@SAY, I respectfully disagree with both your points:
http://www.livescience.com/36143-iq-change-time.html
http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/traits/intelligence
Parental educational attainment is as big a factor as income. The two are for the most part used interchangeably because one is a strong predictor of the other. Do you really think your average rapper, actor, or football player has as high an education as your average doctor or lawyer?
am61517 I also want to be respectful but the science on this ship has sailed. The article you post talks about a very small study where the psychologist “trains” the participants to beat the system. A lie detector test is considered very reliable by law enforcement but intelligent people can be taught to beat the test. However this in no way invalidates the lie detector test as a general test. At any rate the gold standard of studies are the longitudinal twin studies from Sweden in the 1940’s and the recent MN study. Here the same identical and fraternal twins were followed for decades. No reputable scientist disagrees with the results. Many good people who don’t know the literature post many things that are provably incorrect. The US government has spent trillions of dollars trying to improve the education of the less fortunate. Do you really believe this professor has a reliable way to increase IQ by 15-20 points and the world has just ignored his techniques? 20 IQ points is the difference between a surgery technician and the surgeon. It would be wonderful if it was true but it’s just a professor writing papers to maintain his funding. Here are the results of the MN study.
https://mctfr.psych.umn.edu/twinstudy/
This is the same throw away journal you cited. Both things can’t be true. Do you trust a major study involving thousands of people studied over two decades or a single professor with a handful of participants?
http://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html
However none of this remotely helps new applicants understand the complexity of elite admissions which is the point of this forum. The effect of race on admissions can be summed up as follows: being a URM is a large advantage at almost all elite colleges with black= native american and > than hispanic along with other factors such as wealth and educational status of the parents.
This a book published about the famous study.
Born TogetherReared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study Hardcover – May 14, 2012
by Nancy L. Segal (Author)
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Quantifiable Results
Of course, there were many findings that could be quantified, the most obvious being intelligence. There is no better way to measure the heritability of intelligence than to study MZA twins. (For a detailed discussion of the concept of heritability, please see this video.) Because their environments are completely different—though not so different as to include malnourishment or physical abuse—similarities in IQ can have only genetic causes. Test results of such twins are often so similar that it is like testing the same person twice, and MISTRA yielded a heritability of 0.70 for IQ. This is higher than figures in the 0.50 to 0.60 range that have come from other studies, but the difference is no doubt due to having studied adults rather than children. IQs of children can be affected by their family environments, but by adolescence, the effect of genes and non-shared environment (see below) dominate.
The test results that certainly caused the most surprise were measures of personality. At the time, it was common to assume that personality was formed almost exclusively by family influence. It is not; it is formed in about equal parts by genes and by what is called “non-shared environment,” or the micro-environment each person makes for himself. Parents think they have a lot of influence over how their children turn out, but they flatter themselves.
MZT twins (identical twins reared together) have very similar—but not identical—personalities. People always assumed the similarities came from growing up in the same environment. But MZA twins also have very similar—but not identical—personalities, and there is no detectable difference in the degree of similarity between twins who grew up together and twins who grew up in different families—sometimes in different countries. The household, or the “shared environment,” has very little effect on personality, at least by the time people are adults.
Likewise, when biologically unrelated children are adopted and reared in the same home, they may resemble each other slightly when they are small, but as they grow up they become as different as complete strangers. It is well known that shared environment can have an early effect on IQ as well. “Virtual twins,” or unrelated children of the same age who grow up together, have a correlation of 0.3 for IQ at age five, which declines to 0.11 at age 11, and to essentially zero by adolescence.
@am61517 Parents of home schoolers are not a representative sample of a Gaussian distribution. Statistically speaking, there is a “range restriction” problem here.
Here is an interview with a world renowned behavioural geneticist, where topics such as “non-shared environment” are covered. The emotional roller-coaster the interviewer went through is fascinating in and of itself.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/07/sorry-but-intelligence-really-is-in-the-genes/
Though the science on this topic is well established it remains hard for all of us to believe that our parenting really makes little difference and mostly is for our emtional benefit and that the real driver is the DNA from your ancestors.
