'Rethinking Admissions' at Wake Forest University

Reader Comments
Back to blog

Great Article , I considered it exceptional
I look forward to more innovative postings like this one. Does Your Blog have a newsletter I can subscribe to for new posts?

flenceKnify of AL 3:59PM November 23, 2009

Although I Could Agree with you
I however cannot. I'm usually a avid reader of your blog however am pretty dissapointed in this posting.

Spoof Caller ID of AL 3:25PM November 06, 2009

Andrew: I read thousands of briefs each year that are written by white lawyers and many of them can't write a coherent sentence. Actually, their incoherent ramblings are similar to your post.What prestigious law school did you attend?
I don't think minorities will be the beneficiaries of these test optional schools. In fact ,the schools that dropped the test requirement demographics did not change.
In California, the state outlawed affirmative action in school admissions. The result was that schools such as UCSD and UCI became majority Asian, and the other UC schools( including Berkley) are approximately 50 percent Asian. The Asian population in California is around 10 percent. The black population is less than 6 percent.The number of blacks and hispanics in the UC schools have always been small. However, the whites have been losing ground to the Asians. Consequently, the regents have lowered the standards by dropping SAT subject tests and the minimum grade from A to B so more whites can get in. I haven't heard any white people crying about that!
YEAH... what he said

TJ of Texas of TX 11:39AM August 10, 2009

I WAS JUST CURIOUS IS THERE A CORRELATION BETWEEN A UNIVERSITIES DEBT LOAD AND THE NUMBER OF REGISTERED DEMOCRATS ON THE FACULTY?????????????????? THIS GUY MR KANE IS TOUCHING
ON THE REAL PROBLEM FACING THIS COUNTRY ALL THESE DEMOCRATS
WANT TO GO DEEP IN DEBT AND PROVIDE ALL KINDS OF GOVERNMNET PROGRMAS THEY LEARNED THIS AT THE UNIVERSITY THEY ATTENDED

CLAUDE LEWIS of NC 1:41PM May 30, 2009

This not a question of color. . . this is a question of class. Everyone is so concerned about minorities getting a spot in a top school, that is the very least of your quote un quote quota system in schools. The largest piece that most everyone misses is about alumni and class. I happen to be a very successful minority who has some children. Unlike most of the middle class I have had the opportunity to have my children educated by the best schools from day one, we provided spanish lessons for them since they were 3 years old, also there are the musical instrument lessons, dance lessons etc etc. If my kids were to get behind, you can believe the best tutors would be provided for them, my children on standardized tests usually score in the top 2 percentile of their class for all standardized test - - - is it fair that most students who have none of these advantages should recieve the same treatement as my kid and honestly it does not matter as such - I am a loyal paying alumni of my school and my kids would get preferential treatment. If you look at most of the Ivys freshman classes other than this year you would note less than 40% of them require financial aid. And at 50K a year do you really think it is your hard working everyday kid who gets into these institutions. You can't create billion dollar endowments with students from an everyday back ground. Life is not fair unfortunately, but it is good to see things like this to offers some type of balance which helps not only minorities, but kids who may come from smaller towns who don't have the access to stronger education systems.

onemansopinion of NC 4:19PM May 19, 2009

Andrew: I read thousands of briefs each year that are written by white lawyers and many of them can't write a coherent sentence. Actually, their incoherent ramblings are similar to your post.What prestigious law school did you attend?
I don't think minorities will be the beneficiaries of these test optional schools. In fact ,the schools that dropped the test requirement demographics did not change.
In California, the state outlawed affirmative action in school admissions. The result was that schools such as UCSD and UCI became majority Asian, and the other UC schools( including Berkley) are approximately 50 percent Asian. The Asian population in California is around 10 percent. The black population is less than 6 percent.The number of blacks and hispanics in the UC schools have always been small. However, the whites have been losing ground to the Asians. Consequently, the regents have lowered the standards by dropping SAT subject tests and the minimum grade from A to B so more whites can get in. I haven't heard any white people crying about that!

Jim of CA 3:55AM May 13, 2009

andrew curtis of FL -
Well put.
The best way to help under-represented minorities is to help them build strong foundation. That to me, is "true" education.

tom616 of CA 4:42PM April 22, 2009

Test optional, in my opinion, is just a way to create openings for minorities. It's a back door quota system. I have found in my life that people who scored high on the SAT really WERE very bright, and that the SAT in many ways is more important than high school grades, because high schools may tend to give their best students A's when they are not deserved. My wife was a teacher, and was under tremendous pressure not to give C's to the students in her calculus class. Let's not continue with this farce that the SAT is somehow no good, because minorities score low on it. Isn't it natural that minorities might score lower, given that they were not given the same opportunities as others, and probably went to worse schools. Stop blaming the test. If we want to have quotas for minorities to make up for past discrimination, then let's do so honestly, instead of coming up with backdoor solutions, like test optional. For example, Govenor Bush in Florida instituted a system that you got into a state university if you were in the top 10% of your high school class, no matter how bad your high school was, or how low your SAT scores were. This too was simply a backdoor way to impose quotas. We should also remember that if we are going to have quotas for minorities, then many asians and jews will lose their spots, because they are "over-represented". This is not right either. Using the SAT avoids subjective decisions, and encourages objective decisions. I went to a prestigious law school, and once had to review the writing of various students in a writing competition, and was shocked that some of the students that were admitted to that law school could not come close to writing a coherent sentence. Their work seemed to me that of a fifth grader, it was that bad!!!!! That being said, I am not against all affirmative action, but as noted in my prior sentence, it can get out of hand. Test optional is simply a lowering of standards.

andrew curtis of FL 4:13PM April 22, 2009

More off topic:
In the print edition of your 2010 Law School rankings, US News lists the 25th-75th percentile LSAT scores as 162-165. Per the Brooklyn Law website: http://www.brooklaw.edu/admissions/faqs/#scores , see also http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/SchoolPage_PDFs/ABA_LawSchoolData/ABA2047.pdf , these are the numbers for Brooklyn's full time program only, the numbers are 2-3 points lower when using the part-timers, as you do for everyone else. US News also doesn't list Brooklyn's sizable part time program amongst the ranked part time programs.
Whose mistake is this -- US News' or Brooklyn's? It seems a correction to the rankings is in order here.

Miguel of MA 11:08AM April 22, 2009

Apologies for the off-topic question, but I did not know how to write you directly.
Does US News have any plans to update the use of endowment value to account for debt?
Consider two colleges. Both have endowments of $500 million and the same number of students. Both appear equally wealthy to US News. But one of the colleges has $300 million in debt. In fact, it is much less wealthy than the other college because its *net* financial wealth is only $200 million.
Debt figures are publicly available, so this would be an easy change for US News to make. Do you have any plans to do so? If not, why not?

David Kane of MA 5:20PM April 21, 2009