Diversity/College Admission/Financial aide
 

Well this has now come home to roost.

My daughter and a close friend of hers that is hispanic will part ways. My daughter is in the top 10 of her class, barely missed being a National Merit Semifinalist, and has lots of extracirricular activities. Her friend is exactly in the same situation. Both have very high SAT's.
Her friend has applied to Yale, Harvard, and Stanford. There is no doubt in my mind she will be accepted to one of these with financial aide. My daughter is bound and determined to go to one school, The University of Texas. (despite my efforts for her to look elsewhere). So all is good.

NOT QUITE:
My wife is livid. She claims that our daughter would never get into the schools that her friend applied to and my wife is most likely correct. And if my daughter did get in, we would have a few problems in that she would most likely NOT get financial aide.
Her friend has parents that are both doctors. They are extremely wealthy. Yet most likely they will be paying less for their daughter to go to an expensive private instituition, than my daughter will to go to a public institution. This is indeed in the name of diversity.

AFTERMATH:
This really does not bother me at all because my daughter will go where she wants to, UT. My view is that it will all come out in the wash and things will be fine for my daughter. But my wife does not see things my way at all... oh nooo... not at all. She must play the its not fair game.

Conclusion:
In our case, I dont feel it really matters, and that my wife is trying to keep up with the Jones' (Gonzalez's) when it really makes no sense in our case. But I can see how it might affect others. Yet the racial diversity across Universities has acutally decreased. It is very hard to find acceptable applicants of all ethnicities. And after reading the following (italicized), which I whole-heartedly agree with, the problem worsens between the have's and the have nots. And the problem is we apparently dont know how to identify have's and have nots. And more importantly, we dont know how to make this a fair blend with the diversity issue.

Intelligence, indisputably, is in part genetic; and every intelligence test shows a gap between black Americans and others. For a long time, scientific research wasn’t very good at explaining this gap. But it has gotten better lately. For one thing, the gap between white and black adults has narrowed significantly since 1970, according to work by the noted researchers William Dickens and James Flynn. Four decades is too short a time period for the gene pool to change, but it’s not too short for environment to improve. Most intriguing, Roland Fryer and Steven D. Levitt, two economists (the latter is one of this magazine’s Freakonomics columnists), have found there to be essentially no gap between 1-year-old white and black children of the same socioeconomic status.


I dont know how to solve the college admissions problem of diversity and equity.

I've had issues with that problem as well. Helping the already well off people from minority groups really isn't doing much to help their minority groups problems. It is finding the students that may not have had the opportunities growing up but have shown potential and could thrive in a better education system that should be the priority. And that should really be done regardless of anything but economic status.

yet another example of life not being fair. your daughter will do fine, and that's all that really matters.

Sure she will.

But what about my wife...

ask her if that's the hill she wants to die on?

You give such great advice Dannie.










( Yow.)

well heres hoping your daughter chooses an ivy league for post grad studies then

Does this mean you will help foot the bill?

I just want her to go to a good school where she wont come out with nothing. I went to UT for 4 years and then 2 more for graduate...

God help her.

Nah. She will be fine.
I just think about a kid
like her in the same situation
that might want to go to an
"elite" school.

She has gotten calls from 3 Div III basketball coaches though Seatlle. But only one of the schools is what I would consider academically secure. I am very proud to announce that she said no thanks in a polite manner. She clearly cant play at a Div. I school like UT unless she was on a practice squad. And she has no illusions about playing. Its a big fat NO in college. At least she has enough sense to move on. No glory days for her thankfully.

Another strange point of contention.
My choice would be she play intramurals.
My wife clearly wants her to play basketball
for a college. Go to Harvard and play basketball... righto.
My wife never played sports.

Normal college kid with time to study and time
to experience I say. Not on the same page with my
wife, but my daughter is on exactly the same sentence
with me. So I am a happy dad.

lol help foot the bill.. I was fortunate not to worry about not going to college because of not being able to pay. But if your kid gets into Harvard I mean why not go, I regret not going there for a Summer term where they apparently accept any college student with a 3.0 GPA. But as far as colleges go in Seattle the only major 2 besides UW are Seattle University and Seattle Pacific which are both private. In any case its probably nice your daughter is attending the same university you did.

Watch it!

Jerry is hornY!'

Pgardn; it's so interesting you posted this topic- slate ran an article on Albert Shanker (full disclosure: I'd never heard of the guy, and I've seen "Sleeper" a dozen times):

http://www.slate.com/id/2175023/

The article discusses a lot of what you brought up- that affirmative action would be more effective if applied according to economic class, not race. Good article and I think I may have to buy the book on Shanker.

(And Danzig, that's a great line. I'm going to start using it, especially in light of a stupid work situation that just won't go away.)