<p>@xiggi - There seems to be at least one from St. Johns and one from Dallas Country day also on the current Stanford team.</p>
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<p>But don’t they leave much of the “real” decision process in the dark on purpose? Is that not what disappoints the camp of the “paint-by-the-numbers” applicants? For years people have tried to crack the code and scream for an easy to understand system that would be reduced to a simple equation. Get ranked in the top 10 percent and you are in … says Texas. Yet that does not stop underwhelming applicants who missed the cut to file a lawsuit a la Abigail! </p>
<p>Reduced to its essence, a holistic system of application HAS to be subjective as the same level of objectivity cannot be maintained a pure equal among all the readers. </p>
<p>I realize that this is old news to most readers of similar threads. We all know that an applicant that presents a memorable application will trump a dozen Stepford children who are interchangeable with a sea of stratospheric SAT and high rankings peppered with the architypical ECs of some music, some solitary sport, some SAthlete competition, and the mandatory doctor shadowing and Intel fabricated prowess! </p>
<p>We know but we are quite reluctant to admit that such a system of preferences is not only fair but necessary. </p>
<p>I don’t get it. First, people complain that rich people have all the benefits in life. Now, people are complaining that middle-class folks like myself, who were able to get somewhat comfortable due to Ivy League educations that were affordable through grants and loans, can get legacy benefits for their kids?</p>
<p>Isn’t the point to try to create legacies of all socioeconomic classes?</p>
<p>Private schools do things like: require a 5th year of all HS students, require tutoring on campus, have residential students exclusively or full day 9 am to 6 pm students too. This puts kids who can get scholarships (due to sports for example) or pay for it at a big advantage.</p>
<p>If my public school kids can get an advantage because I was able to get into an Ivy and attend it and graduate from it, good for me. And good for you, if you grew up with your parents owning a grocery store and you could get food for cheap. Or if your grandfather worked at an ice cream shop and got you free scoops weekly. Or your uncle worked for a union and gave you stock from a Fortune 500 company, even though he was hourly.</p>
<p>NFN, unless there is a serious conflict of interest, why can’t a private organization serve whatever clientele they want? They try to be diverse, so they give all legacies a “bump” in admissions, yet not one study has proven that legacies are less qualified, all studies have shown they are equally qualified as other accepted applicants.</p>
<p>Wah wah wah, I don’t have advantages in my life that I want, so I am jealous of others.</p>
<p>Do you honestly think that NOT developing your customer based should be forced upon universities? Wouldn’t creating and maintaining a diverse customer base be a good thing not a bad thing? </p>
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<p>Probably has happened with some regularity. Fwiw, the Country Day school in DFW is really that one in Fort Worth. For Dallas, you might expect schools such as Greenhill, Hockaday, ESD or St Mark’s or the public Highland Park HS. </p>
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<p>Country Day is in Fort Worth. I saw 4 Texans on the Stanford roster, all from private schools (Country Day in Ft. Worth, ESD in Dallas, Kincaid in Houston, St. John in Houston). My D’s teams played all of those teams regularly.</p>
<p>In our town, lacrosse is becoming more popular as football becomes less popular. As far as I know, all the public high schools around us have lacrosse teams. Parents have also started clubs for younger players to learn the sport.</p>
<p>I like fencing as a college sport. For one thing, you don’t need dozens of other interested players, nor acres of land, to learn it. <a href=“http://www.teamusa.org/News/2013/March/14/Fencing-In-The-Schools[/url]”>http://www.teamusa.org/News/2013/March/14/Fencing-In-The-Schools</a></p>
<p>When my D played lacrosse for her private school in Dallas, they played other private schools and a public school team, which was actually made up of players from several public schools and was considered a “club” sport. I wonder if the public schools now have enough players to field their own individual teams and play other publics with full rosters in our area. </p>
<p>For a Houston guy, Dallas/Ft. Worth same difference. 
