<p>I actually agree with xiggi on both. The creation of a black middle class owes a lot to AA (not the original form, the altered form). Also, role models are important. If there are very few Asian executives, it does send a message to the Asian kids that executive ranks in corporates are beyond their reach.</p>
<p>The question is, how do you solve for this? Is it through quotas (the later version of AA) or by making discrimination illegal (the former). I prefer the former, when people with merit will crowd out the people without. Regardless of race.</p>
<p>My theme is this - it is easy to ask Asians to share their good luck with URMs, but lucky URMs don’t exactly share their luck with Asians either.</p>
<p>Well, you still haven’t been blunt about your motives. Perhaps you agree with my characterization of that, in which case indeed we can both stop. We are just trying to gain market share by all means, you through a quota system, me through merit.</p>
<p>Disgusting! I think you made it perfectly clear why elite colleges would prefer a student like Shrinkwrap over a tigered child like Indianparent, no matter whose SAT score was higher.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap - I have seen some numbers from you about African American teenagers applying to elites and numbers who actually get in.</p>
<p>Have you seen any numbers on how many got in as athletes vs URMs? I suspect a large number would have gotten in whether they are black or not because of athletics. Xiggi and I have been talking about a couple of sisters at Stanford who were recruited athletes that would have bypassed adcoms altogether.</p>
<p>Ghostt - thanks for the URLs. I keep hearing about these studies but have nt seen any URLs so far.</p>
<p>Actually it’s number who apply, and number who attend. I think there are a lot of the same kids applying to a lot of the some schools, so that inflates admission rates somewhat. Yield seems lower than average for these kids. </p>
<p>My celebration is over, and it looks like yours is just about to start…</p>
<p>Re: SAT</p>
<p>Thanks to texaspg and bovertine for their responses. I have obviously not made myself clear, so allow me to re-phrase it this way:</p>
<p>Does the math portion of the SAT have a fatter right tail than the verbal portion of the SAT? If so, was there a difference before the re-centering? Is the difference increased after the re-centering?</p>
<p>Canuckguy - I am reading about recentering and it seems to mean that they are putting the mean at 500 so the scores don’t keep going down.</p>
<p>What I was saying was that scoring perfect on Math if you make a single mistake is no longer possible. It used to be until 2006 or so but one mistake on Math blows you down to 98 percentile or lower. You can make a mistake or two in both reading and writing and on some versions of the tests of SAT, you can still get an 800.</p>
<p>This is not to say SAT has gotten harder for Math but just how much better test takers have gotten that one really has no chance of making an 800 with a single mistake. So on some versions of the test (say slightly easier) one mistake in Math drops your score all the way to 760 because 2-3% get it perfect.</p>
<p>CG
The thread has experienced a deluge of posts since you left,so I can’t really remember the post I commented on,or my comment for that matter. If your question is whether the math section top score levels got a lot more crowded since 1995, yes I think that’s true. The average scores have held steady as far as I know. Whether this is due to scaling, test difficulty or student ability at the top level, I don’t know.</p>
<p>CG- I’m on my Blackberry right now. When I get on my computer I’ll post an sat collegebound student report from 1973. If you put it up against a recent report it might answer your question.</p>
<p>I believe it is due to test prep. SAT is a test that can be aced by pretty much anyone if they practice hard enough. I know people who know very little English get 700+ in the English sections. The same can be done for Math.</p>
<p>I went through the article posted by Ghostt about the impact college has on future earnings potential. It seems that if average SAT scores are used, there is no impact. However, if the Barron’s rank is used, there is a huge impact. This means that the Barron’s rank likely uses future earnings potential in the first place to rate colleges, which would make sense to me. Given that, it is indisputable that going to HYPSM will lead to a 15% earnings advantage mid career compared to the second-tier elites. I can understand why Asians and URMs all want to go to HYPSM.</p>
<p>I agree that SAT scores are meaningless. That exam is way too easy. I have seen 5th graders crack it. The SAT II tests are only slightly better. What we truly need is an unified AP curriculum nationwide, with the same course, and the same level of grading (i.e., getting an A from a less rigorous school will no longer work). That grade can then be used to judge kids on their academic potential. The ECs will remain separate, of course.</p>
<p>This obviously will favor kids from the most demanding schools, and the most demanding parents. Some may call this discriminatory. However, it is no more discriminatory than letting the best athlete win the athletic scholarship.</p>
Won’t be popular with lots of people. There are many whose objective is that the college population mirrors the population mix in society, and this can only be accomplished by using criteria that don’t need to be quantified by grades, scores, or any accomplishment that can be assigned points non-subjectively.</p>
<p>I am willing to grant that for the population of college students at large. In other words, take all the colleges across the country, and take all the kids that are applying. Make sure that each kid gets at least one college admission. But don’t force the curve in each college, let merit rule there. Thus, the meritorious go to the better colleges, and the less meritorious go to the lesser colleges, but everyone from all races gets a shot at some college. Would that be acceptable as a compromise?</p>
<p>Not really. What about kids that would be meritorious given the chance?</p>
<p>Your way ends up with the elite in the elite schools and everyone else trickling down. We spent decades ending that. That will result in divisions among socioeconomic lines which will lead to divisions among racial lines…</p>
<p>So let’s give them the chance in K-12 education. Pump serious amounts of money to revamp the public K-12 system. If giving them a chance in college works, given them a chance in K-12 should work better, no?</p>
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<p>As it is, 3% of the college students in the Elites come from the lowest quartile of SES. Nothing has ended using the racial quota system.</p>