unjust is that there is a thread on this site where students are posting that they were accepted with SAT scores as low as 1800 and zero AP courses. What? Then it is revealed throughout the thread that many of these students are minority students. So white, Christian, middle class students are being shut out from these universities because they are who they are? This is clearly discrimination!

Race should only come into play if every other criteria is equal. My white, Christian, middle class niece is not a legacy! Her father is a plumber and her mother is a teacher. She is not from the upper crust. What is the point of kids working hard only to be told that they are rejected to make room for students with subpar grades simply because they are of minority status. This is clearly discrimination! I repeat, this is discrimination! My niece often works till 2:00 am and my sister-in-law has to tell her to go to bed because she works so hard. Then her payoff is, “Sorry kid, you are too white and Christian to be admitted!” Once again, this isn’t sour grapes. If an under represented minority student(s) have equal grades and extra curricular activities then hey, it’s understandable…but kids getting into Ivy League schools who are getting 1800’s on the SAT and lower gap with no AP classes…no way is this right.

From researching this topic it seems being white and Christian is a huge disadvantage. Jewish people who make up less than 2% of the US population make up to 25% of the Ivy League and other top schools. Wow…just wow. For those who are affected by this unfair practice it’s time to contact these schools and point out their unfair practices. Think about this, non Jewish whites are 70% of the population, yet they are comprising of less than 50% of the Ivy League schools. Looks like non Jewish whites are well under represented at these schools!
https://jta.org/1967/04/18/archive/doors-of-ivy-league-colleges-reported-wide-open-for-jewish-students

https://rehmat1.com/2013/05/05/how-jewish-is-the-ivy-league/

This is not a racist nor anti-Semitic post. The above links appear to echo one another.

Race should never be a factor in admission. Admitting students with lower credentials is becoming more and more of an issue lately. This is unjust.

In addition - this is not new. A co-worker of mine has a son who scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT. He applied to MIT, all 8 Ivy’s, UM, UVA so on and so forth. He was rejected by all of the aforementioned schools. The young man is brilliant! He is a white, Christian male who has been described by his high school calculus teacher - “He is the smartest student I have ever had - and I have taught mathematics for over 25 years.” He graduated Salutatorian. A young AA girl who was ranked 21st in the class and SAT scores less than 1900 gets into MIT! Huh? Discrimination plain and simple. The young man who was rejected 99.8 unweighted average and research at Brookhaven National Lab for 3 years. The young AA girl - no research experience. It’s a travesty. BTW - on a whim he applied to Amherst and was accepted but still - that kid was an MIT kid if anyone is. The AA girl - transferred out to SUNY Buffalo after 3 semesters. My coworkers son? a PhD candidate in Astrophysics at Rice University. Unreal!

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@ChemistryMan The group that is actually really underrepresented in Ivy league schools are White middle class applicants even admissions officers say that the White middle class is the group that gets squeezed the most. Although there is obviously some form of bias in admission and pressure on admissions officer to promote 'Diversity" you have to take into account the composition of the applicant pool to Ivy league schools. Jewish Americans are a very highly educated group and around 60% have bachelors degrees. As a result they would apply disproportionately to the best schools in the country and probably make up +20% of the applicant pool to Ivies. This is also the case with Asian Americans that apply at very high rates and get overrepresented in the applicant pool even before decisions are made. Unfortunately, if you’re a non-Hispanic white applicant you stand the best chance if you’re really poor and do exceptionally academically or really rich(upper middle class at least) as you’d be more likely to not only do well academically but afford all the extracurriculars to be considered Ivy material.

The concept of fairness here I guess is relative and also subjective, I totally agree that students that are admitted should be academically qualified for Ivy league schools. I believe most AA applicants to Ivies have a 2150+ score and the majority of admits are first and second generation African migrants that tend to do well academically but if your anecdote is true then I agree the people at admission got it wrong there.

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@ChemistryMan You say, “This is not sour grapes…This is not a racist nor anti-Semitic post.” It sure sounds like it is.

