<p>As a person who grew up in NYC and still lives in NYC Jonri is absolutely correct as you would be surprised in how often this conversation happens. The most underrepresented group of students are African Americans with multi-generational roots in the US as many African American students at elite schools are indeed, either immigrants to the US or first generation citizens who are children of immigrants who tend to look down on blacks who are not immigrants. </p>
<p>There have been many articles written about this. </p>
<p>There are other entities that have also WANTED to take race into consideration when distributing opportunities. We’ve understood that’s what they wanted and even why they may have wanted it. Still, as a society we’ve determined we don’t like for that to happen. Whether people are, in your view, “emotionally intelligent” enough to precisely understand the intricacies of the how and the why of colleges’ racial preference systems, shouldn’t matter to the issue of whether it’s the right thing to do or not. </p>
<p>How about the kid from ND or WY? What if he’s got lots of community involvement, with impact? He can articulate his goals and intelligently answer the Why Us?, writes a charming, relevant essay and his LoRs are strongly supportive? You going to gripe? Assume his stats were lower?</p>
<p>So much race sensitivity in this country- any thread about why didn’t I/my kid get in, oh those Blacks/Hispanics, or poor me I’m Asian, just explodes. </p>
<p>And twists and turns, but keeps coming back to the certainty URM kids are less competitive, getting in based on some sad tale of woe or post Civil War guilt or rotten family living conditions. Do you really mean that’s what URMs are about??? There are no close and supportive families, kids striving and achieving, strong personal values, vision and follow-through, no matter the SES? Any of you read the link on Black grad rates from top colleges? Or are you assuming those are the kids of neurosurgeons and went to Andover?</p>
<p>And no one in admissions can find any good in Asian American kids? Cuz they’re stumbling over themselves to get in low performing Black kids? </p>
<p>Anyone consider the post-college impact of allowing a diverse community to experience that college, graduate and go on to impact others in their adult lives? </p>
<p>And all this certainty based on what? You heard something or read it or ten years ago, such and such occurred? And, after all, adcoms are just mindless hacks? Yeah, it’s crazy. And remember, this thread started about elite privates, not publics, which have their own issues.</p>
<p>I would not call the UT process one that requires highest grades. One could go to a crappy school, be average on the whole, and still make the cut because they are in the top 7% of that school. This process was set up to ensure those kids from crappy schools had an equal opportunity to get to any of the state schools if they were among the best in their own school. However, I see the valedictorians and salutatorians from our city’s predominantly minority based schools ending up in lower tier state schools than attend UT which is one reason UT’s stats don’t show a higher number of minorities.</p>
<p>@EllieMom - Agreed. I said as much about three of my posts back - all that would be there is gender and state on the application. You did not need me to give the solution - looks like you found it yourself. </p>
<p>But, I venture to say your idealism will never get us there. Sure, we are not there yet (wherever there is - I bet where is also differs among people), but we will never get there if it is continually practiced. It is like saying one is going to quit drugs slowly; does not happen, especially when some group is feeling good, i.e., feeling and getting advantaged by it. </p>
<p>Either we stop and set a firm moral example or I posit we are stuck with it forever. Why? Because if politicians can find a group that benefits from it, they will pander to get votes on the issue, and it will never go away. Politicians and policy makers do not live to getting rid of programs they create; they live to keep them going, as it is their brainchild and gravy train.</p>
<p>@pigtails - Yes, I do focus on high school students because they are still in their formative years and are the most vulnerable to be long-term damaged by such negative self-reflective events. </p>
<p>The very fact they are, as you state, “not exactly a group representative of mature thought and experience” is the very reason we, as adults, must not do things that damages their psyche, as to whom they are as a person and individual. </p>
<p>I could care less about adults because they can brush things off. Students do not have the life experience, and thus events, such as being seen as rejected for whom they are fundamentally, hurts them more deeply and probably leaves scars that will never go away. That asian student who feels he got shafted by the process will never forget that, and not in a good way. And so will all the other students in a similar situation. </p>
<p>Yes, awcntdb, I can see that having to attend Tufts, or UMichigan or William and Mary instead of an Ivy League school would irreparably damage the psyches of these poor kids. ;)</p>
<p>@saintfan - That post about the asian trying to move to a different pile is but the tip of iceberg. </p>
<p>I have also seen is a URM asking if it is OK to skip doing another subject test because admin would understand because he is a URM. </p>
<p>The students are not stupid. They see the system is preference-rigged and, like good entrepreneurs, they are trying all the ways they could game the system to get an advantage, from adding a different EC to not having to do a test. </p>
<p>Any admissions system that fosters such behavior based on group identity is not healthy or productive, in my book. </p>
<p>As stated in an earlier post, I thought the whole idea was to integrate, not segregate - these kids are segregating themselves in a big way before they get to college, and too many seem not to want to acknowledge as much.</p>
<p>“As a person who grew up in NYC and still lives in NYC Jonri is absolutely correct as you would be surprised in how often this conversation happens.”</p>
