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Well, given their status as ORM, it’s certainly working. ;)</p>
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<p>So, “the standards shouldn’t be negated entirely”–then what would you consider a “proper” negation or lowering of the standards? How do you justify lower admissions standards based on an inborn characteristic? I agree, legacies are socioeconomically unfair; but two wrongs don’t make a right and that is no excuse for AA to continue down the road to hell, so to speak.</p>
<p>FWIW, I conversed recently with a retired private college administrator who had served in admissions, who mentioned Asians as an example of a group that had high stats, but were less contributory to college life overall. I got the impression that what this person related was reflective of the views amongst officials overall at the institution, if not academia in general. This view may be a prominent example of a dichotomy between the policies proclaimed by colleges, and the assumptions on which they operate.</p>
<p>@ yawn: The body of the post is meant to clarify the initial question.</p>
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If.</p>
<p>Sorry for confusion - but no need to jump down my throat about it, sheesh.</p>
<p>haha “he’s an officer at one of the POMONA schools”…maybe you gave it away there?? haha, should be claremont schools.</p>
<p>I went to UVA, Harvard, and Princeton information session and two of the three admissions officers were Asian… and one of them was really funny with jokes.</p>
<p>Haha yeah I meant claremont schools, I knew it didn’t sound right.</p>
<p>“For many schools many Asians pursue similar ECs, and focus too much on academics, which is unacceptable in the holistic admissions arena… Look at some of the chance me threads for UC schools… I can’t distinguish one from the other sometimes… seriously… do they all have to volunteer at a hospital, join few clubs, do 100-200 hours volunteering, some minor awards and leadership positions?”</p>
<p>lol… aren’t many non-Asian have these same stuff, too?</p>
<p>UCB and UCLA are 3% black. UCSD is 1% black. at the most selective schools like HYPSM, with no AA whatsoever, <1% black could easily become a reality. and that’s not racist, that’s a reasonable prediction.</p>
<p>Check the featured thread on Asians aiming for Ivies :)</p>
<p>^^^ Link please. </p>
<p>“I can’t distinguish one from the other sometimes… seriously… do they all have to volunteer at a hospital, join few clubs, do 100-200 hours volunteering, some minor awards and leadership positions?”</p>
<p>Doesn’t everyone do that? We can’t all be in USAMO ya know?</p>
<p>oh gosh just use your URM status to your advantage and dont look back.</p>
<p>dont listen to all the moral crusaders here. colleges WANT you. if you dont use it to your advantage, someone else will. the process wont end…if you wanna create change do it some other way. you might lose a college acceptance and the only thing you get is OMG SUPER FUZZY FEELING!</p>
<p>and PLEASE, who are all you kids judging the college admissions process? colleges can do whatever they want (esp. privates) when admitting students. race isnt the only thing “wrong” will the process, yet no one cares about anything else.</p>
<p>you think the kid who was forced to do a hundred EC’s by his parents is any better than the guy who uses race to his advntage? not really, but let it be. lay out the facts and let colleges decide how to accept their own students.</p>
<p>StitchinTime, great quote.</p>
<p>It’s the other side of affirmative action that needs to be refined.
