"worst" accepted students

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
21

<p>Dbate,</p>

<p>No, what’s “funny” is that even if have the scores to be accepted to Yale regardless of your skin color, you’re going to spend the rest of the life having to prove that you really did deserve to be admitted to Yale. For a URM, admission to Yale loses a lot of its prestige because you’re not held to the Yale standard, you’re held to the Yale URM standard. In short, Harvard for a hispanic/black person isn’t Harvard for a white/asian person because the schools admissions policies say they aren’t the same. So your future employer can’t just look at you and go, “Harvard material” he has to look at you and go, “What color is he? Oh, URM? Okay, 250 points off the SAT until proven otherwise.” Can’t you see that affirmative action makes the legitimate accomplishments of minorities meaningless? For the rest of your life, people, even your own people, will look at you and think, “You only got into Harvard because you’re ______ <---- (insert color here)” So who is really punished? The URM that got a 4.5 GPA and a 1550 on her SAT"s and doesn’t get to bask in the same prestige as her white/asian classmates because affirmative action makes everyone doubt her accomplishments because, truth be told, no one can tell if you’re the URM who got the diversity admit or if you’re a great student who just happens to be a URM - so why not just hire a white/asian kid that you KNOW is Ivy League material, without having to play a bunch of guessing games?</p>

<p>Can you now see the problem? AA doesn’t level the playing field, it slants it! It’s the same old glass ceiling, because “white” Yale means a lot more than “black” Yale, and YALE IS THE ONE THAT MADE IT THAT WAY. What good is being admitted to a top university if the accomplishment is always going to be viewed with suspicion? AA further institutionalizes racism, because from the day you set foot on campus you’ve already been classified by race, and since that classification has an ostensibly different standard, it only makes sense for your employers and peers to view your accomplishments by that lower standard? You might be laughing to yourself having pulled one over on all of your white and asian peers, but no one will ever question their test scores or merit. Because of AA, you will spend the rest of your life having to prove you really belong, and you can’t fault well meaning people for simply being aware of the fact that under represented minorities are held to a much lower standard, and judging them accordingly. It’s not their fault that the university imposes a racially based paradigm on them, and so while they may choose to ignore the truth, deep down they, and you, and all of us know it. Again, my heart bleeds for the URM who has the scores to gain admission to the university without AA, for they are the ones who suffer most. To be honest, I’d rather 75% less diversity on campus if it meant that the 25% of URM’s that remained were freed from the glass ceiling of current admission policies. </p>

<p>As someone of mixed heritage (though, admittedly, mostly white), I can assure you that I see both sides of the issue, and Affirmative Action does no good for anyone.</p>

22

<p>^WOW, THANK YOU! well-stated</p>

23

<p>Well, every college wants diversity and they will do anything to fill in that “gap.” We will never really know what was the lowest scores admitted…but the main point in any application is the ESSAY. If you make yourself stand out, no matter if you have a 2000 verse 2300…it means little because colleges look at everything. I have heard college admission officers say that the most important thing is the Essay, GPA and then scores.</p>

24

<p>i hope soooo cuz being asian i have no chance with just a dumb but amazing sat score</p>

25

<p>I also believed that accepting applicants on a socioeconomic basis made more sense. However, recently I’ve come to realize that a cultural element factors into play.</p>

<p>Edit: I just read phear_me’s input and I would agree save if the employer was really that suspicious about whether the applicant was admitted solely because of his race, he could always look at his college GPA. Surely, even if he got into Yale a 2.0 wouldn’t be held in such high regard.</p>

26

<p>Well to the kid who wanted to know my scores, I didn’t send in the SATs because Yale doesn’t require them if you send in the ACT. My ACT score was a 34.</p>

27

<p>True, URM students will always be doubted about whether or not they were even academically accepted or URM accepted to top colleges.</p>

28

<p>weak sauce. so you sorta kinda flailed on the SAT huh?</p>

29

<p>Truth be told phear_me everything that you said is true. In fact the only reason I came on here is because I was feeling really bummed. It was the Harvard-Yale game I it dawned on me I go to Yale and everytime I think of what a great accomplishment that is affirmative action comes to mind and I think about the white girl a year ahead of me that didn’t get in and I wonder if I would be here if I wasn’t black. </p>

