<p>This from a few pages, but Im just now able to respond. I don’t think you got my point, so I’ll explain it more clearly this time.</p>
<p>You said:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So you’re saying that blacks score worse b/c they’re generally from low-income homes. That is somewhat true. The TOTAL black average is lower than the TOTAL white or Asian averages. So if you’re talking about the TOTAL, you can blame income. But, with the following graph, your low income argument loses some merit.</p>
<p>So the chart shows that blacks score worse AT EVERY SOCIO-ECONOMIC LEVEL. Thus to blame relatively low scores on low income is somewhat absurd when there are black students with the same income level as white/Asian students who score much higher (i.e. the 50k-60k income level where blacks lag Asians by 200 points).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think you’re disagreeing with me. Of course the kid from a tough prep school should be judged differently. That’s why I said they should be judged as individuals. According to you, we should lump all blacks together in low-income and when a black applicant from some tough prep school applies with a 3.45, we should say “Well he’s black so he’s low income so he went to a bad school, so why does he have only a 3.45?”</p>
<p>D is graduating from academically competitive liberal New England prep school with amazingly racist, anti-affirmative action attitudes. Dark-skins can break any rule and flunk any class and not be kicked out. Dark-skins get into top colleges where white kids (unless recruited athletes or legacy) haven’t got a chance. AA is having the opposite of the intended effect: graduating a generation of high achieving students who loath URMs.</p>
<p>That chart only shows incomes up to $70K (and is from a different SAT). I know that it says 70K+ on the graph, but that is a huge range of statistically important information that is not being shown, especially because I wouldn’t exactly call $70K well off.</p>
<p>The thing that we are also missing is that the SAT results are culturally driven. Those students coming from poorer families come from environments that are not good at producing strong students. This is not to say that these students are no intelligent or capable of learning, just that they are not raised the same way as students from richer families.</p>
<p>The apparent exception to this rule would be the Asians. But this group has a culture of high work ethic that counteracts the maleffects of being poor. In the end it is culture that shapes a students upbringing and, on the whole, this tends to correlate well to income.</p>
<p>I don’t know what your point is. I don’t see exactly where you find fault in what I’m saying.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>OK and that smarter people tend to make more money. </p>
<p>What does this have to do with what I said?</p>
<p>Note: 70,000 is in 1995 dollars. I imagine the rest of the graph is irrelevant b/c I think we can assume the correlation between intelligence and income starts to taper off (i.e. is the son of a doctor going to be that much smarter than the son of an engineer?).</p>
<p>I was simply trying to add that culturally affected mentality is the most important factor. Inside of culture, income level is the most correlating factor and racially associated cultural traits are second. This is how I believe affirmative action should be viewed. It has to do with what you were saying in that race is the most important factor and that income has a more minimal impact.</p>
<p>“One of the things that the colleges realize is that while a larger percentage of minority students maybe poorer,if you were to use this as the sole criteria, the pool would still be overwhelmingly majority, body for body by the plain and simle fact that there are more whites in the country.”</p>
<p>I totally agree. People don’t understand the point of AA- it isn’t to make everything fair, but to give a better sense of diversity on college campuses. No one wants to go to a college where everyone is white. Colleges need to use the quota system so that students are exposed to people of all different races. Racial diversity on college campuses is a key way to break down racism in this country as students grow up with friends of different races. </p>
<p>Native Americans can practically get into any school they want- and they should! I, for one, have never met a Native American and would consider a Native American population at a college a strong benefit.</p>
<p>This might have passed the laugh test back at the time the brief was written, and even then only for lack of data disclosure. In the past decade the evidence has become incontrovertible that, as long suspected, the admissions odds for Asians would “significantly increase” in the absence of race preferences, and even more so if race-disparate nonacademic preferences (athletic and legacy admissions) were removed.</p>
<p>As a follow up to my previous comments, I have no problem with eliminating “AA” in admissions, as long as colleges continue to have the right to consider an applicant’s race (as a means of promoting diversity) to the same degree they consider legacy for some in the overall decision. </p>
