<p>Just realized I need remedial math help. 3+1+1+1= 6, not 5. So 6 kids are at an Ivy from Li’s class.</p>
<p>SS’s characterization of Livingston is very accurate–heavily Asian and Jewish, and very wealthy. Though I live in the same county, my town is world’s away from this one in terms of wealth, college aspirations, and acceptances (BTW, SS, you left off the 1 to Columbia and 3 to Cornell on that college list, so we’re up to 10 now.)</p>
<p>The crimson article Marite posted was also posted on another thread, and this is what i wrote there:</p>
<p>"One of the most interesting facts in that article is that one third of the Ivy league is Jewish–I had no idea the proportion was really that high–though my kids, one at an LAC and one at an Ivy, have been telling me that most of the white students they know are Jewish. ONe could then make the argument that, in proportion to their population, the most under-represented group is non-Jewish whites! (Mostly tongue-in-cheek, please don’t flame, folks).</p>
<p>What does this mean, though? Are non-Jewish white students just not trying hard enough? I don’t know, but It’s a really interesting fact that doesn’t get explored much.</p>
<p>BTW, my Jewish dad went to Columbia when other Ivies were apparently quota-ing. And his non-Jewish grandson got in, too (not counted as legacy). And most of his [S’s] friends are Jewish or Asian, FWIW. "</p>
<p>Again, anecdotes, not evidence. But interesting nonetheless. I am actually quite glad that my kids went to colleges which were diverse in many, many different ways, and especially that Columbia has a long history of inclusiveness.</p>
<p>What is interesting is that students of Indian descent are counted as Asian but, as far as I know, haven’t publically complained of being affected by stereotypes and/or quotas when it comes to college admissions. Has anyone heard anything different?</p>
<p>I think the anecdotes are meant to convey that nothing is a given - not legacy status, not URM ethnicity, not perfect SAT scores.</p>
<p>Quite honestly, I think the fierce competition at the Ivy level is good for those colleges right below that level and for state schools. Students who might have been accepted at an Ivy five years ago now end up at the next tier down.</p>
<p>Marite, thank you for posting that article. We have a lot of discussion of these issues in a class I am auditing so I was interested to read more perceptions among the students.</p>
<p>garland, I must need remedial help in reading, too. Or new glasses. I caught the Cornell kids, but not Columbia. </p>
<p>As you know, my town is no Livingston, either. And we don’t have Jello wrestling, to my knowledge.</p>
<p>oops, SS, my bad! 
so much for my reading skills.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Please show me proof of where you see this. Also please do not cite the Princeton Study conducted by sociologists Thomas J. Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung because the article is about hypothetical preferences and not rooted in any actual facts in addition to articles that state the contrary.</p>
<p>If one is going to adequately support the SAT’s role in college admissions, they must also acknowledgling tremendous injustice in our society when it comes to the disparity in housing, income, education and health care that also runs down color lines. In addition on can not look at the SAT as the ultimate yard stick and yet not turn a blind eye to the fact that there are racial, geographic and socioeconomic disparities in SAT scores.</p>
<p>You don’t even have to go that far (though it makes sense to do so): the SAT is proven not to reflect first-year college performance of African-American and Hispanic students, who routinely outperform the prediction. Since it doesn’t do what it says it does, and doesn’t measure “merit” either, the argument of the Princeton sociologist is specious on its face (even if the “evidence” he evokes was there, which it isn’t.)</p>
<p>"In addition on can not look at the SAT as the ultimate yard stick "</p>
<p>Of course SAT + SAT II and AP scores are the ulimate honest, non-manipulative numbers. </p>
<p>Course load and difficulty vary by school.
GPA and Class ranks can be manipulated.
Academic competitions can be manipulated - we have seen that in threads like 'How Intel Finalists …"
Community service can be manipulated - During summers there are too many junkets to South America and Africa.
Essays can be manipulated, bought and sold.
