<p>In my Vanderbilt stereotype, I used WASP deliberately. It was my impression from what they said that they would consider Catholics from the northeast in a favorable light. WASP definitely does not refer to all whites and it has nothing to do with being upper class.</p>
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<p>/sigh</p>
<p>Why is it ironic for people who DO believe in racial equality to ask WHY people such as Fabrizio do BELIEVE Asians are victimized by discrimination. Rather than being insensitive, the mere fact of asking questions shows a willingness to … listen. In addition, as I wrote earlier, there is a difference between asking for the “proof” versus asking for the … basis of the allegation.</p>
<p>How hard was it for Fabrizio to write, “I believe that Asians are discriminated because XXX. I further believe that their admission numbers at HYPS and XXX would go up if those schools would be precluded to use race as a criterion.” Then, all he would have to do is also make a case that this in fact true and that Asians are indeed “deserving” of more spots.</p>
<p>As it stands, this is HIS case to make, and his “duty” to present arguments that back up his positions. This has yet to happen. What he has done so far is dismiss most arguments with: “I did not say that” or something similar. For instance, he claims that his position is not about test scores or GPAs. Great, one might even agree that SAT/ACT are not what makes a difference. But then, what ELSE IS THERE? The reality is that there is NOTHING else, except for flimsy and unproven theoretical analyses that do NOT amount to anything close to discrimination, let alone racial discrimination. </p>
<p>Oops, I forgot something … there IS a not so veiled implication that URM are ONLY accepted because racial preferences are needed to erase … lower test scores. </p>
<p>Despite Fabrizio claims to the contrary, all his mumbled hodgepodge of anecdotes and minsunterpreted data can be summarized in a simple equation of race and … test scores that ignores every other element that is making holistic admissions what they are today. And what that is … is a welcome change from the paint-the-number admissions processes that schools have to rely on because of lack of resources to do … better. </p>
<p>And last but not least, if there is something ironic is that today’s complaining voices come from the same sub-groups who benefitted from holistic admissions when the numbers hardly displayed the alleged (but still unproven) comprehensive academic superiority. </p>
<p>But then again, where is the injustice?</p>
<p>“Many of these offer generous scholarships only to URM’s. Not $500. I respectfully disagree with you.”</p>
<p>Dang! how come I could not find them for MY kids? I WILL say we looked at a lot of schools in the PNW, assuming they would look kindly on my son because he was male, and because he was black, and because he had descent SAT’s and EC’s. They never offered or said “here is your black person scholarship”, butone LAC made an offer we ALMOST couldn’t refuse. But we did. We just couldn’t get past the 1 percent black population. They REALLY need some help with that. </p>
<p>If you happen upon some black people only/no need scholarships, please PM me. I will post them on the AA student thread, and tell my sorority. My sorority does a lot of fund raising for black woman HS graduates in my county, and that’s about how much we give to each student. sometimes a $1000 when we can raise it. and we gave it to a Mexican student this year. </p>
<p>“And btw, why would $500, to a child of an immigrant living above a laundromat in a 2-room flat in a high-crime urban neighborhood, not be as decisive a need as that of a black living in that neighborhood in an apartment or house?”</p>
<p>I think I anticipated and addressed this in my post. your right. Assuming these scholarships are out there, not fair. </p>
<p>But nobody every shows me the money.</p>
<p>As a reminder, I am not arguing with anyone here, suggesting that college admissions are fair. I am just trying to dispel a few myths that seem to come up frequently, but for which I can not find much evidence. </p>
<p>My all time “favorite” is the one about black kids being raised from early with the knowledge that they don’t have to try as hard, because they are a “shoe in” for college.</p>
<p>@siserune, Re: #1937</p>
<p>Is this what you came up with after a whole year?</p>
<p>I am very impressed that you even tried to correct my math. Unfortunately, as happened more than once before, whenever you tried to demonstrate your mathematical thought process, it just exposes your very poor math sense and skill. And this post reveals, once again, that you don’t know the most fundamental basics of probability and statistics. </p>
<p>Here is a snippet of your post, where you tried correct my math (the highlighted parts are your comments):</p>
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</p>
<p>You could’ve used your time better by taking some classes on probability and statistics, or maybe you should’ve had a better teacher.</p>
<p>Now, let me try to help you.</p>
