<p>I don’t think there was ever a time when white men were admitted into elite colleges while persons of color or women with higher test scores and grades were rejected. That’s what is happening today, however. My point was simply that affirmative action unfairly places a stigma on all people of color, even those whose test scores, gpa, etc. are stellar. It’s a sad reality of the system. I dislike it when people assume things about me because of my skin color, but those things are usually positive (smart, studious, etc.). If those things were negative (unqualified, etc.), I imagine the frustration would be great. That was my point.</p>
<p>Again, I’m citing Pomona’s data because that’s what I’m most familiar with. But for their entering class of 376 in 2008, 26 were Questbridge admits and 11 were Posse Admits making up about 10% of the entering class. </p>
<p>All 26 Questbridge partners pay between $40-70K for Questbridge’s marketing and filtering of the over 6,000 applications they receive. Questbridge is becoming more popular every year, and even tho I heard about it here on CC, I did receive literature from them due to son’s PSAT score.</p>
<p>There are probably more low income admits under regular RD that they find out about later because the home economic situation may not be clear in the essays. One of the QB’s applications strengths is giving the student plenty of opportunity to give that picture.</p>
<p>A Jewish quota was enacted in the 1920’s at Harvard because they were concerned with the “character” of their students, and Columbia’s acceptance of Jews dropped from 40 to 20% in just 2 years. 90% of legacies were admitted, and it wasn’t until the 1960’s that this began to change thanks to the president of Harvard who came in after WW2, James Bryant Conant who wanted to replace privilege of family with merit. Women weren’t accepted to the Ivies until the 1970’s.</p>
<p>Are you kidding? This is a fact. Many of today’s top rated colleges used to admit only (white) men. A few examples: Princeton didn’t begin admitting women until 1969, and it took Williams until 1970, Bowdoin until 1971, Dartmouth until 1972, Amherst until 1975 and Columbia until 1983 to accept women.</p>
<p>If you doubt the qualifications of your minority doctor because you believe they were less “qualified” in high school when they got admitted to their school, even though they still received the same college education, that is just ignorance not a side effect of AA, and you would likely doubt the qualification of minorities in general whether or not AA existed. </p>
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<p>Once again, this is only the case if you need to use a college acceptance to validate your self-worth. If you view it as an opportunity to be part of a class, which it is, then as long as you were qualified to succeed then WHY they selected you would not matter. It is disappointing that that boy was hurt by the fact that he could not flaunt his acceptance as making him better than anybody else, but he is more a victim of his own perspective than any program. </p>
<p>And Kel, you continue to discuss who NEEDs an AA boost. Who NEEDs it is entirely irrelevant. if groups were getting boosts because they NEEDed it, that would be marginalizing. But because schools are seeking diversity in their class, whoever NEEDs it is irrelevant. Holistic admissions in and of itself considers an applicant in context, but doesn’t just boost people because they NEED it. </p>
<p>You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how colleges admit students.</p>
I’m not quite sure where you interpreted this assumption. I am asserting that AA constitutes positive discrimination but discrimination nevertheless. Does that clarify?</p>
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Where is the evidence for this generalization? I would particularly point out the dearth of Asians in management positions.</p>
<p>I’m happy for the Latino student who got into Pomona under AA; is the same opportunity to be denied, for instance, to a poor white student from a blue-collar family that deemphasizes education?</p>
<p>Tyler09: If affirmative action is not NEEDED, why does it exist? It is a form of racial discrimination, quite clearly prohibited by law. It is currently legal BECAUSE it has been deemed necessary (i.e. needed) for various reasons–to rectify past wrongs, to aid historically underachieving minority groups, to diversify a college class. My past posts have addressed the first two reasons; the last is an admirable goal, but holistic admissions is still subject to the law.</p>
<p>I understand perfectly how colleges admit students. However, I contend that a holistic review with race as one factor is racial discrimination, a specific subset of discrimination under the law’s highest scrutiny (or somesuch–I’m not a legal expert, go back a few pages to look at fabrizio’s post).</p>
The diversity argument is least convincing of arguments in favor of AA. Most blacks accepted under AA are umpteenth generation African-Americans who are not significantly from different mainstream America, even less so for African-Americans coming from affluent families. Students from disadvantaged families have lives significantly different from upper income families. The benefit of attending an elite college is also greater for students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds ([Estimating</a> the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables](<a href=“http://papers.nber.org/papers/w7322]Estimating”>http://papers.nber.org/papers/w7322)).</p>
<p>My son is a Pomona Questbridge admit, so son is by some definitions a “poor white student”, altho we’re not strictly blue collar - husband is a teacher, we have a failing wholesale plant nursery (we sold to builders) - and I can’t claim that either of us have ever de-emphasized education, in fact quite the opposite, but certainly no opportunity was denied to him by Pomona because he was white (and may I add, Jewish to boot).</p>
