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Post by shawty on May 27, 2019 12:05:14 GMT -5
And bayarea that's what it is so infuriating to see people like Singer and his clients working to gain an even greater advantage than they already have by falsifying their ethnicity/race/disability. Once they're in, no one questions their credentials. When Blacks and Latinos end up at elite schools, it's assumed they "took someone's spot" due to affirmative action.
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2019 0:09:53 GMT -5
And bayarea that's what it is so infuriating to see people like Singer and his clients working to gain an even greater advantage than they already have by falsifying their ethnicity/race/disability. Once they're in, no one questions their credentials. When Blacks and Latinos end up at elite schools, it's assumed they "took someone's spot" due to affirmative action. When I was accepted..fast-tracked, really..into UC Davis in '68, there were virtually no American people-of-color attending (there were international students from Africa, India, the Orient, et cetera). The school started an Afro-American Studies and a Native American Studies curriculum while I was there. I was the ONLY Anglo in either course. I had come from Kennedy High, in Richmond, CA, where it was fully integrated: 40% Caucasian; 40% Black; 10% Asian; 10% Latino. That startling "homogenousness" of Davis struck me as being a different universe (besides being akin to the Midwest in the 1940's, compared to the Berkeley-Haight Asbury scene which I had emanated from!). Suffice it to say, I 'stuck out' like an ol' proverbial sore thumb in both of those fields of study. Truly ironic that Alan Bakke sued UC for discrimination (white kid who wasn't admitted to UCD Law School due to Affirmative Action quotas). I don't regret/ am Very happy I experienced said ethnic studies.
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Post by jmax on May 29, 2019 13:17:00 GMT -5
I acknowledge the possibility, but in the absence of actual data supporting that hypothesis, I have to look at what the available data says. If there is an advantage in identifying as black or Hispanic on applications, 40 years of data doesn't bear it out. Let's say 15% of all M&Ms are green. We count the M&Ms that a given person chooses to eat over some long period of time, and only 6% of those he actually ate were green. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY this indicates that he gives preference to eating green M&Ms. Almost certainly it indicates the opposite, that for some reason he avoids eating the green ones. "15% of all college age Americans are black" does not tell us what percentage of college applicants are black. It does not tell us what percentage of black college age Americans are qualified to attend a four year college. There are probably statistics on this somewhere, but I don't have them. If a college feels that it should have 15% of some group to meet its enrollment goals, but only 6% of the applicant pool is from that group, then there will be pressure to have a higher admittance rate among that group and likely lower average qualifications among that group. The question about what can and should be done to improve the conditions that lead to some groups applying to or qualifying for college in lower numbers is a separate one. Colleges can only consider the applicants that they get. On a related note, this source says that black enrollment rose from 10% to 14% from 1976 to 2008. nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010015/indicator6_24.aspThis contrasts with the "6%" number by a prior poster. In any case, if a college admittance office has a goal of x% of some group in the student pool, and the applicant pool has less than x% of that group, than admittance standards for that group will be lower than it is for the applicant pool as a whole. That is just math. In addition, here are some statistics on SAT and ACT scores by ethnic breakdown. They are not all the same, so the math dictates that an exactly proportional student pool would have differing average test scores even if the applicant pool distribution was exactly proportional to the population distribution. (It is not.) www.data-first.org/data/are-our-students-ready-for-college/
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Post by mikegarrison on May 30, 2019 19:38:12 GMT -5
The admission policies should be strictly merit based and not weighted. Equal opportunity, not equal outcome. That sounds good, until you start to try to define what an "equal opportunity" means. Most of the time, people who say this mean "we all take the same test and whoever scores highest wins", but they completely ignore whether the test is biased, the preparation of the test is uneven, the general opportunity for education is uneven, etc. etc. etc. "We all took the same test (that happened to be exactly tailored to the cultural and education background that I have mostly because of the family I was born into), so it was equal." Riiiight.
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Post by Phaedrus on May 30, 2019 20:37:04 GMT -5
That sounds good, until you start to try to define what an "equal opportunity" means. Most of the time, people who say this mean "we all take the same test and whoever scores highest wins", but they completely ignore whether the test is biased, the preparation of the test is uneven, the general opportunity for education is uneven, etc. etc. etc. "We all took the same test (that happened to be exactly tailored to the cultural and education background that I have mostly because of the family I was born into), so it was equal." Riiiight. Equal opportunity, in this context, means that everybody will be given the same opportunity for admission without any regards to any factors beyond merit. As soon as weight is given to any criteria beyond merit you are attempting to change the outcome. Manipulating a test to remove bias towards any one group is only biasing that test towards another group, again focusing on outcome. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/14/meritocracy-myth-rich-college-admissionsFunny you should say that. This is from The Guardian, a British newspaper. And no one knows privilege better than the Brits.
