I'm a high school senior, and following college application process, I'm beginning to realize how terrible the admission system is.

If you follow this link, you'll find a rubric for UC San Diego's 2009 College Admission process.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AgZdcuCvC25ncEtCMXlENWlRbl84d3FINWJoTWtoWnc&gid=0

What I am wondering is why Income, Educational Environment, First Generation, and Special Challenges are taken into consideration for prospective students. I argue that since a student is incapable of controlling such areas, the colleges are discriminating. A person cannot choose to experience some traumatic event in their life, so why should someone who does get brownie points. Sure they may have had it tough, but why should they be treated differently than you, ultimately the student who will contribute most SHOULD get accepted, not who has had the hardest time. Work hard to be successful, some have to work less hard, probably because their parents worked their asses off to ensure security for their children, but this is just how it will be. What I am mostly disgusted by is that people are recieving points for something that is uncontrollable, which in other words, results in inequality of opportunity. I should not be rewarded less points just because I'm the first generation college student, or because the environment I grew up in is not conducive to learning. I did not choose to be born to a family that is economically stable. Am I doomed because of chance?

I might be wrong, but it looks like these are for scholarships. Those in harder environments that still pursue a college education can receive rewards for their efforts.

Colleges aren't concerned with things such as your family's income as long as you're qualified to take out the loans necessary to pay the tuition.

Yeah I didn't have to fill any of that out when I applied to the UC system, so I don't think that is part of admissions.

I can also start a Google Doc rubric and post it as fact, btw. Where'd you find this link?

No, you do not fill this out, this is the 2009 rubric for the college, the college assigns points based on the following categories to determine admission.

I get some of my facts/information from:

www.collegeconfidential.com/
collegeprowler.com/

I don't exactly remember where I found this document, except that I emailed it to myself.

k, let me rephrase that.

I don't remember filling out some things listed on there (that would eventually be used on such a fine score sheet at the UC admissions facility) when I applied for the UC system. Cool.

So again, where did the link come from?

EDIT:
Alright, answered by editing.

I question the legitimacy of that link is for a couple of reasons.
1. I know some people who do college admissions, and they say your essay, grades, and extracurriculars weigh more than most of the stuff listed on that Google Doc spreadsheet. Unless you specifically mention a death in the family or something, I don't see how they would know about that.
2. It is a Google Doc spreadsheet.

EDIT2:
This topic seems to all be based on the assumption that the Google Doc spreadsheet is real, and actually what admissions are based on. I don't think anyone would argue against what you're saying because you're right, those things shouldn't be a factor, and because they probably aren't factors.

My senior year of high school I had two friends that applied to UCLA. One lived in a super low income household, wrote an exceptional essay, and had a 2.9 GPA. The other lived in a high income family, wrote an average essay, and had a 3.4 GPA. The first friend got in, not the second.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 18 2011, 10:26 pm by DevliN.

Supplements and Essay

EDIT:
Here be the link:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-general/608088-estimate-your-admissions-decision-ucsd.html

EDIT2:

The 2nd probably didn't get in because of the major he chose. An engineer major is treated with much more scrunity than is a english major, which is completely retarded. I got rejected from UCLA with over a 4.1 because I chose engineering while a girl at my school, who had on the down side of a 3.0 got in for freaking majoring in Archaeology.. lol

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 18 2011, 10:30 pm by Vortex-.

Neither of them chose a major that early.

Yea, that was probably smart to go undeclared. I really only care about getting into UCSD, my friend, who is like 1/4 or less hispanic, got in there, but he had a worse essay, worse grades, worse test scores. I say this because I'm guessing the only reason he got accepted was because he's an URM (Under-represented minority).

Universities do have a racial quota afterall.

Of course they do. If they don't reach quotas, then they're racist.

Blame the ADA (american with disabilities act) and affirmative action. Congratulations, your government decided that poor minorities deserve a better shot at college than you!

Actually racial quotas were determined to be unconstitutional in the supreme court, but the rules specified that they still had to comply with affirmative action, but that they could not "quantify" it in any meaningful way. For example, the college in the court case had a points system where minorities recieved free points for admission, then the rest was based off of grades/activities ect. The idea behind affirmative action that you mentioned sorta, is that "inequality of opportunity" already exists, so affirmative action tries to correct it. Personally I think it's bullshit, since the only people it will help are those people who dragged their asses out of the gutter and go to school anyway.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 19 2011, 12:23 am by Vrael.

