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<p>I do not believe that anywhere in society - most selective or worst schools, or places of employment - the share of races should reflect that of society at large. However, I strongly believe that all of our kids - from all races - should get the best opportunity to be at the most selective places. We invest too little in education. By we, I mean both society at large, and many, many parents.</p>
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<p>The U.C. experiment has resulted in a racially, ethnically imbalanced student body --an imbalance which has turned off several extremely brilliant Asian and white students who were offered Regents scholarships, but turned those down to attend far more diverse Ivy settings, with the setting being one of the key reasons for that decision.</p>
<p>I personally know these students, so please don’t tell me that it “wouldn’t” make a difference, “shouldn’t” make a difference, you don’t believe it has or will make a difference, etc. It does. To sacrifice diversity means to lose options among the elite of your student body. And that makes a huge difference to a private elite U. None of them wants to lose out to competitors who offer diversity in student enrollment.</p>
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<p>Pound for pound, poor Caucasian kids fare much worse under the current system than poor Asian kids. Caucasian kids will always be in the majority as long as Caucasian parents donate more to the Elite U.s, and are a bigger portion of their alumni. That will change. I repeat, Elite U.s dance to the tune of whoever butters their bread. By some estimates, the Jewish population now is some 30% of the Harvard incoming class. Unimaginable 100 years back.</p>
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<p>I posit that the several you quote is actually minuscule compared to the extremely brilliant Asian students who now make into the UCs, and would otherwise not have. Otherwise the share of Asians would have significantly gone up in the remaining Elite U.s, and not so much as it has in the UCs. It’s a matter of simple math. The prestige of UCB and the quality of kids there in the mean time remains intact.</p>
<p>I have to say this Epiphany. If a bunch of racist kids are leaving because the Elite U. became race neutral, perhaps it is a good idea for them to leave anyway.</p>
<p>Incidentally, do you have even a single article that shows that UCB is seriously hemorrhaging the top kids? I searched and didn’t find anything.</p>
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<p>No one expresses it this way. (Do you just make this stuff up, or do you have an actual point here?)</p>
<p>I guess I have to spell it out for you.</p>
<p>They (many brilliant whites and many brilliant Asians who are comfortable with a diverse setting because they are accustomed to that) don’t want a campus that is 80-95% white, or approx. half white, half Asian, with barely a black person to be seen anywhere, or >50% Asian.
It’s a campus that does not represent the highly diverse environment they grew up in and expect to continue in.</p>
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<p>Actually, UC has a whole was always ethnically imbalanced even before Proposition 209 and the like.</p>
<p>The reason was that UC eligibility has always been defined as a hard limit based on GPA (as calculated for UC admission purposes), and SAT scores for a marginal zone of GPA (a higher minimum GPA applied to out of state applicants). The limit was supposed to approximate the top 12.5% of the California high school graduating class, and any UC eligible student was supposed to be able to go to some UC (though not necessarily his/her first choice).</p>
<p>Among California high school graduates, 12.5% was actually pretty close to the percentage of white students that were UC eligible. However, you can probably figure out that the percentages were significantly different for Asian, black, and Latino students, with resulting imbalances in applicants, admits, and matriculants to UC as a whole. If any given UC tried to “hook” more black or Latino students, it was merely “stealing” them from other UCs. In practice, this meant that the more prestigious UCs were “stealing” black and Latino students from the less prestigious UCs (while “pushing down” some other students). There were minor effects due to students going to non-UC schools (e.g. a student who applies to and prefers UCLA > USC > UCI will go to a UC if s/he gets into UCLA, but go to a non-UC if s/he does not).</p>
<p>After Proposition 209, UC as a whole remained about as ethnically imbalanced as before (with minor effects relating to non-UC schools as described above), even though each campus may have changed significantly.</p>
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<p>Henry Louise Gates estimates that 2/3rds of the black kids in the Elite Us are sons and daughters of recent immigrants who are all professional and middle class.</p>
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<p>I’m offended, as would all the students I refer to be offended, by your characterization of those who seek racial diversity as essential to a tolerant campus experience, as “racist.”</p>
<p>Again, they don’t care about all those supposedly brilliant Asian students at U.C. plus supposedly brilliant white students. It’s an essentially bifurcated campus which does not represent the fullness of the American experience. And I will note that such appreciation, such tolerance, is a factor in the “Very Important” element of personal character which is sought by places like Princeton. I am very glad that I have raised my children to respect and seek out and learn from all races, and not to be satisfied with a campus that does not reflect a truly diverse metropolitan region.</p>
