<p>“As I’ve pointed out above, many URMs like my D, have stats comfortably within the normative spread (if that’s an acceptable term) of the school’s academic standards” </p>
<p>If that’s the case, then D should take her chances like everyone else without URM status.</p>
<p>Colleges have their reasons for wanting to admit URMs or proferring merit aid or even need-based aid (and no, private colleges do not <em>owe</em> students an education). Using URM status if you are within the acceptable range of admits at a college is similar to using merit aid if you make $300k. If you qualify, go for it. If you are a legacy, check off the box. If you don’t use whatever advantage available to you, that is an unwise decision.</p>
<p>Here is a recent report on by the Chronicles of Higher Education in which college want to have even more diversity= more affirmative action. Even worse, it seems that college are considering watering down their curriculums to keep more minority applicants.
Tell me again why affirmative action is so great?!</p>
<p>As more than a dozen college presidents gathered here on Tuesday to discuss how to make their institutions more racially and ethnically diverse, they quickly seemed to reach consensus on two points: Their institutions still had plenty of work to do, and making some major changes in undergraduate education might be a good start. </p>
<p>The colleges that the presidents represent all belong to the Leadership Alliance, a coalition of 29 higher-education institutions established in 1992 to bring more minority students into mathematics, science, engineering, and technology. </p>
<p>The group, comprising both minority-serving colleges and prestigious research universities interested in expanding their minority enrollments, had not convened a formal meeting of the presidents since its formation. It asked several of its members to take stock of its efforts before Tuesday’s meeting, at the National Academy of Sciences building, and, following a 90-minute public discussion of their findings, brought the presidents together in a private meeting to decide how to proceed. </p>
<p>“I don’t think any of us think we are anywhere near where we should have been by this date,” said Ruth J. Simmons, president of Brown University, where the alliance has its headquarters. </p>
<p>Several of the presidents blamed what they called “weed-out courses” in the early stages of undergraduate education for driving disproportionate numbers of minority students out of math- and science-related fields. Freeman A. Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, said that even those minority students who go on to earn bachelor’s degrees in such fields often are too discouraged by the difficulty of the experience to consider pursuing a graduate education. </p>
<p>They “don’t go on, quite frankly, because they have not done well as undergraduates,” Mr. Hrabowski said. Colleges should do more to get such students “excited about the work,” he said, and should not be afraid to take steps such as urging students to repeat introductory courses in which they received grades of C or lower to ensure that more-advanced classes do not leave them feeling overwhelmed. </p>
<p>Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, was among those who suggested that colleges should rethink their reliance on rigorous introductory courses to ensure that prospective science and mathematics students can handle work in those fields. “Just because we have always done it that way does not mean that is the way it has to be done,” she said. </p>
<p>Several college presidents and administrators on hand suggested that earning Advanced Placement credits in high school may have unintended negative consequences for students, minority and otherwise. The speakers said that, as a result of earning such credits, many students place out of introductory courses that they could handle easily, and go straight into more-advanced classes without adequate preparation, earning poor grades that leave them discouraged. </p>
<p>Shirley M. Tilghman, president of Princeton University, suggested that such students may be done “more harm than good” by earning AP credits. </p>
<p>Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami, said she had seen students earn their undergraduate degrees early as a result of Advanced Placement credits but then go on to graduate or medical school without the maturity needed to handle it. “They are getting into trouble later on,” she said. </p>
<p>Participants in the meeting also cited a fear of high student-loan debt and inadequate minority representation on college faculties as factors discouraging minority students from pursuing doctorates in math- and science-related fields. Ms. Tilghman warned that colleges would suffer if they did not get more minority students to earn doctorates and go on to teach. </p>
<p>“If we do not diversify our faculty, we will look increasingly anachronistic,” she said. “Who wants to be part of something that looks like it is basically behind the times?” </p>
<p>The position papers drafted by various participants in Tuesday’s meeting are available at the alliance’s Web site. </p>
<p>Background articles from The Chronicle</p>
<p>The issue of placing into more advanced courses than one should because of AP credit is one that everyone should be concerned with. My kid is not sure of how to handle the calc sequence at UChicago - but I guess that’s what the 9 day orientation is for. </p>
<p>BTW, taxguy, its just as well your checkbox isn’t on the application, because my kid probably would check it.</p>
