<p>Kyledavid80,
The problem is not the AA for URM who deserve some preference treatment. The issue is between Whites and Asians. It appears that Stanford favor Whites slightly over Asians intentionally or unintentionally.</p>
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Here is the word game again. To say a student’s merit is not based on grades and test scores is like to say a Olympic runner’s merit is not based on running time.</p>
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<p>Wrong Olympic analogy. Getting into selective schools is not like running a foot race. It’s much more like the Olympic figure skating competition - where “merit” is more than just how many triple jumps you landed (although that is certainly heavily considered). There is also significant consideration given to style points, degree of difficulty, artistic interpretation, and the very subjective quality of “what the judges are looking for.”</p>
<p>If you insist on a purely numerical process, enter the Olympic foot race or apply to a huge numbers-driven state school. But if you want to be an Olympic figure skater or to go to Stanford, you are going to have to put up with their respective “holisitic” judging processes. Your choice.</p>
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Come on. Holistic judgement is not meritocracy.</p>
<p>Exactly.</p>
<p>The meritocracy argument is absurd. How on earth is an inner-city kid at an under-funded school supposed to measure up to an Exeter student with constant external motivation? Stanford looks at how you have thrived within your community. It’s not the applicant’s fault if they haven’t had every opportunity handed to them.</p>
<p>Professor101- here’s an idea: For each applicant, multiply their GPA by 700 and add the SAT score. Rank everyone by this number, and admit the top 2400. Granted, I’m exaggerating, but is something like that what you’d like to see?</p>
<p>If Stanford–or any other top school–abandoned holistic admissions, it would quickly lose its competitive edge and cease to be an interesting place.</p>
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<p>I have to say that is questionable. As one of those 2350+/2350+ kids, I take offense whenever people project the idea that a lot of really high achieving students aren’t interesting or worthwhile to be near. There are plenty of really smart really interesting people, and looking at a school like Caltech that doesn’t do admissions like this (but as close as any top school gets to it) I don’t think Stanford would lose it’s competitive edge. All I would say is that the private college admissions process has never been a meritocracy, just as few things have been. I have to agree with Professor that “meritocracy” is a word game. Essentially when you take race and legacy into account, it really can’t be a meritocracy unless you want to fudge the definition of meritocracy to “whomever the admissions officers want to get in will get in” which is a pretty bad definition IMO. The problem is, I think people forget is that meritocracy may be morally right (and this is even questionable in private college admissions), but its definitely not always practical. And for this reason, Stanford admissions won’t change much.</p>
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<p>“It appears” sounds awfully vague. Want to provide support for that claim, specifically for Stanford?</p>
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<p>I don’t think anyone’s arguing that there are interesting kids who scored really high on the SAT. The argument is that admitting a class of solely those kinds of students would yield a class wholly less interesting and diverse (in the broadest sense of the word) than what we have now.</p>
<p>I think we can agree that Stanford’s class is much more well-rounded than Caltech’s–partly because it’s much larger (allowing for more variety), partly because Stanford is not a tech school, and partly because Stanford is just more interested in admitting a diverse class (again, in the broadest sense) than Caltech is.</p>
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<p>Prescribing morals is never a good path to take…</p>
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<p>That’s why I said “may…and this is even questionable.” (I don’t know if you said that I was prescribing morals or saying that I was circumspect in not doing it)</p>
<p>The diverseness and how interesting a place is, is IMHO (notice opinion), would probably not be increased by practicing AA or legacy. I think that athletic talent and special talents would increase diversity and how interesting a place is. However, this argument is moot, because it is not practical for Stanford (for reasons that go way beyond competitive edge and how interesting Stanford is at least directly) to allocate a spot to athletic talent/special talents and then academic superstars while not leaving room for minorities or legacies and for that reason arguing the justness of Stanford’s admissions process is not fruitful.</p>
<p>Both Morsmordre and Kyledavid 80 's arguements are pretty good, showing that Stanford indeed has some pretty bright students.
Kyle, I think that we discussed this in another thread. I have circumstantial evidence in two aspects:
<p>Four from my son’s school went Stanford last year. Two of them were Asians. This year, three from my local school get in Yale. None of them are Asians. Nobody near me gets in Stanford so far.</p>
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Caltech’s yield rate begs to differ.</p>
<p>Edit: oops, zombie thread.</p>
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<p>My thoughts on this topic exactly. This debate is overplayed.</p>
<p>At angryasianman (who posted on Page 2):</p>
<p>How is Stanford doing less for diversity when they actively accept under-represented groups as compared to your idea for making the student body of top colleges 50% Asian?</p>
<p>Increasing the number of Asians from an already heavily over-represented amount does not encourage diversity.</p>
<p>why the h*** would you revive this hatefest?
i swear, some people enjoy argument for the sake of argument.</p>
<p>Hey, newsflash:</p>
<p>IF you don’t appreciate Stanford’s commitment to diversity, DON’T GO.</p>
<p>That’s what the ivies are for…</p>
<p><strong><em>sorry at that low blow haha, I’m sure the ivies are very interesting places</em></strong></p>
<p>If you don’t appreciate what the AO is doing, then you don’t belong at Stanford, and no one wants your negative attitude.</p>
<p>100% merit? In that case, the university would be full of international students from South and Southeast Asia. </p>
<p>Please recognize that you too have had a tip of the hat from the ol’ affirmative action fairy.</p>
<p>Concerning the Asian argument, I think the issue is that many have similar interests in math, with the same ecs and stats, (the ones at my school even all go to the same SAT prep place). But I don’t think race is the main factor because we had a white girl at our school this year, with stats very similar to those of typical “Asians” get rejected from Stanford, but accepted at MIT and Cal.</p>