<p>sybbie: I don’t know where you are going with the graduation rate arguement. In my opinion it is meanigless. From a school’s perspective (public or private) the retention rate, graduation rates are important. For public - $, and for privates - prestige. They would bend over backwards to make sure that you get a piece of paper after 4 years - even if the major was basket weaving. What is important is breakdown on choice of majors, if the students changed their majors from harder ones to easier ones and what their GPAs were.</p>
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<p>Your statements seem to be contradictory. The changing of majors in any school from harder ones to easier ones are also not exclusive to students of any particular race as many students of all races change majors. Please enlighten me as to which schools have basketweaving as majors. Maybe I overlooked it as I did not see it listed in any of the catalogues or as part of any one’s CDS while looking at the degrees by major.</p>
<p>next time we are finding one of those schools that cares about students graduating on time- D seems to have picked one of those schools that prides itself on weeding students out </p>
<p>( I don’t know about basketweaving-but several schools highly ranked ones too allow you to design your own major as they have very very flexible requirements)</p>
<p>The girl that was helping me at the GAP had her degree in Orissi dance :)</p>
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<p>I really did search high and low and I found no basket weaving. However I did find the following on the following schools and the majority degrees conferred in a specific major.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.yale.edu/oir/otherlinks.html[/url]”>http://www.yale.edu/oir/otherlinks.html</a></p>
<p>MIT- 40% Engineering (but we knew that)
Dartmouth- 39% Social science and History (not including psychology)
Princeton-36.2 % social science and history
Cornell- 12% Social science and Hist, 18% Engineering, 12% Business, 11% Bio
Columbia (by # of students) Economics- 86, English -101, history-110. Political science -118
Brown (By # of students) bio 103, Eng. lit-68, Comparative lit 50
Stanford 29% Social science and Hist</p>
<p>sybbie719-I have seen your “stats” many times. URMs graduate at only slightly below the rates of whites/asians because of the grade inflation at those selective institutions. It doesn’t necessarily mean they learned as much or did as well as whites/asians. At selective institutions that do not have grade inflation (like Cornell, the school I attend), URMs struggle much more and the disparity is much more pronounced.</p>
<p>Furthermore, many more URMs (and people of every other race) go to public instutitions where the disparity in graduation rates is much bigger. Often this problem gets ignored because, after all, we have affirmative action. This is why I suggest that we do away with affirmative action based on race and start at a lower level. This is the only way to help the few URMs at selective, grade-inflated colleges as well as the majority of URMs at larger, public schools where they aren’t going to hold your hand.</p>
<p>If the concern is over graduation rates, it’s clear that the top 20 colleges do the best job at graduating blacks. </p>
<p>Top reason for lower graduation rates for blacks : lack of family history with college education. </p>
<p>Solution: Get more blacks to enroll in and complete college.</p>
<p>What’s the argument here? That less blacks should be enrolled in top colleges where the graduation rate is highest? Hmmmm…so, it sounds as if some on here are in support of eliminating what’s working. Interesting.</p>
<p>“Someone should point out that Thom’s English writing skills are substandard.”</p>
<p>I noticed that in his first post, but didn’t mention it because I’m tolerant of differences. His verbal SAT score was another indication of his lack of English comprehension. Again, not worth mentioning because he’s obviously got larger problems and issues that he needs to address…</p>
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<p>Not my stats as i did not conduct any studies. Your issue lies with the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education who did the research and may know just a little bit more about the topic than you as they have been studying trends longer than you have been walking the earth.</p>
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<p>And this is based on??? Can you provide some data to support this??? </p>
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<p>And you know this how? Based on your limited frame of reference? I can tell you from my own limited frame if we are talking out of our hats, that I attended a large public university, had no hand holding. Graduated and completed masters programs at Cornell (your school with a 3.97), and NYU currently a PhD student (but I guess you were not talking about me).</p>
<p>“Why do you think these kids are flunking out of Anne Arbor? Because they are stupid or because they are ill-prepared?”</p>
<p>Neither…because UM does a poor job with educating URMs. Heck, in our experience, they screwed up before getting my son enrolled. </p>
