<p>Why is it so remarkable that a group with stats representing the top 3% of their demographic and probably the top 1% of african american males, wouldn’t have a greater chance of admission? You’re talking about 3,000 or so TOTAL AA students in the whole country with 2/3 of them being female reaching that academic threshold. So a few of these guys apply to UM. A state 20% black. Barely one AA for every college/school in the country. No more rarer than the blue chip athlete who is also highly coveted to make up the millieu of a selective college or university. The rarer a desired commodity, the more coveted. In academia, that translate into top AA more likely to be accepted. </p>
<p>Weasel, thanks. (post 320) They would have to, however, be more driven (usually) than many if not most of their similar peers, similar environment (URM status, etc), in order to be accepted to an Ivy – but no – not more than the drive of an admitted ORM, just equal to it. This would be one of the implications of Ogbu’s research: the lack of motivation, paralleled by that of those particular parents, who relied inappropriately on the school system to deliver the motivation factor – despite, or in addition to, what is happening in school.</p>
<p>To clarify, would you say there is no reason to assume that these black and Hispanic students with 3.2s and 1240s are more interesting and more driven than their equally qualified white and Asian peers? That the chief, if not sole, reason why their chances of admission are nine times greater is because of their scarcity?</p>
<p>Personally, I wouldn’t say more driven or interesting, because as you know, that’s very hard to qualify. However the scarcity among their respective ethnic group and their academic contemporaries has a lot to do with it, I believe.</p>
<p>rarity is only an extension of value. Racial diversity would still be valuable, even if there was no achievement gap. It would just occur without actively searching for it.</p>
<p>Some of the recent threads in this forum continue to show much confusion about what “race” is. Biologically, race ISN’T. We have more in common across all of humanity than many people think.</p>
<p>Why should racial diversity be so coveted as to lower standards?</p>
<p>I fail to see why the AA students couldn’t go to Michigan State instead. It’s not as if there is an either or situation, it’s not “UMich lowers standards to admit AA or they don’t go to college.”</p>
<p>^read the last few pages of this thread to see what is wrong with your thinking of “standards”. </p>
<p>Racial diversity is coveted and achieved by selecting qualified students of all backgrounds. A large portion of people, including 24 of the top 25 institutions in the nation, strongly value racial diversity as a piece of diversity in a student body. In addition, not that this is the motivation behind AA, but African Americans experience the largest increase in income from attending an elite institution. Most other groups, including Asians and whites, receive any significant increase. The boost for African Americans is even larger than the boost for low income. </p>
<p>I hope you are here, Kicharo, to learn and discuss as opposed to just talk.</p>
<p>^^ I’ve read this entire thread, as well as much of the older (and extremely long) one also by tokenadult. </p>
<p>“Racial diversity is coveted and achieved by selecting qualified students of all backgrounds.”</p>
<p>I guess the key term is “qualified.” I’m sure most of the applicants to Umich are qualified to do the work, but that doesn’t mean that the institution will accept them all. I’m not one to place too much emphasis on numerical factors, but when you have statistics like the “1 in 10 vs 9 in 10” noted earlier on this page, the conclusion is clear: University of Michigan was lowering its standards to admit those of certain ethnicities. </p>
<p>“A large portion of people, including 24 of the top 25 institutions in the nation, strongly value racial diversity as a piece of diversity in a student body.”</p>
<p>If so, why has race-based affirmative action been struck down so many times by voters?</p>
<p>“A large portion of people, including 24 of the top 25 institutions in the nation, strongly value racial diversity as a piece of diversity in a student body.”</p>
<p>Not to be nitpicky, but I also wanted to point out that it is actually 23 out of 25, as neither UC Berkeley or Caltech practices race based affirmative action.</p>
<p>People value diversity. They don’t value racial preferences. That’s why voters in California, Washington, and Michigan outlawed the practice in their states.</p>
<p>Random Q-
If you check “white/caucasian”, and then do other - “Human”, do you think adcoms would be ****ed, or would think you’re racist.
I want to do it to like point out that color shouldn’t do with race, since we’re all humans.
But I’m getting a weird sense that if I put down WHITE and HUMAN, they’ll think I’m implying that only WHITE people ARE human, which I don’t want to imply as I do not believe that.
Thoughts?</p>
<p>Thanks Weasel.
I kinda brought it up because one of my essays kind of rants on about how I think everyone is equal, regardless of distinctions etc.
So I thought it’d resonate well if I pointed out human in protest. I guess I’ll do it anyway because hopefully the Adcoms won’t jump onto bad conclusion.</p>
<p>Most college forms are set up so that you can simply leave them blank. That’s always what the law is; you never have to self-report any race or ethnicity if you choose not to. Check the first few posts in this FAQ thread for more details of example wording of forms, for a link to the latest federal regulation on how the forms are to be designed by next year, and for what happens at many colleges. </p>
<p>You don’t need to worry about this. If you choose not to self-report any race or ethnicity, for whatever reason you have, the college won’t hold that against you, because for all the college knows you are just a student who is very aware of your legal rights and chooses to exercise those rights.</p>