Black privilege in College Admissions

There were only 300 perfect SATs last year. There are a few hundred thousand spots available at the schools in the Georgetown study. So yes there is plenty of space available for all of the perfect scores and the other smart kids if they didn't bypass them for underperforming minorities.

SAT on it wrote:

There were only 300 perfect SATs last year. There are a few hundred thousand spots available at the schools in the Georgetown study. So yes there is plenty of space available for all of the perfect scores and the other smart kids if they didn't bypass them for underperforming minorities.

Or for the Jared Kushners, or Donal Trumps, Dick Cheney's, George 'W' Bushes of the world...all rich white men who bought their way into top schools. And those are just the recognizable names. Since most ivies have a single-digit percentage of minorities, I'm going to say there are many more mediocre white students at those schools than there are mediocre minorities. But blame it on the minorities if you want. All those Varsity Blues cases are all minorities , right?

Most students are smart enough to attend the highly selective colleges. We saw this with the huge ongoing scandal. All of the kids who paid their way in went on to graduate with a 3.5 GPA just like the smart kids at those colleges. That is because those schools want to be able to advertise acceptance rates and retention rates and graduation rates. If you are going to pay $300k to send your kid to Harvard, you want to know that they will get a diploma. So of course a black kid is smart enough to attend if she only scored 28 on the ACT. I just want people to be treated the same regardless of the color of their skin.

Wow, a lot of white kids' guidance counselors are doing them a serious disservice leading them to believe they're competitive for schools at which they are not, in fact, competitive.

My school was hyper-realistic: "If you're not the valedictorian, you're wasting your money applying to an Ivy League school. Forget about your test scores. You need both. Or, if you're willing and able to pay full sticker price tuition in cash, then you could call the admissions office and hope for the best."

I can't help but think that this is simply a matter of not understanding that the world has changed. 30 years ago, a Top 3 student with an SAT score in the 90th percentile probably would have been competitive at most schools. That's simply no longer the case. A lot of parents and counselors probably don't realize just how competitive the world has gotten.

I don't mean to pick on this one guy, but whoever said that their daughter would've gotten into Brown but for affirmative action is mistaken. Top 3 class rank and a "near perfect" SAT score? My guidance counselor would have told her not to waste her money applying to Brown. It's still impressive! There are a ton of high-ranked schools that would love to have a student like that. They'll probably offer more money, to boot.

No one has a God-given right to attend an Ivy League school.

Paint it wrote:

Most students are smart enough to attend the highly selective colleges. We saw this with the huge ongoing scandal. All of the kids who paid their way in went on to graduate with a 3.5 GPA just like the smart kids at those colleges. That is because those schools want to be able to advertise acceptance rates and retention rates and graduation rates. If you are going to pay $300k to send your kid to Harvard, you want to know that they will get a diploma. So of course a black kid is smart enough to attend if she only scored 28 on the ACT. I just want people to be treated the same regardless of the color of their skin.

If that's your view, then the most fair admissions criteria would be a lottery. Maybe throw in a minimum SAT and/or GPA threshold, but from there, just pick the class randomly. Nothing could be more "fair"

get real guys wrote:

No one has a God-given right to attend an Ivy League school.

I have a big IQ, and my daddy is rich and powerful.I will go to school wherever I choose. It is my birthright!

tbh, this is how a lot of schools do things outside the United States and it works out fairly well.

The schools are need blind so you got bad advice. Most of the kids getting rejected are smart rich white kids who would pay full fare. The schools reject them in favor of poor minorities with lower credentials. The guy's daughter would have been admitted if the schools stopped considering race.

The study doesn't say a word about the schools being "need blind."

https://1gyhoq479ufd3yna29x7ubjn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/CEW-SAT-only-Admission.pdf

The studied the "200 most selective" colleges, many of which would NOT be need blind.

In this specific example, Brown does claim to be "need blind." Nonetheless, that's not the point. The point is that a 3rd place class rank and a good SAT score isn't as impressive as this guy thinks it is.

Counsel this wrote:

The schools are need blind so you got bad advice. Most of the kids getting rejected are smart rich white kids who would pay full fare. The schools reject them in favor of poor minorities with lower credentials. The guy's daughter would have been admitted if the schools stopped considering race.

Lol. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

" Men — especially white male athletes — have an unfair admissions advantage over women

The process at my college (and many elite liberal arts schools) was particularly brutal to qualified women. We simply had more qualified women than men in the pool; to keep a gender balance on campus, many ended up in the rejection pile. (Rarely do you hear people debate this form of affirmative action.)

There’s another reason that men — specifically, well-to-do white men — had an advantage over women: athletics. Division III athletics allowed a regressive system of affirmative action for the demographic that needs it the least: white wealthy males.

No one can give a solid enough answer of why it’s important for an elite liberal arts school to have a strong D-III athletic program. Some claim it raises student morale; others theorize athletes go into more lucrative fields post-graduation (business, law) and are more likely to donate down the line. In some cases, it seems as simple and silly as a better football team making wealthy donors happy: They have reason to tailgate on campus and bragging rights at the water cooler among other liberal arts alum.

