That was an enlightening report @ChangeTheGame. Interestingly the outcomes mentioned in the report matches what we saw with a family friend who adopted a child. Their biological daughter went to Princeton, but their adopted daughter got caught up in drugs, moved away after high school, couldn’t hold a job, and now has no contact with the family. We thought it was just an unfortunate and atypical situation.
@ChangeTheGame "I have talked about this once before, but I am coming back to it now because my African American son (current HS junior with ~3.8 GPA UW and 35 ACT) told me yesterday after looking at the collegiate landscape that he is not going to even consider any top 20 schools and will only apply to HBCUs (besides in-state Georgia Tech and UGA). The political/racial divisions in the US have started to change his outlook (along with his big sister thriving in a HBCU space) and I am seeing an uptick in HBCU interest among elite African Americans students in our area. It seems kind of ironic to me that my daughter and now my son have both made a choice to lean towards HBCUs partially because their race won’t matter at all at HBCUs.
One of the topics that I have thought about a lot recently and wanted to bring up is the “worthiness factor” of URMs. While I don’t personally agree with racial preferences (or many other preferences for that matter), people need to be careful when implying that URMs are unworthy mainly because of a 4 hour test, because it doesn’t test for work ethic, determination, ability to overcome hardships, and true ingenuity. I have never heard any other preference spoken of with so many “coded words” for being unworthy. Believing that race based preferences is illegal is one thing, but implying that (past, present and future) URMs are unworthy due to elite admissions policies, crosses a line."
I agree with the above point. However, in a similar vein, I think people need to be careful when they imply that the essays or ECs of Asian American kids with high stats are lacking, or they fall short in personality areas.
@websensation You speak the truth, my friend. I have seen 1st hand where someone will try and group Asian-Americans in stereotypes that try and lower an entire group in the eyes of admissions. That is just wrong.
I was talking to a URM student recently who applied to a few elite schools in RD and I wanted to put in perspective the challenge they faced. I gave the students some approximate numbers of the challenge of getting into an Ivy League school for ALL students. For the class of 2022, ~22,000 students were accepted to the 8 schools out of ~316,000 applicants and there are about ~15,000 students matriculating for the Ivy League incoming class of 2022. Once you get to RD, the percentages are so very small, it is very tough. But I was happy that she took her shot and she has nothing to lose. Looking at those numbers up close for the 1st time, it just puts things in perspective for me. Even if every URM spot currently in the Ivy League was redistributed in a total meritocracy (guessing anywhere between maybe 3,000 and 3,500 URMs in an Ivy class or about 20-24 percent of a class which could be wrong), there is no way that every qualified student would even get close to an acceptance at any of the schools. 290,000+ rejections or deferrals that become a rejection occurred last year for 8 schools. That is just an amazing stat to me.
That is a large number, but that’s not 316,000 unique applicants right? There has to be many applicants who apply to more than one ivy. If you assume one applicant applies to 2 or 2.5 ivies on average, may be that goes down to 156,000 or 125,000 applicants.
Regardless of the numbers and statistics, no matter how you slice it, I think @ChangeTheGame’s point:
“…there is no way that every qualified student would even get close to an acceptance at any of the schools.”
is the most important point of this whole debate, IMO.
There just aren’t enough spots, URM’s getting in with lower stats or not. There is simply not enough supply to meet the demand.
But there are lots and lots of fabulous schools the “rejects” will get in to and there is no reason to believe they will have less opportunity in life as a result of not getting into an Ivy or their “top choice” whatever that may be.
@theloniusmonk You are right. I said applicants instead of applications. But I don’t know how you cull down even 125,000 applicants for ~ 15,000 spots without someone getting mad. Especially in this age with more high standardized test scores than ever. The class of 2018 had ~67,000 ACT scores at a 33 or higher. If you add in the SAT equivalent students scores who only took the SAT, those numbers could reach upwards of 100,000 students. And the numbers are probably complicated by the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of high GPA students and all kinds of ECs to review. I don’t envy the job that has to be done to build a class of students when the qualifications looks so similar from my own untrained view.
