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<p>For me, after making their acquaintance, it was very obvious that D’s URM friends and suitemates were very bright and not at all mismatched for the particular college. I tend to be quite perceptive and intuitive about most people, however. I’m sure there are plenty of other people, however, who will assume that URMs are not deserving, no matter how capable they are. I don’t see any point in catering to those biased perceptions.</p>
<p>I think the problem, NYB, is that few people here are accepting an AA jealousy/bias whatever as a given just because you and 2-3 other people on this thread have one.</p>
<p>…and if there were one, eliminating AA is not the way to address it. Rethinking AA, educating those with an issue about it, might be.</p>
<p>Does anyone here, besides a 17 yr old HS student and me, have any constructive SOLUTIONS to suggest?</p>
<p>It’s too bad the 17 yr old can’t vote. He/she has more maturity than most of the people on this board…</p>
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I believe this is the layperson’s explanation of one consequence of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Or maybe it is the Observer Effect.</p>
<p>And no, I don’t believe we need a lengthy mathematical diatribe on why or why not this is an incorrect interpretation, or the latest state of research. It’s something people commonly say in casual conversation. To get overly pedantic on this topic would be incredibly annoying.</p>
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<p>ironic laugh… you mean like how everyone jumped on me when I explained my personal classification of 1st tier schools?</p>
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<p>Certainly superscoring should be eliminated. It just plays to the deep-pocketed set who can test and re-test, focusing on one section at a time, until they get a total score they don’t really deserve.</p>
<p>you think middle class kids don’t engage in superscoring?</p>
<p>So rich kids don’t “deserve”, only the noble poor do?</p>
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Everyone? Not me. Your personal perception is actually sort of unimportant to me. I’m sure that breaks your heart. :)</p>
<p>Plus, I’ve heard elsewhere that Brown is actually an adequate school. Right LoremIpsum? I don’t want to take sides.</p>
<p>[001</a> Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Probability Amplitudes and Quantum States - YouTube](<a href=“001 Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Probability Amplitudes and Quantum States - YouTube”>001 Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Probability Amplitudes and Quantum States - YouTube)</p>
<p>As someone with an advanced STEM degree, I appreciate the question. </p>
<p>This is not a thread about k-12 education. We frequently have them. It would be more appropriate to open a new thread. xiggi would be bummed if he missed that discussion.</p>
<p>i believe in school choice. i believe the unions, and putting the wants of the adults before the needs of the students, has ruined the education system. However, I also believe the demise of the US school system has to do with the quality of intellect of the teachers we now have. Women who used to almost universally go into teaching and nursing, brilliant women teaching our children for like 3c. an hour, have now been replaced by mediocre men and women teaching our children for 100,000 a year. This is an issue that may be cultural and irreperable. I also actually believe we have some amazing teachers who are completely hamstrung by mediocre adminstators, and union rules, and I think our schools are top heavy in administration and short on what we need to teach the kids.</p>
<p>However, if the entire US would adopt Rhee’s D.C. plan, for which she was run out of town by the unions, the children would benefit tremendously.</p>
<p>That’s the short version of what I see.</p>
<p>3girls3cats,</p>
<p>Sorry to repeat what you have already said. Hard to digest 50 pages of posts. </p>
<p>Agree with you that re those value arguments not sure how the fact that legacy and geography can be changed makes them of greater value than AA. Also, AA can be changed and some colleges have tweaked the AA policies to include poor regardless of color and to look at opportunities given to the students (ie Hotchkiss/Andover/Sidwell Friends URMs not going to get same push at some schools as one from a mediocre school district). </p>
<p>As for athletics, yes athletes bring some value in terms of school prestige (although most teams are money losers except football and b-ball) but so too do AA and int’l students. I believe that the different perspectives they bring outside and inside the classroom are very beneficial educationally. I know from my own experience (and admittedly grossly overgeneralizing), the students at my grad school (Duke) were probably a bit smarter as a whole than at Georgetown undergrad, but Georgetown was a much more interesting place educationally due in part to a greater number of minority and int’l students who were integrated well in the school (inside and outside the classroom) and on certain issues brought not only different perspectives but perspectives many others had not even thought about.</p>
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<p>This is some of the worst logic I have seen on this site–and you claim to have attended Harvard? What did they teach you? Everything you say gives further credence to the idea that adcoms need to look FAR beyond test scores and grades to make sure they get the right kids into their admitted class. Too bad they didn’t do that two or three decades ago.</p>
<p>More to the point, Beliavsky, what did a poor non-Asian minority ever do to you, other than be your college roommate? You present consistently racist comments on every thread you participate in (or INITIATE, as in this case). Some of what you say is chillingly reminiscent of others in history who have also held extremist and inaccurate positions on race. I get it–you don’t want poor people in boarding schools, or Ivy League colleges, and you are incredibly resentful that your resources might in any way help give someone else a fair shake. What I don’t get is WHY, although I have ceased to care.</p>
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<p>Hey, that’s pretty neat! I may watch all of this thing and even try a few problems (it’s been a long while).
