Agreed, and the buckets change over time. Today there appears to be a first-generation/low income bucket, a relatively new development. If tomorrow Harvard announced it was interested in the ambidextrous, tens of thousands of kids would be trying to become that. The premise of the article is that elite admissions officers priorities shape many teen lives, and that is undeniable. It may also be undesirable.
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Speaking about buckets will likely only continue the illogical assumption some people hold that any one student’s denial was directly related to some combination of URM policies and Holistic policies. The basic math should be enough to disabuse anyone of that belief.
As the numbers and facts I presented above show, even if ZERO URMs applied to Princeton and if ZERO URMs were admitted during the 2019-20 season, approximately 92.8 of the applicant pool (an applicant pool almost entirely comprised of applicants who were either totally or partially Caucasian and/or Asian) would have been denied admittance.
The math should reveal how illogical it is to blame URMs and/or supposed Holistic policies for anyone’s denial. Again, even if no URMs applied, with no “buckets” reserved for URMs, approximately 24,512+ Caucasian and/or Asian applicants would be denied admittance.
Even if we account for the approximately 233 URMs newly enrolled at Princeton in any given year, it seems ludicrous to the point of suspension of disbelief to say over 24,000 Caucasian and/or Asian applicants were all denied so 233 URM students could be enrolled. The math simply doesn’t support that lie.
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Exactly. Pitting racial minorities against each other has a long tradition of ultimately perpetuating the status quo.
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I am not sure we are disagreeing, but who in the world is making the claim that all posited 24,000 applicants are being denied so that 233 URM could be admitted?
Nevertheless, the URM hook is powerful. The regression studies conducted by Harvard itself showed for instance that absent race preference, 90%+ of some categories of URM would not have been admitted. So, while it is true that no particular non-URM applicant who is denied can or should point to URM preference as the reason for her denial, it is equally true that collectively the URM preference closes off some percentage of the general applicant pool from the pool of unhooked applicants.
In this sense, URM preference is really no different than other sorts of preferences, such as legacy or athletic or first-generation preference, etc. As I termed them, these “buckets” represent the institutional priorities of the institution.
I’m not sure why this is so controversial. My own kid by the way is URM and presumably benefited from large URM preferences at T20 schools. It is what it is, this is the game as it is played.
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In reality, the opposite is true.
The problem is that too many now inappropriately conflate selectivity with quality. That’s partly because for a long time that was a component of the USNWR rankings and those rankings have a lot of inertia (if you believe them valid at all). Selectivity is a measure of ONE thing…popularity. The school may offer a good undergraduate experience or it may not. Not one, but two former professors at one of the nation’s premier science institutes dissuaded by son from applying. Both felt the undergraduate program was substandard. A student once told my son that the T20 school he attended was “like going to school at the DMV.” What is true is that a great education can be had at many non-selective institutions. It’s FAR more about a student’s curiosity and drive than it is about the school they attend. I’m very much aligned with @EconPop’s wonderful first comment:
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I agree with much of what you said.
My point is, the incredible disparity between admits/applicants so far outweighs any preference possibly shown to a percentage of 233 enrolled URM students that it is ridiculous to try to correlate the two disparate figures. Yet, correlate the two is exactly what the Harvard lawsuit was all about. And it was a leap of such immense nonsense logic that the suit had zero merit.
Also, there are many posts/threads on CC wherein someone either speculates or outright claims that their application was denied due to URM and/or Holistic policies. The article in the first post of this thread is all about complaining about Holistic policies.
EDIT: also, the tenor of the past quarter of this thread has shifted toward discussing admittance policies regarding URMs.
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I am forever fascinated by the length some families in our small, Silicon valley proximal suburban city go to in their efforts to secure a spot in one of these ultra selective universities. I work as a researcher and I am constantly inundated by high schoolers asking to intern for me in my lab. I used to be able to mentor a few high schoolers every summer but my lab’s policy changed and we can no longer host high school students due to some unfortunate safety protocol breaches involving a high school summer intern a few summers ago. Long story… I take time to reply to their emails with the current policy and wish them luck but they will not take no for an answer. MANY times their parents follow up telling me how their kid is the next Marie Curie (which I have no reason to doubt) and that they deserve a spot in the lab and a letter of recommendation from me for their college admissions. These kids’ CVs are thicker than mine. Many times I’ve chuckled to myself that with such accomplishments an undergraduate degree seems like a waste of time and money. The desperation in their communications has made me concerned and sad for them and I vowed to not ever consider these institutions for my kids. I’ve tried to make sure that high school should be a time of studying, yes, but also self discovery that allows for mistakes and recovery. But my kids are surrounded by peers (and their families) that from elementary school have worked towards admittance to an Ivy League school. It does set the tone and has led to many self esteem problems in these youngsters.