Leadership positions are basically popularity contests.</p>
<p>“and yet not turn a blind eye to the fact that there are racial, geographic and socioeconomic disparities in SAT scores.”</p>
<p>Could some of the reasons might be lack of drive to study, lack of parental apathy and just plain old laziness be the factor? (let us not talk about expensive prep class advantage).</p>
<p>‘race’ has nothing to do with SAT, SAT II and AP scores. Everyone can improve their academic merit by hard work and determination.</p>
<p>“Also please do not cite the Princeton Study conducted by sociologists Thomas J. Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung”</p>
<p>Well I think they were the only ones who did such a study. Do you have any scholarly or scientific work that refutes their conclusions?</p>
<p>haha jian was in my high school</p>
<p>“the SAT is proven not to reflect first-year college performance of African-American and Hispanic students, who routinely outperform the prediction.”</p>
<p>do you have any data?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes,</p>
<p>In the Chronicle of Higher Education 6-21-2006 article:</p>
<p>State Bans on Affirmative Action Have Been of Little Benefit to Asian-American Students, Report Says</p>
<p>NEGATIVE ACTION VERSUS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION:
ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICANS ARE STILL
CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE</p>
<p>William C. Kidder
Michigan Journal of Race & Law
Spring, 2006 Vol. 11:605</p>
<p>Contrary to predictions in a widely cited 2005 study that said Asian-American students were the biggest losers in affirmative action, those students made only minor gains at law schools when the practice was banned in three states, according to a new study.
<a href=“http://www.advancingequality.org/files/kidderarticle.pdf[/url]”>http://www.advancingequality.org/files/kidderarticle.pdf</a></p>
<p>Kidder states:</p>
<p>The public comments of the National Association of Scholars
18 and the Center for Equal Opportunity19 in response to Espensade and
Chungs study provide additional confirmation of this overlap between
Espenshade and Chungs conclusion and conservatives narrative of APAs
as victims of affirmative action.20 Michael Omi and Dana Takagi have astutely observed that in the public debate over affirmative action, the position of APAs is much more fluid than that of other racial/ethnic groups, a fluidity that can be manipulated in particular ways to suit particular positions.21 This fluidity is evident when ***Espenshade and Chung at times blur two conceptually distinct issues:</p>
<p>(1) affirmative action consideration for African Americans and Latinos in
the admissions process; and (2) the lower admission rates of APAs compared
to Whites with similar credentials***what Jerry Kang calls negative action.</p>
<p>Goodwin Liu has written extensively about the causation fallacy
underlying the affirmative action debate; i.e., the empirically unrealistic
presumption on the part of many Whites denied admission at selective
institutions that they surely would have been admitted but for affirmative
action.33 Given that Espenshade and Chung comment specifically on that
phenomenon,34 it is more than a little surprising that they fall prey to
what might be called a yellow peril causation fallacy35the dramatically
overstated claim that if affirmative action ended, APAs would be poised to
grab four out of every five seats resulting from the exclusion of African
Americans and Latinos.</p>
<p>Chart 1 displays Espenshade and Chungs key findings. Looking at
the third set of bars in Chart 1 (the difference for each racial/ethnic
group) helps provide an intuitive sense of how Espenshade and Chung
arrived at a demonstrably false conclusion. There were 984 fewer admission offers to Blacks/Latinos and 952 more admission offers to
Whites/APAs/others. Since 772 of the 952 offers under the raceneutral
simulation went to APAs, Espenshade and Chung conclude that
( Wow!) four out of five (81%) admission offers taken away from African
Americans and Latinos were redistributed to APAs.36
Kang defines negative action as unfavorable treatment based on
race, using the treatment of Whites as a basis for comparison. </p>
<p>The problem is that Espenshade and Chungs study is internally
contradictory: their research design confounds the role of negative action
against APAs with the role of affirmative action for African Americans and
Latinos, yet the research question they posed was about the impact of
affirmative action and their conclusion that APAs would gain the most
appears to attribute causation to affirmative action per se (or at the very least, Espenshade and Chungs blurry conclusion will mislead many reasonable
readers into believing that a strong causal claim about affirmative action
has been made). Such a conclusion about affirmative action is untenable unless the role of negative action is truly de minimus, but Espenshade and Chung conservatively estimate that the penalty APAs confront because of negative action typically translates to about 50 points on the SAT. </p>
