<p>Why does mirroring the real world prepare high achieving students for their futures when nowhere else in the real world does a policy like AA exist? Why isn't it better to just get the best qualified, most diverese (actually diverse, not just different colors) student body?</p>
<p>As for the student who is harassed because of his inteligence that you spoke of, I agree that he should be given extra consideration - because he did not have the academic opportunities that I have had, and NOT because he is black. Why can't colleges give such preference to students of ALL colors, instead of just blacks?</p>
<p>Please stop patronizing me, and consider your own naivete, bias, and and racism when you post.</p>
<p>This is getting too personal, which is mostly my fault, so I'm going to stop posting here. If anyone has any good arguments for AA I'll continue monitoring this thread, so please post.</p>
<p>Momsdream, my heart goes out to your son. Racism is a real problem in America (although not on the scale that it used to be). Your tone is incredibly patronizing and I think you should probably try to fix that. We're all smart; we don't need to be talked down to...but that's irrelevant to the argument anyway. Look, affirmative action does not solve any problems. It is an attempt rather to treat a symptom of the larger problem (racism in America). Unfortunately, it was not a well thought out strategy. You complain that Black students are peeved that us evil white supremacists would dare imply that affirmative action might have helped them in the college admissions process. Well, hey...maybe because it does. Sure there is a myriad of qualified Black students. Ethio is one of them. Ethio: because of affirmative action however far you get in life and everything you accomplish will continually be questioned and cast in doubt because of the question of whether you were helped along or not (and from your scores and such I know you weren't and won't be). Affirmative action causes more problems than it solves in my opinion. The cost/benefit ratio just doesn't add up and it's not due to "racism," as much as many of us would like to scream that it is.</p>
<p>hope to see you all in Phildealphia in about 10 months.....you all have a great sense of passion, regardless of how off-base I think you are. Once your're given the right information, you'll be passionate advocates of truth. I only hope you'll think twice before assuming that the black student you meet isn't qualified. Then again, once their GPA surpasses yours, the truth will become glaringly clear....</p>
<p>I have read all of these messages and been very intrigued by what everyone has said and have come to this conclusion:</p>
<p>If a college is using affirmative action or something like it in order to help disadvantaged kids, then race SHOULD NOT be an issue. Disadvantaged kids come in all forms, shapes, colors, and races and helping all African-Americans in college selection regardless of their background and socioeconomic status is just plain wrong.</p>
<p>However,</p>
<p>If a college is using these sort of programs in order to make their campus more racially diverse, then I think that affirmative action is in fact OK. Momsdream is right when she says that a large reason schools like Penn accept URMs more easily than other races is that they want their school to be diverse and, consequently, attractive to applicants. If they erased affirmative action, a lot more Asians would be accepted to these top colleges and a lot less Blacks would be accepted as a result. Personally, I know that a lot of people would be turned off if they visited a campus and saw that the school was predominantly Asian. This may be prejudiced, but it's true. You base your opinion of a school off reputation and stereotype and a lot of people don't want to go to a school that they perceive to have students that are nerdy or studious because of these stereotypes. Diversity in proportion is extremely attractive to many applicants and eliminating affirmative action on both ends of the extreme (Blacks and Asians) would hurt colleges when trying to attract top students.</p>
<p>jared, Affirmative Action is for racial discrimination, not economic discrimination. People often mix up these ideas. Although people who make little money should be given extra consideration, AA deals with race not income. You have to realize that racial discrimination is still present today.</p>
<p>This is NOT about AA (since Penn is a private school and is not impacted by the Govt's AA policies)</p>
<p>Penn does this because they WANT to.....period. And, doing away with this goal would harm many, many more white applicants than black since white applicants are not the high scorers.</p>
<p>I understand you're successful. That doesn't give you a right to talk down to people. If you want us to treat you with respect, then it's only fair to ask for the same respect back. Again, diversity's a noble goal. Diversity of ideologies, cultures, values, opinions, and countries...these are all equations of a good campus. Momsdream, you mentioned a few posts back about how affirmative action has an extremely minimal effect. If that's true, then is campus diversity going to be affected that drastically? Is it really worth the stigma that gets placed on all minorites who are admitted???</p>
<p>The stigma is only becuase of the ignorance of the those who uphold it. We liken it to people who think UPenn is Penn State. Their opinion is negligent.</p>
