WOW!! Did you see this??? A NY student accepted to ALL 8 Ivies!

[creekland]

But the median SAT scores for schools that have affirmative action are not accurate representations of what median scores would be without affirmative action.

 

That is to say, if he got in (and by the numbers it seems pretty obvious that he did) partially because of his race; you can't say that his SAT scores would be competitive even if race weren't considered - because if race weren't considered, and students were accepted race-blind, the average SAT score would rise, right?  That's the whole point of affirmative action, to allow in students that are not qualified according to merit (as the school defines merit - generally grades, rigorous courses, SAT scores, etc.) to meet quotas for racial diversity.

 

If he were Asian/white and coming from a college degreed parentage, it's definitely true that he likely wouldn't have gotten into all 8 schools and MIGHT not have gotten into any.

 

BUT, diversity in background (and other things) is GOOD.  He has it.  They are hooks - just as there are other hooks (homeschooling can be one of them - coming from rural areas can be another, coming from ND is a definite hook for eastern schools!).

 

IMO, his attending one of these colleges and bringing in diversity is a GOOD thing AND he IS definitely qualified - probably moreso than others with hooks.  That's the bonus - a nicely QUALIFIED applicant with hooks.  That's why he got into all eight (that and he applied to all eight - most students don't apply to all of them).

 

The poor lad is going to have to deal with folks thinking he is inferior forever, and that, is sad.  He got some bonus checkmarks on his app that elevated him above other qualified applicants, but he IS in the pool of qualified applicants as per his scores and ECs - not merely an essay or whatever.  If admissions had chosen someone else with his scores (and, I'm sure they did), would we be dissing them too?

 

Many qualified students get rejected each year.  That's life.  Some qualified students get accepted each year too.  That's also life.

 

I wish the lad well - and I wish people would give him respect rather than disdain. As admissions in 8 top college have already noted, he has great potential to be going somewhere and doing something at a high level in his life.

[eternalsummer]

No.  It is clear that his SAT scores would be competitive even if race were not considered because his score is higher than the median score for whites listed in CW's post.  Only the Indian and Asian median scores are higher.  Remember that a median is not a floor but a middle.  The low end of the score range - even for Asian and Indian applicants - would likely be less than 2250 (I'm not hunting down the stats right now - not sure whether that's available).

 

His SAT scores would not be as competitive in a general pool as the median numbers above suggest.  They're above the median white score; however, with race-blind admissions, there would (presumably) be much higher numbers of Indians and East Asians admitted; it's hard to say what the overall median score would be but it's probably safe to say it would be somewhat higher than it is now, right?  If you cut out the bottom of the range (since you no longer have quotas to fill, or a reduced requirement for some races) and leave more room on top, there will be more scores on top, so it will be weighted more heavily to the top end of the score spectrum.

 

He might still be within the range, but that makes him a lot less competitive than he is now.

[eternalsummer]

If he were Asian/white and coming from a college degreed parentage, it's definitely true that he likely wouldn't have gotten into all 8 schools and MIGHT not have gotten into any.

 

BUT, diversity in background (and other things) is GOOD.  He has it.  They are hooks - just as there are other hooks (homeschooling can be one of them - coming from rural areas can be another, coming from ND is a definite hook for eastern schools!).

 

I get that race is a hook.  If Harvard (being a private school) or any of the other ivies want to favor people of certain races over others because they think having a non-white, non-asian background is a good thing for their school, that's cool.  

 

But you can't say both that he was likely admitted partially because of his race (which is GOOD, you said) and say that it is bad to suggest he was admitted partially because of his race.

 

And I think it's a legitimate position to question the value of racial diversity over other factors; it's not racist.  I'm not saying Harvard should prohibit people from certain backgrounds/races; I'm just saying that it's reasonable to suggest that the kid, who may be very deserving, may not be as deserving (separate of his unique background) as many many kids who got rejected, and there's no way to know *because* the schools have different standards for different races.

[WishboneDawn]

 

I get that race is a hook.  If Harvard (being a private school) or any of the other ivies want to favor people of certain races over others because they think having a non-white, non-asian background is a good thing for their school, that's cool.  

 

But you can't say both that he was likely admitted partially because of his race (which is GOOD, you said) and say that it is bad to suggest he was admitted partially because of his race.

 

And I think it's a legitimate position to question the value of racial diversity over other factors; it's not racist.  I'm not saying Harvard should prohibit people from certain backgrounds/races; I'm just saying that it's reasonable to suggest that the kid, who may be very deserving, may not be as deserving (separate of his unique background) as many many kids who got rejected, and there's no way to know *because* the schools have different standards for different races.

