How much does race affect admissions?

[pikey]

that assumes the same principle(s) are applied to all candidates, which I seriously doubt happens.  a white person, a URM, a poor person, and a legacy are each evaluted by different criteria... at least with the acknowledgement there isn't a universal yardstick for a cross comparison. 

The arguments proposed by those who attack AA often implicitly assume that admissions decisions are even across the border and that AA is the anomaly, when we all know that this isn't true.

my understanding is most schools with legacy admits also have URM boosts, so it's difficult to address that.  the only point in commenting is justifying a policy based on the illegitimacy of another policy just sticks out.  For example, I do support some URM boosts for diversity and representation reasons, but not on the basis of another wronged policy such as legacy admits.

I wasn't saying that AA is legitimate based on another wronged policy, I was pointing out the inconsistency of those who support and/or benefit from legacy policies who attack AA.

The arguments proposed ny those who attack

[merde]

Hummm, are you sure that "unless they have absolutely phenomenal connections no white male with a LSAT lower than 175 is getting into Yale", because I happen to know a few of them who got admitted with a 172, 170 and (gasp!)a 168 .  Oh and by the way, when schools publish their median LSATs and GPAs, it inherently means that some people will fall below and above that number. Sheeshhh, one would hope that someone planning on attending (or who is currently in) law school could figure that out, à moins que tu sois un imbécile, hein Merde?

You're right I should have said 170, my mistake. I don't know about the friend you're mentioning, but if you check LSN there isn't any nonURM admit with less than 170.
Really, there's no need to prove how correct you're screen name by including generally bitchy comments and poor french.

The reason most people don't get upset about legacy admissions is because legacy does not carry nearly as much weight as people argueing for AA like to assume. It's not a defining characteristic of an application and isn' going to get you an admit if you're numbers are below the school's average.

[pikey]

Hummm, are you sure that "unless they have absolutely phenomenal connections no white male with a LSAT lower than 175 is getting into Yale", because I happen to know a few of them who got admitted with a 172, 170 and (gasp!)a 168 .  Oh and by the way, when schools publish their median LSATs and GPAs, it inherently means that some people will fall below and above that number. Sheeshhh, one would hope that someone planning on attending (or who is currently in) law school could figure that out, à moins que tu sois un imbécile, hein Merde?

You're right I should have said 170, my mistake. I don't know about the friend you're mentioning, but if you check LSN there isn't any nonURM admit with less than 170.
Really, there's no need to prove how correct you're screen name by including generally bitchy comments and poor french.

The reason most people don't get upset about legacy admissions is because legacy does not carry nearly as much weight as people argueing for AA like to assume. It's not a defining characteristic of an application and isn' going to get you an admit if you're numbers are below the school's average.

Umm, obviously some people are getting in below the school's average.  That's why it's called an average.  There's still a good 25% of the class with stats lower than the median.

[J D]

Actually, I'm almost certain that half the class is below the median. 

[petitschoque]

Fincavigia, this is the second thread that I know of that you've started specifically about blacks and Affirmative Action. A few questions:

1. Are you somehow unaware of the fact that blacks aren't the only group to benefit from Affirmative Action? Hispanics and Native Americans also get a "boost" yet people like you never mention those two groups. Why is this?

2. What is your problem? I'm going to come right out and ask that instead of beating around the bush. Obviously it's not really Affirmative Action that bothers you since if it was the program, you'd have questions about all the recepients, not just blacks. And obviously you do have a problem since you keep starting threads. What is the nature and origin of this problem you have? And why don't you just come out and discuss it instead of starting trollish threads with loaded questions?

[philibusters]

From a marginal perspective its huge, less so from a lay person's perspective.  For example say you get an AA admit get into Harvard and Yale with a 164 3.6 (that actually would be a reach, but not a huge reach), most likely they would have got into neither without AA and thats what we focus on.  From a more distant view 164 is the 92% of LSAT and 3.6 usually puts you around the top 10% at most college, even with ones with grade inflation top 20% and it doesn't look like that much of a reach.  I picked those numbers too because they are the medians at the lawschool I go to and while I don't think many of my classmates would excel academcially at T14's, I don't think the majority of them would be fish out of water either.

[philibusters]

Fincavigia, this is the second thread that I know of that you've started specifically about blacks and Affirmative Action. A few questions:

1. Are you somehow unaware of the fact that blacks aren't the only group to benefit from Affirmative Action? Hispanics and Native Americans also get a "boost" yet people like you never mention those two groups. Why is this?

2. What is your problem? I'm going to come right out and ask that instead of beating around the bush. Obviously it's not really Affirmative Action that bothers you since if it was the program, you'd have questions about all the recepients, not just blacks. Obviously you do have a problem since you keep starting threads.

Haha, somebody else getting flack about starting to many AA threads, according to Red I  have started more AA threads than anybody else, 5, but I think that number is misleading because some of the threads like main purpose of higher education or only indirectly related to AA instead of directly related.

Edit:  I looked it up I only started 4, I am not sure if somebody else gave me the number 5 or I just made that up myself.

[dbgirl]

Obviously race is making a huge difference ... there's like, 6 black guys at my school!
I hear some schools have as many 16 blacks enrolled. 

[fincavigia]

I do start a lot of AA threads just because I think it's interesting and I like seeing what people have to say about it- by that I mean argue about it.

I ask loaded questions like this on purpose too to see what people think. That doesn't make me a racist. I am against AA, but it doesn't really bother me as much as my internet posting might indicate. I work a crappy job and I like having posts that a lot of people are actually interested in so there are responses for me to read.

And I'm not trolling, I've been on this site for a long time. I actually do like to hear what people say to these questions.

[John Galt]

http://a255.g.akamaitech.net/7/255/2422/19sep20050805/www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/judiciary/sh102-1084pt2/257-258.pdf

A generic but interesting read as to the evolution of affirmative action at Yale Law School.