The Justice Department confirms investigation into admissions practices at Harvard University

^^ While many Stuyvesant students are low income, it’s impossible to succeed on the Admissions test without extensive test prep, and those low income students find a way to do it. To wit: http://www.wnyc.org/story/301916-around-sunset-park-tutoring-is-key-to-top-high-schools/

Although a bit old as well, more recent than the wnyc piece referenced above:

http://nypost.com/2014/07/19/why-nycs-push-to-change-school-admissions-will-punish-poor-asians/

In a holistic admissions approach, it argues that the wealthier New Yorkers who can afford to pay for extra curricular activities outside the school that may benefit more…just a thought…

@gibby

Students learn something by participating in test prep, which many call “studying.” To be successful at Stuyvesant, one has to study - more so than many other schools.

Does the willingness to prepare, ie study, for the entrance exam signify the willingness to study once admitted? Probably. Why is that a problem?

Do the poor tend to attend not so great public schools that do not otherwise prepare students for the Stuyvesant entrance exam? Probably. So the parents and kids take matters into their own hands by spending their free time preparing for the entrance exam. Why is that a problem?

Nobody is being excluded from test prep as evidenced by the fact that many poor NYC-based Asian-Americans are able to access such resources.

@roethlisburger, two different issues. I’m not talking about a case where women are barred from attendance, I’m observing that it’s entirely commonplace for coed colleges and universities to balance the distribution of men and women in their classes even when it means that it’s harder for one gender to be admitted. The argument is that a class heavily dominated by one group will make the school less appealing to students and they will stop applying for admission.

@FourScoreFour, the holistic admissions is used to make sure that the class that enters offers a varied set of skills and experiences. Granted, it also means that the school has the freedom to admit some of the athletes and connected kids it wants. But the point is it isn’t intentionally used to limit one race’s representation in the class. I do not know if the representation of Asians at Harvard is lower than it should be. We have no way of knowing because we aren’t privy to the application data. What I can say is that Harvard is not Caltech. Its mission is different and it means that while the school values high test scores and high grades, it also looks beyond these factors to get at other, soft and not always quantifiable factors.

@3girls3cats

My comments were about proposals to change Stuyvesant’s admissions policy from test based to holistic.

Stuyvesant IS Caltech like while other high schools in the NYC area are not. Not all kids have the same needs and perform best in the same environment and having a diverse array of different types of high schools - just like having colleges that differ from each other – is a good thing.

Changing Stuyvesant’s admissions policy would mean changing the nature of how it operates. Right now, the curriculum can be geared to very high performing STEM kids. That would have to be changed if less academically prepared students are admitted in place of those who are better prepared.

Oh, I’m not proposing that Stuyvesant change its admissions policy! It has a mission that is well served by its admissions policies and I agree, Stuy is Caltech. I have no argument with a school that holds itself out to be school for high achieving STEM students and uses student performance on admissions tests to determine admission. And aren’t there other test in schools that offer alternatives to those who don’t get into Stuy?

Harvard, on the other hand, is not Caltech.

@3girls3cats

It’s extremely relevant. The main issue is what level of scrutiny is required for gender based discrimination in education? If you accept the majority’s view in the VMI case that an exceedingly persuasive justification is needed, the next question becomes can discriminating in admissions on the basis of gender meet that threshold? You would need smarter legal minds than mine to look at the issue, but my sense is explicit gender quotas would likely be unconstitutional, at least in so far as we’re discussing public colleges(assuming you accept the level of scrutiny in the VMI majority).

With all due respect, the VMI case dealt only with the standard for maintaining a ** male only admissions policy ** at the school and it dealt with whether the standard imposed was closer to the strict scrutiny standard used to evaluate race-based discrimination rather than the less rigorous intermediate scrutiny.

I am asking a different question. I’m asking only whether people object to the very common and seemingly accepted practice of ** coed ** schools using holistic admissions to balance the makeup of their classes so that the number of men is roughly equivalent to the number of women. There’s no strict quota in place and both genders are affected, depending on the school and the major.