Affirmative Action, legally, was enacted so that organizations that wronged races or others in the past could make it up by giving them a leg up now. It was a program made to be terminated, but if a company says "you know what, we did enough, let's get rid of it," suddenly they'll be more racist than organizations that never used affirmative action.

I don't believe in hipocrisy, irony, or contradiction. It's simply a way to muddle causation and historical responsibility and to make everything a wash.

Think of Einstein's theory of relativity. When 2 spaceships are traveling at near speed of light parallel to each other, and one of them fires a laser to the other, then would the laser travel faster than speed of light (as per pythagorem's theorem) or maintain its speed at speed of light (since speed cannot surpass c)? The correct answer is the latter, and, yes, it's contradictory, but should you get frustrated or obsessive about it? Why care about beyond recognizing this as a mathematically sound phenomenon (given that speed = or < c)?

The statistical irony is this (yes I don't believe in irony, so the irony of my using irony doesn't apply). The white kids who are better off and attend elite private schools and colleges are less likely to be prejudiced than their middle to lower class white peers. (I don't have a book with me right now, so I'm going to extrapolate from my own experience and informal knowledge.) The latter group will be more likely to be prejudiced due to their perceived competition with the minorities, in terms of jobs and opportunities as well as outsourcing of jobs to poorer nations. But I think their prejudice is mostly caused by their lack of education and inability to think critically. Think for example of the loss of manufacturing jobs in the States. Are China and India really to blame ... for being China and India (being poor)? Or should we blame the corporate boards, short-term investors, and the stubborn ideological bent against labor movements in the US? Because really jobs don't really have to move overseas... if the decision isn't made to move them. But outsourcing of jobs is a good counter against labor unions because it frames the labor debate from what was "we're being overworked and not being paid sufficiently" to "how can we keep our jobs" and "how does US reduce job loss by becoming more competitive?" The job loss is described as some sort of a natural phenomenon rooted in the West's decline and the shift to a multipolar world, although it has very little to do with national competitiveness, and capitalism is not in fact immune to nationalism. Lower and middle class whites also feel immigrants are stealing their jobs on their home soil, even though they would be unwilling to work the same jobs if offered to them. Then they look to white collar jobs and college education and cry foul and blame all of their failures and mediocrity in life to affirmative action and other relics of this country's racist past.

Even though the racial situation has been getting better in the US, racism structurally exists in terms of residential segregation. Overwhelming number of statistics after statistics have been produced and thrown en masse into the academic debate, proving systemic discrimination in the housing market and the disadvantageous socioeconomic effects of living in worse neighborhoods (resulting from "white flight"). This is why even though inner city blacks and whites live in the same country, they speak different tongues, which is known as "language shift." Then the inner city blacks who are so culturally isolated and demoralized by the dominant white consumer culture and media are blamed and discriminated for not speaking and thinking like their white peers, which is systematically perpetuated in the social norms and institutions such as the workplace, the schools, and the SAT among other things.

This is where affirmative action comes in.

Let me tell you this about affirmative action. AA can only help. It doesn't hurt. Why? Because if a disadvantaged inner city black does above average, s/he has done phenomenally by proving his/her potential to overcome obstacles. Because even if Asian kids under the spell of their hypercompetitive parents get into Ivy League schools, they will end up dropping out if they can't keep up with the schoolwork after having put on the best show of their life in high school. Even if one were to graduate, without good grades, s/he can't get into grad school. Just graduating college doesn't help minorities in many cases if they have hard time fitting into the mainstream culture and lack the necessary social skills to survive the competition, and so a lot of them end up going back home and working at their parents' cleaner shops or gas stations. Also, for certain minorities the competition is much more difficult because they have to compete among themselves. Competitive applicants of certain nationality or ethnicity are so numerous that some colleges no longer consider them as disadvantaged and set the bar to allow rooms for other minorities. Plus there are so many great colleges in the US, it's so much easier to get into one, no matter what your situation or excuse is, compared to other countries in Europe or East Asia that are hypercompetitive.

