"Race" in College Admissions FAQ & Discussion 5 - Page 2

epiphany · 08-29-2009, 08:30 PM

^ Again, in one week this will be a 12-month-old story. Not hot news item. Not worthy of holding one's breath.

For some of you, hope springs eternal. (Otherwise known as self-deception.) This is a dead cause going nowhere. The guy was not '''racially discriminated against." But that's o.k.; keep hanging onto it.

tokenadult · 08-29-2009, 09:22 PM

I'm willing to wait to see the findings before jumping to any conclusion about the inquiry, however long that takes.

StitchInTime · 08-29-2009, 09:53 PM

The Association for Institutional Research (AIR) has a website dedicated to the topic of 'Race/Ethnicity' which includes several presentations and papers from a college's point of view on the new data collection/reporting:

Association for Institutional Research Race/Ethnicity Information

An example of a paper available on the site is Scholars Urge Colleges to Retain Data on Race That New Federal Rules Would Blur which has this conclusion:

Quote:

...Members of the audience seemed broadly sympathetic to Mr. Broh and Mr. Minicucci's model, but some asked whether it would be cumbersome for colleges to maintain, in effect, two sets of books—one for federal record keeping and one for internal purposes.

Mr. Broh acknowledged that challenge but said that the right database programming could make the system feasible. In any case, he said, most colleges will have to change their databases to accommodate the new federal rules.

And this interesting fact:

Quote:

AIR Race/Ethnicity Implementation Status of Non-Federal Organizations

The following status reports have been provided by various vendors, ERP organizations, data requesters. This is not an exhaustive list of organizations that impact an institution's race/ethnicity data...

...Common Data Set (CDS): The CDS publishers have decided not to move to the new categories this year. They are aware that causes problems for some of the colleges, but are not changing until next fall (the August 2010 CDS)...

epiphany · 08-29-2009, 10:08 PM

Quote:

I'm willing to wait to see the findings before jumping to any conclusion about the inquiry, however long that takes.

I'm sure you are. Good luck with that.

fabrizio · 08-29-2009, 10:13 PM

Quote:

^ Again, in one week this will be a 12-month-old story. Not hot news item. Not worthy of holding one's breath.

For some of you, hope springs eternal. (Otherwise known as self-deception.) This is a dead cause going nowhere. The guy was not '''racially discriminated against." But that's o.k.; keep hanging onto it.

Oh my, a staunch defender of the status quo livid at an individual's attempt to question the legitimacy of racial preferences? How very unsurprising!

Regardless of the outcome, Jian Li deserves praise. He took quite a big risk attaching his name to that civil rights complaint. But, it's possible that it has already paid off; Harvard rejected Li in 2006, but they accepted him as a transfer in 2007.

That reality doesn't bode well for the defenders of the status quo no matter how you look at it. If Harvard accepted Li because they feared him, that only further shows the importance of having political power in our country. If Harvard accepted Li because they saw his leadership, it still doesn't help the status quo defenders because this is the kind of leadership that will ultimately topple their regime of preferences. Heads he wins, tails you lose.

jmaya429 · 08-29-2009, 11:35 PM

Okay i have a question, i am hispanic but american indian in race. ive heard that if you check american indian in the common app but dont have an enrollment number then they dont consider you as such. is that true?

tokenadult · 08-30-2009, 10:19 AM

Quote:

ive heard that if you check american indian in the common app but dont have an enrollment number then they dont consider you as such. is that true?

As indicated in the FAQ post higher up in the thread, each college gets to decide how it considers race or ethnicity, if at all, as an admission factor, subject to the federal Constitution and to federal and state laws. At some colleges race should make no difference at all. At many colleges that would actively recruit American Indian students, there are attempts to verify that a person who claims to be an American Indian has federal tribal registration. All you can do is apply and see what happens.

Good luck in your applications.

tokenadult · 08-30-2009, 05:46 PM

United States Supreme Court cases on race as a factor in admission to state universities illustrate what some colleges have done over the years.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke 438 U.S. 265 (1978)

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, U.S. Supreme Court Case Summary & Oral Argument

ruled on the admission practices of the University of California Davis medical school in the 1970s. The holding of the 5-4 divided court was that Bakke's constitutional rights had been violated by the UC Davis practice of having places in the class reserved for minority applicants and ordered Bakke's admission, while the 5-4 dictum (by a different combination of justices) written by Justice Lewis Powell suggested that future cases might find other patterns of consideration race in higher education admission at state universities to be constitutionally permissible.

Two subsequent cases, decided by the Supreme Court on the same day, define current standards of constitutional review of college admission practices.

