<p>Ikky, with all due respect, your comment in post #531 about athletes being “too dumb” to contribute tells me that you are decidedly lacking in the type social skills and good judgment that business leaders would be looking for when they hire individuals who will need to work with their customers – athletes probably do tend to have better social skills and better hires than nerdy iconoclasts who think they are smarter than everyone. </p>
<p>Your comment in post #534 about being 2L at Chicago shows a similar lack of judgment and awareness of your audience – this being a parent board, several of us graduated from equally or more prestigious law schools and had many years of legal practice experience under our belts well before you were born. </p>
<p>That’s where the whole test-score focus falls really flat – the kid who interviews well, has a demonstrated history of accomplishments in areas evidencing a “works well with others” ability, and who performs academically slightly better than the test scores would indicate is probably a much better bet for both short and long term collegiate success than one who does not show those strengths. The test scores provide some evidence of suitability for the academic demands of college, but once a thresshold is reached, it is not very valuable as a determinant as to who should be selected. </p>
<p>I have a word of advice for you before you embark on a legal career: the bar exam is pass/fail. It doesn’t matter how high you score – at least in my state, you won’t even be told the score of any part of the test unless you fail. You will be practicing law on the same footing as hundreds of lawyers from less prestigious law schools who barely passed the bar. The lawyers with the best social skills will make the most money (they attract more clients).</p>
<p>I recently graduated from college. I spent 4 years interacting with college students at HYP, including recruited athletes. They are, indeed, dumb jocks. They don’t do nearly as well in class, they avoid every difficult class like plague, they’re very good at networking and finding out just which classes have the easiest professors so they can get the best grades while doing the least amount of work. You could say that they don’t have as much time because of practice. This is true during the season, but for months they don’t have practice - and they do not study, they go out and party and get drunk. In fact, they are quite proud of this fact and brag about it to their friends. They are not intellectually curious, they just want to get their degree while doing the least amount of work as they can and head to their ibank job to make some $$$. </p>
<p>Yes, it sounds like I’m not being “objective”, but that’s only because I had to put up with jocks and their obnoxiousness for so long. They get into fights at bars, they trash the residential colleges and urinate in the dining halls, they party all semester long and then beg the asian kid in the library to copy his problem set and help them study for exams. </p>
<p>Yes, i’m a little bitter, but it’s precisely because i know that their “drive, competitiveness, and personality” is what it really takes to get ahead in this world.</p>
<p>Cptofthehouse. The case you cited on the non-asian student just reflects the insanity of the college admission process. What is truly sad is that so many of our brightest young students get a bad dose of reality of a highly competitive world just when they take their first step out on their own.</p>
<p>I do not know the racial breakdowns for elite MBA programs though we have family who are Harvard MBAs. I do notice that quite a few of the Harvard MBAs are Asian at the gatherings I attended. Many work in California with high tech companies; I don’t see as many here on the east coast with the investment banking crowd. On the floor here at a major investment banking firm, there is quite a mix of colleges represented when it comes to the undergraduate analysts and other such positions. When it comes to the MBA crowd, the top schools take charge, it seems. But the traders themselves seem to be a mixed lot as well with some top guys without college degrees. I will say that most of the kids with these prestigious jobs early on after college , straight out of undergraduate studies had some family connection help them get the job. My husband tried to get some Harvard undergrads hired a few years ago, kids we knew, but there was no interest in them, as other factors had emerged and other kids were already slotted for any open positions. There are, however, a number of positions that look at the college where the candidate attended, and without a strong mentor pushing for him, HPY can take the cake.</p>
<p>Well I had a suspicion that I pursued the wrong path in colege. That is, CS Major, study a little, party a little. Now I just got confirmation that I just needed to be a theatre major, hang with the girls, party and learn how to throw a block. I will remember this for my next life.</p>
<p>1) you’re absolutely spot on! I AM a nerdy little iconoclast. I DO lack the “social skills” of my intellectually-equal-but-superior-in-every-other-way athlete peers! </p>
<p>2) you’re so right about knowing the audience! it didn’t really occur to me until you just mentioned it that parents on this board are mature adults who don’t look kindly on young upstarts who might DARE to voice controversial opinions without consulting everyone here to make sure their feelings aren’t hurt. </p>
<p>3) All kidding aside, this is a message board, I’m not here to make friends, I just want to express my ideas, get criticism, and refine my ideas further. If you notice I’ve taken every substantive criticism to my posts very kindly and have taken the time to formulate polite responses in an effort to foster further discussion. But if your criticism isn’t substantive, then I’m not going to take you seriously.</p>
<p>Mini, on a group basis, I agree with you that the Ivies favor rich kids. The high level of competitiveness and criteria for admission simply sets a bar that is very high to meet unless families can afford to either fund private schooling for their kids, or provide a home life with a lot of enrichment (or both). </p>
