Without regard to whether it is desirable or not, if college admissions were based solely on merit, then college demographics would likely mirror National Merit Finalists.
Take a look at the last names of last years in CA.
.http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/14/national-merit-semifinalists-announced/
A more selective example would be the top 10% (now 7%) automatic admit group at UT Austin, who are admitted purely by a measure of academic merit (class rank). https://www.texastribune.org/2017/04/11/ut-austin-top-ten-percent-impact/ has demographic information on this group separate from the non-automatic admit students. For fall 2016, automatic admit students were 35% white, 30% Hispanic, 23% Asian, and 5% black. In contrast, non-automatic admit students (considering many academic and non-academic factors, including ethnicity) were 46% white, 17% Hispanic, 23% Asian, and 6% black.
@lalalander111 NMS is done state by state with different required scores. But what makes a much bigger difference in the makeup is the fact that CA has a lot more Asian high school students than any other state, like say, these -
Mississippi https://www.piqosity.com/2016/09/22/mississippi-national-merit-semifinalists-2017/
All of this discussion ends up occurring because of the need to obfuscate reality. Namely that the descendants of people from the advanced countries have genes from thousands of years of natural selection. These are the genes that resulted in the development of mankind out of the stone age to the bronze age and up to the present. All of the recipients of AA have come from populations that were still in the stone age in modern times. This substantial genetic difference is politically incorrect and therefore people spend countless hours trying to come up with alternative explanations. The black-white comparison is so highly charged its better to examine the situation in the LA public schools. Why do latino kids score so much lower than Asians? Both groups are poor and the Asians have suffered far more discrimination than the hispanics yet the hispanics only have a 24% versus 73% for Asians and 64% for whites. It has nothing what so ever to do with race but only the level of advancement of ones ancestors.
The racial achievement gap remains large
Overall, 73% of Asian-Americans — the highest-scoring group — met English standards. Just 31% of black students did the same.
That gap was even wider in math, where 67% of Asian students met the math standards, versus 18% of black students.
The same was true in L.A. Unified, where black students both had the lowest scores of any racial group and made the smallest gains.
“It’s not a pretty picture,” said UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard. “We are not doing an adequate job educating poor kids, black kids, Latino kids.”
@ucbalumnus actually the UT example is not a good one. UT went to this formulation in part to maintain diversity without affirmatively using race as an admissions criteria. Many schools in Texas remain predominantly one race or another because of demographic concentrations. If you go to the UT thread, you’ll often come across parents/students of wealthy suburban schools complain that the 7% formulation unfairly prejudices their child/them because lower achieving students from other schools (usually using test scores as the benchmark) get admitted ahead of their child/them.
In a way the above states/stats prove my point.
Last year the qualifying score in CA was 221…
WY 209, MS 212, AR 213
At that level every one of my D’s friends would have been NMS qualified, but alas in CA even my d’s 220 is not enough.
It’s difficult to say how many of the students in those other states would have qualified for NMF if they lived in CA.
IF colleges only cared about absolute numbers with no ethnic or regional diversity, most top ranked colleges would be largely Asian and Indian.
There are seven large public high schools in our area where the average SAT score was in the top 10% over 1935–mostly Asian students.
and there are many privates which exceed that.
I don’t know if absolute numbers of Commended Scholars are listed by state but I bet that those from CA would fill the top 15-20 universities easily.
If that’s true, and I suspect it is, then what else would those colleges be like, in terms of the questions I asked?
Would these kids all want to be some kind of STEM majors, since that’s especially popular with their immigrant parents and g-parents who are here because of their (generally) STEM accomplishments? If so, how does that affect the academic situation at the college in terms of professors, majors offered, etc?
And sports, music, not having many black, native or Hispanic students around, financial effects of removing legacy and development preferences? Maybe more girls than boys (or the reverse), etc.
What’s the result of this system, beyond race?
Well, there would be a lot less interest in football, basketball, baseball, field hockey, lacrosse…
More interest in golf, tennis, badminton and ping pong?
Less fraternity and sorority participation, much more competitive academics
amazing bands and orchestras…
at least for a generation or two
We’re getting way off topic, but a elite school that just admitted by SAT scores until they ran out of slots would look a lot like Caltech.
