<p>This is a question more out of curiosity than anything; I know the issue of affirmative action has been discussed to death (often heatedly) on this forum. </p>
<p>However, I'm curious about how parents would feel if their child got rejected their top choice university while a classmate with lesser credentials with a minority status as their only hook got accepted. While I know that there are always certain intangibles about students, the obvious conclusion most would reach in this situation would be affirmative action.</p>
<p>If you currently support affirmative action, would a situation such as this sway your view, when a program negatively impacts your own life?</p>
<p>It seems like a curious question. Sure, it makes it more personal, but it's not as if parents hold one set of values for the world and another set of values for their child. </p>
<p>Maybe it would different in a life-or-death situation--for example, a parent might think expensive experimental treatments with little chance of success are a waste of medical resources....until it's their own child diagnosed.</p>
<p>You know that pretty much all the top schools (all but MIT and Cal Tech) have higher standards for women than for men - i.e., they practice affirmative action for white males.</p>
<p>Bill Belichick has a great philosophy. He says, "I don't make the rules. I don't have any control over any of that. All I can do is understand the rules they give me and worry about things my team can do to try to win a game...."</p>
<p>I have come to understand that this is the best philosophy on affirmative action. Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant, really. It is what it is. </p>
<p>Two options: factor affirmative action into the mix when you put together your college list (understand the number of slots available to white students and the competition in the pool for those slots) or apply to schools that are less aggressive in their affirmative action recruitment.</p>
<p>There is no point in being upset. The way I figure it...any minority student who can get in a college that had been lilly white and filthy rich for a century or two must be pretty hot stuff and will likely make the school a better place. Hard to be upset about that.</p>
<p>I am new to CC and I am an African American mom who graduated from Wellesley College in the 1970s, first generation college as is my husband. We are both the only college graduates in our familes except for my mother who began college when I was a junior at Wellesley. My husband I have made sure that our D has had all the advantages we could provide such as a private education from PreK through High School. (Our son graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering for a state school). My D is very competitive academically. I truely hope when she arrives on the campus of an elite college, her attendance will not be questioned because of the color of her skin. I a feeling that she will have to defend herself to majority classmates at every turn!!! How sad...no wonder colleges such as Wellesley only have around 120 to 150 African Americans total enrollment, these enrollent numbers have been constant since 1969. It all seems like a hostile enviroment, couched as free speech, and I wonder if my D will be happy at any of the elite schools. </p>
<p>It seems to me that America is still very segregated when it comes to quality education and a nuturing atmosphere for African Americans in an academic setting. Most of the high school students on CC do not appear to know any academically talented African Americans from their high schools who could be their academic rivals and therefore resent their presence within elite college admissions process. That alone should tell you that something is wrong in America's race relations, from many facets.</p>
<p>As a white male, I got into college while a white male with superior credentials was rejected.
