And these things - not being afraid to reach out, study habits, using office hours - can be taught and supported by colleges in many ways. As Dr. Jack points out, many kids without the background he had (for one year) of private school) do not know what office hours are, nevermind that it’s not showing weakness to attend them, in fact it’s expected.
I would be interested to hear this “mismatch” argument for men. Should they not get admissions preference despite their poorer showing in college in terms of GPA and grad rate? Is it important to colleges to have a gender balance (yes). Is it important to society that men not be “left behind”? Yes. So why do you think minorities shouldn’t enjoy the same benefits men of all races do?
@OHMomof2 You do realize that there are at least 2 million more women in college right now in comparison to men (57/43 split for women)? I am one who doesn’t think men should get any advantage. Men tend to have the higher standardized testing scores, and it is hard to see that difference in the top students at the top schools. The other issue deals with majors and the fact that some (engineering, CS, nursing, etc.) have large majorities of gender, one way or the other which can tilt the landscape. The gender advantage switches between schools where women have a big advantage (MIT) versus some elites where being a man (Brown) is an advantage. I know at my daughter’s HBCU (top 100 USNWR) the male to female ratio was 31% male and 69% female for her incoming class. They looked at the applicants and picked the class regardless of gender. You will see similar splits at almost all HBCUs (besides the few that are more tech based) because they don’t look at gender which is the right thing to do. It is amazing to me that I do not know of one HBCU that uses a racial preference (or gender preference for that matter), but PWIs sure do.
Perhaps this phenomenon could be investigated by comparing the admitted versus matriculated pools of URM and non-URM students in terms of admission ratings, academic stats, first generation status, parental income level, etc… It is possible that the schools with no consideration of race/ethnicity in admissions are losing the strongest URM admits to other schools that do consider race/ethnicity in admissions and post-admission recruitment.
In most cases I would agree with that sentiment, but the top quarter (about 400 students) of my daughter’s college class which is about 85% African American had SAT/ACT scores in the top 5% of all African American students and my daughter’s GPA and SAT scores (3.96 UW and 1470 SAT) could have led her to choose a different path instead of a HBCU. And she knows students with even better standardized tests scores at her university.
@privatebanker this is probably the best point made on this thread:
“Which brings me back to my question. Does it matter. Yes her feelings are hurt. Or she feels diminished is a way. But she’s cashing the checks and leading the meeting. Isn’t that perhaps more important. Feelings don’t pay for college.”
Depending on who the audience is or “judger” (for lack of a better word), the cynics in the room might think the white preppy guy got in because of a connection, the black person got in because of AA or athletics, or whatever…but the point is at the end of the day, if they got the job and are PERFORMING WELL, that’s what they should be judged on.
I bet a lot of people in that hypothetical situation you framed could have just as easily graduated from U of Maryland or Santa Clara or wherever…if they were able to launch a successful career, chances are they gleaned enough from whatever college they went to to make them successful.
So all of this fuss about getting into the most elite schools and who deserves the spots more, in my opinion, is kind of for nothing. There aren’t enough spots at the tippy top schools for everyone that has the credentials to get in. If we have established anything on this thread, it is that. But those “rejects” (I’m one of them) are still going to end up at great schools and can end up in that meeting @privatebanker describes and have people listen to them. And get paid. That’s what matters in the end. And the people that you work with, after they get to know you, will judge you based on your work, not where you went to school.
So to answer your original question, @privatebanker, no, IMO, it doesn’t matter.
I’m conducting some interviews with various people on the subject of affirmative action and race in admissions. I’ve already done one with an admissions officer, and I’m interested in talking to anyone with a strong, informed opinion and about 2 hours to have a discussion. You can message me for drafts of my work, if interested.
It does matter though. The men are graduating less often, and more slowly, with lower GPAs. What you are saying about URMs is actually true for men. They are suffering, feeling bad about themselves and being frustrated in low quintiles and often getting no degree. No? Is it different for them somehow?
@OHMomof2 Amazing. I wrote that I don’t believe in men getting admissions advantages either (just like I don’t believe in preferences in general) and the fact that HBCUs don’t give those advantages for race or gender (possibly because they know better than most the effects of discrimination in society), and you completely ignored that whole train of thought. Men are no different. My daughter’s own institution could try and balance out the large imbalance of women and men (approximately 1100 women and 500 men in her class) as the top ranked co-ed HBCU but they don’t and they should not.
Does it make a difference that many kids are looking for a more even gender balance in college? Does that argue that some schools should be able to take gender into account? The preference for males at LACs was not in my daughter’s favor, but I think she is far happier to choose a school with a roughly even division then she would have been at a school that was too far imbalanced either way.
If Harvard had an affirmative action policy for men because they were less qualified, they would have stopped at a 50:50 parity.
The fact that they are 51% men suggests that admissions most likely means that admissions simply chose the best applicants, and this happened to slightly favor men for this particular year.
Yes, that could give incentive to colleges to target a specific gender ratio for marketing purposes, just like they may target race/ethnicity ratio for marketing purposes.