Why is it that a debate about admissions and test scores always ends up as a debate about IQ??(I blame a certain ‘SAY’ on this thread for going off topic)
lets keep on topic this is about elite colleges admissions and race, not IQ and race. There is definetely a correlation/causal link between wealth and test scores aswell as income and test scores. Also, the more resources your highschool has the higher the test score averages. This inherently puts minorities especially Hispanics and African Americans at a disadvantage early on in comparison to Whites and Asians. As a result of lower highschool graduation rates, higher poverty rates and high unemployment places African Americans and Latinos are at a major disadvantage compared to everybody else.
I don’t believe Ivy league schools take many low test score students unless they’re super rich or athletes. Most African Americans in Ivy league schools are actually African migrants and have IQs in the 110-115 range on average, also score in the 2100-2250 range. This is also validated by the recent Harvard survey that puts the average sat score at 2200 for African American admits. This severely weakens any argument of any major advantage for minorities. Finally, I repeat stop mentioning IQ and lets just discuss admissions from now on.
Ali you just don’t yet have the background to debate this topic in a meaningful way. Income and wealth as they relate to IQ/SAT have been heavily studied and your conclusions are totally incorrect. The data is conclusive and settled. Many Asians are low middle class/poor and they do very well. You are correct that the Ivies do not take many students with low test score but that is irrelevant to the discussion. And yes a large percent of the blacks accepted to the Ivies have good test scores and are not American citizens. None of your statements change the fact that being a URM is a major hook at all the Ivies.
@SAY you keep contradicting yourself here. If most African American admits are migrants and get good test scores then how is there a Major hook here? Over 60% of African American admits in Ivies are actually migrants, doesn’t this severely weaken the ‘Major’ hook argument especially since a survey stated the average sat score is a 2200 for AA?
In addition to this, if socioeconomic factors are taken into consideration shouldn’t URMs have an advantage anyway given the higher rates of poverty, low income/wealth, lower graduation rates? Wouldn’t this weaken your theory of White and Asian entitlement?
The only factor you consider is test scores and use this as a way of predicting an applicants strengths. It’s called a holistic admissions process for a reason, test scores and gpa only carry about 40%-60% of the weight maybe even less for Ivies. You have to take into account extracurriculars, socioeconomic factors and overall fit for a certain university. It’s nearly impossible to quantify these subjective factors and as a result I don’t believe you know how admissions decisions are made at Ivies or elite colleges. I understand that the lack of transparency leads to this type of conjecture equivalent to a crazy conspiracy theory but I don’t believe the ‘Major’ hook argument is true.
Ali you are not trained yet in critical thinking. You constantly confuse your statistics and your arguments. Yes a large percent of Ivy admits are foreign students. Most of them have good stats and are not poor. These are mostly the children of the privileged class of foreign countries. Yes admitted blacks do have good scores at Harvard. But so what. The normal applicant with an SAT of 2200 has a very small chance of gaining admission at H,Y,P,S. But if you take otherwise unhooked URM’s and other unhooked applicants with comparable grades, 2200 SAT’s, and EC studies have conclusively shown that the URM’s are admitted at a vastly higher rate. This is a fact and you just need to accept it and stop the silly arguments. I make no arguments about whether this is or is not fair. This thread is about helping HS students and families understand the truth about elite admissions and you help no one by posting your personal ideologic views about college admissions. The train on this discussion has long since left the station just like the discussion on heritability of IQ and it’s strong correlation to the SAT exam.
Please cite your conclusive studies when you use them as evidence.
You keep saying that Ali isn’t trained in critical thinking. I’ve noticed that when people don’t have a serious factual basis for their arguments, they tend to say things like “you just don’t yet have the background.” Rather than providing evidence, you simply claim that it exists and condescendingly explain that Ali would agree with you if he just knew more.
usualhopeful I mean no disrespect but the fact that neither you nor Ali know the data is more a reflection on your youth and newness to the topic. This is one of the most studied subjects in history. I have posted many sources which you can find in my previous posts. I’m sure both you and Ali are highly intelligent but your views will evolve greatly in the years after HS. The place to start is the two decade Minnesota Twin Study(see above posts) for data on the inheritability of IQ and the Princeton Study admission data for relative effect of being a URM on admission.
