Diversity. Why is it good? Why is it a goal of Universities?

Applying to College
184

I don’t disagree. And props to anyone who has the time, energy, and desire to ride herd on highly rejective school admission processes.

It seems that those who are concerned with the processes at these schools and the disproportionate power some of their grads hold should be delighted that these schools have increased their diversity (certainly since the time the Supremes were in undergrad.) And diversity comes in many flavors…racial, religious, financial, even gender at this point.

Princeton and their goal of having 70% of students on financial aid should be celebrated, no? IMO many of those we see in power are there at least partially because of their affluence and/or family status, not because of their undergrad school.

But, I’m hearing that some posters are in fact not happy about schools increasing diversity/making sure the community is diverse…rather it seems some posters decry the increased diversity/holistic admissions practices. And some have made the direct connection that the ‘diverse’ students (however one defines it) aren’t up to snuff academically speaking.

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185

If transparency in admission and non-preference for recruited athletes is desirable, how about Mississippi State University?

186

No, not from feeder schools. “Boring academic drones” are from public schools. A big part of what you pay for at a feeder is packaging, and they would never let a student be packaged this way.

When 78% of the justices who decide matters such as whether my daughter can access reproductive care graduated from Ivy+ schools, I’m going to keep my eyes on these people. This is even though said daughter will be attending the school that is the right fit for her (it’s between 2 schools that have admissions rates above 90%.)

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187

Absolutely. You can adjust SAT scores based on contextual factors based on transparent criteria. You can discount being a “valedictorian” at a grade-inflated school using a methodology that is transparent. Schools obviously already do this - except for the transparency part. This adjustment is almost as easy as thinking up snarky pot shots that add no substance to a conversation.

Deciding to form a diverse class that one year strongly favors mathletes and the next year strongly favors sailors and the next year strongly favors the tuba and the next year, future ROTC students and the next, students from small towns with no consistency nor accountability is the fig leaf that hides preferences - often that strongly and consistently favor certain demographics. And there definitely is diversity in demographics as to how willing some are to acknowledge preferential treatment.

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Depending on the college, something like 25-50% might be admitted in that zone. Again, very comparable to Oxbridge odds, say, maybe a bit better in some cases. Of course it is important to understand observed frequencies are not really the same thing as individual odds, but I think it is fair to conclude that absent something like really deficient rigor, in that zone you would be academically competitive.

For the most selective colleges, this was not really possible. The zone in question was right up at the top-right corner and there were plenty of people not being accepted.

As you started going down in college selectivity, you could start seeing different zones. Like, there might be a very similar band in which it was hit or miss but at a decent rate, and then in that top-right corner it would be more like 75-100%. Obviously it is never really 100% individual odds, I just mean all the recent applicants in that zone were in fact admitted.

I saw no evidence of such an effect in SCOIR, meaning pretty much always it looked like the higher the GPA/scores combination, the higher the observed frequency of admissions (understanding when there is not a lot of data points it gets a bit fuzzy).

So if you are applying to colleges in the range where 25-50% of kids get admitted, that is a pretty normal “reach” sort of situation (indeed, arguably more hard target sort of situation).

Of course I understand some parents and kids so desperately want to get into those particular colleges that they are angry there is not some easy formula they can follow which will turn that into 100%.

But as always, I think there is an available solution for such kids, which is to identify more colleges that would be great for them, get into multiple of those, and then know they are going to have a great college experience even if none of those 25-50% colleges come through for them.

Incidentally, that is pretty much exactly what happened to my S24. We spent a lot of time identifying great colleges for him, including using SCOIR. He was academically in the top right box, but he was concerned about things like his ECs and essays, so we made sure to identify a range by selectivity.

And then he didn’t get into any of the six colleges that were most selective (although he was waitlisted at two, and deferred-to-rejected at a third, so it wasn’t like he was crazy to apply).

But as per plan, he did get into a bunch more great colleges. WUSTL (which he chose), Carleton, and Vassar were his personal final three, and he also got into Haverford, William & Mary (with the Monroe), Wake Forest, Rochester, St Andrews, and Pitt.

