<p>Momsdream, I chuckled reading your post because while I was in agreement until the very end, it made me realize that just about everyone perceives some group is getting unfair treatment.</p>
<p>Today’s feeder schools are feeder schools because kids accepted to them have already undergone a similar selection process to that administered by top colleges.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the math either, Momsdream.</p>
<p>Actually, my son and I were both concerned with this issue at the beginning of process. And then the gross inequalities of the non-AA system (or AA for rich white kids) become more and more obvious. So, no more whining. Would he have been accepted at the two schools that WL’d him if he were black? Don’t know, don’t care. My son is looking forward to attending a school that is only 60% white.</p>
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<p>This is simply false. Colleges are very good at anticipating how many students will enroll following an acceptance, and they over-admit to account for this. If the college guesses wrong, they admit from the wait list. There is no “spoiler” effect. You are also incorrect in suggesting that only 1 student from a non-famous high school has a chance to be admitted in any given year. If the school has two superstars, the college will take both.</p>
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<p>This is absurd. The admissions process does not involve “displacing” one student for another in an individual seat, as though places in the class were chairs in an orchestra. Every rejected student was displaced by every admitted student. How would you decide who among the rejects was displaced by an AA admit and who by an Intel finalist and who by a legacy?</p>
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<p>Very true and well put, momsdream!</p>
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<p>I am quite sure that you already know that this is only part of the equation. Did you read or write their essays or their recommendation letters? If there was an interview component, were you the interviewer. Have both of these kids had excatly the same experience and and are able to tell their story using the exact frame of reference?</p>
<p>At most selective colleges, scores and grades are the objective criteria that gets you over the first hurdle, it is the subjective criteria that separates the candidates and ultimately leads to the admissions decisions.</p>
<p>I did read the essay from one of the kids. I can also assure you that the kid who was waitlisted had a very strong interview. I asked him a few questions that I felt would be asked by admission’s officers, and he gave some pretty impressive responses. However, maybe he didn’t respond well under pressure. I guess we will never know for sure.</p>
<p>Hanna, I was only being sarcastic in my suggestion. I didn’t really want schools to add a box like I noted.</p>
<p>Taxguy, I’m not talking about hurt feelings and what parents say when their kids get rejected. My son still can’t enjoy his own acceptance because his AfAm girlfriend was rejected from Wharton… with stats that are in line for such a school…or his good friend since K who got rejected at Harvard…with scores that are out of this world. Both kids are black…and both have doctors are parents…both live in the burbs… I don’t buy it! If you really think all the black kids are out celebrating in the streets because they played the so called “race card” and won, you’re misled. </p>
<p>And let’s now skew the numbers…if one college accepts 30 more AfAm kids this year, that surely doesn’t equate to 30 white kids form ONE school not getting in. And, again, you’re assuming that all of those white kids would have gotten in otherwise. How arrogant.</p>
<p>“Today’s feeder schools are feeder schools because kids accepted to them have already undergone a similar selection process to that administered by top colleges.”</p>
<p>Unless you come from OUR feeder school, where most kids enter in kindergarten or nursery school and stay until 12th…the only selection process there is $$$$$$$$$! (well, to be fair, they DO select the kindergarten class from a group of kids who “play well” lol)</p>
<p>Momsdream, I am not assuming that all minority kids are celebrating. Perhaps, however, your son’s AFAm girlfriend was rejected for the same reason: quotas! We will never know, will we?</p>
<p>You also note,“And let’s now skew the numbers…if one college accepts 30 more AfAm kids this year, that surely doesn’t equate to 30 white kids form ONE school not getting in”
Response: Yes, you are quite right. It can be 30 kids from 30 schools. However, it certainly made a difference to those 30 kids!</p>
<p>By way way, my post only commented on one case that I am familiar with. By the way, I also don’t assume that minority applicants aren’t qualified. It is presumptuous to even suggest this.</p>
<p>I also don’t do well with quotas of any kind. Too often, they have been used to discriminate against kids based on religion, race, geography, etc. Past use of quotas has left me being suspicious, perhaps overly so.</p>
<p>“I also have to admit that I’m concerned about my son getting one of these kids as a roommate. But, I guess he needs to learn, too. We don’t get much exposure to this mindset around here in liberal Philadelphia. Thank goodness colleges see fit to take all of these schools of thought and put them into one place where they can learn from each other.”</p>