<p>Haha very good...but unfortunately that's just plain not true. The stigma exists for obvious reasons. We're in agreement that many african-americans get admitted when they otherwise wouldn't be due to their skin color. This is what affirmative action is...let's not mince words. How is it ignorant for people to believe this? It's the truth. I know many aren't, but many are...let's say it's half and half (could be more, could be less, i'm not sure). If someone asked you to pick heads or tails but if you lost you had to pay 2 dollars and if you won you only had to pay one dollar what would you say? You'd probably say no...that's completely illogical (unless you're a gambling addict). Similarly, it's reasonable to cast doubt upon URM's college acceptances when there's a solid chance that affirmative action was indeed the most important reason behind their acceptance.</p>
<p>Let's turn the tables....you and many other white applicants are probably getting into Penn BECAUSE of tip facors and raced based policies. Whites are not the most qualified applicants when test scores are used as the criterium...and that's a proven fact. Ask your Asian friends. They'll tell you that they are being held to higher standards because not doing so would continue to increase their over-representation on campus and propoagte the stray from the mirror of general population. When you meet a black applicant and think "oh, you're here because of AA", they'll be thinking the same thing about you. The Asians are the only ones hindered by raced based admission policies as they would strongly outnumber whites otherwise. </p>
<p>Ilovepoker, raced based asdmission policies may be the only reason you get into Penn this year.</p>
<p>I could care less if people wanted to question my success. Whether or not its due to affirmative action or my own, work, it wouldn't matter. I would still be SUCCESSFUL - which is what matters to me. If a white kid wants to talk behind my back about my achievements, and discount them as all due to affirmative action, fine. I'm still doing a hell of a lot better than he is.</p>
<p>btw momsdream - </p>
<p>thanks for holdin it down for me...youre alot better versed on thsi topic than I am...by the way, you said you lived in philly? I did a wonderful program at Wharton over the summer called LEAD... philly is awesome by the way...your son should definitley look into it. Email me if you want details on it.</p>
<p>This Thread Has Been Officially Labelled: RETARDED</p>
<p>This is a classical case of two people (maybe a few more) who are too far away to punch each other on the face.
The internet was created for faster and borderless communication, but it also bought along a problem called: forum-disagreement/retardedness syndrome. Often this mental/system/internet illness is caused when two or more people disagree on a topic and can not find a way to resolve their differences. In real life disagreement like this one will end with either courteous mutual consent or asinine physical confrontation. However, when this situation occurs on the internet, each subject can only release frustration and rage by smash their keyboards with the mentality equal to that of a chimpanzee. Forum-disagreement/retardedness syndrome can cause bandwidth/server wastage, high blood pressure/heart rate, damage to phalanges, personal computer mistreatment and most devastating ---- unwanted retardedness, the inability to make philosophical inquiries and objective arguments.
To cure forum-disagreement/retardedness syndrome, one needs to bark 100 time while attempting to lick his own left ear.</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm sure affirmative action is going to help white people. That's pathetic. You've failed to rebut any of our points, instead just repeating the same red herrings. While asians might be hurt by affirmative action that doesn't equate to it being a tip factor for whites. The only time affirmative action is ever a tip factor is for URM's and you know it as well as I do. I'm done with this. If people can't logically argue their opinions without throwing out ridiculous statements there's no point in discussing the issue at any further length.</p>
<p>To just refute one thing that momsdream said:
"studies show that once African Americans are admitted, they perform JUST AS WELL in college as whites. "</p>
<p>This is not true. The Chronicle of Higher Education did a study in 1998 on affirmative action. They found that black students who scored between a 1250-1300 on the SAT had a 74% chance of gaining admission to the five colleges in the study. White students with the same scores had a 23% chance. After being admitted to the colleges studied, the average white students cumulative GPA was 3.15, while the average black students was 2.61. The numbers speak for themselves. Minority students are getting admitted to schools that they are not qualified for and so when they are at the school they cannot handle the workload, resulting in a lower collge GPA.
Another example is when the UC schools stopped using AA in admissions the percentage of minority students admitted dropped 52% at the elite UC schools like Berkeley and UCLA. However, the number of minority students actually increased at other UC schools like Irvine.</p>
<p>"and when the school bus would bring him home from his all-white school to our black neighborhood"
If you lived in a "six-figure family" why do you live in a "black neighborhood."</p>
<p>On another note, perhaps you don't realize that racism doesn't only affect and disadvantage blacks. I'm indian, and at various times people have been racist towards me. Additionally, for the majority of my life my family has lived in small apartments (we came from India and made extremely little money). But, just because I'm Indian--and us Indians work hard and achieve even when we are disadvantaged, I will be negatively affected by affirmative action. Why should your son--who is clearly less disadvantaged than me, get to be unfairly boosted in the college admissions process? There's absolutely no logical reason to explain this--affirmative action is down right racist. If it was fair, it would help all those who are disadvantaged. In reality, all it does it helps those blacks who do not and can not achieve as high as the rest of us.</p>