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<p>Google “aleksey vayner impossible is nothing”. Go to the first youtube link; I am not allowed to post youtube links. This is what made him famous, or infamous. There are a lot of parody videos too.</p>
<p>Here’s a good article.
[Top</a> This: Aleksey the Great : The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/23/061023ta_talk_mcgrath]Top”>Aleksey the Great | The New Yorker)</p>
<p>"
I don’t advocate “numbers only” admission. You must have me confused with another poster."</p>
<p>Then what’s the problem if AA SAT scores are lower on average than those of whites or Asians? Clearly you DO think its a problem.</p>
<p>Suppose you found that the average SAT scores of admitted students from Massachusetts were higher than the average scores of admitted students from Mississippi. What would that prove? Would it prove discrimination against Mass residents? </p>
<p>Look - the pools of applicants are different. Let’s say the process really was a lottery. Harvard first takes all the kids below 1800 and dumps them, for the sake of argument. Then they go through and pick every 20th student from then on out. The remaining Asian applicant pool has higher stats than the white pool than the AA pool. So in the resulting randomly selected class, the admitted Asians had higher stats than the whites and then the AA. But in this hypothetical, there was no discrimination or preference given to race at all!</p>
<p>“No one knows an exact number, but even if you want to deny, there is a number of people who is damaged by AA”</p>
<p>If I’m a white kid who was reasonably qualified who doesn’t get into Harvard, was I “damaged by AA” or did I simply not get in? </p>
<p>How can you distinguish between the “didn’t get ins” who were damaged by AA and the “didn’t get ins” who simply didn’t get in?
Because “damaged by AA” implies a spot owed someone, that was unfairly ripped from them and given to someone. So, who are those kids? Are they all the 2400s that Harvard rejected? All the valedictorians? Who, precisely, are those kids?</p>
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<p>I am not sure that is a safe conclusion. This is the same activist court that brought us Citizens United. And the court has not determined that people are damaged by AA. They are just hearing the case.</p>
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<p>So the plaintiff in the Texas case. How was she “displaced,” exactly? She didn’t make the 10% cutoff for automatic admission into UT-Austin. She thus went into the “holistic” pool of remaining applicants, in which a variety of objective and subjective factors are considered. She still didn’t make the cut. But she did find her way to another university and graduated. What “damage” has occurred because of her UT rejection?</p>
<p>Ya’ll are making me sick with this thread. Seriously.</p>
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<p>Come on, you know you liked the Vayner video.</p>
<p>Didn’t see it but I’m so sick of people complaining. I wonder how many of them or their kids were rejected from the prestigious schools.</p>
<p>beachlover, no one is making you read this thread. If it bores you so terribly, leave. You have made five separate comments here. That says more about you than about any of us. Seriously…change the channel.</p>
<p>This is a complicated issue that goes to the strategy of the school (if the school is private).</p>
<p>On the one hand, underprivileged kids who can make it through elite institutions probably get a greater benefit from having the elite label stamped on their foreheads than middle/upper middle/upper class kids. So, if the schools see their role as including a social engineering component (and they seem to), then giving admissions advantage to underprivileged kids makes sense. It is unlikely that providing comparable admissions advantages to athletes or legacies has them same effect (except for underprivileged athletes), so these decisions clearly follow from other goals (e.g., enhanced fundraising as opposed to social engineering).</p>
<p>On the other hand, perhaps because of government policies and PR needs, the schools have tied admission advantage to racial categories rather than socioeconomic categories. This leads to a few things:</p>
<ol>
<li> Elite schools end up with middle/upper middle class minorities when they can. The vast majority of blacks admitted by Harvard are middle class or above and the majority are also Caribbean immigrants rather than African American (e.g., [Most</a> Black Students at Harvard Are From High-Income Families](<a href=“http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/52_harvard-blackstudents.html]Most”>Most Black Students at Harvard Are From High-Income Families</A>)).<br></li>
<li> Minority students in STEM are likely to be disproportionately underrepresented in STEM majors and overrepresented in humanities/social sciences – history, Black Studies, psychology, sociology – at elite schools (e.g., [STEMing</a> the minority gap | Thoughts on Public Education](<a href=“http://toped.svefoundation.org/2012/04/03/steming-the-minority-gap/]STEMing”>http://toped.svefoundation.org/2012/04/03/steming-the-minority-gap/)). Although a number of these fields require substantial writing, grading is much more subjective than in STEM fields.</li>
<li> Excluding the most elite schools, graduation rates for minorities are much lower than for the population as a whole. “Barry Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, was justifiably proud of Bowdoin’s efforts to recruit minority students. Since 2003 the small, elite liberal-arts school in Brunswick, Maine, has boosted the proportion of so-called underrepresented minority students (blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, about 30 percent of the U.S. population) in entering freshman classes from 8 percent to 13 percent. “It is our responsibility, given our place in the world, to reach out and attract students to come to our kinds of places,” he told a NEWSWEEK reporter. But Bowdoin has not done quite as well when it comes to actually graduating minorities. While nine out of 10 white students routinely get their diplomas within six years, only seven out of 10 black students made it to graduation day in several recent classes.”([Why</a> Minority Students Don’t Graduate From College - Newsweek and The Daily Beast](<a href=“http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/02/18/minority-report.html]Why”>http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/02/18/minority-report.html))</li>
</ol>