<p>I don’t think you know a single admitted student to any Ivy, because otherwise you wouldn’t engage in this unseemly character assassination which you do. You assume that because a student would seek a diverse campus, that person is “racist.” That is not the perception of the colleges, nor the teachers who have written recommendations about such open-minded students.</p>
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<p>Yet they continue, as the UCs clearly prove. The quality of students have not been going down there, is it?</p>
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<p>But more balanced than now, for certain.</p>
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<p>No, just the diversity is going down. And a well-rounded student, character-wise, often seeks diversity of campus experience along with excellence. With the elites, they don’t have to choose. With UC, they do have to choose.</p>
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<p>Like I said, I am raising my kid to be completely race neutral. I hope that he never feels that different races bring different things to the table, and considers all races to be just Americans instead.</p>
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<p>You’re avoiding the question. It is not about black people. It is about white and Asian people.</p>
<p>Suppose black and Latino student enrollment were each 15%. Now, does it matter for “marketing” purposes whether the remaining 70% were 65% white + 5% Asian, 35% white + 35% Asian, 10% white + 60% Asian, or some other ratio?</p>
<p>"Henry Louise Gates estimates that 2/3rds of the black kids in the Elite Us are sons and daughters of recent immigrants who are all professional and middle class. "</p>
<p>Duh (sorry)… I’ve heard that… but that is still less then one percent of eighteen year old blacks.That’s all I’m saying. That 2/3+1/3 are so rare, most blacks don’t know, or maybe have not even head of, one of them. That’s all I’m saving.</p>
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<p>So you agree that diversity doesn’t have any impact on the quality of the student body. Thank you.</p>
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<p>But 66% of all African Americans in the Elite U.s.</p>
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<p>And no, I’m not avoiding the question. You have some weird agenda. I don’t. No student I know looks at quotas, limits, ratios, absolute numbers & percentages per se. They get a feel for a campus. They ‘barely ever see one black person,’ then they know it’s uncomfortable for them, even if they’re not black. It doesn’t represent real life to them. They also wouldn’t like such a large majority of anything (white, Asian, or an HBCU!) that the campus did not feel diverse to them. UC does not feel diverse to such students. They’ve never expressed it in percentages, because they’re not petty people.</p>
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<p>No elite university comes anywhere close to representing the fullness of the American experience. Just completing a bachelor’s degree puts one in a minority of about 30% (among persons age 25 and up). And doing that at an elite university makes one a member of a tiny minority of that group.</p>
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<p>Only marginally, due to the effect of some students choosing or not choosing non-UC alternatives (but in that case, it is just UC “stealing” students from, or having students “stolen” by, non-UC schools). The base problem of differing UC eligibility rates ensures that no amount of manipulation in UC admissions processes will make much of an effect on the ethnic imbalance at UC as a whole. Of course, fixing that means fixing K-12, which is a much harder problem.</p>
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<p>IP, although you did not really answer my questions, I will thank you the reply. </p>
<p>For future reference, please note that, while there is a large overlap between UCB (Cal or Berkeley) there is hardly any overlap in enrollment. As I posted in an earlier thread, almost all students who are cross-admitted by Cal and Stanford do attend Stanford. </p>
<p>Despite this, if you happen to consider them to be of equal caliber, ask yourself if you would place both schools in the same “pipeline” to prestigious internships and careers. Ask yourself if you are worried about potential discrimination at Cal that might preclude your kids to attend. Ask yourself if you would be happy to pay OOS fees for your kids to attend Cal? And finally ask yourself if an admission at Cal would mean the same thing as a fat envelope from HYPSM. </p>
<p>Fwiw, you do not need to answer any of those questions, but I hope that it will make you reconsider the position that Stanford and Cal are of equal caliber for undergraduate education, which is the subject of the discussions here. </p>
<p>Now to go back to the geographical concentration, please note that there is no comparison between a school that recruits on a nationwide basis (HYPMS) and Cal that is a state/regional powerhouse. Stanford recruits on the West Coast in the same manner as HYPM recruit on the East Coast.</p>
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<p>Remind me, what’s the share of whites in HYPSM? I don’t hear so much complaining about lack of diversity there though. However, the moment the Asian share shoots up, all kinds of warning bells go off. See why I believe that these kids are racist?</p>