<p>lol at the NBA reference, usually a 6’7" player plays at the power forward position and a 7 foot 1 player is a center. There is a difference :)</p>
<p>D1 went away to a senior retreat few years back. They played an admission game where seniors were to be adcoms. They were given a handful of applicants to evaluate, and it included essays, GPA, ECs…They were asked to only admit 10% of applicants, what minimum criteria (GPA, test scores) to look for. They had no problem in weeding out most of applicants, but when it came down to have to narrow it down to the last 1 or 2, it was very difficult. Granted those students weren´t seasoned adcom or had experience at all, but most of them picked applicants not necessary for best stats. They argued hard about which one they should keep and each one had a different point of view. What´s interesting was they supported applicants they could most relate to - it could be the kind of sport/instrument/EC an applicant played, family background, adversity encountered…</p>
<p>The point of exercise was to show those seniors that adcoms are regular people like them, sometimes they make admission decision that has nothing to do with stats, and that´s why when it comes to college admission it´s a crapshoot, it´s not an exact science.</p>
<p>[NBA.com</a> - 2007-08 Player Survey: Height](<a href=“Page Not Found | NBA.com”>Page Not Found | NBA.com)</p>
<p>“Only” five of the eleven tallest players are black!</p>
<p>“Although it is a huge advantage, height is somewhat counter-balanced by quickness and body-control. So we may be on a plateau here. We’ve leveled out at an average of 6-6 to 6-8. I don’t think you can improve the speed of the electro-chemistry by which impulses are transmitted around inside the human body or the way errors are propagated by extra length. Ergo, you can’t get rid of the penalty for being tall.”</p>
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<p>Maybe they say that, but I just don’t believe it. I am sure they could get an adequate class from the “rejects”. But they aren’t doing their job in admission very well if they didn’t identify at least the few hundred absolutely most outstanding applicants. They won’t replace those in the second grab from the applicant pool. For the “strong standards”, sure, there is some truth in that claim.</p>
<p>OK, whatever, sorghum. They’re a bunch of lying liars and they are just making it all up.</p>
<p>Just use some common sense, Pizzagirl. Surely Harvard can capture all say 50 absolutely top mathematicians and all the Olympic athletes and major international award winners in the first pass through the applicant pool?</p>
<p>And I’d like to see an specific source where they claim an “equally talented” class.</p>
<p>I can’t think of any kid I knew or know who applied to the very top schools who would have shocked me if accepted. Most of the applicants have excellent academic profiles and lots of extras as well. The athletes, the legacies, all of the special category kids I know all were worthy of Harvard acceptance, and sometimes it was a surprise who was accepted over whom. There are, of course, the occasional true rare gem of a student that gets accepted nearly everywhere, but that is truly unusual. </p>
<p>I’ve seen the “equally talented” class quote as well, Sorghum. I’m not sure what they define as equally talented, however. But those kids who apply to the most selective schools seem to be incredibly talented kids, dedicated scholars and top students taking rigorous courses.</p>
<p>Here’s Fitzsimmons discussing the admissions process at Harvard-
[William</a> R. Fitzsimmons - The Choice Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/author/william-r-fitzsimmons/]William”>William R. Fitzsimmons - The Choice Blog - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Discussion of standardized tests in Part 2. Says similar stuff to NSM overall, as you would expect since she’s an alumni interviewer.</p>
<p>I think the editorial author makes a big stretch when he connects Harvard admission policies to working class white angst. I think the vast majority of FFA and 4-H members don’t give a rat’s butt about Harvard.</p>
<p>But it’s hard for me to guess about his underlying belief re: prejudice against working class white people, because in the area where I interview, we get occasional working- or under- class URM applicants, but virtually no white ones. In my a cappella group, there was one working-class, small-town white guy from my metro area, so I know they exist in the applicant pool, but they’re pretty few and far between.</p>
<p>In my 8 years of interviewing, I’ve had two students admitted. Both were very clearly the stars of my personal 8-year-pool, with a waitlisted student an obvious #3. It’s possible that they gave a lot of weight to my interview reports, and those two kids got in because I said they were stars. But I think it’s more likely that their star-hood was obvious throughout the application, and my interview report just confirmed it. Of the two admitted students, one was a URM and the other a legacy; #3 was also a URM.</p>
<p>Full disclosure: I have a major grudge against this author for his self-serving BS book about Harvard, but I mostly think his column isn’t bad.</p>
<p>“I think the vast majority of FFA and 4-H members don’t give a rat’s butt about Harvard.”</p>
<p>Amen.</p>
<p>Many people fall into that category along with the FFA and 4-H members.</p>
<p>How many times does Fitzwilliam have to say it before CC posters will believe him?
