<p>NY,
You’re the one being slick here. i quoted the most extreme discrepancy but reported a GRADIENT. You chose to take 1 statement and ignore the rest of the data.</p>
<p>NY,
Do a google of Thurgood Marshall and the 14th (equal protection clause) amendment…</p>
<p>In his Brief in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall, then executive director of the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wrote in 1954:</p>
<p>“Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state, bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere.”</p>
<p>“Justice Marshall long ago made it clear that the plain words of federal law proscribe racial discrimination…against whites on the same terms as racial discrimination against non-whites.”</p>
<p>And race preferences fly in the face of the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Powell, in Bakke, put this eloquently:</p>
<p>“The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal.”</p>
<p>Justice Powell, in Bakke, very specifically addressed this “racial balance” defense of admissions preference; he wrote that such a purpose is “facially invalid,” invalid on its face! He concludes:</p>
<p>“Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids.”</p>
<p>Tom,
You missed the point entirely. What I am saying is that a kid who manages to rise above a disastrous home life to get solid grades and a decent SAT score IS qualified. Probably MORE qualified than the A student from the good family who got constant support to make those A’s and raise those SAT scores. I know how much effort it takes to go to class and do the homework and stay the course if your family and those around you place no value on those things. </p>
<p>What I’m saying (and I know it’s a lost cause, so I’ll go away now) is that kids are more than the sum of a bunch of numbers. UF makes no pretense otherwise. They are going to look at the scores AND OTHER THINGS to make a determination of admission. I KNOW that my kid better absolutely kick it in the grades and test scores and essay department.</p>
<p>It’s more fun to whine about unfairness and reverse discrimination than really look at people and their lives. I get that. Hopefully you’ll get a larger view of the world and the issues at play as you live your life.</p>
<p>I wish you well.</p>
<p>“It’s more fun to whine about unfairness and reverse discrimination than really look at people and their lives. I get that. Hopefully you’ll get a larger view of the world and the issues at play as you live your life”</p>
<p>There is no such thing as reverse discrimination.</p>
<p>“What I am saying is that a kid who manages to rise above a disastrous home life to get solid grades and a decent SAT score IS qualified. Probably MORE qualified than the A student from the good family who got constant support to make those A’s and raise those SAT scores.”</p>
<p>This again is YOUR opinion. You have a right to keep it, act on it and talk about it. You have no right forcing it on other people. I’m not sure why you don’t get this. How is it not clear? I’m guessing you’ve spent your whole life in academia, you sound like a career academician. The comment about college being mandatory shows your true colors and your sanctimoniousness. College doesn’t make one better and there are many career paths that are lucrative and productive that don’t require college. </p>
<p>I have news for you, more than half of the people in the US don’t share your view of Affirmative action and the constitution forbids you from shoving it on them</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>By the way, teachers, ironically aren’t the best test takers in the aggregate. The average GRE score of elementary ed majors is 50 points below the average at 970, with the overall average being a 1040. It doesn’t surprise me that teachers, as a group don’t like the SAT, which is closely correlated to the GRE, LSAT GMAT and IQ. I guess most teachers have had a hard life and learned to overcome abject poverty?</p>
<p>[GRE</a> Scores by Intended Graduate Major](<a href=“http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended%20Graduate%20Major.htm]GRE”>http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended%20Graduate%20Major.htm)</p>
<p>Tom,</p>
<p>Thanks for the information. I’ve got more to say on the subject, but I’m short of time at the moment. </p>
<p>FLBoy</p>
<p>Tom,</p>
<p>I was a software engineer long before I became a teacher. My test scores were just fine, thanks.</p>
<p>You are correct. I don’t get to determine which applicants the college accepts. Neither do you. The college does. And UF has made it quite clear that grades and test scores are NOT the end-all. I wish you luck in finding a college that is all about the numbers when it comes to admissions. Most are not, and make no pretense otherwise. In observing high school students, I have had the opportunity to see that there is more to most kids than numbers. Frankly, I’m glad the college admissions officers recognize this.</p>
<p>Mom,
I’ll forget you said you were going to go away because I am always interested in hearing the other side of the coin. You’re missing the elephant in the room…If UF or ANY other institution discriminated based on race, it is illegal persuant to the 14th amendment of the US constitution. You can rationalize all day long but you can’t change this. You may be glad, but so were the admissions office workers at U-michigan until the high upheald the voters striking down the racist admissions policy. </p>
<p>Don’t get caught up in emotion so much to see the logic. Let me ask you something, why is it that YOUR kids will do well at a lower ranked school, but a minority student must be bumped via AA from that lower ranked school to a higher ranked school to have the same chance of success? It sounds dubious to me that in your opinion, minoritied need to go to higher ranked schools than thier statistics dictate, yet your kids will do just fine at the lower ranked school. Also, i take offense, because I think If UF wanted to be fair, they should admit minorities in whatever proportion they want. However, maybe they should RECRUIT minorities that have an average SAT and GPA that are within plus, minus X% of the target admitted scores of the entire pool.</p>
