"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion 12

Applying to College
4501

@roethlisburger When a right wing group want to interview a person who expresses an view that is critical of women or minorities, they interview a woman or a minority. It’s an old reactionary tactic. Pointing it out is not misogynistic.

The definition of Misogyny is: “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.” Unless I had claimed that she was not as qualified for this interview as a man, merely pointing out that her gender is an important part of the political theater going on here is in no way or manner misogyny.

That is simply how this game is played. When you want to present a controversial point of view, you have it done by a member of the group, or one of the groups, which your opponents claim will be negatively affected by policies based on that point of view. It makes debate difficult, because they can always respond “how can you say that it will be bad for this group? I’m from this group”. It is, of course, a logical fallacy, but use of logic in debates is not all that useful.

Left wing groups are not nearly as skilled at this.

4502

@mwolf I can admit that Heather McDonald is not “my cup of tea” when it comes to talking about AA, and I believe I have heard more substantial thought provoking commentary on the state of AA on this thread than I have seen or heard anywhere in the media. I also believe that her motives are not particularly “pure” (she doesn’t really care about solving the achievement gap) and she is a “divider” instead of someone who can pull people from all sides of this subject together. But she is not off base on some of her commentary, despite not doing the best job backing up her point of view. @wyzragamer’s last post was a "mic drop” from my point of view because it clearly points out the problems of using racially preferences while also acknowledging the plight of African Americans at the same time.

At the tippy-top schools, there are definitely African Americans who can compete at the highest levels, but I can see from my ground level view dealing with many African American friends, church members, co-workers, students and family that as a group, we are not emphasizing education or taking the most rigorous classes in comparison to Asian American families and their students and it is not particularly close. These effects become larger as you go continue to go down in the rankings of schools and that is why I believe the UNC lawsuit is a bigger threat to AA than the Harvard lawsuit. One of the problems with AA as a whole is that it can be applied so differently from school to school and Blum and his allies will one day find a school or schools that have applied those racial preferences too broadly and that will be the beginning of the end of racial preferences in college admissions.

What I would love to see is a study on is GPA, standardized test scores, Leadership positions, total ECs, if a student has a job, AP/IB exam classes taken and AP/IB exam results in selected diverse affluent high school communities by race, sex, and family income. This entire discussion is much bigger than any political affiliation/identity for me and my family. It is about properly helping historically marginalized/discriminated against underrepresented groups without actually discriminating against others.

4503

@MWolf

You are claiming she got the interview because she was female. Men who “dislike, have contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women” commonly will claim a woman only got the interview/job/role because of their gender status in an attempt to belittle them or dismiss their arguments. You are using a classic misogynist tactic.

4504

@roethlisburger She didn’t “get” the interview. It’s not a competition for this between dozens of different people and they choose the best. She wrote her book, and they interviewed her about the book, because they like her points of view, she has great credentials, and they knew that they could use the logical fallacy of “how can these points of view be misogynistic if she is a woman” if she was the one presenting them. They would probably interview her if she wrote about other things that they like, but they would likely avoid having a White man express the points of view that she does in the interview.

If you don’t believe that she was interviewed because of she was a woman, let’s check who else they’ve interviewed or had present points of view on controversial topics.

April 29, 2019 Shelby Steele On Race And America Today. BTW, Mr Steele is mixed race - black father, white mother. What did I write in my previous post?

The previous article related to race:
Wednesday, April 10, 2019, ‘Not Going To Happen’: Thomas Sowell Blasts 2020 Dems’ Push For Reparations.

You guessed it, Mr. Sowell is Black.

The day before:
Tuesday, April 9, 2019 Shelby Steele: Cory Booker Introduces Bill To Study Slavery Reparations. Republicans Should Be Elated

The previous piece on race:
Friday, March 1, 2019 Jason Riley On “False Black Power? Is it possible?

Oops, yep, Mr. Riley is also black.

I could go on, but I think that I’ve established the pattern. So yes, I was not being misogynistic, I was commenting on the pattern of behavior of the The Hoover Institution.

As I wrote - that is how the game is played.

My comment may be cynical, but it isn’t misogynistic.