  1. All the stats you list, along with the ones you claim that you have seen on this thread, are anecdotal and unverified. 2) Personal anecdotes do not comprise empirical studies. 3) You’re scapegoating people of color as if they “took someone else’s ‘rightful’ place” (presumably white and Christian). 4) You’re not on the admissions committees. 5) Test scores do not equal admission. 6) There are nearly 3,000 four-year colleges in the U.S.; tell your embittered friends and family to broaden their searches. 7) Applied to all Ivies? This is a troubling trend carried out in rich school districts every year for vanity purposes. It’s also a reason to examine getting rid of the Common App, because it is too easy for too many students to apply to too many select schools, further fueling the reason you feel upset that people you know did not get in.

The student you referenced who got into Amherst, but not MIT you describe as a travesty: Do you think his life is going to be diminished in any material way by attending what is consistently thought of as one of the top-three liberal arts colleges in the country? He is probably in a better academic environment, if he intends to get a Ph.D. Facts support that students who attend liberal arts colleges enroll in Ph.D. programs on a higher per capita basis than students from research universities.
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/cech_article2.pdf

Regarding the African-American woman who transferred out of MIT: Do you know her personal circumstances? Maybe she encountered racism and sexism or an unsupportive learning environment she did not want to endure any longer.
http://diverseeducation.com/article/31237/

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/the-year-we-really-started-caring-about-sexism-in-science/

Finally, you also say, “Race should only come into play if every other criteria is equal.” Race comes into play from the day we are born, to where we live, to where we go to K-12 school (and how we’re educated there), and stats bear out the inequality of such segregation. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal

If you really thought that race should only come into play if all other criteria are equal, you would spend as much energy fighting for reform in K-12 school so this wouldn’t be an issue at the college admissions level, by which time everything would presumably be equal.

Your anecdotes do not support any systemic disparities in admissions; what they do underscore is a contradiction in what you claim is not a racist, Anti-Semitic, or embittered post with repeated mentions of whiteness and Christianity and the wrongs perpetuated on them by these other groups.

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@texex1 You make a good case here and I do agree with a lot of your points; however, I find it hard to believe that the admissions process for the most selective colleges in the country are completely fair. White middle class applicants do infact get squeezed the most in admissions even a Dartmouth admissions officer admits to this: http://www.businessinsider.com/secrets-of-dartmouth-admissions-office-2012-10?IR=T

The admissions works in a way that it favors students that are really poor(lower middle class/lower class) that do exceptionally academically or students that are really rich(at least upper middle class) that can afford to do all the extracurriculars that make them Ivy league material and do really well academically. The students that fall in the middle find it a lot harder to gain admissions.

In addition to this, most African American admits to Ivies are first and second generation African migrants that tend to do well academically. It was estimated in a 2007 study that African Migrants make up 41% of the black population in Ivy league schools, the percentage is probably higher now. This isn’t a good thing since African migrants only make up 13% of the college aged black population. The African migrants in general are well educated and are from middle class to upper middle class families so elitism even exists among the African American population.

Also, I wouldn’t use sexism or racism as excuses for affirmative action, socioeconomic factors yes but not discrimination. If @ChemistryMan anecdote is true than it most likely that the African American female student couldn’t cope academically at MIT and a 1900 score is very low for a school of MIT’s caliber. The student that didn’t get in still did great, both Amherst and Rice are very highly regarded academic institutions.

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@Ali1302 I never advocated that the system is fair. In fact, I know the system is unfair, but probably for different reasons, which I list below. I do advocate that many commenters inject race as a way to blame black and brown people for the unfairness and to say they don’t belong at such institutions.

SAT scores are not an indicator of future academic success. One does not need to score in the top 5% of test takers in order to succeed in college–that includes Harvard, MIT, Amherst, or any selective institution. You, like many commenters on a thread like, this falsely assume someone admitted through affirmative action is inferior, and thus unqualified. Affirmative action does not admit wholly unqualified students into a university.

Middle-class white kids are being squeezed? The college admissions process is unfair all around, but blaming students of color, who are wholly underrepresented at elite schools is not the solution. You said, “The admissions works in a way that it favors students that are really poor.” No, it does not. In fact, many high-achieving, low-income students don’t even apply to elite schools, because they feel such schools are out of reach to them. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring-2013/2013a_hoxby.pdf (Parenthetically, look at the interactive in the Texas Tribune series link below to see how few top-10 percent academic Texas students from poor schools apply to UT, because they feel it is out of reach to them–even though they would automatically qualify for admission).