<p>I don’t agree. Many of the most selective schools use other criteria other than grades and test scores (where Asians tend to excel), such as co-curricular activities that demonstrate leadership, talent, and well-roundedness. In some cases, Asian students are not as competitive in these areas as their counterparts. There was a story in the WSJ a few years ago about a young Korean kid who went to Groton with a stellar academic record who was rejected by the ivy schools. One of the reasons speculated in the article was the fact he participated in no activities and spent most of his free time listening to Korean music in his room.</p>
<p>In addition, personal essays play a big part in the selection process as they provide greater insight into an individual. SAT I Writing scores for Asians suggest this is an area where Asians possibly underperform as well.</p>
<p>“I totally agree. People don’t understand the point of AA- it isn’t to make everything fair, but to give a better sense of diversity on college campuses”</p>
<p>“fair” is another word of “equality”. If diversity practice doesn’t honor this mission, then it fails.</p>
<p>“Colleges need to use the quota system so that students are exposed to people of all different races”
This is good practice, but if they use it as priority to not honor the academic achievement, eg acccepting 1800 SAT and not 2380 SAT for the AA’s shake, then they fail as places to honor and promote academy</p>
<p>AA isn’t going to change anytime soon for private universities. The reality is that if AA were based on socioeconomics, fewer URMs would be admitted. Just look at the UC schools.</p>
<p>“Colleges need to use the quota system so that students are exposed to people of all different races.”</p>
<p>What “quota system” are you referring/agreeing with?</p>
<p>If there is a “quota system” for AAs, then there must be a “quota system” for legacy applicants as well? How about athletes? Is there a “quota system” for them as well? </p>
<p>Truth be told, there is no “quota system”. Quotas were outlawed by the SCOTUS in the U of M undergraduate decision. </p>
<p>What we have is the right for a college to consider race as a non-deterministic factor in a holistic evaluation of a candidate; synonymous to legacy, which is used to give a non-merit boost to some candidates who happen to be born into a family with a parent or grandparent alum of the school.</p>
<p><a href=“2kidsincollege:”>quote</a> I don’t agree [with #108].
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What part of post #108 don’t you agree with? </p>
<p>The amicus brief says something that was privately known and publicly suspected to be a lie in 1996 and has been overwhelmingly exposed as such since then. The lie is the claim that no non-URM applicants are significantly disadvantaged by race-centered admissions (that is the correct term; the Princeton study showed empirically that being black had a greater effect on an application than any other major preference category). We now know the results at elite state colleges and law schools that have partly eliminated the race preferences. The Asian acceptance and enrollment figures shot up dramatically at the leading UC’s after the California ballot initiative. That’s in addition to a number of academic studies quantifying the effect of preference removal.</p>
<p>“D is graduating from academically competitive liberal New England prep school with amazingly racist, anti-affirmative action attitudes. Dark-skins can break any rule and flunk any class and not be kicked out. Dark-skins get into top colleges where white kids (unless recruited athletes or legacy) haven’t got a chance. AA is having the opposite of the intended effect: graduating a generation of high achieving students who loath URMs.”</p>
<p>I can’t believe you just call people Dark-skins. I think it’s you that has a problem here.</p>
<p>I don’t agree an Asian’s odds would necessarily increase in the most selective schools. UC schools are not the most selective. I am talking about top national schools where the acceptance rate is 20% or less.</p>
<p>In these schools, it takes more than just top grades and scores to get in. Many of these schools turn away thousands of kids with perfect SAT scores every year. </p>
<p>At these schools an Asian student may pass the first filter; but what is unique about Asians that will get them selected in greater numbers amongst all the other non-Asian students with equally impressive academic stats?</p>
<p>The article cited above addresses suspected “quotas” in hiring. The discussion we are having deals with admissions policies at colleges and universities. Two totally different subjects. </p>
<p>Many years ago, I taught graduate courses at JHU. Had you tried the same “bait and switch” logic in my class…you would have left yourself open to a bit of ridicule.</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png]File:1995-SAT-Income2.png](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png%5DFile:1995-SAT-Income2.png){kind=link}
