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The moderator agrees.
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Asian students account for upwards of 40% of the student body at some campuses of the University of California. Hard to argue they are being “screwed”. Problem to be seems to be that people cannot handle rejection and when they are, they seek someone to blame. Better that we teach our children that they won’t always get what they want.
@collegemomjam Having worked in admissions at an Ivy, “AA” as it is being described here disappeared a while ago. The move to holistic admissions has meant increasing emphasis on socio-economic parameters etc. The Supreme Court – including the most conservative justices – have supported this new approach and indeed have said that socio-economic considerations should be weighted more heavily. I’m not certain however that this will please critics as it is now even harder to “predict” admissions. And this has only increased pressure of applicants as they now must excel in a number of dimensions.
Have you considered that there might be people that are against injustice in the world, even if they are not directly affected? Or that the best cure for a past injustice (slavery and subsequent discrimination) is not to create a new form of injustice?
Great. Let’s put more emphasis on SES and get rid of race altogether as a consideration for admission.
If you aim to cure this particular past injustice, how would you do it?
In basketball and football, which is where the coaches have the most pull, the teams at elite levels tend to be overwhelmingly URMs. A star football or basketball player is going to get a much larger athletic preference than a star tennis player. Football also has the largest roster. So I don’t agree with your premise that the athletics boost favors whites. Then, there’s a significant question about whether a legacy boost exists at all, for regular legacies whose parents haven’t made significant donations to the college. Some here have argued the apparent legacy boost is really a dev boost in disguise.
@roethlisburger - no.
Look at Harvard’s 2017 team photo.
https://gocrimson.com/sports/fball/2017-18/photos/0002/index#PhotoSwipe1505264374681
or last year
http://cdnak1.psbin.com/img/mw=650/cr=n/d=ugttl/q4y53je63ssawkb7.jpg
Not even going to post pics of the hockey team, rugby team, tennis team, rowing team, fencing team, lacrosse team, polo team,water polo team, etc etc etc…Or any of the women’s sports.
I don’t have to post pictures to show that white people overwhelmingly enjoy the sports recruiting advantage at elite colleges. Just look at the Ivy League’s NCAA data. This chart in this post doesn’t line up properly but the first two columns are white men and women, then black men and women, etc. .
To see the chart lined up properly go to http://web1.ncaa.org/rgdSearch/exec/saSearch and select the year (I did most recent year), D1 and Ivy League, all sports.
It’s OVERWHELMINGLY white. Basketball is where there are by far the most black players and still they’re half the # of white players - 126 white vs 64 black. Football 496 white, 172 black. Most sports have 0-5 black athletes, and there are 25 varsity sports!
Sport White Black American Indian/Alaskan Native Asian Hispanic/Latino Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Two or More Races Nonresident Alien Other Total
M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W
Baseball 187 0 6 0 2 0 4 0 2 0 0 0 14 0 1 0 36 0 252 0
Basketball 61 65 39 25 1 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 12 6 4 2 18 20 137 120
Cross Country 132 177 6 3 1 1 8 5 6 2 0 0 5 7 6 7 29 45 193 247
Equestrian 1 53 0 1 0 1 0 3 1 3 0 1 0 17 0 1 0 4 2 84
Fencing 36 44 4 5 1 0 28 26 5 4 0 0 4 8 6 7 18 21 102 115
Field Hockey 0 118 0 2 0 0 0 9 0 3 0 0 0 5 0 5 0 26 0 168
Football 496 0 172 0 6 0 11 0 31 0 0 0 59 0 2 0 129 0 906 0
Golf 36 16 1 0 0 0 18 29 1 4 1 0 3 3 5 4 12 9 77 65
Gymnastics 0 52 0 4 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 2 0 76
Ice Hockey 107 66 0 0 0 2 2 3 1 1 0 0 2 5 17 28 38 31 167 136
Lacrosse 214 177 5 6 1 1 3 1 6 1 0 0 6 8 5 0 44 33 284 227
