<p>Bovertine -My position is that being an URM should not automatically give you extra credit in the holistic process. An additional check should be made whether you are a low income to deserve the extra credit.</p>
<p>My example - If you are an URM whose URM parents are physicians (who already got their opportunities to rise up from being low income URMs) who sent you to the best of the private schools, you are in the middle of your class and the only other people who got in from your school to HYPSM were in the top 10% of class, do you also deserve an admit?</p>
<p>Shrinkrap - I am assuming I followed you correctly when I say you are a physician URM. What is your opinion about my above example?</p>
<p>I know maybe six other black physician or dentist parents. Most have kids that are a bit younger than mine, but I think those who have kids in college, would have NO idea what goes on here at college confidential. </p>
<p>Yes, I am a physician, yes I am second generation college in my family, but I hope you can believe me when I say I would be very surprised if most black physicians value or even understand how this top school game is played. </p>
<p>I’ve said this before, but i will say it again. I found CC because my husband said my D should take an SAT class, and maybe take it twice. I though he was CRAZY!!! I could not believe kids did that! So I google, and I find CC. It is like “Oz” to me. I have never seen anything like it. Could be because black physicians are more likely to be “neuveau riche” (sp?), and they have some money, but none f the trappings or “sophistication” that goes along with it. This is true of just about every black physician I know. First generation, grew up fairly poor ( not homeless). Kids go to public school. I know a couple in Georgia that I think fit your stereotype (although their parents were poor and I think one was actually an orphan), and I think their kids go to private school. My kids and a few others had their kids in tiny “Christian” schools. They are a far cry from the private schools that get talked about here. Almost all of the kids in my sons class went to community college.</p>
That’s fine. I understand that. Lot’s of people share that position. I get it. I just don’t understand why you are so worried about complete vetting of the URM, but seem to believe any particular low income student deserves an admissions benefit more than any particular student from a more wealthy family without exmaining their entire situation in addition to their parent’s financial statement.</p>
<p>But I see no evidence you actually care to read my point of view, </p>
<p>so, one more time, do you actually believe what you wrote:</p>
<p>There’s nothing “automatic” about it. Nor is it as quantitative as you are implying. Being URM, from whatever income bracket, does “automatically” give you very careful consideration. But it is not an auto-admit by any means. The committee might have 85 (just a random number) very good URM candidates this year, but one or two of those has considerably less promise when compared with a couple of whites or a couple of Asian candidates, whom the U feels would bring much more to the class that year – or to the intended academic department, or to the intended campus activity. The committee isn’t going to say, “Wait; have to admit.” They’re going to weigh these 2 students (individually) against the other fine individuals also in the pool, and make a judgment call.</p>
<p>You surely exhibit the most bizarre and twisted style of rhetoric. Because you are unable or unwilling to answer the simplest of question, you fire back with an another question or go dig a trivial element to muddy the waters. Are you preparing for a career in politics?</p>
<p>I ask YOU why YOU think Asians are discriminated and you ask ME why Cliatt did not … say something? Why would you care what my speculation would be? How in the world would I know why she did not do or say something. However, YOU should know what YOUR argument is.</p>
<p>So far, you only say … I did not say this or did not say that. Why is it so darn hard to answer the question posed to you.</p>
<p>I don’t apply to bigoted schools, or bigoted job settings, or bigoted commercial rental space, or bigoted residential housing. No one’s being forced, LOL, to apply to HYPS.</p>
<p>Coming from someone who thinks that a certain subgroup (read: Asians) are “overrepresented” only because their culture (monolithic?) condones cheating and encourages “trophy hunting”?</p>
<p>None of us are seeing essays and none of us are seeing letters of recommendation. Without those pieces, I can’t conclude anything. Frankly, I think a lot of the high-stats people (of any race / ethnicity) on CC come across as textureless drones. I won a bunch of math / science contests, but there’s nothing that makes me interesting or stand out. I fully understand why elite colleges would rather “cleanse the palate” with someone who might be more interesting.</p>