I’ll just make one comment on this topic right now: anybody who thinks the current Justice Department is going to take action that helps Asian students in college admissions is in for a rude awakening, in my opinion.

I disagree with that. As we can see all the time on CC, affirmative action is a wedge issue, and Trump and Sessions love grandstanding on wedge issues. It is irrelevant (or almost irrelevant) that Asian-Americans could be the major beneficiaries if affirmative action at Ivy League universities is outlawed. The idea that affirmative action should be outlawed appeals to a broad swath of the Trump base . . . and those people don’t actually give a hoot what happens in the Ivy League anyway. They just want to hear that liberals and URMs have been taken down a peg or five and been revealed as racists.

And there are probably plenty of districts on the East and West Coasts where Republicans would love to pick up some Asian-American votes. So sending more Asian kids to Harvard may not be completely irrelevant, either.

They are not going to get a lot of volunteers from career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division to work on this case, but they’ll find someone, somewhere, inside or outside the Justice Department.

@3girls3cats

It appears to me that any public college rejecting a more qualified applicant to maintain some desired sex ratio would be in violation of the equal protection clause and Title IX. It appears that any university, public or private, doing so at the graduate or professional level would be in violation of Title IX. As for private colleges at the undergrad level, it seems like they can do whatever they want in targeting a sex balance, unless Congress decides to modify Title IX.

I think that Stuyvesant should close its doors forever. I am not alone in this opinion.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/07/the_case_for_shutting_down_stuyvesant_high_school_the_best_public_school.html

It is a pressure cooker that discriminates in insidious ways against minorities. It gets tiring to hear repeatedly in this forum that one race or another is genetically superior. You may be financially or culturally superior but that does not give you the right to gobble up all the spaces at an elite institution such as Harvard. That is the very heart throb of blatant discrimination and a complete lack of any sense of social justice.

As some have said Harvard is no Caltech nor does it want to be. Harvard has kids that want to go on to finance or consulting or to just teach high school history to underprivileged kids. Harvard has a big view of the world and the value of diversity. So Sessions can look all he wants at Harvard it will not change Harvards mission to value people of all races and all backgrounds

Schools like Stuy and some HS in the bay area just lead in many cases to neurotic mal adjusted teens on the verge of suicide. I see nothing good about that. They don’t need Harvard they need a sense of priorities and a meaningful view of life. Creating more suicide clusters is not the answer

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/

And I think that there should be more schools like Stuy. Certainly not all, but more. There are many highly gifted children thst are depressed throughout the country because they are not challenged and have no intellectual peers. A place like Stuy can be a life saver.

And as far as it being a bad place for some students, you are right. My oldest would have wilted in a highly competitive environment. My youngest, on the other hand, would thrive. Don’t extrapolate your children being a poor fit, and assume that is true for all others.

And @collegedad13, it boggles my mind how you could take a completely meritocratic selection process, and twist it so that system is considered racist. Here is a clue that it isn’t: There is nothing in the selection process that discriminates based upon the race of the applicant.

Having had two kids graduate from Stuyvesant HS, I agree with @collegedad13’s assessment, however this thread has gotten wildly off course – which may be my fault, as I suggested Harvard should NOT deviate from it’s current holistic model and emulate a meritocracy such as Stuyvesant HS. So, unless the moderators want to close this thread for going off course, I suggest the focus should remain on the title of this thread

LOL hehegebe. It is not a completely meritocratic practice. The admission process forces 10 year olds to cram for a test over and over they will take when they are 12. Kids should be playing little league or soccer at 10 not be on the path of neuroticism

I am not sure how you can not say that the process is not racist unless you believe in a genetically superior super race.

https://ny.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2014/06/09/city-endorses-legislative-push-to-diversify-elite-high-schools/#.VRrJoZPF-R9

At Stuyvesant High School, for instance, just 3 percent of seats were offered to black and Hispanic students.

“As the Chancellor has said before, a student is more than the result of one exam,” Devora Kaye said in a statement.

