"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion

Applying to College
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<p>epiphany,</p>

<p>“If excellence were limited to a certain group…”</p>

<p>Well, is it? Last time I checked, no group holds a monopoly on excellence. Also, last time I checked, UCBerkeley and UCLA are doing some of the best jobs in our nation with respect to admitting and enrolling low-income talent from all races. You keep claiming that if we go race-blind, we’ll have “duo-tone” campuses with few poor students. The top schools of UC serve as very visible counterexamples to your claim. They’re racially diverse, and they have over 30% of their students on Pell Grants.</p>

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<p>I have never said that there is anything wrong with recruiting talented musicians, debaters, journalists, and so forth. You’re rewarding demonstrated excellence. Do you think Ward Connerly is crusading against the status quo because of ungodly talented musicians who are chosen over 2400/4.0 students? Do you think Jian Li filed a civil rights complaint because of future world-class journalists who are admitted over 2400/4.0 students? Of course not! Who has actually said that colleges shouldn’t recruit people who have proven their talent and potential to improve?</p>

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<p>I never said that race-blind admissions would result in a pure meritocracy. Furthermore, I never advocated for the elimination of consideration of extracurriculars.</p>

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<p>“Do you think Jian Li filed a civil rights complaint because of future world-class journalists who are admitted over 2400/4.0 students?”</p>

<p>No, I think he filed his complaint because he assumed that there is no such thing as (1) a saturation range of ‘qualification’ and (2) because he did not account for the self-chosen interest in Asians with ‘high scores’ to obtain these high scores. The fact that he assumed incorrectly (that a ‘higher score’ makes one ‘more qualified’) is his problem. It was not Princeton’s policy when he applied, nor Princeton’s policy today. Nor did they ever tell him that. The fact that his researchers thought that Asians “had” to get those scores is their problem.</p>

<p>The UC’s are not as (proportionally) racially diverse as many of the PRIVATE elites. We are talking about private elites. UC does not participate in AA currently, & since they haven’t, their overall <em>racial</em> diversity has signficantly shrunk. Their application system & their public accountability is light years away from that of the private elites. They have 30% Pell grants because they take from an entirely different demographic than HYP does. Their admission spread, & their FA offerings, reflect the enormous economic diversity of a state with a significant low-income and low/middle income population. Percentage wise, the private elites do not receive apps in such numbers from such SES groups as do the UC’s.</p>

<p>Economically, the privates are not as diverse as UC. In terms of personal origins, the privates are way more diverse on the undergrad level, way more. And that’s what lots of undergrads seek, & the privates seek to please undergrads as well as their boards, etc.</p>

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<p>Response to post 160:</p>

<p>…the bananas + the oranges + the apples. (I.e., were the beautiful apples to reach the phase of comparable, representative numbers, & be of indistinguishable quality to the quality of the bananas & oranges, all 3 groups could potentially complain – if not formally – that some of them were rejected, though maximally qualified.) Such complaints are based either on narcissism (I must be better than the rest, even though I can’t see the rest) or on a self-misinformed understanding of college admissions, which assumes a hierarchy of grades/scores vs. all other 13 factors combined with grades/scores. </p>

<p>The chef can’t use all those gorgeous bananas & oranges. The table’s only so big; there are only so many chairs.</p>

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<p>In other words, Li didn’t file suit because of “wind musicians…, students keen on debate, or students with a journalism track record to maintain a legendary college publication, or a few key students to populate a Classics Dept…”</p>

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<p>Are you talking about disappointment at being rejected or a Jian Li-style civil rights complaint?</p>

<p>A race-blind system doesn’t mean there will be no sad faces every April. It does mean, however, that there won’t be any, “My race is held to a higher standard!” claims.</p>

<p>I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand what you said. Are you saying that even if there were no achievement gap among the races, we would still have complaints like “my race is being treated unfairly!” Also, as a separate question, if indeed there is no achievement gap, then that means race-based affirmative action is unnecessary, yes?</p>

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<p>//"In other words, Li didn’t file suit because of “wind musicians…, students keen on debate, or students with a journalism track record to maintain a legendary college publication, or a few key students to populate a Classics Dept…”//</p>

