<p>Taxguy, I am referring to highly selective schools’ football teams. I agree with you as you go down the selectivity ladder and up the football talent hierarchy, you get kids who don’t belong there and the colleges may not be doing many of them any favor. I see it particularly in the basketball stats. I read during the last Final 12 (or whatever number) how those colleges, some of them fine schools, how shamefully low their graduation rates were. There were many with a big fat goose egg for graduation! That is a disgrace. I don’t think you have that issue with the ivies. Even those kids who are waay below numbers you would even think associated with such schools, tend to graduate.</p>
<p>We have close friends who are a Chinese-Mexican descent couple. Both ivy leaguers, and they joke that you know who is going to be hiding in the bushes during college visits and interviews. It is sad that this sentiment that Asians are discriminated against just for being Asians, is so strong that a Harvard/Yale couple would refer to it. Just joking? Maybe, but many a truth is hid in jest,and I seriously doubt that the Asian ancestery is going to be mentioned much less highlighted in the kids’ apps. It has gone so far, that I think that the matter needs to be addressed and investigated. With the history these top schools had in blatantly discriminating against blacks, Jews, non legacies, it is not a far fetched rumor. The fact that so many highly qualified Asian kids are not accepted to these schools has fed this anti Asian frenzy. I, for one, would like to lay this dog to rest.</p>
<p>Haha Curmudgeon, that story made me smile :-)</p>
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</p>
<p>Taxguy, aren’t there former football players who have become wonderful communicators on national TV? It seems that the color commentators who cover the NFL games do rather well. Actually, turning to ESPN News and listening to the real professionals is often painful. Count that twit who insists in reporting runners’ statistics as “a buck something” as one of the worst. </p>
<p>Also, don’t the various Jay Leno street interviews provide a counterpoint to “how dumb” athletes are when being interviewed? </p>
<p>PS I do understand the negative impact of colleges recruiting athletes who are quasi-scholars and pretending to educate them. However, that does not seem to be all that relevant to this thread. For some reason, I doubt that any athlete who might have taken Jian Li’s spot needs remedial classes.</p>
<p>nothing wrong with partying. My rant was an exaggeration - but i wanted to give some anecdotal evidence of athletic recruits “contributing” to the atmosphere at the college.</p>
<p>As a point of concession: i am rather happy that yale FINALLY won the harvard/yale game this year. Maybe the reason I’m so bitter at the football players is that for 5 years before this, they failed to do the one thing that they were put at yale to do. (yes, this is also an exaggeration, but not much of one)</p>
<p>I give you… an articulate football player:
Michael Strahan addresses the media -
<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnjIbAeprkU[/url]”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnjIbAeprkU</a></p>
<p>And I’m not even playing the Tiki Barber card!</p>
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</p>
<p>Definitely not for individual applicants, but 50 points is significant when it’s between two large groups of individuals, based on the old 1600 standard.</p>
<p>Ha! You think that Yale recruits football players for the sole purpose of defeating Harvard? </p>
<p>There are several things that athletes contribute to their colleges (and remember, I couldn’t care less personally): entertainment for their fellow students and alumni, and wonderful memories for alumni. This is what keeps them coming back for the Tailgate. These memories are great motivators for loosening the alumni’s purse strings.</p>
<p>By the way, I knew Ted Donato the Harvard hockey coach, when he was an undergraduate and went on to captain the winning US hockey team at the Olympics. He probably was not have the best student in his classes, but he did okay; and given the bruising schedule he must have maintained to make the Olympics, he did pretty well academically.</p>
<p>This I submit to you: a little more levity at the expense of a little accuracy = fun for the whole family.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I was responding to IKKI’s post about all athletes being stupid. Yes, I know there are some former athletes who are well spoken. My post never said “all athletes.”</p>
<p>Bay</p>
<p>My son’s college search was specifically targeting non-sports oriented schools. He did not want to apply to any school that spent serious money on sports. His idea of fun would be staying up all night talking about philosophy or poetry (or maybe half the night, and the other half a little racier), but none of it would involve sports.</p>
