<p>See, you smoothly transitioned from lower SES to race. That’s the part I have problem with. I am in full agreement with you that a thumb on the scale by SES is fine, even desirable. I am not at all in agreement with using race as a proxy for SES, as, 1) it is an imperfect measure, and 2) it is super easy to directly measure SES.</p>
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<p>Yet, it is tempting to solve it using quotas, by discriminating against kids whose parents were involved. Is that really the message you want to send?</p>
<p>Fabrizio, it is Sunday, and it should be a day of peace. There are times when people post a tongue-in-cheek comment … without telegraphing it. I thought that the using the term omniscient Fabrizio would be a clear “hint” of the nature of the comment. Next time, I will add one of those silly emoticons!</p>
<p>Regarding parsing the posts of others, I hope you could realize that it IS something you do. Just look at the energy you devote to cut and paste from sources or from CC posts. Perhaps you do this to make sure there is no ambiguity in your discussion, but it remains that you do a lot of parsing. If that is a negative or a positive remains open for debate.</p>
<p>IP, my post was a sequitur to yours. If you object to the smooth transition, let me correct this for you:</p>
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<p>When I wrote, “As far as parental involvement, it is obviously a large part of the puzzle. A puzzle with no easy solutions!” the last thing on my mind would be a system of quotas or “punishing” the involvement of parents. Fwiw, my long involvement with this site should be a clear indication that I value the role played by parents in education, with perhaps a small caveat that I also tend to feel sorry for the progeny of helicopter parents, especially when they turn into misguided and vicariously obsessive Amy Chua’s clones.</p>
<p>^IndianParent, As a grown up odds person, presumably with better math skills than I , how do you the odds of a black student, lets say a boy, differ at birth, from those in the application pool to Harvard class of 2012?</p>
<p>I don’t know the number, but think it must be a dramatic change. If just being a middle class URM accounts for 2/3’rds of that, what can we do with that?</p>
<p>Ghostt, Thank you. Great study, I will read it up. I have one question and one concern. </p>
<p>It doesn’t really cover a period where Asians kids were in American schools en masse. I believe that the benefits that URMs get would be the same for Asians, who are typiclaly unhooked.</p>
<p>The Newsweek article clearly states that the benefits accrue by SES and not race, which is what I would expect as well.</p>
<p>I don’t know the overall odds, but I everything I read on this leads me to believe that everything else being equal an African American kid will have better odds than an Asian kid.</p>
<p>^ I think you must mean in the applicant pool, certainly not at birth. I’m trying to draw your attention to what very small percentage of the black population make it to the elite pool, that you are focusing on. I’m guessing less the I percent, maybe 0.25 percent of all black teens, 0.15 percent of black male teens.</p>
<p>I think about 2,500 black teens end up attending “elite” universities. 2500 out of 151,000 SAT takers, and maybe 800,000 black teens. Of the rest, almost half don’t even graduate high school.</p>
<p>I have no problem understanding why the above applies for people with lower SES, but I don’t understand why it applies to URMs at large. If you just focus on people with lower SES, you automatically cover URMs from lower SES. Why do you also need to provide additional help (thumb on the scale) for URMs from middle-to-higher SES? Incidentally, Henry Louis Gates estimates that the 2/3 of the thumb on the scale benefits accrue to URMs from middle-to-higher SES.</p>
<p>“My” system relies on the adcoms to make the necessary adjustments when evaluating the application of Sasha Obama versus a black kid from Mrs. Rhee former district versus the Stuy attending son of a New York Laotian seamstress who works at a sweatshop versus the daughter of a Mexican meatpacking plant worker.</p>
<p>I am fully aware of the claims made by Lani Guinier or Henry Gates and other stories about blacks from Africa or the Caribbean. Just as I have studied the plight of Asians who have found refuge from oppressive dictatorships to adapt in the United States with a mostly agrarian background and little to no education.</p>
<p>It probably helps to believe in the integrity of “the” system and believe that the readers and adcoms do not separate the piles of the files by placing red AAR (for AutomaticAsianReject)letters on the covers, and that those people do analyze the files with the proper context.</p>
<p>I really don’t know how it will apply to the African American population at large. But I believe that a really poor but smart African American kid will have better odds than an equally poor but similarly smart Asian kid when it comes to admissions at the same college.</p>
<p>It may help you, but I am skeptical of good intentions, and would rather remove the race altogether, and group just by SES. Would you have a problem with that? If yes, why?</p>
<p>Well, another way to look at it is that 1/3 of the URM are from the lower SES groups. How would that compare to White and Asians? Isn’t there a statistical evidence that only 1 out of 24 students at the most selective schools come from the lowest SES quartile.</p>
<p>"But I believe that a really poor but smart African American kid will have better odds than an equally poor but similarly smart Asian kid when it comes to admissions at the same college. "</p>
<p>Again, as an odds person (I am not, so I really need your help), you mean, once in the applicant pool, the odds we better? What are the odds for random poor Asian kid, compared to random poor black kid, in 10th grade, BEFORE applications? And let’s leave “smart” out, since I’m not sure what that means.</p>
<p>The odds are definitely better for the random poor Asian kid before the applications, as the academic performance for the random poor Asian kid is also likely higher. Why is the academic performance for the random poor African American kid lower than that of the random poor Asian kid? I don’t know. But scores indicate that it is. </p>
<p>But the random poor Asian kid doesn’t compete with the random poor African American kid post applications. Two similar kids from different races compete, and there the Asian kid faces a significant disadvantage.</p>
<p>"Two similar kids from different races compete, and there the Asian kid faces a significant disadvantage. "</p>
<p>Except that Asian kid is completing against a very small percentage of the black kids. Say, 50 percent of Asian kids, compete against one percent of black kids. Way off, (and maybe irrelevant), I know, that’s why I need your help.</p>
<p>I believe that it would have a disastrous effect, and would eradicate most of what has been preserved or gained in the past 60 years. Since I am in no position to make policy recommendations, all I can say is that I do support the AA policies of schools that do rely on a system of preferences for URMs.</p>
<p>I already addressed the issue of adding a SES criterion that could lead to an eventual reshuffling of the categories. Fwiw, I do not believe this would help the “Asian Cause.”</p>
<p>This is correct (percentages may not be exact, but there is indeed a significant difference in scale). The reason for this is simple - Asians prioritize education and college admissions over all else. This is true for all SES. It is a cultural issue. Unless the African-American culture-at-large changes, there is no way to counter this. Massive investments will help, but will still not be enough. You have to involve the parents. I do understand that the parents are not always there, but you can’t penalize the Asian kids because their parents are there and pushing them relentlessly to do well in academics. This is the main issue that Asians have - they are penalized for extra effort. And not just by URMs, even whites feel that Asians by trying hard are creating an unfair advantage, and lately there has been a significant white flight from the very strong school districts where Asians are a majority and relentlessly push up standards.</p>