I agree there are so many more applicants with incredible scores, GPA’s, and EC’s. Are the kids getting smarter, working harder or neither? My son has a 1420 on his first shot at the SAT (he’s a junior) and a great GPA, EC’s etc., but I’m not getting his hopes up, even if he gets the score into the 1500 range which is his goal. He will just be one of many, even with a 1550, applying to a top school. This is why applicants need a realistic list…absolutely there should be some top choice reach schools (because you might be one of the lucky ones), but there need to be more match/safer choices on there that they are comfortable with. It’s just the way it is, no matter what your background is.
I think changes in test design combined with current cultural norms that encourage intensive prep and repeat testing have led to the higher scores. It’s a huge driver of revenue to the testing companies. It also makes it possible for elite schools to draw from higher cutoff scores…which is great for their rankings. And at the same time, it means that the test scores are far less meaningful in the admissions process. Instead of a useful metric to distinguish among applicants, the scores simply take on a gatekeeping role.
The test scores are definitely higher today, but I also wonder if technology may be the biggest culprit. It was much harder in my high school years (mid-90’s) for someone to even get to 10 college applications and most of the students I knew did between 2-5 college applications and most had little parental help in the process. It is so much easier with electronic applications that I would not be surprised if most top students apply to 15-20 schools.
It seemed like some White and Asian American students with no hooks at the 25th percentile for test scores could make it into top schools in my era, but that seems almost impossible today just looking at the raw numbers of applications received. And if those students are from a lower SES background, it may be impossible, which is one of my biggest concerns with the current process. But there are just not enough seats at the “tippy top” schools and some one will get left out in the cold in today’s environment.
I would. Nature is much more important than nurture. Kids who are adopted out are more likely to have had parents with problems. These are passed down to the biological children, and no amount of love or good parenting by the adopting parents is going to make a difference.
A bit off topic but for those who are interested in Nature vs Nurture, a great documentary released in 2018 is Three Identical Strangers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Identical_Strangers). It’s definitely a “truth is stranger than fiction” story, but in brief it discusses the story of 3 identical triplets who were raised in 3 different households, who only find each other during their college years. The documentary is great because it shows that the whole Nature vs Nurture debate is quite complex. When the triplets are in their early 20s, the documentary suggests that despite being raised in completely different environments, Nature aspects easily over-ride these differences, but later in life, Nurture aspects come to play a larger role than expected. A fascinating story but demonstrating at least to me, that any black or white (no pun intended) or simplistic view of a complex matter is destined to be wrong.
@havesomeheart I saw that and you are exactly right and both came in to play. Nature is a big part of it but the right upbringing can make a difference.
Saw this and immediately understood why some of those parents in the Lousiana school that was talked about in this thread, sent their children to that school despite the red flages. https://nowthisnews.com/videos/news/students-at-louisianas-block-high-school-still-face-segregation
Back on the topic of race in college admissions -
New case, same plaintiff as the Harvard case (SFFA/Blum) and they ae using the same expert (Arcidiacono), but this time the defendant is a public U, and their expert is different than Harvard’s (Hoxby).
Some different issues at play as UNC is public, but the gist of it is about the same.
UNC says:
The UNC case looks very interesting. Does anyone have links to the briefs and expert reports handy?
Unlike HYP, UNC cannot skim the very best URM from a national pool. It also has a mission of course to serve North Carolina residents, and the state has a tremendous number of low income and underprivileged whites. And no legacy preference for in state applicants.
My prediction is that the evidence of discrimination in admissions against poor whites in favor of wealthier and more privileged URM will be eye opening.
@SatchelSF I think you are right that they will see much more of an variance in the URM students versus the rest of the student body at UNC. One mistake in choosing Harvard for the case last year is that they get the top URMs every year and if the lawsuit had picked a school ranked around 20 or lower (like UNC) the difference in the URM stats would have probably been more profound.