<p>Moreover,given that there were 5,134 Whites in the admit pool, compared to
1,691 African Americans and Latinos, it follows from this three-to-one ratio
that Whites must be the primary beneficiaries of negative action against
APAs. By implication, ending negative action would primarily involve a
transfer of admission offers from Whites back to APAs; inevitably, the number
of African American and Latino admission offers that would be at play
with the end of negative action is substantially smaller.</p>
<p>In addition to sheer numbers, the distribution of likely admits in
Espenshade and Chungs study also suggests that their conclusion that
absent affirmative action APAs would acquire four out of five seats taken
away from Blacks and Latinosis, to put it mildly, swimming upstream in
relation to their data: 80.8% of actual admits and 84.5% of Simulation 1
admits had SAT scores in the 13001600 range (56.9% and 61.1% were
14001600 range), and the authors note that if they ranked the top 9,988
applicants by SAT scores (enough to equal admission offers), only 3.1% of
that pool is African American or Latino whereas 86.4% is White or APA.43
Espenshade et al.s companion study of the same elite universities found,
The largest admission preferences are conferred on applicants who have
SAT scores above 1400 . . . .44</p>
<p>The upshot of the fact that White admitees outnumber
Blacks/Latinos 3-to-1, and the aforementioned discussion about the
composition of actual and likely pool of admitees is that Espenshade and
Chungs study contains a yellow peril causation fallacy that misidentifies
APAs as the group poised to be the biggest numerical winners if affirmative
action ended at elite universities.</p>
<p>{b]*In other words, when an APA applicant in their dataset is denied admission because of negative action despite a strong transcript and say a 1510 or 1430 or 1360 on the SAT, it is exceedingly more likely that the student admitted instead was a White applicant with slightly lower academic credentials, not a Black or Latino applicant given an affirmative action plus factor… </p>
<p>Consequently, Whites, not APAs, would occupy the largest number of the seats created by ending affirmative action at the elite universities in question. Espenshade and Chungs contrary suggestion defies basic arithmetic.***</p>
<p>It discusses the effect on APAs. It did not dispute the 230 point advantage finding (did I miss it?).</p>
<p>Also, it is an analysis - a view point (not based on data). One can torture numbers anyway they like.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t care who would benefit the most if AA was abolished. It will take us one step closer to removing ‘race’ as a variable. It will also remove the stigma many URMs (at elite places and even in work environment)are facing today.</p>
<p>
This statement definitely isn’t true for the top UCs. A check of stats before and after AA was banned readily bears it out. </p>
<p>
Again, this statement isn’t true for the top UCs.</p>
<p>The seats for the increased numbers Asians didn’t just come from URMs - check the percentage of whites before and after and it’s a dramatic difference. </p>
<p>Just because those statements aren’t true for the top UCs doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be true for some specific other institutions but it’s quite interesting to see the demographic change at the top UCs before and after non-AA.</p>
<p>“Well I think they were the only ones who did such a study. Do you have any scholarly or scientific work that refutes their conclusions?”</p>
<p>Refuted even the idea of its hypothethesis.</p>
<p>Yes. A really, really massive one - the biggest of its kind ever conducted anywhere in the United States, on students admitted to the entire University of California system over a five-year period. </p>
<p>“the SAT is proven not to reflect first-year college performance of African-American and Hispanic students, who routinely outperform the prediction.”</p>
<p>do you have any data?</p>
<p>MASSIVE amounts - you can look it up online.</p>
<p>mini:</p>
<p>What about the ACT’s predictions versus the SAT’s (I don’t know the answer but thought you might)?</p>
<p>^ I trust your word.</p>
<p>“What about the ACT’s predictions versus the SAT’s”</p>
<p>For whatever reason, UCal didn’t study the ACTs. It may because they either required the SATs, or they simply didn’t have a large enough sample submitting them.</p>
<p>The Kidder article appears to be about law school admissions, and the impact on Asian admissions if affirmative action is eliminated. That is a far different calculus than for undergraduate admissions. The LSAT and SAT are not comparable. At least in California, for the undergraduate UC’s, eliminating affirmative action has had a dramatic, unmistakable effect on admissions figures: far more Asian admissions, far fewer African American and Latino admissions. There has long been a low proportion of Asians in law in the U.S.</p>