I completely agree which is why I said it would be nice to have our “intracountry” diversity on campuses together to help students from different parts of the country understand one another better. There are misconceptions about each other and deep down their values are probably more similar than dissimilar.
I’ve posted this before - I have lived in Texas and I have lived in Maine. I have seen more race problems in Maine than in Austin. It really upsets me when people stereotype southerners as a group as being racist. I think a LOT of people are racist, but it’s not better in the north, believe me.
There are racists everywhere, just as there are misconceptions of all people everywhere. This is exactly why the diversity of all kinds on college campuses should be desired. The more we learn about people that are from different backgrounds, the more likely we are to bridge that gap. With that said, there are campuses that are more diverse than others, have reputations that are more or less conservative than others (whether or not they are deserved), for example…these are all factors students and their parents consider when trying to find the right college fit.
^I agree!
I saw this article and it surprised me how honest the students were in the survey.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/14/warikoo-study-affirmative-action/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/the-rise-and-fall-of-affirmative-action
Came here to see if this was being discussed. Very surprised to find it not posted yet.
@picktail publication date is next week 
It’s not the legacies, the athletes, the donors, it’s that tiny % of black and Hispanic kids “stealing” spots from Asians. It’s a brilliant divide and conquer strategy on Blum’s part.
Indeed. And many Asian Americans will lose out if he is successful, as the group includes some who benefit from AA and will in the future. SE Asians, in particular.
I note the kid in article got into UPenn (an Ivy) and went to the USNews #1 LAC in the country, Williams. Is he supposed to be the poster child for college rejection?
He himself favors Affirmative Action, but not DIS-favoring Asian applicants. These are, of course, two different things that are regularly conflated here.
Interesting.
…and also interesting that the original student in the article says he loved Williams and would choose it over Harvard, now
@picktails
Thank you for the link, a very good article. Pretty well presented the nuanced reactions Chinese Americans have had towards AA, even though it mainly focused on the anti-side.
“It’s hard not to take things personally, even if the process traffics in a magical impersonality. There are all of the mythologies that intertwine in the process: the farce of a pure meritocracy, of color blindness; a misplaced faith in standard measures of achievement. We suspect that the system is unfair and nonsensical, but we try anyway. We hope that we will be recognized.”
Black and Hispanic students make up 26% of the student population. Not “tiny” by any means. Ivy league schools have actually used (and continue to use) the argument that affirmative action is required for diversity because a large percentage of black and hispanic students would not have met the bar if their race wasn’t considered, meaning a large percentage of black and Hispanic Ivy league students do not deserve their place at the schools they attend.
@UndeservingURM 26% at what school?
At Harvard enrollment is 7% black and 11% Hispanic. Some subset of those may have benefited from AA; some did not.
I’d like to see a link where Harvard or any other Ivy says that. What I have read is that they like to consider race as part of their application review because it provides valuable context for the achievements of the applicant.
On another note, here’s an application - with admissions and interview notes - provided by an Asian American Harvard student. It’s interesting. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/12/harvard-student-admissions-file-analysis/
His SAT was only 2060.
Very interesting to see a marked-up Harvard application… but I’m not sure how it helps Harvard’s case. Southeast Asians are not an ORM, only East Asians and South Asians are. Besides, the applicant, as a 1st-gen, has a strong hook.
Exactly, let’s not overthink this, he was a first-gen, huge hook and he can add Vietnam to the list of countries Harvard said their admitted class came from. A 2060 from an Asian in the bay area is not getting past the first screen at Harvard.
Oh gosh here I thought Vietnam was in Asia. This kid did check the dreaded “Asian American box”.
So maybe the SFFA-Harvard lawsuit needs to be changed to specifically be about ending affirmative action that favors SE Asians to favor Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Indian students only? Maybe those from Singapore which is of course also in SE Asia but not the same…
Give me a break.
…and 1st gen is a tip but it’s not a HOOK. He’s also low income.
This kid is from California.
So if this kid lived a 6 hour drive north (he’s from LA) he’d have been rejected? Please.
