At the elite colleges - dim white kids

At the elite colleges - dim white kids

 

Surf the websites of such institutions and you will find press releases boasting that they have increased their black and Hispanic enrollments, admitted bumper crops of National Merit scholars or became the destination of choice for hordes of high school valedictorians. Many are bragging about the large share of applicants they rejected, as a way of conveying to the world just how popular and selective they are.

What they almost never say is that many of the applicants who were rejected were far more qualified than those accepted. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, it was not the black and Hispanic beneficiaries of affirmative action, but the rich white kids with cash and connections who elbowed most of the worthier applicants aside.

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.

Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.

More at the link provided.

Comments

[brotherbrown]

I'm so glad my kids are well on their way to their degrees, because I get so tired of the affirmative action debate, which in terms of college admissions, always centers on the assumption that black students are inferior across the board from white students.

The college admissions process is inefficient, but in the long run, anyone who truly wants to go to college has avenues to get there. The longer you are away from college, the most important matter is that you earned a degree somewhere.

[Aaron]

Good post, keep up the good work DarkStar :-)