<p>This is an accurate summary of my position on this issue. Thanks, bovertine.</p>
<p>Yes, I am opposed to ALL racial preferences on the principle that everyone should be treated equally WITHOUT REGARD to his racial classification. I do not and have never agreed with Justice Blackmun that “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”</p>
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<p>I interpreted his plan the same way, and I view it as his compromise. My compromise, as I’ve stated in numerous posts, is to assign each applicant a unique identifier and modify the box to just “(Optional) Are you a ‘URM’? If yes, please check one or more of the following:” I’d rather have that than an overt quota, though as long as “critical mass” is Constitutional, quotas exist anyway.</p>
<p>Ah, I didn’t realize you were referring to professional sports recruiting when you talked about adopting a system of selection by merit as is used in athletics. Your example of successfully using “pure statistics to pick the players” makes you sound like a stats man, btw, and might work if colleges were trying to produce graduates who excelled at only one thing - like killing it on standardized tests.</p>
<p>The pro sports business model is not analogous to the elite college business model. I am quite sure that most people could tolerate a work day that required being surrounded by insufferable prima donnas, peers who cannot string two sentences together or who don’t speak English or who pick their noses, when they are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so and can retreat to their mansions or luxury hotels every evening. But I think you would have a hard time recruiting students who would be willing to pay $200,000+ to spend 24/7 for four years with those same types of people. That is why recommendations, face-to-face interviews, and other indications of positive personality traits matter for most selective colleges.</p>
<p>Except athletes who are picked based on stats and athletes who are picked based on subjective bias both have the same attributes that you describe, while the former also perform far better than the latter.</p>
<p>May be it’s just me, but I personally learned nothing from the 3 schools that I went to. I found classes to be super boring. So I can’t imagine what one can learn in school.</p>
<p>There is an element of Emperor’s New Clothes in all of this, as I’m sure we are all aware on this thread. Getting into HYPS undergrad is a very nice thing, terrific if you want to segue directly to I-banking after undergrad. Otherwise, there really are a gazillion other marvelous educations to be had out there. And the depressing truth is that “getting in” to a trophy school at 18 is not an end zone. It’s just the beginning of a life of applications and evaluations and assessments and probable rejections and a sprinkling of acceptances.</p>
<p>These schools are far too fetishized. The competition for a spot at one of them is very harsh but the much harsher reality is that once in, you have to start all over proving yourself, standing out, strategizing, working extremely hard, etc.</p>
I’m fairly confident that at least a few admissions officers at the most selective schools do indeed care about educating the next generation of inspiring college professors. In the admissions game, their goals count, too.</p>
What’s unfair about it? We’re offering two competing hypotheses. Your hypothesis is that Asians are the new Jews. My hypothesis is that Asians simply don’t meet the prevailing criteria at the rates you’d prefer. If Jews do (or have at least reached a point of being content that the system is treating them fairly), maybe it is because in the Jewish community, being a Rabbi or a writer or a college professor is a respected, desirable profession. So Jewish applicants are competing across a wider span of the “balanced” class. </p>
<p>You complain that the criteria aren’t objective enough. In fact, admission to the most selective schools is largely based on two reasonably objective criteria, namely class rank and test scores. Those are necessary but not sufficient criteria, because (a) grades and existing tests aren’t sufficiently precise to differentiate the merits of the ablest students, and (b) no test or grading standard has been devised to measure certain qualities the tippy-top schools want.</p>
<p>Would it be surprising if those desired qualities have a cultural bias? This is a country created by self-starters and risk-takers, not obedient parent-pleasers. So the Tiger Mother model can backfire.</p>
<p>Which is fine. There are non-Asians in the student body and can serve this purpose. Why must the Asians be forced to choose careers that pleases the AdComs?</p>
<p>This was true in 1925 as well, when the Harvard President was conspiring to keep Jews out. So I don’t buy your point.</p>
<p>This is the key driver. Antisemitism is no longer acceptable in American society. One day discrimination against Asians will no longer be acceptable as well. It is just a matter of time.</p>
<p>It’s from the Wizard of Oz. It turns out the scarecrow was the smartest of the bunch, but for some reason he doubted his ability. Oz assured him he was just as smart and educated as all those professors, he just didn’t have the approriate credential.</p>
<p>Okay, maybe it’s not an entirely apt analogy. I suspect you don’t doubt your ability. </p>
<p>All the LAC proponents on this thread - I got a question.</p>
<p>I saw a brochure from Williams College. One point it makes in the financial aid brochure is that it costs 80,000 per student per year. However they are estimating the costs at 55,000. How should these numbers be interpreted - that Williams is spending an extra 25 or 30k per student from their endowment?</p>
<p>This thread has went from the effects of Affirmative Action on the acceptance rates of Asians to the differences between Jewish and Asian Parenting.</p>
I don’t think Harvard pays that much attention to the interview. If it’s horrendous it will definitely count against you, but from everything I know (and I know one interviewer IRL) they often give enthusiastic recommendations for strong candidates who still get rejected. Anecdotally, though, I think there’s a certain truth to this (and not just just for the interview for the whole application). They want students who will share their intellectual (or other) enthusiasms with each other. My older son didn’t get dinged for telling his Harvard interviewer Harvard wasn’t his first choice, indeed I think the interviewer kind of admired his chutzpah. The interviewer spent a good deal of the interviewer trying to persuade my son Harvard was better than MIT. But my son also talked about his enthusiasm for computer science and science fiction.</p>
<p>Yes, I know Caltech uses both students and faculty and they are also notorious for giving a lot more weight to grades and scores than other schools. It leads to a pretty quirky undergraduate body. I love it, but it’s not for everyone. (Dh was a grad student there and I worked in a library for a while.)</p>
<p>Actually the closest admissions system to the British one is at Carnegie Mellon where the schools with the schools are pretty narrowly defined. My son only applied to the School of Computer Science so his I am a computer nerd approach to the application served him well.</p>
<p>I disagree that the case has been made. Unless the colleges give out a lot more numbers breaking down the racial makeup of admissions and acceptances, it can’t be made. And even then, holistic admissions gives them a lot of wriggle room to make their case even if the numbers seems suspicious. But we don’t even have accurate numbers to work with at this point.</p>
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