<p>In reality I would like to think I was one of the blacks who didn’t need AA considering I did alot of quantum mechanics research, was one of the best speakers in Texas, did band, played football and scored well enough on theACT to get into any university in America black or white. But I admittedly had a low class rank (13 out of like 500) and it does make me wonder. Well is all the worse though, is that the same year I got admitted an asian student ranked 13 in his class got admitted to Harvard, and one of my good friends who is white got admitted being 17 in his class, yet they never have to doubt if they deserved to be at Harvard or Yale. So it does suck for those of us who work really hard and do achieve.</p>

<p>But whatever, the fact that I am making better grades than some of the whites and Asians who went to prep schools gives me comfort :), and lets me know I got in here based on merit.</p>

30

<p>^you would have been deferred/rejected if you were korean or chinese</p>

31

<p>While I do believe that many URM applicants do get huge boosts due to AA, and perhaps a handful would have never been considered had they not been minorities, most of those who were accepted are highly qualified. I think Dbate might have been accepted (or at least deferred) without AA, but I’m quite sure it also helped. :)</p>

32

<p>^ a 13 out of 500 is SUCH a bad rank -_-</p>

33

<p>Dbate, </p>

<p>A 34 is a fantastic ACT score and I never doubted your personal merit. I am simply pointing out that affirmative action really does more harm than good. It is because I have a great respect for all people that I chafe at the racially motivated policies of affirmative action. But, also firmly believing that people shouldn’t be limited because of the shortcomings of their familial situation, I do remain a strong supporter of diversity admits based on socioeconomic status, although not of the “you’re poor so you get a lower standard variety”, but rather an opportunity to explain your background and any extenuating circumstances in the interview/essay process, because I do think that accomplishments need to be viewed within the context that they were achieved to get the best feel for potential success and merit. Again, if URM’s really are suffering from some form of institutional racism (something I doubt very much these days given the fact that asians are 4% of the population and the most overrepresented in terms of education and wealth per capita), then they would still receive the benefits of this socioeconomic policy. </p>

<p>Diversity is something that comes about from differences in culture, experience, and background. While skin color can be correlated with these things, it is most definitely not causal. To say, “having blacks/hispanics at the school adds diversity” without spending a minute to find out about that person is to say that there is something intrinsically DIFFERENT between races, and thus AA is a policy that actually implicitly validates racism. I cannot support a policy that is shrouded in such a savage hypocrisy. </p>

<p>Look at Dbate, who has professed his own doubts about whether or not he belongs at Yale (with a 34 ACT you do). But if he has doubts, can you imagine how others will view his time at Yale? A policy that causes meritorious students to doubt themselves is horsecrap, and the worst part is no one can blame people for doing it, because it is the school’s themselves that create this racist paradigm that others must try to work around. I am white/castillian, my sister is black/white, my 1st cousins are white/polynesian and white/mexican. We’ve got it all in our family and I truly believe I’m not racist. And yet, when a URM tells me they were admitted to a top school, the first thought I always have is, “what were your test scores?”, because I want to know if the person is a diversity admit, or if they earned it. </p>

<p>Having to navigate a system that forces me to think that way if I am to make sense of it really, really, ****es me off.</p>

34

<p>Phear</p>

<p>Interesting, yet flawed. If you meet a white tennis player at…say… Yale, will you think…hmmm was she an athletic recruit? Or does the fact that she’s white automatically confer genius status and make you presume that she had 99 percentile SATs and a 4.0 GPA? If you find yourself rooming with the heir to the IBM or Pillsbury fortunes, do you think , hmmm … I wonder if (s)he is a legacy recruit? </p>

<p>This kind of pie in the sky conversation always amuses me as though any of these processes are fully “equitable” and “fair.” Wake up. They are not. Nor are job interviews and placements.</p>

