are colleges racist?

Parents Forum
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<p>[Household</a> income in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States]Household”>Household income in the United States - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>Let me use 150k family income as being rich which puts about 6% in this group. I will disclose that our family belongs in this group and also my universe does include a lot of people at this base level or above.</p>

<p>Let us pick a national median income of 44,000 as being poor which includes 50% (if the feds don’t need a family of 4 to pay taxes at 50k…).</p>

<p>[Nearly</a> half of US households escape fed income tax - Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0]Nearly”>http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0)</p>

<p>So if a few people in the top 6% of income bracket treat their kids poorly with respect to their education, I don’t accept that argument extending to a majority of the population that is considered poor.</p>

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I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. What is your point? Do you support giving admissions advantages to poorer kids or don’t you accept giving admissions benefits to poorer kids? Because your post is completely confusing. Quoting wikipedia income stats is wonderful and all, but has nothing to do with anything. </p>

<p>And once again, my “universe” of experience is not defined by my adjusted gross income. Which is my whole point. I support these socioeconomic preferences despite the fact that they don’t tell the whole story, and sometimes rich kids have more obstacles than poorer kids.</p>

<p>Rich or poor, this statement is completely ridiculous -

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<p>And if you believe that, we live in different “thought” universes, despite having similar income levels.</p>

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<p>Oh, it’s been a few years since this appeared on CC (on the older forum) in a series of debates similar to this one. There is, however, an important part missing from the narrative, namely the comparison to the … white sub-group. </p>

<p>As I suggested a dozen pages ago, one can focus on percentages or look at absolute numbers of students who reach certain milestones on standardized tests. The “1,476 Asians scored between 700 and 800” should be compared to the number of white students scoring this high, especially since the verbal scores often carry more importance at the most selective schools in the country.</p>

<p>PS Fwiw, here’s the omitted part:</p>

<p>In 1995, for 674,343 White test takers of the SAT 1 Test, in the Verbal, 8,978 Whites scored between 700 and 800, 19,272 scored between 650 and 699, and 36,700 Whites scored between 600 and 649.</p>

<p>In 1995, for 674,343 White test takers of the SAT 1 Test in the Math, 9,519 Whites scored between 750 and 800, 29,774 Whites scored between 700 and 749, and 51,306 Whites between 650 and 699.</p>

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<p>I disagree with that. Conley’s proposal offers an alternative way of achieving racial diversity (i.e. what “diversity” really means) with less controversy. Civil rights initiatives outlawing racial preferences in public universities have passed in five out of the six states that have had them. When was the last time you saw an initiative that banned socioeconomic preferences?</p>

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<p>I am in favor of considering the income level as a major factor when race is being considered as one of the factors. I see no problem with the so called holistic approach accounting for diversity but I don’t believe someone who comes from a family with an income level of 200000 or more should be given an advantage in admissions based on a box checked on the commonapp despite being a couple of notches below other candidates. There may be a few hundred cases of higher income kids not being given the opportunity to do well in and outside of school but when income level is low, there are a few hundred thousand cases where they simply don’t have the opportunity to do well.</p>

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<p>What does that have to do with anything? Private elite colleges do not have any obligation to rectify the Black-White wealth gap in America, nor do they have any obligation to resolve some peoples’ perceived “controversy.” If you want to argue that the public universities do have this obligation, that is another question. But if I remember correctly, this thread is about HYP et al.</p>

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<p>texaspg,
You are making a (racist) assumption that rich Black kids don’t “do well” or are “a couple notches below other candidates.” What is the basis for your assumption?</p>

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<p>I wrote that to pre-empt you from asking me whether socioeconomic preferences are less controversial than racial preferences. My reply also indicates my disagreement with how you view Conley’s proposal.</p>

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<p>Indeed. Way back in page 71 (post 1062) of this thread, xiggi (sarcastically) claimed to understand my “reluctance to perform an analysis that will demonstrate that the number of white students who score higher than 700 on the SAT Verbal (an extremely important element in holistic admissions at the most selective schools) represents SEVERAL multiples of the Asian one.”</p>

<p>I was “reluctant” for two reasons: (a) I don’t think the SAT is everything, and (b) it wouldn’t surprise me at all that more whites than Asians score > 700 on the verbal section because…there are more whites than Asians in this country.</p>