<p>I can see people arguing about about Asians and Jews and am not clear how that’s tied to the initial question, except for one thing. The holistic policies that schools now apply to give admissions advantage to certain racial minorities, legacies and people from certain geographical areas was developed to replace the Jewish quota (too embarrassing for supposedly moral individuals) with a sub rosa system for reducing the proportion of Jews admitted. [Come to think of it, this reminds me a bit of the recent concern over supposed voter fraud]. The schools have torqued the same holistic black box designed to discriminate against one minority and have dressed it up for use in some social engineering goals (as well as to maintain the athlete/legacy/geography advantages) but as a black box, it can easily be shifted again to attain less socially desirable ends. On balance, even if things were boring, I suspect I prefer more transparency, but I am confident that I don’t get a choice in the matter.</p>
<p>I would take your advice Sally…but I won’t.</p>
<p>Trying to give admission preference based on socioeconomic categories is a lot easier said than done. How do you account for those families that earn money off the books? I am sure everybody is aware of cash businesses. How does one determine what is considered middle class? Cost of living varies tremendously across the US. School district quality varies tremendously across the US as well. Human judgement will always be injected into the equation as I believe it should. The process will never satisfy all. </p>
<p>I would just like to know why is it acceptable to give preferential treatment to legacies. I am sure the same people complaining about affirmative action will be the first to defend legacy boosts for their children.</p>
<p>Shawbridge, excellent summary.</p>
<p>“I would take your advice Sally…but I won’t.”</p>
<p>I too have tried to stay away. But pizzagirl’s posts are like a car wreck: Both are difficult to stop watching, and you never really know what you will see next.</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl,
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<p>Do you really believe that Americans aren’t interested in going to overseas universities because “they’re viewed as boring and not the places that inspire creativity and leadership” as they are ”strictly rack-em test scores” </p>
<p>Or could it be that for most Americans, overseas universities are simply off the radar, outside of the budget, exceeding the foreign language proficiency, and have different entry tests (A-Levels or IB). According, more Americans vacation in Fort Lauderdale rather than in Cannes.</p>
<p>Here is an example of a well-regarded overseas university that admits by test scores: Oxford
**
Oxford University selection criteria**
We are looking for academic achievement and academic potential.
Although we take many all-round talented students, who captain
sports teams, run volunteer societies, and write plays, we do not select
students for their extra-curricular achievements or their leadership.
In contrast to our US peer universities, we select on academic criteria
alone. This means that our academics – your future tutors – are the
people making the admissions decisions and conducting admissions
interviews. An Oxford admissions interview is an academic interview:
in the sciences, you might be asked to solve an equation; in the
humanities, you might be given a poem to read and analyse. We
want to understand your academic potential, and give you a chance
to experience Oxford learning. This is quite different from a typical
US college interview, which is a more general discussion about your
school performance, academic interests and extra-curricular activities. </p>
<p>In case you think Oxford is not well-regarded by any Americans of consequence, here are some notable Americans who studied there: Bill Clinton, Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer & David Souter, Susan Rice, Wesley Clark, Bill Bradley, Nicholas Kristof. These illustrious Americans studied there as Rhodes Scholars. The application for a Rhodes scholarship has minimum standardized test requirements: </p>
<p>Mathematics and preferably also 700 or more in Writing,
giving a combined score of at least 2,100.
OR ACT with a score of at least 32 out of 36.</p>
<p>Grade 5 in three or more Advanced
Placement Tests in appropriate subjects.
OR SAT Subject Tests in three appropriate subjects at 700 or better.</p>
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<p>If you want revisit the reason Harvard went to “holistic” admissions, it was not for any noble reason. It was to exclude Jews who were scoring high on entry exams.</p>
<p>Since California enacted Proposition 209 in 2006, the UC schools seem to be doing just fine. The UC schools still practice holistic admissions, but exclude race, gender & ethnicity from the selection criteria.</p>
<p>@hebegebe,</p>
<p>I know what you mean. It’s like watching Honey Boo Boo on Toddlers & Tiaras</p>
<p>I’m a little surprised that it hasn’t come up yet that women with higher stats (and I’m going to just use GPA/scores here) are turned away so men with lower stats can get in to keep a gender balance, which is seen as critical. Like race, gender is out of a student’s control.</p>
<p>I’d say a kid from South Dakota or Mississippi has an advantage over a kid from NY or NJ or Mass, lower stats will get them in. They have that advantage for National Merit for sure, but even apart from that in admissions. Few colleges wants all kids from one state or region (or high school) and will “lower standards” accordingly. Geography is also out of a student’s control, for the most part.</p>
<p>Is the gender and geographical different from the racial? How?</p>
<p>@OHMomof2,
</p>
<p>That is why in California, they have also banned the use of gender. </p>
<p>“Geographical” admits are different. People can move. Race and gender (barring a sex-change operation) are immutable.</p>
<p>To Pizza:
</p>
<p>I cannot believe you are still trying to defend the “no damage” argument Pizza. The argument that “there is not damage” was presented to the Supreme Court and ruled out. Every applicant from a non-preffered demographic profile who applies to a selective university who uses AA sufferes damages. </p>
<p>Readers of this post can believe your opinion… or they can believe the Supreme Court’s opinion that there is “damage”. The motion for disimissal based on “no damage” was presented to the Supreme Court and was ruled out.</p>
<p>But not at private Us, especially LACs.</p>
<p>OHMom, great questions.</p>
<p>Some answers:</p>
<p>Kids at a co-ed college want a gender balance. Or at least the majority gender does. If young women don’t care about having guys around for the social aspects, they can go to Mt. Holyoke, Smith, etc. Young men can go to Wabash. The gender balance “is seen as critical” because it makes the institution more desirable to more people. The same can be said of geographic diversity or race or LGBT presence or having a strong sports culture or Greek system. Each institution decides what attributes it wants to be able to offer prospective students, just like a store decides what products to stock to attract customers.</p>