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<li><p>People need to leave Affe alone. I also hope Affe isn’t getting to upset. Just remember that at the end of the day you will be going to Stanford and most people on this forum won’t be. Many of them may pick at you due to their frustration at not getting through the application process. That is their drama, not yours. Congrats.</p></li>
<li><p>The above post is incorrect (at least in the case of Stanford) as the university is open that it has affirmative action as a piece of its admissions process.</p></li>
<li><p>People that argue that socioeconomic status based affirmative action should replace a race based one typically have a rather naive view of how race works in the US. Just for a small piece, even if you go to a nice high school (I went to an extremely good high school), as a black student I was always expected to underperform my peers. I still remember a white kid (that didn’t know me except that I was on the basketball team) asked me if I had applied to any colleges early. I said yes, Harvard. He responded, “dont you have to have good grades to get into Harvard?” lol? I was the strongest technical student in the school. Most of the kids I was around didn’t really know any black people except for the variety that show up on MTV. And, unfortunately, a lot of times when minorities are thrown into situations where they are the token, their race because the biggest point of distinction for them and they start to take on stereotypes more than they usually would (which often includes performing less strong academically). It’s like all the studies done when you take a group of men and a group of women (controlling for ability/grades in math) the same math test, but you tell some of women beforehand that women typically do worse on the math test than men… and they end up doing worst than a group of women that wasn’t told anything. Similar things are true for minorities. For further reading, look up some research on stereotype threat (a term first coined by a professor here at Stanford).</p></li>
<li><p>I know people think of me as a diversity admit all the time at Stanford. I personally feel as though that’s a racist thought. You’d think that the white/asian people (and even many of the minority students as well) that go to a school like Stanford would be bright enough to have a more complicated view of race issues. It’s so ridiculous how people think that if you go to a nice high school or a nice college that you officially haven’t be “disadvantaged” by being a minority. That is absurd. You constantly are having to prove yourself moreso than others, which is exhausting. I took a graduate statistical finance course last quarter (ridiculous math class) and it took me forever to find a group for the project. I’m a pretty nice guy (a lot nicer than most of the graduate technical students at Stanford), and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that I was a personality issue. I honestly think it was that</p></li>
<li><p>they didn’t know me</p></li>
<li><p>I am an american (most students in this type of math class will be international, this course is required for fin math students, which had 25 international students and 2 americans last year)</p></li>
<li><p>I am black, and the only black person in the class (which is the case in almost every class I take at this point). Don’t even get me started on job interviews as well. I study CS/Math/Statistics at Stanford, and when I show up to an interview for a quant type job, along with 50 asian/white students, you better believe that I have to work harder than others to prove my ability. and this is despite a 3.9 gpa at stanford. Last quarter, I had a job interview with a company that was my first choice at the time that to this day does not employee ANY black or latino people. How can you tell me that I’m not at a disadvantage of some kind going into that interview when everyone else interviewing is white/asian?</p></li>
<li><p>While I will be the first to admit that there are definitely some minorities at stanford that are pretty suspect as to whether or not they should really be here, there are also a LOT of just dumb white/asian students as well (especially a lot of the premed types). I don’t know what their SAT scores were or any of that–I’ll assume they did well but they really, really aren’t that bright. In fact, I’m about to go take a physics midterm right now with a bunch of them. I should thank them in advance for the curve.</p></li>
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<p>P.S. I’m not normally that mean/arrogant, but this kind of **** ****es me off.</p>
<p>peace.</p>