<p>It happened to me. My freshman roommate, son of steel magnate in North Carolina and mother from northern Alabama, dyed-in-wool preppie down to the adhesive tape wrapped round his Bass-Weejun pennyloafers, told me on the very first day we met that his parents’ greatest fear was that he would end up rooming with a New York Jew (this was a time there was still a Jewish quota at my alma mater.) I was their worst nightmare! Now I can’t exactly claim that we became good friends, but I know that I learned from the experience!</p>
<p>Momsdream, interesting. In my area the K-12 privates that took kids in K without an IQ test (most did test the 4 year old applicants!) don’t do nearly as well in college placement. </p>
<p>But the real feeder schools, the country’s top private preps and public magnets, have a rigorous selection process meaning at the start of those schools all kids look and score like candidates for top colleges.</p>
<p>Sybie:</p>
<p>“I don’t agree with this statement because there is something to be learned from everyone. A poor minority can learn from a minority with money and this person can actually be an inspiration for that person to do better” I think rich kids with $few million dollar can do better than middle class but lazy URM with full access to lot resources. At least they will lower the tution for my son.</p>
<p>So you are telling me that a AA kid with $150,000 money can contribute to more for diversity than a a URM kid who comes from poor background with $20,000 income. I hope adcoms think about this statement.</p>
<p>According to you diversity based on color is better than diversity based on intellectual wisdom despite being poor and circumstances beyond ones reach. Wow!!!</p>
<p>Well, I have to add a little more to this thread becuase I feel that it’s part of the value I bring to CC.</p>
<p>Someone might look at my son’s acceptance to Penn and say that he probably got an AA boost. His scores were excellent, but not stratospheric. His grades were good, not fabuous. His ECs were incredible and his recommendations (I never saw them, was told) were tops. </p>
<p>But, still, so many kids come with this package. </p>
<p>And, then you can look at our income, neighborhood and certianly his school and say that he had EVERY advantage. If you were a parent at our school, and that’s what you had to go on, you might make assumptions. </p>
<p>But, as an adcom, you read the essay…and this kid talks about kind of being black…maybe…not really sure because his mom was adopted. And, never having met his dad, he’s not real sure about that part either. But, he accepts being black because there’s this birth certificate that his mom has that says she’s black…even though we all know the BC isn’t the original and has been altered. So, who knows. And, then he talks about living in a black community and being bussed out to an all white school. And, then he goes on to discuss what happens when he brings his white school friends home to his neighborhood…how they react and how his black neighborhood friends react…how the basketball games became routine and how the rhythm of the ball distracted them from the rhythm of a rumble…and how he straddles racial lines, serving as a conduit for cross-racial interaction. And, then he goes on to discuss what it’s like to live in a state of racial and cultural ambiguity…without the limitation of any expectations based on who/what he is…and the freedom that comes with the lack of identity and the barriers those identities place on us. </p>
<p>Now, I know this is my own son and moms are biased. But, if I were an adcom, I would want him on my campus. I would expect that this is the sort of perspective that would lend to interesting discourse and the “out of the classroom” experiences we’re all hoping our kids get over the next 4 years. </p>
<p>But, some will look at the feeder school he attends and his mom’s income and determine that he has nothing to offer that’s any different from the rest of the white kids in his school.</p>
<p>Simba, I wish you had not brought up this thread. I don’t know what you are going through in your high school but I don’t agree with most of your premise. And to suggest that there should be a clearing system for AA candidates is offensive.</p>
<p>“It happened to me. My freshman roommate, son of steel magnate in North Carolina and mother from northern Alabama, dyed-in-wool preppie down to the adhesive tape wrapped round his Bass-Weejun pennyloafers, told me on the very first day we met that his parents’ greatest fear was that he would end up rooming with a New York Jew (this was a time there was still a Jewish quota at my alma mater.) I was their worst nightmare! Now I can’t exactly claim that we became good friends, but I know that I learned from the experience!”</p>
<p>Anyway, to add, he was clearly admitted as a result of AA for rich, white folks. I imagine they might have considered him a “diversity” admit because he was from the South, and he did play lacrosse (but rather poorly, as I remember.) But other than that, I knew literally hundreds of students from my high school (Stuyvesant) who were attending City College of New York who were “better qualified” than he was, including 8 who were rejected by my alma mater (six of whom had better SATs and GPAs than I did when I was placed on the waiting list and ultimately admitted.)</p>
