Believe it or not, enough time has passed where there is already a well-established generation of URM legacies as well. Also, I hope you’re not trying to convince me, because I already agree with you. I dislike the fact that unqualified legacies get free passes.</p>
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In my opinion, they should be evaluated in the same way that any other unhooked candidate is evaluated. BUT - I would like to make this clear - I would hold much less of an issue with racial AA if the URM admissions boost strictly applied to top applicants.</p>
<p>actually, haivng both legacy and URM boosts itself is hypocritical. The point of AA is to even the playing field for the disadvantaged, right? To give a chance to the less fortunate? But legacy is basically making the same, people in everytime. </p>
<p>So basically I disagree with both legacy and URM, but it’s understandable that they would want a legacy boost.</p>
<p>For me, it seems that many people argue against AA, without realizing the advantages that ORM’s get from legacy admissions or the benefits people get from being the child of a big donor. That’s not any more fair than giving a boost to URM’s. But it seems that most people target AA as being unfair without realizing the other unfair practices that are still prevalent in college admissions. Should you get in just because you’re the child of a celebrity, or a politician? Should you get in just because your parents make a lot of money? No. But no one ever seems to argue against that, they’d rather spend more time arguing against AA, which I think is wrong. </p>
<p>If you’re going to argue against AA, then you should be able to stand up against legacy admissions, or boosts given to big donors. Those are not any fairer than giving a boost to a URM. </p>
<p>In the end private institutions can do what they want in order to achieve their goals. Even, If it means adding to diversity through AA or giving boosts to legacies who add to their endowments or lowering the bar for athletes so that a school can have athletic prowess.</p>
<p>Harambee, I find your post to be largely irrelevant. First of all, look at the thread we are in. We are primarily discussing the effect of race in college admissions. Nevertheless, I will address your points. Most of the advantages you listed are advantages that I, once again, disagree with. But these groups (celebrities, children of politicians) are so minuscule that they can essentially be ignored for the purposes of college admissions.</p>
<p>ORMs are no more predisposed to these advantages than URMs. By your logic, ORMs do not deserve advantages because 5% of ORMs have legacy connections whereas only 4% of URMs have legacy connections. Once again, this point is entirely useless when comparing unhooked applicants of different races.</p>
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All I’ve been doing IS arguing against unfairly advantageous circumstances for legacies, and yet you continue to ignore my arguments.</p>
I really don’t think there are many asian legacies at all. Also, I thought white people weren’t disadvantaged… only not advantaged? </p>
<p>Anyway, part of the reason people aren’t arguing against those other things is because it makes logical sense, and the schools won’t change it. They benefit from it (fame or fortune). But AA is where they don’t really benefit.</p>
There is no clearly defined point to AA. I believe the point should be to help those who are disadvantaged, which is why I approve of a socioeconomically-based AA. And there are people who believe that AA is meant to increase diversity, but what diversity is really being reached, what is its value, and is it reasonable to quantify diversity? The argument that AA is for diversity really opens up many ambiguous problems and effectively backfires upon itself.</p>
<p>I believe that people should be proud of their race regardless of whether it would help in the process or not. Furthermore it doesn’t make sense for an URM not to pick their race. Therefore only ORMs pick that option, and it will not have any benefit at all. I wonder why people still bring up that option.</p>
<p>I am proud of being what I am and being a human being. Race? Asian? hmmm.
I even think that “Asia” is only a regional category. If I am asked about my race/ethnicity, maybe I would respond like “Japanese - mostly Jomon type”.</p>
<p>What general principle of morality supports that conclusion? </p>
<p>Anyway, how do you know what your own race is? (That is, how do you know what category makes sense, a narrow category or a broad category? How about “human” as the designation of your race and my race?) How does the child of a “multiracial” family know such a thing?</p>
<p>In my own lifetime, the federal government of the United States has made up new “race” categories more than once. The category “Pacific Islander” was split off from the “Asian” category so recently that I have seen many posts here on CC that indicate no awareness of that new classification. (And isn’t it odd that Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, all countries located on islands in the Pacific Ocean, don’t include many inhabitants who would be classified as “Pacific Islanders”?) Most inhabitants of what will soon be the most populous country on earth (India) were reassigned from the “white” category to the “Asian” category within my memory. There has been much confusion right here in this thread about which “race” is possible for a Hispanic person. (The correct answer, according to the current federal classifications, is any of the federally defined “race” categories might fit a person of “Hispanic” ethnicity, but again lots of posts here indicate that people don’t know that rule of classification.) </p>
<p>But the United States is not the only country in the world. Other countries classify races or ethnic groups differently. To the United States system, a Tamil person living in Sri Lanka and a Sinhalese person living there are both “Asian,” but Sri Lankan internal politics throughout my lifetime has been all about finding differences between those people, and that led to civil war. Essentially all the people living in Lebanon are classified as “white,” but that didn’t keep Lebanon from having a civil war. The “black” people of Rwanda and the “white” people of the former Yugoslavia added genocide to their civil wars, noticing differences among themselves that are not apparent at all to the federal classification in the United States. </p>
<p>That’s why I’m happy to advocate that human beings be happy to be aligned with the human race, period. To do less seems to be unscientific and dangerous.</p>
<p>I see. That makes sense. For me though, I’d just pick whichever one sounds right to me. Then again, I’m 100% chinese so mine’s relatively easy, so I can’t really imagine how hard other people’s might be.</p>
<p>Wrong. I am half Hispanic and I put “Race unknown” or didn’t answer it on all of my college apps. And no, my name does not give away my heritage (it is Irish through and through). I didn’t put my race because I don’t think it’s relevant to my admission into colleges.</p>
<p>I am 100% human. It’s the only race I care about.</p>
<p>Nope. Not wrong. Just because the odd few URMs do select unknown race doesn’t mean they’re going to give it a boost. It would still be counted ORM as the majority of them are ORMs.</p>
<p>But if a few do it, and only a few apply to those colleges in the first place, how do we know the relative percentages of people that don’t indicate their race?</p>
<p>That said, my girlfriend is first generation from South America and chose not to put down her race in any of her admissions, yet still managed a full ride scholarship from multiple top schools.</p>