<p>PS</p>
<p>And this is no slur on students who love sports. Different strokes for different folks. My kid doesn’t even like to go outside much, except on a mountain hike.</p>
<p>bethievt,</p>
<p>I think it is great that your son knows what he wants. I hope he finds it. I still think most college students like having sports at their schools.</p>
<p>And there are some great schools out there that do not have football programs, Swarthmore and Emory come to mind. Doesn’ t see to hurt them one bit. But, there are kids who specifically want a football or other active sports program that brings out the rah rah, because of what it contributes to college life. I am not any such person, having gone to absolutely zero of my college’s football games, and barely knowing they had a team–haven’t gone back for one either, don’t even know why they bother to have a team with their record and quality of team, and for all the kids who go there care about the football team. But just found out my friend’s son who is a big, bruising football player is applying there and hoping to be a football recruit. He is well within admissions parameters academically, and is working with all of the ivy league schools and other highly selective schools. And frankly, knowing him, I would have to say that he is the type of kid I would like to see more of at some of these very academic schools, to kind of round out things. And not because of the football. Yet it is the football that is attracting him to some of these schools–he wants to play. Yes, it serves as a great hook for HPY where it is doubtful even with his stellar stats that he would get in without the football, but also in consideration is whether he could play. He loves the sport and has invested a lot of time and energy into it for many years. Even with his safeties, the question is whether he can play.</p>
<p>Ikki </p>
<p>One way to flood asians in Ivy leauge admisison is chnage kids name to John Smith, enroll them in politics, let them develop a rap song or jazz music, and play some a** kicking football or a sports and be recurited for it. Mainatain their GPAs and SATs. One hell of a formula to have a good chnace.</p>
<p>Parents for fun so do not get offended. I just want to prove asians have a snese of humor too. Ask Micahel Jackson how did he turn so white and ask the drug developer for a formula which does opposite of it make you colored just not yellow or brown color. 
simple. In the process if something goes wrong - do not ask who I am. If you have abnk account just call a movie star who will be happy to have your cause as it would get the movie star a free publicity.</p>
<p>
What I’m saying is that I think the error bars on whatever the SAT measures are large enough, even given the number of data points, that calling a 50 point difference “significant” is a little statistically dicey. Further complicating matters is that we don’t know the numerical difference between the scores of Asians and whites who apply.</p>
<p>I agree, Mollie. Many whites and Asians do not identify themselves in terms of race because there is nothing in it for them to do so. They should have a random scholarship or something offered for those who do fill in that info so that it is more accurate. Only the URM category is fairly accurate because there is an advantage to checking that box, and even then some of that data is incorrect. However, there have been studies that have been compiled with controlled groups that pretty definitively come up with data showing the differences among different ethnic groups. Asians consistently come up the highest. It is a known fact among colleges that Asians as a group have the highest academic scores. That is not the issue debated. The thing that is debated is the weight that these academic scores should have in the admissions process. By putting emphasis on other things as well, and many of them are things that exclude Asians as a group (athletics is a big example), the holistic admissions policy emphasizing diversity in interests and activities among the students hurts the Asians as a group. That Asians, as a group, are adversely affected by the way elite school admissions works is also not disputed. The problem come to whether the way admissions works is discrimatory to Asians or whether it is a byproduct in the same way that all nonathletes are discriminated by athletic recruiting, all non legacies are discrimnated by legacy preference. We accept that sort of discrimination though we grumble about it. We grumble louder about the URM getting some recognition and desireablility–this takes up spots that non URMs, could have had.</p>
<p>Oh come now.</p>
<p>I could have filed the same complaint saying I was discriminated against for being Hispanic when people I know got into Princeton with C averages.</p>
<p>Get over it, you are at Yale.</p>
<p>Really, would Princeton want to sacrifice its diversity to become something like a UC where the campus is 76% one race?</p>