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<p>There is also a player from Cypress TX on the list which is a public.</p>
<p>“actually, lax is one of the fastest growing sports at the HS level. Quite a few California public high schools have started men’s and women’s lax teams in the past few years. Of course, those same publics also have water polo. 
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<p>Perhaps in California. Not everywhere. </p>
<p>The main point of this lawsuit does not appear to be the bonus for admission given to legacies equivalent to 160 sat points (out of 1600) but a 50 sat point discount applied to Asian applicants. The question of whether Espenshade’s data is equivalent to Harvard’s admission data should soon be answered once discovery for this lawsuit begins. </p>
<p>Well, as far as I can see from what I know of people whose kids got D1 athletic scholarships, THAT is affirmative action for the affluent. These kids put in the hard work, to be sure, but they wouldn’t have had a prayer if they hadn’t had the wealth to have an at-home mother who could chauffeur them around, the money for private lessons, coaches, trainers, the money to be able to fly mother and kids to tournaments all over the country, and the money to hire household help to watch the younger siblings left at home. It was a complete shell game of families paying $200,000 for $200,000 in athletic scholarships. THAT is the shell game, not plain-vanilla legacies (who may or may not be affluent), with high scores and the other academic qualifications necessary. </p>
<p>Except I predict there will be no discovery, because it is likely to be dismissed before that happens. We’ll see, though.</p>
<p>But looking even deeper into my crystal ball, if there is discovery, here’s what I predict it will show:</p>
<ol>
<li>There will be no documentary evidence of any kind suggesting a cap on Asian admissions, or showing any anti-Asian animus, or any policy about restriction of Asian admissions.</li>
<li>There will be documents about individual applicants, with a bunch of general notes about them, and an admission decision. None of them will include such terms as “typical Asian” or “only stereotypical Asian ECs.”</li>
<li>If depositions of admissions people are taken, they will say that there is no cap on Asians, that they don’t recall ever discussing how many Asians there should be, and that they, personally, would never devalue an applicant simply because he or she is Asian. They will admit that part of holistic review includes benefits to URMs, but will say that they don’t care at all whether a candidate is white or Asian.</li>
<li> When asked to explain why unhooked Asian admittees have, on average, higher SAT scores than unhooked white admittees (assuming that this can actually be shown), they will say that they don’t know–all they know is that they consider each candidate as a total package, including scores, grades, ECs, recommendations, essays, etc. They will decline to speculate on why that could result in higher average scores for Asian admittees.</li>
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<p>This will leave the court with essentially three possibilities:
- The admissions people are lying, and there really is a cap.
- The admissions people are unconsciously biased against Asians.
- The disparity is caused by something else that isn’t Harvard’s fault, such as a higher percentage of Asian kids seeking the same majors, or having similar (or weak) ECs.</p>
<p>End result: plaintiffs lose because they haven’t shown intentional discrimination.</p>
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<p>The basic problem with such data --if you like to call Espenshade findings data-- is that it does not support the theories behind the claims of discrimination. A fact that Espenshade has admitted himself. Of course, that has not stopped multiple parties, including some of his P’ colleagues to run with the numbers and repeat those fallacies about bonus and discounts. All that such numbers might show --if they sustain the scrutiny imposed on real numbers and not the game playing narratives is that enrolled students have different breakdowns in terms of races and SES status. </p>
<p>All in all, even if the data was twice as compelling as presented in the lawsuit, it will still fall way short of showing neither treatment nor impact discrimination. </p>
<p>In a way, it would be better if there was a discovery as opposed to have the claim dismissed (as I predict in the same way as Hunt) because it will (or should) both settle the argument and push it back further. The biggest issue with the claimants is that, despite the riches of Blum, they have not presented a compelling case, have not found a 'reasonable" case of a student which might generate synpathy, nor retained attorneys capable of writing a decent federal lawsuit instead of the abysmal hodgepodge of a brief that mixed anecdotes with facts and was mostly devoid of verifiable data or citations. </p>