<p>When I was a student at Bowdoin, the gentleman I dated for 3 years was a white man from the West Coast whose father was a graduate of the school. My boyfriend was also courted for his football prowess. His grade point average and his SATs were solid but lower than mine and my roommates (one who was a Northern Maine farm family recruit). He was white. I am African American. Later, when I attended Harvard for graduate school, the whisper and chuckle joke of the two years was that the dumbest person in our program was a middle aged alcoholic who was a direct descendant of John Harvard, followed by a white woman who had attended University of Connecticut as an undergraduate and graduated with a B+ avaerage and shaky GREs which she as much admitted after too much tequila at the local bar and grill.</p>

<p>If it makes you feel superior or more comfortable about yourself, continue to make automatic assumptions. I can not speak for second tier schools, having never attended any, but I can say that Ivy League schools cream for the very few AA candidates they accept. They always have, and they always will. That means for the uninformed that they’re not taking “unqualified” candidates. They’re still taking the best and the brightest and if that means a 93 percentile on a standardized test instead of the 99th…horrors, gasp! How will you ever survive sitting next to such an idiot in your History or Chem class?</p>

35

<p>wash, </p>

<p>I am a graduate of MIT, so I’m initiated in the ways of prestige, although MIT is far more of a meritocracy than most of the Ivies. Do note that I turned down Columbia & Cornell to attend MIT (grad school), so I’m not exactly making angry “pie in the sky” excuses for my own lack of success. </p>

<p>Since the only actual argument you made in the above post is that athletes are also admitted with lower stats, I will address that point and leave you to stew in the remaining vitriol on your own. The main difference between a URM and an athlete that you can’t tell if someone played sports just by looking at them, but it’s really easy to tell if someone is black, white, asian, or hispanic. Furthermore, athletic talent is a unique talent that actually does adversity. The last time I checked, being a URM is not a talent in and of itself.</p>

<p>Making up numbers, i.e. 99% vs 93%, is meaningless. Here’s a fact: 84% of black students have SAT scores below their respective institutions average an 67% of hispanics do as well. (source: UCSD memo on AA). While a diversity admit URM may be QUALIFIED they are not AS QUALIFIED as other applicants, and yet because of a racist policy that proclaims dark skin requires lower standards, or provides some inherent “diversity” difference (as if peoples perspectives could be reduced to skin color!), they are admitted. Being qualified isn’t sufficient criterion when people are competing in a process that is expected to be based on merit, not race.</p>

36

<p>@washdcmom: This argument is dealing with the “unhooked” applicants. That is, those who are not minorities, athletic recruits, or legacies and are attempting to receive admission based on academic merit. Athletes and legacies have similar preferential treatment conferred upon them just as minorities which is obvious although the argument has steered towards concerns regarding ethnicity.</p>

<p>But by your argument, why should a minority applicant be accepted solely because (s)he is at/near the top of his/her minority peers? If that applicant’s qualifications do not match those of her white/Asian counterparts, then he or she does not deserve acceptance, since such an offer of admission would be unfairly taking racial matters in account. Clearly, one who scores in the 93 percentile is not an “idiot” but one in the scoring in the 93rd is still not performing at the level of most applicants.</p>

37

<p>Excuse me if I am not making any sense, but I think the best colleges not necessarily look for simply the best students. They are a. looking for the best class of students, and that implies diversity and compatibility b. looking for those that will utilize their potentials and make greatest use of the resources and education. On that note, they actually do need to care for some aspects other than simply top-notch, but many other aspects as well. And one more thing, colleges are not shrines. They have to think sometimes for their own development. So for example by recruiting legacy students may do benefit to the endowment rate. But of course, great colleges look for great students. But always THE BEST? Not always so.
Just my highly personal opinion.</p>

