"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion 12

Applying to College
4141

Some are certainly getting in on merit, but think about this.

There are approximately 3.6 million high school seniors in the USA and approximately 70,000 of them are Jewish, yet 20% of Ivy league slots go to Jewish students? For each high achieving Jewish student there are going to be many high achieving non-Jewish students. It’s just math.

And according to Harvard Hillel, Harvard Grad schools is 57% Jewish (2,500 of 4,402 grads)!

Do I have an explanation or any insight into why there is this over representation? No. It just seems to be the hook that no one wants to talk about.

4142

I agree that “Jewish” and “White” are in the same system, but haven’t we spent 276 pages discussing how subjective the system is and how influential race is in the process?

4143

My friend who went to MIT got Bs there, whereas I got 3.0 GPA in college but close to 4.0 GPA in English Lit major. Most people would probably say I was more intelligent than my friend. Yes, he’s better than me in solving math and engineering problems (but that’s not fair to compare because I am not interested in these fields), but I am way better in evaluating investment decisions and running a business. You can’t say someone who went to MIT and got all As is more intelligent than another person who went to an average college and got all As in a soft major, mainly because intelligence in real life situations doesn’t work like that. In fact, one of the smartest guy I know went to Temple University and did not shine academically but he’s super good at putting business deals together and running his own business, and his net worth is close to 100 Million dollars (I think).

By the way, I had higher SAT score than my friend who went to MIT and got all As. He had all As in high school also, whereas my high school GPA was also 3.0, but we made a bet that I would get higher SAT score than him and I won the bet. I met too many super intelligent people in real life who did not have high SAT scores or had high GPAs, so I never disagree that test scores and GPAs are good measures of anything. But usually I can tell someone is intelligent after 10 minutes of deep conversation.

4144

It is important to read clearly what Anderson is really saying. He is showing more nuance than he is given credit for. Firstly, his first degree was in philosophy, the most intellectually demanding of all humanities. He must have done well in class and with the LSAT, because he made it into Harvard Law.

Have a look at the following three quotes:

“Unfortunately, I can’t in good conscience do that, because so far as I can tell, the humanities, with notable exceptions at particular universities and with the general exception of philosophy, have punted on the analytic skills in the verbal areas”.

“They’re not now because liberal arts education is no longer teaches very much that’s analytic in most fields and because, in any case, the price tag is simply too high”.

" You’d do somewhat better with a liberal arts major that sent a signal that you had analytic writing skills, but philosophy and intellectual history are the only two that come to mind, given the general analytic implosion of English departments".

He did not say humanities and social sciences are not good, but that analytical thinking is poorly taught in our universities. In fact, he defended humanities in this article:

http://volokh.com/2012/07/08/limits-on-job-market-for-scientists-and-stem-and-why-in-a-alternative-universe-not-consisting-of-our-universities-you-should-also-study-humanities/

All in all, we need to be more careful in our evaluation and not jump to conclusion too readily.

4145

The cheating scandal puts race and affirmative action in an entirely different light. Very few, if any, minority students were involved. Fact is, we have had affirmative action for the wealthy for many years. Just look at the number of “full pay” students at Harvard and other elite universities, and compare that with the number receiving Pell grants. And that’s before we discuss Jared, who finished in the third tier of his high school class.

4146

Hello, I got accepted to UCSD the other day and I’ve been excited until I saw the Stats for people that got accepted, they all did so much more than me. I have an SAT score of 1090, ACT of 22, only 96 hours, and I was only an editor for one club. Although I have a weighted GPA of 4.3 and unweighted of 3.92, it breaks my heart to see people did that so much more than me get waitlisted or denied. The only reason why I feel as if I got accepted was that I’m Mexican. I still am going to San Diego, but it just doesn’t feel right. I will provide evidence if need be.

4147

Re: #4145

UCs do not consider race/ethnicity in admission.

However, they do lean more on GPA than test scores, and may be more impressed if you overcame a disadvantaged start (more common for students from lower SES or non college families) to achieve what you did. Also, your essays may have been better than theirs, and they are important (but comparison of such is not generally possible by those on the outside of the admission office).

Or they could have gotten unlucky and drew “hard graders” for admission readers.

4148

For me it casts into question the “holistic” system where people are admitted into college based on many non-academic factors. And minority students were definitely involved—one of the few students who was complicit in the scandal was Dominican-American Isabelle Henriquez. Add to this the reported fact that Singer misreported ethnicities in order to gain an advantage, and you have a compelling case against affirmative action.

So at Harvard, 16% receive Pell grants and 28% are full pay. Are these the numbers you’re referring to?

4149

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=harvard&s=all&id=166027#finaid indicates that it is actually 15% Pell and 44% full pay for frosh, 11% Pell and 57% full pay for all undergraduates.

Pell approximates the lower half of the US household income distribution. Full pay at Harvard approximates the top 3-4% of the US household income distribution.

4150

@tpike12 You seem quite obsessed with the number of Jews in Ivies, and you seem to REALLY want to blame Jews for Asians not being accepted. If there was only a term that we could use for somebody who tries to blame Jews for whatever they see as being bad…

Seriously, your semi-veiled hints about how Jews are unfairly over represented, and how nobody wants to talk about it are feeling increasingly like an attack.