<p>Never said he did. (Thanks for merely reaffirming that.)</p>

<p>The point in my bringing up the various OTHER reasons for rejection is that it is absurd to focus (as he did) on scores/grades as “qualifiers,” having more weight, being decisive factors, etc. They’re not. Except in some people’s wishful thinking. Clearly they weren’t decisive for him, as he had a 2400/4.0. Yet Princeton was unimpressed, as they & their peer schools are similarly unimpressed with many other Asian & white students with identical stats.</p>

<p>The study NEVER demonstrated that Asians “needed” a higher score, or were held to a higher standard. The study showed that Asians <em>had</em> higher scores, overall, than whites who were admitted, overall. No one in authority told the Asian applicants that they must do that, should do that, or would have an edge by doing that. </p>

<p>And yes, when utopia arrives and “there is no achievement gap,” then two things will happen: (1) race-based AA will be unnecessary, and (2) racial diversity will still be desired. Thus, there will still be beautiful oranges & beautiful bananas qualified for the fruit salad, LOL, competing on the same level as the equally qualified apples. So instead of disappointing merely the oranges & bananas, many apples will also be disappointed IF there are more than enough of them who have applied, to meet <em>diversity</em> goals – NOT AA goals. (Different creatures.)</p>

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<p><a href=“1”>quote</a> a saturation range of ‘qualification’

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<p>What exactly does this mean? </p>

<p>For readers who didn’t see the thread on this subject in the Princeton Forum of CC back in June, I’ll note that it has been reported </p>

<p>[Investigation</a> into alleged admissions bias expands - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/06/11/21269/]Investigation”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/06/11/21269/) </p>

<p>[Princeton</a> accused of anti-Asian bias - UPI.com](<a href=“Princeton accused of anti-Asian bias - UPI.com”>Princeton accused of anti-Asian bias - UPI.com) </p>

<p>that the federal government, rather than dismiss an investigation into Princeton’s recent admission practices, has expanded the investigation. The statistics released by Princeton as part of mandated federal reporting have NOT been sufficient to determine whether or not Princeton practiced (practices?) biased admission. To make a final determination on that matter, the federal investigators will have to read many internal files of Princeton that are not routinely released to the public.</p>

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<p>Why should a school care about “my race is held to a higher standard!” claim when those claims are grounded in narcissistic misjudgment based on the false premise that their is a standard to begin with, and that college is an award not an opportunity? Especially when top students still apply to those schools anyway.</p>

<p>The article i posted a few pages back uses an analogy of handicapped parking spots:</p>

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<p>^^interesting analogy. However, it leaves open the argument that people who were waitlisted and rejected would have been detrimentally affected. There aren’t that many people on the waitlist.</p>

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<p>^can you clarify please? I’m not quite following</p>

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<p>Well, AA may displace only a small number of people. However, there are only a small number of people on the waitlist, so one could argue that the people who were waitlisted and rejected would have been admitted if not for this policy. Presumably the people on the waitlist were the next in line, so to speak, to get into the university.</p>

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<p>What has happened in court cases on these issues is a finding that </p>

<p>a) illegal discrimination DID occur, </p>

<p>and </p>

<p>b) particular applicants were harmed by that discrimination. </p>

<p>The court cases are cited earlier in the thread. What’s especially significant about the court cases is that blatantly illegal practices went on well after the first case was decided. </p>

<p>I have no opinion on the issue of whether or not some colleges are still engaged in illegal discrimination on the basis of race after the very most recent relevant cases. I would need more information to form an opinion on that issue; presumably each college differs from some other college in its particular practices, and different bodies of law define what is legal at privately operated colleges and at state colleges.</p>

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<p>The degree to which an injustice occurs doesn’t make it any more or less unjust.</p>

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<p>People aren’t going to continue checking ‘Unknown’ until everyone’s doing it…I’ve yet to hear of anyone checking ‘Unknown’ when reporting their race would help.</p>

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<p>I wholeheartedly agree with you that the notion of merit in the context of college admissions is fundamentally flawed. That said, you can’t deny that colleges evaluate applicants on the basis of several factors: academics, EC’s, intangibles, etc. They say as much in admissions literature. These characteristics implicitly define a standard, whether it’s a good one or not. If you disagree, please discuss in greater detail what you mean when you deny the existence of a standard. Narcissism? Let’s cut the ad hom crap.</p>

<p>I find your distinction between award and opportunity interesting, but I don’t really see how it has any bearing on whether civil rights violations are occurring.</p>