I can’t believe I actually got something of value out of this thread. My luck to start reading again on the correct page.</p>
<p>At most top colleges, the number of URMs is substantially lower in terms of percentages than in the general population or at flagship state schools. Thus, AA is hardly controlling admissions decisions for a significant percentage of the other applicants (and at most schools probably not to the same extent as legacies and athletes). Also, as others have pointed out, many URMs at top colleges would be accepted AA or not making the percentage impacted by AA even less.</p>
<p>“There are 5488 hispanics scoring a 30 or above on the ACT. I’m not even including Collegeboard.org SAT scores. As you can see there are PLENTY of students within the range for these top schools. I just would like to know why there are so many claims that hispanics don’t have these scores.”</p>
<p>I knew a couple of families at my kids’ school in which one parent was from Spain. The kids were National Commended Hispanic scholars. When I first became aware that kids of those from Spain were considered “Hispanic” I was shocked, but apparently it is legitimate and I suppose technically it is correct, but I have a hard time seeing how someone from Spain qualifies as a URM.</p>
<p>@poetgrl,
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<p>K-12 education is relevant to this thread, because there exists a disparity in academic stats, on average, between URM and white applicants that has occurred during K-12. Regardless of what one’s position is on AA, something needs to be done to close the gap, and it needs to happen during K-12.</p>
<p>“I can’t believe I actually got something of value out of this thread.”</p>
<p>That makes you singular … more’s the pity. Congratulations anyway …</p>
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<p>So why doesn’t Portugal count when Brazil does?</p>
<p>GMT-- </p>
<p>All things being equal, though they never are, due to teachers treating students differently, conciously or unconciously, the difference is the parents. Educate the next generation of parents better and the next generation will also do better. Nothing matters more than the parents when it comes to education in this country. The work of learning is happening at the dining room table after dinner during homework.</p>
<p>If you don’t continue to educate the promising students, the promising students kids don’t catch up. In the case of URMs, one has to acknowledge history and that only now are we even beginning to address the first world problems. Only two generations removed from the civil rights movement, you cannot expect to say, “Hey! The immigrants do it!” The story just isn’t the same. Sorry.</p>
<p>You have to address the problem where it is, not where you wish it was. You can’t actually fix a problem unless you know what the problem is. History caused the problem, in the US, and it might take a little bit more history to right the ship. Or, in pop culture parlance? It’s gonna take a while to get the titanic turned around, here. Slow down.</p>
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<p>hence the arbitrariness of AA…</p>
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<p>I said nothing about any noble poor. The supposed value of the SAT and ACT is that is a nationwide way of comparing individuals from a broad variety of backgrounds. To the extent that this is correct – and people point to the SAT differential between races an ethnic groups – shouldn’t the playing field for taking this test be as level as possible? Comparing one student’s best 3 subscores out of 5 tests taken against another student’s best out of one or maybe two tests taken, due to cost and possible transport issues, negates any value to the standardization of that test.</p>
<p>Consider the outcry if you were in a college math or science class where the results were based on a curve, but those students who could afford it would be allowed to retake a variant of each test as many times as they liked and only the best score for each problem number counted?</p>