<p>Tom,
If you read my original post, you’ll note that I don’t mention race. I mention opportunities and culture, especially regarding education. I am saying that kids who don’t have the opportunities my kids did, and in fact have to fight, uphill, for every bit of success they have are likely to be extremely good candidates for success in higher education. </p>
<p>Someone on another thread mentioned folks who “are born on third base but think they hit a triple.” It’s an apt analogy to some attitudes on the CC boards. Again, I mention this in regard to the environment a person grows up in, not their race.</p>
<p>This is a complicated issue. But I KNOW that I have had some B students whose drive to overcome adversity will lead to great success in life, and I’m delighted that university admissions officials try (albeit in a flawed way, no doubt) to recognize this fact. </p>
<p>It stings like a %$&#& to not be accepted to a school when kids with lower stats got in. But the reality is that it’s not all about the stats. Never has been, never will be. And I’m arguing that, perhaps, it never should be.</p>
<p>The University of Florida seeks to enroll and to graduate applicants who will develop educationally and personally and contribute to the university community, the state of Florida and the broader society.</p>
<p>Evaluation Criteria</p>
<p>The Office of Admissions seeks to recruit, to admit and to enroll applicants who are academically excellent, accomplished in extracurricular endeavors and broadly diverse. It is the universitys experience and judgment that this diversity will create a vibrant educational atmosphere and provide the best educational experience for all students.</p>
<p>The university has admitted applicants with an outstanding array of academic and extracurricular credentials; diverse socioeconomic, geographic, athletic, religious, cultural, racial, ethnic and international backgrounds; and wide-ranging interests, achievements, experiences, talents and beliefs.</p>
<p>Evaluation Process
Admissions is more art than science: the admissions process is designed to consider all aspects of an applicants academic record and personal experiences, and is not intended to admit applicants solely on the basis of grade point averages and test scores.</p>
<p>UF’s admissions process is dynamic; it is continually reviewed and updated to reflect changes in the composition of the applicant pool and the evolution of the universitys educational objectives. The Office of Admissions strives to find better ways to ensure an individualized and holistic review of every application.</p>
<p>The admissions review process tries to balance the subjective and objective components of any review: Admission officers can exercise flexibility and professional judgment in their reviews and decisions, but they must also apply consistent standards. Every evaluation retains a focus on academic achievement and the applicant’s overall potential for success at the University of Florida.</p>
<p>Holistic Review
The university recognizes that there is great variation among applicants personal circumstances, home communities and high schools, including those schools course offerings and grading practices. Admission officers therefore have a responsibility to consider all factors when evaluating applications and to admit those applicants who are academically qualified and who have demonstrated a potential to contribute to and to be successful students at the University of Florida.</p>
<p>The new application is designed to facilitate individual holistic consideration. The application does not alter the factors considered in the process (i.e., socioeconomic status, special skills and talents, unusual experiences, etc.), it simply makes it easier for each applicant to illustrate these criteria, and thus facilitate a more complete and personal application review.</p>
<p>Short-answer and essay questions in particular help the Office of Admissions consider the applicant within the context of each applicant’s own experiences: with family, in high school, in their local communities and within the context of their cultural backgrounds. All factors that can distinguish an applicant’s achievements and indicate the potential for success at the University of Florida will be considered.</p>
<p>From Tom’s quote above;</p>
<p>“Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids.”</p>
<p>In UF’s statement above I don’t see where they are " preferring members of one group for no other reason than race"</p>
<p>EVERY race is judged holistically and treated equally under this approach.</p>
<p>I can already anticipate your counterargument.
SAT, SAT, SAT.</p>
<p>LIKE THEY SAID THE SAT IS ONLY ONE PART OF THEIR CRITERIA.</p>
<p>If you have a problem with their system then I guess YOU will have to sue to change it.</p>
<p>Mom2three, I understand your point. Even though your children have many great academic accomplishments, it was mainly due to their background and diligent parents. Most kids don’t have parents who are professionals and who how to work the system. </p>
<p>May I add / point out again (like I did in another thread) that those stellar kids are product of parents who pampered those children, or parents that have the financial resources necessary for a great education and took charge of their children’s education. </p>
<p>Nothing in life is truly fair. It is fair that some parts of the world have more environmental disasters than other areas? It is fair that African babies are dying from malnutrition while we have chance of a great life span and have internet access? It could have been the other way around. In addition, unfortunately, we can never (or at least most of the time) claim that our achievements are “100%” ours. </p>
<p>In order for the SAT to be less unfair (yes, “less unfair”), everyone would have to bring the same cards/assets to the table. It would require everyone to have the same resources and the same life experience. Something that is impossible to ever achieve.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the SAT assesses skills that are coachable. It might take others longer to learn those set of skills, but they can be acquired indeed through coaching.</p>
<p>So I took your advice TOM TOM and Googled Bakke.