Grutter v. Bollinger 539 U.S. 306 (2003)

Grutter v. Bollinger, U.S. Supreme Court Case Summary & Oral Argument

Gratz v. Bollinger 539 U.S. 244 (2003)

Gratz v. Bollinger, U.S. Supreme Court Case Summary & Oral Argument

epiphany · 08-30-2009, 06:26 PM

singing the same old song, fabrizio. (Same old repetitious oversung song.)

Jian Li =/= racial PREFERENCES. Never did.

College admissions which include varieties of races, ethnicities, & nationalities are not preferring any over any else, but including all.

Really, some people need to move on in life, start living life, start realizing the equal opportunities among peer schools such as Yale, and stop ignoring the fact that masses of Asian students accepted to Princeton AND Yale every year turn those schools down for Harvard.

Hmmmm.

But yes, continue with your self-deceit.

fabrizio · 08-30-2009, 08:42 PM

Quote:

Jian Li =/= racial PREFERENCES. Never did.

College admissions which include varieties of races, ethnicities, & nationalities are not preferring any over any else, but including all.

I don't mind being repetitious if it means correcting blatant misinformation.

The most intellectually dishonest statement used by the defenders of the status quo is denying that racial preferences exist. Need I repeat the results of the Espenshade and Chung study? I don't think so.

Li's complaint was never about being "bitter." It was always about questioning the legitimacy of racial preferences, a topic that some people hold with such regard that they instantly dismiss any and all skeptics as rabble-rousers.

epiphany · 08-30-2009, 10:33 PM

Well, then, since some posters do not mind repetition, and since other posters apparently have weaker & more selective memories than some of us, no one will mind my repeating the facts of the applicant's underqualification by Princeton University standards:

Princeton answers to Jian Li claims

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:

Amid charge of bias, Rapelye stands firm

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/arc...ws/16798.shtml

"Anything that seems unfair is under scrutiny," Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye told students yesterday in a rare roundtable discussion that ranged from allegations of discrimination to the implications of the University's elimination of Early Decision.

Addressing the ongoing investigation into the University's admission policies for Asian-Americans, Rapelye told roughly 30 students in Frist 308 that "the numbers don't indicate [discrimination]," and "what we're doing is as fair as it can be."

As part of the investigation, the Admission Office examined its statistics from last year. Rapelye said that about 50 percent of students with perfect SAT scores were admitted, and that admissions officers look closely at extracurricular activities to piece together a holistic view of each candidate.

"Many others had far better qualifications," Rapelye said of Li, breaking with the office's tradition of not commenting on specific applications. "His outside activities were not all that outstanding."

One actually need only go to the CDS, which states somewhere between 9 and 11 Important to Very Important factors in admission -- depending on the U in question. Like other selective universities, Princeton does not rank order which among those multiple factors are ever *more* important, which *less* important. They don't rank order not because it's some secret, but because one or several areas of impressive strength can outweigh a different area of slightly less strength -- even within the same category of consideration. A student amazingly strong in 8 areas but marginally weaker in one may easily be considered more valuable to that university, that year, than someone fabulous in 2 areas and marginally weaker in the other 7. That's the way admissions works. Not your system. Their system.

tokenadult · 08-30-2009, 10:34 PM

Quote:

But yes, continue with your self-deceit.

I'm calling this out as a personal insult in violation of the Terms of Service here

College Discussion - FAQ: College Discussion - TOS & FAQ

and remind all here to express disagreements about facts, but not about participants. All participants who follow the Terms of Service are welcome here. Any person in a free country is "entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts," in a saying attributed to a late politician who studied this issue. It doesn't help people find out what the facts are to be gratuitously insulting.

tokenadult · 08-30-2009, 10:38 PM

About the link in post #26, the specific link kindly given with the long quotation from the Princeton dean of admission appears to be a dead link, but as I Google up a phrase from the text, that source appears to be much less recent than the most recent report I have seen about the issue

Department of Education expands inquiry into Jian Li bias case - The Daily Princetonian

from a Princeton-based source.

Oh, through that Google search I think I found the correct link for the 2006 Daily Princetonian story,

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2006/11/30/16798/

and, yes, that is interesting to read but not the last word on the subject.

It would, of course, be interesting to hear from any participant here who has a still more recent source with a report on the conclusion of the requested Department of Education Office of Civil Rights inquiry.

epiphany · 08-30-2009, 11:23 PM

Quote:

Any person in a free country is "entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts,"

I cannot agree more. And indeed, I have related and relayed the facts of his (the complainant's) underqualifications from the voice of the Dean of Admissions of the University in question. Can't get closer to the source than that.

Not discriminated against. Under-qualified.

alam1 · 08-30-2009, 11:31 PM

wait.. i do not want to read the whole thread sorry.. but to get something clear.... tokenadult and epiphany are you saying that colleges do not prefer certain races? I always heard that being an URM was an advantage.. am i wrong?