<p>Honestly, I’m now a bit afraid of being disappointed about the sort of people I’m striving so hard these last four years to surround myself with. From all the complaining I’ve seen in the thread, I’m worried that I’d be surrounded by racially insensitive elitists who, for all their intelligence, have quite a bit of wool over their eyes.</p>
<p>That some HYPC bigot might pick me out as the one dumbest there in a crowd of Ivy Leaguers just because of my skin color makes me wonder about what sort of people these colleges are admitting based on “merit” nowadays.</p>
<p>But, hebegebe, yes we can blame others for wondering. I do. And I for sure think those people ought to grow up! Why do some people think they are so well qualified to judge another person’s worthiness for admission to any school, elite or not? Why do they think it’s their business to second guess institutions that assuredly are not making their decisions hastily or cavalierly? Because, of course, all of these “wondering” people are not only more meritorious than the people they’re wondering about, but also more qualified to determine what constitutes merit. I do not understand how people think this attitude of resentment and arrogance is natural or understandable. I think it is ugly.</p>
<p>You get more of what you subsidize. Providing free daycare for needy families would encourage needy families to have more children, which has a dysgenic effect.</p>
<p>That exemplifies the unintended consequence of AA. The posts I posted here have the objective to explain that negative consequences exists, and the logic behind the problem. Recognizing that this is a problem and therefore that it is desirable to seek color-blind forms to increase diversity and access to higher education.</p>
<p>Some people here labeled posts that alert readers here about this problem “non ethical”. But I think that closing our eyes to the unintended negative consequences to AA is counterproductive.</p>
<p>It is like engaging on a debate being only exposed to the one side. You are likely to underperform on the debate. If you know both positive and negative arguments about an issue, you can better better on the debate… Even if your intention is to reject all the negative claims.</p>
<p>Meanwhile some people here continue to distort the information. The most recent one is about identifying baseball players.</p>
<p>“Hey Paul, Clinton just got a bill passed that makes day care for our kids free! I know we’re poor, struggling with multiple jobs to pay the rent and can barely feed our kids every night for dinner, but I think we should have another baby!!!”</p>
<p>Show me on a graph where the second baby boom happened when Clinton instituted this policy in the 90’s.</p>
<p>I hope you will agree that AA is a double edged sword. While it may help to level the playing field in a world that still has racial bias, people like you will bear the brunt of being suspect as a “token”.</p>
<p>To be honest, until you mentioned the fee waiver for test taking, I assumed from the organization of your arguments, the sophistication of your writing skill and the maturity of your tone that you were a seasoned, college-graduated adult. Any college should be so lucky to get you. </p>
<p>You do not need AA. A person like you will go far in life because of your ability. </p>
<p>I wish you the best of luck in the college admissions game. But from your writing ability, I can see that you don’t need luck.</p>
<p>I think a lot of the shrill, insult-flinging adults on this board could learn much from you.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that most ivy leagers DONT think this way! If they did? This policy would not be in place. Please believe me and please note the very few posters on here who are making these posts. Do not be discouraged by this.</p>
<p>Highly educated people value diversity highly. They won’t even apply to schools where the numbers of URMs are not at least closely representative of the population base. They don’t want to be in cram school for the years they are in college.</p>
<p>Keep this in mind, and it has been left out of the discussion, but the real reason nobody wants to get rid of legacy is becuase it is not really what you know it is who you know! It is so important for kids like you to go to the top schools. 1. so you can meet the decision makers and have a future. 2. because it is not what you know, but who you know. So, go to the influence centers and meet people and do well and succeed. You think someone’s going to turn down the Obama sisters? No. They battled over chelsea, and the kennedy kids and even the bush kids. the point is the school wants these people interacting with their students, and I want you to go and interact with them, as well, for them AND for you.</p>
<p>There is a reason engineers rarely end up in management, and salespeople so often do. Because, past a certain point, being able to add and subtract things isn’t going to help you unless you know the right people and know how to get them involved.</p>