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<p>These chances threads are being answered by HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS with absolutely no insight as to what happens in admissions office. The fact that high school students on CC may think that URM = magic bullet does not make it so.</p>
<p>But what if the elite colleges want some rich URMs in the student body because they perceive a benefit to the class when rich URMs are included? What if the elites think that rich URMs bring a different perspective than poor URMs? Are you saying that it doesn’t matter, if you are rich you do not get a second look if you are URM, because only poor URMs bring something different to the campus?</p>
<p>“If you are an URM whose URM parents are physicians (who already got their opportunities to rise up from being low income URMs) who sent you to the best of the private schools, you are in the middle of your class and the only other people who got in from your school to HYPSM were in the top 10% of class, do you also deserve an admit?”</p>
<p>Shrinkrap - I am assuming I followed you correctly when I say you are a physician URM. What is your opinion about my above example? "</p>
<p>Also, my D was about number four in her class (of only 85 though), although she probably had the second highest SAT’s (highest SAT’s went to Liberty). She only took them once. That’s what she was told to do by her counselor, who also advocated going to a CC, then transferring to a UC to save money. Where we live, her EC’s were considered pretty good, and had nothing to do with going to college (but nothing like CC kids). She did not apply to any Ivy’s. She DID get into one reach school. The other black kid of an MD at her school went to Biola. His father had died on campus coaching basketball when our kids were in the sixth grade. </p>
<p>My son was closer to the bottom of his class, although he too had among the best SAT’s ( took them a second time after self studying from the Blue Book; Thanks CC!) and accomplishments. He is very happy to be going to one our regional schools.</p>
<p>"An additional check should be made whether you are a low income to deserve the extra credit. "</p>
<p>Hey! Don’t white families get extra points for being full pay?</p>
<p>I think this applies to many people who are the first in their family to be professionals; I don’t think it’s a race thing. People like that can figure out what to do enough to become a doctor or lawyer, but they don’t know anything about the system. </p>
<p>My parents ended up being very successful and both got graduate degrees, but came from poor to middle class backgrounds. They really didn’t know anything about the process of applying to elite schools either.</p>
<p>If Princeton practices non-discriminatory admission, the data can still be parsed to allege discrimination. The raw admission rate, if higher for Asians, can be argued to come from higher average credentials, so would not satisfy those claiming discrimination. More refined data, including a spreadsheet on all applicants and admits listing grades, SAT and other basic data, will falsely present race-neutral (but “disparate impact”) factors as procedural penalties against Asians — who would then appear, in Espenshade and Chung’s terms, to “face a loss equivalent to [number] SAT points”. Such factors include the math/verbal SAT split, geographic clustering, clustering into majors, clustering by high school, clustering by ECs, and simultaneous clustering across multiple covariates (such as an unusually high number of high-math, lower-verbal, Californian tennis/piano playing female applicants with decent but not amazing scores on math competitions, who go to church and tutor ESL within their ethnic group). </p>
<p>Here’s a math puzzle that might boil it down for fab. </p>
<p>Exercise: suppose that in Ivy U’s applicant pool, the students who score exactly 1500 math + verbal on the SAT have different average scores in the white and Asian subgroups. Thus, whites in this group average (761 V + 739 M) while Asians average (739 V + 761 M), or generally (750+X, 750-X) for whites and the opposite, (750-X, 750+X) for Asians, for some positive value of X. Next, assume Ivy U’s admission procedure is to rank students by the SAT scores, with verbal given twice the weight and take the top 2000 students in order of this M + 2V index. This is a race-blind procedure. However, a sociologist studies the data and performs an Espenshade-and-Chung style regression analysis using total SAT scores and race as variables to predict admission. Question: as a function of X, how many points of “Asian SAT penalty” would the researcher find, for the students scoring 1500 on the SAT?</p>
<p>Are you saying that without racial preferences and with socioeconomic preferences, rich "URM"s would be “shut out”?</p>
