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1 lostlakehiker  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 11:10:49am

We do in fact discount the fact of admission to a high-prestige college if the person who gained admission was eligible for `legacy' preference. We discount it if they were an athlete.

Quite properly and rationally, we use Bayesian statistical thinking: the conditional probability, given that person X was eligible for a preference unrelated to academic merit, that X was below average in the overall pool of persons admitted, is higher than 50 percent. The bigger the preference, the higher that probability.

This sort of thinking is logically correct, no matter the source of the preference.

Anyhow, the historical preference, back when, given students to the University of Arkansas because they were white is perhaps moot: nobody puts much stock in having gone to U of Ark anyhow.

(This is not to say that there are no good students from there. It's just to say that the mere fact of having got in doesn't cut much ice in the wider world.)

2 Obdicut  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 11:40:45am

re: #1 lostlakehiker

We do in fact discount the fact of admission to a high-prestige college if the person who gained admission was eligible for `legacy' preference. We discount it if they were an athlete.

No, we don't. Please back up this assertion.

3 Randall Gross  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 1:05:53pm

Speak for yourself and quit saying "we" like you know everyone else's motive. You do not.

4 Obdicut  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 2:29:28pm

re: #3 Randall Gross

Speak for yourself and quit saying "we" like you know everyone else's motive. You do not.

When you apply for a job, you don't note that you were a legacy admission or on a scholarship. What Lostlake is saying is just completely fucking false. Most graduate programs don't go into that level of detail, either.

5 hellosnackbar  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 3:52:38pm

My son applied to St John's college (Oxford) to do an engineering degree.
One member of the interviewing panel looked at his CV and asked him if he was ashamed to have had his early education in apartheid South Africa.
My son started to laugh and asked the idiot academic if ,as a seven year old ,he'd had any choice of where he was educated.
He followed up with the statement that institutionalised racism could never be justified!
He was rejected ;but went to Imperial College (London).
The very idea of affirmative action is the application of discrimination.
One's ethnic background should never be an issue!

6 Obdicut  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 3:54:30pm

re: #5 hellosnackbar

Can you please sum up what you think affirmative action is?

7 Prideful, Arrogant Marriage Equality Advocate  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 4:08:27pm

re: #4 Obdicut

I thought he was responding to Lost lake.

8 Prideful, Arrogant Marriage Equality Advocate  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 4:19:00pm

re: #6 Obdicut

re: #5 hellosnackbar

Sorry your son met a jack ass in another country. In America, I believe that man doing the interview could have gotten into a lot of trouble for saying those things in a place of public life.
However in America Affirmative action was put in place to fight discrimination! And it was, I am almost sure, never implemented to keep your son out of college in England!

9 EmmaAnne  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 4:28:15pm

re: #8 Prideful, Arrogant Marriage Equality Advocate

Sorry your son met a jack ass in another country. In America, I believe that man doing the interview could have gotten into a lot of trouble for saying those things in a place of public life.

Well, though, we are getting one side of the story third hand. That is the kind of exchange that is rife with miscommunication and exaggeration in the retelling.

10 EmmaAnne  Sat, Nov 17, 2012 4:30:34pm

My darling (and very white) husband went to an ivy league school as both a legacy and a beneficiary of geographical diversity (being from the west). He never has his admission questioned.

11 hellosnackbar  Sun, Nov 18, 2012 12:38:34am

Affirmative action as applied in South Africa was a system in which black Africans were awarded jobs even if white or ethnically Indian candidates were better qualified.
The whites referred to it as kafirmative action and were extremely pissed off that they for the first time were victims of ethnic discrimination.
There was never any possibility that my son would have been denied education(he had perfect entrance exam results).
But taking the piss out of some left wing halfwit academic illustrates how leftist arseholes discriminate against bright youngsters who are less than deferent to their stupid questions.

12 ReamWorks SKG  Sun, Nov 18, 2012 1:07:39am

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