<p>Anyhow, if the prestige colleges wanted to make up for the generations of AA for rich white folks they’ve had (and continue to have), the number of current folks admitted under AA of the other kind is absolutely pitiful! (But, as they openly note, that’s not what they intend.)</p>
<p>Mini, how did you and your roommate get along? </p>
<p>And, yes, poor white kids are being admitted with lesser stats. Anyone who read the “admission decisions” threads could have found as many poor or rural whites with lowers stats. They all seemed to understand that this was why they were admitted, as the kids had a comment section on the thread where they could say why they thought they had been admitted. Hmmm, it never made me angry…and I never though “he took (son’s GF’s name) spot!” Never. </p>
<p>Some of us are used to life feeling a little “unfair”…and some are just now being introduced to the concept. </p>
<p>For those of you who are new to the real world…welcome. Take a deep breath, it gets more interesting as time goes on!</p>
<p>momsdream notes,"
For those of you who are new to the real world…welcome. Take a deep breath, it gets more interesting as time goes on!"</p>
<p>Well said. I definitely agree with you here.</p>
<p>Oh, we were civil enough to each other, I guess. He knew that anti-Semitic comments were out-of-bounds, at least with me around (I have no idea what he was like around his friends), so he seemed to think that anti-Black comments were acceptable (the reality is that he had known almost no Black people except for the housemaids.) And I, being somewhat a lost soul myself for the first year, am somewhat ashamed to say I didn’t confront him about it. Anyhow, he transferred to another school before he could flunk out (which was a really hard thing to do!), and is now a high-ranking southern judge.</p>
<p>I think the worst thing it did for me was to confirm southern white stereotypes, which I then had to spend the better part of two decades undoing.</p>
<p>Let me tell you what we get if we get rid of AA. When I was a scholarship kid in college (an Ivy that will remain nameless in this post) I took my meals every day in a large, central dining hall whose walls were covered with enormous pictures of students from the old days. I looked at those pictures often and always had the same reaction. These people – all men, of course – looked stupid. Really stupid. Their faces were blank as a sheet of paper. I would look at them, and then think of my grandparents (who had come here in steerage and worked as maids, stonemasons, and shoemakers) and of their children, my parents and aunts and uncles, who loved art and opera and reading and politics and who had gone to night school to feed their thirst for culture and the life of the mind, not to mention better jobs. The college boys in the pictures were the product of generations of the inbred, cozy system that existed back in the day. Good riddance to it.</p>
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<p>You really won’t have to worry about the lazy URM with full access to resources getting in to a selective school because his/her because adcoms doo look at what you have done in context of the opportunities you have had and regardless of skin color, to whom much has been given, much is required. When the time comes, your child is going to be evaluated by the opportunities that he has had in spite of the fact that you make $20,000.</p>
<p>Are you saying that unless a person is rich and by virtue of being a full pay or contributing tons of money to a school that then lowers the tuition for your child that they have no merit?</p>
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Show me where I made that statement, that is your assumption.</p>
<p>I posted this on the other AA thread but it applies to this one too.
I see the issue of AA as a means of colleges trying to justify the tax monies and donations they receive from ALL Americans. It defies logic to think that state legislatures and governors can justify appropriating tax dollars to these institutions when a significant proportion of the taxpayers children arent able to attend these same institutions. The same can be said for corporations donating money to private colleges. Do you think a company with minority workers will continue to donate to colleges that do not make and effort to enroll minority students? Probably not. Eliminating AA would mean that a few more non-URMs would be accepted to these institutions but the financial repercussions would hurt all students?</p>
<p>AA is really less about diversity or helping the 6% URMs get a college education but more about reducing the individual cost for the 94% non-URMs without incurring the minority populations wrath.</p>
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Again think about the financial repercussions at my alma mater, alumni donations triple the year after we went to the Rose Bowl and remained at that level for 2 additional years. A competitive football or basketball program brings in BIG MONEY (the colleges share of NCAA TV revenue, alumni donations, corporate donations, etc) that benefits not only the athletic department but also the whole student body.</p>
<p>Do you think these universities would be able to recruit and keep top minority athletes if they are the only ones of their race on campus?</p>