Couple things
by wpkirish (2024-01-09 09:42:27)
Edited on 2024-01-09 11:18:45

In reply to: I don't see where dulac said the kid was black, but let's  posted by Tex Francisco

Cannot Reply Return to Political

as to whehter or not the student was black, the post does not state it specifically but states every they use the quote every time a white person does not get something they wanted a a person of color does. He then cites this specific example which I took the mean the kid who was accepted was black oitherwise the story makes no sense.

With regard to the Harvard case keep in mind it was also reported the bigger issue was the use of legacy preferences in admissions. Linked below is a Vox article showing that legacy and geographic preferences will continue to affect Asian applicants even after the decision. They cite a study that determined privileged white students were admitted at higher rate than asian students largely due to those two preferences. I have linked the article below.

THis quote is from a NYT article:
Harvard gives preference to applicants who are recruited athletes, legacies, relatives of donors and children of faculty and staff. As a group, they make up less than 5 percent of applicants, but around 30 percent of those admitted each year. About 67.8 percent of these applicants are white, according to court papers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/us/politics/harvard-admissions-civil-rights-inquiry.html#:~:text=Harvard%20gives%20preference%20to%20applicants,white%2C%20according%20to%20court%20papers.

I think part of the difficulty of this conversation is we all have our anecdotes but we dont really know why decisions were made. My son attends a private HS here in Chicago and has a number of friends who would fit your description. I will tell you having watched their acceptances the past couple of years I think the legacy is probably a bigger factor for most of these kids. One kid in particular was an excellent student with great grades and scores, good activities, father is a C Suite member of a Fotune 500 company here in Chicago. He was accepted at Michigan (Dad's alma mater) but rejected from the schools you say he would be given the preference for admission.

I think the problem is we all know great applicants who were rejected from lots of schools. What we dont know is the kid who go the spot instead of them. Geography is a large factor in this as well and one not easily understood. And when we talk geography dont forget international students.

Keep in minds the schools we are talking about on average reject 9 out of every 10 kids who apply. There are great kids from every race, religion and economic group that get rejected every year. The easy answer for many parents is my kid lost out because some other kid was favored.

I am fairly certain despite the decision last fall admission rates for every group will go down at ND this year (and likely every elite school) for the simple reason there will be more applications. When I applied in the mid 1980's as near as I can determine we likely had 5,500 applications. I think our class size was 1,875. This year I think they are looking for a class of 2,200 and I expect they will receive around 30,000 applications. Your odds of enrolling at the University have gone from 40% to 7.3%. During that same time period UCLA has gone from an accpetance rate near 90% to the low teens.

The other factor is the early decision process. Northwestern was on my son's inital list. His counselor (a former NW admissions officer) told him you are a great candidate at NW and I think you would be admitted IF you apply ED. Applying ED of course meant choosing NW overr ND and he was not going to do that. If you are a kid who knows where you want to go you can improve your odds significantly by applying ED.

With a HS senior I have had to adjust expectations which has been easier for me than my parents. He may get accepted in March he may not but what I do know is he is a thousand times more qualified to go to any school than I ever was and it is much more difficult for him to get into any school today but it is not becuase he is a white male.

Edited to add this. One of wife's college roomates has a daughter (my goddaughter) who is graduating from TCU this spring. Great kid bright student. Four years ago all we heard about was how college admissions punished white kids because everyone wanted black students her parents had become big Trump fans attending boat parades and the like. We never pried about scores or grades and just kept our mouths shut.

Four years later our son started the process. During conversations the parents let us know her grades and scores. Iin this day and age anyone with a superscore 32 ACT should not have an expectation of going to an elite school but that did not stop the parents from saying for years how she just did not get in because of affirmative action. That is not to say she couldnt do the work but given the number of applicants and the number of spots the odds of you gaining admission are pretty low.






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