Mismatch caused by racial preferences

sally305 · October 30, 2012, 10:15pm

I can tell you why I grew to hate it. I always disliked the “S” part and never cared about “T” or “E,” but I loved the “M.” LOVED it. I was an exceptional math student in high school and had great support from some fantastic teachers. It was my favorite subject by far.

What happened was that I got to my “top-tier” college, and walked into my math class in the engineering building on the first day, and saw that a) I was one of a small number of female students and b) I was one of a small number of white students. I had been planning to take the class for fun, just to fulfill a requirement. But I saw the curve–a mass of earnest, brilliant-looking Indian and Asian kids, mostly male–right in front of me. I knew, at that moment, that I didn’t have it in me to compete. It wouldn’t be fun. And I didn’t NEED that level of math for my major. So I switched to a really stupid programming class for COBOL/BASIC that also fulfilled my distribution requirement.

That was the day I checked out of math and put my “love” aside. And now I don’t even balance my checkbook. Sad.

Philovitist · October 30, 2012, 10:15pm

Uh…I’m perfectly fine with preferences for legacies if they aren’t huge.

PCHope · October 30, 2012, 10:15pm

"I think EVERYONE, except the families of legacies, is against the preference for legacies. The colleges perpetuate it because it’s in their economic self-interest to do so: they get fat donations when Junior gets admitted.

You should be complaining to your alma mater about this. Do not assume that because someone is opposed to AA that they support legacies. "

My daughter is double-legacy at HYP, and she has indicated that she would not tick the legacy box when she applies We are very proud of her.

And Yes, we have repeatedly complained to our alma mater regarding legacy admission.

And No, I have never assumed your or other people’s position on legacy, for or against.

shawbridge · October 30, 2012, 10:17pm

Bayesian reasoning is actually a very useful way to think about inference and decision-making. It was the core part of a course that was required of Harvard Business School students for many years. To your specific question, it depends upon what structure you put on the problem, but one could certainly set up a problem in which one’s conclusion enables you to map backward to their underlying beliefs. There is also an interesting concept in game theory called separating equilibria, in which different choices in effect separate different types of people (in a very stylized world – see [Signaling</a> game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_game]Signaling”>Signaling game - Wikipedia)).

OHMomof2 · October 30, 2012, 10:30pm

That makes me sad. My D also loves math. She was recommended for Algebra in 6th grade and decided (without consulting me) not to do it because it was “only boys taking Algebra” that year.

I believe she regrets that decision today and is looking to take a summer course to get to where she can take BC Calc in high school instead of AB. She still loves math.

If she’d told me about that decision at the time (she didn’t) I’m not sure what I would have done…force her into what she saw as an uncomfortable situation? Tell her it’s dumb to stay back just because all the other girls are? Try to help her see that it’s not weird to be a girl who is good at math? I don’t know.

As she begins to think about specific colleges, I feel like some that end in -polytechnic or -technology should be on her list. But I wonder how she will react to the mostly male students she sees?

chashaobao · October 30, 2012, 10:33pm

Sorry, I am not quite as noble.

But I am having a hard time finding these legacy boxes on the forms.

Please help me, where are they?

NotYourBusiness · October 30, 2012, 10:34pm

Muckdogs 07:

Here is a list of articles that deal with the issue of whether or not AA helps perpetuate stigmatization. Some of these articles support that it does, some do not support.

Notice that many of these articles focus on the issue of gender. But they nevertheless exemplify the “mechanism” that was discussed in this thread (conditional probabilities).

The Affirmative Action Stigma of Incompetence: Effects of Performance Information Ambiguity
Madeline E. Heilman, Caryn J. Block and Peter Stathatos
The Academy of Management Journal
Vol. 40, No. 3 (Jun., 1997), pp. 603-625

The other side of affirmative action: Reactions of nonbeneficiaries to sex-based preferential selection.
Heilman, Madeline E.; McCullough, Winston F.; Gilbert, David
Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 81(4), Aug 1996, 346-357.

Presumed incompetent? Stigmatization and affirmative action efforts.
Heilman, Madeline E.; Block, Caryn J.; Lucas, Jonathan A.
Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 77(4), Aug 1992,

Affirmative action’s contradictory consequences.
Heilman, Madeline E.
Journal of Social Issues, Vol 52(4), 1996, 105-109.

Type of affirmative action policy: A determinant of reactions to sex-based preferential selection?
Heilman, Madeline E.; Battle, William S.; Keller, Chris E.; Lee, R. Andrew
Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 83(2), Apr 1998,

Cracking the Egg: Which Came First - Stigma or Affirmative Action?
Angela Onwuachi-Willig; Emily Houh; Mary Campbell 
California Law Review, Vol. 96, p. 1299, 2008

Sources of Stigma: Analyzing the Psychology of Affirmative Action
RUPERT BARNES NACOSTE
Law & Policy, Volume 12, Issue 2, pages 175195, April 1990

Persuasion and Distrust: A Comment on the Affirmative Action Debate;
Kennedy, Randall
99 Harv. L. Rev. 1327 (1985-1986)

OHMomof2 · October 30, 2012, 10:36pm

Common app asks where your parents went to college…I guess you could leave it blank but that would be lying, sort of?

GMTplus7 · October 30, 2012, 10:36pm

I’m curious of your opinion of UT’s Top Ten Percent Plan which admits students in the top 10% of each Texas high school’s graduating class, regardless of their race.