The most farcical aspect of this system was it favored underwhelming white male candidates. White female athletes who were unspectacular candidates were still generally qualified enough to get admitted the traditional way.

I witnessed the cynical strategy of deferring black male athletes to the general committee, their cases then championed on the grounds of increasing diversity. This saved tips in the athletic committee for more underqualified white men, while robbing non-athlete black students in the regular committee.

It was unsettling then, and it’s infuriating now. White males with wealthy, educated parents and substandard academic profiles and SAT scores had a back door into elite schools through athletic talents that couldn’t net them Division I scholarships. You wouldn’t want to pay to see the teams play, but these students were admitted as if they were contributing to revenue-producing sports teams at larger universities."

Counsel this wrote:

The schools are need blind so you got bad advice. Most of the kids getting rejected are smart rich white kids who would pay full fare. The schools reject them in favor of poor minorities with lower credentials. The guy's daughter would have been admitted if the schools stopped considering race.

1) Most schools make no claim to being "need blind"

2) "Need blind" is a purely self-reported metric that has no consensus definition. Schools have been caught lying about it (see below). Other times they're simply being misleading. Many schools will assess their American applicants on a "need blind" basis, while assessing foreign students on a different basis. This, in effect, means that the school is not need blind, as these are totally fungible categories.

3) No school can claim to be "need blind" while continuing to grant priority admissions to legacy students. (See, the Ivy League, Brown very much included)

Basically, "need blind" is a marketing slogan used to increase applications and lower a school's acceptance rate. It has very few practical implications otherwise. Most schools don't even bother with the charade and would happily take on a few rich kids to subsidize everyone else's financial aid.

Counsel this wrote:

The schools are need blind so you got bad advice. Most of the kids getting rejected are smart rich white kids who would pay full fare. The schools reject them in favor of poor minorities with lower credentials. The guy's daughter would have been admitted if the schools stopped considering race.

ohdear wrote:

Counsel this wrote:

The schools are need blind so you got bad advice. Most of the kids getting rejected are smart rich white kids who would pay full fare. The schools reject them in favor of poor minorities with lower credentials. The guy's daughter would have been admitted if the schools stopped considering race.

zxvczcvx wrote:

"'Our data confirms that the affluent have extraordinary advantages in college admissions,' says the report from the researchers.'

Most recruited athletes are white. Most affluent people are white. Kids raised in affluent households get a lot more words said to them everyday; they are listened to more; they get constant educational enrichment opportunities; while the poor kids go to a public daycare with sports and videos all day in the summer, in the best case, the rich kids go to a series of elite summer camps teaching them academic subjects as well as sports; the poor kids gain more in school than the rich kids but start way back and fall further back every summer; the rich kids get years of one on one test prep from top teachers, while the poor kids probably don't even take the test.

Affluent people are also generally smarter than poor people. Their higher IQ helps them to have higher career goals than standing on the corner grabbing their testicles.

No discussion of the advantages of wealth are complete without an admission that wealthy kids, like their parents, are smarter on average than the children of teenage single mothers.

ohdear wrote:

ohdear wrote:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/college-sports-benefits-white-students/573688/?utm_source=twb

Yep! I suspect this is not news that will be welcomed by the audience of this particular website.

There is more:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-ivy-league-admissions-rowing-20190331-story.html

An excerpt:

"Every year, tens of thousands of high school seniors from all walks of life compete for a limited number of spots on college basketball, football, baseball and softball teams. Ivy League universities and other elite schools also reserve a sizable slice of each class for kids with more exclusive pursuits, such as skiing, sailing and crew. While schools are trying to diversify the rosters, the sports remain overwhelmingly white, sporadically offered at public high schools and can require expensive equipment. The result is an admissions boost for the most privileged applicants.

Crew especially exemplifies how elite colleges tilt admissions toward the affluent. In the cutthroat game of college acceptance, an interest in rowing can offer a significant edge. It's an open secret among some parents.

"Rowing became a sport that was chatted about within certain athletic circles -- exclusively within these white upper-middle-class communities," said University of Oklahoma education professor Kirsten Hextrum, who studies college sports recruiting."

Not saying it’s right or wrong, but this is a very different issue.

Affirmative action for minorities has the stated goal of allowing in more minorities than would otherwise be accepted.

Athletics in expensive sports has the unintended result of allowing in rich students who may otherwise not be allowed in.

One is intended the other isn’t.

Someone gaining admission to an elite college via affirmative action is already exceedingly intelligent. The point isn't to take just anyone off of the street. The point is to give an edge to disadvantaged students who are just at the threshold for gaining admission.

Basically, what we know about the SAT is that it's a good determinant of general intelligence. Basically, it is fair to conclude that someone with an average or below-average SAT score (1050, currently) is going to be less intelligent than someone with a significantly above-average SAT score. The differences between the 90th percentile (1350) and the 99th percentile (1600) are far less determinant. The people gaining admission to a truly elite college are going to be among the higher percentiles.