 

[WishboneDawn]

Ugh. The forum is acting weird. What I meant to address was this:

 

And I think it's a legitimate position to question the value of racial diversity over other factors; it's not racist.  I'm not saying Harvard should prohibit people from certain backgrounds/races; I'm just saying that it's reasonable to suggest that the kid, who may be very deserving, may not be as deserving (separate of his unique background) as many many kids who got rejected, and there's no way to know *because* the schools have different standards for different races.

 

 

I'd first wonder what quantifies deserving. I'd also wonder if Harvard has a duty to admit every student based on how deserving they are of a spot at Harvard. Certainly some portion may be accepted on that basis but with others how deserving they are may be less of a factor then how much Harvard wants them on their campus. 

 

I'm also a little sceptical on all the weight being placed on race when the real factors may have been 1) child of fist gen. immigrants and 2) the socio-economic factors at play in the community he grew up in. I wonder if SATs are a straight number game when you're sitting at the admissions desk. His SAT numbers, in context, might look a LOT more impressive then the next student who outscored him but lived in an affluent neighborhood and went to a prestigious private school. 

 

Which brings it back to the question of deserving. 

[stripe]

Okay, fine, I'm going to say what I've been wanting to say:  I hope the schools have the good sense to be embarrassed about their collective lust over this candidate because he is a black man.  My white daughter has stats as good as or better than these (higher SAT; more APs--5s all around; a star athlete at a real, year-around sport, not shot-put!; long-term volunteer work), and there is no way under the sun that she would get into every one of these schools.  

1) What's wrong with collective intellectual lust over a smart black man? (There's plenty of collective lust on this board of Johnny Depp, which has a lot less merit.) It's about time black men's brains were lusted over. There's enough lust over their bodies already. If he were a student athlete, no one would blink an eye that lots of colleges wanted him for their basketball or football team.

 

2) Having high SAT scores is not a ticket to an Ivy.  Colleges are trying to create a balance -- on many different levels. Harvard could fill its entire freshman class twice over with valedictorians, but it chooses not to: it wants musicians, artists, scientists, poets, athletes, and so forth, not just one sort of person. As one of their admission pages says, "Harvard does not want, or have, a student body of 'grinds' who are uncreative, plodding regurgitators of knowledge." When I was in high school, my class valedictorian was pretty furious he wasn't admitted to Harvard, but another guy (presumably "less deserving") was waitlisted; both were white males who were born outside the US. The valedictorian was a pretty boring nerd with high academic achievement and nothing else; the other guy was reasonably good academically, played an instrument and sports.

 

3) If your daughter were a top-ranked physics student, I would be pretty comfortable saying she might get a hell of a lot of interest from a lot of colleges. So, my advice for girls is, ditch the psychology/English literature/French angle and go for the sciences. Women are underrepresented. Colleges want them.

 

For the record, Harvard accepts more students based on legacy admissions (children of alumni) than any affirmative action. Some articles on the habits of the Ivies:

http://chronicle.com/article/Legacys-Advantage-May-Be/125812/

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/legacy-kids-have-an-admissions-advantage-2013-6

 

• Harvard's legacy admissions rate hovers around 30%. Its overall rate was 5.8% this year. 
• For Princeton's class of 2015, 33% of legacy applicants were admitted. The overall admissions rate for that class was 8.5%. 
• Yale says it admits 20 to 25% of legacy applicants. It admitted 6.7% overall this year.

And this has a trickle down effect, because the pool of legacy applicants is mostly white.

https://chronicle.com/article/10-Myths-About-Legacy/124561/

 

By the way, for anyone who's interested, Diane Ravitch has some statistics about the high academic performance of black students who speak another language at home (which I interpreted as, child of immigrants) versus those who speak English at home in one of her books. 

[wapiti]

His SAT scores would not be as competitive in a general pool as the median numbers above suggest.  They're above the median white score; however, with race-blind admissions, there would (presumably) be much higher numbers of Indians and East Asians admitted; it's hard to say what the overall median score would be but it's probably safe to say it would be somewhat higher than it is now, right?  If you cut out the bottom of the range (since you no longer have quotas to fill, or a reduced requirement for some races) and leave more room on top, there will be more scores on top, so it will be weighted more heavily to the top end of the score spectrum.

 

He might still be within the range, but that makes him a lot less competitive than he is now.