OK, so a certain sort of kid/family could be really upset he didn’t get admitted to any of the most selective six, despite him being academically qualified.

But my kid and our family is thrilled he got to choose between so many different possible college experiences. Indeed, I still can’t decide what I would have chosen, including because I loved St Andrews, I think the Monroe at William & Mary is a fantastic program at a fantastic college, I really liked Haverford and its location and its consortiums (more than S24 I gather), and so on.

But sure, if you want to be upset that this is how it works when applying to the most selective colleges, you can choose to be upset. But that is not a choice I am going to be making.

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189

You can’t have it both ways: that 1) selective colleges are in such tight control of a secret alchemy that determines the demographics of each year’s entering class AND, 2) that it varies wildly from one year to the next (and is therefore unpredictable.)

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190

Not sure how keeping an eye on Harvard’s current admission processes is going to effect sitting Justices. :woman_shrugging:t4:

Or that moving away from diversity is going to change the makeup of the courts?

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191

I appears they are mainly doing this by raising the qualifying floor for financial aid to very high income levels, even as high as $250,000/yr which is about the 96th percentile of income. So no, I’m not celebrating yet.

Since racial diversity can no longer be taken into consideration, I think it only fair that “I play lacrosse” diversity, and “my daddy and granddaddy were Yale men” diversity and “My parents paid $75K/yr to send me to a feeder” diversity, and “Look at the ‘research’ I did at an expensive summer camp” diversity should no longer be taken into consideration either.

If that leaves these schools with nothing but “academic drones”, I would take it as a win even.

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192

Yes, colleges can consider race in admissions in context of a student’s lived experience and characteristics that arose thru said lived experience (my bolding):

Q2: In what ways can institutions of higher education consider an individual student’s
race in admissions?

The Court in SFFA limited the ability of institutions of higher education to consider an
applicant’s race in and of itself as a factor in deciding whether to admit the applicant.
The Court made clear that “nothing in [its] opinion should be construed as prohibiting
universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” Id. at 39. This means that universities may continue to embrace appropriate considerations through holistic application-review processes and (for example) provide opportunities to assess how applicants’ individual backgrounds and attributes—including those related to their race, experiences of racial discrimination, or the racial composition of their neighborhoods and schools—position them to contribute to campus in unique ways. For example, a university could consider an applicant’s explanation about what it means to him to be the first Black violinist in his city’s youth orchestra or an applicant’s account of overcoming prejudice when she transferred to a rural high school where she was the only student of South Asian descent. An institution could likewise consider a guidance counselor or other recommender’s description of how an applicant conquered her feelings of isolation as a Latina student at an overwhelmingly white high school to join the debate team. Similarly, an institution could consider an applicant’s discussion of how learning to cook traditional Hmong dishes from her grandmother sparked her passion for food and nurtured her sense of self by connecting her to past generations of her family.

In short, institutions of higher education remain free to consider any quality or
characteristic of a student that bears on the institution’s admission decision, such as courage,motivation, or determination, even if the student’s application ties that characteristic to their lived experience with race—provided that any benefit is tied to “that student’s” characteristics, and that the student is “treated based on his or her experiences as an individual[,]” and “not on the basis of race.” Id. at 40.

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For those that enjoy their late 1980’s/early 1990’s teen comedies, there’s a movie called “How I Got Into College” that treads on this topic. At fictitious Ramsey College, a selective liberal arts college, one of the admissions counselors notes, “At Ramsey, we’re looking beyond the numbers.”

Another counselors notes, “I wish they’d tattoo their SAT scores across their forehead. At least that would make my decision easier.”

Not trying to solve the debate here, just noting that this has been going on for a good long while.

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195

“…appears they [Princeton] are mainly doing this by raising the qualifying floor for financial aid to very high income levels, even as high as $250,000/yr which is about the 96th percentile of income. So no, I’m not celebrating yet.”
Princeton raised the financial aid ‘qualifying floor’ at the low income end as well; students whose family incomes are less than $100,000 pay no tuition nor room-and-board, compared to the old (used for the class graduating from P in 2026) methodology in which, families with income of less than $65,000 pay nothing.

