Sunday, March 24, 2019







Why the mystique of elite college admissions really does matter

When college admissions and their power to corrupt a certain class of Americans dominates the national conversation, everyone has something to say. One common and acceptable reaction is to condemn the unsurprising unfairness of it all. Another is to inform the world that there are those of us who were admitted to good schools the old-fashioned way, whatever that means. Others still — the optimists among us — issue a call to reform the crooked culture that inflates these institutions’ social capital. As if their prestige could be cut down by joint decree.

The one thing we don’t say — at least not right away, or not out loud — is that elite colleges aren’t actually overvalued. They can’t be, when you consider what the eight Ivies and equivalent colleges like Williams, Stanford, and the University of Chicago actually do. They collect the brightest and hardest-working crop of a generation on the cusp of adulthood and clump them together into an anxious mass, then expose them to social and intellectual stimuli more intensely concentrated than they’ll ever get again.

Even the experience of being admitted hits a high school senior like a religious conversion. It changes her. As it should. Because what are these places if not sacred sites? They’re over-brimming with America’s holiest stuff: raw human potential. No other secular institution approaches an elite college’s ability to force smart, driven people to focus so singularly on the problem of what they’re meant to be doing on this earth.

The actual work of college is older than the liberal arts. It’s the project of becoming yourself. Marinating in poetry and history helps, but so does the mystique of competitive admissions. Collectively buying the hype, once you’re in, that you and your cohort of nervous grade-grubbing solipsists are somehow exceptional can even be good for humanity. Because, for better or worse, the more exclusive your college, the likelier you are to hold yourself to a terrible standard of excellence that only grows from the “what now?” moment after the Common App website delivers the good news.

None of this is to say that actresses, hedge funders, and mid-level magnates are justified in their crimes against the meritocratic admissions system and its honest participants. If the colleges William Singer, his cronies, and clients defrauded want to preserve their invaluable mystique in the wake of the Operation Blue Varsity indictments, they can only expel those parents’ kids. Let them reapply, if they care to, clean. But if the indictments teach us anything, it should be that the mystique actually is worth the actual price of admission. A price obviously much higher than what the “side-door” scammers paid — and, yes, even higher than what the “back-door” scammers, a.k.a. the multimillion-dollar donors, shell out every year to actually inconsistent effect.

Everyone who idolizes the Ivy League and comparable colleges buys into the mystique — and, I’d argue, they’re owed something in return: consistently excellent graduates prepared to bring their gifts out into the world. When they fail to do so, the colleges cheapen their own mystique. And effectively default on their debt to everyone who fell for it in the first place.

William Deresiewicz’s “Excellent Sheep” came out shortly after I graduated, and its arguments have resurfaced since last week’s news. The mystique wasn’t paying out, he basically argued. As an albeit Ivy-pedigreed indictment of elite higher education, it rang mostly true: I’d seen the best minds of my generation competing for entry-level comp at a handful of elite hedge funds, investment banks, and financial firms. Deresiewicz’s critiques carried an undercurrent of insidery anti-snobbery and were so self-consciously damning that the reforms he proposed in response seemed limply obvious by comparison.

But he was right that graduates of elite colleges too often wind up zombified, trapped in a cycle of high achievement and low return. Once they’ve made enough money to send their future children to fancy colleges — if they can get them accepted, that is — it won’t actually be enough. Because status-seeking, like any addiction, leaves the seeker unfulfilled.

But what was lost in the ensuing debate back then, and again now, is that there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to attend an elite college. As a motivating ambition, there’s a lot more that’s right about it. When these colleges fail to individuate their flocks, though, it’s clear something’s missing. A top-notch faculty and world-class resources aren’t the only, or even the most important, ingredients in an elite education actually worthy of the mystique. Too often, students who’ve spent so long on the academic grind won’t stop long enough to take a look around once they get where they thought they were going. In reality, wasting time at a great school — time made meaningful by the history and pathos of the place, and the thrill of figuring out, in such rigorously curated company, who you want to be — is more worthwhile than time spent at the same school grinding toward the next status-marking achievement.

The more bright young people there are actively wondering who they’re going to be, and why it matters, then the better off society will be: Because the ultimate answers always have something to do with giving of oneself to the world. If we’re going to keep buying the mystique, and we inevitably are, we’re right — being citizens of that world — to expect a return on our investment.

SOURCE 






Asian students received most offers to NYC's elite high schools

Asian students again dominated the city’s specialized high school admissions this year, accounting for 51.1 percent of all offers, the Department of Education announced Monday.

A total of 27,521 applicants took the admissions exam for the elite high schools, with 4,798 scoring high enough to secure a seat.

Asian students accounted for 2,450 of those coveted offers. At 28.5 percent, white applicants had the next-highest share of specialized high school seats, with 1,368.

Hispanic kids received 316 offers for a 6.6 percent share, and black students got 190 spots for a 4 percent share.

Those racial proportions were largely unchanged from last year, according to the Department of Education.

While Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza congratulated those who were admitted this year, he pointedly reiterated his opposition to the current single-test admissions structure Monday.

“I share the excitement of students and families receiving high school offers today,” Carranza said in a statement accompanying the new figures.

But Carranza then noted the low acceptance rates for black and Latino kids — and demanded changes to the admissions process.

“We’re also once again confronted by an unacceptable status quo at our specialized high schools,” his statement continued. “We need to eliminate the single test for specialized high school admissions now.”

While the figures released Monday largely mirrored prior years, the total number of offers decreased by several hundred.

That’s because of the DOE’s expansion of its Discovery program, which gives offers to low-income kids who score just below the test-score cutoff for admission.