my point: There's much more than minority status going on. It's easy to blame AA for a rejection, but even in such a perfectly hypothetical situation, it's probably not honest to do that.</p>
<p>Eckie, the idea that you can look at 2 kids at any high school and know all the differences makes your assumption questionable. How do you know that the other kid didn't have recs that said she had incredible character? How do ou know she does not bring any one of a number of things the school wants. You also don't know what made it's way into your child's file. If parents are looking at it this way, I can only imagine how your kid sees it. Will she resent all blacks at wherever she ends up and assume she has better stats?</p>
<p>Eckie - if you look at the "UC San Diego or prostitute college" thread you will see that the daughter of a National Review Online writer was accepted into UCSD with grades and test scores far below those of my son. The obvious conclusion is that the only reason for this injustice is that she comes from a right wing family, which she telegraphed by subtle references in her application essay, while my son comes from an honest, unassuming liberal family. I am, needless to say, outraged. I demand an investigation. Do you have the phone number for the regents? [sarcasm/off]</p>
<p><em>giggling</em> I posted something, and then deleted it, because I didn't want to start a fight over my very strong support over affirmative action. I appreciate your comment. <em>grin</em></p>
<p>"It seems to me that America is still very segregated when it comes to quality education and a nuturing atmosphere for African Americans in an academic setting."</p>
<p>Heck, America is still very segregated. Period. How many people have close friends of other races? How many people go to a place of worship where the congregation reflects the ethnic and racial diversity of their city? How many adults would feel comfortable with their kid marrying or dating a person of a different race?</p>
<p>I didnt mean to envoke sarcasm - CC is such a harsh crowd.</p>
<p>It was a simple question about if your views would change if you thought your own child didnt get in to a college due to affirmative action, that's all. Plus, if you read my entire first post, I said I KNOW there are intangibles about every student.</p>
<p>I don't see how sarcasm was at all necessary. No need to respond in such a manner.</p>
<p>p.s. I'm not a parent so no, I'm not feeling this way about a situation; I'm ** curious. **</p>
<p>I just asked my son, and he echo'd what I originally started to post about. As a white male born to educated middle class parents in the US, he has a strong sense of feeling like he's already got tons of un-deserved advantages. Even if there were flat out a "we gave your spot to this student of color", he would feel that it's part of the overall balancing that needs to happen to help undo the terrible wrongs of historical racism in higher education. He stays, "I am STRONGLY for affirmative action, and I would not be the least bit upset if I were not admitted to a school because of it."</p>
<p>I know you didn't mean to provoke sarcasm, Eckie, but you did anyway. Go figure. What I was trying to illuminate for you was the unspoken assumption which underlies "the obvious conclusion most would reach in this situation" and drag it out into the light of day. If you actually read the other thread what you'd find is that while the evil right wing family's daughter initially didn't seem to have any basis for being preferred over my stellar son, the more you find out about her the more you realize that there's more there than meets the eye. Maybe my son doesn't have a lot more than grades and test scores. (I love him anyway.) Maybe, maybe, maybe. But the gist of the problem, as you presented it, is "the obvious conclusion most would reach" when the "other" kid is a racial minority. There's really not much reason to go past that point.</p>
<p>The reason for my post is that it's happened several times at my school and I know the kids personally. I know genuinely how intelligent they are, how driven, read their essays, heard about the recommendations, participated in clubs with them. From a sheer ability standpoint, I know who is by common standards the better applicant. When it doesnt work out the way Guidance Counselers, college advising books, etc all say it was supposed to and the applicant of lesser abilities who got accepted is a minority, the answer everyone (myself included) jumps to - whether justified or not - is affirmative action. This genuinely got me thinking, because as I'm for affirmative action when it honestly benefits the applicant and is not being used in a superficial manner, it's always easy to support it when it's some other kid who gets rejected in favor of someone not considered as competitve. But serious, how would I feel if it was me in the rejectee's shoes? </p>
<p>I figured I'd get more well-thought out responses in the Parents Forum.</p>
<p>The truth is that whether one believes that AA is right or not, it does lead to an opinion that many blacks who are admitted are only there because of their race, and not their qualifications. Obviously this is not true for many applicants. I think that many African-Americans just shrug this off and go about their schooling, but this attitude does exist, and is a byproduct of AA. I don't think it will ever change unless there is no affirmative action anymore. I also think that there are lots of people who are very resentful about AA, and just don't usually speak up. It is not PC to say anything, except they will at times be openly resentful, especially when they see someone who is a minority accepted to a competitive institution with lesser stats or perceived lesser qualifications. But AA is not a made-up fantasy, it does exist and is controversial, and leads to hard feelings. I am not justifying these feelings, but they are a byproduct of the policy in general.</p>
