Gifted Bulletin Board

Welcome to the Gifted Issues Discussion Forum.

We invite you to share your experiences and to post information about advocacy, research and other gifted education issues on this free public discussion forum.
CLICK HERE to Log In. Click here for the Board Rules.

Links


Learn about Davidson Academy Online - for profoundly gifted students living anywhere in the U.S. & Canada.

The Davidson Institute is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted students through the following programs:

  • Fellows Scholarship
  • Young Scholars
  • Davidson Academy
  • THINK Summer Institute

  • Subscribe to the Davidson Institute's eNews-Update Newsletter >

    Free Gifted Resources & Guides >

    Who's Online Now
    0 members (), 167 guests, and 10 robots.
    Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
    Newest Members
    parentologyco, Smartlady60, petercgeelan, eterpstra, Valib90
    11,410 Registered Users
    March
    S M T W T F S
    1 2
    3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    10 11 12 13 14 15 16
    17 18 19 20 21 22 23
    24 25 26 27 28 29 30
    31
    Previous Thread
    Next Thread
    Print Thread
    Page 10 of 38 1 2 8 9 10 11 12 37 38
    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 2,639
    B
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    B
    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 2,639
    Originally Posted by ultramarina
    I figured my kids will possibly get in as "low SES" admits (well, really just "low E"). Whatever works.

    I don't think the most selective schools give preferences to low-SES whites:

    http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html
    How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others
    By Russell K. Nieli
    July 12, 2010

    Originally Posted by Nieli
    Espenshade and Radford also take up very thoroughly the question of "class based preferences" and what they find clearly shows a general disregard for improving the admission chances of poor and otherwise disadvantaged whites. Other studies, including a 2005 analysis of nineteen highly selective public and private universities by William Bowen, Martin Kurzweil, and Eugene Tobin, in their 2003 book, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, found very little if any advantage in the admissions process accorded to whites from economically or educationally disadvantaged families compared to whites from wealthier or better educated homes. Espenshade and Radford cite this study and summarize it as follows: "These researchers find that, for non-minority [i.e., white] applicants with the same SAT scores, there is no perceptible difference in admission chances between applicants from families in the bottom income quartile, applicants who would be the first in their families to attend college, and all other (non-minority) applicants from families at higher levels of socioeconomic status. When controls are added for other student and institutional characteristics, these authors find that "on an other-things-equal basis, [white] applicants from low-SES backgrounds, whether defined by family income or parental education, get essentially no break in the admissions process; they fare neither better nor worse than other [white] applicants."

    Distressing as many might consider this to be--since the same institutions that give no special consideration to poor white applicants boast about their commitment to "diversity" and give enormous admissions breaks to blacks, even to those from relatively affluent homes--Espenshade and Radford in their survey found the actual situation to be much more troubling. At the private institutions in their study whites from lower-class backgrounds incurred a huge admissions disadvantage not only in comparison to lower-class minority students, but compared to whites from middle-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds as well. The lower-class whites proved to be all-around losers. When equally matched for background factors (including SAT scores and high school GPAs), the better-off whites were more than three times as likely to be accepted as the poorest whites (.28 vs. .08 admissions probability). Having money in the family greatly improved a white applicant's admissions chances, lack of money greatly reduced it. The opposite class trend was seen among non-whites, where the poorer the applicant the greater the probability of acceptance when all other factors are taken into account. Class-based affirmative action does exist within the three non-white ethno-racial groupings, but among the whites the groups advanced are those with money.

    When lower-class whites are matched with lower-class blacks and other non-whites the degree of the non-white advantage becomes astronomical: lower-class Asian applicants are seven times as likely to be accepted to the competitive private institutions as similarly qualified whites, lower-class Hispanic applicants eight times as likely, and lower-class blacks ten times as likely. These are enormous differences and reflect the fact that lower-class whites were rarely accepted to the private institutions Espenshade and Radford surveyed. Their diversity-enhancement value was obviously rated very low.