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<p>texaspg can speak for texaspg. I’m saying that there’s a fundamental difference in how we see things. I think INDIVIDUALS bring “something different to the campus.” You think GROUPS bring “something different to the campus.”</p>
<p>Is it surprising that we disagree so strongly on this? No.</p>
<p>Who said that such a student automatically “got” an admit, or “deserved” an admit? </p>
<p>What part of “race is taken into consideration along with the other holistc factors” is difficult to understand here? They aren’t getting automatic admits. It is being CONSIDERED. Sometimes that consideration will work in their favor, sometimes it won’t. Sometimes an intriguing student from Idaho gets admitted and being from Idaho works for them; sometimes an intriguing student from Idaho doesn’t get admitted and being from Idaho doesn’t bring them enough “merit” to be admitted. </p>
<p>I truly don’t understand why people are being stupid about this and acting as though the race box automatically adds or subtracts points, or that it is the only thing that might tip the scales, or that it serves as anything even remotedly close to an auto-admit.</p>
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<p>HYPS only has the “grace” that you let it have. Plenty of people become wildly successful in this country and don’t think twice about HYPS. You’re the one investing the almighty power in them by acting as though not getting into those schools is the end of the world.</p>
<p>And where’s the link to your working paper on SSRN that explains all this? The names of the labor studies? The “Berkeley NMF” data? Your 15+ years of hand collected data for math competitions?</p>
<p>Edit</p>
<p>If you don’t want to release your 15+ years of hand collected data because you’re using them to write your thesis, fine. Send me a copy of your paper with your name, title, and acknowledgements omitted. If even that’s too much, rewrite your abstract so I can’t find it on Google and send that to me.</p>
<p>I guess the big question is how Espenshade and Chung analyzed their data. If the did it in a way that race-neutral selection could look like racial bias, then that would reflect poorly on their own abilities as researchers. However, these are both Princeton professors, right? So you would expect a certain level of competence. In general, appeals to authority are weak arguments. However, since two Princeton professors has conducted a study that alleges bias against Asians at their own institution, it is certainly worth looking into. I haven’t read the Espenshade study so I can’t comment on whether there are logical flaws in their interpretation of their data.</p>
<p>It would be easier to figure out what is going on if college admissions was more transparent (i.e., they didn’t hide their data.)</p>
<p>I won’t address cheating issues, but COME ON. Are there not enough threads on CC to convince you that there is a predominant misconception in many Asian communities, esp those consisting of recent immigrants, that the only schools that are really “worth” attending are HYPSM? I’d be rich enough to have my kids be developmental admits if I had a dollar for every time some unfortunate student said that they felt like failures because their parents fully expect them to get into HYPSM and if they don’t, they won’t pay for their education / will be embarrassed / ashamed. Because their often-immigrant parents DON"T UNDERSTAND that it’s not like it is in China, where admission to a few key universities = success and lack of admission to those places = menial work the rest of your life. Come off it! Get real. It’s far more prevalent in the Asian community to believe that success is just a mere handful of places (typically research universities and not LAC’s, and typically only certain brand names).</p>
<p>And btw, why is it that the “arrived” second-generation hasn’t done outreach to the immigrant community to clue them in that it isn’t like that here in the US, that HYPSM are not the be-all-end-all?</p>
<p>No. The first statement is very clear on its face; please stop taking it and saying “Are you saying …?” and then ending with something completely different.</p>
<p>Then explain why the schools your kids are attending “overrepresent” Asians by a factor of four or more, please. If I recall correctly, neither of those schools is among “HYPSM,” though since “et al” is twenty-five to thirty-five schools, both are probably in the “et al” part.</p>
<p>And explain why with few exceptions, the remaining twenty-three to thirty-three schools in the “et al” part similarly feature an “overrepresentation” of Asians, please.</p>
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<p>Ah, but WHITE students who apply to “HYPSM” do so not because they think it’s a ticket to success but because of FIT, am I right?</p>