<p>Problem: If you flip 7 fair coins, what is probability of getting six heads and one tail?</p>
<p>This is apparently too hard for you, so I will start with an easier but analogous problem: what is the probability of getting 2 heads and 1 tail, if 3 fair coins are flipped?</p>
<p>There are 8 possible outcomes, 3 of them with 2 heads and 1 tail:
h1 h2 h3; h1 h2 t3; h1 t2 h3; t1 h2 h3;
h1 t2 t3; t1 h2 t3; t1 t2 h3; t1 t2 t3;
(t1 h2 h3 means tail for coin 1 and head for coins 2 and 3)
Thus the probability of 2 heads and 1 tail is 3/8.</p>
<p>Similarly, the probability of getting 3 heads and 1 tail when 4 fair coins are flipped, is 4/16;
the of getting 4 heads and 1 tail when 5 fair coins are flipped, is 5/32;
…
and finally the probability of getting 6 heads and 1 tail when 7 fair coins are flipped, is 7/128 (not 8/128 as you imagined).</p>
<p>And the probability of getting 5 heads and 2 tails with 7 fair coins? You can also count out all 128 outcomes or learn some combinatorics. But the answer is 21/128 (not 29/128, as you imagined. But I am quite impressed with your imagination and creativity.) Similarly, the probability of getting 3 heads and 4 tails with 7 fair coins is 35/128. </p>
<p>As I stated previously, given your sever handicap in math skill, it is just comical to get into a debate about some supposed under-performance by other people in USAMO.</p>
<p>And with such sever lack of understanding of probability and statistics, you should have no business interpreting or criticizing studies by Espenshade et al.</p>
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<p>It would not be a bad idea to look at the information posted on the Questbridge site. The organization has been extremely transparent about their mission and their results. As some might know, their process makes no racial distinctions but establshes a financial limitation. </p>
<p>[QuestBridge</a> Home](<a href=“http://www.questbridge.org/]QuestBridge”>http://www.questbridge.org/)</p>
<p>Fwiw, although this is not as transparent, one needs to be aware that there are more students who benefit from QB’s process than is reflected in the College Match results. For instance, while could conclude that there are about 40 QB students at Stanford, the number of students who were ultimately accepted is about three times as large.</p>
<p>As as additional fwiw, it should be clear that NONE of the QB successful candidates belong the high middle class. This is obviously in direct contradiction to what has been intimated several times in this thread, namely that MOST URM at HYPS are part of the upper middle class.</p>
<p>Xiggi - the same way you are arguing about proof showing discrimination, CAN YOU prove your last statement?</p>
<p>Most schools are providing 10% as their first gen students who are mostly in the QB numbers too. First gen includes people of every race and QB numbers barely cover 1-3% of any given school’s admission numbers and Harvard does nt use QB. Hispanics and African Americans represent approximately 20% of HYPS.</p>
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<p>??? Yet another confusion about proofs? Read my earlier posts about asking to establish the basis for the … allegations.</p>
<p>As far as my last statement, do you really want to me to confirm that people who earn less than 60,000 or 80,000 USD per year are hardly part of the upper middle class? </p>
<p>See my last statement: </p>
<p>“As as additional fwiw, it should be clear that NONE of the QB successful candidates belong the high middle class. This is obviously in direct contradiction to what has been intimated several times in this thread, namely that MOST URM at HYPS are part of the upper middle class.”</p>
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<p>Assuming the numbers are true, this argument by xiggi shows that overrepresentation at one level of competition may naturally decrease at a higher level of competition.</p>
<p>However, I must point out that the level it takes to be a USAMO qualifier is higher than the level it takes to be phi beta kappa in engineering at MIT. I know quite a few phi beta kappas that couldn’t make USAMO, and not for lack of trying. And in general, the USAMO guys were thought of as being on a higher level, not just because of their contest results but other stuff too. USAMO has become a little more diluted than it was when I was in school, but still I think it’s safe to say that USAMO qualifiers are generally higher in intellect than your average science major, even at top schools. So I’m not sure this helps your case.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the racial breakdown for NSF grad fellowships or the Putnam. However, again, I really don’t believe that winning an NSF fellowship is harder than qualifying for USAMO. Personally, I think the reverse is true.</p>
<p>Uh, texaspg, it’s perfectly possible for someone to be a poor URM who got into HYPS and didn’t get in there through Questbridge.</p>
