I feel like this discussion suffers from topic creep. I'm really confused about what we're talking about now.

And how many white people, statistically speaking, actually applied for these scholarships?

Damn.. What do those blind people give back into the community? How old are you? I'll take a step back and just say I don't know what GPA is, or what an SAT is... I'm pretty far removed from the American university system. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter where you went, what you studied and who taught you shit. What matters is what you learnt and what you achieved. The university you went to is just the brand name, you're going to plaster it at the top of your CV one day and be so proud of it - but it counts for jack shit in the 'real' world.

How is any qualification going to solve an energy crisis? Smarten up.

No offence, but your tone seems like you expected a cup of tea and an interview. Thousands of people apply for university each year. Life's a bitch - deal with it. There are 6 billion people on Earth and yes, we are all competing. Just be thankful that you're getting the chance to apply for colleges or whatever, a lot of people don't even come close to your situation.

Edit: @Kame - yup.

I'd ignore what SiberianTiger is saying with regards to affirmative action. It all sounds like complete bullshit. He has minor points here and there, but, overall, they're irrelevant to the topic of affirmative action. We had a black girl with an 80% average get into Cornell while most of the school, most with 90+, applied there. Affirmative action sucks.

Ignore Cardinal, he's just trollin'.

Also, having taken the SAT test and done extremely well on it, I will attest that it doesn't require any genius or a ton of studying. Well, unless I'm a genius.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 19 2011, 8:22 pm by Centreri.

Double bind:
1) regardless of her 2.5 gpa, the black girl's case was a success because she was able enough to handle the work load.
2) the black girl wasn't smart enough and had to drop out by the second year.

What do you have problem with?

Double bind:

1) most with 90+ average that didn't get into cornell did well in other schools, achieved 4.0 gpa, and transferred to cornell or got accepted to cornel grad school, vanderbilt med school, etc.
2) most with 90+ sucked anyways despite going to an easier school and just got by and graduated.

Anything wrong with this too?

Everyone in this forum seems to know someone with lower gpa who got into a better school. Wow I don't know anyone like that. Congrats.

To be fair, I can't tell you - even though I'm in Upper Division classes - how often I've seen people bawww their way into getting extra credit to pass a class, or how many exchange students get pushed through the program when they aren't very coherent when they write.

It certainly is discriminatory.
dis·crim·i·na·tion - treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit
Affirmative action makes a distinction in favor of ethnic minorities based on the ethnic group the person belongs to, rather than the individual merit of the applicant. Don't even argue any further about the definition. If you want to say we should discriminate, thats something different.

Wait, why shouldn't someone study for the SAT? And studying does help, you can easily get a 2300+ SAT if you study enough for it. It's just like any other test, and having a high IQ doesn't guarantee a high score (2300+ I mean) either. Mistakes are inherent in human nature. If the SAT is supposed to be a measure of your high school learning, and you studied in high school, theres no reason not to for this exam.

You clearly know nothing about the way college works. Your value of IQ is overestimated and your value of hard work is severely underestimated. Hard work doesn't mean sitting with your nose in a book for hours not understanding something. If you don't understand something you go to your professor's office hours, ask your friends, google it, whatever. A 200+ IQ won't help you solve a problem if you don't even understand the basic terminology, especially once you start getting into specialized material where jargon comes into play. If I give you a problem about an airplane and ask you to solve for the Osborne efficiency coefficient, can you solve it? No! Not because you're not smart, but because you have no idea what the fuck an Osborne efficiency coefficient is. Now I'm not saying a high IQ isn't helpful or useful. I've been blessed with a great amount of intelligence (well, I'm sure Centreri will dispute this ) and I've noticed times where it helps, but I'm also smart enough to realize that there isn't a substitute for getting down to the grindstone and doing the work. Your IQ doesn't "max out" in college. Sure, "if you try hard enough anything is possible" won't work for a retard, but for anyone reasonably intelligent enough well spent time and effort will produce results. I say well spent because like I already said, staring at a problem you don't understand for three hours wont help.

If a person is smart enough where they dont need to do any hard work, then they don't need to go to college anyway. Why spend thousands on college tuition when they could just buy the books, read them, and apply for a job or even start their own company?

