I don't care about the girl. I am just pointing out obvious flaws in arguments that race should be a factor in admissions. I am not arguing it was in her case. Why does diversity have to come from less qualified students? The students who grew up in these same poor areas who scored high on the tests will not bring enough diversity? Race should NEVER be a factor for admissions. Ever.
OK I'll repost explaining why I disgree from your points above and highlight the most relevant parts--where I discuss the limitations of "qualifications" in academic success (often there is a subjective component, objective inidcators don't predict that well anyway) and cases where using race (or consider racial contexts where persons have been, and are, highly oppressed) might be relevant after other means have promoting diversity have been maxed out. Which parts do you disagree?
Crime and such - I have seen the figures with Minorities vs White non-hispanic in sentances. They are in fact very different. Not as different as those when you compare income levels and ignore race. So to me the justice system is much more $$$$ bigot than race. I never said it is a 1% factor in admissions I said that if you eliminate the preferencial treament because of race you will not change the demographics much. and the 1% cannot possibly mean greatly expanded diversity (this is just to explain my 1% number, it does not address any of your points) On the flip side living in a crap hole could give you added motivation to get an education unlike your peers. Where as a rich kid might become complacent. Its a subjective argument and impossible to put a value on. And again race has nothing to do with your hometown. Its more about wealth, your argument only works for poor kids not minorities. 75% unpredictable? I doubt you can qualify that in anyway. What does the 75% mean? when does one make it to the 25%? How accurate does the prediction need to be to distinguish them? This stat reeks of trash. When you are googling to back up your seemingly quite broad 10% and 75% mystery numbers get me a number that says race is a factor in school success.
I don't follow. If you eliminate the "preferential" treatment of race (in your words) you admit it won't impact the demographics much, e.g., change the student body say 1%. So you are for alienating groups of URM and trying to imply a society is color blind (when it isn't even looking like objective markers like criminal sentencing, treatment in hospitals for the same conditions, etc) by prohibiting the use of race as a consideration simply because the student body is 1% different than it might otherwise be. Again, why the fuss about race if by using it only impacts about 1% of the student body demographic? Seems you desire for an ideal colorblind racially unbiased admissions system (though it is not clear what other biases you will allow--e.g., legacy) when it is plainly obvious the outside society nowhere meets that standard. For example, the differences in sentencing, health outcomes, education, etc--are way, way bigger than the 1% demographic change by prohibiting race as a factor in admission. Guess what, talent is important, but motivation and opportunities are more important. I would really like to see how much traction you get with the argument it is just as plausible a kid living in a wealthy and highly educated environment has more untapped talent and motivation than a kid with virtually the same test scores from a most deprived and lacking in infrastructure environment like many impoverished urban and rural areas (many reservations, colonias, White rural Appalachia--I am for helping them too). No mystery at all. The coefficients of predicting college success from GPA, GRE and other factors leave more 75% of future success unexplained. There is too much work in the area to summarize, so I was providing some ballpark figures for the sake of argument. Nevermind, I took your advice and did a google search, and it pointed right away to more or less similar and consistent data. I have added my own comments too. Here is some classic work in the area. http://epm.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/28/2/433 Here is some more recent area with more lay persons explanations. http://www.ucop.edu/news/sat/research.html And still more from the below article, I cut and pasted (italics), and commented... Title: Do Psychosocial and Study Skill Factors Predict College Outcomes? Comment on Robbins et al. (2004). By: Weissberg, Norman C., Owen, David R., Psychological Bulletin, 00332909, 20050501, Vol. 131, Issue 3 .......Consider now the issue of student characteristics. A substantial literature supports the observation that correlations between various predictors and college outcomes often vary widely by race, gender, and the preparedness level of entering students (Baird, 1983; Burton & Ramist, 2001; Cabrera, Nora, Terenzini, Pascarella, & Hagedorn, 1999; Lavin & Cook, 1990; Lichtman et al., 1989; Metzner & Bean, 1987; Morgan, 1990; Ramist, Lewis, & McCamley-Jenkins, 1994; Weissberg, Owen, Jenkins, & Harburg, 2003; Young, 2001). Although Robbins et al. (2004) were not unmindful of the limitations such moderator variables may impose, they seemed to minimize their impact, noting, for example, that the relationships they report may “in particular settings, be slightly [italics added] higher or lower than indicated by the meta-analysis