<p>xiggi, why did you bother to quote me? Your “reply” is non-responsive to that quote. Did you not see my reply to Shrinkrap, where I noted websites of many colleges and universities? These are institution-specific scholarships, not anything associated with Questbridge. I’m quite familiar with Questbridge and don’t need to “look at the information” posted on their site.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap, my information is from research I did over 3 years ago. It was hardly limited to the PNW. That research included the Midwest, the South, the mid-Atlantic regions, as well as some Northeastern colleges, both public and private institutions. I do not remember if specifically I looked at the PNW. But your response that because supposedly the PNW didn’t/doesn’t have “black only” scholarships is certainly not evidence that college-specific scholarships for only URM’s (outside of the HBCU’s) do not exist. They do exist.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to suggest that. I was only saying how come I never see them? You would think they would make them known to African American students like mine, and the ones on the AA forum. I do searches, my kids applied to a LOT of schools. I imagine we are looking in the wrong places. I was told to look in the PNW.</p>
<p>I am sure there are such scholarships out there. I just find it hard to believe that they are as plentiful as believed here on CC, since “we” haven’t been able to land one in five years.</p>
<p>As far as my last statement, do you really want to me to confirm that people who earn less than 60,000 or 80,000 USD per year are hardly part of the upper middle class? </p>
<p>See my last statement: </p>
<p>“As as additional fwiw, it should be clear that NONE of the QB successful candidates belong the high middle class. This is obviously in direct contradiction to what has been intimated several times in this thread, namely that MOST URM at HYPS are part of the upper middle class.” </p>
<p>Xiggi- By being verbose, you can’t BS your way out of this. This is a numbers game and I want you show that your numbers can add up to your statement.</p>
<p>I concede 60-80k is noway upper middle class. I also concede that 10% of African Americans can’t all be upper middle class in HYPS. I don’t know how many can be classified that way. I did make the statement based perception among several CCers but also raised the question if there are any, should they deserve special consideration based on race. </p>
<p>If you want to make a blanket contradiction or even one that states very few can be classified upper middle class as well as URM at HYPS, what is the evidence?</p>
<p>QB is looking at much lower income than that and if you go look through their website there are nt many being sent to each school (I went through this with a kid on CC a couple of months ago trying to get her to apply through QB and ignore her dream of Harvard EA to get a better shot at the other elite schools and we literally counted matches for each school and I dont remember a single school matching more than 30 students on QB or 1.5% of their admits). </p>
<p>So how are you proving 1.5% of admits (which includes all races) is equal to 10% of African Americans who don’t meet the threshold of upper middle class? I would accept any chart from anywhere showing an income by race demographic at any of these schools as evidence. I have no problem being wrong, if you show something like that and we can put this whole question mark to rest.</p>
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<p>I think you should re-answer the posting, because you have just embarrassed yourself in the most spectacular way allowed by an online Internet forum. </p>
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<p>Or maybe you missed something very basic that all AP Statistics students learn. The following lesson is free:</p>
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<p>You misunderstood the correction that I posted. You attempted to compute the probability that
- exactly 6 years have grade 10 > grade 9, AND
- exactly 5 years have grade 11 > grade 9, AND
- exactly 3 years have grade 11 > grade 10</p>
<p>where all three occur at once. </p>
<p>Unfortunately that is the wrong quantity to calculate (you made a correct computation of the wrong thing). It is like testing whether a coin is biased by flipping it 100 times, getting 51 Heads, and asking about the probability of a 50-50 fair coin to come out Heads <em>exactly</em> 51 times. That probability will be very low, but the correct calculation is about the chance that a fair coin lands Head 51 times or more, a probability that will be very close to 1/2.</p>
<p>The correct version of your calculation is the probability that
- 6 years or more have grade 10 > grade 9 (prob. 8/128), AND
- 5 years or more have grade 11 > grade 9 (prob. 29/128), AND
- 3 years or more have grade 11 > grade 10 (prob. 35/128 + 1/2 = 99/128).</p>
<p>(Alternatively, you could ask about the chance of having at least 6+5+3 = 14 increases along the grades 9-10-11 pathway, out of 3*7=21 possibilities.)</p>
