"Princeton is scrambling to prevent the release of a trove of its most sensitive admissions documents, including individual student files and information about how the school judges and selects its freshman class.
The data was provided to the Education Department as part of a years-long investigation, making it subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. If those requests are successful and the documents are made public, it could upend the world of Ivy League college admissions, shining an uncomfortable light on what is usually a clandestine process. It would also have the potential to deal a serious blow to affirmative action efforts by elite colleges." …
I hope it does blow off the lid to the clandestine process. This is because ORM’s are tired of being mistreated. When the second question on the Common App is whether you are black or hispanic, leading one to believe the decision tree splits there, something is definitely wrong. MLK’s dream is for everyone, not specific groups.
I think the Supreme Court will finally get it right. Preferential treatment by race should not be tolerated. There are plenty of other ways to identify diversity.
However, for some reason ORM voters tend to vote overwhelmingly for one particular political party which favors preferential treatment by race while the other party’s court nominees are more likely to oppose preferential treatment. The problem won’t get fixed in the courts until ORM voters change.
Trying to keep this posting somewhat at a high level or this post will get deleted by the moderators. Had that happen before.
In contrast, I think these colleges high end/desirable colleges have been aware and looking over their shoulders for quite some time. You can’t say, with the history of periodic lawsuits, that they aren’t savvy to this possible threat, sensitive to liability. Not that hard to not self-incriminate. This is why I don’t asking for files will show any smoking guns. And why there hasn’t been anything earth-shaking against their use of holistic, to date.
@preppedparent ORMs are mistreated by the admissions process? What a brilliant comment. Who are these mistreated ORMs you speak of? Whites who make up the majority of all the ivy league schools? Do you realize that these schools can select who they want in their class band that affirmative action isn’t necessarily lowering the bar for URMs to get in. Rather, it’s ensuring that the URMs that do have potential (evidenced by grades & test scores) are selected given the history of this country.
@preppedparent Also, if you’re pissed about affirmative action, you better be ready to be pissed about legacy admission (which has been around and benefited whites for decades) and development admits since you’d be considered inconsistent and hypocritical otherwise.
I have been railing against race based admissions for a long time (although I remain strongly in favor of income based admissions). I continue to do so, even after my D was accepted into a university with a single digit acceptance rate.
@Deaston Over the 20 years I worked in admissions for two Ivy League universities, I noticed a major change: parents (and candidates) could no longer take “no” for an answer. 20 years ago people accepted that they didn’t make the cut. They were upset but accepted it as a fact of life.
Beginning around 2005 things changed. Parents could not longer accept that their child was rejected. They started arguing that they were being “discriminated” against for one of a myriad of reasons. Sadly, this had the effect of making admissions officers even harsher. I got out of admissions as I frankly was tired of the abuse. And tired of having to explain to people that their child may be outstanding but there were simply other candidates who were more attractive overall.
Makes me wonder how people will deal with rejection later in life.
So if P is forced to release applications, would they be anonymized? I wrote some pretty personal stuff in my essays, and I really don’t want other people (including my family) to read them?
Could someone call the Admissions Office and ask for details? I’ve heard that they delete all application materials after matriculation; is this true?
Thanks! Sorry, but this is making me really uncomfortable. I thought my application was confidential.