<p>I don’t know how much you know about critical theory, at this point in your education, but the truth is that what we find out about people when they talk about other people is only something about the person talking and not much of anything about the person they are talking about. It’s a law of physics that the observer impacts what it is he or she can see. This is true in life as well.</p>
<p>This reminded me of my D’s freshman suite at Harvard. It was composed of 2 varsity athletes, a URM, a legacy and another student who was of Chinese heritage (my conclusion based upon her last name and appearance). I remember asking my D, “why do you think she is here at H?” lol. My D told me writing was this young woman’s forte. Unfortunately, after going through the rigorous “comp” process, this roommate was not selected for the Crimson. Therefore, unlike her roommates, I guess she was one of those admits who <em>only</em> contributed her smarts. lol</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that most ivy leagers DONT think this way! If they did? This policy would not be in place. Please believe me and please note the very few posters on here who are making these posts. Do not be discouraged by this.</p>
<p>I think it was Hanna in a post above who pointed out that racism preceded affirmative action in this country. We didn’t need affirmative action for people to make invidious assumptions about people of other races. The fact that affirmative action arouses racist thought in some people does not bespeak a weakness in the policies. It speaks volumes, though, about your values if you seize affirmative action as a justification for your racist beliefs. This does not mean I do not think affirmative action policies should be reviewed and discussed. I think they should be. But if you jump to racist conclusions when you see a biracial student in an honors class or a black student at an elite institution of higher education, that’s a failure in your character. Affirmative action is just a convenient scapegoat.</p>
<p>That makes me think Bay…is a URM who is ALSO an athlete, musician, business owner, book author, celebrity, legacy, etc questioned? How will all the people who supposedly are out in full force assuming all URMs got in because of AA to judge how he got there? </p>
<p>I mean, how can you tell if a URM has some valuable talent or outstanding aspect of his personality beyond his perspective as a URM? Do you ask or just assume he’s only there for URM status? How awkward to maybe have to ask…</p>
<p>You are completely missing the point. I am not inviting you to do calculations. What I am saying is that probabilistic calculations explain the AA Stigma.</p>
<p>You somewhat are trying to say that explaining a phenomenon is offensive. Perhaps even that I am trying to offend people intentionally (actually, I did tried to get back at Pizza after being labeled many things by her, but I digress…).</p>
<p>What I am trying to do is to show that altough some public policies have noble results, they may also have unintended consequences. Who would think that this is offensive?</p>
<p>If a Politica Scientist/Economist/Sociologiist studies poverty and shows some facts that drive poverty. Some consequences of poverty. Some reasons the explain when efforts to alliviate poverty are likely to work or not. When some people are likely to experience social mobility and when they are not, is this offensive to poor people? If someone finds that some public policy is likely to diminish social mobility, would you like to know about it? Or would you prefer to just wish that this were not the case? </p>
<p>If an MD-PHD studies intervention X for someone who may have some health condition, and shows that such an intervention improve health in some dimensions, but has side effects in other dimensions, is this offensive to someone? Do you prefer to only be informed about the positive effects of a medicine, or would you prefer to read the side-effects as well?</p>
<p>Again, NotYourBusiness, if you want to justify racist assumptions by blaming affirmative action, that’s your prerogative. I get that people jump to these conclusions. That is not the fault of the policies. That is the fault of their racist selves.</p>
I think the people who enter the top school expect to have to study extremely hard to hold their own in a student pool of exceptional performers. They may think diversity is a good thing to have, but forcing diversity for the sake of diversity is not productive.</p>
<p>
nobody? I think most non-legacy families (i.e. the majority) would like the schools to get rid of that preference. It is the schools that perpetuate it to encourage donations.</p>
<p>
That is not the case where I work. Nor is the case for any engineering type company I am aware of.</p>
<p>
Please tell me which law of physics this must be. As someone with an advanced STEM degree, I am unfamiliar with this law.</p>