the Sam Jackson College Experience

This is a ‘part 1′ because this is a very big very thorny issue which concerns affirmative action and much more. As such I will in the near future be writing a ‘part 2′ which directly addresses any AA-related concerns I’m having about this topic here… but for now, my understanding of the issue:

Pulitzer prize winner Daniel Golden wrote a piece about “whether elite colleges give Asian-American students a fair shake” in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. It focused specifically on the case of one Jian Li, a Chinese permanent legal resident who went to a NJ public school having emigrated at age 4. Mr. Li recently filed a complaint against Princeton University for rejecting him through the Dept. Education’s Office for Civil Rights; he is currently a freshman at Yale. (n.b., this is not a tort case, it is a complaint about what Li feels was discrimination.)

This is an issue that throws a lot of people off sometimes, because some people confuse a) Affirmative action with b) race-based discrimination. Private universities in the United States are not required to have the same ‘objective’ qualifications that businesses or real estate have; race discrimination is only happening if there a pattern (in this case acceptance / rejection) unique to one race or ethnicity on the basis of unfair (nonstandard) comparisons–hence the problem with Berkeley’s law program back in the early 90s, which took Asians out of the general pool and compared them against each other.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ms. Jacinda Ojeda gave a quick information session yesterday afternoon, but I don’t have very much to say about; I had hoped to ask some questions but there wasn’t really any time for me to do so. She is the new reader for Exeter (and also reads for Maine, NH, VT, RI, and Delaware–web says Conn too.), so I had hoped to of course stun her with my very excellent questions. It was a half-hour wedged in during Universal Free after sports but before G period; I couldn’t be late to Mr. Vorkink’s existentialism class–that wouldn’t have gone over very well at all.

My unasked question?

“How do students deal with the confluence of preprofessionals–engineering, nursing, Wharton–and plain ‘ol liberal arts undergraduates?”

When I was at UPenn, I was blown away by the zeal which the school seemed to have for interdisciplinary work, so I was really enticed. After talking to Ms. Dolan, I realized that there could be some stratification or at least unpleasantries in being surrounded by people heading all off in specific directions, rather than going towards the broader-based education I would be looking to have. Obviously I would still have a perfectly great education–that’s not the issue. It’s always an issue of people, and in this case, whether I would want to surround myself with so many preprofessionals.

There were some very encouraging words about public transportation in West Philadelphia–buses, trains and such. I had wanted to ask how the new big extension Penn is working on would affect me if I were to apply and matriculate.

I’m still interested in the very selective, very rigorous, very neat Huntsman, Jerome Fisher dual degree programs; I also heard for the first time about the Vagelos program which is Life Sciences + Management but one degree. You choose to have either a Wharton stamp or College stamp depending on where you focus more of your time. That sounded pretty neat and I know my Dad would love for me to do that… it did sound intriguing.

The talk of tech transfer was interesting in light of recent studies (or at least Chronicle articles) suggesting it might not be all that great for most schools.

So what if I’m on vacation? I can still make a light post. Here goes.

Columbia and UPenn are going to be taking the common app soon–a logical step to get more applications and from that, more rejections. Penn will start in Fall 2007; Columbia is not very specific about when they will begin, but “very soon.” Columbia was a near second to Yale this year in terms of percentage rejected accepted; with the additional applicants this move will bring, things could get interesting! UPenn will get a cute prestige boost from rejecting more of these new applicants too, of course. Here’s the article from Bloomberg which tipped me off:

Columbia, Penn, in Seeking Broader Pool, Make Admission Tougher
By Emily Sachar ~ Bloomberg

Aug. 24 — It’s about to get harder to get into Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, as both schools begin accepting the common application for undergraduate admissions. That leaves Brown University as the only Ivy League college that does not.

Accepting the common app, as it is widely known, generally increases the number of applicants by making the process easier. Pennsylvania, founded in Philadelphia in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin, expects the percentage of applicants admitted now to drop to 12 percent from the current 17 percent, said Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson. Columbia declined to provide comparable numbers.

Penn’s goal is to attract up to 2,000 low-income applicants along with the roughly 21,000 others expected to seek admission for Fall 2007, Stetson said. “We’re broadening our market,” he said in a telephone interview, with applicants who “because either they can’t afford it or thought they couldn’t afford it or thought the application was too tough to complete” didn’t apply.

Personally I’m not really sure why a school taking the common app makes people feel like they should suddenly apply; it really doesn’t save all that much time given all these supplements. For those who apply to schools which don’t have supplements to the common app, though, it’s pretty awesome. Of the 298 schools that accept the common app, I’m not sure how many don’t have supplements…

Read the rest of this entry »