Congrats, direct reflection on the parents. Feel for folks with no kids...nothing better in this world than to see them succeed at a high level.
Give me a break. If you're going to vilify "discrimination" aimed at promoting diversity and remedying the denial of equal opportunity to certain groups, don't come in here and try to defend "discrimination" aimed at helping rich people get into the university. No sale.
I apologize in advance for the long post. A few things I'd like to note: 1) Most kids, even the ones who devote themselves to a pet cause and sell that on a college application, don't know what they want to do or what they're passionate about at 17-18 years old. More often than not, they were taught how to "play the game" early on and got the memo as to the kind of things admissions offices want, even though it's far from an exact science and is a bit of an ever-moving goalpost. 2) Prioritizing "resume" is more about making the process subjective than it is about "leveling the playing field," or "picking up the best applicant." This isn't a really a job interview. There are around ten thousand slots every year and it is more likely than not that any person or group making judgments on these applications will never personally meet the applicant after they begin their college career, even at UF. It's a method that gives the university cover because there's all sorts of ways of justifying an admission (or denial of admission) with all of these factors at play, and nobody can question it. It's just an alternative way of picking "winners" and "losers." It by no means necessarily "levels the playing field" or makes it more "meritocratic." The closest thing we have to a system that actually "levels the playing field" is in fact SAT/ACT scores, and even that isn't perfect because there's prep courses, tutors, etc. There's also the fact that I'm not sure we should want to live in a world where some arbitrary combination of intelligence and SAT test-taking skills determines your academic/career outcome. It's fair in the sense that intelligence is relatively a "luck of the draw" characteristic (if you think randomness is fair), but it's not optimal in the sense that we should want to give people agency. You like to believe that the average kid actually has the potential to go to Harvard if he just does all of the right things. I'm not sure if that's true, or if it ever was barring some sort of tipping of the scale outside the applicant's control like affirmative action or family legacy. Affirmative action didn't "level the playing field" because it provided unfair advantages to upper class minorities and disadvantages to lower class whites. Grades aren't because every school varies in challenge and grading scale. Even resume isn't because everybody can learn to play the victim and everybody can learn to sell themselves. Does anybody honestly believe little Johnny actually found his unique humanitarian passion in 9th grade, stuck to it through all of high school, and devoted hundreds of hours outside of school to that cause just because he wanted to, or because of some calling... when he could've been spending that time doing countless other things teenage boys prefer like playing football, playing basketball, chasing girls, going to parties, etc. No, a mentoring figure told them what to do and pushed them in that direction 90% of the time, and made the connection between that... and their favorite school or career path. My point is that it's never been a great system and it's never going to be. But something I can't stand about the current system is this expectation that teenagers need to map their entire lives around fake passions to game college admissions systems to be competitive. I think there should be much greater priority on grades, SAT scores, school group membership, championships (if applicable), leadership positions, and awards, rather than essays highlighting your personality or personal experiences.
As a statistician, it hurts my feelings, but GPA is a better predictor of college success than SAT/ACT scores. Every school, and every teacher, grade a little differently. It should be a valid predictor of anything, yet it is.
If we're going by Constitutional analysis, assuming universities in question are subject to 14th Amendment Equal Protection standards... What level of scrutiny must affirmative action programs satisfy? What level of scrutiny must legacy admissions satisfy? Whether you like or dislike the policy is another story entirely. We all have our opinions.
We're not going by constitutional analysis. The new far right majority changed the analysis after 40+ years. That means jack shit to me. This discussion is about the hypocrisy of arguing against affirmative action for Black people because of "merit" while defending affirmative action for rich people.
I think that both are necessary in the equation. Access to prep classes is one issue and grade inflation is another. There is a reason that UF unweights and reweights. Some schools, both public and private, are notorious grade inflators.
If you're talking about the affirmative action ruling, I'm not sure that's true. I know Roberts wrote the majority, but I find his opinions generally unhelpful as they tend to try and isolate the rulings to the particulars of the case to avoid answering any tough questions. I believe Gorsuch's reasoning in his concurrence was that affirmative action either never satisfied that standard or no longer does. Either line of reasoning would not change the outcome. I believe Thomas's and Kavanaugh's analysis were similar in that regard with some additional layers, history lessons, and dissent rebuttals sprinkled in. Kavanaugh leaned more towards the notion that the precedent controlling affirmative action was outdated, not that it was never proper. I thought Thomas condemned affirmative action even historically most strongly. But most importantly, none of them changed the analysis. They just changed whether affirmative action passes scrutiny under the analysis. But perhaps I am wrong.
test scores have been catching up. Or so I’ve read. Admissions isn’t my space but I’ve been seeing more reports about it. But regardless this whining about Uf is ridiculous. They accept as many as they can it’s so ridiculously competitive. There’s only so much space in Gainesville. And plus I thought everyone thought that faculty were the enemy? Give Uf another 500 mill recurring. Let them hire 300 more faculty and build 20 more buildings and maybe they can squeeze in another 5000 kids each year. Idk what people want Uf to do here…
I can understand the parents' frustration. Those seem like extremely qualified students. But does the fact that they were rejected mean someone even more qualified got accepted instead?
That was the case when I was attending. Plenty of Santa Fe and Broward CC transfers were in my upper level classes. That would be my suggestion, just transfer in and drag out your graduation so it feels like you attended 4 years of undergrad
I don’t even disagree with a lot of that, and where I do it’s certainly a fair debate to have for the most part. Everything about college admissions is subjective. Even test scores - is the kid whose parents could afford 3 years of prep for him along with private school and got a 1500 really better than the kid who basically took it off the street from some run down inner city public and got a 1350? But my point was meant to be more basic. UF’s admissions review process is far more complicated than two or three metrics someone throws up to show how their kid got robbed. Whether one agrees with it or not, it’s a known commodity.
That's changing the analysis. When in the past, the Court held up an admissions system as an example of the proper way to do it and in the present, that same admissions system fails under the analysis applied, something has changed, right? Roberts can play his favorite game where he pretends he hasn't actually overruled precedents, but that doesn't change the reality of what happened.
No apologies needed. This is a great post. I've always said if there's one positive that could come out of this awful affirmative action opinion, it's forcing the elite schools to use socioeconomic diversity as a proxy to achieve the racial/ethnic diversity they want. Under affirmative action, they were overwhelmingly admitting rich students of color, so it really wasn't serving the purpose most liberals wanted it to serve.
After obtaining your AA degree you can apply to the “College of whatever” assuming you’ve met that college’s requirements. I earned my AA in Jacksonville then got into the College of Engineering.
That makes sense. Of course, even those who got admitted to UF as freshmen weren’t guaranteed to later get into the College or program of their choice as juniors. Seems like junior college would be smart for that reason too to the extent the classes are easier (they were in my opinion).
