"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion 12

[Ynotgo]

Caltech does not need to “just admit by SAT scores until they run out of slots” to get stats as high as it does because it only needs to admit about 550 students to get to its class size of ~235. With a class size that tiny and lots and lots of kids out there with high test and GPA stats, they can get pretty far down their CDS list of factors considered without compromising on the stats.

So, although they do have a mid-50% SAT II Math 2 of 800-800, they can also still look for students with Why Us?, Why STEM?, Honor Code, and other essays that look like a fit for the quirky Caltech culture. And, they can look through the high-stat pool for STEM research and competition success.

Yes, I expect they do look at URM status, 1st gen status, and sports as a tie-breaker when getting the admit list down to the right size. I don’t guess they look at ethnicity between Asian and white at all. Caltech’s incoming class is 16% URM.

I’m sure Caltech coaches know that athletes are going to have to be some of the stronger kids academically because of the extra time commitment of sports.

Legacy status is not that big a deal, considering that Caltech has only about 20-25,000 living alumni, and a lot fewer than that have high school graduates in any one year. An alum would know how tough Caltech is and would not want their kid to attend if they knew the kid wasn’t qualified.

The CDS list does not ask whether gender is considered. I believe it is, as they stated this year that 52% of Class of 2021 admits and 46% of incoming students are female. For comparison, the previous year’s CDS says about 26% of applicants were female. Having a more balanced undergrad class is important to them and to students (both male and female) who are attending.

Note that geography is not considered on the CDS, and the percent of California students (along with Asians) is higher than our representation in the general population. Though that is to be expected since Caltech is better known on the West Coast.

They aren’t kidding about wanting course rigor, though. Caltech has an optional (highly-encouraged) summer online course for incoming freshmen called “Transition to Mathematical Proofs.” It is quite challenging and seems to assume some prior knowledge not just of calculus, but also of set theory and more. When everyone has to take at least 3 quarters of proof-based math and physics using the Apostol textbooks (with a side of the Feynman lectures), they can’t admit a bunch of students who found the math sections of SAT/ACT/SAT II the least bit difficult.

[CottonTales]

Not mentioning names, but a couple of you are just plain racist and cruel.

[collegemomjam]

@CottonTales thank you for pointing that out. I’m usually not shy on CC, but some of the comments some of the posters are scary and I have been at a loss. We are all protected by anonymity on these boards as it should be. I guess based on the state of this country I shouldn’t be surprised by how racist and closed minded some people are. I guess this is why we still have White Supremacists marching with many, many supporters. I am an upper middle class white person and a victim of “reverse discrimination” myself and this makes me sick to my stomach.

If you think the effects of what was not very long ago outright legal racism are completely gone (i.e., Jim Crow Laws) you are completely ignorant. Yes we have made SOME progress, but we are not there yet.

NO ONE is saying that the playing field has to be completely level. NO ONE. And it never will be. NO ONE is saying that wealthy people shouldn’t have more opportunities…this is America and that’s what makes us tick. But we are talking about EDUCATION…not giving people that might need a boost top Wall Street jobs, but giving CHILDREN a chance to educate themselves so that they have a shot in life.

Think about a baby being born in the inner city today vs. a baby being born in an affluent suburbs. Think about their opportunities from the second they are born until the day they turn 18. That playing field is at a 90 degree angle.

Many pages ago someone brought up the point that many of these kids that are benefiting from AA and similar policies are sometimes not able to make it in the more competitive schools because they are so behind and just don’t have the skills. This is definitely a problem and we definitely need to work on a way to improve educational opportunities for everyone right down to the pre-school level. But this is a different conversation.

In the meantime, stop kidding yourselves that racism doesn’t exist. And the more we can minimize racism in this country, the better off we will ALL be.

I

[hebegebe]

The race issue is played on by both sides. At one extreme are the white supremacists who as shown in Charlottesville are ready to use violence to further their goals. On the other side is the far less serious charge of yelling “white privilege” with the goal of shutting down a conversation.

The one common thread is that neither side wants a discussion–they just want their way. And if there is one thing that is disappearing from this country, it is civil discussion, which we can hopefully do here.

@collegemomjam, I think you would be hard pressed to find people on CC that are against giving students an admissions boost if they come from a low SES family. That is a race-blind policy that will disproportionately help students that happen to be black or Hispanic. And naturally that will also help lots of poorer white students as well. That is a good thing for the country as well.

[Zinhead]

The New Yorker ran an opinion piece written by a Harvard Law professor which promotes what seems to be the current trend in selective schools admissions; boosting Black and Hispanic admissions as much as reasonably possible, while lifting the ceiling on Asians. This has the effect of making Whites underrepresented at a great many of these schools.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-affirmative-action-and-asian-americans

The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans

In the pursuit of diversity, some amount of racial balancing seems unavoidable, however taboo. We should not want the composition of our élite universities to be wildly out of proportion to the racial composition of our country. Such lopsided access to gateways of opportunity and power—say, with whites being severely underrepresented at schools like Harvard—has the potential to fuel dangerous resentment and disturb social peace, at least if the change occurs too far ahead of demographic changes that are projected to make whites a minority in this country in less than three decades. I would not relish seeing the nation’s most élite colleges become majority Asian, which is what has resulted at selective high schools, such as Stuyvesant, that do not consider race in admissions at all. It is also extremely troubling when solely test-based admissions such as Stuyvesant’s reflect the failure to remedy structural disadvantages suffered by black and Latino students. What is needed instead, then, is race-conscious affirmative action, to address the historic discrimination and underrepresentation of blacks and Latinos, in combination with far less severity in the favoring of whites relative to Asians.