<p>However, on an individual basis, I don’t think that there is any such discrimination. On the contrary, I think that when the Ivies see an applicant who has managed to meet the threshold for admission and has the indicia of coming from a less privileged background, then the tables are turned and the applicant is given a more favorable read than the cookie-cutter apps they get from kids from rich suburban enclaves and pricey prep schools. The problem is that there are very few applicants who fit that criteria. If I’ve got 90 rich kids and 10 poor ones, and pick 8 of the poor ones and 50 of the rich ones – I still end up with many more rich than poor, even though I have actually given the poor ones favorable treatment.</p>
<p>The dearth of kids in median-income ranges is simply a function of the way the financial aid system is structured. If the need-based aid is not enough to bring the cost of the private college within range of a pubic college, finances are going to dictate the choice of the public school (or a lower-ranking private that offers substantial merit aid).</p>
<p>Ikki, I know a number of college athletes and they do not fall into your description at all. In fact, for my son’s sport, those accepted at Harvard had excellent grades, 1500+SAT1s, and were taking difficult courses. There are some athletes that do fall into a category where ONLY their athletics got them into the school, but I don’t believe there are that many of them at the most selective schools. Even those who are at the lowest quintile academically by Harvard standards are a pretty smart bunch. I am not a great cheerleader of sports, so it is not a bias speaking here. Where I see issues with athletics and college admissions is when the athletes are truly out of step with the rest of the school, and with some of the top basketball programs I do see this. The graduation rates of those players are pathetic, and I think such situations are a disgrace. But for someone, like a friend’s son who is hopefully an ivy football recruit, with a 3.5 average at a strong highschool, and 1450 SATs, I hardly believe he is going to be a fish out of water at even HPY, even though if he gets into any of those schools, it would be the football hook reeling him in , as kids from his highschool who generally get in have much higher stats. But they are not and have not spent the punishing hours in that sport, either.</p>
<p>I agree with you that there’s probably no rampant or conscious discrimination of asians in top schools. The difference in SATs is at most 50 points. But it’s still signficant, and think that the reasons offered to explain this difference is very telling: asians are homogenous because they pursue the same activities, and asians don’t interview as well. </p>
<p>This may be true to some extent, but the fact that people rely on these generalizations, especially adcom officers, may influence their perception of candidates. Psychologically, people tend to see things to fulfill their expectations. Thus, discrimination may occur at the subconscious level. Moreover, the very “anti-social” traits that many ascribe to asians to justify giving them lower personality scores are the very results of their experiencing discrimination and racism in their childhood. Yes, that asian kid you’re interviewing is a little quiet, but that’s because he’s never been invited inside a white man’s expensive home, and all his teachers used to turn the other way when the kids beat him up for talking in a funny accent or dressing poorly. </p>
<p>I’ve posted on this board for a day, and I can already feel people ascribing racist generalizations to me: i called athletes dumb, on an internet message board, hardly a controversial statement, and for that I was labeled a nerdy iconoclast lacking in social skills required to succeed in business. Criticizing AA + making fun of athletes = nerdy business failure. Do you see the pattern here?</p>
<p>I’m sure most of the people who play sports are fine people, but a significant minority of them are very unqualified academically, and socially disgraceful. The point is, getting rid of athletic recruitment will NOT factor out athletic achievement altogether, just make it count as much as musicianship or significant community service. Thus, you get the best of both worlds, and get rid of the low achievers.</p>
<p>At a DI school or program, 1450(math, verbal) is a high SAT score for a college athlete. At a place like Stanford and Duke, 1450(math, verbal, and WRITING) is probably average for their athletes. At Brown, there are several athletes with 1100s on their boards that had B or C averages in high school, with an average college bound senior’s schedule. They are not included in the averages. </p>
<p>In obscure sports that are rarely played by public schools, like crew, squash, or waterpolo, colleges go to the private and wealthy public schools. So, they will usually have much better grades because people in obscure sports had more time to study and faced little competition, relative to football and basketball.</p>
I believe I do. You make an over-generalization, somebody calls you on it and you over-play the victim bit. Is that the pattern? And by the way calling athletes dumb around a bunch of parents of scholar athletes is not just controversial, it’s guaranteed to get a negative reaction.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, society at large values those sports more. Ever see the crowd at some of those football, basketball, hockey games? Then check out who goes to the concerts. For many of the non revenue sports, there is not much of a hook. Still, you don’t have the number of kids there to make up a competitive team if you don’t give it some consideration. There is no need to give musicians and community service kids such hooks, as they are overrepresented in the top school communities, and except for a few spots such as male tenors, violists, oboes, and other rarities, you can do fine with the kids you accept on academic merits. </p>