One of the issues that could work in URMs favor in this case is that mission to NC residents and the large minority population in North Carolina that pay taxes that feed into the state’s colleges/universities. If UNC is anything like my own state flagship (UGA) it could be a tough case. 34% of Georgia’s high school graduates are African Americans but only 7-8% of UGA attendees are African Americans and I have a feeling that UNC’s numbers may be in that same ballpark.
http://accrpt.ncpublicschools.org/app/2018/cgr/ indicates that, in North Carolina public schools, there were 103628 (120079 * 0.863) 2014-15 9th graders who graduated in 2017-18 or earlier, of whom 26143 (31747 * 0.832) were black. This is 25.5%.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=chapel+hill&s=all&id=199120#enrolmt says that 8% of UNC-CH’s undergraduate students are black.
There is also lots more data from North Carolina public schools at http://www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/reporting/ .
So to solve that issue, they would have to change to a policy like the one in Texas where they take the same percentage from each high school (guaranteed) and then other students that don’t make the cut compete for the remaining spots.? Not a perfect science but it might increase the number of African Americans in the top state school in the state, if this is desired result. But I’m not sure what the percentages of African American graduates are in Texas compared to the attendees are at UT Austin. And if there has ever been any kind of study on the benefits of their system.
I can’t find all the documents for the UNC lawsuit yet, but on a very quick skim plaintiff’s original complaint from 2014 has some interesting data on pages 18-19:
http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-UNC-Complaint.pdf
Defense documents are easy to find: https://admissionslawsuit.unc.edu/documents/
The data on differential admissions rates by academic index and SAT/GPA contained on those pages in the complaint are a little dated (2006 and 2012, respectively), but the defense expert’s rebuttal report contains some more recent data with respect to admits from in-state public schools only. See Exhibit 6, p. 96 here:
https://admissionslawsuit.unc.edu/files/2019/01/Exhibit-023.pdf
From that same report (Exhibits 2A and 2B on pages 84-85), though the presentation is a bit opaque, one can see that the bumps for URM are quite large in the middle deciles for out of state applicants, and substantially less so for instate applicants. It would appear at a glance that UNC is choosing to meet its “classroom aesthetics” color goal (as Justice Thomas so memorably termed it with respect to UM in Grutter) with out of state URM. (URM here includes only Hispanics and blacks.) Out of state pays a lot more for tuition, right?
Los of reading to do! Can anyone find links to the plaintiff’s documents and reports?
@ucbalumnus Thanks for the actual data which is not quite in the same ballpark as the data from the state of GA.
@collegemomjam I always get nervous with the Texas model because of the cutthroat nature that has been reported at some of Texas’s top high schools to get into the top 6% of a class to be an auto admit at UT Austin (or top 10% at one of the other UT campuses). But the University of Texas at Austin is among the most diverse Flagship schools in the nation today (37% White, 25% Asian American, 24% Hispanic, 5% African American, 4% internationals, and 3% Multiracial reported in the most recent UT Freshman student profile). The state of Texas has has a demographics shift since HB 588 was enacted but I have pasted the numbers from the 1st couple of years after the law was passed.
Table 3
Top 10% of Students Admitted to UT-Austin by Ethnicity
Year 1997 1998 1999
(before HB 588) (first year of HB 588) (second year of HB 588)
White 2,262 2,561 2,753
Black 118 143 268
Hispanic 613 734 911
Source: University of Texas at Austin, Office of Admissions, Implementation and Results of HB 588, Report 2
Most Flagship State institutions in the Southeast have a large disparity in the amount of URMs attending in comparison to the amounts of URM high school graduates in those states so I am slightly surprised to see them pick one of them for a court challenge. I have always believed the place for a court challenge would probably be at some of the elite LAC’s (like Williams), whose standardized test scores are relatively close to Ivy League numbers (but do not necessarily have the same name recognition within minority communities to get top level URM talent). But they probably could just go test-optional to overcome any pending court challenge.