Rowing 234 265 3 9 4 1 15 23 4 11 0 0 14 19 29 13 68 112 371 453
Rugby 0 36 0 15 0 1 0 9 0 10 0 2 0 7 0 1 0 3 0 84
Sailing 32 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 39 0
Skiing 10 51 0 0 0 0 3 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 25 0 42 51
Soccer 133 137 19 19 0 1 8 6 10 9 0 0 15 17 7 2 35 24 227 215
Softball 0 89 0 3 0 1 0 12 0 9 0 0 0 16 0 2 0 20 0 152
Squash 61 58 2 0 1 0 14 13 3 2 0 0 5 1 19 16 26 21 131 111
Swimming 161 138 5 15 0 1 35 36 6 5 0 2 11 17 10 6 40 47 268 267
Tennis 42 27 1 1 0 1 15 28 5 0 0 0 9 5 13 7 15 16 100 85
Track, Indoor 245 270 57 64 1 2 19 8 16 6 1 0 38 27 9 13 76 76 462 466
Track, Outdoor 252 269 57 63 0 2 19 8 17 6 1 0 38 25 78 11 10 87 472 471
Volleyball 9 95 1 11 0 0 0 5 0 5 0 2 0 7 0 1 16 20 26 146
Water Polo 25 24 0 1 0 0 4 5 1 2 1 0 1 4 5 0 15 15 52 51
Wrestling 107 0 9 0 2 0 4 0 10 0 0 0 10 0 0 0 32 0 174 0
Two prongs.
The first prong is that admission bumps should be based purely on SES relative to the location where they live. It doesn’t matter if the SES bump benefits a black student whose family didn’t accumulate inter-generational wealth due to discrimination, a white student living with a poor single mom, or a first-generation legal immigrant whose family came with almost nothing. The SES provides a summary of the accumulated advantages and disadvantages through time. Note that this approach will disproportionately help blacks and hispanic students due to many having a low SES.
Second, if the SES approach still ends up highly skewed, the correct way to try and get the proportion you want is through outreach programs to the under-represented groups. Rather than lower the bar, start reaching out to promising young kids from those groups and teach them to clear the same bar as for other groups with the same SES.
@hebegebe I actually agree with that approach, mainly this part - the hard part, really - getting the K-12 in order.
To make the argument you’re trying to make, I think you would need the average ACT/SAT score by team. That might tell you how large the athletic recruiting advantage is in each sport. I don’t believe it would be equal for every team. Basketball, football, and track are unusually white at the Ivy League relate to other division 1 schools. However, those teams still have a higher percentage of blacks/mixed race than the NARP population of the Ivy League.
@roethlisburger Not for MY point, no, we don’t. If you want to make YOUR point about that I’d be interested to see the numbers.
We don’t need that data because we know that plenty of very high stats non-athlete applicants are turned down - indeed MOST high scoring applicants are turned down by the various Ivies (and other elite schools). Most valedictorians too. Even if every recruited athlete has excellent scores (and we know that’s not true because there is a formula specific to athletes in the ivies, the AI, to account for their lower stats generally), they are still given an admissions bump over other high scorers because of their recruitment hook.
And the vast - vast - majority of those athletes are white.
Were you surprised to find that you were so off in the case of the Ivy League? Just curious. Because I think a lot of people share your assumption based on pro sports or state U sports and would be surprised to find out that the Ivies and elites are very different that way. IMO there is a reason for that and it speaks to the point I’ve been making these past few pages about who is “taking away” spots form meritorious student applicants.
If you look at the NESCAC chart, it’s the same story though a greater % of recruited athletes - these are schools with something like 30-50% of the student body playing sports, most recruited. Amherst did a very detailed multiyear report on their athletic program, academics, race and other areas of impact, I can find it if you have any interest.
This is what I like best about CC–the ability to have a civil discussion among people who have differing political beliefs.
I won’t pretend that it is realistic to fix K-12 as a whole. There are a large range of societal problems and vested interests that perpetuate an awful education for much of the population.