 

We may have different ideas on what scores are competitive and what the significance of the score is, in substance.  His composite score is still within the 99th percentile (I don't know what the breakdown was), at which point admissions becomes an exercise in hair-splitting.  How well does the SAT really delineate significant differences in ability within the 99th percentile?  My hunch is that it's a blunt instrument, now even moreso than years ago.  One need only get to a certain level *of GPA and SAT combined* (I don't know what his gpa was) in order to be "competitive" (under my own usage of the term) and then other factors take over.

 

Other factors would include the rigor of his high school courseload, which included 11 APs.  While I'm sure his ethnic background was helpful in giving him an extra edge, it's not as though the guy is a step-down in ability level.  As we are not on the admissions committee, it's impossible to say which parts of his background were more significant, race vs first-generation, economic diversity, etc.  From my discussions with someone on a local admissions committee for Harvard, my understanding is that a non-wealthy, first-generation story plays very well.

 

It sounds like you'd be in favor of a test-only admissions process, which would probably result in only students with perfect SAT scores at Harvard.  That's not what Harvard's looking for and I can't blame them - how boring.  They're looking for interesting.

[WishboneDawn]

I have to admit, I find all the SAT talk and extreme SAT focus a wee bit funny. North of the border SATs just aren't done unless you're applying to a US university our maybe a homeschooler looking for some outside validation to pad the university app (which is exactly why my kids will be writing).

[eternalsummer]

No, I think there are many other relevant factors to a student's accomplishment/potential besides the SAT.  I'm just saying that it's important to be honest - this kid did not get into all 8 Ivies just because of his academic accomplishments and potential.  If he had been an Asian kid with the same record, he would not have gotten in.

 

Legacy admissions are a similar bucket of worms to race-based admissions.  If this kid were a white kid who had ancestors who had attended all 8 Ivies, and he got into all 8, there would be no harm in saying, "Good for him but the legacy admissions had a part in it."

 

With regards to women in STEM fields; there's a reason there are fewer women in STEM fields.  We are, on the whole, less inclined to be interested in the study of systems/mechanics/etc. than men.  Encouraging women to go into a field that doesn't hold a natural interest for them is counterproductive.

[Corraleno]

No, I think there are many other relevant factors to a student's accomplishment/potential besides the SAT.  I'm just saying that it's important to be honest - this kid did not get into all 8 Ivies just because of his academic accomplishments and potential.  If he had been an Asian kid with the same record, he would not have gotten in.

 

Legacy admissions are a similar bucket of worms to race-based admissions.  If this kid were a white kid who had ancestors who had attended all 8 Ivies, and he got into all 8, there would be no harm in saying, "Good for him but the legacy admissions had a part in it."

 

With regards to women in STEM fields; there's a reason there are fewer women in STEM fields.  We are, on the whole, less inclined to be interested in the study of systems/mechanics/etc. than men.  Encouraging women to go into a field that doesn't hold a natural interest for them is counterproductive.

 

uh... wow. You sure have some interesting opinions about the place of women and minorities in higher education.  :blink:

[Crimson Wife]

It sounds like you'd be in favor of a test-only admissions process, which would probably result in only students with perfect SAT scores at Harvard.  That's not what Harvard's looking for and I can't blame them - how boring.  They're looking for interesting.

I think a lot of the controversy has to do with the cultural differences between how Harvard and other elite U.S. colleges and universities do admissions vs. the way elite universities in Asia do their admissions. If you're a first generation immigrant from South or East Asia and what you're familiar with is university admissions solely based on scores on the one-shot admissions exam, then you're probably going to be upset by "holistic" admissions here in America.

 

Personally, I think there needs to be a "happy medium" between purely exam-based admissions and the current system that leads to large differences in qualifications between different demographic groups. Improving K-12 public education to make it more rigorous would go a long way IMHO towards improving the "pipeline" of well-qualified URM's.

[Crimson Wife]

If he had been an Asian kid with the same record, he would not have gotten in.

We don't know that. He had a 2250, which is slightly below the median for Asian students at Harvard, but not wildly different from it. Plus he had a lot stronger extracurriculars than the typical Asian student (he was a varsity athlete, for example). An Asian kid with his extracurriculars would stand out from the pack of Asian kids with only orchestra and math or science team on their resumes.