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Post by mikegarrison on May 30, 2019 20:37:50 GMT -5
That sounds good, until you start to try to define what an "equal opportunity" means. Most of the time, people who say this mean "we all take the same test and whoever scores highest wins", but they completely ignore whether the test is biased, the preparation of the test is uneven, the general opportunity for education is uneven, etc. etc. etc. "We all took the same test (that happened to be exactly tailored to the cultural and education background that I have mostly because of the family I was born into), so it was equal." Riiiight. Equal opportunity, in this context, means that everybody will be given the same opportunity for admission without any regards to any factors beyond merit. As soon as weight is given to any criteria beyond merit you are attempting to change the outcome. Manipulating a test to remove bias towards any one group is only biasing that test towards another group, again focusing on outcome. If I put an item on a shelf eight feet high and say, "Anyone who can reach that item without jumping gets to go to college", then college will be mostly full of men, right? But hey, it was a fair test. Everyone had equal opportunity. Wondering why so few women pass it would be "attempting to change the outcome". People with privilege love to go on and on about "equal opportunity; not equal outcome". Because hey, they passed that test fair and square. It wasn't their fault it was pre-biased toward them, right? Reminds me of the Hunger Games, where some of the rich districts send kids that have had the luxury of training for the competition all their lives, while the poor districts draft kids from the slums who are basically just on their own.
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Post by Wolfgang on May 30, 2019 21:18:58 GMT -5
Equal opportunity, in this context, means that everybody will be given the same opportunity for admission without any regards to any factors beyond merit. As soon as weight is given to any criteria beyond merit you are attempting to change the outcome. Manipulating a test to remove bias towards any one group is only biasing that test towards another group, again focusing on outcome. ... Reminds me of the Hunger Games, where some of the rich districts send kids that have had the luxury of training for the competition all their lives, while the poor districts draft kids from the slums who are basically just on their own. Spoiler alert!
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Post by Wolfgang on May 30, 2019 21:27:57 GMT -5
There are thousands of universities in America, most of them good. You'll do fine at any one of them. It's all on you. You need skillz, you need persistence, and you need luck.
I have an interesting story about one of my best friends from high school. But I'll spare you the details and just give you the executive summary. He was second place in everything, second choice by everybody. He had science/math smarts but not so good with the other skills. Didn't get into his top choices for college. Settled for a state school. Okay GPA -- A's/B's in all the science/math/engineering classes but C's in all others (which really brought down his GPA). Didn't get his top engineering job choices. Had to go to Ohio, of all places, to get a job as a technician, not engineer. (For those who don't know, technician is thought of as "below" engineer.) Then, he did really well as a technician.
He looked to get out of Ohio and hit Silicon Valley. Didn't get his top job choices out here, but he was brought in as an independent contractor for some work for a start-up right around the time start-ups were growing like weeds out here in the 1990s. Did really well. In fact, he did so well, they couldn't do without him. Joined as an engineer with stock options. Put in his time. Got patents. Start-up got bought up by a bigger company and now, my friend is a multi-millionaire. Now lives in Palo Alto.
This is my way of saying issues like "fairness" and "equal opportunity" and "merit" are really difficult to resolve. Just apply where you want to go, go where they want you, do good work, learn stuff, and keep moving up.
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Post by volleyguy on May 30, 2019 21:35:46 GMT -5
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Post by pepperbrooks on May 30, 2019 23:37:55 GMT -5
That sounds good, until you start to try to define what an "equal opportunity" means. Most of the time, people who say this mean "we all take the same test and whoever scores highest wins", but they completely ignore whether the test is biased, the preparation of the test is uneven, the general opportunity for education is uneven, etc. etc. etc. "We all took the same test (that happened to be exactly tailored to the cultural and education background that I have mostly because of the family I was born into), so it was equal." Riiiight. Equal opportunity, in this context, means that everybody will be given the same opportunity for admission without any regards to any factors beyond merit. As soon as weight is given to any criteria beyond merit you are attempting to change the outcome. Manipulating a test to remove bias towards any one group is only biasing that test towards another group, again focusing on outcome. How do you distinguish between hundreds of applicants with the same scores and grades?