-Many selective schools in the most recent admission cycle admitted more than 40%of its freshman class (60% at Davidson, and 54% UPenn, for example) of their students early admissions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/31/a-college-admissions-edge-for-the-wealthy-early-decision/

-Athletes make up as much as 25% of the student body at some selective schools.

-Legacy admits are 45% likelier to be admitted over non legacies. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/opinion/end-college-legacy-preferences.html?_r=0

-Add in children of donors and celebrities, and it’s not just middle class white kids who are disadvantaged–it’s everyone who doesn’t fit in these categories who is being squeezed.

As I said in my previous post, one student’s experience, whether true or not because we only have @ChemistryMan 's word to go by, does not make for a study. You said, “Also, I wouldn’t use sexism or racism as excuses for affirmative action.” I didn’t, but they ARE the reasons for affirmative action, because both manifest as discrimination. Laws like Title IX exist explicitly to ensure equity in representation in college sports and education–affirmative action for women. I pointed to a possible reality why the African American student left MIT. You and ChemistryMan assume it was because she couldn’t cope academically. What if is was a hostile learning environment? What if she didn’t like the social environment?

The reality is when students don’t have support at an institution they are more likely to drop out or transfer. That’s why the University of Texas has taken meaningful steps to address students who may need support in order to be successful in college.
http://apps.texastribune.org/price-of-admission/getting-to-graduation/

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@texex1 No one is blaming African Americans, people here are blaming the admissions system itself and policies such as affirmative action. I believe you have to academically qualified to be admitted to a selective school not just fit into the right group.

The SAT is a great indicator of college success, this is confirmed by many studies: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-proves-just-how-much-sat-scores-predict-future-success-2012-5?IR=T

However, test optional colleges like Bates have admitted academically talented student and found no difference in those who did not submit test scores in terms of GPA. The SAT may not be the perfect test of academic success but it highly correlates with IQ and helps colleges separate students by percentiles.

I disagree with the argument that everyone is squeezed as stated earlier both Asians and Jews are overrepresented as student in ivy league schools. The poor applicants do get a boost in admission because of adverse circumstances, that’s why 15-16% of entering classes are first generation. Rich applicants(at least upper middle class) tend to go to the best schools, have the most opportunities and do well academically; therefore, they are well represented if not overrepresented. Middle class applicants are the group that are squeezed the most and are less likely to get in.

This is proven by legacies who the vast majority have incomes >$250,000 and first generation students who majority have household incomes <$50,000(44.1% have incomes below $40,000).

Interestingly enough, according to the Harvard crimson 0.5% of students are Transgendered, 4.9% homosexual and 4,9% Bisexual for the recent class so it seems the LGBT community is overrepresented. If anyone had any doubts about how liberal Harvard is it is extremely liberal: http://features.thecrimson.com/2015/freshman-survey/makeup/

Anyway, in response to your last point it is extremely unlikely that a student with a 1900 sat score can cope at MIT no matter what race or gender they are. The likelihood of your assumptions that she transferred because of a hostile learning or social environment is very low. This is why I dislike anecdotes because of peoples different interpretations.

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@Ali1302 You said, “No one is blaming African Americans, people here are blaming the admissions system itself and policies such as affirmative action.” I am confused. Ask people whom they perceive as benefiting from affirmative-action, and 99% are going to say black and brown (presumably unqualified) people. However, white women as a group have been the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action. http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/17/affirmative-action-has-helped-white-women-more-than-anyone/

Asian Americans and Jews may be overrepresented, because they are playing to the system. They are being test prepped, applying early, and winning in the admissions game.

Scoring well on SAT tests correlates with being prepped well to score well. It also correlates highly to income. Equating this with inherent intelligence is false. Any of us can be made to look culturally and intellectually ignorant if we are put in a different environment.

SAT scores do not predict college success.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/19/study-finds-little-difference-academic-success-students-who-do-and-dont-submit-sat You said, “However, test optional colleges like Bates have admitted academically talented student and found no difference in those who did not submit test scores in terms of GPA.” That’s because high school grades are a better predictor of college success, which is why many schools are going test optional. Highly motivated students are generally attracted to liberal arts colleges like Bates and will do well without submitting a standardized test score.

