Thursday, October 15, 2009

How To Justify Racism In College Admissions

The Daily Princetonian reports:

According to the data, not all races are considered equal in the college admissions game. Of students applying to private colleges in 1997, African-American applicants with SAT scores of 1150 had the same chances of being accepted as white applicants with 1460s and Asian applicants with perfect 1600s.

The results of the study come three years after Jian Li, a rejected Princeton applicant, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. He alleged in the complaint that he had been discriminated against based on his race when he was denied admission to the University.

Espenshade noted that he did not initially use the word “discrimination” when discussing the results of his study. Though he found a 140-point SAT score discrepancy between accepted white and Asian students, he did not have access to what he called “soft variables,” like extracurriculars and teacher recommendations.

The rest of the article discusses how the data is a decade old, how the lack of "soft variable" information means you can't prove racism, how Princeton doesn't discriminate on the basis of race, and how a discrimination complaint by an Asian applicant is beyond bogus.

Some people used the Bible to justify slavery.

(PS, the comments on linked article show that not everyone at Princeton is as stupid as the admission folks are.)

Update: Link added. Thanks for pointing that out!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey darren, i don't see any link to the news article.

~maia_orual

socalmike said...

no link.

Ellen K said...

I witnessed the same thing with classmates of my daughter. Both had the same GPA, both had taken the same slate of AP classes in chemistry, physics, biology, English, foreign language, history, and calculus. But one got in Johns Hopkins and one did not. Guess which one did-the "regular" smart student or the one who lived next door to him in another million dollar house who had a Hispanic surname?