Posted on 04/11/2013 9:56:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Pittsburgh high schooler Suzy Weiss has a 4.5 GPA, an SAT score of 2120 (out of a maximum 2400), and a slew of rejections from Ivy League colleges. But unlike most unsuccessful applicants, Weiss didn’t accept her rejection meekly. Instead, she penned a sarcastic open letter to those who spurned her — and got it published in the Wall Street Journal.
Weiss’s letter lampoons the in-vogue collegiate-admissions practice euphemistically known as “holistic” review of applications. Holistic review “frees” admissions officers from the old-fashioned practice of relying heavily on objective measures of academic success (such as grades and standardized-test scores) to determine who gets admitted. Instead, they are free to put much more stock in evidence of non-academic qualities, such as compassion and commitment to causes that might prove “valuable” to the campus community.
Weiss’s letter touches on all these points. But what seems to have most offended the academic community is her lampooning of “diversity,” the sacred cow of the modern university world.
Weiss asks what she could have done differently to get accepted at the schools that rejected her. Her tongue-in-cheek answer begins:
For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would’ve happily come out of it. “Diversity!” I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would’ve been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage.
Such sarcasm is seen as blasphemy in universities and colleges throughout America. Their faculty and administrative officers, and their professional associations, such as the American Council on Education, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and the American Association of University Professors, overwhelmingly believe — firmly and unapologetically — that out-and-out racial and ethnic discrimination in college admissions is fully acceptable in the interests of “diversity.” Discriminating against culturally “nondiverse” Caucasians such as Suzy Weiss is, in their eyes, the right thing to do. And they want the Supreme Court to recognize such discrimination as constitutional.
How do we know that? Because scores of schools and their professional associations have recently filed amicus briefs in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin making that very argument.
Abigail Fisher’s story is little different from Suzy Weiss’s. A culturally “nondiverse” Caucasian (i.e., the type of student who does not fill any of the racial and ethnic “diversity” quotas of college-admission officers), Fisher applied for admission to the University of Texas in 2008. Texas, like almost every other university in the country, takes race into account in its admissions process. Because Fisher was not black, Hispanic, or, as Suzy Weiss says, “Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything,” she was not given the same exemptions from standard admissions criteria that UT-Austin provided to other, more “diverse” students with the same or worse qualifications.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the four universities that rejected Suzy Weiss — the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale, and Vanderbilt — all joined the same brief in the Fisher case. Sadly, my undergraduate school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which used to be a place that believed that everyone should be judged on his abilities, not his race, is also a party to the brief. It encapsulates the high-sounding academic jargon and rhetoric used to disguise the ugliness of what these universities do.
The amici “seek to provide their students with the most rigorous, stimulating, and enriching education environment, in which ideas are tested and debated from every perspective,” in order to “prepare active citizens and leaders in all fields of human endeavor.” But apparently, the only way they can achieve those goals is to “take account of race and ethnicity” as factors in the “holistic review process” that determines who will be admitted. Even though these schools all “have highly selective admissions criteria designed to ensure that all of their students (including minority leaders) will be prepared for demanding coursework and will graduate successfully,” the only criterion they all agree on that is required to achieve those goals is discriminating on the basis of race.
Perhaps we should not be surprised that Ivy League and other top-notch schools practice such ugly discrimination. After all, they had similar practices in the 1920s to ensure their schools did not have “too many” Jewish students. Today, they just want to make sure they don’t have “too many” Caucasians or Asians on campus. All they have done is change the groups targeted for discrimination.
Suzy Weiss and many other high-school seniors across the United States are being discriminated against because of their skin color or because they have an epicanthic fold in their eyes. Such racial and ethnic discrimination is morally wrong, and neither “diversity” nor anything else can justify it.
Attempts to disguise discrimination with high-sounding talk about “holistic” reviews just won’t wash. And the claim that such discrimination provides different points of view is, itself, racist. Apparently, America’s institutions of “higher” learning believe that your skin color determines how you think.
In 1965, that would have gotten you rightly condemned as a bigot. In 2013, it makes you “progressive.”
— Hans A. von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department. He is a co-author of Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk (Encounter Books, 2012).
Why would she now want to go to an Ivy League school now?
Sacred cows make tasty burgers. Especially with some blessed cheddar and holy bacon.
