What irks me about AA

[adlai]

Well, okay, I've never met an URM who was so blatantly incompetent that I thought "he was under-qualified and got in only thanks to AA."

Most URM's I've met were competent enough for the organization... the difference lay in the financial aid given to them by the schools, scholarship funds and the like. Without AA, a large chunk of URM's could probably still be admitted, hell, given the large number of qualified applicants flooding top schools, admission is more or less arbitrary. And yes, I'm jealous of just about... everyone who gets a better deal than me. I do take issue with race being counted as diversity... imo you'll find greater diversity across class lines than you will across racial lines.

[MachuPicchu]

And yes, I'm jealous of just about... everyone who gets a better deal than me.

I tend to feel jealousy pangs only when the applicant with "the better deal" is of my exact same GPA/scores, ethnic and linguistic background, socio-economic and marital status, work experience/resume, volunteer experience, soft factors package, geographic location, and neighborhood growing up. Other than that, I recognize that somebody else got in or got a better fin-aid package precisely because they were different than me in some way, and that's why it doesn't bother me (or at least, I keep tellin' myself that  )

I do take issue with race being counted as diversity... imo you'll find greater diversity across class lines than you will across racial lines.

Socio-economic background and class are subsets of the larger "culture" umbrella. "Culture" has multiple (often intersecting) tentacles such as ethnicity, language or dialect or slang, class, socio-eocnomic status, geographic origin, nationality, shared interests, etc. etc. I agree that the best examples of diverse universities and law schools are those with a wide range of the above factors (a Scottish-American Calvinist from low-income Arkansas; the daughter of Guatemalan migrant workers; a Sikh South Asian prep school graduate, a semi-professional musician, a 45-year old atheist government worker, a transgendered overweight person, etc.) However, I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater and declare ethnicity/"race" a less helpful source of diversity just because there exist numerous other forms of cultural diversity and life experience, as well.

[t...]

And yes, I'm jealous of just about... everyone who gets a better deal than me.

I tend to feel jealousy pangs only when the applicant with "the better deal" is of my exact same GPA/scores, ethnic and linguistic background, socio-economic and marital status, work experience/resume, volunteer experience, soft factors package, geographic location, and neighborhood growing up...

I love it.

And word.