However, the effects of preferences of potential students differ for gender versus race/ethnicity. Colleges likely presume that most potential students prefer to have enough opposite gender students around, but that most potential students who care about race/ethnicity want to see enough of their own race/ethnicity around.
The claim it’s harder for women to be admitted to Harvard undergrad is indisputably false. Admit rate would only be a useful statistic if admissions were completely random like a lottery. If you look into the regression analysis that came out of the Harvard lawsuit, being female is an advantage. This is true whether you look only at the baseline sample, as SFFA’s preferred method, or whether you look at the expanded sample, as Harvard’s preferred method. The male applicants may be admitted at slightly higher rates, but that’s because on average they are more qualified.
The specific regression coefficients are below. The Harvard OIR internal analysis found no difference in admission preference by gender. The more complex SFFA analysis found a slight preference for women. I believe this preference only reached statistical significance for Asian Female vs Asian Male. The analysis by Harvard’s expect (Card analysis) hints at a similar conclusion to the SFFA analysis regarding a slight preference for Asian Female over Male, saying the following. The specific regression coefficient for Asian female was +0.17, with a good amount of variation in different years.
Harvard OIR Internal Analysis
Female: -0.00
SFFA Analysis: Full sample, full controls
Black Female: +3.73
Black Male: +3.67
White Female:+0.15
Asian Female:+0.04
White Male: +0.00
Asian Male: -0.26:
I realize that looking at admission rates alone can be misleading due to different strengths of applicants among genders, different prospective majors, and similar. Nevertheless the admit rate for Harvard shows a similar pattern, with little difference in admit rate between genders. In the most recent CDS, the admit rates were 5.2% for men and 5.1% for women.
However, there are plenty of other selective colleges that show much larger differences in admit rate and are more likely to have a gender preference. Average admit rates over the past 5 years are below. for some colleges with larger differences. In general LACs have a higher admit rate for men, while tech schools have a higher admit rate for women. I expect this relates to trying to achieve a good gender balance with varying number of applicants of different genders, rather than trying to correct for overpredicting male GPA/graduation rate/… type performance.
Admit Rate By Gender: Last 5 Years in IPEDS
Vassar – 35% Men, 20% Women
Pomona – 13% Men, 9% Women
Brown – 11% Men, 8% Women
Swarthmore – 16% Men, 12% Women
…
CMU – 19% Men, 31% Women
MIT – 6% Men, 13% Women
Harvey Mudd – 10% Men, 24% Women
Caltech – 6% Men, 16% Women
Olin -- 8% Men, 27% Women
Average of 55 Selective Colleges – 18% Men, 19% Women
@collegemomjam There is something missing that most do not see that permeates throughout American society. One of the reasons that I push for equality instead of AA is that this discussion touches more than college admissions. For minorities to be treated equally, we must be equal. Money does not help my son’s fear when he is pulled over by the police, or gets followed in a department store because of how he looks. I believe all of this, and I mean all of it ties together when it comes to how people are treated. It is easy to treat folks differently when you have lower standards for them.
I have had many discussions on the question of perception with African Americans for and and against AA and most believe that perception matters. I have watched some Black people in my life hate or fear all white people because of past policies (Jim Crow), and I have personally seen how AA policies create more people who hate and it is URMs on the receiving end. But I understand why some believe that the perception doesn’t matter at all (because for those folks, it really doesn’t matter). I hope that I get the privilege to feel the same way one day.
@hebegebe I wonder how many URM students attended Texas Tech med school before this year and it will be interesting to see how the demographics change under their new policies.
One of the things that I do at this time of year is turn on YouTube and start up a montage of admissions decisions at colleges and universities all over the country while I do things around the house and 2 sides of of the AA story come into focus.
One African American male student posted getting into all 12 schools he applied to (3 in-state institutions along with 9 of the top 15 ranked USNWR schools in the country while receiving 5 likely letters and he noted his stats (4.0 GPA, 2nd in his class, and a 1600 SAT score on his 3rd sitting for the test) and while not specifying his ECs said that he thought that they were not a weakness. He makes a bad joke about AA which I believe shows that he deals with the perception of himself by others (race was why he got in) even with his level of achievement.
On the other end of the spectrum was an African American female who applied to upwards of 20 schools, and got into some pretty selective schools (UCB, UCLA, UCSD) and at the end her video talked about her stats (3.2 UW, 3.6 W and 1020 SAT and some of her ECs along with the importance of her essay). She never mentioned where she was from but she applied to many California schools and watching her joy getting into some of her schools is my favorite part of watching this video. The 3 schools that I listed don’t consider race, and the preferences I do believe in (being in-state and low SES) should be a factor in admissions decisions. But I worry about that student and the challenges that await her as she will need a work ethic and resolve to overcome the challenges she might face as a student with such mismatch stats (lower GPA is even a bigger worry) for such accomplished student bodies. What bothers me is the feeling that a low SES in-state Asian American who has everything mentioned above and maybe more would probably have no chance getting accepted at those schools. But I hope I am wrong.