You’re also WAYYY off in your numbers. Harvard University has over 13,000 graduate students, not 4,402. Even if Hillel’s numbers were correct (and they’re not even close) we’re talking that Jews make up 20% or so, NOT 57%. However, Hillel’s number are meaningless, since Hillel does not have a list of Jews, and the great majority of Jews on campus do not utilize Hillel’s services. So they make guesses, which tend to be wild at times.

There is exactly 0 good estimates as to the number of Jews at any college, since not only is there is no requirement to state whether an applicant is a Jew, there is not even a box to tick. All attempts to estimate how many Jews there are, based on surnames, and other such ways are BS at best, and racist at worst, since, among other things, they deny the Judaism of the millions of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, none who is an Goldberg or a Finkelstein.

But feel free to start searching for Jews under the beds of University presidents, or hiding in closets, secretly controlling the USA. I’m sure that you can find tons of antisemitic literature which would support your opinions and views.

PS. Unz’s calculations regarding the number of Jews are statistically invalid, because he tries to compare two types of data each collected in radically different ways, and neither which is very good or reliable data to begin with two types of bad data and he performs statistically invalid calculations.

4151

I enjoyed reading this article today on the incredible advantage enjoyed by athletic recruits at Ivies and D3 colleges. For me, mostly just affirms what I knew - and we have discussed - before. But some info about athletes vs non-athletes lower alumni giving was new to me.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-22/athletes-have-huge-college-admissions-advantages

[quote] Getting recruited as an athlete is perhaps the single biggest leg up one can get in the elite-college admissions game in the U.S., far bigger than being a member of a minority group or an alumni child.

Their athletic programs generate almost no revenue, and they don’t play a notable role (unlike, say, football at the University of Alabama) in enhancing the schools’ visibility or prestige. As for the much-rumored connection between sports success and alumni giving, Shulman and Bowen found no statistical link between winning football records and giving at large universities or Ivy League schools, and just a modest positive relationship at liberal arts colleges such as Amherst — where, remember, about a third of the alumni are former intercollegiate athletes. Alumni of losing teams actually gave more money than those who had played for winners.

[/quote]

4152

Does anyone know whether the race of the kid as it enters the high school transcript gets passed to the college, or is it going to continue to be entirely self-reported for the forseeable future?

Hypothetical cases: Student checks wrong box; student is mixed race and school checks URM box to get Title III even though student may have multiple boxes to check; student does not answer and school (unethically) makes a guess.

Does anyone know how this information flow is evolving?

4153

@MmeZeeZee I’m not entirely sure about how the info flows, but since “mixed race” is a fairly new designation in many places, I would guess that a kid who identified as minority in HS and identifies as mixed race on college applications will not cause any raised eyebrows.

4154

Its totally an honor system, nobody checks it, nobody verifies it. As America get more racially mixed, DNA kits become more available and stakes get higher in admissions the system is ripe for abuse.

4155

[quote] @MmeZeeZee Student checks wrong box; student is mixed race and school checks URM box to get Title III even though student may have multiple boxes to check

@MWolf since “mixed race” is a fairly new designation in many places

[/quote]

Historically in the US the first example is the accurate way to do it.

“Mixed race” just meant (and to many still means) black (assuming African ancestry was any part of the mix).

4156

@OHMomof2 You are right on both counts, but I do not think that @MmeZeeZee needs to worry, even if her kid was, say, marked by the HS as non-White Hispanic, so long as one of the kid’s parents is non-White Hispanic.

4157

Native American claims are commonly subject to requests for tribal enrollment documentation (basically outsourcing any such determination to the tribe that someone claims to be part of).

However, there are multiracial people with ancestry other than black and white.

4158

I am aware there are multiracial people with ancestry other than black and white. That’s why I said “assuming African ancestry was any part of the mix.”. You quoted that part so I’m not sure what you are clarifying there?

4159

@Mwolf I’m not concerned about consistency for us.

I’m concerned about how much I need to put effort into background statistics now, to prevent anything from flowing through to college.

We prefer to stay out of these statistics ourselves, but my state is reconsidering the affirmative action ban and I don’t want my kids to have any doubt about their admission. I don’t want them getting in for being Hispanic or not for Asian. I want them to compete as themselves.

Noooo, not in my state. Vast majority of mixed people are Asian/White or Hispanic mixes.

You say below that you weren’t trying to say that but in that case can you clarify? I’m not sure what you are saying.

@ucbalumnus

There are two kinds of NA. One is tribal claims and the other is Mestizo/Hispanic mixed. One has to do with being affiliated with a government, the other one is heritage. Absolutely people need to pay attention to what they are claiming.

4160

@jzducol

Just curious, how do you know this:

“It’s totally an honor system, nobody checks it, nobody verifies it.”

I have often wondered this before and we debated it on this thread a while back…you might be right but I was wondering if this is really something we know for sure? That admissions committees really don’t verify when someone checks a box that might give them a leg up?

I also wonder if there is some kind of info on the high school report that verifies race so that if they are different, the admissions people would notice. I don’t mean mixed race, but if white kids check the african american box, no one would check? Of course most people would never do that, but is this truly something that could get past admissions? And given the recent scandal, might this be something that changes?

I’m wondering if they may start asking for pictures…not for race verification by the way (pictures can deceive with that) but to compare to SAT or ACT reports as a way to make sure people are taking their own tests.