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Curious; what is the source of this info?</p>
<p>bubble, </p>
<p>Your entire essay was one giant equivocation between culture and ethnicity. Consider yourself very lucky that I was not the one reading it when you applied for admission.</p>
<p>That post was not an attack on you or anyone else on this thread, I don’t understand why your response was an attack on me. I was simply trying to offer another perspective and if you don’t agree with it, respect it or at the very least ignore it. And I don’t understand the “Consider yourself very lucky that I was not the one reading it when you applied for admission.” It was an essay for 11th grade english class that I thought pertained to this thread (as I mentioned) so I thought I’d post it. Perhaps it was my fault that it didn’t quite fit in with nature of the rest of the debate. Oh well…</p>
<p>I really don’t want to start something with someone I don’t know via the internet lol so I’m not going to say anything else on this thread. This and my previous post were not intended to be inflammatory and I’m sorry if I have offended anyone.</p>
<p>bubble,</p>
<p>I made that remark tongue in cheek and, as I said earlier, have been busy today and did not put the appropriate amount of thought into the comment. In retrospect, I see how it could be taken offensively and admit I was out of line. Please accept my apology, I didn’t mean to be offensive. </p>
<p>As for the rest your post, all I can do is comment once again that ethnicity and culture, while correlated, are not causal. All hispanics do not share the same culture as all whites as all asians as all blacks etc., so making an attempt to group a hispanic day laborer from Juarez with a hispanic investment banker from Mexico City as being from the same culture is absurd. The same categorical error occurs when adcoms attempt to group a white person from suburban San Francisco into the same culture as a farmer from the Appalachians. Surely the hispanic day laborer and the white farmer from the Appalachians have more in common with each other than the other aforementioned members of their race. And yet, the white farmer will be the most disadvantaged person in the admissions process and likely rebuffed as “having all of the advantages”, as though whites and asians have secret meetings where they pass out t-shirts and ferraris, I mean, where do you think all that stimulus money really went? Who gets the biggest advantage? The well to do hispanic, who had the most opportunities, because somehow there aren’t enough rich kids from private school in college? If AA makes sense, it makes sense based on socioeconomic status, not race. </p>
<p>If there is any great value to diversity, I emphatically state once again, that it has nothing to do with melanin and hair color and it sure as hell isn’t something one can derive from a checkbox on an application for admission.</p>
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<p>I did the math in another thread based on the SAT Data Tables. Let me dig it up for you. It’s a rough figure, but unfortunately there is not a data table available with the composite scores for African Americans.</p>
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<p>Although Hispanics may or may not have more in common than, say, African Americans, culture and ethnicity simply aren’t equal. They probably aren’t even strongly linked. That’s why I support top colleges when they try to accept students from every state, every country, etc. I’m also extremely supportive of new financial aid and admissions initiatives for low-income students (Stanford, for example, is 17% low-income and 24% first generation - that’s huge for a top school). That also works better. Race is ridiculous these days. On some of the “diversity weekends” I’ve been on (hey, they were free flights), I get hosts who epitomize self-segregation. At least two of my hosts commented that they only hosted those weekends to encourage more black students to come, so they could have more friends and boyfriends to choose from. SERIOUSLY? How ridiculous is that? I’m African American and I have to say I’ve never had a black friend. And life is good. Ugh.</p>
<p>I don’t support Affirmative Action in its current form. I do, however, and will continue to actively and vehemently support minorities, especially in colleges.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with the math there. If 1871 are scoring 700+ on math, 1871 are scoring 700+ on CR, and 1871 are scoring 1871 on W, then the literal maximum number of African-Americans scoring 700+ on all 3 sections is 1871, and that is if all 1871 of them earned 700+ on all 3 sections and no other African-American earned a 700+ in at least one section (obviously untrue). The even bleaker reality is that the number of African-Americans scoring 700+ on all 3 sections is most likely in the hundreds; calculations cannot approximate that number.</p>