<p>Would it be fair to say you and Jonri would be surprised at how often that conversation DOESN’T happen? Where do you and Jonri live? I will read the articles, but when I was there, (not Manhattan, as no one I knew could afford to live there, and since then everyone has moved to the ATL and Florida) there were just not many black folks talking to their neighbors about affirmative action. When I said I wanted to be a doctor, my neighbors told me “no one get’s to be a doctor”. My mom was a teacher and a nurse, and my dad a psychologist who did grad school at Columbia, and worked on Riker’s Island. Maybe it is all different now, and that conversation happens equally throughout NYC. </p>
<p>Sue- and it must be damaging generations because, after all, the elites can only take in a tiny fraction of hs graduates. We had a great thread, some long while ago, about all these damaged psyches- how frail kids are, how little resilience, how doomed. Ahh. </p>
[quote]
So where do you and Jonri live?[/quote[</p>
<p>Grew up in brooklyn; Brownsville, Ocean Hill, Bed Stuy (Stuyvesant heights) (sister still lives in the brownstone that we grew up in , siblings and a lot of other family members in Bed Stuy and Clinton hills and still attend one of the big bklyn black churches (parents from Florida and Georgia who went to school in one room school houses and I can trace my roots back to slavery). </p>
<p>Even when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in one of the early group of girls to attend the one of the big 3 when they went co-ed, you still had more students which families from the Caribbean than you had students with parents from the south. </p>
<p>You are sadly mistaken if you don’t think it is not a conversation that takes place even in the black church and in high school US history classes when they start talking about civil rights and affirmative action. (I can tell you first hand as a person who has worked in a range of schools from the top specialized hs to BGHS in bed stuy).</p>
<p>Can also tell you that at my D’s college (80 african American student) and Law school (35 African American students), the majority of blacks are still the children of recent immigrants and or first gens born in the US.</p>
<p>OK, good article. Kid got admitted to a bunch of lottery schools. Here is what he has going for him:</p>
<ul>
<li>Baseball (MVP of the Oakland Athletic League baseball in 2013, hitting around .500 , pans to play at college) </li>
<li>Basketball (3 years on his high school team; gave up basketball in favor of baseball… but he also happens to be 6’1") </li>
<li>Musician (Young Musicians Choral Orchestra, plays trumpet, French horn and the djembe - a West African drum)</li>
<li>GPA: 5.0, SAT 2100</li>
</ul>
<p>And yes, he also happens to be an African American, Rastafarian who grew up in the 'hood. </p>
<p>But there is was a white, blond kid on my block who played baseball and was recruited by Stanford; now plays pro-ball. No one around here even knows what his GPA or test scores were – but everyone seemed to know his ball stats. Seems to me that the baseball alone is enough to explain his admission just about anywhere. </p>
<p>@Sue22 - I believe you are missing the big picture. I am not focused on just the top schools. There is a reason there were state-wide lawsuits in California, Texas and Michigan surrounding preference programs at the state schools.</p>
<p>My concern has nothing at all to do with the school to which a student ends up attending; it is the reason they think they ended up there that is the issue. The potential damage is the same even if the student perceived he was preference-shafted out of Harvard and had to attend Yale. </p>
<p>This is what is surprising to me - many people seemed focused on the end-result and have little regard to the potential damage of the process to the person and the human. Process matters; anyone can successfully shoehorn a 4-inch nail into a 2-inch hole, but damage will be done in the process.</p>
<p>“You are sadly mistaken if you don’t think it is not a conversation that takes place even in the black church.”</p>
<p>Not sure if it’s sad. I was born in Bed Stuy! I am hoping Bed Stuy kids are going to elite colleges in disproportionate numbers! (I went to Howard on an ROTC scholly). Certainly seems that where I live now (California), not a conversation that takes place in the black church. Yay.</p>
<p>"My child didn’t get into that school because…</p>
<p>They don’t want kids who need financial aid.
His space was taken by a poor kid with a good sob story.</p>
<p>He comes from an over represented state.
She comes from a state with crappy schools. </p>
<p>We are professionals and the schools put first generation kids at the front of the line.
All those savvy college educated parents hire professionals to write their kids’ essays but we never went to college so we don’t know how to do that.</p>
<p>Her spot was taken by someone whose family has attended the school for generations, long before they admitted kids like mine.
Black and Hispanic kids have all the breaks. My kids would have to be twice as good to get in.</p>
<p>We can’t afford our EFC because we’re poor.
We can’t afford our EFC because the poor kids get all the financial aid.</p>
<p>Jock with lousy grades are shoo-ins. No one wants scholars like my kid.
My kid was president of everything but that one C kept him out. What do they want, robots?!</p>
<p>Schools care too much about scores and my kid’s a lousy tester.
“Holistic admissions” are just an excuse to skip over the best and brightest, those with the best scores, in favor of some kind of cockamamie social engineering.</p>
<p>My ethnic group has a history of underachieving, so he started out behind the eight ball.
My ethnic group is overrepresented at elite schools, so she never had a chance.</p>
<p>The admissions officers are morons.
The admissions officers are morons.</p>
<p>You are definitely on to something though. Even if what you wrote is not true or only true in very small doses, the fact that it is perceived very differently and negatively is a problem. </p>
<p>It is not a rich or poor issue or elite school versus state school or even a black or white or asian issue. It really is whether the system treats students equally and if students see it that way. And even if it does treat equally on a broad scale (and it might), if the perception is otherwise, it really does more harm than good. </p>
<p>I do find it interesting that it is the adults who have least issue with the system and who also seem not to be not asking students what they think of the system that directly affects them (the students). That tells me a lot about how students are regarded, which is not very highly. I believe students deserve more than that. Read the students’ threads and profiles - they are instructive.</p>
</p>