But the elite schools have both the interest and the financial ability to perform outreach for the bright kids in under-represented groups. It would be interesting to compare what each university does in this area.
I know MIT reasonably well, and here are what I consider its notable outreach activities:
- MIT PRIMES Circle: To understand MIT PRIMES Circle, you first have to understand MIT PRIMES. PRIMES has some of the strongest kids nationwide in math perform real research with MIT grad students. The kids in these programs are overwhelmingly white or asian. MIT PRIMES Circle is a variation on MIT PRIMES that specifically focuses upon under-represented groups (area girls and inner city kids), and gives them a gentler introduction to math research projects. The goal is to light a fire in these kids so that they build a strong math background by the time they are ready to apply to college.
- WTP: Women's Technology Program. The goal is to increase the percentage of women in engineering. Families with an income of less than $90K attend this program for free.
- MITES: Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science. Another program with the goal of having under-represented groups the opportunities in engineering and science.
These programs aren’t ideal, mainly because they start so late. Nothing is available for middle schoolers. PRIMES Circle is available for high schoolers, but I think that WTP and MITES are for rising seniors.
@hebegebe - Agree. Many colleges have fly-in programs geared to first gen, low income and URMs (including Asian kids in many cases) but this is picking out kids who have already excelled despite their circumstances, so, yes, a bit late. I’m aware of a few programs that reach out to talented younger low income kids, but probably not enough to have a major impact.
Reaching out to 1st Gen, low income and other groups at a young age doesn’t require Elite schools. It needs to be done by more schools locally. Elite schools may have more money for these things and could fund programs in areas where there aren’t schools with enough funds to do it locally.
Lot of people assume that if those elite schools just switch to a SES model the race issue would go away. The reality is that given the choice between a black kid with ACT 32 from $200k family and a black kid with ACT 23 from $30k family the elite schools would take the former in a heart beat. And regardless of race you simply do not find a lot of ACT32+ kids from below $30k families nowadays (unlike fifty years ago for some reason). Programs like MITEs produces 50 kids/yr for the entire country, hardly a figure that would make a dent.
It doesn’t make sense to give any preferences to kids from families making $200k or more. AA isn’t intended for them, is it? Families in that SES range aren’t underprivileged, no matter their race; they have adequate resources to live in a decent neighborhood and for test prep, etc.
I’m not sure what you mean @jzducol . I think most colleges would take a kid with a 32 over a kid with a 23 no matter what the race or income.
The hard part is that getting K-12 in order so that first-generation-to-college and low SES students have the opportunity to prepare well for college is much harder (but would be much more effective) than doing things at admission gateways.
At the admission gateways, one may be able to observe that someone who started out from a disadvantaged situation (first-generation-to-college, low SES, racism, etc., evaluated individually in each case) is more meritous than someone who made similar achievement from an advantaged situation. However, anything done at the admission gateways does nothing for the disadvantaged people who are held back from reaching a sufficient level of achievement to go to college.
Similarly, outreach programs may be effective for a few, but are hardly large enough to affect more than a few of those starting from disadvantaged situations.
Low SES (Pell grant is a reasonable proxy) still remains greatly underrepresented at the elite private schools, while the scions of the top edge of the upper middle class and upper class (students not receiving financial aid) still remain greatly overrepresented at the elite private schools.
But perhaps more relevant overall would be state university policies, including their financial aid policies (at least for in-state students), since far more students attend state universities than elite private schools.
“I’m not sure what you mean @jzducol . I think most colleges would take a kid with a 32 over a kid with a 23 no matter what the race or income.”
@OHMomof2 What I mean is that most people assume since certain minorities are lower SES in general if the elite schools just use SES criteria those minorities should naturally get in. And that is whole argument accepted by the public for AA—to give those disadvantaged minorities a chance. The reality is that those lower SES minority students don’t have 32+ scores and are not being selected by elite schools.
I think what people are suggesting is that colleges uses SES as a tip, but not entirely, not to make up for a 12 point ACT difference. @jzducol .