<p>I can’t trust “Li’s judgement that he was more qualified than the candidates from his own school.” How would that 17-18 yo know? These kids have enough trouble pulling together their own apps, much less analyzing each other.<br>
He can point to his scores, maybe he thought his EC choices were superior- but not how a stranger/adult would respond to his package.</p>
<p>But back to Espenshade, from an interview with the Princeton News Service: *People may read this and want to say, “Oh, because I’m Asian American, my SAT scores have been downgraded.” That is not really the way to interpret these data. Many times people will ask me, “Do your results prove that there is discrimination against Asian applicants?” And I say, “No, they don’t.” Even though in our data we have much information about the students and what they present in their application folders, most of what we have are quantifiable data. We don’t have the “softer” variables – the personal statements that the students wrote, their teacher recommendations, a full list of extracurricular activities. Because we don’t have access to all of the information that the admission office has access to, it is possible that the influence of one applicant characteristic or another might appear in a different light if we had the full range of materials. *</p>
<p>But, I’m not really sure this is all that true.</p>
<ol>
<li> Legacies</li>
<li> Athletes</li>
<li> Diversity of studies</li>
<li> creative talent: theater, arts, dance, music</li>
<li> hard sciences</li>
<li> math</li>
<li> humanities</li>
<li> pell admissions</li>
<li> diversity of race</li>
<li> diversity of location (part of country, town, etc…)</li>
<li> international admissions</li>
<li> children of famous people</li>
<li> famous people</li>
<li> award winners.</li>
</ol>
<p>There are how many spots in each Ivy? </p>
<p>There are so many things they are trying to do here. I think if we take off our own filter for what is or is not important, the decisions become less baffling and more a matter of cherry picking the people they “need” for the spots they are trying to fill.</p>
<p>That said, if this many people scrutinized every single hiring decision you ever made? They might find you prefer to hire people you also have a good chemistry with. You might not hire some guy or gal who did not appeal to you, when there were people equally qualified with whom you got along. Life is like that. College admissions at this level are also like this.</p>
<p>Yeah, but people are aware of all these factors.</p>
<p>There was a guy at my school who wasn’t a great student who got into a top 5 school. No one was baffled though because he won a very impressive award.</p>
<p>Yes, but many of the absolutely most impressive ECs aren’t even things you’ve heard of in school and don’t take place in school, and maybe have no awards attached to them. You just don’t know everything you think you know about the other student.</p>
<p>Well, I saw his interview on 60 minutes, and he didn’t strike me as someone who was the sort of person to have a simplistic view of anything. It wasn’t so much what he said but the general impression I got from his demeanor–maybe a certain sobriety or conscientiousness.</p>
<p>I guess you could say I arrived at it holistically.</p>
<p>Well, when I was in high school, which was a feeder high school for the ivies back when dinosaurs still walked the earth in the large form, it was never baffling why someone got into the school. Their parents had gone there.</p>
<p>There was actually a huge break up in my friendship group when acceptances came out because one girl whose dad had gone to Harvard really wanted to go to Yale or maybe it was princeton? But the girl whose father had gone to Yale got in and the other one “had to” go to Harvard. </p>
<p>Other reasons were, you were ranked in the top 100 or so in the class. (big class.)</p>
<p>Now they only take 24 from this high school, on average, and still nobody is confused by who gets in, let alone “baffled.” </p>
<p>c.alum- your reaction wasn’t holistic- there was no whole, only what you saw. It was gut or subjective or intuition or ? And, possibly, what you saw was edited.</p>
SES-based affirmative action could be added on top of race-based affirmative action, which is what I fear. SES is often defined in terms of parental income and education. Since both income and education are correlated with IQ and therefore academic achievement, one should expect upper-class kids to be over-represented and lower-class kids to be under-represented at the most selective schools.</p>
<p>Charles Murray develops this argument in the section “The Dominance of the Upper-Middle Class at Elite Schools” in his book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010”, which can be previewed on Amazon and Google Books. Quoting page 60:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Murray estimates on page 66 the average IQ of a child conditional on his parents’ degrees as</p>
<p>two high school dropouts – 94
two high school diplomas – 101
two college degrees (and no more) – 109
two graduate degrees – 116
two degrees from an elite college – 121</p>
<p>"Yeah, but people are aware of all these factors.</p>
<p>There was a guy at my school who wasn’t a great student who got into a top 5 school. No one was baffled though because he won a very impressive award."</p>
<p>Guess what? It’s not HYP’s job to make admitting decisions that don’t “baffle” you. They are crafting their class as they see fit. If you can’t handle that concept, don’t apply. It is arrogant on your part to believe that a) you have insight into the totality of other kids’ apps and b) it’s incumbent on the school’s parts to make decisions that you, personally, would agree with.</p>
<p>“Yes, but many of the absolutely most impressive ECs aren’t even things you’ve heard of in school and don’t take place in school, and maybe have no awards attached to them. You just don’t know everything you think you know about the other student.