<p>First, they placed him into a “support” program because of “something in his application” that indicated that he needed support. When he didn’t enroll, they placed him in the Honors program. Hmmmm…first he needs support, then he’s worthy of the Honors program…all within a span of 30 days and without any changed to his application. </p>
<p>If you ask me, UM needs to sit back and rethink their approach to URMs. It’s a mess today.</p>
<p>I might have added this comment to another post, but I think it deserves it’s own. </p>
<p>I strongly believe that African Americans haven’t yet figured out the college selection/application process. Even when AfAms have the stellar scores and GPAs to get into highly selective colleges, I think there’s usually an automatic jump to Ivy and Co., instead of the careful “best fit” approach. </p>
<p>I think AfAms are much too “name brand” focused when it comes to college. </p>
<p>In many cases, admission to an Ivy is a signal that an AfAm family has finally “made it”…ya know…like the big house in the burbs, Benz in the garage and kids in private school. </p>
<p>But, we’ve missed the part about “careful seelction” and “best fit”. </p>
<p>This is part of the growing pain that comes with the opportunities offered now that we’re moving beyond some of the painful legacies of the past.</p>
<p>Has anyone wver wondered why most of the children of wealthy, educated AfAms still choose to attend Morehouse, Spelman, Hampton and Howard? It’s because THOSE are the institutions that have served their families so well! Generations of wealth, education and achievements…thanks to MSHH. But, now, AfAm students are exploring other options available…and parents don’t really have the history with white colleges to be able to help their children choose. We only know what we read and hear from white friends…and the very few AfAms who have history with these white institutions. </p>
<p>So, if AfAms aren’t choosing well and aren’t graduating at the same rate of whites, it might not be wise to automatically assume that there’s an achievement gap for all of these AfAm kids. </p>
<p>This is a relatively new world for most of these families. </p>
<p>I can tell you, for certain, that most talented AfAm children (Talented Tenth) of privilege either choose Ivies or HBCUs…very, very little in between.</p>
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<p>Could the “something” have been his URM status which prevented adcoms from even looking at other parts of his apps to discover that he belonged to the Honors program? </p>
<p>In another post, Norcalguy attributes the higher rate of URM graduation at some Ivies to their grade inflation. But surely, that benefits ALL other students, not just URMs, unless he wants to prove that profs deliberately award higher grades to URMs? </p>
<p>Reading this thread in conjunction with the article on U of Arizona in yesterday NYT (Survival of the Fittest), one can see why URMs do so much better at Ivies and not so well at large state universities. At the latter, they just do not get the support they need to do well.</p>
<p>"Could the “something” have been his URM status which prevented adcoms from even looking at other parts of his apps to discover that he belonged to the Honors program? "</p>
<p>marite, I actually think that’s too far fetched. Moreso (and similar to your explanation, without the overt prejudiced agenda) , I think UM’s approach to AfAms is just careless. Perhaps he got into UM via some mechanized process, which assigned him to a program because his GPA wasn’t 3.5. Later, I bet his app was sent to someone who reviews admitted URM apps for recruitment purposes and it was read carefully enough to have someone note the ECs and prep school background. Suddenly, he looked better than he did via the “mechanized” screening. Just my theory…</p>
<p>Remember, he first learned about the Honors admission via a call that came to his school GC (this was about a month after the initial letter of general admission). So, at that point, his app was on someone’s desk. That was when things changed and they began the business of recruiting.</p>
<p>AA opponents will argue that AA made him attractive, not ECs. This isn’t true in this case. He was attractive without the box being checked. But, ANY school would have had to really read his app to judge accurately.</p>
<p>Momsdream:</p>
<p>Maybe I’m cynical, but even without a 3.5, a student should not be deemed to need remedial classes!</p>
<p>Momsdream: substandard english? yeah, maybe… </p>
<p>i know that 620 on verbal is not that high. what score would you get on an Arabic/Korean/Chinese/Japanese/Hebrew language test?? 250 maybe?</p>
<p>btw, dont brag how good your spanish/french/german/italian… is, coz all these languages are relatively easy for a native english speaker to learn, all made of similar letters… give me a spanish newspaper, i can get what a lot of the vocabs mean…</p>
<p>do u know how different Chinese is from English?</p>
<p>my article in substandard English on my school newspaper was voted as the best article this year so far…so who cares about substandard English?</p>
<p>some data fromUSnews</p>