<p>It would not bother me in the least because it is most likely that my son would be admitted to his second or third choice college. And that first choice college will have admitted athletes, legacies and children of the rich/famous with "inferior" applications.</p>
<p>And in the end he is as likely to enjoy his experience at that 2nd choice college as much or more. And in the end his success in life will not depend on where he graduated from anyway as studies have demonstrated.</p>
<p>My only complaint about AA is that it should not be merely race based but be based on a combination of race and socio-economic factors. I see no reason why a Hispanic student from Scarsdale,NY or African-American from Palm Springs, Ca should receive any advantages whatsoever. Those students would provide far less real diversity to the college than a white student being raised by a single parent in Newark, NJ.</p>
<p>"However, I'm curious about how parents would feel if their child got rejected their top choice university while a classmate with lesser credentials with a minority status as their only hook got accepted."</p>
<p>Happens all the time (like 10 generations) with white students. Legacies (interesting that now that there are signficant numbers of minority legacies, legacy admissions are being de-emphasized), developmental admits, political pull, relationships with the "right" GCs, attendance at the "right schools", equestrians, squash players, ice hockey players, (lacrosse players ;)).</p>
<p>I'd understand that the college was building a class rather than admitting individuals, and that the classroom and out-of-classroom experience is enhanced strongly when there is greater diversity, and I would hope that my kid would be able to attend a school where that was also true.</p>
<p>P.S. I was one of 9 who applied to my alma mater, only the 7th "most qualified" by credentials and the only one that got admitted, and there are stories....(I did not benefit in any way from AA, but in an odd and interesting sort of way likely from anti-Semitism, even though I was in fact Jewish - it would take awhile to explain....)</p>
<p>Welcome to the forum. I think you are correct to consider the climate for minority students at each college. IMO, not enough parents consider those intangibles. However, I would also urge you not to paint with an overly broad brush. There are elite colleges where the concerns you have expressed are not the reality.</p>
<p>As for African American enrollment numbers, it is true that enrollment numbers at the colleges that were the earliest proponents of minority enrollment have levelled off -- not so much from 1969, but certainly from the early 1980s.</p>
<p>There are several reasons for this:</p>
<p>a) Elite colleges are no longer adjusting their admissions standards to the same degree. It is my belief that the Af-Am students at the elite colleges I follow are superb applicants and very successful in college with graduation rates that are much higher than in the early days of affirmative action. IMO, the numbers mask very signficant and very positive improvements from the 1960s and 1970s.</p>
<p>b) Yield (the percentage of accepted students who enroll) for Af-Am students is very low. This is due, in large part, to the much higher competition among elite colleges for minority students. Twenty-five years ago, there were relatively few schools aggressively recruiting minority students. Today, the number of schools competing for students is much larger.</p>
<p>c) Attracting African American males to elite private colleges is extremely difficult right now. There are probably many reasons for this, not the least of which is that the overall high school graduation rates for Af-Am males is frustratingly low nationwide, reducing the size of the applicant pool. My daughter's college is nearly 2 to 1, Af Am females to Af Am males.</p>
<p>I'm sorry that my first response failed to meet your exacting standards for depth and careful thought.</p>
<p>I believe Universities have the right to admit the class they feel is optimal. I believe there are educationally sound reasons for wanting a diverse class, so I support that as an institutional goal. I am aware that this means my (white) son may be disadvantaged vis a vis certain other applicants when he applies to a college that promotes diversity. It will hurt to see him denied if that happens, especially if he is denied from a college he'd really been hoping to attend. But that doesn't mean I suddenly stop believing what I stated above. </p>
<p>There are more upsetting (to me) reasons he might be passed over, such as for a wealthier student or an athlete. But even then, I understand that this is how admissions to selective institutions works. It's a bummer, to be sure. But I get it. I'm not going to get overly bent out of shape over those kind of admits, so it's even less likely that I would do a 180-degree turn on a policy that I actually think has considerable merit.</p>
<p>I think that both Mizo and collegialmom raise an important point. While AA was implemented to bring about a desirable result, lowering standards to admit (or hire) minorities serves to hurt them because most people will, consciously or unconsciously, assume that they have lower qualifications, at least until they get to know them. Since students don't go around with their IQ and SAT score tattooed on their foreheads, this will be true even if they have the highest stats of anyone in the school. Even if no one says anything, a minority would likely feel that he has to continually defend himself and his qualifications, which might make him come across as arrogant. AA encourages negative stereotypes rather than dispelling them.</p>