4505

@MWolf I am surprised that these statistics you quote aren’t spoken about more often on this thread, or maybe they have been and I missed it, but comparing graduation rates at top schools that have AA vs. top schools that don’t have AA truly support AA as you point out:

"…the graduating rates of Black students from “elite universities is mostly pretty close to that of White students. Of the Ivies, the biggest difference is at Cornell, where 94% of white students graduate, versus 87% of Black students. At Harvard, it’s 98% versus 97%. Graduation rates of Black students are close to, or over, 90%, at almost very “elite” college to which there is Affirmative action. Interestingly, as UCLA and UCB, which do not have AA, the rates are 78% and 74%, and they are 12% and 17% lower than those of White students. THOSE are the statistics which demonstrate that AA works…”

4506

I think you are just missing when those posts are coming through… @Data10 posted some 6 year graduation rates back on 4/8 (pg 283) and I have seen that data posted in one form or another (including a time when I reposted some of the @Data10’s data) at least 4 times in the last 9 months. It is that data and the fact that the GPA spread (on the senior survey at Harvard) between Asian Americans (3.70) and African Americans (3.55) is small makes me think that the Harvard lawsuit is a losing battle unless the SCOTUS just rules that racial preferences are illegal because race should not be taken into account. One question that you might want to ask is what was UCLA and UCB’s African American graduation rates before Prop 209? Schools like UCLA and UCB are also affected by the large African American population of athletes (much lower graduation rates in general) in comparison to those campus’s overall African American population that skew their numbers lower and it is harder to compare those schools to any schools but other large winning D-I sport hubs. It is definitely not an apples to apples comparison looking at UCLA/UCB and Harvard (along with Harvard getting their pick of the top African American students in America).

At the tippy top National Universities and LACs, I believe they are getting the best of the best African American talent and that helps keep the graduation numbers close, but once you get outside the top 25 schools, I believe that more liberties have to be taken in regards to AA (The pipeline of top level African American students is small) which causes the graduation splits to grow larger when comparisons are made by race. Since there are over 400 schools that take race into account in admissions decisions, I think one has to look at the results for all schools that take race into account before any declaration on the effectiveness of AA can be made. One thing that AA has not been effective at is closing the income/wealth gap between African Americans and all other racial groups since its inception 50+ years ago.

4507

@ChangeTheGame it’s entirely likely I missed some of those points as I can’t always catch up with the very thorough and data intense posts.

I would imagine there are too many variables to list that impact the income/wealth gap between lots of different groups, not just different racial groups and AA is just one of many. We are never going to be able to have a “control” group and have apples to apples comparisons which is why so many posters have great data supporting both sides of the argument.

So while you make a valid point that AA hasn’t helped close the income/wealth gap, I wonder if that gap could actually grow larger without it? And I also think there are other benefits other than income and wealth that come out of AA, including just having the diversity on campus enhance the educational opportunities of all students. I’m not sure we can put a number on that and not sure how we even track it, other than maybe just by keeping a pulse on race relations and inclusion.

4508

The SFFA has four main arguments, none of which has much of anything to do with college graduation rates of AA or the college GPA of AA:

  1. That Asians are discriminated against by adcoms and receive lower personal ratings as a result of stereotypes against Asians.
  2. That race-neutral alternatives such as a larger boost to URM or first gen or eliminating legacy preferences could increase diversity.
  3. That the admissions boost to URMs is so large as to be effectively a quota.
  4. Harvard is not using race to achieve critical mass. That Harvard has a motive for AA other than “educational benefits of a diverse student body.”
4509

@collegemomjam You are right that there are many variables involved in looking at these issues and it is hard to know what is significant. The wealth gap shrank some during the 1st 20 years or so after AA and has be slowly and steadily increasing since. You are right that we do not know if it would have grown even wider. One comment on race relations is that some of my daughter’s friends 1st real dealing with race relations came at the expense of them getting into really selective schools and it being attributed to them being URMs. I’ve known some of the kids who said those hurtful words their entire childhoods and I know that they were just hurt by their own rejections, so AA also has a way of dividing us even as it tries to bring us together.