<p>^ But admits like your S are far scarcer than racial AA admits. And he is a Questbridge admit; I assume that his academic qualifications were CC-typical, going by the stats of Questbridge finalists. He is, if I may so presume, different from the poor white/Asian OR URM student who struggled initially but managed an increasing trend in grades, or who has adequate but not brilliant test scores (let’s say 650-720, rather than 750-800). Such a student may well be academically qualified, but statistically he/she does not hold up to the rest of the pool; at least on CC, I have seen very few cases of these kinds of ORM students being given the benefit of the doubt that URMs are given, socioeconomic status being equal.</p>
<p>Also, Pomona is one of the few colleges that can afford financial largesse; the disparity is more dramatic at selective but mid-tier schools like Hamilton College, for instance, where given the choice between a poor white student and a poor minority student, the latter will always win out. I quote from a 2007 article covering a book written by a sociologist who observed the process firsthand:
<p>AvantTao, thank you for the statistics link. I find it very interesting, although they do not entirely support your generalization. URMs as a whole are underachieving and earn less; this does not mean that every URM underachieves and/or earns less than a white/Asian in an equal position. I am similarly confused by these sentences from the Wikipedia article:
If the disparity is due to differing occupations, where is the evidence for women earning less money “in the same job, with same education and same experience”? Admittedly I have only skimmed the source you provided, so it is a genuine question. The green-and-gold colored chart (colors marking highest and lowest medians within each comparable group) also contradicts your broad assertion that “No matter how upper or lower class a latino or black is, they still make less money than whites or Asians who are working similar jobs.” Hispanic females with high school and bachelor’s degrees do indeed have the lowest median, but Asian females rank the lowest with some college education and with doctorates (although no data for Hispanics by gender is available at the doctorate level). Even white females ranked the lowest for Master’s degree. On the whole, the data favors white males–hardly surprising–but it is not conclusive in either extreme.</p>
<p>^ That makes perfect sense, and opponents of AA are in no way bashing racial/ethnic diversity. But when such diversity comes at the cost of unfair and possibly-illegal discrimination? If this were a perfect world, we would not NEED AA to ensure “adequate” diversity. And I would not call the few schools that do not practice racial AA “undiverse,” either.</p>
<p>Hi, AvantTao, I asked for proof of the statement you made “No matter how upper or lower class a latino or black is, they still make less money than whites or Asians who are working similar jobs.” You kindly provided a link to a Census Bureau document that doesn’t group statistics by “working similar jobs,” which is what I found surprising about your statement. I have no doubt that as a matter of group averages Hispanic and black people make less money than white or Asian people, but I think the statistics also show that’s largely because there AREN’T similar jobs in proportional distribution among the different ethnic groups. If you could find evidence for your statement as you originally made it, I would be glad to look that up. I think, for the moment, that your statement is incorrect, because black people and Hispanic people in the United States largely don’t have similar jobs to white people and Asian people. When a bunch of people of varied ethnic background work together in similar jobs at the same workplace, I suspect they mostly enjoy the same pay. And the same kind of work in different parts of the country can have differing pay from region to region, because of differences in the cost of living in different regions.</p>
<p>Pomona chose 8 QB admits from hundreds of QB finalists who ranked Pomona. 6 of those 8 matches were white. Why not just choose URMs with the stats and grade trends you suggest (assuming they didn’t find any URMs with awesome stats in the pile, and why wouldn’t there be?) Why admit some Jewish kid from South Florida with stellar SAT scores instead? I mean, they must get plenty of these applications from 2300+ SAT Jewish kids in L.A., NYC, Westchester & Connecticut. Is it possible, that perhaps their decision to choose my son from the hundreds of highly qualified low income URM finalists sitting on their conference table might, just might, have had something to do with factors other than his stats or the color of his skin? Some spark, some quality that made them say, you know, I really want to meet that kid, Matt.</p>
<p>Your questions may be rhetorical to you, but to me, they have answers. First, why not just choose URMs with awesome stats? Maybe it’s because there are so few of them.</p>
<p>There are so many universities and colleges in the United States where a 1400 / 1600 is “middle 50% of first-year students.” All of them want high-scoring blacks because they contribute to “diversity” and don’t decrease the average SAT scores. Yet, in 2000, there were at most 914 black students who had “even” 1400s. Such immense demand, such scarce supply.</p>
<p>You seem to suggest that you want your son to be evaluated on “factors other than his stats or the color of his skin,” on the qualities “that [make] them say, you know, I really want to meet that kid.” Hey, that’s exactly what I want. That’s why I oppose racial preferences.</p>
<p>Well, assuming you’re right and there are so few of those 700+ URM kids, why not pick out the ones that they’ll be picking out for “AA” from the QB pile?</p>