I agree that using an anecdote is dangerous, but you picked it up and ran with it and presumed that this African-American student was on qualified because of her scores. We don’t know the distributions of her scores. If she had 700s in math, and lower numbers in English, it would not be that uncommon among STEM majors. People fail to make it for a host reasons at school. Defaulting to a presumably low test score is unfair, feeding into the stereotype of the unqualified black person. Would test scores be a question for the MIT students who have committed suicide?

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@texex1 No one was debating against a particular group, the criticism was aimed at admissions PERIOD! This isn’t a race issue at all and no one even suggested that all African American admits are unqualified you just assume people do. Also, women don’t need affirmative action last time I checked females get similar test scores to males and make up the majority of college students in America.

I would say socioeconomic factors are playing a huge part in Asians and Jews success at getting into top schools. Also, both groups highly value education and around 50%-60% earn bachelors degrees.

Well, SAT scores do determine where you end up studying which pretty much influences how successful you’ll be in the future. I agree the SAT isn’t an IQ test or anything but still strongly correlates with intelligence.

Bates college also noted that students who submit test scores are more likely to end up in Medical, law and business schools because they’re likely well trained at taking standardized tests for grad schools(MCAT, LSAT etc…). Anyway, I agree that highschool GPA is a better predictor of college success but SAT scores determine where you end up in college.

Finally, if Ivy league schools all of a sudden turned test optional do you know how much of a task the admission officers would have trying to pick students when virtually everyone applying has a high gpa and is an honor student? It would be near impossible to pick students for admissions that is why test scores are used in the first place to divide applicants into test percentiles. Then they further divide applicants by race, gender and maybe even sexual orientation. Then they compare different groups with each other and pick the best of each group represented proportionately. Add the legacy bias, first generation bias, donor bias and obviously recruited athletes then you have a typical Ivy league admissions process.

If the admissions process were a completely random and fair process it would be chaotic for the university. They may end up with an extremely disproportionate number of white admits one year say 70% and an extremely low percentage of students of other backgrounds. That’s why I suspect UCLA and UC Berkeley still separate applicants by race in admissions although they don’t have a preference it helps them compare students fairly based on demographics. In addition to this, both UCLA and UC Berkeley seek diversity in their international students and admit students of different nationalities otherwise all internationals at UCLA would simply be Chinese and Indian.

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@Ali1302 You said, “This isn’t a race issue at all and no one even suggested that all African American admits are unqualified you just assume people do.” Well, I guess we are reading two different threads. @ChemistryMan post, to which I originally replied, as well as numerous other previous posts on this thread and the several other threads on the same topic that precede it, cite SAT-point differences among racial groups to make the case blacks are unqualified and taking the place more deserving students. The 1,900-SAT-MIT student he references implies she’s unqualified, while the Amherst student is. I did not make assumptions; I am responding directly to previous posts. You may argue that that’s not what people are upset about, but that’s what I see on this thread, and that’s what I responded to explicitly.

You say that the admissions process is unfair; I agree, and in my previous post, I listed a host of reasons why it’s unfair. Still, affirmative action for people of color bears the brunt of the criticism. As proof, yet another case is before the Supreme Court on this very issue, but none against legacy admissions, special talents (music, acting, debate) athletes, kid of donors, celebrities, geography, or others in college admissions.

You said, “Also, women don’t need affirmative action last time I checked females get similar test scores to males and make up the majority of college students in America.” I partially agree; women have achieved and exceeded men in academic attainment (true). But it is specifically because Title IX exists (and deservedly so) to ensure women have similar access opportunities in higher ed (i.e. no quotas on their numbers), especially in public college admissions. It’s easy to ignore this today, but gains by women in education did not happen on their own. Ivy League schools, in particular were resistant to admit women (and to nominating women as Rhodes Scholars). The change did not happen simply because they were scoring well on standardized tests.

If the Ivies and other elites stopped using standardized test (which maybe they should, but even if they don’t), they could go to a lottery system (which they should already) for all students they deem qualified for admissions and separate the pools demographically to get proportional representation. Admissions would be determined by the luck of the draw.

No one is ever going to be fully satisfied with the admissions process. However, attacking affirmative action programs for students of color often provides the most convenient form of attacking college admissions. It is a disservice, however to avoid examining (and possibly filing lawsuits against) the other preferences that advantage privileged groups within the applicant pool.

