<p>“Madame Chiang Kai-shek graduated from Wellesley in the early 1900s, paving the way for a strong tradition of Chinese and Asian students that apply there to this day.”</p>
<p>How interesting!</p>
<p>“Jian Li reiterates everything that is wrong with affirmative action, a truly vile and unnecessary evil that makes it impossible for the aforementioned statement to ever come to fruition.”</p>
<p>As opposed to slavery, which was not nearly so vile or unnecessary an evil, I suppose, since it persisted in this country, virtually unquestioned for centuries. Jim Crow must not have qualified as evil or unnecessary either, since that lasted for over a hundred. But, a few thousand black students get into elite schools with less than perfect stats over the past 30 years, and THAT is vile and evil. Okaaayyy…:rolleyes:</p>
<p>My son took the PSAT twice, the SAT I twice, and several SAT II’s, including the Math IIC test. He scored 80 or 800 on the math parts 3 out of 5 times. One time he missed one question; that dropped his score by 30 points. Another time he missed 3 (I don’t know why) - that dropped his score even more. Both times he scored lower the second time he took the test. Considering that missing one answer on the math SAT can drop your score by 30 points I have a hard time assuming that one applicant with a score a hundred points higher than another applicant necessarily has more “merit.” Close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and college admissions, as far as I’m concerned.</p>
<p>It’s really hard to reason away a consistent difference between Princeton or Yale and Harvard or Penn, and there seems to be one. The Penn/Princeton difference could be attributable to size alone, but I’m not so sure about Harvard/Yale or Harvard/Princeton. There’s not that much of a class size difference.</p>
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<p>What does that mean? I’m not aware of any “magic” SAT score that gets anyone accepted to Princeton or other highly selective schools.</p>
<p>I’m also not aware of any highly selective school that views SAT scores in absolute terms. The admissions offices ALL evaluate test scores in the context of geographic region, type of high school, family income and education, ethnicity, and other factors. 1400 could be viewed as a very good score for a first-generation college white student from a small farming community in Nebraska and a poor score from a wealthy white applicant from Westchester County whose family goes back 4 generations at the college.</p>
<p>Colleges have always accepted students with lower test scores. George W. Bush is reported to have scored 1206 on his SATs – far below the median scores at Yale back in the day (probably somewhere around 1400).</p>
<p>Percent of people who identify as Asian in U.S. = 4.2%</p>
<p>Percent of people who identify as Asian in California = 12.3%</p>
<p><a href=“http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:x51z0r7PO2kJ:ccsre.stanford.edu/reports/report_8.pdf+percentage+of+Asians+in+California&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2[/url]”>http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:x51z0r7PO2kJ:ccsre.stanford.edu/reports/report_8.pdf+percentage+of+Asians+in+California&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2</a></p>
<p>Percent of Asians at Cal = 48%</p>
<p>Percent of Asians who are UC eligible = 31% compared to 16% of whites in the state.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/12/14_data.shtml[/url]”>http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/12/14_data.shtml</a></p>
<p>I have European friends who have the same problem. They don’t get the American system of ECs and diversity. Their system, like the Asian, is based on academic merit and academic merit alone. When their ‘brilliant’ children are rejected they lose their minds (paritally because they believe Americans are dullards and couldn’t possibly be as bright as their superior European children).</p>
<p>I hope his case is dismissed. The US has the best teritary system in the world. We spend three times as much as the European Union, never mind Asia and we have the innovation and the prosperity to show for it.</p>
<p>It ain’t perfect, but I prefer the holistic evaluation.</p>
<p>Interesteddad, I’m pretty sure what that study meant is that if you control for all other variables (SES, region, athletic ability, etc) a black acceptee will have, on average, a SAT score 200 points below a white candidate with equal credentials. The study estimated that eliminating race-based AA (and not doing anything about hardship, legacies, etc) would reduce black and hispanic enrollment by 80%.</p>
<p>I think some degree of AA is justified but a system that admits mediocre middle-class black kids ahead of both brilliant scholars and the truly poor is not the way to go about it.</p>
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<p>How about a system that admits high achieving African American students over mediocre affluent white kids with high SATs?</p>
<p>I am not aware of many colleges or universities that reject “brilliant scholars”.</p>
<p>Sure, admitting “high achieving African American students over mediocre affluent white kids with high SATs” is a good thing. But that’s not what AA as practiced in Michigan accomplishes. As I’ve said, a black acceptee has on average an SAT score 200 points lower than an OTHERWISE IDENTICAL white applicant - controlling for parental income, neighborhood, et cetera. Are you saying that a black applicant whose parents make six figures is less likely to receive SAT tutoring than the white kid down the street? (The effect of tutoring is grossly exaggertated, btw, but that’s another topic). Granted, admissions should not be based entirely on tests, but while some of the AA acceptees certainly have exceptional accomplishments (Intel semifinalists, naitonally ranked musicians, and so on) I don’t see any reason to believe that they are more likely to have these accomplishments than non-URM students.</p>
<p>Pyroclastic, I agree about the effect of tutoring - the only time we tried it my kid’s score declined - but let me just put it this way: the odds that any kid will get into any particular selective school are always less than 100%. Given that, you can never say that this kid took that kid’s “spot”. So why the wailing and teeth gnashing over that kid getting in and this kid going someplace else? I mean, it’s not like we’re overrun with an army of overeducated, overprivileged URMs, are we? Would it help our nation, as a whole, if we could boost the groups who have been historically underrepresented in positions of power and prestige by having a few more of them go to college in places that traditionally graduate more movers and shakers than other schools? I sort of think so. And I think that that would actually help my (middle class white) kids even if it means that a 2100+ SAT score means attending UC Santa Barbara instead of Berkeley or UCLA. I’ll admit - I view AA from a purely selfish point of view as a good thing for my kids, even if it means they have to attend a slightly less prestigious college. Win-win, as far as I’m concerned.</p>