@roethlisburger that’s ironic since Caltech says:
http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/content/first-year-applicants
I don’t think so. The main topic is affirmative action, and the current thread we’re discussing is “what would schools be like, how would they change, if AA and all other preferences were dropped”.
I think it’s right on topic. Because if you drop AA but don’t drop the other preferences, you don’t free up all (or even most of) the spots all academically meritorious students “deserve”, so what’s the point? So that’s why it’s interesting to discuss what strict “merit” admissions - defined as test/gpa - would do to the college experience.
I’ll make this my last post on this tangent. If you look at the difference in stats between Caltech and other ultra-elite schools like Harvard, that doesn’t happen by accident. Caltech is extremely stats driven no matter what marketing BS about holistic they put on their Web site.
Caltech gets so many highly-qualified applicants that they likely use the essays to identify those that have made an effort to investigate the departments, majors, and academic culture (“Why Us”). Caltech is the most meritocratic university in the US, but they still want kids that understand their mission. They don’t have to compromise their stats-driven admissions policy to do that. The mid-50% score range on the SAT Math II Subject Test was 800-800 for the latest admitted class. If Caltech accepts kids that scored less than a perfect 800 on that test, they are in the lowest quartile.
@OHMomof2 - I wouldn’t believe everything a university says about its admissions polices, the two schools I was thinking of would be Cal Tech as well, in addition to University of Chicago.
Roethlisburger is right, and as someone in marketing, do not believe things like holistic, it’s used by colleges to justify who they admit or don’t admit. Similar to need blind, they’re not, they’re need aware, and if they’re not, the athletic departments sure are.
“And sports, music, not having many black, native or Hispanic students around, financial effects of removing legacy and development preferences? Maybe more girls than boys (or the reverse), etc.”
Colleges would move to being need aware (but see my post above, I think they’re need aware already), since alumni and large donor funds would decline, but not drop to zero. The biggest thing a football program does is bring in alumni donations outside of the direct TV money is alumni donations, so for sure colleges would need more students to pay.
And your point about sports and music is well taken, I recently visited the African American Smithsonian and the contributions to music and sports by blacks is immense and you would have club or div 3 (or fcs or whatever it’s called) sports for sure, similar to ivy or patriot.
“Because if you drop AA but don’t drop the other preferences, you don’t free up all (or even most of) the spots all academically meritorious students “deserve”, so what’s the point?”
You absolutely have to drop preferences for the others - legacies, wealthy donors, athletes.
@OHMomof2 , there seems to be a new poster with a name like mine. Please be careful in your links.
Caltech, to the best of my knowledge, does not consider race, or legacy in terms of admission, and gives minimal weight to athletes.
Therefore @OHMomof2, it represents what other highly selective schools would look like in their STEM departments if they followed the guidelines uou described above.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=706 and http://finance.caltech.edu/documents/479-cds2017.pdf say, for Caltech admissions:
Very important:
Rigor of secondary school record
Standardized tests
Recommendations
Essay
Character / personal qualities
Important:
Academic GPA
Class rank
Extracurricular activities
Considered:
Volunteer work
Particular talent / ability
First generation to attend college
Relation with alumnus
Ethnicity
Work experience
The coaches at Cal Tech make it very clear to the athletes that unlike the NESCAC or the Ivies the coaches could provide no meaningful help with admission. There is one hell of a big difference between very important and considered as everyone knows who is familiar with their admission process. So yes their mix is what would happen if race, legacy, and athletics were removed. Keep in mind virtually every student has a perfect or near perfect SAT. I take no position over whether that is or is not desirable.
Someone mentioned sports as a meritocracy. No so! Basketball was designed to favor tall people … it’s “tallist”. I think they should be required to lower the height of the basket to no more than 6 feet. I was a really good shot from the field and three point range but could never dunk a ball because I was too short. It was totally unfair! It wasn’t my fault I was too short, I was born that way. I suffered through years of being ignored when teams were being picked. Studies show that tallism is rife in our society: tallists do better in business, dating, etc. What’s the average height of the Presidents over the last 50 years???