[roethlisburger]

@OHMomof2 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?

The point would be for college admissions officers to stop being racists.

[collegemomjam]

@hebegebe I wish you were right but based on some of the posts, it seems like there are people that don’t think anyone should get a boost. I completely agree and have stated in this thread months ago that AA should be more of an SES thing than a race thing, so I think you and I are on the same page. But I read some posts that make me believe there are others who think the admissions decisions should be based more on hard data like scores because life just isn’t fair.

Some of the wrong people get the boost and that is a separate problem that should be addressed, I completely agree. I think some schools do a better job of making sure the right URM’s get the spots than others. No system is perfect.

[ucbalumnus]

@collegemomjam

I wish you were right but based on some of the posts, it seems like there are people that don’t think anyone should get a boost.

There are also people who think that legacies should get a boost, even though legacies are generally already advantaged over the general population of college applicants.

[OHMomof2]

@zinhead - very interesting article, I hadn’t seen it.

Some parts that struck me…

But this lawsuit, and much of the discussion of affirmative action that surrounds it, makes a serious error in assuming that, in order to stop discrimination against Asian applicants, race-conscious affirmative action must end. The argument simply proves too much. Continued use of affirmative action of the kind upheld by the Supreme Court is perfectly compatible with tackling the discrimination at issue.

The problem is not race-conscious holistic review; rather, it is the added, sub-rosa deployment of racial balancing in a manner that keeps the number of Asians so artificially low relative to whites who are less strong on academic measures. It is also time to look seriously at the impact on Asians (many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants) of the advantage enjoyed by legacy admissions and wealthy families who are likely to give significant donations. It distorts and confuses the debate to lay the preferential treatment for whites over Asians at the feet of affirmative action—or, on the other side, to deny that Asians are disadvantaged in admissions today.

Some of this reflects what I have been saying. It’s not the beneficiaries of AA that’s keeping more Asians out of elite colleges, it’s white people. And IMO it keeps some other minorities out as well.

It is unrealistic to think that universities like Harvard can immediately stop privileging white applicants, given the current whiteness of their donors, but that picture will change over time.

^ no kidding.

What is needed instead, then, is race-conscious affirmative action, to address the historic discrimination and underrepresentation of blacks and Latinos, in combination with far less severity in the favoring of whites relative to Asians.

^ I agree.

[OHMomof2]

@theloniusmonk 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

I wasn’t saying sports and music would be different because there’d be fewer black people though.

I was saying they’d be different because talented lacrosse goalies and oboe players would lose their admissions advantage.

[OHMomof2]

@roethlisburger The point would be for college admissions officers to stop being racists.

It seems that dropping AA would not get that done at all. Not for Asian applicants, anyway.

[Zinhead]

Some of the wrong people get the boost and that is a separate problem that should be addressed, I completely agree. I think some schools do a better job of making sure the right URM’s get the spots than others.

So who are the wrong URM’s?

[Ynotgo]

^ One could certainly argue that high-income Hispanics whose families have been in the US longer than many white families are not particularly disadvantaged. Our school has certainly had its share of NHRP winners who don’t have a Hispanic last name and have exceptionally light skin and/or blonde hair.

[SAY]

Ynotgo can you please explain what you mean by the disadvantages of hispanics in general.

[theloniusmonk]

“I was saying they’d be different because talented lacrosse goalies and oboe players would lose their admissions advantage.”

That wouldn’t necessarily be the case, there would be plenty of talented oboe players who would have the scores to get in, same with lacrosse players. Asian students are being told now not to play instruments as that makes them look too Asian for adcoms. If they were free to play instruments, you’d have no problem filling an orchestra. Same with lacrosse, except it would be more Asians on the team than whites.

[hebegebe]

Another contender for the “wrong URMs” might be that at least historically, a large fraction of the blacks at highly selective schools were not African-Americans, but instead are immigrants from Africa or the West Indies.

Note that these immigrants by all measures have excellent stats. However, selective schools typically admit only a tiny fraction of international applicants. Given the large pool of domestic black applicants that are not accepted though, is this a “window dressing” attempt at diversity?

Some links that address this:

2004: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more-blacks-but-which-ones.html?_r=0
2009: http://www.theroot.com/black-immigrants-overrepresented-in-the-ivy-league-1790869651
2011: http://thegrio.com/2011/04/21/harvard-has-more-black-students-than-ever-but-are-they-african-american/

[OHMomof2]

@theloniusmonk there would be plenty of talented oboe players who would have the scores to get in, same with lacrosse players

If that were the case, they wouldn’t need the admissions bump they get now.

[theloniusmonk]

Where are you seeing that oboe players are getting a bump, similar to how a urm or athlete would? I’m talking to a standard major or program, not Berklee or Juliard or to a university’s music college.

[theloniusmonk]

“The point would be for college admissions officers to stop being racists.”

That’s a little strong, but there’s a lot of stereotyping and prejudicial thinking that happens.

[OHMomof2]

Oboe players definitely don’t get the big, organized, official admissions help that recruited athletes get.

But they are kind of a joke around here about holistic admissions - the oboe player with lower stats gets in over the trumpet player with higher stats because the orchestra already has enough trumpet players and oboe players are fairly rare.

But the athletes are a fine example - if colleges could build good teams without recruiting them, why lower academic standards for them at all?