<p>Wish/April and Jamimom’s exchange above nicely illustrates how colleges are playing fast and loose with their “minority” numbers. When colleges are boasting of their diversity, Asians are tallied in the “minority” column, but during the admissions competition Asians get no URM boost. What would an ultra-competitive college campus look like in a color-blind world? VERY “minority” intensive – but that “minority” would be Asian.</p>
<p>LOtuswoman, frankly, if Asians rise to the top based on hard work and dilligence, so be it. I, for one, don’t have a problem with that.</p>
<p>Poetsheart said:</p>
<p>So then, it would seem that it’s “understandable” why an adcom would choose the engaging and quirky red head from Iowa City who founded a Kazoo and Washboard Band in his high school ( but whose SAT is below the 50th percentile ) over an applicant from Phillips Exeter with the 1540 SAT—as long as both applicants in question are white. But that lower scoring kazoo player had just better not be a URM!</p>
<p>And, of course, this is the stone in everyones shoe. There is undoubtedly a rather large tip given to URMs. As we speculate as to why this tip is given, some like their imagined reasons for such a tip and some dont. </p>
<p>But lets be honest: this debate is largely driven by resentment, not some utopian dream denied.</p>
<p>The reasons for an individual URMs tip will remain a mystery to those who love to wield statistics in their righteous crusade to take back the affluent and cloistered holy land of Harvard Yard. Until some guilt-ridden admissions committee member–desiring redemption–comes out and says weve admitted under qualified URMs for no good reason, there is no terra firma on which to stand when getting all up and indignant with righteous (and clever) rage at a safe and ineffectual distance from the stockades.</p>
<p>Lets all pray for the blessed return of the college football season so that all this righteous, meaningless and Byzantine rage can be redirected to the place it is perennially honored and appreciated.</p>
<p>Re the comments on Asians, I am not generally taken in by conspiracy theories, but there was a time when the Ivies and, I’m sure, other schools made a deliberate effort to restrict the number of Jewish students for fear their campuses would have “too many” of them. Reading about Columbia’s history back when my d was interested in applying, I came across some fascinating material about why the Ivies began to emphasize “personal qualifications” in admission and to require that students take the College Boards (which were given on Saturdays). Evidently otherwise they found that if they relied strictly on academics, the percentage of Jewish students on campus was getting higher and higher. <a href=“http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/cuhistory/archives/WechslerText.htm[/url]”>http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/cuhistory/archives/WechslerText.htm</a>
In the words of a Columbia dean, “It is a fact that boys of foreign parentage who have no background in many cases attempt to educate themselves beyond their intelligence. Their accomplishment is over 100 percent of their ability on account of their tremendous energy and ambition. I do not believe, however, that a College would do well to admit too many men of low mentality who have ambition but not brains.”
But I don’t mean to malign Columbia here. HYP and others were doing the same. The changing ethnic and racial compositions of elite schools has always alarmed certain people.</p>
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<p>Amen. Only a few more months before Harvard and Yale students can debate once again their respective college’s alcohol policies. :)</p>
<p>oooh don’t bring up football- my husband is so mad that Monday night football is going to be on ESPN ( we don’t have cable )</p>
<p>mini that would be fine but how many white families do you think have been wealthy for five generations ot even in America for five generations?</p>
<p>At HYP etc? Surely your question is meant in jest?</p>
<p>“I personally have nothing against development cases and legacies or athletes; but when a white or Asian kid does not get into his dream school, he usually blames it on AA. Now, why is that?”</p>
<p>When it comes to the group of “AA blamers”, they should not be lumped together. If CC is a good indicator, while one part of this group is more vocal and aggressive, the other sub-group is quite passive and resigned. </p>
<p>The first group is mostly upset because the gravy train stopped riding with the full wagons that resulted in a top skewed and grossly over represenation population in higher education. The foundation for their claim of discrimination is unproven, anedoctal, and mostly fabricated. On an annual basis there are less than 150,000 asian students who take the SAT -one source for theri claim of superior merit- and their SAT average is slightly superior but not in all components. In the higher ranges, asians trail the scores of white students. Considering that white students outnumber asians by 7 to 1, it is not hard to see that there are more -much more- whie students with better or equal qualifications. Yet, asians apply in a disproportionate manner to MOST of the top schools -where the competition is the stiffest. The major problem does not reside in the number of admissions but in the number of applications that fall in the admission range. A secondary problem stems from erroneous assumptions of meritocracy and the distorted "folie de grandeur- expectations from students and families. </p>
<p>There is a reason why there are so few cases of discrimination in higher education. The reason by no case of discrimination against Asians have been successfully decided is that there is … no case. When it comes to disproportion in admission numbers, the ethnic groups that are affected are white and the under represented minorities. The first group presents this disproportion in both absolute numbers and in a numbers of high range scorers. </p>