If he came from a wealthy family his SAT might not have been good enough? THAT I accept, and is the entire point of holistic evaluation - looking at what a kid achieved given what was available to him.
You can read more about him here: https://tathingocthao.com/thu-vien/nhung-bai-quan-tam/van-hoa-giao-duc/harvard-student%E2%80%99s-story-offers-window-on-%E2%80%98diversity%E2%80%99-in-us-college-admissions.html
The entire point is that H liked what this kid achieved despite obstacles, and how he achieved it. His personal rating was very high - they liked HIM. His race may have been a plus factor, it certainly is part of his “story”. Take away any consideration of his ethnicity and what that means, and maybe Harvard sees the 2060 and skips over him.
Would be their loss - he’s now a senior and looks pretty involved in H and the community, judging from his LinkedIn.
27.5% https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics
A large percentage benefited from AA [1]:
I’m not sure you’ve been reading the right sources. The “consider race neutral alternatives to affirmative action” argument has been central to many cases. The Ivy Leagues usually respond by arguing that a large percentage of admitted URMs would not gotten in without using race as a factor (like Harvard above) and that there is nothing redeeming about these admitted URMs , so anything short of using race as a factor would fail to achieve their “diversity goals” aka quotas.
Harvard's website (and most other similar colleges) list demographics in a way to inflate the percentage of URMs, often by doing things like double counting persons who check multiple boxes and handling of international students, such that the percentages add up to more than 100%. The percentages using standard federal racial definitions are below. These percentages match how Harvard reported race percentages on the CDS, College Navigator, IPEDS, and similar. One example is https://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2017-18.pdf . It's not a "tiny"group, but it's also not 27.5% of students.
Black – 523 / 6766 = 7.7%
Hispanic – 777 / 6766 = 11.5%
No reason to be sarcastic here. The lawsuit is about discrimination against certain ethnic/racial group. It doesn’t really matter what that group is, discrimination is discrimination and is against the law. It’s not even necessarily about affirmative action. See this column in The New Yorker:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/anti-asian-bias-not-affirmative-action-is-on-trial-in-the-harvard-case
Arcidiacono’s analysis found the following regression coefficients for admission (full controls, expanded sample)
Athlete: +7.849 (0.153)
Black: +3.674 ((0.103)
Dean/Director’s Special Interest List: +3.246 ((0.417)
Children of Staff or Faculty: +2.630 (0.353)
Legacy: +2.329 (0.164)
Hispanic: 1.959 (0.086)
Applies Early: +1.531 (0.096)
Disadvantaged: +1.527 (0.139)
First Gen: -0.0001 (0.168)
Being first generation was associated with almost exactly zero admissions benefit, beyond the other control variables. First gen may have other less direct effects on these control variables, such as assigning ratings in other categories in context of first gen background and/or increasing rate of “disadvantaged” flag. The disadvantaged flag is supposed to be assigned,to low income applicants. The documents state, “When reviewing applications, admissions officers flag applicants who appear to be socioeconomically disadvantaged or eligible for aid under the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative.” Based on the comments in the article, it sounds like he received this flag, which is a hook. However, as noted above, the disadvantaged flag as among the weakest of all analyzed hooks.
His personal rating was 3+. 76% of admitted students had higher personal ratings in the lawsuit. He was accepted in spite of receiving a mediocre 3+ in academic and personal, rather than because of it. His 2 in ECs and the rest of application pulled his overall to 2-. The lawsuit implies that 2- overall is a borderline applicant Only 8% of Asian applicants who received a 3+ overall were accepted, while 68% who received a 2 were accepted.
I stand (slightly) corrected. Maybe they’re double counting racially black hispanic americans in their admitted profile.
However, we should only use first time freshmen stats because transfers and drop outs add noise to the data:
Black : 160 / 1685 = 9.5%
Hispanic: 195 / 1685 = 11.6%
21.1% of the student population.
But we’re grasping at straws here. 19.2%, 21.1% and 27.5% are all “substantial” in the context of affirmative action because a high portion of these groups are only accepted because race is used as a factor.