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Since 90% of the applicants to Cal are UC eligible, most are rejected (same at UCLA). The more significant percentages would be how the breakdown is at up at the top end so rather than at the roughly top 12% (which is what the 31%/16% breakdown is for), it’d be interesting to see what it’d be for the top 4% or so. My guess is that the percentage of Asians in that bracket correlate to the percentage Cal admits - 48%.</p>
<p>". Are you saying that a black applicant whose parents make six figures is less likely to receive SAT tutoring than the white kid down the street? "</p>
<p>Very true. There actually has been research that says this. About 6 years ago, the Seattle Times even did a story on this phenomenon. The article said that even when prep companies offered free sample tutoring to black families, the families didn’t take advantage of it.</p>
<p>Apparently African American families consider the college board tests basically tests on innate ability and luck. People of other races --particularly Asians and whites – realize that tutoring and studying for the test can have a big impact.</p>
<p>I am black, and both of my sons studied for the SAT and got some tutoring. One scored in the 98th percentile overall, the other in the 99th percentile.When my kids were young, I read everything could about the tests, and also talked with parents whose kids did well on them. I learned that the kids with the highest scores in general started prepping for the tests when they were in 7th grade, so I did the same with my sons.</p>
<p>I have tried to tell black families about the importance of prepping for the tests, but most – even highly educated ones – don’t believe me. Most won’t even have their kids prep for the PSAT even though their junior year scores can help them win major scholarships through the National Achievement Scholarship program for black students and the many universities that would glady admit high scoring black students.</p>
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<p>Better check your numbers. The CEO report shows that the median combined SAT score for the 952 black acceptees at UMich in Fall 2005 was 190 points lower than the median for the 9663 white acceptees. That 190 points is raw data, not corrected for any educational or socio-economic factors.</p>
<p>Let’s put this in a little perspective. 2609 accepted white students had combined SATs below 1270. 721 accepted black students had combined SATs below 1270.</p>
<p>1642 enrolled white freshmen at UMich in the fall of 2005 had SAT verbal scores below 600. There were only 443 black freshman enrolled at UMich total in the fall of 2005, many of whom had SATs above 600.</p>
<p>My question: why are Linda Chavez, the Bush Justice Department, and the voters of Michigan so concerned about a relative handful black students accepted at UMich with low SAT scores when far larger of numbers of white students are accepted at UMich with similarly low SAT scores?</p>
<p>“Believe it or not, perfect SAT scores really aren’t that exciting to the most selective colleges and universities.”</p>
<p>Absolutely! My brother-in-law is a very active Stanford alum who volunteers in interviewing and recruiting in his geographic area. The edict comes from the professors especially…‘do not fill my class with a bunch of boring valedictorians with perfect SATs!’. These are his words, not mine. Why is it so hard to grasp that SATs and rank do not make or break the candidate?? Nor should they.</p>
<p>Here’s some data from Amherst’s Fall 2005 class that shows how useless the SAT scores are in selecting who to admit:</p>
<p>Median Verbal SAT scores:</p>
<p>Applicants: 650 - 750
Enrollees: 670-770</p>
<p>Median Math SAT scores</p>
<p>Applicants: 650 - 750
Enrollees: 660-760</p>
<p>If you were to pull out the “why did you apply to Amherst, you had no prayer” applications, the median SATs for the applicants and the enrollees would probably be identical. If all Amherst cared about were SAT scores, they could simply select applications randomly and get the same statistics.</p>
<p>“My question: why are Linda Chavez, the Bush Justice Department, and the voters of Michigan so concerned about a relative handful black students accepted at UMich with low SAT scores when far larger of numbers of white students are accepted at UMich with similarly low SAT scores?”</p>
<p>Because they are fully invested in the secret belief that blacks are “unsuitable” for elite schools. Most would never admit to it, but that belief has a long and ingrained history in the American psyche, derived as it is upon the even longer standing conviction that blacks are inherently intellectually inferior. This is why most of AA’s most vociferous detractors completely ignore the fact that elite admissions has NEVER been entirely predicated upon raw merit, that at any given elite school, 25% of white applicants are admitted with below median stats. Only when it comes to URM applicants do they demand that the numbers serve as the be-all and end-all. They have to believe that some undeserving URM “took their kid’s spot”.</p>
<p>Li’s race-based portion of his complaint is based precisely on the wording of the charge given The Dept of Eduction - Office for Civil Rights, which specifically includes enforcement actions against violations arising under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits discrimination “based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance”</p>
<p>Now the legacy and athletic preferences issues have also been mentioned by Mr Li, although the constitutional aspects of these (if any even exist at all) are very different</p>
<p>“Because they are fully invested in the secret belief that blacks are “unsuitable” for elite schools.”</p>
<p>No doubt, and Condi Rice SEC OF STATE would agree I bet</p>
<p>Too funny</p>
<p>I wonder if Mr. Li was picked as a plaintiff to bring this test case. Why would someone complain about not getting into Princeton when they got into Yale? Most kids don’t make a clean HYP sweep…and they don’t complain of discrimination.</p>