<p>The 1995 data, which appear to have been copied from [the</a> comments section here](<a href=“http://www.discriminations.us/2008/02/more-handwringing-orthodoxy-from-the-college-board/]the”>More Handwringing Orthodoxy From The College Board), are interesting. Like bovertine (post 1545), I too thought that the number of Asians who scored > 700 on the verbal section was “low.”</p>

<p>xiggi correctly filled in the gaps by including the corresponding figures for whites, which confirmed his claim that the figure for whites was “SEVERAL multiples of the Asian one.” But xiggi only told half the story: proportionally, more Asians scored > 700 than did whites.</p>

<p>1476/81514=1.81% > 9519/674343=1.41%</p>

<p>(Disclaimer: That is not in any way intended to suggest that Asians are “superior.”)</p>

<p>So in 1995, very few students of any racial classification scored > 700 in the verbal part of the SAT. I still don’t know what xiggi’s point was in highlighting an unsurprising result–more whites than Asians score > 700 in the verbal section–but I’m detecting that xiggi is loose with stereotypes against Asians. I daresay he would never stereotype "URM"s for fear of being labeled a racist.</p>

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You enjoy making up statistics? I have no idea what the numbers are, and neither do you. My whole point, which you continue to disregard, is that just as with any particular URM you cannot tell whether they came from a rich family or poor family, you cannot tell with certainty whether any particular rich kid faced fewer or more obstacles in their education than any poor kid merely from their socioeconomic level. But the only thing people every complain about is the URM. Nobody seems to care about giving the same level of scrutiny to any other admissions advantage, or “checked box” as you put it.</p>

<p>Or rather let me say, that people seem to worry excessively that the adcoms aren’t giving the appropriate level of holistic scrutiny to the URMs, but accept every other admissions designation as valid on its face.</p>

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<p>This is exactly the way it works now. The vast majority of universities in the US admit student entirely on stats. There are very few that look past stats for other factors that would enhance diversity at their schools. However, the schools with diverse student bodies that do look past just the stats happen to be some of the most desirable and tend to be at the top of the USNews ratings.</p>

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<p>Bay - I am making no such assumption. I am saying if someone is a rich black/hispanic/asian/white kid, their accomplishments should not be in anyway less than the kids who would normally be admitted to any of the elite schools (people keep harping on HPYS but getting into WashU or Northwestern or Rice is equally hard). The admissions are supposed to be need blind in a lot of the top 20 schools and so if we are to believe that, the holistic process that considers race as a factor does nt take their income level and opportunity to do well in school into account if they don’t tie it back to financial status. </p>

<p>If a black/hispanic/asian/white kid with 50k family income is in top 20% of class, scored 1900, worked 20 hours a week to contribute to the family income (gets rejected by most top 20 schools), that kid is superior to any kid who scored 2100, is in top 15% of class, never worked, has a ton of ECs, wrote beautiful essays about raising money to alleviate poverty issues in Guatemalan slum dwelling children, and happens to be an URM with a family income of 200k and got into a top 20 school (not an athlete, not legacy and no wow achievements). If this belief makes me a racist, so be it.</p>

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<p>No, I did not tell half the story. I wrote about focusing on absolute numbers as opposed to percentages. So, let me fill you in! In terms of admissions, it does not matter if Asians do better “proportionally” but how representative they could be in the pools of applicants.</p>

<p>Here’s an example. If 80% of all students from Western Bhutan happened to score 2400 SAT, it would be a high percentage. However, if there are 50 students applying to Stanford, that would still be only 40 out of 32,000 applications. </p>

<p>Why is the absolute number of students important? If only 2,000 of 80,000 Asians score above 700 on the Verbal SAT, it should be obvious that NO MORE than 2,000 could be in the applicants’ pool of say Harvard. If there are 8,000 Asian applicants at Harvard, it would mean that 75 percent of those applicants score below the above number.</p>

<p>From here on, you can play with the numbers of potential high scorers and potential admits among white and asian students. Since the focus of this thread is on discrimination based on race, one ought to wonder which group fares the biggest attrition among the high scoring students. </p>

<p>Here’s another way to look at it. Considering that more than 20,000 spots at the Ivy League plus MIT and Stanford, how does that “jive” with your number of Asians who scored above 700 on the verbal in 1995? How many Asians were admitted at those ten schools? Would 15% enrollement not be 3,000 students and … more than double than the 1400+ who scored high? How does that work for White students?</p>