<p>Recruited athletes with combined SAT scores from 1250 to 1299, for example, are admitted 77 percent of the time at the 19 schools Bowen studied. Blacks and Latinos with the same scores enjoy a 66 percent admit rate.</p>
<p>… blacks, Hispanics, and recruited athletes, who tend to underperform in college relative to their high school grades and test scores…</p>
<p>I won’t brag about foreign language skiils becasue I can’t brag about them…but, if I was attempting to gain admission to a school in one of those countries AND wanted to make a stink to them about how they run their educational systems (which I know very little about - as you do ours), I would surely get to know the language well…or I would stand down. </p>
<p>Anyway, my chosen approach to these situations is to ignore them. Battling these issues is a distraction for me and other URMs. Our energy is better focused on making strides, not explaining the past to people who don’t care.</p>
<p>In this instance, I support Booker T’s approach. </p>
<p>Everyone doesn’t have to agree. For those who don’t agree with me on this subject, I wish them well. </p>
<p>Peace.</p>
<p>What do “graduation rate” stats really mean? They mean that a certain percentage of a certain demographic do or do not graduate from the institution being referenced. They do not tell you if the students who do not graduate from this particular school fail to earn a college degree. They simply show that they did not obtain one from XYZ University. </p>
<p>The assumption being made by the opponents of AA is that the URMs who do not earn a degree from XYZ fail to do so because they are academically ill-equipped. But is that necessarily true? Like everyone else, URMs are INDIVIDUALS who sometimes find that the school into which they’re currently enrolled is a poor fit. The fit can be poor for any number of reasons: It’s too far from home. It’s too close to home. The school is too large and impersonal. The school is too small and confining. They don’t fit in socially. The major they desire is not available. The dorms are poorly maintained or housing is scarce. The food is lousy. The administration is unresponsive—and yes, it’s either too academically rigorous, or not challenging enough. Who can say? Many times, the reasons why a person leaves a school have nothing to do with academics. They may have family issues that require immediate addressing. They may no longer be able to afford the school in question. They may be struggling with a physical or mental illness. The list goes on and on.</p>
<p>But URMs also sometimes face special challenges having to do with race, and culture, and feelings of disenfranchisment. Everyone wants to feel as if they “belong”, that they are valued as an individual, that the institution supports their goals and appreciates their strong suits. I was speaking with an aquaintance yesterday, whose academically talented daughter (an AfAm freshman at a very prestigious state school) experienced a troubling reaction to her first paper from one of her professors. It seems that he was “suspicious” of the originality of her very well written and insightful paper. Even though he’d given it an A, he asked her to more “closely document” all her statements and she ended up resubmitting the paper twice, virtually unchanged. Though the Professor in question never actually accused her of pledgerism, he clearly did not believe that the work was her own (though he had not the slightest bit of documentation to prove this suspicion). From the beginning, she had faithfully referenced ALL stats and analysis not her own. But she DID include original thought and analysis which she had not derived from anyone else. The professor just didn’t want to believe that she was capable of such work. Now I understand that this professorial scepticism could have happened to anyone. But in this student’s case, she was plagued with the nagging thought that perhaps this professor had placed low expectations upon her based on her race, that he just didn’t believe a black student was capable of such sophisticated thought and analysis. Clearly, the most vocal AA detractors on this thread would be the first to suspect that such work could not have been her own, given their assumptions that AA admits are qualitatively inferior. What I’m trying to say is that black and hispanic students at predominently white schools sometimes face unique social and academic challenges that have nothing to do with ability or academic preparedness, and when they leave a school at which they’ve faced such problems, they may well just proceed to transfer to a school they believe might be a better fit—and obtain their degree from that institution. </p>
<p>In the case of UMich, such a stink has been raised about AA there that it should not be surprising that some AfAms feel that their abilities are often assumed to be sub-par, that the campus environment is hostile to their presence, that they are not viewed as a legitimate part of the University. If I felt that way about my school, you had darn well better believe that I’d be looking to transfer to a more accepting environment. But it doesn’t mean that I would eventually “failed to graduate” from college.</p>