I suspect we will have to agree to disagree.
Have a good day. I dont know what it’s like to be African-American but I’m hopeful that ending affirmative action will help heal the country somewhat because America is so racially divided at the moment.
I wonder if they should separate by zip codes because in our county the URM are highly affluent, parents tend to be doctors, executives, or lawyers, are involved in ECs, the students do not have disadvantages when it comes to applying to top colleges. They should be compared equally with the rest of their peers from the county they come from.
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ZIP codes can contain a mix of SES areas which may have little shared experience (schools, neighborhood activities, etc. – e.g. 94303). Areas specified for the convenience of postal sorting may not necessarily align with other possible uses that distinguish between areas.
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Many schools (not sure how many) purchase CollegeBoard’s Landscape offering, which includes demographic info and census tract data (but not zip code) so AOs can place an application in context of their HS and neighborhood.
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I believe the admission officers at elite schools are well aware of this, and for the unhooked students are making admission decisions relative to how well the student has outperformed given their context. Harvard for example gives particular weight to low income students, regardless of race.
The issue is that there are preference categories that act as overrides beyond this SES adjustment. Race is one, but others include legacy, athlete, child of faculty, and child of major donor. And for each of these, the standards for admission are reduced significantly.
Eliminating race from consideration will be a legal ruling. The others involve moral issues, and therefore not subject to the Court’s ruling
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Our entire county is affluent and has one of the top public schools in the country. Overall most URM are very wealthy here and there are few of course who are struggling but that’s also found in ORM populations too. My DD’s closest friends are URM and they are more affluent than us. So for equal playing field- the kids from out county should be viewed same regardless.
However the policies for URM which are valid and needed for admissions policies are for those kids who are truly from environments that make it challenging to succeed- those would be the kids that live 20 mins from me in the great city - but sadly this city is known for high drug use, extreme violence, low employment, very badly run public schools, etc. but reality is - I don’t think these kids benefit as much from the URM policies compared to the kids in my school who are URM and attend the best colleges because of the parent support/wealth/best education and the URM boost given to them.
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Note that most of these listed above correlate to higher SES (much higher for major donor kid), other than directly preferring lower SES.
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My kids definitely had some early obstacles as Black students (oldest “accidentally” dropped out of accelerated math program despite having the scores and we had to go around a teacher to get son tested for gifted program where he got the top score in his individual class when tested) but were also really privileged at the same time. Our household income while my oldest was in K-12 rose from about 95K->140K with a steady growth which is comfortably middle class, but we absolutely knew the “game” when it comes to high level college admissions and spent almost all of our disposable income when they were young on their activities. My kids definitely did not need nor necessarily want a tip in admissions (my daughter hated how things changed between the top students of different races in her class and she pinpointed elite college admissions decisions as a dividing factor among the students).
My daughter’s class had Black students get into Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell (Son’s class had Black students get into MIT, Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia) and it caused some hard feelings, but none of the Black kids that I know from those 2 classes had below 25% “stats” and everyone from my daughter’s class has graduated from those elite schools and have started careers or graduate school. A couple of those Black kids were lower income, but most were at my households level or higher. Based on the Harvard data, about half of those Black students may not have been accepted without the tip and the ones that I think would have been dropped 1st just based on “stats/ECs” would have been the lower SES Black students so I am looking for something that really does right by low SES students and finds a way to have a representative sample of our best and brightest without looking directly at race. I have always believed there is a way to do it, but I know people who do not believe that it is possible.
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One of the data points that shocked me (and still does) is that High SES Black students received a “greater boost” than Low SES Black students in Harvard’s dataset. That has never sat well with me.
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Yes, and so you end up with the situation where it’s mostly high wealth white kids that have it easier in terms of admissions, and you have URM kids that have it easier in terms of admissions.
With almost half the class being filled up with ADLC + URM kids, the remaining unhooked kids have a very tough time. These are often Asian-Americans or lower income whites.
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I have gifted this article from the Washington Post, so hopefully people without a subscription will be able to read it. The point of the article is that of course the Conservative-dominated Supreme Court is going to ban consideration of race in college admissions. The question is whether they will also ban racial proxies in college admissions (admissions by zip code, or by inner-city high schools that are virtually entirely Black and Hispanic, or by census tract low socioeconomic status, etc). The article makes the point that the advantages that higher socioeconomic status (mostly White and Asian) students have that lead to higher standardized test scores and higher achievement are also racial proxies, not to mention of course legacy, donor child, and even recruited athlete for most sports.
Should they also ban racial proxies, I wonder if that will have a trickle down effect for the racial proxies that are being applied to magnet high schools, such as Boston Latin.