<p>Not to mention that the “solutions” the plaintiff offered (such as distributing the admissions according to zip codes) would more than probably hurt the group represented by the plaintiffs (or purportedly so) the most, and amount to the same quotas they claim might exist. </p>
<p>That lawsuit is a disaster in itself, but if the IS a point in the stables of Blum, it is none other than remaining in the news and preparing for a full blown attack on affirmative action with the not-so-veiled hope to be able to rely on a conservative SCOTUS. The current plaintiffs in the H lawsuit are puppers on a string. </p>
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<p>So is starting or running a charity, volunteering to tutor others, working a part-time job, writing a novel or play, running for public office, learning to play an instrument, etc. All of those achievements, and many others, are considered when applicants apply. Athletic prowess is only one of many. Even for athletes, there are likely some athletes who have lower scores than others playing the same sport. </p>
<p>If you want to talk about the lawsuit, consider that many of Harvard’s Asian students end up attending medical school. </p>
<p>Working from the College Navigator, 2013 figures. </p>
<p>1,803 Harvard grads.</p>
<p>16% Asian (288 students)
48% White (865 students)</p>
<p>Add to that figures gathered from: <a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html</a>
Table 2: Undergraduate Institutions Supplying Applicants to U.S. Medical Schools by Applicant Race and Ethnicity, 2013 307 Harvard graduates applied to medical school in 2013, 17% of the class.</p>
<p>Harvard supplied 121 white applicants to US medical schools. Some may have taken a gap year. However, if they all proceeded from graduation to enrollment, that means 39% of the medical school applicants from Harvard were white (less than their representation in the graduating class.)</p>
<p>101 Asian Harvard graduates applied to medical school in 2013. 33% of the medical school applicants from Harvard were Asian. (more than twice their representation in the graduating class.)</p>
<p>14 out of every 100 white Harvard students are pre-med by graduation. (Many may have changed career plans while undergraduates.)</p>
<p>35 out of every 100 Asian Harvard students are pre-med by graduation.</p>
<p>Look at this chart from the National Science Foundation: <a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/pdf/tab3-5_updated_2014_10.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/pdf/tab3-5_updated_2014_10.pdf</a> There are more than 10 times as many white students in graduate school for the social sciences than Asian students. </p>
<p>There are eighty-five times as many white graduate students as Asian graduate students in the History and Philosophy of Science (343 vs. 4). Harvard has an undergraduate concentration in that subject; in 2013, 46 students graduated with that concentration. </p>
<p>That’s a significant difference in group habits. Does a college not have a right to enroll students interested in political science, the humanities, the arts and the social sciences? </p>
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<p>In addition to out west…:</p>
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<p>So that’s another version of the argument that certain groups of students “cluster” in certain majors, which hurts them because a college can’t be all STEM or all whatever. </p>
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<p>Heck, no. </p>
<p>2400 must…be… auto-admit. </p>
<p>^ Single sitting or super score? There are only 700+ for single sitting but super score - who knows.</p>
<p>How about ACT 36? There were only 1400+. I am a bit weak in addition but I have a sneaky suspicion that the total will exceed whatever number Harvard officially admitted in March.</p>
<p>since you are from Techsus, I vote for 2400 only (no 36’s). Go big or go home. Plus, the ACT is not popular with a certain segment of our population. </p>
<p>It will be interesting to what happens with this case once discovery has started. According to the plaintiffs they currently have data that show that Harvard admits the same percentage of Asians each year even though the percentage in the applicant pool has changed. If this is true then they may be able to prevail and win the case without showing how Harvard achieved this. The case also alleges that Harvard uses discrimination against a particular ethnic group and holds that group to a higher admission standard. Espenshade’s data suggests that this is the case however the plaintiffs may decide to use a different statistical model to prove their case depending on the admission data set. One thing is certain, whoever losses this case will appeal the judgment. Based on Blum’s previous case, Abigail Fisher v. Univ. of Texas-Austin, this case will probably take years to resolve. </p>