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196

This whole discussion doesn’t really seem to be about diversity and whether it’s good or bad. The real discussion seems to be about 1) the merits (or lack thereof) of holistic admissions, 2) admissions philosophy at US schools (i.e. the need to shape classes) and 3) a (not really veiled) discussion about race in admissions, which is prohibited by CC rules outside the PF thread.

Anyway after 170+ posts we seem to be going in circles. Not seeing any new insights here, so I’m leaving.

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198

This is the sort of cynicism I can get behind! Of course I actually do think developing socially and ethically is very important regardless of where you go to college. But to the extent there is a game to evidencing all that for college admissions purposes, these high schools are definitely playing that game to win.

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201

The assumption is that it’s a choice between diversity and meritocracy. The current system is NOT a meritocracy. If it were, then we would see a more standard distribution of all different types of groups - gender, income, geography, and yes, race.

The current system favors a particular group of constituents, and diversity initiatives threaten to reshuffle the haves and the have nots.

Unless you believe that intelligence, hard work, and worthiness are not equally distributed across all populations, then a true meritocracy and a well functioning college system would see college populations and opportunities roughly mirror the overrall population distribution. Otherwise it’s just favoritism for a different group of people.

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203

Really depends on how you define “meritocracy”. If we define it based on objective academic standards using test scores, level of educational attainment/course rigor and achievement (GPA), I would not expect an equal distribution. Children growing up in intact families, with high educational attainment by 1 or both parents, that are not in poverty and who attend well resourced schools are going to index with much higher academic attributes. Schools and society can reasonably start to put a finger on the scales to account for the fact that some start at the “0” yard line while others start at the “40” in a 100 yard race. This already happens as part of a “holistic/contextual” admissions process. What I have a problem with is trying to engineer an outcome with equal distributions and call that meritocratic. All that you have done then is declared victory often in a superficial manner that does not address underlying problems for certain segments who have historically underperformed. We need to ask why these segments tend to underperform and is there a way/policies to attack the roots of these problems.

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204

This describes the UC system where certain factors are overweighted to achieve a distribution which reflects political priorities. It may be socially acceptable or even desirable but it isn’t meritocratic by any means.

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I note that due to the Supreme Court’s recent decision, US colleges can no longer use race/ethnicity as a simple plus factor, nor target certain percentages by race/ethnicity, or so on. They can, however, continue to consider individual stories that involve race/ethnicity to the extent those stories connect to permissible institutional goals and valued attributes.

This is an illustration of how there are a lot of nuanced positions available in this space between the extremes. Indeed, “merit” in this context just means something like the qualities or actions of a person that determine what they deserve to receive (see definition 1c):

And usually the real debate is not so much about whether selective colleges should act on the basis of merit, but instead what qualities and actions they should value.

And so while some people have strong feelings about the limits of what these colleges should value in their admissions, and don’t like that these colleges have always valued more than what they think they should value, that is not really defending merit-based admissions in general, but rather their own beliefs about what should be considered meritorious.

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207

I don’t know of any definition of merit that says one’s race or parental wealth is meritorious. At Harvard, the admissions folks justified rejecting some of the most academically qualified Asians by knocking them down on non-academic factors, basically personality, the same way they did Jews decades ago. They used these subjective factors because they couldn’t justify the admissions decisions on objective grounds. In my opinion, it’s unjustified and discriminatory. At my own child’s school, most of the Asians at the top of the class are also among the most engaging, interesting and giving students there, with the potential for huge positive impact on the world in the decades to come. Yet they are rejected from the Ivies, etc. while non-Asian students with less academic prowess and, arguably, less positive impact are accepted. And, most of the time, it isn’t even subtle, as in a few ticks of GPA and 20 or 30 points of SAT score. The gaps are much, much wider.

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