At the same time, I have to question the real value of an education from any institution which would not recognize its admissions are being done for the sake of political expediency and a retributionist agenda rather than on a basis of ability.
What ever happened to the 'content of their character rather than the color of their skin'?
SOURCE: http://www.thefastertimes.com/college/2013/04/09/dear-suzy-lee-weiss-i-took-your-spot-at-harvard/
Dear Suzy Lee Weiss, I Took Your Spot At Harvard
Dear Suzy,
You probably don’t know who I am but after reading your op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about not getting into any of the Ivy League schools you applied to, I felt I had to reach out. You see, I’m the girl who took your spot at Harvard.
I know this with absolute certainty. On my acceptance letter from Harvard, your name had been crossed out and mine had been written above it.
I know this must be really upsetting for you. You worked really hard for four years. You took all of the AP classes your high school offered. Your parents paid for expensive SAT prep courses and you did really well on the test. You did all kinds of volunteer work even though you had hours of TV unwatched on your DVR. Basically, you earned this.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I did some work, too. I went to class and paid attention when the lesson wasn’t disrupted by a fight in the hallway. My textbooks might still reflect a Cold War world but not needing to know the names of all the Soviet republics made it much easier to study for global studies exams. Much less to memorize that way. That’s probably the only reason I managed an “A” in that course.
But when my parents got divorced and my mom came out of the closet and hooked up with the ¼ Navajo lady neighbor, I closed my textbooks and put down my pen. I figured—why bother? I’m a black female from the inner city with divorced parents, a gay mother, and a part-Native American stepmother. Every college was going to recruit me like I had a great jump shot.
Not only did Harvard accept me and shower me with financial aid, they put my photo on the cover of all of their recruiting materials. You were totally right—being a minority in 21st Century America only has upside!
It must be really tough to learn that you didn’t get what you totally deserved, but I’m sure you’ll do well at a state school. And I’m certain your parents will be able to find it in their hearts to love a daughter without an Ivy League pedigree.
As for me—I’m set for life. Obama is president, racism has ended, and law schools have already come a-callin.
Best to you in life,
Aaliyah Martin
I’d tell her to stay in town and go to my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon, but I fear they’ve become the same diversity-uber-alles jackasses those other schools are.
RE: Why would she now want to go to an Ivy League school now?
From this source:
http://theivycoach.com/the-ivy-coach-blog/tag/denied-college-applicant/
Apparently Suzy Weiss will be attending the University of Michigan, that’s what she alluded to On “The Today Show”
(Ann Coulter’s alma mater, where she received her J.D. ).
From this source:
http://theivycoach.com/the-ivy-coach-blog/tag/denied-college-applicant/
Apparently Suzy Weiss will be attending the University of Michigan, that’s what she alluded to On “The Today Show”
(Ann Coulter’s alma mater, where she received her J.D. ).
The orginal op-ed from the WSJ.
This girl is awesome and looks like she’s going to nest in the source of the Michigan Affirmative action fight.
When Sandra O’Connor wrote her tie-breaking opinion to allow Affirmative Action (read: racial quotas) in university admissions, she also noted that she hoped it would not be needed in 25 years. Ten years later, and it seems to be accelerating.
Her op-ed was excellent, but frankly, I've enjoyed all of the harrumph-ing in response to it from academics (both young and old).
Sez me, if you're on target, expect some flak. I hope that this young lady overcomes her handicap of being "diverse as a saltine cracker" (still grinnin' at that one) and has a successful college career.
RE: Apologies to the young woman but that won’t cut it to get into MIT or an Ivy League.
Really? And what were the SAT scores of GW Bush, John Kerry, Al Gore and most of all Barack Obama?
Inquiring minds want to know since we know that the former 3 were C level students and Obama never revealed his test scores.
I couldn’t tell what the point of that was... sarcasm? Was it also making fun of the diversity sacred cow? Or was it rubbing it in?
The first three obviously were admitted because of their family connections. Obviously Obama was a diversity entry. But what I am saying is one took the SAT scores of the applicants of the schools this young woman wanted to enter and rank ordered the scores and took the top X number of scores she would not make it by this 100% blind admission standard.
Her scores are in the bottom 25% of applicants trying to enter these schools for example MIT.
I don’t think there is any way for a “non-diverse” white to get into a Ivy League school, unless one of his parents attended it or has pallets of money with which to “endow” the school.
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