If you’re in a small school and you’re with people for 4 years, you tend to hear about these things.”</p>
<p>No. This is a conscious choice you make - to keep mental tallies on your classmates, and to assess whether colleges “made the right decision.” You don’t have to be that way.</p>
<p>I’d say people <em>think</em> they know all about what their classmates in a small school have done, but it’s not always true. My kid would be a good example. He wouldn’t strike his classmates as an academic or extracurricular heavy hitter. He hates the spotlight so no one at his tiny school except for his best friend knew he was getting A’s at school then coming home to nurse a parent through the side effects of chemotherapy. We had to tell his advisor, who’d met with him weekly for 4 years, about the national award he’d been presented in DC and the EC accomplished by fewer than 25 people annually worldwide. I’m sure there will be some talk about how such a slacker was admitted to a school that turned down other, more prominent students in his class.</p>
<p>My takeaways from the abstract are the following:</p>
<p>1)both liberal and conservatives demonstrated the same unconscious tendency to fit assessments of empirical evidence to their ideological predispositions.</p>
<p>2)subjects who scored highest in cognitive reflection were the most likely to display ideologically motivated cognition.</p>
<p>3)motivated cognition is a form of information processing that rationally promotes individuals interests in forming and maintaining beliefs that signify their loyalty to important affinity groups.</p>
<p>In CC and elsewhere, the strongest affinity group for most people is race/ethnicity; I simply cannot explain some of the behaviours any other way.</p>
<p>Beliavsky just spent another two paragraphs with citations explaining exactly why he felt that would be problematic and it has nothing to do with your cootie theory.</p>
<p>Based on the Hoxby/Avery study from the other thread, it looks like there are plenty of “high archiving” (given their loose floor which normally wouldn’t fit HYP) in the lower SES quartile. The bad news for the racist HYP ADCOMs is that they are mostly Whites and Asians.</p>
<p>^^ Well, things like cultural cognition are what genuinely fascinates me about the social sciences. The nice, heady projects. </p>
<p>Taken at face value, Beliavsky’s post is (maybe inadvertently)suggesting a positive to affirmative action: get the parents college degrees, even elite degrees…and raise their kids’ IQs. </p>
<p>Of course, I think much more is involved in the IQ discussion- and AA. And, in the end, the IQ may not matter as much as what you do with it- including many occupations that serve the greater good (or some defensible good) but have nothing to do with acquiring wealth.</p>
<p>If you want to leave out poor kids, just campaign against finaid. But then you’d be back to the complaints about all those white LAXbros dominating elite instutions and heading off to be wealthy and powerful on their own, in their narrow paths.</p>
<p>*In CC and elsewhere, the strongest affinity group for most people is race/ethnicity; I simply cannot explain some of the behaviours any other way. * But you realize that, on this thread, we know very little about each other’s racial/ethnic/religious identity, economic status, how we vote or stand on various policy issues, where (or whether) we went to college, whether our parents went, etc. Only what we each write. An ironic equalizer?</p>
<p>And the point of Canuck’s link to cultural cognition includes that studies can be valid and slanted. And that we tend to seek out studies that validate our positions, etc, etc. And that both sides of an issue can be intelligent and thoughtful- and possibly find a way to bridge the thinking gaps, satisfactory to both. (Not just C’s link; look at the cult cog homepage.)</p>
<p>I read it: if the IQ of a kid with dropout parents is 94, but of two college grads is 109- on the surface, send kids to college and their own kids’ IQs will be higher. Note that, once again, we’re on quantifiables.</p>