<p>I’ll walk back my original statement, a little bit. The tippy top universities can afford to be need-blind because they obviously don’t go recruiting in every working class or rural neighborhood they can find in order to find students. They go to some; but, it’s pretty well callibrated. Some things about “The Gatekeepers” seem a little dated in light of today’s discussions about Asians and Asian Americans (I wonder if Jacques Steinberg would have been able to eavesdrop on the racist adcoms rejecting all those Asian over-achievers out of hand) but, other things are still quite salient. For example, the travel schedule of most premier colleges and universities would still resemble that described in the book, replete with day schools, prep schools and high-powered suburban schools. When they visit one or two Indian reservations a year, it’s called affirmative action, but, when they vist the Harvard-Westlakes of the country year after year, somehow this isn’t affirmative action for the rich?</p>
<p>I don’t argue positions based on the personal characteristics of the “owner” of the argument or hypothesis. Whether Mr. Sander’s own children are white, black, purple or polka-dotted is irrelevant. Wouldn’t it be somewhat – oh, let me use the word biased – to assume that Mr. Sander would reach a given conclusion merely based on the racial characteristics of his son?</p>
<p>And yet when they visit Harvard-Westlake, or Exeter, or Pingry, or whoever, it doesn’t mean that they are "“biased against” or “discriminating against” everyday public high schools. This is the core point Fabrizio has an issue with - that wanting to include X is not “discrimination” against not-X. Harvard certainly wants to make sure the elite boarding-school kids with whom they have relationships are included; that is not “discrimination” against poor inner-city kids or even average-public-school-going kids. Harvard wants to admit legacies at a higher rate; that is not “discrimination” against non-legacies. </p>
<p>To allege discrimination, I think you have to get at the reasons for such discrimination. “I want to ensure a critical mass of diversity, including blacks and Hispanics” is so completely different from “I want to keep the % of Asians down to x% and not a single more.” Discrimination, to me, implies animus. Fab tries to allege that there is some systematic anti-Asian animus in the system and isn’t showing proof other than that some really-smart-qualified Asian kids don’t get in.</p>
<p>Good to know. I pointed it out to pre-empt anyone from calling Sander a partisan hack with an agenda, as Espenshade and Chung have been described in the past. If you don’t “argue positions based on the personal characteristics of the “owner” of the argument or hypothesis,” great.</p>
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<p>That’s negative discrimination. Positive discrimination is still discrimination.</p>
<p>Well, then they practice positive discrimination by trying to be inclusive of URM’s and ensure a reasonable amount of representation, even if it means a few less spots in the class for everyone else. Oh well. Such is life. No one was guaranteed those spots anyway, and a spot in a class is not a “reward” for qualification or hard work because as epiphany has explained, the buying power is on the side of the colleges who get to choose who they like out of the pool of very qualified applicants. </p>
<p>You’ve not proven any of the following:
Asian acceptance rates at elite u’s are appreciably different from white acceptance rates at elite u’s
Asians “deserve” to be at higher levels / make up more of the admitted pool at elite colleges
Colleges deliberately select away from Asians as a matter of policy
Colleges engage in setting quotas / keeping Asian representation to x% and nothing more
Asians are underrepresented in elite colleges settings
There is explicit anti-Asian animus at the elite colleges
When a 2400 Asian is rejected and a 2200 URM elsewhere is admitted, that URM “took the spot” of the 2400 Asian who “should have gotten in”
The benefits of the thumb on the scale for URM’s aren’t accruing to poorer URM’s but they’re going to “sons of black physicians who attended boarding school”</p>
<p>I don’t think the 2.9 for first year grades is necessarily a mismatch. I’d like to see what happens in the following years as well. I also note that the blacks in that study had lower income levels on average which is probably a good proxy for poorer schools as well. They can catch up, but not necessarily in a year.</p>
<p>But mismatch is worth studying. As I said earlier, MIT did this when looking at accepting more women and found that women were getting better grades than expected even if their stats were lower.</p>
<p>I can’t read the actual study, and I’m not willing to fork over $5.</p>
<p>Why do there have to be discovered “reasons” or identified motives for discrimination to be true discrimination? Whether an outcome is intentional or not does not alter the result and its impact. A biased outcome will be just as unsatisfactory even if all the people and institutions involved were well-meaning. When achievement tests used to be biased toward males because there were a lot of sports-related questions on them, or baised against non-whites because all the children in the problems and stories were suburanites named Mike and Susan, this was not some evil plot. But it was still bias that needed to be corrected.</p>
<p>And yes, since there are not unlimited spots at the top schools, a greater emphasis on recruiting students at the top prep schools in comparison with students at poor rural or urban schools, could in fact lead to relatively fewer numbers of the latter even allowing for some discrepancy due to academic preparedness issues, whether anyone had some nefarious plan for that to happen or not. It’s the outcome that counts, not the intention. HYPS et al. don’t get a pass just because they don’t have Hitler as their Director of Admissions.</p>
<p>What does “trying to be inclusive of URM’s [sic]” even mean? Are you saying that without racial preferences, universities are NOT being inclusive of "URM"s? If so, how?</p>
<p>What is a “reasonable amount” or “critical mass”? Michigan, home to Grutter and Gratz was ~10% “URM” before Proposal 2 and ~8% afterward. Are you saying 10% was “critical mass” but 8% wasn’t?</p>
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<p>Please stop saying this. I do not dispute it. Sheesh. Besides, given that the pool is very qualified and there are more qualified applicants than slots, why single out the "URM"s?</p>
<p>Maybe an “[un]reasonable” number of "URM"s would exist under race-blind admissions, but so what? That’s simply a natural consequence of…wait for it…there being too many qualified applicants!</p>
<p>I guess you and epiphany aren’t so happy that your favorite go-to line can actually be used against you.</p>