<p>@zoaxanthellae: A decent number of people already decline to check a box. The problem is that there’s a strong incentive for minorities to identify, so there’s still a separation of types. If you believe that you’re race is discriminated against, don’t expect to receive fair treatment simply because you don’t check a box.</p>

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<p>epiphany,</p>

<p>Li has not said that scores and grades should be “qualifiers” or “decisive factors.” He has never advocated for your “numbers only” straw man.</p>

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<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/11/13/news/16544.shtml]Source[/url”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/11/13/news/16544.shtml]Source[/url</a>]</p>

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<p>Espenshade and Chung found that “Asian-American applicants face a loss equivalent to 50 SAT points.” That’s a direct quotation from their paper.</p>

<p>If you’re being treated as if your SAT scores are fifty points lower than they actually are, I see that as being “held to a higher standard.” Moreover, to my knowledge, E&C did not show that overall, Asians had higher scores than whites who were admitted. I don’t think that’s anywhere in their paper, but you’re free to prove me wrong.</p>

<p>Why don’t we take a look at William Kidder’s paper? It used to be that whenever E&C’s research was brought up, a pro-racial preference person would say, “That research has been discredited. See Kidder.”</p>

<p>I used to laugh whenever this happened. Kidder used law school data to disprove a paper that was based on undergraduate data. That’s like saying Steffi Graf is better than Pete Sampras because she won 22 majors whereas he won 14. It’s not a meaningful comparison since the two played in different tours.</p>

<p>However, it turns out that Kidder says something that you don’t like. His paper actually emphasizes that Asians are being held to a higher standard, something that you have never admitted. Kidder said, “At some elite colleges and universities, Asian Pacific American (APA) applicants have a lesser chance of being admitted than equally qualified White applicants.”</p>

<p>What are your thoughts on his statement?</p>

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<p>Sorry to be curt, but DUH. You’re switching your own subject now. You said that if all groups were equally qualified, that we would still have groups “filing civil claims.” Now, you’re saying that if all groups were equally qualified, then qualified rejectees would still be sad.</p>

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<p>This statement is easily shown to be false. </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810896-post4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1060810896-post4.html&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Lots of colleges have lots of applicants who decline to report any race or ethnicity, and the general national trend (see the first few posts of this thread for links) is that that number of students is increasing year by year. </p>

<p>The second statement </p>

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<p>is a logically invalid argument from silence. I have listened in more places, and I recall posts here on College Confidential (which, of course, I can’t independently verify as to this detail) in which applicants have said that they declined to self-report “underrepresented minority” race or ethnicity because they thought that wasn’t the most significant aspect of their personal lives, or because they wanted to be sure that they got into college on the basis of academic and extracurricular criteria other than ethnicity. Anyone might make this choice for a variety of reasons.</p>

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<p>tokenadult, do you think that URMs decline to self report with the same frequency as the general applicant pool? Seems exceedingly unlikely given the strong incentive to do otherwise.</p>

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<p>Ah, in the first part of my post “until everyone’s doing it”, I meant that I doubt this trend will continue to the point that everyone is doing it, not that people will not do it until everyone will.</p>

<p>Admittedly, it’s apparently not true that <em>no one</em> checks the “Unknown” box as a URM, but I’d be very surprised if the majority did.</p>

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<p>It is my understanding that waitlisted students are not arranged in any priority order, nor do universities have any obligation to admit students from their waitlists at all, if for example, several admittees chose not to attend. They can fill empty slots any way they choose, including from applicants who were not on the waitlist.</p>

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<p>“They can fill empty slots any way they choose, including from applicants who were not on the waitlist.”</p>

<p>So you’re saying they call up people who did not apply to the school or who were rejected and accept them over people they waitlisted? It’s just an unfeasible scenario. Presumably, they were waitlisted because they were more desirable to the school than those they rejected.</p>

<p>It doesn’t matter whether they ranked the waitlistees or not. Generally, for a school with an enrollment of ~1600 (like Harvard), the waitlist would be ~300. Small perturbations in admission policy could have a dramatic effect on the chances within the waitlist group. It doesn’t matter if the entire waitlist group might have been displaced from the admitted group or just a large fraction; in either case, the change of policy had a large effect. Regardless of the fact that the colleges don’t absolutely have to admit off the waitlist, it’s reasonable to assume they are shooting for a target number of people to admit when they look at the applications the first time.</p>