findings” (p. 277). Some examples may serve to underscore our concerns..... DS-a main point here is that predictors like GPA, GRE etc do not uniformly predict college outcomes across groups, including racial/ethnic groups. So why again should not committees not consider race and or collect this information (see google Ward Connerley, sp?) if the metrics perform differently for different races (or for persons with different preparedness) The authors cited an observed correlation between high school average and persistence of.239, with a lower bound of.180 and an upper bound of.297. (The estimated “true” correlation between these two variables as well as the boundaries of the confidence interval are not substantially different from the values noted.) When all of the predictors (traditional + the PSFs) were entered into the regression equation, they accounted for 17% of the variance in persistence (23% when corrected for measurement error). Turning one's attention to GPA as an outcome, the authors report an average uncorrected correlation between high school average and college GPA of.413, with a lower bound of.376 and an upper bound of.451. When all of the predictors were entered into the equation, the percentage of variance accounted for in GPA was 26% (34% when fully corrected). These data are consistent with Young's (2001) report (based on studies of students graduating since 1980) of a weighted average correlation (uncorrected) of.42 between these same variables. DS-OK using more advanced statistical models we can get to 34% prediction of college GPA from this like the SAT, high school GPA, etc, which means 66% of college GPA is unexplained--due to other factors. Ballpark of what I was saying before. ....For example, Lichtman et al. (1989) cited a correlation between high school average and college GPA of.143 for Black students and.446 for White students, whereas Weissberg et al. (2003) found a similar disparity with a correlation of.24 for Blacks and.56 for Whites. Moreover, in an analysis of data gathered from the 1990 freshman cohort at the City University of New York (OIRA, 1995), the standardized regression coefficient between high school average and first-year GPA was.10, whereas the combination of demographic variables and various indices of high school preparation accounted for 15% of the variance in first-year GPA.....When individual student characteristics are considered, the disparities in the magnitude of correlations reported often are anything but “slight.” Finally, even a publication from the College Board, who makes money off the SAT, recognizes many of its limitations discussed. That is like a Pharm Company publically agreeing about side effects of certain drugs. (well no quite, I think the College Board tries very hard to be based on sound science, but they still have their own staffs salaries and such to cover—not totally unbiased. http://www.collegeboard.com/research/pdf/rn10_10755.pdf
Look, I have a job. Sorry I was practicing law instead of waiting eagerly by my computer at 1:30 in the afternoon for your next silly post. You made your choice of words, live with it. When you refer to another "rich" "suburban" student, you conjure up images of somebody who drives their 2008 BMW to the catillion to have tea and crumpets...in Sugar Land, that generally isn't the case, bub. You chose it, and I think you did that intentionally in order to support your argument. I don't really have a dog in this fight, but to be fair...if the girl had a better GPA and better SAT score than a student who got admitted, then there is no reason to deny her admission (other than to be diverse just to say you are diverse). It is obvious that this is very personal to you for some reason. I don't know what that reason is, but this is very important to you. To give admission to one student from a poor district over a middle class student who has better scores is just wrong. Period. I believe that the courts will agree.
Ok let me explain again. someone argued that they will help demographics, I said they will not change it by much, so this argument is flawed. You then misunderstood my 1% number to mean something entirely different. All it was used for was a tool to counter the demographics and diversity argument.
You have never heard the "I wanted to build my mom a house/I never wanted my kids to go hungry/ I learned early that this is a hard world" statements? Poor kids think about how cool it would be to have money. Rich kids think about how cool its gonna be when their dad buys them a motorcycle and the new xbox game.
Well in the real world people who score high on SAT go to very good schools, those who score low go to lesser schools. These schools all have very similar GPA's if you compare the same majors. Thus its easy to explain a guy with a 1400 getting similar GPA to guy with 1100. Also the higher score kids will likely do engineering or science where there is a competition driven GPA, ie only the top 5-10% get A's no matter what. This is all very nice stats except I have yet to see any that say non-whites or those from urban areas with lower scores are more likely to succeed. IF there not any that say that then I don't see a reason to have race as a consideration.
Does this assume that minority college graduates go back to their communities to provide these services? Or that non-minority college grads won't go to these communities?
