<p>Thank you, @oldmom4896, for your sweet words. 
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<p>Harvestmoon1, what does the Melissa Harris Perry controversy have to do with this thread?</p>
<p>breaking my vow…back for a moment…came across this via a FB post by a friend who has lost a son…brings things into perspective. I am guilty of not following this…and CC is often not conducive to this approach to life…</p>
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<p>The 'remaining quiet" is my biggest personal challenge…Nite all…</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing dietz. I’m going to borrow some of that.</p>
<p>If someone steps on your foot, it hurts. But if it’s an accident it’s different from if he/she meant to hurt you. No sense in getting irate if it’s an accident, even if it hurts. So it might be relevant to ask if the people making the stupid comments intend to be offensive or if what they say comes from ignorance, insensitivity, or maybe it just came out wrong.</p>
<p>Therefore, while it seems clear such comments can be hurtful, it does not necessarily follow that behind each such comment lurks a rabid racist, and that the Harvard campus is overflowing with racists.</p>
<p>true^ and as other posters have pointed out, this is why this awareness campaign can be helpful, because many people are unaware of the impact of their comments and this spreads this understanding. kind of challenging for each student to ask “did you mean to be offensive?”</p>
<p>I didn’t see anyone intimating that Harvard was overflowing with racists or that ignorant comments must equal rabid racism. However the other extreme isn’t true either, that there is no issue and that these students shouldn’t complain about these issues.</p>
<p>And what if that person carelessly walks around as they please, failing to look to see if someone’s foot it in their path?</p>
<p>Not presenting an argument. Just presenting another viewpoint. </p>
<p>The only real issue I see with this project is that the incoming class at Harvard is 11 or 12 percent black and there are also Asians, Latinos, etc. So, it’s not as though this is a teeny group on non-white students on campus. Why can’t everyone just be individuals? Everyone is special in there own special way. We don’t all need a project. </p>
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<p>You’d be quite wrong about that depending on the college and student concerned. I say this as someone with an abysmal HS GPA who not only managed to gain admission to a top 30 LAC, but do so with a near-full ride
scholarship to the shock of everyone including my parents. </p>
<p>The impression I got from the adcom when I asked was HS reputation, academic rigor, recommendations, and essays can actually turn the factor for/against a given applicant. </p>
<p>BTW: I happen to be Asian-American myself. </p>
<p>This is even more the case for grad school. </p>
<p>One HS friend was shut out of every med school he applied to for 4 years despite graduating with high MCATs and a 3.85 GPA as a pre-med bio major at a public university highly regarded for his field. He applied again for the 5th year and was not only accepted to several places, but was admitted to some fine institutions like Cornell and UChicago for med school and received near/full rides at several others. </p>
<p>A college friend was shut out of Chem PhD programs for 5 years because his subfield of chemistry is highly competitive and he didn’t make the cut despite graduating with high honors in Chem and Viola and having done undergrad research. In his sixth year, it just happens a place opened up for a few grad students in his subfield at Harvard and if he’s on track, he should be completing his PhD soon. </p>
<p>In short, one’s stats only gets you a chance to avoid being eliminated in the earliest round. The odds past that point are still stacked and nothing’s guaranteed. </p>
<p>Cobrat, I don’t know why you are resurrecting this thread, but a) you’re going back a number of years, to a time when Oberlin really wasn’t as selective as it is today (as recently as 2012, the admit rate was 31% - nothing to sneeze at, but hardly the sub-10 % numbers we’re seeing at some schools)
and b) your comments are absurd.</p>
<p>Look at the admit rates of students whose scores fall below a certain threshold at any top school that provides the data, and then tell me that someone is “quite wrong” to assert that admissions has a lot to do with stats. I don’t care how fantastic your essay and recs are, if you have a 400 on each section of the SATs and a 2.5 HS GPA, it ain’t happening. Even if you have a 600 on each section and a 3.3 GPA, it ain’t happening in all but the rarest cases. </p>
<p>Med school admission is highly stats driven. I can’t speak to your friend’s experiences, but I find it hard to believe that someone who really has high MCATS and a great GPA didn’t get in anywhere for 4 years. Maybe your friend was lying to you. </p>
<p>As for grad school, you’re right that GPA and test scores are weighed far less heavily there than they are in undergrad. Your story still doesn’t entirely add up, as usual; applying to a program six years running is insane and a good way to derail your life. At least in English, some programs actually limit the number of times you can apply to two or three. </p>
<p>Furthermore, getting into a PhD program is hard, but if you’re actually competitive for admissions, it isn’t THAT hard. If this person got in in the sixth year, I don’t assume it was because a magic place opened up, but because whatever he had done in the interim actually made him a better applicant in some way. And if he was qualified for Harvard, there were plenty of other decent schools that should have found a spot for him sometime in the previous five rounds. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t bother replying, but I worry that people might get a warped impression of how admissions actually works from your totally unrepresentative anecdotes. </p>
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<p>I’d doubt it considering I saw the admission letters to med schools from UChicago and Cornell in his fifth attempt. When I asked my medical resident roommates about his situation, they said competition for med school entry even among students with his high GPA/MCAT scores are so keen it’s still possible to be shut out. One possibility they came up with is that the admissions committee filled up all the incoming first-year seats before they got to his application in the final evaluation round.</p>
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<p>It seems his sub-field of Chemistry is so competitive applying multiple times before receiving an acceptance in a highly competitive program isn’t unusual according to friends who were also pursuing chem PhDs at the time. </p>
<p>I think you are on the wrong thread. Please. Let this one rest in peace. When you figure out where the discussion of an old friend’s rejections belong, please ask a mod to move your comments there.</p>
<p>The Crimson posted an [url=<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/column/the-snollygoster/article/2012/11/2/Siskind-affirmative-action/]article[/url”>Affirmative Dissatisfaction | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson]article[/url</a>] on affirmative action:
Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence, the person who started the campaign, is quoted on the buzzfeed page:
I do not normally type like this, but THAT IS SO OBVIOUSLY NOT WHAT THE ARTICLE MEANT AT ALL that Kimiko utterly loses any opportunity to have any kind of credibility in my mind. I mean, this is the kind of misunderstanding that I would expect from a random disgruntled person posting for the 10th time in a heated argument about affirmative action. But from a Harvard student trying to start some kind of movement and promote discourse? What does that say about her, well, reading comprehension?</p>
<p>I respect that these students are bringing their experiences to light and everything, and I would not judge the other 62 students for a statement made by one of them, but I honestly lose intellectual respect (but not respect as a human being) for anyone who manages to interpret something as innocuous as the Crimson article as being demeaning of black people who are high achievers. Want to convince us that “you, too, are Harvard?” Start by proving that you can read.</p>
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<p>I can see how she read it that way. It certainly does suggest that race-based AA puts people into school (or surgery) who do not deserve to, and should not, be there.</p>
<p>^The author of that article disclosed that she was herself a legacy, and that legacy status should not be a boost either. Should the legacies also get together and form a protest campaign?</p>
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<p>Call it “I’ve always been Harvard”? </p>
<p>(I’m procrastinating…need to get back to work.)</p>
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<p>They don’t really need to considering they already have some institutionalized support from the college’s alumni association…especially the contingent of older alums and younger sympathizers. </p>
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<p>You owe me a new keyboard, mine has coffee all over it now!</p>
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<p>Sounds good, but we need some signs for them to hold at the protest.</p>
<p>Here’s one, “Don’t ask if you can summer with me at my second home in the Hamptons.”</p>
<p>Here’s another: “No, [so-and-so] building is named after my second cousin’s in-law’s branch of the family, not mine.”</p>