@roethlisburger Yep, I totally understand the SFFA’s arguments in the lawsuit against Harvard, but I believe that Harvard showing that their is little to no drop off in final outcomes could make a difference in the final decision from the courts. Harvard is already taking some steps to try and quell the final court results (2023 class has the highest % of Asian Americans ever admitted), and I think that by the time the case reaches the high court, it could go in Harvard’s favor. The data definitely points to the African American admissions boost being too large, but the final outcomes support Harvard’s own arguments in the case. I am just not sure if the SCOTUS will overturn AA without a slam dunk case (or a good old philosophical shift which may have already happened with the new court members added in the last 2 years).

4510

Another interesting aspect missing in Harvard’s case (or at any selective schools) is the distribution of the intended concentrations at admission vs actual concentrations at graduation among URM students. If there is indeed a bigger drop in URM’s STEM concentrations at Harvard compared to a non selective school that don’t practice AA then there is a big cause for concern as AA policy can negatively impact URM’s representation in higher paying STEM jobs.

4511

I meant to say such as a larger boost to low income or first gen, but it’s too late to edit now.

4512

@ChangeTheGame I support AA because, at this point, it’s all that there is. However, I believe that AA is a blunt tool which is being used to deal with a complex problem. It also does not help with the real problems that start at the K-12 level. It is complex, and there are many factors there, including poverty and discrimination. However, there has yet to be any serious attempts to actually solve any of those issues, and I do not see that happening at any time in the near future.

However, I really need to say: Finally, enough with the obsessions with “elite” colleges. The problem is not whether some under-qualified minority kids are getting into “elite” colleges. Well, it may be important to parents and kids who believed that a place at an Ivy was their well-deserved reward for their hard work at school, and believe that having 870 places available to the 30,000 “unhooked” applicants instead of 800 would have made that difference, since odds of 2.9% are so obviously better than 2.67%. There are more recruited athletes in Ivies than there are black kids, and if Harvard’s data is correct, they are far less prepared than the Black kids. Yet, Ms MacDonald talks, in detail, about how it’s a problem that there are so many unprepared Black kids in elites, and it must be ended. Of course, if the “elite” colleges manage to get enough high stats Black kids to apply, it will cease to be a hook.

That is actually the crux of the matter. High stats Black kids are simply not applying to “elite” colleges in numbers that are proportional to their numbers in the population. I would guess that it is because of the well documented wealth divide. To be accepted at their proportion in the population without needing a hook, they would have to have a wealth distribution similar to that of White people. Only 4% of the Black families in the USA are in the top 20% by income. That means that only 2.4% of the top 20% by income is Black. Since the lower your income, the lower the probability that you will even apply to an Ivy+, that means that fewer Black kids will apply than expected by their proportion in the population.

Additionally, since so many of the factors that go into acceptance by Ivy+ colleges are related to wealth, it is easy to see that the proportion of Black applicants with the right stats ECs, athletics, etc, will be far lower that their proportion in the population. The next income range that includes kids who can have good stats and ECs are the people in the “doughnut hole” whose EFC is too high a proportion of their income to make attending an Ivy+ viable financially.

So, the REAL reason that Black kids are being accepted at a higher rate and with lower stats, is that most of the kids who are qualified cannot afford to go, and overall fewer apply.

4513

I have to respectfully disagree. My own household makes approximately 140K per year, but we put enough in tax-deferred retirement and health savings accounts to lower our number to 115K which with another child in college would make our costs to HYP about 8-10 K per year for my son who is applying to college next year which is easily affordable for my own family and almost half the costs of our great state schools (GT and UGA after Zell Miller scholarship is taken into account). My daughter’s scholarship cohort of 29 kids at her HBCU had most accepted into top 20 schools and kids like my daughter who did not even apply to top 20’s though she would have had a good shot with her stats and current AA policies. Most of the kids in my daughter’s cohort are not high income (Scholarship has an income kicker at 150K to pay 1/4 tuition, but that is happening to only a few of the students) and top 20’s would have been really cheap and in some cases free for those families. So what is the real deal?

A significant percentage of African American families (besides those that have immigrated to the US in the last 2 generations) do not look at HYPSM and other top schools the way the rest of world does. I never had an inkling to apply as a poor kid to HYPSM schools despite having top 1% standardized test scores among African Americans (I didn’t know the sticker price was not the actual costs back then). My kids hear about the HYPSM schools from their diverse friend group, but have never really even considered those schools, even with me touting their resources and relative affordability. My high stat son will apply to a couple of top 20’s (Only because he is listening to my counsel) but the chances of him ever attending one (despite being affordable) is very slim even if he was accepted. The real deal is that high stats African American students have more great opportunities to go to college affordably than any other group of students. In my inner city black community where I grew up, Howard, Morehouse, Spelman, Hampton, XULA, FAMU, and NCAT had more “prestige” than any PWI in the world.

