Said Rushil Umaretiya, who grew up in an Indian immigrant family and will be a freshman at the University of North Carolina.
Umaretiya's observation is based on what he saw colleges and applicants doing before the Supreme Court's new decision came out. After the decision, there will be even more emphasis on the applicant's personal essay, and what can students do but tell the best story of their life as a victim of society?
Even before the decision, [Umaretiya] had seen anxious classmates at his selective high school, Thomas Jefferson High School, in Alexandria, Va., making up stories about facing racial injustice.
What's the difference between framing your life story in terms of victimhood and making up stories? Umaretiya says he saw — how did he see? — his own classmates making up stories. That's the NYT paraphrase. Who knows? Maybe every applicant is honest or no more dishonest than to pick a tale of woe out of context and describe it colorfully. But the heavy reliance on the personal essay as the new way to pursue racial diversity creates far too much temptation and strikes me as quite unfair to those who are scrupulously honest. But who cares? Honest people are all alike. You want diversity.
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Whew. At least AI is available to to help with the stories.
The academic standard is so low that it’s not possible to base admissions on grade, anymore. Everybody gets an A.
Now it’s based on subjective ‘achievements’. Since minorities are a protected class, with legal implications, academia better hire minorities or they are going to be in legal hot water.
There’s always around the ‘rules’ anyway: when hiring, always look at the name, where they live, their LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social media, first. Don’t like what you see? Don’t even bother scrutinizing a resume.
Does the trauma of being the offspring of an Asian Tiger Mom count, remove the stigma of the high grades and SAT scores? Maybe include a simple photo of mom holding a gun to the head of the applicant, saying I'll shoot this kid if you don't admit him?
We're teaching kids how to game the system.
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Whining will favor Jews and put that extraordinarily high verbal IQ to use.
I think that the emphasis on the personal essay could be itself a basis to claim disadvantage for the less verbal candidates. The candidate can write about how difficult it is to prepare the essay and what goes into the struggle to explain that difficulty sufficiently, because that's not something the candidate excels in for whatever sympathy-inducing reason-- and this causes victimization.
It does smack of white, upper-class privilege, this need to be able to write the kind of personal essay that will encourage the admissions board to select you. A command of the English language, what does that have to do with diversity? Does the university really want only students who write well?
Democrats(mob) want everyone filled with grievance, victimhood, and angst.
This gives them power. Neo-Marxist power.
The Chi Coms are laughing.
Yes! That's what I thought about was UC Davis is doing. Begging for trauma dumping.
It's so weird that this is what university admissions- to some of the finest universities in the world- have become. Side shows begging for trauma dumping and prioritizing skin tones.
Gaming college is nothing new. My classmates from multimillionaire families- and it was an international undergrad business school so there were a lot of them- they never had to disclose alimony or child support. So they live with mom and rake in major financial aid while my middle management dad insisted he drain his savings so I could attend and not be saddled with debt.
Gaming the system is nothing new. Nobody wants to hire the honest kids anymore anyways…
There was a tweet that went viral totally unrelated to the AA decision where someone asked "what thing they've learned in the last 3 years they never thought they'd believe" and the answer was:
"There are no benefits to being a good person."
So congratulations progressive America, your victory is complete. Between Hunter Biden, his dad, and every other fucked up unqualified unmeritorious person like Sam Brinton etc, you have succeeded in turning everyone into vicious backstabbing lying little social climbers who will enhance the shittiest aspects of their personalities for personal gain for the rest of their lives.
As if all the elite overproduction wasn't bad enough, you have now shown them that their apparent failures at self-actualization are the result of them not being ruthless enough. Instead of hundreds of turbo-assholes, we will now produce tens of thousands of turbo-assholes.
Words cannot express how much I detest these people.
I've spent years on admissions committees and have had to read these essays and judge people based on them. I was looking at applicants who were 4 years older or so, but still, I considered them to be young and to mainly be trying to do their best at whatever it was we were supposedly asking them to do.
Those who'd grown up in America seemed to think we wanted a story of misfortune. Very often the misfortune chosen was that someone they knew died — a grandmother or a friend.