<p>As much as I was upset at Pton for rejecting me last year, I’m on there side for this.</p>
<p>Zelda,</p>
<p>Don’t forget. Li himself has stated that he never wanted to go to Princeton. He wanted a rejection so he could sue.</p>
<p>Hawaii Schools Racial Enrollment Upheld </p>
<p>by Adam Liptak
New York Times
December 6, 2006</p>
<p>The Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii, private schools with an endowment of more than $6 billion, are entitled to limit their enrollment to Native Hawaiian children, a federal appeals court panel in San Francisco ruled yesterday by a vote of 8 to 7.</p>
<p>Students may be denied admission based on their race without running afoul of a civil rights law, the majority ruled, citing what it said were unique factors in the history of Hawaii, the plight of Native Hawaiians and the schools distinctively remedial mission, which Congress has repeatedly endorsed. </p>
<p>The schools are the only beneficiary of the enormous legacy of a 19th-century Hawaiian princess. They have an enrollment of some 5,000 students, from kindergarten through 12th grade, on campuses on three islands. Admission is a great prize, as students pay about $1,800 in annual tuition for an education worth about $20,000.</p>
<p>The schools admissions policy requires prospective students to prove that at least one ancestor lived on the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, when the British explorer Capt. James Cook arrived.</p>
<p>The suit was brought by a student identified as John Doe. The schools conceded that the student probably would have been admitted had he possessed Hawaiian ancestry. The suit argued that the admission policy ran afoul of a Reconstruction-era law, the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The court, splitting almost entirely along partisan lines, ruled that the prohibition did not apply to the schools admissions program. (The eight judges in the majority were appointed by Democratic presidents. All but one of the dissenters were appointed by Republicans.)</p>
<p>The schools are a wholly private K-12 educational establishment, whose preferential admissions policy is meant to counteract the significant, current educational deficits of Native Hawaiian children in Hawaii, Judge Susan P. Graber wrote for the majority. That fact, coupled with Congressional praise for the schools mission, she wrote, meant that the admission program did not violate the civil rights law.</p>
<p>The decision overturned a decision by a divided three-judge panel last year. Judge Graber was in dissent in that decision. Judge Jay S. Bybee, who wrote the principal dissent yesterday, wrote the majority decision last year.</p>
<p>Eric Grant, the plaintiffs lawyer, said he would ask the United States Supreme Court to hear the case. Were disappointed to be on the seven side rather than the eight, Mr. Grant said. But the closeness of the vote, he added, made Supreme Court review more likely.</p>
<p>Kathleen M. Sullivan, a lawyer for the schools and a law professor at Stanford, said her clients were elated by the decision and particularly by its unanimity on some points. </p>
<p>All of the judges agreed that the Kamehameha School has a noble mission and has had extraordinary success in addressing what all the judges admitted are the continuing disadvantages suffered by Native Hawaiians, Professor Sullivan said.</p>
<p>The schools history and mandate is so unusual, she added, that yesterdays decision will have no precedential impact on any other school in the nation.</p>
<p>In a dissent joined at least in part by six other judges, Judge Bybee said the schools worthy mission nonetheless violated the law.</p>
<p>I cannot reconcile its admissions preferences a racially exclusive policy that operates as a complete bar to all applicants who are not of the preferred race with the Supreme Courts requirements for a valid affirmative action plan, Judge Bybee wrote. The majority exempts an organization with noble goals that seeks to remedy a significant problem in a community that is in great need, but it can do so only because the majority departs from clear principles and established precedent. </p>
<p>The case from Hawaii is only superficially similar to the ones from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., argued Monday before the United States Supreme Court, Professor Sullivan said. </p>
<p>In contrast to the schools involved in the Supreme Court case, the Kamehameha schools are private, receiving no federal funds; they say their discrimination is remedial, meant to address historical wrongs; the beneficiaries are indigenous peoples; and the program has met with Congressional approval.</p>
<p>The student-assignment programs before the Supreme Court, Professor Sullivan said, involve public schools, mean to achieve racial diversity, are not directed at any particular racial group and come without similar Congressional endorsement.</p>