<ul>
<li>The plan achieves better representation of URMs.</li>
<li>It normalizes for the fact that many hard-working kids are at a competitive disadvantage because they attend poor performing schools, so it rewards their performance.</li>
<li>It does not discriminate on the basis of immutable characteristics like race or gender. </li>
</ul>

Yes, it is possible for a family to “game” the system and enroll their kid in a lower performing school so their kid might stand out. But how many parents would really be willing to do that?

sally305 · October 30, 2012, 10:36pm

@OHMomof2: It WAS sad, and in some ways I regret it to this day. I made it all the way through high school, with the smart, older boys (I don’t recall any other girls being there) snickering about me being in their classes–until I started beating them on all the tests. That shut them up.

I get that I was not in the same situation as a URM, but I have a lot of sympathy for what it must be like for them to work their butts off in high school, DESERVE their acceptance to a great college, but then be surrounded by a cloud of doubt once they get there. It’s 2012. We should be past this by now.

NotYourBusiness · October 30, 2012, 10:39pm

All:

Regarding the dynamics happening on this thread, I would like to quote the following, which is on the first page of the article “Persuasion and Distrust: A Comment on the Affirmative Action Debate” (the last article on the list I posted above).

" “Affirmative action,” “preferential treatment,” and “affirmative discrimination” are used as synonyms. At the level of semantics, “affirmative action”. avoids the problem of preference that is inescapable if one uses the term “preferential treatment.” It also avoids the problem of discrimination made salient by the term “affirmative discrimination.” On all too many occasions, however, proponents of affirmative action have hurt their own cause by evading the difficulties posed and costs incurred by the policy they advance. These difficulties and costs will not disappear behind euphemistic terminology. To properly convince the public that these costs are worth shouldering, proponents of affirmative action will have to grapple straightforwardly with them - a process which involves, at the least, conceding their existence. "

Pizzagirl · October 30, 2012, 10:39pm

Why would one assume that the level to which whites and / or Asians go into STEM is the right and normative level that blacks should aspire to? Perhaps the level at which blacks naturally go into STEM is the normative level, and whites and / or Asians overindex on STEM for the wrong reasons (such as fear-based ones or misguided parental pressure). Who knows? I think it’s bizarre beyond belief why some people think STEM majors are preferable over others, and I certainly hope they don’t push their children that way.

OHMomof2 · October 30, 2012, 10:40pm

@sally, Women were URMs in college, period, not long ago and in many STEM programs and schools I suppose still are.

One reason I’m glad she enjoys science and math is that in those programs she actually benefits from being female whereas at most LACs she’s harmed by her gender. But it does come at a cost if she is that much of a minority.

I imagine racial URMs feel the same way, only more.

Pizzagirl · October 30, 2012, 10:42pm

Sorry. Being against aff action is one thing, but the people described on here who think that it’s “natural” to see a white / Asian / black and think that the black kid must not be as bright as the other two, or that it’s “natural” to suspect the black student of not really earning a spot, are the ones who have something to apologize for.

PCHope · October 30, 2012, 10:43pm

"But I am having a hard time finding these legacy boxes on the forms.

Please help me, where are they?"

On the common application supplement of our alma mater, there is a specific section asking for legacy info.

Pizzagirl · October 30, 2012, 10:45pm

UT can have its mission, which is fine. Harvard et al can have their mission, which is fine too. No one here who is a proponent of holistic admission which includes consideration of race is saying that every school HAS to be set up that way. If UT wishes to have as its mission educating the top 10% of Texan students without regard to race, and they don’t have a goal to increase representation of URM’s, that’s their prerogative.

PCHope · October 30, 2012, 10:45pm

“Common app asks where your parents went to college…I guess you could leave it blank but that would be lying, sort of?”

I just downloaded the common application form. You are right, and I do not know how to deal with this.

GMTplus7 · October 30, 2012, 10:46pm

@Pizza,

Because on average, STEM majors earn more (and pls don’t bring up biology majors) And raising the economic status of the URM community would be good for that community and good for society as a whole.

Do you ever have anything POSITIVE or CONSTRUCTIVE to contribute to ANY discussion?

Philovitist · October 30, 2012, 10:47pm

chas theyre in the supplement; you name the people you’re related to

It’s the fact that everyone else at the school is a math genius compared to you and you have all these other, stringer skills you could be cultivating instead.

My interest in STEM subjects comes from my interest in more humanistic pursuits (the topic of my why yale essay) and I had to really work to begin to love the stuff. First, it was philosophy, and then psychology (what I see as a great tool for studying it) became the gateway science. Books that I read about it made me internalize this distaste for soft science and focus more on cognition, evolution, and neural activity. That, in turn, has made me interested in computer science and, to a lesser extent, mathematics.

And whenever I make these jumps, it’s always a very uneasy experience. Because I know that I’ll never be as good a computer scientist as a nerd who’s had a computer in his room his whole youth and had been allowed to do crazy, time-heavy things on/to it. I’ll never be as good at math as those kids who actually knew about those math exams and science bowls and everything before they first read a CC chance thread.

And because I want to become the sort of person who’s one of the best at what he eventually does, I feel this need to play to my strengths even if it might be more constructive to go out of my comfort zone.

Whenever my parents pressure me to do pre-med, even, I’m extremely anxious about not being able to handle the chemistry. I’d rather do engineering than chemistry…

I’d prefer computer science most, though. Yale has this sexy Psychology and Computer Science Major that I will definitely be sampling if I get admitted.

Pizzagirl · October 30, 2012, 10:48pm

Oh please! The best math students IN REALLY HIGH PERFORMING SCHOOL DISTRICTS WHO HAVE TEACHERS AWARE OF THESE TESTS, or the best math students WHO HAVE SUPER DUPER INVOLVED PARENTS WHO FIND OUT. Do you really think that applicants to these tests come from more than a relative handful of high schools? The vast majority of hs math teachers in the country have never heard of these tests / competitions, thus effectively cutting out most students.

Mismatch caused by racial preferences

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