Tl;dr of what vrael said: Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% hard work.

Mr. Robber came into my house last night and stole my laptop. He was caught by the police. When I demanded my laptop back, the police said, "··s·t·ea·l··" "to take something away from" "you can't take the laptop from him" "unless you are okay with him stealing from you, that's something different."

For the third time, I don't recognize irony or contradiction, only causation, sequence of events, weight of the consequences, and historical responsibility.

wat is this i dont even

You don't know me at all. Vrael, after having endless SD wars with you and with other people here (very few of which have impressed), I consider you to be one of the smartest people on SEN.

Based on how few people transfer colleges, you overestimate the leveling effect that has. And the injustice of a relative dullard getting in is in itself the problem.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 20 2011, 1:35 am by Centreri.

I completely agree with Vrael. And in that, my personal opinion is that affirmative action should only be a temporary medium until the society as a whole embraces people with little prejudice (Looking at how we work, there is bound to be some, only less relative compared with prejudice nowadays.)

My opinion bases on something like this. Like nature, we are part of nature, and thus follows the laws of nature to a great extent. (It isn't a law, rather I'm trying to say it follows a coherent pattern to some degree.) As described in theory of evolution, if there need be no evolution, there is none. Likewise, most people with low IQ have never had the need to use their brains extensively, nor did their environment encourage them to do so. Thus there was no development, and they did not feel the need to be motivated in any kind whatsoever.

You do realize that our brain does not remember everything without particular reason to do so. Even those with 200+ IQ cannot remember the faces and names of everyone they meet trivially throughout their lives. They also do not remember phone numbers that they've seen two years ago only by a glimpse, nor do they prove all of Fermat's equations just by looking at them, nor can they understand theory of relativity just by reading it. The mistake is that simply knowledge simply isn't true knowledge. The way I say differs the two knowledge from each other. If you've read any books in introduction to epistemology, psychology, or neuroscience- it is obvious that Human brain runs more efficient with more organized knowledge. While there can be, and will be potential differences from birth, if one is not below a certain level of intelligence (with no measurable amount, intelligence is not something you can simply measure. IQ is only relevant within certain boundaries.), it can in theory raise one's IQ beyond what they have currently.
As an example, seeing patterns and seeing geometry well is well considered 'highly intelligent' by most, when it also can be the result of a childhood interest within geometry and patterns. A person who didn't have the same interest could match the person who did by making it 'known'. (I guess the closest thing would to the know I just used would be Platonic 'true knowledge'.) In order to gain true knowledge, one must repeat so that it is not only just remembered, but also remembered by your body.

Obviously, then there would be no significant differences between professors who have had their doctorates and college freshmen. The truth is that is not the case. There are enormous differences even between professors. What then makes the difference?

@Tiger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29
It's good book.

@Centreri
Only because majority of SAT questions are rather a joke then serious measure of scholastic aptitude. One could simply know the answer just by taking a glimpse at most of the questions- even without having to work for that. And because of that, students often live in self induced illusion that they are a 'genius' when it was not they who were smart, but the fact that the questions asked was a gag.

You should work on compressing your ideas into fewer words. Also, lol @ the SAT bit.

I propose we switch back to arguing affirmative action rather than continue exploring Tiger's belief that his brother is a genius (or whatever genius-related thing you're on).

I agree. Though to the sub-topic of this discussion of 'why Colleges are biased' may be due to the fact that many college admission systems are not standardized.

Yes, there may be SAT, GPA, and everything not scored to account for, but the ultimate decision rests on the school's admissions department, and frankly, the scores of
standardized tests and GPAs can very in proportion from college to colleges. For example, college A may take 50% SAT, 30% GPA, 20% out of total grading system, and college B may take the same but may still differ. For example, College A wanted to have students who were tenacious and hard-working, so they made their scoring system so that one would get 1% of GPA scores when they had the GPA of 3 while one would get 100% of their 30% GPA scores when one had GPA of 1, but College B wanted students who were innately keen on solving gag like problems, so they emphasized on SAT, but disregarded GPA so that anyone who entered admission would only get 5% of their GPA scores taken off at the maximum.