38

<p>wash, </p>

<p>To address the standard ad hominem “you must be _____ <---- (insert phobia here)” attacks used by most liberal AA believers, I’m happy to let you know that I am a graduate of MIT, so I’m initiated in the ways of prestige. Not to mention I’m confident in, what is considered common knowledge, the world class rigor of the MIT meritocracy. After experiencing cross registration with Harvard students, I can assure you I’m not losing any sleep at night at not being there. If you’re really hung up on the Ivies, do note that I turned down Columbia & Cornell to attend MIT, so I’m not exactly making angry “pie in the sky” excuses for my own lack of success. Okay, so the “you’re just trying to feel superior” argument has been effectively derailed. </p>

<p>Since the only actual argument you made in the above post is that athletes are also admitted with lower stats, I will address that point and leave you to stew in the remaining vitriol on your own. T being, one obvious difference between a URM and an athlete that you can’t tell if someone played sports just by looking at them, but it’s really easy to tell if someone is black, white, asian, or hispanic. Thus, lower academic standards for the athlete does not create a paradigm of, at least obvious, discrimination against them. More importantly, is the fact that athletic talent is a unique attribute that actually does adversity and improve the body of skills that comprise the university. By contrast, the last time I checked, being a URM is not a talent in and of itself.</p>

<p>Making up numbers, i.e. 99% vs 93%, is meaningless. Here’s a fact: 84% of black students have SAT scores below their respective institutions average an 67% of hispanics do as well. (source: UCSD memo on AA). While a diversity admit URM may be QUALIFIED they are not AS QUALIFIED as other applicants, and yet because of a racist policy that proclaims dark skin requires lower standards, or provides some inherent “diversity” difference (as if peoples perspectives could be reduced to skin color!), they are admitted. Being qualified isn’t sufficient criterion when people are competing in a process that is expected to be based on merit, not race.</p>

<p>One other point to consider is that AA is a bandaid to fix a perceived problem in the ethnic makeup of colleges. If there really is an issue outside of personal choice/responsibility that is keeping minorities from the same academic success as whites, affirmative action reduces to an offensive form of condescension that placates minority communities and impedes an improved understanding of the actual dynamics leading to the academic inequality between races. Although, again, with asians being the smallest population and now the most overrepresented ethnic group in terms of education and wealth, I find such institutional racism arguments seriously lacking for any causally supportive data.</p>

39

<p>^ I agree with phear_me, there was a girl from my school who got accepted to Harvard a couple of years ago. For the past 10 years she was the only one accepted to any type of ivy league school and although she was accepted a few years ago, people are still saying that she got accepted because she was Native American ( which I heard is the URM with the easiest chances). I think AA just demeans her great accomplishment. If she was white/ asian everyone would probably be saying she was a genius since no one else has ever been accepted. I feel bad for agreeing with the opinions of others since the girl did have relatively low scores and not active in any major ECS because of the stigma of AA.</p>

40

<p>Ok, i rarely post on topics like this but i’m tired of prestige-minded people constantly discussing how people don’t deserve to be at certain universities. Phear_me, you say you’re a graduate of MIT so why are you worried about affirmative action in undergraduate admissions? What drives you to make these arguments? People are so much more than their test scores. I know some very intellectual people who just don’t score well and people who are so involved in their EC’s that they aren’t going to spend thousands of dollars or waste their precious time studying for the SAT/ACT. A person is so much more than their test score, as cliche as that may sound. Now some people are probably going to think i’m bitter about not scoring “as high as other applicants,” but that’s simply not true. </p>

<p>I’m surrounded by intelligent black people at my private high school who, qutie frankly, don’t need affirmative action to help gain admission to top schools. I do agree that AA should be more based on socioeconomic background, but I believe that the system is not completely flawed. In the past couple of years, I’ve seen lazy black seniors apply to Ivies and not get in, proving that top schools don’t accept underqualified students. Ok, you can argue that the blacks who do get in have lower scores than their asian/white counterparts. So what? There might have been something about that applicant that was particularly attractive to the adcoms. I would hate to go to a school filled with a bunch of 2400 scoring robots, not that those who score that high are boring. I’m really really tired of people who wear their SAT scores as a badge of honor as if it adds so much to their lives. If one could study for these tests then the test only tests how well you can take the test. I know my argument is a little random but i just had to get this off my chest. This is certainly not an attack on phear_me for the record.</p>