    Joined: Mar 2013
    Posts: 1,489
    B
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    B
    Joined: Mar 2013
    Posts: 1,489
    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    Amy Chua's essay "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" struck a nerve because Chinese-American kids *are* over-represented at our elite universities and among science competition winners. If Chinese-American kids were underperforming, she would be ignored. I think Chinese outperformance partly results from a higher average IQ (some studies find 105), but few critics of Tiger Mothering want to consider that reason for outperformance.
    Being in the thick of this, out of 47 kids in my son's math class only 3 are Caucasian. (Not all are Asian-American but a large percentage.) One of the reasons is immigration policy. The PARENTS who are in this country are those who are bright and successful. The poor Chinese don't have a chance to immigrate. So many of these kids are bright, gifted and motivated.

    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Originally Posted by DAD22
    Originally Posted by ultramarina
    I hear all the time about what a different ballgame it is now than it was when we applied.

    I don't think we all applied at the same time. I applied to colleges in the late 1990's, not the 80's, for example.

    I applied in the early 90s, and I was already conscious of the arms race to the best universities. As a result, I did not apply. That's one part of the selection process for Ivies that often gets overlooked, which is that a great many top candidates opt out.

    I was not aware of loose parental morals for those participating in the arms race, but I was aware of overwhelming parental pressure at that time. My peers who were in the arms race were, as far as I knew, doing what they said they were doing, and suffering the consequences.

    I did get sought out specifically by my local UC, and it's entirely possible that they were coming to offer me a full ride, but I never heard them out because the idea of living at home and going to college locally was fairly abhorrent to me at the time, as "home" was not a healthy place. The UC sought me based on a practice college admissions essay they were providing to high school juniors, so it was a proctored thing they just happened to get to see from me.

    Otherwise, there was nothing on my application to mark me as unusual in any way. For example, there's no way for the school to know whether I got a B in math because it was my best effort, or if it was because I decided that five hours of homework a week was unnecessary. My credentials were clearly good enough to show I'd be successful anywhere I went, but they didn't have that extra something.

    I was accepted everywhere I applied, but the financial aid packages offered were fairly pathetic. It didn't help that we were a very low SES family for all but about three years of my life to that point, and that the plant where my mom was working for those was scheduled to close during my senior year of high school. This meant I'd be returned to low SES just in time for college, but all my financial aid applications required the numbers from the previous year, an extraordinarily rare good one. I'd been told all my life that if I got good grades, I'd get scholarships. So much for that.

    I decided not to be responsible for liquidating my mom's entire severance package, which is what it would have taken to attend the modestly-priced Cal State just out of commuting range, and so, after a year of trying and failing to work my way through college during the early 90's financial collapse ... anchors aweigh.

    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 3,428
    U
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    U
    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 3,428
    I hadn't thought about the international angle. The piece about UW is certainly sobering.

    Quote
    In other words, it isn't just the US population expansion which is fueling this trend. It's that US residents are often competing for FEWER spots at top universities, among a cohort which has easily tripled in size.

    So you're saying that there are 3 times as many strong applicants as there used to be, or that 3 times as many students apply, or...? Are there numbers on this anywhere? I'm not intending to sound challenging. I'm just interested in the hard numbers...

    Quote
    I don't think we all applied at the same time. I applied to colleges in the late 1990's, not the 80's, for example.

    True. (I went to college in the '90s as well. From what everyone seems to say, I'd be lucky to get into Podunk College now. I actually didn't take any science classes my last two years of HS, and I never took calculus. I didn't take every AP class I was eligible for. Not much on leadership, either, though I had some unusual extracurriculars.) I suppose this also makes one ask: WHEN did this change? Was it gradual, or more sudden?

    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    My peers who were in the arms race were, as far as I knew, doing what they said they were doing, and suffering the consequences

    Yes. I was already in higher ed at the time, and this is exactly what I'd have said, too-- that in the mid-90's, most of the kids who were being pressured/groomed were REALLY doing what was on their resumes.

    Now, though? Not always. It's been an escalation that I watched with dawning horror while I was in the classroom and laboratory, and one that I've continued to witness living in a university town-- some parents have jumped the shark to such an extent that they really-- and I mean, really-- don't care about the means anymore as long as the outcome is as planned.

