"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion 12

Applying to College
1801

Check Exeter, Andover, Choate, Horace Mann, Trinity, Collegiate, Spence, St. Ann’s, etc…

Seriously, black students who have the chops to be within spitting distance of Stuyvesant are in very high demand (to say nothing of those who actually do qualify for entrance).

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/education/black-at-stuyvesant-high-one-girls-experience.html

Sometimes? Honestly, why go to Stuyvesant - where the competition will be merciless - instead of one of the more “holistic” schools?

That’s not exactly true. Plenty of people showed up - but they were almost all poor Asians! (Many of them took the subway long distances to traditional minority neighborhoods - they weren’t setting these prep centers up in Flushing and Sunset Park!) The black and Latino kids mostly couldn’t be bothered. This 2006 (!) article mentions the program, a bit obliquely:

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/education/18schools.html

Here is the latest sheet on the further expansion of all these programs (including DREAM, Discovery, outreach, free tutoring, etc.): http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/mediarelations/NewsandSpeeches/2015-2016/City+Announces+New+Initiatives+to+Increase+Diversity+at+Specialized+High+Schools.htm

These programs were (and are) all free. All students even get summer subway and bus passes for free. But the programs generally cannot discriminate against Asians - if they are poor they could go too - and the result has been that Asian overrepresentation at Science and Stuyvesant has gone up, and traditional minority representation down.

Liberals have been fighting the SHSAT for more than 50 years. It’s not even clear that the highest performing black and Latino students would even want to go to Stuyvesant, as they have better options in the privates where they will face much less competition. These schools remain what they have always been: places where smart but unprivileged kids can prove themselves. At one time that meant lots of Jewish kids (and some working class Irish and Italian-American kids and blacks like Eric Holder, Thomas Sowell and Neal de Grasse Tyson, among others), today it means mostly poor and working class Asian immigrants, who face long odds in the private schools. Tomorrow?

1802

Yep, totally agree. Stuy and the like are not schools for everyone. Not everyone has interest in those types of schools, and even if they passed the exams, would not want to go there, nor should they, as that is not where their interests lie. That’s why it makes no sense to get rid of SHSAT as there are definitely more holistic schools for students of different interests. I am only advocating for the exam-based schools because that is one model which seems to be working, so let’s keep it for now, while we figure out other ways so fix other systemic issues. I mean, should we make private schools all public now because it discriminates against people who pay? No, because the private school systems also seem to be working. Perhaps the conversations should be on how families can culturally raise children to see the value of education, instead of dismantling already successful systems.

Agree. That’s what I meant.

There are so many great schools that are not exam-based, so it’s not necessary to get rid of the SHSATs, because right now, the SHSATs seems to be working for a small number of schools.

1803

What a waste, being that test prep doesn’t matter, according to you? Kumons should be out of business by now.

1804

I’ve seen how test prep helped my eldest. There is no way any study will convince me its irrelevant.

1805

When I made the above statement, I was being sarcastic. A child who is willing to prep shows something about them.

1806

https://www.wnyc.org/story/why-test-prep-may-be-key-improving-diversity-citys-specialized-high-schools/

Barron’s books to prep for the SHSAT cost less than $10. Take a look at the sample questions through Amazon’s preview. Sure, they are logically tough in many instances, requiring high intelligence, but there’s nothing in there past what a decent 6th grade education would cover. If the free programs aren’t enough, Kaplan offers all sorts of summer programs for less than $1000, which is less than the cost of an iPhone X. I was walking around my old neighborhood and haunts in the Bronx not too long ago and was surprised at just how many black and Latino kids were walking around with IPhones… The place looks a whole lot better than it did 30 years ago, that’s for sure! (Bronx Science, though, looks exactly the same; just less trash strewn about on the bridge in front of the train yards, and on Harris Field, which now looks safe enough to walk in.)

(None of this prep stuff really makes a huge difference, of course. The very high intelligence kids only need minimal exposure to the format and some basic practice, while low intelligence kids could spend 10,000 hours prepping and it would make no difference at this level of selectivity - not that they would spend that many hours of course. I guess, though, at some point in the middle, perhaps at the edges of admissibility for a place like Stuyvesant which is seeking to identify talent approximately >2.5ish standard deviations above the mean, solid preparation combined with the requisite strong motivation and/or encouragement can move the needle, especially at these younger ages when students have less freedom to resist parental and teacher pressure. Notably, most research that I have seen on the very limited effectiveness of test preparation involved older kids prepping for the SAT and later tests.)