I noticed that the essays of immigrants did not, so far as I noticed and remember, frame their story as one of victimhood. They were much more upbeat, even as they had a much stronger set of facts for telling a story of struggle. They seemed to take adversity in stride and not complain but work hard and move forward.
I would be embarrassed to talk about muh adversity. That was something to hide, while you pretended to be a normal well adjusted person.
Fake it til you make it.
Rereading my 8:49 comment, I see that the Americans really did have a misfortune: They grew up being taught that it's an advantage to be disadvantaged and if they want to advance, they need to internalize a self-image of victimhood.
The immigrants had the advantage of receiving the optimism template.
Perhaps they should now change DEI to AEIOU because where they are going is a society that values Adversity, Equity, and Inclusion but ends up Owing You for the cost of just about everything.
It’s hard to believe that the path to lifetime success means never leaving the road of victimhood.
The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the 3rd and 4th generation.
Why not use blind admissions? Students are given a random number or ID, submit grades, test scores, after-school or volunteer activities (including sports) and recommendations. No race, no names, no essays.
They grew up being taught that it's an advantage to be disadvantaged and if they want to advance, they need to internalize a self-image of victimhood.
That seems to be a massively growing trend, if the HS students that my wife teaches are representative of teenagers today.
Higher Ed institutions need to decide what type of student body they want - one that is malleable and can be indoctrinated, or one that can think critically and forge their own way. My guess is the US needs the latter but the admins want the former.
Thinking back to "The Greatest Generation," could a foreign adversary have devised a better long-term strategy than to reverse Americans' optimism template?
Personal essays are 95% bullshit. Yancey's Law.
"IT WAS NEVER EASY FOR ME. I WAS RAISED A POOR BLACK CHILD."
Steve Martin, The Jerk
And every college applicant in 2023.
One online definition of fair: " ... impartial and just, without favoritism or discrimination."
The only "fair" way to handle admissions is via lottery. And to keep the process fair the tuition should be zero. Sort of "basic training" for life. Barracks and uniforms and all that.
The solution is to do away with the personal essays and interview questions about defining moments in one's life. It really is all bullshit. The solution is easy- each school sets its minimum scores on SAT/ACT, all names go into a hat for random drawing. This idea that you are going to find the diamonds-in-the-rough or keep out the socio/psychopaths via personal essays and interviews is a delusion.
All happy marriages are alike; every unhappy marriage is unique. Probably not true, and not even supported by Tolstoy's novel.
"After the decision, there will be even more emphasis on the applicant's personal essay"
Yes, though CJR told them not to do it.
"making up stories about facing racial injustice"
Everyone's a victim, except white men.
"Honest people are all alike. You want diversity."
Except that dishonest people are also all alike. Living the lie.
(I Was Born...)
One of the things that always seems to be missing from these discussions is how few applicants need affirmative action.
Most colleges and universities (@75%) accept pretty much any hs grad or GED who applies and have for at least 60 years that I know of.
A few schools don't even require a hs diploma or any pre-qualification. If you can do the work you can stay.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/
There's probably better articles, this was just the first in a quick ddg search.
All this hoorah about AA only applies to about 25% of schools.
That doesn't make it any less important.
It does give the lie to the line that without AA women and blacks won't be able to get a college education. I've heard this lie ad nauseum the past weeks.
John Henry
My son, for his "personal essay" was told to write about an important event in his life. He wrote about sailing to Hawaii at age 16. His high school advisor asked him if he really wanted to go to college. I don't know if he rewrote it. He is now a trial lawyer and recently (June) was in Greece at the world championship of the Finn class of sailboats.
Ann Althouse said...
Rereading my 8:49 comment, I see that the Americans really did have a misfortune: They grew up being taught that it's an advantage to be disadvantaged and if they want to advance, they need to internalize a self-image of victimhood.
The immigrants had the advantage of receiving the optimism template.
Exactly! And imagine in the current atmosphere, a white middle class or upper middle class student writing about how positive they feel. Oh! The terrible privilege on display.
If the guideline is "more Cowbell will help" you can damn well expect more Cowbell.
Even for someone who had to use UTube to understand the sound.
This nonsense is why I could not get outraged over what Lori Laughlin did for her daughters. It's ALL a game. Why should I be upset over money being used?