<p>I think the right solution for getting rid of this score disparity is some sort of mass education reform. Obviously we are far from that point, with all that is currently going on with our nation. But racial affirmative action is a lazy, unthinking man’s solution to a problem that is really a subset of a bigger problem that affirmative action only serves to promote, and that is the culturally racial segregation that pervades our society now more than it ever has. That is a discussion for a separate thread.</p>
<p>As for worst accepted students: if you include hooked applicants, this title probably belongs not to athletes nor URMs nor mere legacies but rather developmental athletes. In fact, I met a kid this summer whose parents were huge Yale donors. I believe the kid was learning disabled and was taking a summer course remedially. Nevertheless, he will most likely attend Yale.</p>
<p>Unhooked candidates: haven’t really seen anything that would surprise. Maybe 2250 SAT, 3.9ish GPA? I hardly would consider that bad at all. Elite college admissions is unkind to the unhooked. Pick up that ball and start throwing the heck out of it; you might just become a college athlete! :)</p>
<p>But when you say “unhooked”, does this include applicants that may have a hook but not in the traditional URM, legacy, athlete way? For instance, many speculate that college admissions officers have certain “categories” for their applicants to fill which include the usual athletic needs, legacy needs, et cetera. But one that people don’t often discuss when discussing hooks is the “artistic or musical institutional needs”. So would people that have passion for and done a lot of work in a certain artistic or musical area be considered possibly hooked, but not in such a concrete way?</p>
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<p>I’m not disputing what you’re saying in the least, but I don’t understand your math here. Can you explain it in a different way? Math is one of those things that doesn’t settle with me in a paragraph.</p>
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These aren’t traditional hooks, and even if they became admissions boosts of sorts, you would know if you were skilled enough to have that boost. So yes, it would help a lot (I would avoid the term “hook” to avoid confusion with the traditional use) but no, your AP Studio Art final project collage does not count (wow that was mean! :)).</p>
<p>applicannot: If there are 3743 students with 700+ on every section, then it follows that there are at least 3743 students with 700+ on the math section. But there are only 1871 students with 700+ on the math section, so there’s a contradiction. Basically, think of a Venn Diagram and try to picture 3 circles, each with 1781 people in it, overlapping in certain areas so that the people in the overlap area count for each circle that they are bounded in. It’s tricky to explain without an actual diagram, but basically if there are 1781 students with 700+ math, 1781 students with 700+ CR, and 1781 students with 700+ W, and there is no overlap, then 0 students have 700+ in all 3 sections.</p>
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<p>Oh! Of course. Obviously. Now I see it - thanks for pointing that out instead of completely attacking my math skills. I completely committed a logic fallacy there. Good thing math was never my strong point. In the post that I quoted, I originally stated that only 1500 or fewer African American students scored a 700+ on every section. But then my math was questioned, and I re-did it, and then I just failed all over the place. Good point. On the one hand, don’t even get me started about the ridiculous African American performance in this country. On the other hand, I’m one of a select few hundred or so oddities.</p>
<p>“These aren’t traditional hooks, and even if they became admissions boosts of sorts, you would know if you were skilled enough to have that boost. So yes, it would help a lot (I would avoid the term “hook” to avoid confusion with the traditional use) but no, your AP Studio Art final project collage does not count (wow that was mean!”</p>
<p>Haha, yeah, I know. But I think I might have a “hook” in this department, as I’ve done a 7 years worth of screenwriting work. Well, we’ll see if it helps me, I guess! :)</p>
<p>lolooool</p>
<p>■■■■■■■</p>
<p>there was this girl at my school with
sat score of around 1200 but definitely less than
1300. anyway, she had this crazy disorder but was
a world athelete. she didn’t even write essays
but still got into an amazingly selective school.</p>
<p>i think she was recruited (as an atheleste)
and the professors wanted to
research her case.</p>
<p>ps-i think affirmative action should be based on income (if anything at
all) instead of ethnicity.</p>
<p>lJmYEA, it should be based on a combination of income and ethnicity.