<p>These three events are not independent, so you can’t just multiply the probabilities. If you did, the answer would be in the range of 1 percent. A correct calculation, that I performed or approximated at the time of this discussion last year, gives about 1-in-13 odds of the phenomenon you observed **or one that is at least as favorable<a href=“one%20where%20additional%20increases%20occur%20compared%20to%20what%20is%20actually%20in%20the%20table”>/b</a>. This is the standard statistical question to ask when determining the odds of some effect having happened through random chance.</p>
<p>Keywords: statistics, significance testing, nonparametric statistics.</p>
<p>(If NCL is too embarrassed to respond, I’ll understand. One way to restore his or her credibility at this point is to open source that “hand-collected math competition data” as someone here has called it, that NCL has gathered and computerized, with all the names of individual USAMO qualifiers since the 1980’s together with their Asian/non-Asian classification.)</p>
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</p>
<p>Do you have any specific disagreement with any specific comment(s) I made about Espenshade’s studies? Have you read those studies with your “understanding of probability and statistics”?</p>
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<p>Well, this is the part I addressed:</p>
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<p>I simply suggested to people who participate in this conversation to look at QB because they have no racial limitations. Was that a problem?</p>
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<p>I do need to BS my way out of anything. I posted a simple and clear statement about QB applicants not being part of the upper middle class. Is that incorrect? I also wrote that this is contradictory with statements that most URM who are accepted at HYPS are upper middle class.</p>
<p>Would it make you happier if I added that the most selective schools in the country do a better job art recruiting minorities than they do with students from the lower SES quartile?</p>
<p>All I’d have to do is quote from this research:</p>
<p><a href=“http://tcf.org/publications/pdfs/pb252/carnevale_rose.pdf[/url]”>http://tcf.org/publications/pdfs/pb252/carnevale_rose.pdf</a></p>
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<p>Not that hard!</p>
<p>"I simply suggested to people who participate in this conversation to look at QB because they have no racial limitations. Was that a problem? "</p>
<p>I do feel bad that so many kids on CC are ignoring this valuable tool because they are aiming for gold at this one particular school or the other that does nt participate. They underestimate the power of being able to apply early to several schools at once where they can know on December 1st if one wants to admit them with a full scholarship.</p>
<p>Me never happy Xiggi!</p>
<p>In all fairness, I admit I was wrong. These are “black only” scholarships, but not “just” for being black. Neither of my kids would have qualified based on their PSAT.</p>
<p>Here are some recipients of National Achievement Scholarships; they are $2,500.00, for 700 kids. Some had to choose between National Achievement and National Merit. Apparently some schools give more, but they seem hard to find. (Please post on the subforum below if you know…)</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/african-american-students/1096453-anyone-receive-scholarship-national-achievement-yet.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/african-american-students/1096453-anyone-receive-scholarship-national-achievement-yet.html</a></p>
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<p>I think the answer can be found in book reviews of The Chosen. According to Christoper Avery, Roy E. Larsen Professor of Public Policy and Management at Harvard: </p>
<p>*Karabel intends his retelling as social criticism, arguing that admissions policy tends to reflect power relations between major social groups. *</p>
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<p>Once again, the best answer comes from Karabel…"Those who are able to define ‘merit’,"he writes, “will almost invariably possess more of it, and those with greater resources–cultural, economic, and social–will generally be able to ensure that the educational system will deem their children more meritorious.” </p>
<p>We really should not be surprised.</p>
<p>There’s been discussion on here about racial discrimination meaning holding a certain race as inferior or superior to others. For me this pretty much fits. If the Asian kid must score 200 points over the rest of the fray to get a look then that is most certainly saying in no uncertain terms that the Asian kid is from an inferior race. He or she has to pay more to get in, ie, cough up the academic currency that helps drives the rankings.</p>
<p>If it makes everyone feel better, call it price discrimination instead of racial discrimination. </p>
<p>What does a 17 year old have in the way of currency? Scores and gpa mostly. If you charge more from those 17 year-old applicants from one race than from others then you are practicing price discrimination.</p>
<p>And now I’ll no doubt get scolded about how a 2200 = 2350 and those annoying 2350 Asians are so darn boring . . .</p>