They should contract with Elizabeth Warren. She seems to have an innate talent for it.
There's an LA Times story today about the now assumed importance of the college essay as a tool of admission. You'd think the story would focus on African Americans who don't know how to frame their race in a way that gets extra (almost said "Brownie") points. Instead, the caption under the top photo and the lede are about kids who are Asian-Jewish.
"... making up stories about facing racial injustice." It seem likely that most stories about racial injustice are made up by now. Racism exists on all sides - black racism fueled by white lefties and black grifters - but racial injustice? Racial injustice is generally litigable.
Are these made up stories products of Critical Race Theory in schools? Other than providing fodder for victimhood and racial hatred does CRT produce anything?
I'm white. My parents were poor. It was a self inflected poverty due to my father's alcoholism. It's said that there's no shame in being poor, but there might just as well be. In any event, growing up, I would never admit to my classmates or even myself that I was poor. I tried to keep it a secret....I had severe acne in high school. I couldn't keep that secret, and, if I had to gauge which was more traumatic I'd definitely give the edge to acne....Growing up poor wasn't all that bad. Kind of adventurous even. Being white, I could always pretend to be middle class when needed and pass through the world without hostile notice. The acne, however, spoke for itself. No one discriminated against me for acne except all the girls in the world. I'm still bitter about it. At the one time in my life when I was permitted and indeed encouraged to pursue teen age girls I was at my least attractive and most penurious state. It's just so unfair.....I don't think if I wrote an essay describing my hard luck that it would have advanced my chances of admission into Harvard. I think most people have some kind of hard luck but only some kinds of hard luck are deemed worthy of compensation by admission committees.
Love your comments on this post, Ann.
It’s pitiful, this emphasis on sob stories. Whoever has the best sob story gets to go to Harvard.
So it's a high stakes creative writing exercise. What's wrong with that?
IIRC, I had to submit an essay about my hopes and ambitions, just to get into Tiger High (a.k.a. Memphis miStake University).
I don't recall any details, but I'm pretty sure I didn't share my own hard luck and trauma tales as balance-tippers. OTOH my son, when reapplying after dropping out, did peddle the real loss of older people he was close to as reasons for his poor performance.
I knew, and I like to think he did too, that he was practicing Excusism and that those deaths merely coincided with his crappy grades and attendance but did not cause them. (He dropped out for good, finally.)
College admissions treats young people as supplicants with no rights to fair treatment and no right of privacy. The powerlessness creates a template for propagandization. There are no rewards for resisting the nonsense. We've created a generation of progressive conformists.
"They seemed to take adversity in stride and not complain but work hard and move forward."
This statement pretty much encapsulates the problem with a large swath of college age people today, IMO. Too many have been indulged for their own petty grievances. They don't seem to respect the idea of working hard to achieve a goal.
But the heavy reliance on the personal essay as the new way to pursue racial diversity creates far too much temptation and strikes me as quite unfair to those who are scrupulously honest.
If the students don't list their greivences, how can admissions officers turn themselves into heroes of social justice?
You want diversity.
Diversity can be achieved by lottery. No, they want to believe they are hovering over society and passing judgment on mankind.
The stress on victimhood flows out of presuppositions about America itself. America is seen as a bad society, steeped in injustice, that victimizes people (and even victimizes the planet). From what I can tell, this is the dominant view of America now: America the Ugly.
The alternative view is America the Beautiful: a good society, working to mend its flaws, yet conferring benefits on people. Seeing oneself as the beneficiary of a good society, though, isn't the way to get into college now.
"Honest people are all alike."
Channelling Tolstoy this morning, it seems. Whatever.
The next phase of the college admissions/racial preferences litigation will likely focus on statistical analyses of personal essays to determine whether essays which disclose an applicant's race result in disproportionately high rates of admission for some races, particulaly where the other admissions factors (GPA, grades, class rank, extracurricular activities) would otherwise lead to a different distribution across the races. In substance, the analysis will be looking for a distribution like how Harvard's personal rating ended up ranking Asian applicants as a group at the bottom, then whites, then Hispanics and (at the top) black applicants.