There’s two girls at my school who got aa’d into top schools last year because they were “hispanic”, meaning they each had ONE grandparent who was from SPAIN. They were completely loaded and didn’t need “assistance” getting into college, but got in regardless.</p>
<p>HAHA…literally the same thing is happening to one of my friends. Are colleges really so stupid that they can’t recognize that CONQUISTADORS WERE THE ONES WHO KILLED THE TRUE HISPANICS and that SPAIN IS IN EUROPE.</p>
<p>While what Phear_me has said are mostly true, his(?) argument is based on the assumption that colleges admit students solely based on scores and tests. </p>
<p>It is true that URMs can score lower for the same chance of admission, but in truth, as long as they hit a certain threshold, there is no reason for colleges to deny them. We are all kidding ourselves if we think that someone without a 2400 isn’t going to do well. While someone with a 1000/2400 is likely to suffer, someone with a 2100/2400 is no less likely to succeed than someone with a 2400/2400. </p>
<p>That’s when the whole “diversity” thing comes in. When an admissions officer has two applications in front of him, one from a black applicant with a 2100 and one from a white applicant with a 2400, the adcom KNOWS that just because the black applicant received 300 points less does not mean that he is less “qualified” than the white applicant. Say even that the black applicant was more privileged than the white applicant, but when the adcom turns his head to the remaining thousands of applications, he sees that 90% of the time, black applicants are nowhere near the threshold. So while it is not fair to the white applicant that the adcom admits a more privileged black applicant, going over the rest of the applications, the adcom knows that he will rarely come across another black applicant with a score near to that of a 2100.</p>
<p>AA certainly had its time and place (and is probably still necessary). However, it should be viewed as a temporary solution to an overwhelming, deep-rooted problem that must be combated in many ways- not just admitting a handful of minorities every year to first-tier schools.</p>
<p>Interesting discussion. </p>
<p>As many have said, college selection is not a system based solely on numbers, colleges use a “holistic” approach, but it is my belief also that colleges see their awesome (in the old sense of the word) right of class selection as an equally awesome responsibility.</p>
<p>Consider that this small group of people in selective colleges’ admissions offices anoints students with the title “Yale Student” or “MIT Student”. From the moment of their selection these young people can forever be associated with the school, should they choose to accept the offer.</p>
<p>Is it hard to imagine that admissions officers may be idealistic, and dream of helping create a Better Society? And that what that involves is their role in social engineering by “designing a class” that will, they hope, design a better country and a better world? I don’t think I’m overstating the case. For me and for many, a Better Society means full inclusion of all ethnicities, and if it demands Affirmative Action to do it, so be it (I am about as far from URM as it gets, btw).</p>
<p>And what if I say that Aff. Action can actually strengthen society, because it increases the pool of highly-capable students attending, graduating from and maintaining ties to schools that are NOT Ivy.</p>
<p>This part I don’t understand, phear_me and applicannot:
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<p>In this country, many times ethnicity/complexion/physiognomy IS “personal experience and culture”. Anyone who thinks otherwise has probably not spent much time in predominantly-minority communities.</p>
<p>My brother has taught science in 2 different Harlem schools over the last 20 years. His schools are 99.5% minority, with a few white and Asian kids. His constant frustration is that the kids are smart, but that there are cultural consequences for “rising above the pack” or “acting white”. Consequently, kids constantly dumb down and sabotage their schoolwork in many ways. He said that last year the valedictorian didn’t go to college, because “nobody else was going”, and that the salutatorian didn’t even show up at graduation. Think about how difficult it is, when raised in this environment, to ignore the peer (and adult) pressure around you and actually excel to the point of applying to selective colleges. Don’t you think that these kids, even if their stats are not top-notch, should go to good colleges so they get a chance to break that pattern for themselves and their communities?</p>
<p>Now consider this case, the ‘bizarro world’ version of the above. This is a school that is 99.7% white (with a couple of African-American and Native-American kids) with virtually no ESL, yet with less than a 80% graduation rate and only 46% go on to college. Many of those going to college are first-generation. What is happening here (because this is the school from which my D is about to graduate)? This is a crumbling former mill town, with a depression-era rate of unemployment. The principal describes it as “working-class” and “blue collar”. My D is constantly pushing against the peer pressure for underachievement. When she studied for the SATs, her friends texted her constantly, saying “what are you studying for SATs for, that’s stupid”, and “come on, you’re boring”. When she needed to cut back on her job hours to work intensely on her science research, her manager and co-workers jeered at her, harassed her, and made life difficult and stressful – because she was doing something they didn’t understand. I am sad to say that the downbeat pressure HAS had an effect on her work and stats. There are studies that prove that the “perception” of oneself during SAT testing conditions can actually affect the results.</p>
<p>Will my D from a disadvantaged non-minority school be considered the same as URMs from a predominantly-minority school? Don’t know. We’ll see.</p>