<p>Now, before you repeat again that your position on asian discrimination is not based on standardized test scores (for apparent good reasons) would you finally share WHY you think that Asians are discriminated at HYPS and why they’d deserve MORE spots? Or should we conclude that we have missed your argument all this time, and that you DO NOT believe Asians deserve more spots and do NOT believe that Asians represent superior candidates. </p>

<p>I am still puzzled about the basis and nature of your argument.</p>

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<p>“You enjoy making up statistics? I have no idea what the numbers are, and neither do you.”</p>

<p>Percentages don’t lie. 50% of the families make less than 44k in this country and at that income level, they usually have to seriously evaluate how to pay 1000 SAT coaching class fees. Unfortunately, a high percentages of URMs are part of this group than your so called rich friends who don’t care about their kids education. If you have n’t figured out what percentages mean, caring does n’t translate into affording. </p>

<p>And you are right, I am beginning to believe that we inhabit different planets, if not universes.</p>

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<p>[I didn’t really understand your post, but I will respond to this^ part]</p>

<p>Rich kids are “normally” admitted to private elite schools, in very large numbers. 30-50% of HYPSM’s enrolled class are full-pay students. “Need blind” means you won’t be rejected because you can’t pay. It doesn’t mean that the elites don’t want or need or seek out full-pay students. There is no way you can know all of the qualifications of any particular admitted rich applicant, or whether the elites actually gave them an advantage because they are full-pay. There is nothing that prevents them from doing so.</p>

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Good grief. You are now arguing against yourself. </p>

<p>Case 1: If percentages don’t lie, and what you say above is correct, then a high percentage of URMs are low income. So statistically, by concentrating on URMs we would be more likely to admit low income students. </p>

<p>Case 2: Similarly, by your argument, if we give an advantage to students with lower incomes, we would be more likely to admit studets who overcome educational obstacles, irrespective of ethnicity.</p>

<p>My point is that for any given student we do not know the full story without evaluating the entirety of their application. Neither the economically deprived nor the URM. We don’t know what obstacles they’ve overcome, and we don’t know what they might add to a university community. But you only seem concerned about questioning the Case 1 student.</p>

<p>Since you bring up the “universe” comment, I go back to one of your original statements which prompted me to say this. Perhaps you could answer it. Do you actually believe this:

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<p>You wrote it. To me, lack of parental interest in the student’s education is one of the major problems we have today.</p>

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<p>Bay - Do you look what people post in chance threads or admitted student threads?</p>

<p>Have you ever come across posts where some admissions seem like they are strictly based on race because the accomplishments seem to differ quite a bit from the rest of the pool? </p>

<p>Why is that people are giving a lot of leeway when someone mentions being an URM irrespective of income level and tell them they are IN even if their resume does n’t stand out? </p>

<p>I agree that a lot of the kids being admitted tend to be in an income bracket where they can pay the fees. The question here is if most people being admitted to HYPSM are in the top 5% of the class, should someone be admitted as part of that group if that person is in top 20% of their class but a well to do URM who had the opportunities to do well in school, i.e., low income not a contrubuting factor in a lower performance?</p>

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<p>I don’t see why not, because being in the top 5% of the class is not a pre-requisite for admission to HYPSM.</p>

<p>My comment applies to any admitted student, not just URMs.</p>

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<p>Two comments about the above.
“Why is that people are giving a lot of leeway when someone mentions being an URM irrespective of income level and tell them they are IN even if their resume doesn’t stand out?”</p>

<p>Sounds like you are talking about “chance threads”. The kids responding to “chance” threads (and they are usually kids) don’t really have a lot of credibility; they often end with “now chance me back!”. If you look at the admission results I linked form “Blacks in Higher Education”, it seems obvious to me that most black kids at least, do NOT get admitted. The admit rates might be better than average at some schools, but most do NOT get admitted. </p>

<p>With regard to result threads, I don’t recall seeing any black kids (don’t really follow the Hispanic results) being admitted to top schools without being at the top ( well above 20 percent) of their class. Personally, I think it’s the SAT’s that draw the most attention.</p>

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<p>You most definitely should. “Deserve” has nothing to do with it; it is not a term I have used. Moreover, I have never stated that Asians “represent superior candidates”; again, that is not a phrase I have used.</p>

<p>Perhaps I should address your post from earlier.</p>

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<p>Answer my question, xiggi. Why didn’t Cass Cliatt, Princeton’s PR rep, release such information? Why can’t she say something like, “Asians made up 12% of the applicants in the year Li was rejected but 14% of the admits. Li needs to shut up”?</p>