The suggestion that these personal essays will provide an easy work-around allowing colleges to engage in the same racial balancing scheme that just got shot down strikes me as quite naive. It does not take into account the willingness of non-profits like SFFA -- to say nothing of class action lawyers looking for the next big score -- to keep attacking. The colorblind principle now embraced by SCOTUS will work its magic in many places. After all, teh class action guys already know that there is a lot of money to be made not in in attacking racial preferences in admissions, but all across the board (employment/promotion/hostile workplace claims being high on that list).
"Since minorities are a protected class,"
I keep hearing and reading that term -- protected class. And I wonder, protected from what, exactly? And for how long? In perpetuity?
"So congratulations progressive America, your victory is complete. Between Hunter Biden, his dad, and every other fucked up unqualified unmeritorious person like Sam Brinton etc, you have succeeded in turning everyone into vicious backstabbing lying little social climbers who will enhance the shittiest aspects of their personalities for personal gain for the rest of their lives."
Lord of the Flies wasn't meant to be a societal blueprint. Yet, here we are.
"they need to internalize a self-image of victimhood."
This isn't a new thing. See:
A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character (Paperback) – August 15, 1993
by Charles J. Sykes
https://www.amazon.com/Nation-Victims-Decay-American-Character/dp/0312098820/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2AQD77OUBSJEB&keywords=a+nation+of+victims&qid=1688930149&sprefix=a+nation+of+%2Caps%2C229&sr=8-1
Joint project at UW Madison, partner got higher grade. When I asked why, TA told ne it was because she was an older woman.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/07/chart-shows-the-outrageous-rise-in-college-tuition-cost-over-the-years/
"Why not use blind admissions? "
Because the student body was would be 50% Asian and 5% black.
Can't have that!
Establish minimum entrance requirements than randomly draw from that pool. Ditch that personal essay. They're just garbage. Result, a class of freshman who have a chance of succeeding instead of a class of qualified students mixed with totally inadequate students, who need to switch to the easies majors to have a hope of graduating.
When I applied to college (Class of 1965) I don't remember having to do an essay, but if I had been required to to, I would have had no problem -- I was always a good bull-shitter (still am). What I read about now is the idea of using the essay written by an African American applicant ("I was born a poor Black child") as a substitute for racial preference. If the admissions interviewers are honest, they ought to catch such crap and reject it. If they aren't honest, the value of a Harvard degree will be degraded. I'm too old to care, but aren't there SOME folks associated with Harvard or Chapel Hill who still care?
There's performance, and then there's performance.
testing
Here's one which won't make it:
My father is a pilot in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. He was on deployment when I was awarded Eagle Scout in my junior year in high school. And then he was gone again when I was awarded All Conference Linebacker my senior year, along with MVP and captain.
A couple of guys tried to grab my sister. I stopped them and they threatened to sue my family. Even God hadn't heard about that much money and my Mom was distraught. But the cops had some additional information and so they suit was dropped. My Mom still hasn't gotten over it.
Spring of my junior year, the house across the street caught fire. We got everybody out. I was in the hospital for a couple of days during finals week due to smoke inhalation. I wasn't prepared for the make up exams so I didn't qualify for NHS.
I was driving on base and had stopped and gotten out of the car for Retreat. A couple of civilians stopped and gave me a hard time. Base Policy arrived and the guys accused me of trying to jack their car. A noncom from Base Security had seen it and got things straightened out, What is wrong with people?
My girlfriend and I were really tight, exclusive. Too young to get engaged but we were planning on it. Her brother was KIA on deployment and she decided she didn't want anything to do with the Army. I didn't want to leave JR. ROTC. She won't even say hello to me.
Good enough?
Get the federal gov't out of the funding of higher education. Then these elite schools can run their reputations into the ground, without the rest of us having to care.
I get the impression that what we are teaching our youngsters is that they have no responsibility for accomplishing anything. I seem to be running into more instances of people who are providing a service being completely uninterested in making sure the service is done well. Almost as if they are getting paid whether they do the job or not.
Maybe it is just because I'm getting old.
They should stop asking for kids about stories of challenges they have overcome. That's teevee culture. Ask them to describe a time they became interested in something or talk about something they're interested in.
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