1807

Stuyvesant is the closest thing you get to a meritocracy in education.

the Asians who attend are for the most part

  1. poor
  2. english is often their second language

white parents of substantial means are going to be sending their kids to cushy “holistic” private schools like Dalton instead of a Stuy. and it doesn’t surprise me that qualifiying minorities will be poached by the privates too.

what makes stuyvesant rigorous is the top caliber of the student… and it’s no mistake that a lot of wealthy families avoid sending their kids to Stuy because of this.

1808

@sbballer that’s very interesting and good to hear. Sounds like an amazingly gifted group of students. No wonder they end up at great colleges.

1809

Yes, there are advantages to being in an environment where other students test well, and students really can make a school a great place. However, there are many other factors that lead to a great group of students and a great school environment besides just having high admission test scores. For example, Stuy has had multiple major cheating scandals recently, including one that led to the principal’s departure. They’ve made some policy changes to address cheating, yet it still seems to be the norm. In a survey of Stuy students earlier this school year, 97% of Juniors said they have cheated. Across the full 4 years, most students said they have cheated on tests, as well as on homework. Some said they cheated on major standardized tests, like the SHSAT.

They are many contributing factors to the high rate of cheating at Stuy, particularly the high pressure environment with a strong focus on selective college admissions. However, not considering any type of holistic criteria in admissions, including things like whether the student is likely to do well academically at Stuy without resorting to cheating (cheating rates were highest among students who had the lowest GPAs) and whether the student is likely to make Stuy a better place while attending isn’t helping the situation. It’s nice for students to have a variety of acceleration options including ones that emphasize merit, but if the goal is anything beyond just having students who do well on other standardized tests, then there other important considerations.

It’s also not a given that attending Stuy offers a notable advantage in college admission, as several have suggested. Stuy does have a high number of matriculations to selective colleges. However, the main reasons for large number of selective college matriculations are likely a high concentration of high-stat students at HSs with selective admissions, and a high concentration of students who apply to highly selective colleges among students who apply to highly selective HSs. If I attempt to control for these two factors by looking at acceptance rate (not number of matriculations) among students with similar scores, then the advantage looks much smaller… at some selective magnets, even an overall disadvantage. Some kids really do love learning and really benefit from acceleration at a higher level than is offered by their HS… regardless of whether there is a notable college admission boost or not. And it would be great to offer the Stuy opportunity to those students, regardless of race, which requires going beyond just test scores.

1810

Yes, although I’m guessing there would be cheating at many other schools as well, but Stuyvesant lives in a fish bowl. Anything that happens at that school is immediately highlighted. Also, it’s interesting that it seems when the principal makes any kind of changes whether it be adjusting ap classes or some other administrative duties, the NY newspapers reports it immediately.

1811

@uocparent makes the best overall point: there are many choices in NYC public high school education. Why should the essential characters of Stuyvesant and Science be changed when they have worked so well for so long? Especially when there are something like 40+ other screened and education-option high schools that do take into account for admissions purposes all sorts of other data like grades, achievement test scores, attendance, demonstrated talents, interests, socioeconomic status, etc.?

This is the strongest evidence that the single-test admission criterion makes sense for minority students: no stigma. You cannot predict the academic ability of the students by their skin color, and the students all know this. Only limited data ever surface of course, but at least for the class of 2008, the average final GPAs of the students sorted by race are all within reasonable distances of each other. In fact, at Science, the black students as a group had the highest average GPA in the school, tied with whites and higher than all other groups including Asians. It’s a point I’ve made on this race thread constantly, but if you want to break down stereotypes about which groups can do what, the best way to do that is to ensure that all students are truly qualified. It’s not enough to say it, or to call people racists who demonstrate that holistic admissions criteria regularly and reliably consign certain minority groups to the bottom of the class; you actually have to do it. And these specialized high schools are doing it, on the basis of a single test.

Here is the 2015 thesis that has the data - there is a literal treasure trove in there. The most relevant section for my point above is Table A3 on p.118: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1154/

(There is, of course, much to dispute in the paper, which is not particularly convincing in its conclusions and suffers from some obvious flaws and limitations; nevertheless, it’s a very useful and readable piece, and the author clearly had access to the data.)