4514

For comparison, the median parental income:

$204k Brown https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/25/harvard-income-percentile/
$168k Harvard https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/25/harvard-income-percentile/
$127k UGA https://www.onlineathens.com/local-news/2017-01-24/uga-students-family-incomes-near-top-among-sec-georgia-universities
$126k GT https://www.onlineathens.com/local-news/2017-01-24/uga-students-family-incomes-near-top-among-sec-georgia-universities
$68k Howard https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/howard-university
$66k Morehouse https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/morehouse-college

$80k median household income for households headed by age 45-54 https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2018/10/19/median-household-incomes-by-age-bracket-1967-2017
$58k US median household income https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US,ga/PST045218
$53k Georgia median household income https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US,ga/PST045218

4515

@ucbalumnus Thank you for all of the income numbers.

This data just shows how much my immediate family has it made (children in the top 1-2% of students stats wise and more income that 80% + of households) but we will get a large boost from AA at hundreds of schools. Low SES should be a much bigger boost than race. The larger boosts given to students like my own kids who already have so many options/advantages over low SES 1st gen. White, Asian American, and Hispanic students will always be hard for me to stomach because being poor was harder than being black (My personal opinion as someone who has been both).

4516

The SFFA isn’t arguing mismatch theory. A quota for AA would still be illegal if the graduation rate for AA was 100% and the GPA for AA was a 4.0. A high graduation rate for AA could even undermine Harvard’s arguments, as then you don’t need to admit additional AA to account for attrition.

4517

“I can admit that Heather McDonald is not “my cup of tea” when it comes to talking about AA, and I believe I have heard more substantial thought provoking commentary on the state of AA on this thread than I have seen or heard anywhere in the media.”

Here views are very divisive, as are a lot of programming on Fox. She makes some good points here and there but by and large she was brought on to denigrate liberals at elite colleges. Many Fox viewers (not all) need an enemy and elite liberals at elite colleges is a good one, along with the usual political ones.

If she really wanted to sell more of her book, she should have gone on CNN or HBO and potentially reach different customers. The Fox viewers are going to buy her arguments, maybe her book as well. But if she went on another network, she would have been challenged no doubt (Bill Maher would have pushed back on most things she said), but if she got through it, maybe she changes the minds of some people. Going on Fox with puff questions is not going to change anything.

“You are claiming she got the interview because she was female”

That’s kind of how it is at Fox and other networks as well, they’ll bring a black to say there’s no racism in the US, a woman to say women are treated fairly in the workplace, a trans to say trans people are not marginalized. Fox would not have gotten a white male to discuss race in admission and sexual assault.

4518

Interesting read…https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/1/18311548/college-admissions-secrets-myths

4519

It’s so weird that the author of that article seems to support affirmative action in the few places that it’s mentioned but is so jaded about the rest of the process. He thinks that admissions officers are powerless to get rid of the preferences for wealthy white people, which ostensibly come “from the top”, but doesn’t see that affirmative action is a similar kind of preference with its own insidious agenda. He longs for a university that “reflects our society”, but does he just mean by race? And I really can’t get behind how he says that admissions officers are so overworked and underpaid. Sorry, but the people who make the university worth going to—graduate students, postdocs, adjuncts, and lecturers—all work way harder for probably less pay than that.

It’s also funny how people like this support Harvard in the lawsuit. If they really want change, why not start by supporting SFFA and their quest for transparent, fair admissions? It’s Harvard and their ilk who want to keep legacy, development, early action, athletics, etc—along with affirmative action. Harvard’s the one with a long history of illegal discrimination. SFFA proposed race-neutral options for achieving diversity but Harvard is the one who won’t implement them. So why do so many people seem to support Harvard?

4520

Should all black students at elite colleges be poor/first gen? Should wealthier black students with higher stats not get any tip at all? or just “less”?

Seems like a different set of problems.