[eternalsummer]

uh... wow. You sure have some interesting opinions about the place of women and minorities in higher education.  :blink:

 

They're not opinions; women choose, across many different cultures/societies (with different social expectations of women's roles), fields like nursing, humanities, etc. over STEM fields.  This is true even in cultures where there is complete freedom of choice - Sweden, for example.

[eternalsummer]

We don't know that. He had a 2250, which is slightly below the median for Asian students at Harvard, but not wildly different from it. Plus he had a lot stronger extracurriculars than the typical Asian student (he was a varsity athlete, for example). An Asian kid with his extracurriculars would stand out from the pack of Asian kids with only orchestra and math or science team on their resumes.

 

An Asian kid would not have likely been a varsity athlete (Asians are generally not as good at American sports as people of African descent, see the NBA, NFL, etc.).  Also, you really think an Asian kid with a 2250, 11th in his class, with a lot of APs, would have gotten into all 8 ivies?

[LibraryLover]

This is going off the rails.

[Alice]

Some slightly random thoughts...

 

1) My first day of medical school I overheard a guy in front of me talking to another guy. He said that he would bet money that any woman or minority there had lower MCAT scores than him because the school had to "take them". He kind of half turned and saw me listening. I said "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours." He kind of half-laughed and turned back around and wouldn't tell me his scores. :) 

 

2) My husband is Asian. I am white. A few years ago one of our nieces asked us how our kids would fill out forms: would they say they were Asian or White. My husband's answer: "If they are applying to an Ivy they are white. If it's for a Chinese-American scholarship they are Chinese. We're not proud, we're pragmatic." It actually came up for the first time recently on a form and I asked my 10 year old what he wanted to pick and he said to check both, which was allowed on that form. 

 

3) Dh went to Yale and had his 25th reunion last year. He went to an admissions talk which was fascinating. The main take-away points were that at a certain level it's a fairly arbitrary decision and no one should feel that their success in life depends on going to a particular school or that being rejected by a school mean that they weren't worthy. The way he described the process was something like this...there is a certain academic bar that everyone has to meet (scores, grades, etc). Even after meeting that bar they have a huge number of applicants. They then look at the academic needs, they have something like 200 Div I positions to fill and the athletic directors and coaches give them lists of who they want. It won't help you there if you don't meet the bar but if they happen to need a pole vaulter and you are a star pole vaulter with good SATs and solid grades you might get in where someone else with higher scores won't. They then look at musical needs: they have to fill the orchestras, bands, choirs. He said that pianists and violinists were a dime a dozen and won't get you in if you aren't already in. But if you happen to be a fantastic bassoonist ....that might push you over the edge. They then look at STEM, they want something like 45% of their class to be STEM majors (which seemed really high to me but that's what dh wrote down). They then look at diversity. They aim to have at least one freshman from every state. They also want international diversity. They look at where you went to school and they look to see "what you did with your resources" meaning taking 11 AP classes is great but if you took only 5 in a school that offered only 5 they would consider that just as highly. They described what they were looking for as "standout in context". They then said that legacy only helps you at the end, it might give you an advantage over a non-legacy if all things are equal. They claim that their high legacy acceptance rate is because legacies tend to have had a lot of advantages in life and educationally and so are going to have higher scores and other things they are looking for. 

 

As for diversity, one story was that the admissions guy made a statement that "there is one high school where we could accept the entire graduating class and they would all do well here but we just can't do that". A guy in the audience then stood up during the Q&A and asked "My son goes to TJ..." (TJ is Thomas Jefferson Science and Tech in Fairfax, VA and routinely ranked in the top 5 high schools in the country). The admission guy nodded and said "Yep, that's the school I was talking about." 

 

Dh and I joked that what we took away from that was that we should move to Wyoming or Idaho or North Dakota and get the kids interested in discus throwing and teach them to play the harp or bassoon. :) Or that maybe we shouldn't tie our success or theirs to getting into an Ivy. 

 

(ETA: That's not to say that this kid and his parents shouldn't be incredibly proud. It's quite an achievement.)

[Ameena]

I see nothing wrong with him being accepted at all 8 ivies - go him. He sounds like a smart well rounded guy.

 

That being said - race / ethnicity is a HUGE hook for college when comparing applicants. There are {or were as late as 2006} quotas at the college I attended & worked at. That being said - African American isn't an instant in anymore. The highest wanted quota was NATIVE AMERICAN & 1st gen college student combo. At that time, at that large private uni in TX, if you put Native American on your admissions stuff it was an instant acceptance & often a free ride. I could count the number of Native American students on my hands - they were that rare. Now this probably isn't true in some parts of the USA.