As it urns out the Holistic admission approach that UF is using has ALREADY been thru and approved by the US Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Link:</p>
<p>[Regents</a> of the University of California v. Bakke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke]Regents”>Regents of the University of California v. Bakke - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on affirmative action. It bars quota systems in college admissions but affirms the constitutionality of affirmative action programs giving equal access to minorities.</p>
<p>Case
Minority applicants to the University of California, Davis, Medical School went through a different admissions process than white applicants. Minority applicants who checked a box stating they wished to be considered as “economically and/or educationally disadvantaged” applicants were directed to the separate admissions committee. Minority applicants did not have to meet the 2.5 GPA requirements. Minority applicants competed for 16 seats out of 100 among each other and were insulated from competition from the regular applicant pool. Several white applicants applied to the special program, but none received an offer of admission through the special program.
Allan Bakke, a white male medical student, applied to the school in 1973 and 1974 and was denied both times. In 1973 he had a benchmark score of 468 out of 500, but no regular applicants were admitted after him with a score below 470. Bakke, however, was not considered for four special admissions slots which had not yet been filled. Bakke wrote a letter of complaint to Dr. George H. Lowrey, the Associate Dean and Chairman of the Admissions Committee, complaining the special admissions program was not what it claimed to be (a program to help the underprivileged), but a racial and ethnic quota.
In 1974 Bakke again applied to the school and received a score of 549 out of 600. His lowest score of 86 was from Dr. Lowrey, who found Bakke “rather limited in his approach” to the problems of the medical profession, and was disturbed by Bakke’s “very definite opinions, which were based more on his personal viewpoints than upon a study of the total problem[1]” In both years that Bakke applied, minority applicants were admitted under the “special admissions” program with GPAs, MCAT scores and benchmark scores significantly lower than Bakke’s.
Bakke then filed suit in the Superior Court of California seeking an injunction to allow him into the medical school claiming that the school had discriminated against him on the basis of his race and thus violated his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the California Constitution, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The California Supreme Court favored Bakke, in a vote of eight to one, and the university appealed to the United States Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Decision
Handed down on June 23, 1978, the decision of the Court was announced by Justice Lewis Powell. The court ruled 5-4 that race could be one, but only one, of numerous factors used by discriminatory boards, like those of college admissions. Powell found that quotas insulated minority applicants from competition with the regular applicants and were thus unconstitutional because they discriminated against regular applicants. This was an example of reverse discrimination. Powell however stated that universities could use race as a plus factor. He cited the Harvard College Admissions Program which had been filed as an amicus curiae as an example of a constitutionally valid affirmative action program which took into account all of an applicant’s qualities including race in a “holistic review.”