@SAY you’ve cited this study before that is about 17 years outdated and back when Princeton had a 25% acceptance rate. How does this count as any proof of how Ivy league admissions works today especially since Princeton now has a 7% acceptance rate and a higher percentage of Asians now? I’m not going to seriously consider data from 1997 and if this is all you have then you basically have no valid proof for your assertions in the year 2016.
Ali surely you know the much lower acceptances are mostly a math sleigh of hand caused by far more applications per student and the fact that the elite colleges now perform mass marketing to induce students with little chance of acceptance to apply to drive down the numbers. The best example is the Univ of Chicago which had a 35-40% acceptance rate just a few years ago and is now mid-single digit. Do you really think anything major has changed? What happened is a new University President was hired and he actively pursued a strategy to drive down the acceptance rate to match the Ivies. So they marketed the school with fancy brochures to marginal students who had little to no chance of acceptance and it worked. The data from a decade ago remains valid and there is more recent work like Professor Sander’s data that show exactly the same thing. What exactly do you think could have changed? Your argument is completely non-convincing. The data will always be a few years behind and this hardly makes it invalid. But as I’ve said before you are free to think what you want as that is the privilege of youth but the facts are the facts.
I know this has probably been talked about before, but should Asians not report race on the Common App? Do adcoms frown on that for choosing to not indicate your race or do they not really care and move on quickly? Lots of stuff would give away that I’m Asian on an app, but it should still help since i wouldn’t be increasing the Asian percentage on diversity reports/class profile right?
@classof2017 Advising Asians to be deceptive in their common application isn’t going to help their cause or cause a demographic shift. The percentage of Asians at UCLA and UC Berkeley hardly changed after affirmative action was removed, this argument that if you hide your identity you increase your chances is weak and baseless. Also, race can be pretty obvious from your name and essay. At Ivies those that choose not to report their race actually have the lowest admit rates probably equal or lower than average so this could actually hurt your chances. Conclusion is don’t do it and those that do don’t help the Asian demographic at all, there is no proven advantage to this and could actually be a major disadvantage since Asian admit rate is higher than unreported/other admit rate in many cases at Ivies and other selective colleges.
@SAY I repeat the data is 17 years OLD!!!
Do you seriously believe this is in anyway applicable today now that Princeton has a 7% admit rate in comparison to 1997 when it has a 25% admit rate??
You attribute lower admit rates as a result of mass marketing and competition with other universities. The issue here is you have no measure of the quality of the applicant pool at all and the quality of applicants could have increased not decreased. You can’t assume applicants are poorer overall in comparison to ten years ago.
This is also a development with other top schools like Johns Hopkins that had a 26.8% admit rate in 2009 and now has a 12% admit rate. Is Johns Hopkins better than it was back in 2009??? No, but it’s way more selective now. I don’t believe Johns Hopkins has spent money on a mass marketing campaign to attract students the school sells itself by being associated with one of the best medical schools and hospitals in the country.
Ali this is not a debate. The major reason for the lower acceptance rates is a fact. Are you aware this topic didn’t begin this past few years? By the way the passage of time does not disprove accepted data. Besides there are reams of new data that confirm this “old” data. Keep in mind Professor Sanders had access to the actual UCLA admissions data. I want to remain respectful but you just don’t know what you are talking about. By the way you can’t be looking very hard because this data isn’t tough to find.
http://www.personalcollegeadmissions.com/getting-in/the-great-success-of-the-university-of-chicago
Are you seriously going to use UCLA data as evidence for Ivies? Also, the percentage of African Americans in UCLA law school and medical school is extremely low, I doubt there is any bias. UCLA actually has a higher admit rate for Asians than any other race. Admit rate is in the order of Asians > Whites > latinos > African Americans. I remember looking at the class profile of UC Irivine medical school and the racial breakdown. Out of 109 students there was only 1 African American. That is a representation below 1% for African Americans, with these statistics I don’t believe there can be a credible argument for bias in UC admissions.
In addition to this, you can’t use Chicago as a model for all Ivies. The admit rates for Ivies have dropped at a slower rate and most Ivies don’t have to spend money on mass marketing. I challenge you to find one article that states this is the case for Johns Hopkins that had a 26.9% admit rate in 2009 but now has a 12% admit rate.