In the case of college A, there would be little chance for people of lower GPA to get in, but for College B- GPA hardly matters. Although the case is extreme, it still serves a purpose. Anyhow, this is one of the reasons why colleges can be biased.

Another reason may be that some of the admission policies may seem 'vague'- as if it were open to subjective judging on students. A certain college could possibly want ambitious and hard-working students, who have 'potential' but not currently visible abilities. They could prefer not to take students with good scores, but with no ambition.

On the other hand, one could make a 100% standardized college entrance tests, file it up in order from the national scale and accept students on that order. I'll tell you that it won't be biased at all. But what I can also tell you is that SATs would become infinitely harder than it is now if that happens. It has to. And it would give students with mothers with the ability to hire tutors and sending them to private institutions an infinitely better playing level than others. This is actually, one of the reasons why current college admission is biased.

I'd actually vouch for a system like that though. With several steps to college entrances, such as 'standardized test' for eligibility for step by step tests done by the college itself and having to mandate on campus tests before admission and stuff like that. But they would never ever do such a thing like that. Don't they have application fees or something like that?

... like I said, get off your fucking horse and come play in the sandbox with the rest of us kiddies. No one thinks your cool because you don't believe in those things.

Your analogy is wrong. First off, the meaning of "to take" and "to steal" are inherently different. Stealing involves taking property which doesn't belong to you, without permission, and without the intent to ever return or pay for it. Taking an object makes no implication about the permission or owner, merely who currently has possession of the object.
steal - to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force
Since the laptop is yours, you are not stealing it when you take it back from the theif.
Secondly, even if this analogy was right, how would it show or prove that affirmative action is not a form of discrimination?

In literal sense you're right high IQ doesn't guarantee high SAT scores. Nothing guarantees anything. I didn't say that. It would simply that there would be a high correlation between the two. In real world situation, however, it would be to assume high IQ would almost guarantee high SAT score in reasonably given circumstances, unless the test taker didn't care at all or never took the test more than once. On the other hand, with low IQ there is absolutely a limit to how high your SAT score can get, and this was what I actually said. You have no evidence to back your claim, whereas I do mine. Asians who go to SAT cram schools are the perfect example, since they study variably from 2~6 hours a day on SAT and barely sleep but they still score around 2100 with combined score, taking the highest scores for each section from different tests. If someone supposedly with low IQ gets a high SAT score, by trying or not, then he must have had a high IQ or gifted by some other means.

Plus you guys are arguing something that I didn't mean. I mentioned IQ as one way to indicate my little brother's intelligence, but intelligence exists in other forms too. I am just distinguishing broadly between people who are talented and average.

And the argument that efforts alone will yield high SAT scores is self-defeating regarding your point on affirmative action. See why?

Also your assumptions about hard work are so simplistic, and you framed my position in a conveniently unreasonable manner. Of course success isn't guaranteed to everyone who is gifted (or high IQ), especially if s/he doesn't try at all. Why is that important? My point is that there is a limit to what you can do with average talents. Does talented + no effort ==> failure at ivy league somehow inversely prove average + effort ==> success at ivy league ? No it doesn't. Don't try linking the two. They are unrelated.


Yes. This is so what I said about high school. And it might apply to classes taught in state and community colleges. Remembered by your body? That's so high school vocab quiz. How are you going to remember something you can't solve? What are you going to do if your notes from professor's lectures seems to have nothing to do with the problems that appear on homework or exams, and the textbook is completely useless?

Even in classes that are not related to science or math, no one remembers anything, especially if they have to read and write so much. They simply go on a trance and spam terminology aggressively like in the debate videos I posted before. College work has more to do with connecting the dots than memorizing for vocab quiz. Knowing the terminology? Wouldn't that come naturally?

Again you can't prove your claim, whereas I can mine. If someone who was supposedly above average were to try his or her best and succeed at Harvard, then s/he must have been talented. But there are a ton of Koreans who study every minute of their life who had to drop out from ivy league colleges because they simply weren't smart enough to handle the workload.