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@TooOld4School wrote

No, the French simply herd their marginalized minorities into banlieu ghettos, and simply ignore their race problem until cars burn or stadiums & concert halls get attacked.

Frances’s poor integration of its minority underclass is an example of what not to do.

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The French, like the rest of Europe, have problems with Muslim immigrants who have not integrated into their society IMO, the blame for that is more on the immigrants than the French who have a reasonable expectation that immigrants will confirm to their standards. That has little to do with US racial issues which have roots in slavery and not colonialism. By and large US immigrants have integrated successfully within a generation or two.

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The University of Georgia did away with AA at some point before 2001, and that school is 9% Asian and 12% URM. UofM, UT, U of Arizona, and U of Florida all did away with AA at one point or another, and none of those schools have demographics that match Caltech’s. [url=<a href=“http://loaditsoft.com/%5D%3E:P%5B/url”>http://loaditsoft.com/]>:P[/url] Location is a huge factor as well. Caltech draws heavily from CA.

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@CaliCash Since the other thread was closed, I wanted to post my reply here. I know Asians are very overrepresented but that’s the diversity argument I mentioned. When people bring up having “historical disadvantages” though, nobody ever mentions Asians who have had their fair share of racial barriers throughout history.

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But not as much as blacks did.

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@class0f2017 Asians received reparations for the camps they were put in. Blacks never received reparations for slavery.

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Getting into a discussion regarding reparations in like a politician willfully discussing illegal Israeli settlements. It’s a discussion that going to be mired in mud no matter how committed each party is to productive discourse.

The main problem with reparations, as I see it, isn’t determining who deserves them and how much. There are commissions that can be created to sort all of that out. It’s determining from whom the reparations are to come. Obviously, it’s taxpayer money, but you can’t take it from the general pool lest you tax immigrants whose families moved here after 1865 for it, and you can’t take it from the families of former slaves lest you open the door to doing more harm than good. That leaves a very small payer base, one that’s been singled out for taxation (in violation of the 14th Amendment, imo), that could be unduly stressed by the amounts eventually agreed upon by members of the commission. And, if you want to delve further, do we provide different amounts in reparation money to those whose ancestors lived on big vs small plantations? For those whose ancestors were lynched by the KKK? For those who suffered segregation vs unfair conviction in court? How do you prove those things in the absence of record? I mean, it’s an issue that can’t be touched because passions are high on both sides, but it’s also an issue that could never be addressed to the satisfaction of either party.

So set monetary reparations aside and look specifically at ways we can improve the lives of those living today. If we assume that institutionalised racism not only still exists but is pervasive, and we also acknowledge that kids growing up with single parents (for whatever reason) and with a family history of illiteracy, crime, drug abuse, or poverty are less likely to succeed without a leg-up, then we have to conclude - as citizens of a moral society - that some form of affirmative action is necessary. Ideally, whatever system is put in place doesn’t hurt more than it helps. Striking the balance is what’s difficult.

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@CaliCash , The reparations you are referring to what when Americans of Japanese ancestry were unconstitutionally interned and denied their rights as American citizens. That was a specific instance of limited duration for a specific group and an egregious violation. They were only paid a token amount - $20K -for being held prisoner for 3 years during WW2 in 1988 under Reagan when many of the internees were still living. You cannot make the same argument about slavery because it was constitutional until 1865, and you have practical problems @SirPepsi refers to.

Discrimination against Asians was widespread in the post civil war era, as it was with blacks. There was an initial wave of Chinese immigration as labor to build the railroads, but in the following decades the US introduced quotas to favor European over Asian immigration. More recent Asian immigrants are primarily highly skilled and it mostly their children who are experiencing the negative effects of AA. Lower skilled immigrants avoid AA as first time college students.

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If universities would see each applicant as an individual, and not as merely a member of a racial or ethnic group, it might be a step forward. Asian-Americans are not treated equally in college admissions at many universities. Saying that has been demonstrably true for African Americans, Jewish Americans and Catholics does not make it any more palatable today. JMHO.

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At what “tier” does affirmative action start? Most average state schools and lower ranked schools in general only care about GPA+test scores. How many schools actually have “holistic admissions” where they care considerably about race?

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Oh how I wish many whites had your thinking! :-/