</p>
<p>There are also essays on line (I think in Harvard Magazine - I’m not going to look now) that explain that yes there is a certain percentage of the class that are admitted because they are academic superstars - but that’s not because they have perfect SAT scores, it’s because they’ve gone way beyond the standard math curriculum, or they’ve taught themselves college level computer programming, or they’ve done brilliant research and been recognized by Intel, etc.</p>
<p>Re: post #174
Quote:
Anyone who is fortunate enough to be able to apply to Harvard already has had a lot of unearned blessings in their life, and would be better off being appreciative of the options they have instead of envying others.</p>
<p>Absolutely! Amen, Northstarmom.</p>
<p>^Likes this.</p>
<p>^^ridiculous</p>
<p>When I got hired by the company I currently work for, many years ago, a friend’s wife was complaining to me about why her husband didn’t get hired by them. She told me that they were hiring too many women, and there weren’t enough slots left for the men (about 3% of the hires in my position are women).</p>
<p>Quotas are not neccessarily a good thing for women/minorities, particularly if the quotas are low. And then everyone assumes you got accepted to a school/job because of them.</p>
<p>"Quotas are not neccessarily a good thing for women/minorities, particularly if the quotas are low. And then everyone assumes you got accepted to a school/job because of them. "</p>
<p>Where are the people who are complaining about the hundreds of years – a time that extended into our lifetimes and when many of us were looking for jobs – when the “quota” for most jobs was that they be filled by white men?</p>
<p>"Where are the people who are complaining about the hundreds of years – a time that extended into our lifetimes and when many of us were looking for jobs – when the “quota” for most jobs was that they be filled by white men? "</p>
<p>To be fair, people have been complaining about discrimination in employment at least since the 1920’s (I won’t address Reconstruction and the tragedy of the unenforced 14th amendment) Many of those complaining were black, but a few were white, including some founders of the NAACP. </p>
<p>These were generally DIFFERENT whites (not just different indivdiuals, but different socially and ideologically) from the ones most vocally complaining about affirmative action today.</p>
<p>Were white males complaining about being seen as successful only because of discrimination against non-white and women? No, because there was an ideology of white male superiority and sexual division of labor that justified their position to them.</p>
<p>Did many Jews, for example, place limited value on the admission of an old line WASP to Harvard or Princeton in the 1940’s? I think so. The quotas became enough of an embarassment to the institutions that they dropped them.</p>
<p>There is still a difference between wanting to ensure or increase diversity and deliberately trying to keep certain groups out, of course. “I want to try to get someone from every state in the country” isn’t the same as “I want to keep people from Massachusetts out,” even if a kid from MA gets turned down for the kid in Idaho.</p>
<p>in motivation maybe, but not much in implementation</p>
<p>X=y+z maximize y, or minimize z, amounts to the same thing</p>
<p>x=y+z+p+q</p>
<p>well now there is a difference between minimizing z and maximizing y. Does z really feel better because z+p+q is whats being minimized?</p>
<p>It all makes it very subject to definitions, huh? “we aren’t minimizing the number of kids from Mass, we are minimizing the number of kids from the north east” Would it better when they were minimizing the number of kids from Mass, if they had instead said “we are minimizing the number of kids from boston and leominster and springfield and …”</p>
<p>Is it really better if instead of “we are trying to lower the number of Asian Americans we admit” its “we are trying to lower the number of whites and asian americans we admit”</p>
<p>Suppose in 1920 they had said we arent trying to keep out Jews, we are just concerned about Christians being underrepresented? I dont think anyone in the US tried that linguistic switch, I think in eastern europe they may have put it that way though. </p>
<p>I am not arguing for a sudden end to all affirmative action. I am just saying that some concerns about affirmative action (and, btw, all kinds of other hooks) are real (and I say that realizing full well the complexities of the goals universities, esp the most selective ones have with their admissions policies, as shawbridge expressed well) and cannot just be dismissed as racism.</p>
<p>True, Pizzagirl, though the original reason for geographic distribution requirements was to reduce Jewish enrollment, plain and simple. No sentiment about wanting Massachusetts prep school boys to experience the diversity of Idaho farm boys. We the public and many schools other than HYP have adopted those things as if they derived from common sense and noble values, when in fact the opposite is true.</p>
<p>Interestingly, I think that there have been discrimination cases regarding laws/rules that have a discriminatory effect even if there was no apparent discriminatory intent. I’ll defer to lawyers here, but I think that those laws/rules that are typically allowed to stand.</p>