The decision was indeed split with four justices firmly against all use of race in admissions processes, four justices for the use of race in university admissions, and Justice Powell, who was against the UC Davis Medical School quota system of admission, but found that universities were allowed to use race as a factor in admission. Title VI of the civil rights statute prohibits discrimination in any institution that receives federal funding. Burger, Stewart, Rehnquist, and Stevens supported this view and supported Bakke’s side of the case. Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and White did not like this strict scrutiny and tolerated this violation because of the socio-political ramifications. The nature of this split opinion created controversy over whether Powell’s opinion was binding. However, in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court affirmed Powell’s opinion, rejecting “quotas,” but allowing race to be one “factor” in college admissions to meet the compelling interest of “diversity.” After eight months, a vote of 5-4 decided that Bakke be admitted to the medical school at Davis.</p>
<p>By the way I agree with the Bakke Decision. You however are completelly mirepresenting it.</p>
<p>Go ahead and sue UF. Per the Supremes YOU WILL LOOSE!</p>
<p>“Title VI of the civil rights statute prohibits discrimination in any institution that receives federal funding.”</p>
<p>“Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and White did not like this strict scrutiny and tolerated this violation because of the socio-political ramifications.”</p>
<p>Sorry, but the decision was 5-4 and the make up of the high court is different than it was back then. the 5 justices who voted in favor were just wrong, as per the above quote, they ignored the constitution for socio-political reasons. That is just disgusting and I believe that is called legislating from the bench.</p>
<p>“Go ahead and sue UF. Per the Supremes YOU WILL LOOSE!”</p>
<p>Really? because it was a slam dunk the first time? It was a 5-4 decision and will certinally come before the court again. Oh, and i have no reason to sue UF, as I am graduating with my MBA from there in Dec. Go Gators!</p>
<p>Justice Powell made it very clear in Bakke that an admissions system whose focus upon “diversity” amounts mainly to adjusting the racial proportions of its classes misconceives the diversity of which he was writing. He, the author of the defense of diversity upon which reliance is so commonly placed, declares unequivocally that race-based systems devised to advance racial proportionality are constitutionally invalid on their face.</p>
<p>The continuing unabashed use of ethnic preferences to achieve a higher proportion of one race or another — success measured by percentage numbers carried to decimals — is a flagrant violation of the principles laid down in the law of the land; readers who doubt this will receive a copy of the Bakke opinion from me upon request.</p>
<p>In that opinion, Justice Powell rejects the effort to defend the pursuit of racial percentages so long as “goals” but not “quotas” are employed. “This semantic distinction,” he writes, “is beside the point.” The point, Powell emphasizes in Bakke, is that any admissions device is discriminatory “whether described as a quota or a goal” if it uses “a line drawn on the basis of race and ethnic status.” That is the fatal flaw of racial preference, the deliberate use of racial categories for disparate treatment. Moral principles condemn it; and as the Supreme Court of the United States has made perfectly clear, our Constitution and our laws forbid it. </p>
<p>[Race</a> in University of Michigan Admissions](<a href=“U-M Weblogin - Stale Request”>U-M Weblogin - Stale Request)</p>
<p>I’m seeing the demographics card being played a lot as well as the whole idea that students need to have parents with plentiful resources to succeed at the SAT. This is not true whatsoever. There are plenty of kids I know including myself who never once attending SAT classes (for financial reasons or otherwise) and still did perfectly well on the SAT. We got the SAT books and practiced on our own and for those who cannot afford that, the library has tons of up to date SAT books that anyone can borrow. If students ever need help with questions in the book, teachers at school always are ready to help. The resources are available for those who are motivated enough to seek it.</p>
<p>Here is my source for anyone who wants to validate the authenticity of the data.</p>
<p>Joseph Hice, APR
Associate Vice President, Public Relations & Marketing
The University of Florida
101 Tigert Hall/P.O. Box 113156
Gainesville, FL 32611-3156
(352) 846-3903 office
(352) 846-3908 fax</p>
<p>So according to Tom Tom the US Supreme Court was wrong. He knows BEST.
SAT is the ONLY credible indicator of college success.</p>
<p>I just love the way he cherry picks thru all his arguments giving partial quotes to justify his personal opinions. Seems like you will need to quote actual links for all your future posts since you dont appear to be a credible source for some of this information.
As examples:</p>
<p>The court ruled 5-4 that race could be one, but only one, of numerous factors used by discriminatory boards, like those of college admissions.</p>
<p>Powell however stated that universities could use race as a plus factor.</p>
<p>However, in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court affirmed Powell’s opinion, rejecting “quotas,” but allowing race to be one “factor” in college admissions to meet the compelling interest of “diversity.”</p>
<p>Nothing but smoke and mirrors.</p>
<p>You’re either an idiot or pushing an agenda. You’re also ignoring the fact that 5 justices ignored the constitution and that AA is unconstitutional AND that 4 of the judges disagreed AND that the court can hear the case again. You can TRY to make me sound ignorant by saying I know better than the Supreme curt, but I actually agree with 4 other justices, I guess by your logic they are non logical thinkers either?</p>
<p>“The Court held in a closely divided decision that race could be one of the factors considered in choosing a diverse student body in university admissions decisions. The Court also held, however, that the use of quotas in such affirmative action programs was not permissible; thus the Univ. of California, Davis, medical school had, by maintaining a 16% minority quota, discriminated against Allan Bakke, 1940–, a white applicant.”</p>
<p>[Regents</a> of the University of California V Bakke: Free Encyclopedia Articles at Questia.com Online Library](<a href=“http://www.questia.com/library/encyclopedia/regents_of_the_university_of_california_v_bakke.jsp]Regents”>http://www.questia.com/library/encyclopedia/regents_of_the_university_of_california_v_bakke.jsp)</p>
<p>My argument hinges on the fact that colleges are doing now is practicing AA, but doing it under the cloak of “holistic” admissions. It’s a thin vial and it won’t take long before someone legally challenges them on it and wins.</p>