To All the White Girls Who Didn't Get into the College of their Dreams
racialicious.com
racialicious.com
You don't need to blame affirmative action for that rejection. 2120 (~1410 on the older scale for people my age) was Duke/Cornell numbers back when I was applying to colleges a dozen years ago, and these days it's Berkely/Michigan/Virginia numbers. That's the nature of a system where populations grow but class sizes stay the same at top colleges. The other stuff is meaningless--you can easily inflate your way to a 4.0+ GPA these days now that schools have eagerly rushed to label everything AP, and being a Senate page just means you know a Senator (your parents being rich and living in D.C. is enough) .
I can't believe this kid got on T.V.
Completely agreed on the SAT score. I had a similar score (albeit a decade ago on the old system) and had the lowest SAT score out of all my friends at one of the supposed "elite" colleges.
I'm an alumni interviewer for my alma mater, and have seen candidates far more impressive than Ms. Weiss denied admission this year. I honestly don't think I'd get into my school today.
edit: I remember reading the article by Suzy Weiss and thinking that she was just being facetious. Was she actually serious about that article? Wow. Or I guess the more likely situation is that while the article is satire, her feelings and outrage are genuine.
It does underemphasize how much getting into a specific school is kind of a lottery even for the highly qualified. I knew plenty of people who applied to pretty much every top school, and got into some small number of them -- in some cases including their first choice. My sister applied to a bunch of highly ranked schools -- many rejected her, but she made it into Yale.
The somewhat arbitrary & capricious nature of admissions is part of what feeds into this whole complex the article discusses.
edit: you're right, this is a pretty good (and funny) article.
It is my hope that race based discrimination will soon be no more. Lots of important things coming up for SCOTUS, recently. Studies show that academic mismatch from race based discrimination actually hurts the minorities it is intended to help, so if race based discrimination is made illegal, then people of all races will be better off. Minority graduation rates will be much higher once we've gotten rid of it.
This seems to imply that college is supposed to be the sort-of "invisible hand" hand that makes the whole world equal. Just because your parents/grandparents endured some hardships because of a prejudice society, I'm not sure how that ties into college acceptance (or should at least).
If a person earned a 4.5 GPA, they earned a 4.5 GPA. If I earn a dollar, is my dollar less valuable than a black person's dollar? No because it's earned all the same. Maybe I don't have a car and have to bike to work in freezing weather, where the black person has a nice warm car. But when I try to buy a burger with that earned dollar, will I get a discount because it was a little harder for me to earn that dollar?
as far as the whole black/white thing, black people definitely still have to deal with the racism of past and present, and it's in our social structure and political structures and legal structures and economic structures and on and on. i certainly acknowledge it, but i still can't help but be annoyed by this article's presumption that white people just 'have it made'. bitch i didn't even dream of ivy league. local public college was the top of my scope of college ambition. stop worrying about the next person's lot and tend to your own.
in my experience, when i was rejected, i went on my own and proved that i can make it just fine without whatever organization/institution/group that rejected me - their loss! life is full of rejection, take it gracefully and show them up with your own accomplishments. the author of the article seems to hold that point of view so kudos to her. she gets it.
lastly i'll say no one cares what college you went to, and if they do - congratulations! you made your way into some elitist, 'exclusive' high society circle jerk. only thing that matters in this field (this is hacker news, right?) is skills, wherever you got em.
What do you think this is, the set of The Wire?
> this article's presumption that white people just 'have it made'. bitch i didn't even dream of ivy league
And you didn't address any point other than the diction in my delivery, so way to stay relevant, with your ad hominem, non sequitur, fallacious remark.
For your info, I wasn't referring to the author with the interjection. Get some culture.
The author might find the reason for her non-admission to Brown there.
The piece has some good ideas, but the racism is dialed up a bit high in there.
"Plus, in singling out diversity as your issue, you're eliminating half the college applying population from your debate. By your logic, if a white girl with your background doesn't get into an Ivy League college, it’s because there weren't enough spots for white students that year. But, if a non-white girl with an identical profile is rejected, who do they blame? No one."