I know some people who are hardly black (like for one person 1/8th african american and 7/8 white…you could never tell her great grandfather was black…and no she does not consider herself black…) or native american (have 1 NA ancestor somewhere far in the family tree) but list themselves as African American/Black and NA for admission purposes . </p>
<p>Im not trying to be racist but seriously thats completely cheating the system.</p>
<p>There is a book called The Price of Admission written by a WSJ reporter. In the book he claims an Asian applicant needs 50 points higher than a white candidate to be on even ground. A Yale student was suing Princeton when the book came out, don’t know what happened.</p>
<p>Why isn’t anyone upset over athletes? For years my son’s school sent kids to top schools only because they were athletic superstars. Then they started offering a scholarship to kids who scored highly on their 7th grade SAT, so now it has evened out a bit out. But, you can still see the athletes clearly in the Naviance scattergrams.</p>
<p>Here’s the answer right here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/635350-who-telling-us-truth.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/635350-who-telling-us-truth.html</a></p>
<p>zzzboy certainly presents a pragmatic, if inherently selfish, viewpoint. I can only reiterate the old adage: two (or more) wrongs don’t make right. We are indeed “moral crusaders” to an extent; is it bad to have a conscience in college admissions? I don’t claim anything other than hypocrisy as I’m still struggling with what to put on my own application; but if you “lose a college acceptance” that you gained entirely due to race, why would that be better than “OMG SUPER FUZZY FEELING”? And while I agree, private colleges can do whatever they like, schools like UMich, UVA, and the UCs are held to a different standard.</p>
<p>MattsMom: I can only answer for myself. I do not care about favored treatment given athletes because I figure they have earned the boost. To be a recruited athlete at most Division I programs means the person has highly unusual athletic gifts that I don’t have. However, affirmative action doesn’t reward talent or ability. It rewards people because of their skin color based on 1960s perceptions of racism in America. As a high school senior, I don’t see any black or hispanic kids who are the victims of a racist society, except for the racism the blacks have for hispanics and vice versa. The “man” certainly isn’t holding any black or hispanic back at my school. </p>
<p>It’s true that Asian students dominate the top of my class, but they do so simply because they work harder than everyone else, including me. Although I’m not Asian I can certainly understand why they are angry when they see their URM classmates get preferential treatment simply because of their skin color and they see their Asian peers getting rejected from top schools. </p>
<p>We had one kid in our school get admitted to Harvard last year. She is a black girl whose dad is a doctor and whose mom is a city worker. Her SAT was 1980. Her GPA put her in the top third of our class. She wasn’t an athlete or legacy. She certainly isn’t poor. At least 20 Asian students from my school with higher SATs and GPAs applied to Harvard and were rejected (three were deferred and ultimately rejected), including 7 with SATs above 2300. Try telling these 20 students that Asians don’t have a harder time getting into the elite schools.</p>
<p>Affirmative action stinks.</p>
<p>^^^^No one has shown yet any hard proof that AA even exists. I just read an article where the Dean of Yale says they rarely look at stats because 85% of the applicants are qualified for the college. He said the main qualification is being “likable”. Yes, he said LIKABLE. In addition, they like to have a well-rounded class that represents cultural and socio-economic diversity. A LOT of Asians apply to top schools, so many, that it is almost a cultural given. For a school that wants diversity, admitting a class that is 50% Asian is as likely as enrolling a class that is 50% Jewish (another group that loves their Tier 1 schools - full disclosure: I’m jewish). Unfortunately, in this country, finding a middle class, well-educated black kid who is engaging, quirky and funny and has good stats (1980 shows she can do the work) is probably pure gold because of the oppressive condition blacks continue to live in in this country (and since you stated you don’t believe this, please just rent one season of The Wire if you don’t want to start driving around the ghettos that still exist.)</p>
<p>This is not an SAT contest. This is about colleges attempting to create a well-rounded student body that is full of happy, well-adjusted and productive students.</p>
<p>MattsMom: Racism and poverty are not the same thing. There are inner-city problems (much worse than Baltimore) throughout the world. So what? That fact has more to do with the nature of human beings than racism. </p>
<p>If you knew the girl I’m talking about, you would realize that she’s very unlikeable. She’s loud, angry, and hard to get along with. She didn’t get into Harvard because she’s likeable.
(By the way, how do these admission officers tell if someone is “likeable” from an application?). She’s “capable” of the work? Are you kidding me? If that becomes the standard, then why do elite schools evern require the SAT? Have you seen Harvard’s SAT averages? They aren’t accepting very many “capable” people who score 1980. The bottom line is that she is an OK student who had no chance of acceptance had she been Asian or white, while other much more capable students were rejected. </p>
<p>For just a moment, pretend that you and Matt were Asian and he was rejected from Harvard with a 2360 SAT and top grades, while you neighbor’s daughter was accepted with 1980. Would you still be justifying your argument because of shows like “The Wire”? That’s the scenario that my friends are dealing with.</p>