 

I agree with another posted who said they were pragmatic - put what helps you the most. My dd will put Native American on her paperwork when it comes time, even though she is only about 1/16th Native American. She looks it though & identifies with it however which is the most important IMO.

[creekland]

I get that race is a hook.  If Harvard (being a private school) or any of the other ivies want to favor people of certain races over others because they think having a non-white, non-asian background is a good thing for their school, that's cool.  

 

But you can't say both that he was likely admitted partially because of his race (which is GOOD, you said) and say that it is bad to suggest he was admitted partially because of his race.

 

And I think it's a legitimate position to question the value of racial diversity over other factors; it's not racist.  I'm not saying Harvard should prohibit people from certain backgrounds/races; I'm just saying that it's reasonable to suggest that the kid, who may be very deserving, may not be as deserving (separate of his unique background) as many many kids who got rejected, and there's no way to know *because* the schools have different standards for different races.

 

I don't recall saying it was bad to suggest he was admitted partially due to his race.  I said it was bad for folks to judge him (forever) as being less qualified due to his race.  His "unique background" overall is his hook and I can definitely understand why any school (Ivy or not) would want him.  He is likely to go places and do things with his life based upon what he has shown so far.  That's the type of student top schools want.  His unique background helped him stand out among others.  Kudos to him!

 

And while I understand what you are saying about women and choosing STEM (I don't disagree with it), I'll freely admit to being a happy Physics major here (Psych major and Math minor too).  ;)

 

 

 

It sounds like you'd be in favor of a test-only admissions process, which would probably result in only students with perfect SAT scores at Harvard.  That's not what Harvard's looking for and I can't blame them - how boring.  They're looking for interesting.

 

Same here.  There's no way I'd want a test-only admission policy - esp when I've yet to see any stats showing the SAT to correlate well with college success.  Schools have a bar of what scores they'd like to see, then have oodles of applicants that easily make it over that bar.  There needs to be other ways to figure out who to admit and who not to.  Then there's limited space, so plenty who could easily have been admitted just don't luck out.  It happens.  Those kids are likely to do well and be an asset at any college they go to, so all is not "lost."

[Corraleno]

Also, you really think an Asian kid with a 2250, 11th in his class, with a lot of APs, would have gotten into all 8 ivies?

 

Let's be sure we're comparing apples to apples: Could an Asian with 2250 SATs and 11 APs whose parents immigrated from a 3rd world country â€” say Cambodia, Uzbekistan, or Myanmar; who is male; is from a low-income school; who plays the violin in a chamber group, bass in a doo-wop group, and sings baritone in musical theater; is a varsity shot-putter; and volunteers in a local hospital, be accepted to every Ivy he applies to? Quite possibly. Maybe good shot-putters and baritones are hard to come by.

 

 

An Asian kid would not have likely been a varsity athlete (Asians are generally not as good at American sports as people of African descent, see the NBA, NFL, etc.).

 

FWIW, fencing is one the top sports at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Penn, and Columbia, and many of the top fencers are Asian. For example, half of Harvard's fencing team (6 of 12) are Asian.

[Butter]

And while I understand what you are saying about women and choosing STEM (I don't disagree with it), I'll freely admit to being a happy Physics major here (Psych major and Math minor too).  ;)

 

My SIL was a physics major for her bachelors and loved it.  I don't know what her master's was.  Her PhD was in traffic science or something like that.  She's a traffic engineer.  In fact she was named the engineer of the year by her state DOT where she works for 2013.  On some test you take (might have been for graduate school admissions - my brother told me once but I forget), in the history of the university she and my brother got their bachelor's from, up to that point, my brother had the second highest score and my SIL (they were not married at the time) had the highest score.  (My brother, btw, has a PhD in linguistics... kind of a more "feminine" field; very feminine compared to physics!)

 

A lot of women do tend to go into service oriented fields and those that are conducive to having a family and not being the primary breadwinner, but I think a lot of that is conditioned into us and not innate.

[Corraleno]

Interesting comment:

 

 

 

“Hell, I’m an Asian-American who got 2210 on my SAT,†wrote one of Enin’s defenders, Princeton student Benjamin Dinovelli, in The Daily Princetonian. “Despite the 40-point difference, my acceptance was not littered with shocks of surprise or comments from others about how I did not ‘deserve’ to get in.â€

[umsami]

He's going to be a Yalie. :)

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ny-teen-accepted-eight-ivy-league-schools-picks-yale-n94006