<p>Just a note on the supposed high volume of black students attending boarding schools :rolleyes:…</p>
<p>If someone can show a high critical mass of rich black students attending boarding schools, I’ll be willing to look at such statistics. Do not, however, equate attendance at boarding schools with income. One of the key strategies directed toward at-risk black youth in impacted urban environments is to move the best and most vulnerable of those (depending on neighborhood, family situation, etc.) to East Coast boarding schools, so that the effect of negative local influences (especially from peers) can be nullified. Thus, an attempt will be made by administrators of urban middle schools serving black youth (especially) to get some of the very capable students who have shown ambition and talent to transplant for 4 years, because such students may very well have promise and need a counter-culture to support that. That means that those (few!) students will be there on generous financial aid.</p>
<p>Edit: These (rare) students are not pulled from the low-performing site schools of the public system, but rather the high-performing charter schools which are specifically directed toward reversing a non-academic culture in the neighborhood.</p>
<p>Consistently, 30-50% of HYPSM’s freshmen classes are full-pay ($50K+ per year tuition). If HYPSM didn’t want it this way, it would certainly be easy for them to take more poor kids.</p>
<p>On page 20, it mentions that “the CLL data show that the median grade in Chemistry courses at Duke University is a B while in English it is an A-.” That seems to be a larger than average disparity in grade inflation between different subjects.</p>
<p>But there are only so many spots in East Coast boarding schools, and a slot filled by the at-risk black youth is a slot taken away from Muffy McPreppingstone! I allege that elite East Coast boarding schools, by wanting to bring at-risk black youth into their environment, are discriminating against old-school wealthy WASPs. It’s a travesty, I tell you! Especially when Muffy is more … qualified.</p>
<p>The reality of discrimination complaints and lawsuits, when alleging discrimination by category (race, gender, etc.) is that the burden of proof is on the complaining party to show:</p>
<p>~that the negative or restricting actions were directed specifically because of categorical membership alone
~that other categories/classes were treated in a disparate or assumptively more favorable manner
~that there has been a systematic pattern of categorical restriction/elimination
~that other categories have not been restricted, with everything else about them being similar or identical to the category of persons alleging ‘disparate treatment.’<br>
~that within the targeted institution’s (private club, school, etc.) published requirements for guaranteed membership, only or mainly people of your category have been denied membership while nevertheless meeting requirements.
~that you and/or your class/category have suffered appreciable harm, or will be harmed, by being denied access to this particular institution.</p>
<p>I also don’t get to create my own standards for membership, or to re-interpret basic requirements for admission/membership/the job (etc.) as actually super-requirements. Thus (speaking of jobs, for example) if a job asks for a Master’s Degree, a man holding a Master’s Degree gets interviewed & then hired, as being qualified and well-matched for the existing mixed-gender team of employees, but two women are also interviewed for this job, and they hold Doctoral Degrees. That’s not discrimination against the women, in itself. The job didn’t ask for Doctoral Degrees, and plenty of other women are also in the work environment in similar positions to this man, with Master’s Degrees and Bachelor’s Degrees. </p>
<p>Read what I said in context. I was trying to tell the poster that presenting a partial truth is also torturing the data to say what you want it to say. He may not like the whole truth, but reality sucks, it is what it is. </p>
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<p>Here is another example of presenting a partial truth. If not challenged, it would be allowed to stand; if challenged, one can always say it is done with irony or with sarcasm. Putting smilies after the comment would eliminate this type of gaming.</p>
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<p>Since another poster has already answered you, I would just add that all three groups are economically disadvantaged with respect to the white subgroup. The Asians are economically similar to the Latinos, but academically superior to all, and this is even without SAT scores. </p>
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<p>Are we comparing apples to apples? A population where 80% study physics vs. one where 80% study biology are very different populations. Beware Simpson’s paradox!</p>
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<p>I dont think so. Look like they are holding the report long enough so nobody can remember what the fuss is all about. As far as GS goes, it will probably settled quietly with a little slap on the wrist. GS will get to keep the profit from the disaster they helped to create though.</p>
<p>This quote, from fabrizio, is from pages back, but I’ve been out of town:
I don’t think the campuses of Ivies would be 60% Asian in the absence of racial preferences as between whites and Asians. I think they’d be somewhere between 12% and 19% Asian, because of various “soft” and demographic factors. I think if you eliminated racial preferences for URMs, the percentage of Asians would go up by a couple of percent, as would the percentage of whites. Despite several extremely lengthy discussions of this over several years, I haven’t seen anything that makes me think that this opinion is wrong. It could be wrong, of course, but I’d like to see some data to the contrary before I’d suggest getting out the pitchforks and torches.</p>
<p>To perhaps spell this out better, the Ivies say they don’t discriminate between white and Asian applicants on the basis of race. If you think they are lying, you need some decent proof to persuade others. I don’t think there is decent proof of this as things stand now.</p>
<p>" I think if you eliminated racial preferences for URMs, the percentage of Asians would go up by a couple of percent, as would the percentage of whites. "</p>
<p>I am curious about how many URM students it would take to increase the percentage of whites at a school that is fifty percent white. I don’t love math, but if the school had 5000 students, and 50 percent, or two thousand five hundred where white, to go from 50 to 52 percent would mean swapping out how many students? If there were 20 percent URM’s at that school, that would mean…(logging out to look for a calcuulator…)</p>