I attended Clements (Class of '07) and I can tell you for a FACT that some people with 4.5's were not in the top 10%. They fell into around 13-15%. It's all about the school you go to and how competitive it is. I was in the top 20% freshman year and during my sophomore year, I got 3 C's and dropped back to the 56% percentile. If it wasn't for an amazing junior year, I don't know where I'd be. There were a ton of deserving students that got CAP'd or didn't even get in at all. This girl needs to STFU and move on. I know I would've had I not gotten in.. He's right. I guess you can call it a "loophole" in the system. I wouldn't go as far as saying high school counselors or college board giving them that advice (I never got it) but it is being done.
Race should never be a factor in the quality of education for all children from kindergarten through high school but it is so when are the suburban kids from Sugarland or wherever else going to understand that there's a whole world out there where kids don't get a quality education because the entire system is rigged against them? These folks could apparently care less about what the system does to generation after generation of minorities and the poor but then when it's time to go to college and they don't make the grade then they want to start blaming other people for their own failure and THEN it's all about racial preferences? They should take responsibility for failing to meet the criteria they know they had to meet while having all the advantages that millions of other kids don't have in attending a quality school district. She knew what mark she had to hit to get in and she failed. Deal with it.
The reality side is that living in a crap hole doesn't provide you the tools you need to achieve a better future and therefore provides little hope. Those poor rich kids and their battle against complacency.
Honest question, if my counter argument is not true, why is graduate school now dominated (enrollment) by international students? Mostly from India, china etc, they are working harder than the "richer" american students to get ahead.
Wow now I have to deal with an issue I don;t care about. The only issue I care about is race being a factor. I think race should never be a factor.
first of all graduate schools are not dominated by international students. the numbers have actually (i believe) declined since september 11th due to the restrictions on immigration. they of course are a substantial number in certain fields for sure. however do you really think that most of those students came from 'crapholes'? of course your brilliant knowledge on race leads one to believe that you have a great understanding of these regions, but i'd venture that at least a significant number if not an overwhelming majority of students who come here from china or india are actually from fairly well off families and do not live in conditions that plague our inner cities. more importantly however, just because a certain percentage of people are able to make it out of disadvantageous situations doesn't mean we should not care to equal the playing field. are you really attempting to isolate a single issue and then put your head in the sand when people want to discuss why that isolated issue is an issue? are you 11? things dont happen in vacuums. race must be a factor, just not a quota according to scotus, if we want to address any issues in this country. the fact is that black and brown kids go to crappy schools. they dont have access to the same facilities and teachers that affords them an equal playing field in schools. this along with the substantial lingering and very present effects of slavery and segregation and poverty. so children who have suffered due essentially to their race (there are urban schools in this country that are 99% black). yet when they apply to schools we want to take away race as a factor, as if it doesn't exist? and then you have the audacity to play the we are post-racial card? i went to a superb public high school. we had a handful of black kids. i had several phds teaching me in high school. unlike inner city schools where 50% of the black kids drop out, in our school the discussion was more which college you would go to. safety was never a concern. everything was moderately clean. we had up to date technology. should an inner city kid have to compete with kids from my high school? is that fair? as a society can we say race shouldn't be a factor? grow up.
How are international students the same as American minorities? And your argument that poor kids are driven to do well in school, while rich kids have it rough fighting complacency is absolutely ridiculous.
Race will continue to be an issue as long as we continue to make it an issue. I have often envisioned a college app process that assigns a number to each app as it is received. The review committee gets the entire app with all identifying information redacted. All they know is the app number. As for the concerns regarding the SAT and unequal access to facilities. I also have often wondered about ways in which that part of the process can be made more fair. I am not talking about the content of the SAT, but rather preparation for the SAT. If there could be a uniform prep course available after school, etc that is of little or no cost (make it no cost to those who cannot afford it), then that would be more fair. It seems to me that trying to level the playing field in that way is more fair than to admit students just to be diverse.
Yes, there are reasons. SAT/GPA are not everything that goes into an application process. Employment history? Classes taken? Languages spoken? Are they a legacy? Any extreme hardships they overcame? Essay written? Hell, Rice's application had a blank box they wanted you to fill in with something you like. It's wrong to simplify the process to SAT/GPA and then say UT was biased because they picked a minority with lesser stats over a white girl. Would she sue if she knew white people with lesser stats who got in? Or are they solely concentrating on which minorities got in with lesser stats? To me this is just a lawyer trying to make a name for himself.