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Post by trainermch on May 30, 2019 23:39:00 GMT -5
There are thousands of universities in America, most of them good. You'll do fine at any one of them. It's all on you. You need skillz, you need persistence, and you need luck. I have an interesting story about one of my best friends from high school. But I'll spare you the details and just give you the executive summary. He was second place in everything, second choice by everybody. He had science/math smarts but not so good with the other skills. Didn't get into his top choices for college. Settled for a state school. Okay GPA -- A's/B's in all the science/math/engineering classes but C's in all others (which really brought down his GPA). Didn't get his top engineering job choices. Had to go to Ohio, of all places, to get a job as a technician, not engineer. (For those who don't know, technician is thought of as "below" engineer.) Then, he did really well as a technician. He looked to get out of Ohio and hit Silicon Valley. Didn't get his top job choices out here, but he was brought in as an independent contractor for some work for a start-up right around the time start-ups were growing like weeds out here in the 1990s. Did really well. In fact, he did so well, they couldn't do without him. Joined as an engineer with stock options. Put in his time. Got patents. Start-up got bought up by a bigger company and now, my friend is a multi-millionaire. Now lives in Palo Alto. This is my way of saying issues like "fairness" and "equal opportunity" and "merit" are really difficult to resolve. Just apply where you want to go, go where they want you, do good work, learn stuff, and keep moving up. Pass out copies of this at every HS and College graduation.
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Post by charger0304 on May 31, 2019 0:16:24 GMT -5
How do you distinguish between hundreds of applicants with the same scores and grades? By when they applied. Tie-breaker goes to first applicant. Early bird catches the worm. Not sure if this is a serious reply but maybe true if the school has rolling admissions? Otherwise, this is why most applications have essays, letters of rec, activities lists, etc. It's the "holistic" approach that's become quite popular.
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Post by mikegarrison on May 31, 2019 0:35:55 GMT -5
If I put an item on a shelf eight feet high and say, "Anyone who can reach that item without jumping gets to go to college", then college will be mostly full of men, right? But hey, it was a fair test. Everyone had equal opportunity. Wondering why so few women pass it would be "attempting to change the outcome". People with privilege love to go on and on about "equal opportunity; not equal outcome". Because hey, they passed that test fair and square. It wasn't their fault it was pre-biased toward them, right? Reminds me of the Hunger Games, where some of the rich districts send kids that have had the luxury of training for the competition all their lives, while the poor districts draft kids from the slums who are basically just on their own. Nope. The smarter shorter people (men, women or otherwise) would look at the test parameters and go find something to stand on. That's cheating. Just like the people we are talking about in this thread. They went and got a box to stand on, by being clever and faking up a athletic resume. Standards and tests are ALWAYS biased. You can't avoid it. Any given test is going to fit some test-takers better than others. Standards to get into MIT are going to be more biased toward STEM than poetry. Standards to get into Bennington are probably biased the other way. It's not only valid but important when designing a process (and admissions is a process) to look at the results of the process and use feedback to tune the process. This is fundamental to process design. If the admissions process is resulting in a lot of students who flunk out of school, then it's a flawed process that needs to be tuned up (assuming the college cares about graduation rates). In exactly the same way, if the admissions process is resulting in over-representation of wealthy white kids, then it's a flawed process that needs to be tuned (assuming the college cares about diversity of their student body). The assumption many people make is that these two goals are in conflict, but generally speaking they are not when it comes to the "selective" schools. They turn down way more kids who would have done just fine at their school than they have space to accept. So they have plenty of degrees of freedom to tune their process to get their student body any way they like, while still keeping their academic standards high. It is the Kennedys of the world who have always gone to Harvard and who expect to always go to Harvard who love to claim that they got in without any special favors, but the whole country is set up as a special favor to them from the time they are born.
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Post by mikegarrison on May 31, 2019 0:37:12 GMT -5
There are thousands of universities in America, most of them good. You'll do fine at any one of them. It's all on you. You need skillz, you need persistence, and you need luck.
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Post by mikegarrison on May 31, 2019 0:41:56 GMT -5
Robert Kiyosaki is a typical self-help guru. He's got book after book claiming to teach people how to be rich, but if they worked so well then why does he need to write any new books? Anyway, his lifeview is apparently all about money. I guess that's OK for him if he wants it like that, but not everybody feels the same way.
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