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Thanks for that article. I am a subscriber, but I didn’t see it.
Perhaps it’s just as well, because the article was a train wreck. It ignores the most useful measures for measuring advantage in college admissions, current household income and wealth. While the article does mention instances of discrimination against Blacks, it again misses the obvious conclusion an admission process that adjusts for income and wealth effectively accounts for whatever reason the family is poor today. Perhaps it’s because their parents were redlined and couldn’t build wealth. Perhaps it’s because of a single parent who struggled to make ends meet. Or perhaps it’s because of medical bankruptcy. Whatever the historical reason, current parental income and wealth is a reasonable proxy of the opportunity that a child has had.
There are also a lot of dubious conclusions that are not necessarily supported by the data, but I won’t go into those here.
Do you think there is a noticeable geographic difference, in the United States, when it comes to racism and race?
I feel there is a huge difference but I have not walked in your shoes and was curious about your opinion.
Unfortunately from what I read it seems the college lawyers did a terrible job of explaining why diversity is good for all students and for society at large. Diversity is not just about SES (though that’s also important) - it is about different perspectives based on race, gender, geography and everything in between. Even high SES black individuals have very different experiences than I do in navigating the world. I attended a top 5 law school years ago. The perspective of some of my black colleagues were invaluable in helping me viscerally understand things like stop and frisk /walking while black or housing discrimination or other issues where other students generously shared their experiences in our classes. you can’t get these perspectives from books and it’s definitely not all about income. even more important is bringing the diverse perspectives into the workplace - and that includes high end law firms and investment banks as well as teaching and social work. I think diversity truly benefits all of us and that starts with ensuring that people from all backgrounds are represented at all levels of higher education.
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This.
I certainly don’t consume myself with this stuff but since I am an avid reader and most often these stories are unavoidable – also, I am not trying to make myself out like some sort of perennial victim (I am certainly blessed).
And this. I don’t consume myself with this stuff. And I feel blessed and fortunate in so many ways. I also don’t talk about it here among posters who seem to have no understanding at all of the lives of African-American people in general let alone African-American children and teens.
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I think that some of the other preferences could be tied to an expansive legal ruling by the court. As one example, if a large percentage of major donor children are White, does that moral issue become a part of an overarching legal question around a racial preference hidden within the major donor preference?
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I agree it’s wrong if the Court gets rid of the URM preference but allows the preferences that help wealthy white applicants. But I expect the final decision will allow those preferences to remain in place.
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There are only so many protected classes (race, religion, sex). Being an athlete, or a non-athlete is not protected. If a school wants to admit only athletes, it can.
A future plaintiff could argue that the effect of the preferences are discriminatory, but that would be a very hard test.
That wasn’t the finding. I suspect that you are referring to the following regression coefficients. A higher number represents a greater degree of boost. This is for baseline sample with full controls.
Black, not SES Disadvantaged: +3.9
Black, SES Disadvantaged: +3.9
Hispanic, SES Disadvantaged: +3.0
Hispanic, not SES Disadvantaged: +2.0
White, SES Disadvantaged: +1.5
Asian, SES Disadvantaged: +1.4
White, not SES Disadvantaged: 0.0
Asian, not SES Disadvantaged: -0.3
Note that Black is the only race for which there appears to be no special boost given for low SES over high SES. It isn’t a preference for high SES. It’s more a lack of considering SES. It’s unclear the reasons for this. One possible explanation is to avoid creating a superhook beyond the already very strong hook for being Black. Or phrased differently, there is a minimum admission quality threshold that Harvard does not want to go below, regardless of SES.
The result of this policy is the following SES disadvantaged rates among admits by race (full, expanded sample). Note that Black is the only race for which the SES disadvantaged rates was similar among applicants and admits. All other races had much higher admit rates for SES disadvantaged applicants than not SES disadvantaged.
Black Admits – 27% SES Disadvantaged (29% of applicants SES Disadvantaged)
Hispanic Admits – 34% SES Disadvantaged (24% of applicants SES Disadvantaged)
White Admits – 10% SES Disadvantaged (6% of applicants SES Disadvantaged)
Asian Admits – 20% SES Disadvantaged (11% of applicants SES Disadvantaged)
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I’ve lived on both coasts and would say that there really isn’t any noticeable difference when it comes to racism. Sure, some areas have more tolerant and civilized people who shun and discourage such behavior, which should be the goal of everyone. I find it frustrating when people make a comment that suggests it is more of a regional issue (i.e., a Southern problem) when you can easily find bigots/racists in all parts of this country, from the bluest district on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to the deepest red district in Mississippi.
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