I don't understand how you can make arguments about what ivy league is like when all of you complain of someone else who got in, which would mean you didn't get in yourself. i know what new ivy is like, so i can only imagine how much harder ivy would be. And I talked this stuff with my friends. One of them is in an accelerated engineering program, and he really has a hard time keeping up although he's very smart. He says math gets so difficult, although he used to like math, and the only reason he liked it was because he was good at it, and physics nearly impossible. Do you get that? One can go to the library and sit and look at the first problem for the next 6 hours without being able to do anything.

Also the fact that very few people transfer probably proves my point. People go where they belong.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 20 2011, 7:40 am by SiberianTiger.

I fail to see how you proved your claims.

To be honest, I don't even know what on earth SiberianTiger is trying to argue anymore.

To the OP, welcome to college admissions, it's a bitch. It would be nice to believe that the admissions process is a meritocracy, but it quite simply isn't. There are serious moral questions at issue here which do not have simple, clear-cut answers. (i.e.: What is the mission and purpose of a university? It would be naive to say it only serves to educate the most talented applicants; you could equally say that it aims to promote the growth of society by accepting a diverse and varied class.) But the question of whether affirmative action should exist aside, it certainly does exist, and you are going to be judged and rejected based on your race, gender, and socioeconomic status. The best advice I can give is to forget about it for now and move on, because there isn't much you can do to change it. Excel wherever you are accepted and you'll make it through fine in the end.

Although in some instances minority students admitted by affirmative action have demonstrably lower performance at these universities, by and large this is not true. Universities admit minority applications who are qualified, but less so than their peers from the racial majorities. But since they are essentially qualified to attend the school, they have an equal (statistical) chance of succeeding as any other admit, as beyond a certain point success indeed tends to be determined more by personal factors of speed or learning and dedication than any demonstration of aptitude at the end of high school.

At the top levels, it's simply a problem of too many qualified applicants. Ivy League schools (and MIT and Caltech) have two to four times as many fully qualified applicants as they have space for freshmen each year. How to determine between them? Sometimes, you can use tests but it's an inexact science. As I said in another topic, high schools and exams like the SAT are just too easy. 2400/4.0 students are a dime a dozen, and while truly spectacular qualifications (i.e. a gold medal in the IMO) turn heads, if I recall the admit rate among even IMO qualifiers to MIT was 33%. So schools get a PR boost, money boost, and feel better about themselves by creating feel-good stories of lifting poor kids out of poverty by giving them an Ivy League education, and by admitting legacy students and athletes to keep the cash pouring in. I'm not going to take a moral stance on this, but it is an undeniable fact about admissions these days. After the "backdoor" spots are sold, the remaining spots are so few that you might as well roll dice between the rich white/Asian applicants who all have 2400/4.0s, outstanding extracurriculars, stellar letters of recommendation, and the lot. I'm bitter as hell about it, but it's hard to gain perspective so shortly after having to deal with being discriminated against.

Yeah, it hurts.

@SiberianTiger
You don't prove by 'looking at the fact that few people transfer'. It is not a direct correlation, and thus not a proof. I am also naturally skeptical of anyone who would say so. You don't prove just by saying it. So no, your point not proven.

Although I'm offended at pointing out a certain Asian race such as Korean (partly due to the fact that I am Korean also.), there are bound to be people who do drop out. But you cannot say because they are not smart enough. Maybe it simply did not suit them, 'not fun', but certainly smart enough. Maybe the example you pulled had no tenacity, and there's also no way to prove that they've studied every minute of their life. (I certainly didn't. I live in Korea, and even the most hardworking people have time to relax and have fun.) And if that particular Korean didn't have enough lingual skills- then all the more harder, but still hard to prove he wasn't smart enough. He might've had inefficient methods, habits, complexes that could've led to his dropout. But that does not say he was not smart enough. So no, you do not even have a valid example.

I'm quite amused with Siberian. He acts like getting a +2300 on the SAT is unbelievable. I took it this year as a sophomore in HS and got a 2370. It's actually really easy.

I don't even know why the SATs matter, other than getting into your university of choice - which you might change your mind on later as something like half of college students do. I didn't need the SATs, I only took the ACTs. I did alright - just enough to get into my first and second choice, but I ended up hating my first choice and changing schools anyways.