“there are many black and Hispanic admits who would have been admitted without race preferences. Nevertheless, those students will be painted with the same brush”
Athletes, legacies and development admits deal with that also. I don’t think anyone is crying for them.
In many cases the URM is a relatively privileged individual-perhaps an affluent international or prep school grad.
So the question is why should that applicant be given preference because of physical qualities such as the color of their skin or texture of their hair. At that point it’s like admitting extremely short people or red heads to round out the class.
Or is it just for marketing and optics?
Marketing is probably a big factor. Probably many people are hesitant to attend a college where their race/ethnicity is what appears to them to be insufficient numbers (for many white people who are hesitant in this way, the threshold is probably clear plurality or majority, but non-white people are likely to accept being a minority that is “large enough”). That implies desired minimums for each race/ethnicity for optimal marketing.
Note that marketing for ordinary alumni donations and huge donations is the presumed reason behind legacy and development preference. Recruited athlete preference (beyond the ordinarily favorable effect of strong extracurricular performance or achievement) presumably helps marketing to alumni via winning sports teams. Both legacy and recruited athlete preference can be indirect ways of keeping the white student population from falling too fast and becoming no longer a clear plurality or majority sooner.
The lawsuit provides some hints about how the class would change at Harvard, if there were no hooks and they instead they gave a more significant advantage to applicants who were financially disadvantaged. Card’s model found the student body would change as follows. Recruited athletes would have the largest change with only ~7% of the current recruited athletes from the class still being admitted under the new admissions system, without athletic hooks…
Asian: 24% → 34% (43% increase)
White: 40% → 38% (5% decrease)
Hispanic: 13% → 11% (12% decrease)
Children of Faculty/Staff: 50 → 36 (28% decrease)
Black: 14% → 7% (51% decrease)
Legacy: 293 → 89 (70% decrease)
Double Legacy: 78-> 20 (74% decrease)
Recruited Athletes: 183 → 14 (93% decrease)
Favoring these groups all apparently helps Harvard’s (and similar colleges) institutional goals. The reasons for the degree of preference are not always obvious. Some of it likely relates to keeping alumni and faculty happy, particularly with athletes, legacies, and children of faculty. Some of it relates to maintaining Harvard’s reputation, particularly with athletics (the Ivy League is an athletic conference) and to a lesser extend with racial diversity. Finances likely contributes, with 46% of matriculating legacies reporting incomes of $500k+ in the freshman survey.
According to Harvard, it already has ceased to be majority white.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/08/02/harvard-incoming-class-majority-nonwhite/5yOoqrsQ4SePRRNFemuQ2M/story.html
Still plurality white, with white students being more than double the next largest group.
“The majority of students accepted into the incoming freshman class at Harvard University are not white, the second year in a row an institution that prides itself on educating future presidents, CEOs, and world leaders has reached that milestone.”
Since the word “milestone” has a distinctly positive connotation, then it almost seems, as far as marketing, the fewer whites the better…at least at elite universities?
and from USC:
“Twenty-four percent of the admitted class are from historically underrepresented racial groups, with more than two-thirds being students of color.”
ok
The colleges’ marketing departments have to spin whatever they have in a positive way in their press releases, even if it is not perfectly optimal.
Still, white students are a clear plurality at Harvard.
USC gets a large percentage of students from California, where white students are no longer the plurality among 12th grade high school students, applicants to the UCs that they compete with, and matriculants to the UCs that they compete with, so it may not have the same marketing constraints with respect to race/ethnicity as Harvard.
It is wrong to contextualize people based on race though in the admissions process or in general. I have met people of all races that have come from all walks of life with different interests, socioeconomic backgrounds, perspectives, and personalities. Race doesn’t teach anything about potential applicants it just reinforces generalizations and neglects the individual.
This is a very concerning trend among many Ivy, D1, top tier, and state schools. The emphasis on diversity has led to racism in the admissions process itself. Many of these schools have become plurality-minority or majority-minority, with USC even being over 2/3 as you said. Now I am not one for admitting people based on race, I believe the best applicant should get in regardless of race and have no problem with a school being majority-minority, but when the US in over 60% white only and yet they make up the minority, often now a small minority of many top-tier schools it is clear this is a result of discrimination from affirmative action not a fair holistic approach.
Population (US Census Estimates 2017)
White alone- 76.6%
White alone, not Hispanic or Latino- 60.7%
Hispanic or Latino- 18.1%
Black or African American alone- 13.4%
Asian alone, percent- 5.8%
Two or More Races- 2.7%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone- 1.3%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone- 0.2%
The 18 year old population in the US is about 50% white, which just happens to be close to the percentage of undergraduates who are white that some of the prestige private schools happen to have.
Regarding USC, note that it draws heavily from California, where only about a quarter of 18 year olds are white. White students are still the plurality among undergraduates at 32%.
USC is private so private schools will skew toward affluent populations. Berkley is over 50% asian as I recall.
Undergraduate population at UCB is 38.6% Asian (11,793 out of 30,574 in fall 2017).
That of course is only the students who choose to check an ethnic box. I live near UCSD and on the actual campus the numbers appear far higher. Many students know better than to check the Asian box if their name isn’t a dead give away.
You have to also add in some portion of International students who are part of the denominator.
^It would be interesting to see actual stat’s on numbers of applicants who are successful cross admits at highly selective schools. The higher the number, the less “random, subject to luck” would be the process. I suspect there are a not insignificant number of applicants who are successful at multiple institutions on the universal strength of all components of their application. I am also sure that there are also some applicants who only got into 1 highly selective school because of some specific appeal of that student to that school, which could involve some degree of luck – e.g. an essay that strongly resonated with 1 influential AO which may have fallen flat at other schools. FWIW, the vast majority of S’s friends at Yale were cross admits at multiple highly selective schools.
But, nothing to see here. AA is the real target.
The target is racism against Asians and Harvard is likely to lose the case because it’s such an obvious case. Athletic recruiting is entirely different and not based on race but rather athletic merit. Legacy is a different thing but again not based on race. They issue being examined is racism which is forbidden by Federal and State Law. Athletic recruiting and legacy are red herrings and completely irrelevant to the legal case.
@BKSquared I find your post interesting. My biracial DD is a “super senior” at Penn (graduating December '18.) She identifies as black. Your cross-admit posit is an interesting one. She was denied to both Yale (ED) and Brown (RD.) But admitted everywhere else - Middlebury, Williams, Amherst, Vassar, Brandeis etc. (I think there were 8, it’s been awhile.) Her friends are mostly POC who have gone on to do amazing things - one just left for Oxford on a full PhD scholarship.
What if the “vast” difference is academic ability is just a high school situational statistic, and given the opportunity most POC admitted to the best institutions rise to the occasion? Make a difference? Do good in the world and back in their neighborhoods. Isn’t that something to celebrate rather than deride?
Confirming the thought that “diversity” is just a code word for fewer and fewer whites:
"Campus Ranked Among Most Diverse in the U.S.
UC Merced has been identified by Best Colleges as one of the country’s top 50 campuses where students have the most opportunity to interact with different ethnicities, ranking No. 12."
UCMerced is 10% white
Re: #2260
UC Merced is not in the top 25 of https://www.bestcolleges.com/features/most-diverse-colleges/ .
It is also not in the top 20 of https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/campus-ethnic-diversity .