<p>If there are REAL cases of discrimination, the platform to bring forward claims are not joy luck clubs, bingo parlors, or discussion boards. The US has an abundance of lawyers, many of them would jump at the chance of taking a stab at a juicy case and shake the establishment. </p>
<p>It is easier to talk about an issue than to document the truth.</p>
<p>Many colleges do publish legacy numbers. At the ivies I believe they range from 5-14%. Their stats are within a few points of the overall pool at all of them. Adcoms have been quoted as saying that the legacy pool is stronger than the regular pool, which makes sense given that they are the offspring of highly educated parents who have often gone to the best schools and had every advantage.</p>
<p>I do not believe the legacy pool is stronger than the regular pool. If that were the case, the legacy kids’ stats would be stronger than the rest of the pool’s and that just does not happen on the stats I have seen. You then are in a situation where it is a disadvantage to be a legacy!</p>
<p>That could be Jami, but I did see an article where an adcom made this claim.</p>
<p>The funny thing is that I don’t see anger and call for change by the public schools that still give legacy preference like UVA. They stopped it in CA and I agree that state schools should have to achieve “fairness.”</p>
<p>I think I saw the same article, and when it came down to the stats, they were overall lower than the rest of the pool. It was a bunch of adcom double speak. Although there is annoyance about legacy preference, most people are not outraged, probably because they feel they will someday benefit from this policy themselves with their kids whereas , they will get nothing they can comprehend from AA.</p>
<p>“I do not believe the legacy pool is stronger than the regular pool. If that were the case, the legacy kids’ stats would be stronger than the rest of the pool’s and that just does not happen on the stats I have seen.”</p>
<p>Here is Yale President Richard Levin, addressing the issue of legacy admissions in a recent alumni magazine interview:
<a href=“http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_11/q_a.html[/url]”>http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_11/q_a.html</a></p>
<p>Y: About 14 percent of last year’s entering freshmen were children or grandchildren of alumni of the college, graduate school, or professional schools. The admissions rate for legacies is about 30 percent – three times the rate for non-legacies.</p>
<p>L: It’s important to understand that being a legacy does not guarantee admission to Yale College. But the pool of legacy applicants is substantially stronger than the average of the rest of the pool. The grades and test scores of the legacies we admit are higher than the average of the rest of the admitted class, and the legacies that matriculate achieve higher grades at Yale than non-legacy students with the same high school grades and test scores.</p>
<p>When you stop to think about it, this isn’t so surprising. Legacy students are coming from highly educated households, where books, reading, and cultural life are prized. They tend to be more exposed to and more serious about intellectual matters. We are admitting very strong students as legacies.</p>
<p>Thanks, Kubakloth, that is the article I saw as well. But when I got the stats on that pool of legacies, they were slightly below the average. If you think about it, it would make sense that it would have to be that way. Otherwise why be limited as a legacy? Don’t let them know.</p>
<p>just like when many whites stood up and said discrimination was wrong in the 60’s, at some point, intelligent urm’s will stand up and admit the emperor has no clothes. IMNSHO, the problem lies more w/ the small numbers of qualified URMs applying to college than the % attending. looking at it a different way, what % of URMs that apply to college are admitted? the children of parents who consider a college education impt tend to do better in school - yes? maybe we need to do a better job of educating parents… otherwise, we are teaching our children to hate each other, is that what we really want?
prejudice goes both ways & it’s ugly no matter what direction you’re coming from!</p>
<p>While we’re at it…and we want to hold everyone to the same standards i.e. “you can’t come if you can’t score X”…we should also consider the parents fo these kids and what they can afford…i.e…“you can’t come if you can’t pay full fare!”. Why should schools make allowances for students who can’t afford to be there? There are other schools that are cheaper…so it’s not as if you won’t get an education anywhere. </p>
<p>Why would a parent who can only afford $10/yr have their child apply to a $44k school? Why should the full-fare payers support those who cannot pay when that money could otherwise be spent on resources, labs, housing, better food, better pay for profs, better libraries? </p>
<p>Why do low income people expect to be subsidized? Why should we all have to suffer? Why do we help?</p>
<p>Oh, right, because that’s what we do for the common good…we help you…and most people don’t have a problem with helping…as long as you’re not black.</p>
<p>There’s an entire section on CC of parents who are trying to get money from schools and the gov’t because they can’t meet the minimum standard - the base tuition. I hope all of you that are here whining about what’s not fair are also over on the Fin Aid board claiming the same.</p>