Don't blame others for your mediocrity. Even from a state school one can transfer to or apply for grad at ivy schools or med school with good grades. All this points to this. Not getting into an elite university is not a chance lost. And people who got in did not get something they didn't deserve. It's simply who they are. The very obsession with getting into a good college is a very artificialand unnecessary question. If you are a good student, you don't need to commit yourself to get into a good schoo because the process is quite natural. A lot of people in my high school class hated studying, but they breezed through their SAT's and ACT's with 33s and 2200s. My little brother played 5 hours of games the night before his SAT, and he never studied, but he got 2300+, near perfect score, and his IQ is 160+. Unless you are someone like him, you are going to suck and fail out, or take all english lit and psychology classes and waste all tuition money, if you got into a good school. You are going to be staring at your calculus and physics problems blankly like you'd into a wall for hours on without being able to figure out absolutely anything. Ok sure, if you're lucky you might manage to graduate with mediocre grades and a bachelor's in chemical engineering. But if you can't go beyond what you were challenged in high chool and college, and you can't move onto the next level in grad school or your workplace, there's no point in having put on the best show of your life and forcibly producing superficial results.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 19 2011, 4:49 am by SiberianTiger.

I think its good for diversity so it makes it easier for them to pick you. If you don't make it in you could always go to community college and tag your way in.
(If you do make it in, learn to skateboard or bike, as getting to class takes forever here at UCSD )

Ok Mr. Tiger, first off your einstein crap is completely wrong and misleading. Unlike the speed of light, college admissions is a relevant event in the lives of a shitload of people. If you're going to fret over something, getting into a good college is a good choice. Now I agree, not getting into an Ivy or Caltech ect. isn't the end of the world, but there's no reason not to strive for it, and there is plenty of reason to be angry that the government mandated discrimination on the basis of race, when so many things nowadays bear the words "shall not discriminate upon the basis of race, sex, national origin, sexual orientation,. . ." Not having an IQ of 160 also doesn't mean you can't get a 2400 SAT or do well in an Ivy league school. (On a slightly unrelated note, if your brother's IQ really is 160 or above I hope to hear his name on some famous law of science someday). Plenty of people are intelligent without being super gifted and do well at top universities, that's what that little activity called "studying" is for.

Secondly, Vortex- is applying to colleges now, not whining about how he's mediocre. Get the fuck off your horse and come play in the sandbox with the rest of us kiddies.

Edit:

Third, affirmative action doesn't help inner city blacks (or other racial minorities), except for the ones who don't need help already. If an inner city black makes it to the point where he's applying for college, that means he's gone through all his schoolwork and taken the care to get ahead, which means he's the kind of kid who's going to do fine anyway. Then the ones that "need" help are the ones cutting class, not giving a shit in general, and easier entrance to colleges isn't going to help them because they never get to the point where they're going to college. Affirmative Action should be scrapped and any funding it has right now should be redirected into actually helping these poor bastards. More teachers, school security, social workers, real shit.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 19 2011, 8:06 am by Vrael.

Yeah, Tiger... that made my head hurt. Affirmative action does nothing but artifically inflate the mediocre/less interested. I applied to several REUs, and the vast majority of those I saw had something along the lines of "minorities and women encouraged to apply" (and some seemed to be nothing but minorities and women). Maybe... women are less interested in being engineers? The artificial inflation doesn't correct anything because, as Vrael said, at the point of applying for college (or anything else after that), the person is likely out of the gutter.

His brother probably got the 160 on some internet test. I got a 180 once.

There are many ways that your friend was accepted. Perhaps he was rewarded a scholarship, kept getting grants, worked on FAFSA and Financial Aid, or he went to City College for two years and transferred to a UC. Many people from low-income families would take full advantage of those programs.

If Vortex is striving to get into Ivy or Caltech, he should get in. Really he should try. And even if he doesn't get in, he probably will get into a second tier college like ucla in trying. Don't complain if your sat is 2000 and have an overinflated gpa of 3.6 from a public school.

Should I copy paste what I wrote above? You can try, but there's no need to get angry about affirmative action or if you don't get in to the top schools yourself. There are so many options and second chances for those who are capable. People who aren't smart enough are going to drop out. And getting into a good school is not the hardest thing especially in this country. The real hard part is actually graduating with good grades, which has nothing to do with affirmative action and would be in fact easier to accomplish at an easier college.