1812

I tend to agree that it’s probably a good thing to have some high schools that only use scores for admission, mainly because there are so many “holistic” schools out there. I guess the kids that fall through the cracks are the poorer top students that maybe just aren’t aware of the opportunities out there for them, for whatever reason, at the high school or college level.

1813

Similarly, Kelley School of Business has a score and GPA cut off that guarantees admission. You can appeal it, but I think you have to be close. Any other colleges out there that have score cut-offs? I for one appreciate having Kelley as an option for my son who will be applying in a few years. If he gets the score, he knows he has a spot at a great school. I love the transparency. (Watch them change the policy now!!).

1814

“However, there are many other factors that lead to a great group of students and a great school environment besides just having high admission test scores.”

Many of these schools have their own issues too, St. Paul, a holistic school that feeds the ivies has a rape culture, which the school finally admitted. I may hold off on generally characterizing these schools as having great students. Unless you think St. Paul is an aberration.

1815

No need to worry about that for the test-only NYC high schools. There are about 75,000 8th graders in the public system, and anyone who knows NYC knows that some will opt for private or parochial schools, or public suburban districts (a non-trivial percentage of families move after 8th grade of the oldest kid). 30,000 kids take the SHSAT. Just take a look at the dismal middle school achievement test scores overall in the city - 30,000 means that every kid who could possibly succeed at the test-in schools knows about them and will be at the test.

The time to find kids who are going to fall through the cracks is much earlier. There are some very bright kids stuck in horrendous schools and home life situations. Resources are not infinite, so it’s just not possible to offer the full panoply of conceivable enrichment to everyone; in other words, we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Do some universal ability screening very early on and let’s figure out who these kids are. The alternative is what we have now in just about every urban school district in the country.

A very diverse district in Florida about 10 years ago tried universal intelligence screening of second graders and saw a near doubling of the numbers of poor and minority kids identified as suitable for gifted and talented (a reasonable relaxation of the cutoffs was made for poor students). Unfortunately, “funding was cut off”… Here is the intriguing paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/113/48/13678

1816

It’s my understanding that all selective, specialized public high schools in NYC admit by only SHSAT score, without considering additional holistic criteria. Yes, there are private school options, but there is a big difference between a $49,000 per year tuition at Horace Mann and no tuition at Stuy. Many private schools do offer FA and scholarship options, but even so, high sticker price private school is not viable option for a large portion of parents.

1817

The comment was there are other factors that lead to a great group of students and a great school environment besides high admission test scores. A high school with a rape culture highlights that there are additional factors. For example, suppose you wanted to flag students in admission who had a high risk of committing sexual assault. How would you do it? Would you just consider SHSAT score as the only factor? Or might you also flag students who had certain types of disciplinary records, had concerning comments from the teachers/administrators in their former school, had concerning issues in interview, etc? Obviously you wouldn’t flag all students who will commit sexual assault in the future, but I expect you could do better than a system that only considers test scores in admission and no other factors.

1818

Obviously Laguardia admits by audition (as the main criteria for admission). It is nonetheless a specialized public HS.

1819

You’re mistaken, @ Data10. Only 8 NYC high schools use the SHSAT alone. In addition, only 3 of them are required by the 1971 legislation to admit solely based on the test.

Just Google the “education option” and “screened” schools for NYC secondary education and you’ll see that many of the top rated public high schools are the screened schools that use multiple criteria to admit. None uses the SHSAT.

https://nypost.com/2016/09/17/the-top-40-public-high-schools-in-nyc/

This debate has been going on for more than 50 years. Fortunately, the legislature has already deferred consideration of the Mayor’s silly plan until after next school year, but he could still expand the limited affirmative action plan on his own for the 6 of the 8 schools that allow it (Science and Stuyvesant have opted out because the kids are so far below their intellectual standards). He probably won’t do it, though, because the affirmative action plan cannot give points for skin color, only for poverty. Last year, 80% of the affirmative action admits were white or Asian.

The biggest myth about these schools is that the kids are “privileged.”

1820

My post mentioned “specialized” high schools. NYC.gov, Wikipedia, and other sources list 9 specialized high schools – all admit by SHSAT except for LaGuardia school of Music. However, I do see your point. There are numerous other excellent public HS options that use different admission criteria, usually considering both grades and scores.