    Before, they were willing to sacrifice their own kids, but not their principles or anyone else's kids. Now? All bets are off for some of them.



    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Oct 2011
    Posts: 2,856
    Originally Posted by bluemagic
    Being in the thick of this, out of 47 kids in my son's math class only 3 are Caucasian. (Not all are Asian-American but a large percentage.) One of the reasons is immigration policy. The PARENTS who are in this country are those who are bright and successful. The poor Chinese don't have a chance to immigrate. So many of these kids are bright, gifted and motivated.

    My high school AP Calculus teacher (known as Calc II in some school systems) was the one teacher I've met who fits the caricature of the highly-tenured, poorly-motivated, union-protected teacher. There were only about 10 of us in the class to start with, and only 3 of us were actually keeping up with the material. They were all getting help at home, because their parents knew the material.

    They were also all Asian.

    I dropped the course at the semester break. Clearly the teacher was grading on a steep curve, because I got a B. My test scores started out well because the first few weeks of a new math class are mostly review. My last test score was in the teens.

    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Originally Posted by ultramarina
    Are there numbers on this anywhere? I'm not intending to sound challenging. I'm just interested in the hard numbers...

    I'm interested in them, too-- the problem is that I don't think that anyone in a position to pay for the study WANTS to know or publish them. I'm not usually much of a conspiracy theorist, but in this instance, it would seriously damage the machine to be honest about this situation, I think anyone can see.

    If one assumes that population growth has resulted in a doubling of the graduating high schoolers in the United States, and that the top three quartiles are being encouraged to immediately apply to colleges (yes, as in plural), I'm estimating that 3X is a highly conservative estimate of the increase from a timepoint during the Reagan administration.



    Remember, that was pre-ADA, it was also at a time when manufacturing jobs were plentiful and well-compensated (well, relative to today, anyhow), and therefore, there was not a national push toward higher ed to begin with.

    I think that the shift has been fairly gradual.

    I do recall that of my 300 graduating classmates, only 2/3rds planned any kind of higher ed at all-- and I went to an "excellent" public high school. A few of my classmates went on to Ivies, but they were solidly UMC and up. The rest of us sort of accepted that Brown or Harvard were probably pipe dreams, no matter whether or not we could get IN.

    (For the reason that Dude mentions-- it would have bankrupted our parents.)


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posts: 2,007
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posts: 2,007
    Originally Posted by Dude
    I dropped the course at the semester break. Clearly the teacher was grading on a steep curve, because I got a B. My test scores started out well because the first few weeks of a new math class are mostly review. My last test score was in the teens.

    That only happened to me when I took differential equations in college.

    I never did get to the point of actually understanding what I was doing, but my "brute force hack" method allowed me to pass the class somehow.

    In fact, I still don't know how I passed any of my upper level engineering classes since I specifically recall having absolutely no idea what I was doing.

    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 3,428
    U
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    U
    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 3,428

    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Interesting piece, which I agree with in its details, but perhaps not-- quite-- in its conclusions.

    This explains a few things, though--

    Quote
    Edmonds is a vice president of research and development at Noodle.org, an education company that helps high school students with the college search and preparation process. The views expressed are solely his own.



    In other words, OF COURSE he wants parents to keep their kids applying to those 'highly selective' colleges. And most of all, to prepare well for that process. wink





    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
    Page 10 of 38 1 2 8 9 10 11 12 37 38

    Moderated by  M-Moderator 

    Link Copied to Clipboard
    Recent Posts
    Testing with accommodations
    by aeh - 03/27/24 01:58 PM
    Quotations that resonate with gifted people
    by indigo - 03/27/24 12:38 PM
    For those interested in astronomy, eclipses...
    by indigo - 03/23/24 06:11 PM
    California Tries to Close the Gap in Math
    by thx1138 - 03/22/24 03:43 AM
    Gifted kids in Illinois. Recommendations?
    by indigo - 03/20/24 05:41 AM
    Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5