<p>I don’t think that Jian Li’s suit is frivolous. He is formalizing something that has been in the air for a long time. THough I do not believe it is so, that does not make it not so, and if there is enough of an outcry about this, perhaps an examination of the situation is in order. I don’t think it is healthy to anyone that there is this belief that Asians are being discriminated against in elite school admissions, and that there is some sort of Asian Detector in the admissions offices of such schools to sniff out anyone who is Asian. A problem right now is even getting an accurate count of who the heck is Asian that is applying and is accepted since there is a dearth of Asians who report their race, as it is not required, nor is it checked out. You know that they do not look at the name and go through the app trying to find out who is Asian? They have to go by self reporting. And I don’t know how to get an accurate count of this as there are adopted Asians, Asians with US names, Non Asians with Asian sounding names , Non Asians who lived or grew up in Asian countries, half Asians, quarter Asians, Asians who don’t look Asian, Asians hiding the fact they are Asian, non Asians who look like Asians. Other than the international Asians (and even that is not necessarily 100% as there are Asians in non Asian countries), it is difficult to get an accurate count. I think we need more Asians in admissions if this is indeed a serious concern to the Asian community, which I believe it is. I believe that any comprehensive study will show the situation as I have described it. Yes, there are more Asians with high academic scores and great ECs being denied than other races, but the reason is that they tend to be clustered in overrepresented groups that the adcoms create in the interest of having a school with diverse interests and talents. ANYONE who is not a URM who falls into that grouping is going to run into the same situation as the Asians who are in that group. To take much more from that particular subset of candidates is going to result in a school more homogenous in certain majors, interests, activities, and take away from some of the more unusual things.</p>
<p>Not apropos to anything really but cptn’s post reminded me of a story my wife’s boss’ wife tells about her chilhood. She is 1/2 European and 1/2 Japanese. She was asked by her teacher in school about her “race” for some form and she said she didn’t know. She went home and asked her mother who told her “Well, you are Eurasian, 1/2 from daddy’s side who are all European and 1/2 from mommy’s side who are all Japanese.” She returned to school the next day and the teacher asked again for her “race”. She proudly responded “I am a raisin”.</p>
<p>I don’t think Jian’s claim has merit unless he can show that Asians are discriminated more than Whites, which is difficult: if all he can show is that urms have a big advantage, then he’s not going to get any sympathy. I think his best argument (but maybe not legally), is that admission policies like legacies and recruited athletes 1) gives more spots to Whites than Asians, and 2) are cost-benefit unjustified. </p>
<p>2) is what the focus should be on. If someone can show that legacy preference does not significantly add to endowment, then I don’t see how universities could justify that policy. Recruited athletes are more problematic, because the argument is that they add to school spirit; it’s a bit hard to quantify that one</p>
<p>In many schools, some of those sports also really add to the revenues. Legacy preferance does add to the endowment. When you look at those legacy lines, wow. And that money can stop right there if you reject a highly qualified kid. Many even in the upper echelons of income like to support the school that takes their kid, and would love to get back at a school that rejects him. Legacay often adds to the spirit of the school as well. The question is what is the optimum take for legacies? That number has been reduced over time. There was a time when legacies pretty much ruled these top schools.</p>
<p>I also have met some fine scholar athletes, but lets be realistic, especially for football. Many of the college football players, and even NFL players, are not the “sharpest knife in the shed.” Have you listened to star athletes interviewed on TV? How many of them speak correctly using correct grammar? How many come accross as highly literate? Again, I am focusing on football players.</p>
<p>Recently, colleges were notified that their football players must have a certain percentage who graduate. The colleges need a score of 900 out of 1000, which translates to 50% graduation rate! Think about this. Colleges are required to have a measly 50% graduation rate among its players. Many of the schools who are representing bowl conferences are not far from the 50% number too. Almost 25% of them didn’t even meet the cutoff.</p>
<p>I cannot imagine choosing a college that had no sports teams. Maybe its just me, but I doubt it.</p>
<p>And ikki, what is so horrible about athletes, and any students for that matter, having fun and partying in college? In my day, that was part of the college “experience.” It is a time of your life when you actually have the freedom, flexibility, and energy to have a tremendous amount of FUN. </p>
<p>So I say, get a good education, but please have some fun doing it!</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, if it turned out that Jian Li’s primary flaw as an applicant were his recommendation letters, would Princeton be allowed to reveal that information, or must it be kept confidential?</p>
<p>
Is it really? I think it’s stretching the bounds of credulity somewhat to assume that the SAT measures potential with an error of the mean of less than 50 points. </p>
<p>I also think that without information about the demographics of the applicant pool, it’s difficult to say that admitted Asians have higher scores than admitted whites. If, for example, Asian applicants had scores 50 points higher than white applicants, you would expect to also see Asian admits have scores 50 points higher than white admits – it would just show that admissions committee members were selecting with very little regard for SAT scores. I think this is somewhat likely, given that Asian students do have higher SAT scores than white students on average.</p>