“We cannot have a dynamic where some of our greatest educational options are only available to people from certain backgrounds,” de Blasio said in April.

Thanks Gibby you are right!!!

“Admissions process benefits a campus even though it may be discriminatory towards some.”

So it’s okay to be discriminatory against some groups and not others?

Yes! Harvard, and all colleges really, strive to do just that every year. For example, every college I’m aware of – save single sex colleges – wants to have an equal balance of men and women in their freshman class.

However, if MORE women apply than men, the college is left with a discriminatory choice: do we admit students based upon their scholastic ability regardless of gender? Or, do admit more men (who may not be up to the same standards as the women) to create an equal gender balance? If a college chooses the latter – which most tend to do – they are being discriminatory against one gender. Is that okay? In my book (and that of virtually every college in America), the answer is a resounding YES!

@collegedad13

Stuyvesant has had very successful graduates (see below). Sorry to burst your preconceived stereotypes.

Standardized tests have been revised repeatedly over the years to take out any hint of racial/cultural bias. The SAT itself has been revised at least 3 times since the late 1980s. Stuyvesant likes students who can study hard and thrive in an academically challenging environment. That’s not your cup of tea? Go elsewhere.

Frankly, it’s comical that so many families obsess over youth sports (of all things) - having their sons play on 3 different baseball teams at a time while denigrating those who choose to focus on other, more academic passions.

@collegedad13 I can call you neurotic for having whatever interests choose to focus on. That doesn’t make it so. Again, dispense with your racial stereotypes. They’re offensive.

@gibby

Now that your children have already benefitted from Stuyvesant, you’re happy to tear it down so others may not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School

Stuyvesant is noted for its academic programs, having produced many notable alumni including four Nobel laureates.[95][96] U.S. News & World Report ranked it as one of the best high schools nationwide in their 2012 list of America’s best “Gold-Medal” public high schools[97] and fifth best in its 2012 list of STEM schools.

According to a September 2002 high school ranking by Worth magazine, 3.67% of Stuyvesant students went on to attend Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities, ranking it as the 9th top public high school in the United States and 120th among all schools, public or private.[98] In December 2007, The Wall Street Journal studied the freshman classes at eight selective colleges (Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams College, Pomona College, Swarthmore College, U. Chicago, and Johns Hopkins), and reported that Stuyvesant sent 67, or 9.9% of its 674 seniors, to them.[99]
Stuyvesant, along with other similar schools, has regularly been excluded from Newsweek’s annual list of the Top 100 Public High Schools. The May 8, 2008 issue states the reason as being, “because so many of their students score well above average on the SAT and ACT.”[100][101] U.S. News & World Report, however, included Stuyvesant on its list of “Best High Schools” published in December 2009, ranking 31st.[102] In its 2010 progress report, the New York City Department of Education assigned it the highest possible grade of “A”.[103]

Stuyvesant has contributed to the education of several Nobel laureates, winners of the Fields Medal and the Wolf Prize, and other accomplished alumni. In recent years, it has had the second highest number of National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists, behind Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia.[104] Over the past nine years (2002–2010), Stuyvesant has produced 103 semi-finalists and 13 finalists on the Intel Science Talent Search, the second most of any secondary school in the United States.[105]

“I suggest the focus should remain on the title of this thread: The Justice Department confirms investigation into admissions practices at Harvard University”

My 2 cents: DOJ investigation is serious. It can dig out whatever information and documents that it sees fit. I think it may zoom in to the level of a few selected high schools, such as Stuyvesant, and see whether it can find somethings at the micro level. This is going to put pressure on pretty much all elite schools, and Harvard is surely at the direct receiving end of the lightning bolt.

Just like all institutions (NFL being the recent example), Harvard and other elite schools do not operate in a vacuum. They are members of the society and they do react and adjust to the external environment, like they have always done.

I am not saying whether this is good or bad, or right or wrong. It is just logical from an organizational perspective for them to make some adjustments in order to divert some external forces.