There were 5,067 specialized high school offers in the first round of offers last year, compared with 4,798 this year.

The DOE said that it expects to extend roughly 500 offers through the Discovery program this year — roughly 250 more than in 2018. The exact figures will be revealed in the coming weeks.

The initiative is part of a larger City Hall campaign to increase the number of black and Latino kids at the specialized schools.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Carranza want to eventually boost the share of Discovery program admissions to 20 percent and hope to scrap the entrance exam altogether.

SOURCE 







What Conservative Students Face on Your Campus

Jerry Zheng

“It’s OK that conservatives don’t feel welcome”. That was the headline of an op-ed piece in the Washington University in St. Louis student newspaper published last month.

“Conservative ideas do not deserve equal consideration to that afforded liberal and left ideas, because conservative ideas are not equal to liberal and left ideas.”

Would the author, Sean Lundergan, support Donald Trump’s recent statement on enforcing free speech on campus? I reached out, and I haven’t received a response.

No one can say Sean Lundergan didn’t exercise his first amendment to full effect. 

Two and a half weeks later, this happened on the University of California Berkeley campus:

A conservative activist on campus physically attacked by a man who disagreed with his views.

The two events aren’t related; but they lend credence to something we already knew: college campuses are hostile to conservatives. 

Both WUSL’s and UCB’s campuses are overwhelmingly left-leaning. At the WUSL campus, conservatives only make up 8% of the student population in their recent survey. At UCB, it could be even less.

We wanted to know what students across the United States thought of their school’s political climate, so we asked 1500 of them.

Here’s what stood out:

* Less than half of Republicans surveyed say they feel welcome on campus. On the other hand, Democrats, feel very welcomed on their campus.

Democrats and moderates know their school isn’t very welcoming for Republicans too.

But conservative students aren’t the only cohort that feels unwelcome on campus – their allies do too. Right-leaning speakers face disinvitation attempts coming from the left of the speaker 2x as likely as left-leaning speakers, according to a 16-year study by Heterodox Academy.

Conservatives function in an environment where forces on campus are trying to mute them, from facing disinvitation attempts to outright censorship.

According to a Harvard poll, 60% of Democratic students say they feel they can share their opinions on campus “without fear of censorship or negative repercussions,” whereas only 25% of Republican students can say the same.

* 37.5% of Republicans say they feel unsafe on campus

To the question do you feel unsafe on campus for having your political views. 37.5% of republicans answered yes, to 11.5% from democrats.

The incident at UC Berkeley isn’t unheard of. News of conservatives on college campuses getting attacked for their political views make the airwaves frequently enough to make conservatives think twice about exercising their freedom of speech.

When Allison Stanger, a professor at Middlebury College, was physically assaulted to the point where she had to wear a neck brace after her live discussion event, it warned conservatives that they are not safe.

It’s no surprise, then, that more than 1/3 of conservatives don’t feel safe on campus.

When sharing conservative views on campus can get you doxxed, stalked or even have death threats issued against you. It takes Herculean courage to be transparent about it on college campuses.

* 55.1% of Republicans don’t tell their friends about their political views

Republicans are 4x more likely to hide their political views from their friends than democrats in college campuses

The fear of being cast with damning labels and feeling ostracized is a genuine fear for conservatives on campus. It’s also why 55.1% of Republicans are closet conservatives who don’t tend to share their political orientation with their friends.

For Democrats, being part of a college campus that mostly shares their views could be what contributes to feeling accepted in inner and wider circles.

According to research from the Pew Research Center, liberals are more likely to unfriend you over politics – online and offline.

It shows Republicans and Democrats share very different social lives on campus. Republicans have to suppress their voice to feel accepted, while the Democrats can speak without thinking twice.

* 35% of Republicans feel their student government seats were elected with a political bias

Democrats believe student government seats are elected with a political bias the least between Republicans and Moderates.

Conservatives tend to believe the seats on student government were elected with a political bias 14% more than their liberal peers. Most students aren’t quite sure on both parties.

This has been a point of concern for conservative groups because student government bodies are the conduit for student groups to get funding. Sometimes student governments are the determining factor between a guest speaker being invited or not. 

* Republicans are 2x more likely to want to transfer schools after a political encounter than Liberals

Political encounters on campus for conservatives are particularly distressing because the ammunition used against them are more sharp and damning.

“Racist”, “misogynist”, “bigot” – Labels and over-generalized assumptions of the makeup of their character are part of the package leveled against conservatives.

The distress that comes from political encounters for campus conservatives lead them to think about transferring schools three times more than their liberal peers.

If campus conservatives didn’t believe they have the numbers stacked against them, at least they ought to know the political makeup of college professors: Democratic professors outnumber Republican professors 10 to 1.

Digging deeper, research has shown 52% of students have said their professors or course instructors express their own unrelated social or political beliefs “often” in class.

For conservative students, It would be unwise to believe their professors wouldn’t let their political preference affect their grading.

What’s worrying is the endangerment conservatives on campus face for holding their political views. In the pursuit of their own political aims, the left has resorted to libelous claims, intimidation and unlawful use of violence against the right.

55.1% of campus conservatives say they’re too scared to speak or show their political identity to even their friends. Even if they don’t want to admit it– that’s terror.

Methodology

Based on survey data collected from 1500 US college students across 207 different schools. 441 males and 1091 females participated in the survey. Students were engaged on social platforms. 814 identified as first-year students, 347 as second-year, 187 as third-year, 111 as fourth-year and 41 as 5th year or grad. This survey was conducted from March 4th to March 6th.

More HERE  (See the original for links, graphics etc.)





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