I don't know what you are complaining about. What colleges are you aiming for because unmotivated inner city blacks are definitely not going to get into ivy or new ivies. At best they will get into state schools or community colleges. A good evidence of how blacks get into the right school is that they easily fit in and keep up in elite schools, whereas asians don't fit in and can't keep up and have to move within their own groups on campus. It's interesting to observe how asians who were better academic candidates are more isolated than their black peers.

Affirmative action IS NOT discriminatory, given discrimination and other socioeconomic disdavantages clearly exist for minorities who are isolated from the mainstream white culture and discouraged by racial stereotypes and social barriers. A bad analogy would be a robber who was caught complaining that he's being robbed as the stuffs he stole are being returned. Again I don't recognize irony or contradiction, only causation, sequence of events, weight of the consequences, and historical responsibility.

And no my little brother took a legit iq test offered to him by his school because the teachers felt he was special. Good luck getting above 2300 sat on single sitting yourself if you got 180. But don't cheat by actually studying or going to asian cram school. His friends went to cram schools and studied 4 hours a day on sat still got less than 2100 (combined score, highest of each sections from multiple tests).. SAT is sort of like an iq test, so it really doesn't help to study beyond a certain point.

Then you must never have taken SAT or didn't know what was going on while taking it. You could really try with superhuman work ethics like the other billion Asians 3000+ miles away, and you might max out at a combined score of less than 2200 if you were to take SAT 5 different times. And, no, this idea that if you try anything is possible is partially a myth, although it's a useful principle to promote good work ethics and self-helping habits. Sure you can put on the best show of your life in high school, since algebra geometry and physics are easy enough to be handled by efforts alone, and force your way into ivy. Then your iq will max out and you won't be able to handle MTH 173Q or PHY 255. You won't even be able to manage history and english courses where you have to finish a 500 pg worth of book or pdf every week per class. You have to read like this, although not aloud all the time:

http://debatevideoupload.blogspot.com/2007/04/rd2miamimvvdartmouthco1ncmp4.html
http://debatevideoupload.blogspot.com/2007/03/finalsdartmouthcovoklahomacj2acmp4.html

There are a ton of Koreans who did exactly what you described, getting 2200 sat and superinflated gpa from public school, and failed out from ivy.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=faec4312db29f91576aed0e7af634d3f

If you're white, you still have better chance of getting into ivy than an Asian.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/10/12/24103/

Post has been edited 8 time(s), last time on Mar 19 2011, 7:53 pm by SiberianTiger.

@Siberian

I am in no way mediocre. What I am saying is that economic status is not a choice given to a child when he is born, if a child is born into poverty, he just is; if a child is born into wealth, he just is. What this means is that if the child born into poverty wants to transcend economic boundaries then he will have to work much harder. How the fuck does it make sense to give someone who had a hard time a pat on the back and a slice of pie? I'm sure the parents of the wealth couple worked their asses off to get where they are. Equal opportunity not equal result.

@KrayZee

My friend is in my class, he's a senior in HS, got one scholarship for something(by the way all the scholarships given out at my school were given to all the hispanics, not one white person got it), he has lower GPA than mine, lower SAT, no work experience(while I have two internships, one mechanical engineer, and the other electrical, at a legit Fortune 500 company), he has done so much less to contribute back into the community; for example I serve at the local Braille Institute with the blind. Damn quotas.

I know what I want to do in life, and would kill for the opportunity to study at such a university, unlike some idiot who has no clue what they do and chooses english as a major or some garbage thing like communications. How is getting an english major going to solve an energy crisis? The admission process is just very impersonal.

well it depends where you get the scholarship. did you apply to the same schools? do you want to go there? I could have easily gotten a scholarship from my state university simply by filling in the bubbles on SAT, but I didn't want to go there.

don't compare yourself with others. why would a university pick every one of its candidates as engineering majors?

colleges have different scholarship programs for different departments.

it's like complaining that you got rejected from nyu premed while someone else got into nyu art school.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 19 2011, 7:23 pm by SiberianTiger.