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Or conversely that students who get in are somehow “better,” but better by what metric? Certainly it isn’t anything outward facing.
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I think you misunderstand the Harvard lawsuit. While I question the motives of Blum, I believe that the lawsuit’s outcome will depend upon if the Supreme Court believes that the admission criteria is different according to race, and if so, if this difference is justified. The person supporting Blum’s position is a Duke University professor named Peter Arcidiancono, a Fellow of the Econometrics society, meaning that he is very skilled in applying statistical methods to problems like this one.
I don’t think the article was complaining about holistic admissions as much as it was questioning who was setting the standards for holistic qualification and how it is being applied by admissions officers.
I agree that URM is never the absolute reason why someone was rejected, but URM admissions decreases the amount of seats for all of the other highly qualified applicants.
20% of all undergraduate seats go to URM students, which doesn’t seem like much but if you factor in the fact that an additional 14% of students are legacy, 10% recruited athletes, and all of which in total takes up 44% of all available seats. Around half of all seats at your top Ivy are gone even without your app being read. Less seats, which increases competition.
I am in no way trying to say that one group has a clear advantage over the other, but the point I am trying to make is that college applications should be more merit based, not a roll of the dice.
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I never understood why the athletic bucket was not more controversial, especially at LACS. At UT, another 200 athletes in an undergrad body of 40k isn’t even noticed, but at a place like Williams (or Princeton), those athletes take up a big percent of a small class. It isn’t as if the sports there either make money or produce pro athletes.
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I hate to participate in the further hijacking of this thread but …
There is a huge realization going on in the Economics field about how blind Economic theories and calculations have been over the last forever years regarding race, gender, and other issues. This includes people educated at and teaching at every T20 university out there. I am not surprised that any one professor at any university holds illogical assumptions.
While we’re tossing out names, check out the articles of accomplished and lauded economists Claudia Sahm and William Spriggs who attended CC LAC favorites Denison and Williams College respectively.
EDIT: Sorry for allowing myself to get sidetracked with this response. I’d rather just allow the numbers I presented earlier to speak for themselves. The math proves any net negative effect URM and Holistic admission policies may or may not have on the denials of 30,000 Princeton applicants (and hundreds of thousands of T30 applicants) is statistically insignificant.
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When 30000+ applicants are vying for 1900 seats, from the very beginning it is inherently and by definition a roll of the dice. 
The problem is, many applicants seem to lack the critical thinking skills to recognize the very basic fact of math.
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Whoa there EconPop. You were the one saying that the case had no merit. I was pointing out that a person who is actually far better at analyzing this type of data disagrees. Note that the methods to analyze this type of problem are well known, and the fact that this involves race does not change the methods being used. Harvard will have its expert witnesses as well, and no doubt view the data differently.
That’s an oxymoron in general though and applicants should know that going in. Holistic simply gives admissions committees carte blanche to do as they will to narrow a pool of far too many qualified applicants for far too few slots. The standards, if there are any, are what the institution says they are (within the confines of the law). End of story. I’m a believer that adcoms heavily favor good creative writers, but who really knows from the outside? No one. So do as @EconPop said, take it for what it is and be prepared for the nearly certain statistical likelihood that the thick packet from elite school X won’t be coming in the mail, regardless of the accomplishments submitted.
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That bucket is basically a Trojan Horse for the very upper class from exclusive private schools to keep the $$$ flowing in . It’s not so much about athletics as it is about an investment in the college’s future endowment.
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Are they really non-profits with tax exempt status or are they just ‘businesses’ that make no money and don’t plan to make money?
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My sons track/XC high school team could probably beat a lot of these D3 schools at a meet 
, yet everyone only focuses on URM bucket.
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