Mon 8 Aug 2005
In retrospect, I should have brought up the interesting issue of what counts as “Hispanic” at Williams as a general topic and not tied it directly to one particular student. So, let me bring it up here. The Record reports that:
[Director of Admissions Richard] Nesbitt said he was “ecstatic” with the yield of minority students. “We’re doing very well by any standards,” he said. Included in the class are 53 Asian Americans, 42 African Americans (down from 53 last year at this time), 55 Latinos (a record high) and three Native Americans. Thirty-two international students have also accepted offers. Nesbitt expected the number of African Americans to rise to 9 percent of the class as decision extensions expire this month.
Question: Is it true that there are 55 “Latinos” in the class of 2009?
Now I am not accusing Nesbitt ‘74 (or the Record) of lying, but I think that this magic number requires some parsing. I believe that the admissions office gets all it race/ethnicity data from the Common Application that all applicants fill out. It provides an array of ethnic/racial boxes that one may check, including “Puerto Rican”, “Mexican American, Chincano” and “Hispanic, Latino” with a place to specify the country of origin.
Presumably, when Nesbitt reports that the class of 2009 will have 55 “Latinos”, he means that there were 55 students who checked at least one of those three boxes. (This is a perfectly reasonable shorthand for Nesbitt to use.) But are there really 55 Latinos?
My purpose here is not to delve into the issue of affirmative action at Williams, a topic that we broached in one of the first EphBlog debates. I just want to understand the facts on the ground. Applicants may check whatever box(es) they like. The College does not check that these answers are truthful or even accurate. Do I think that many applicants lie? No — although, given the admissions policies at Williams and other elite schools, the temptation to do so must be a strong one.
My concern is with answers that are truthful, but misleading. Note that the application asks “If you wish to be identified with a particular ethnic group, please check all that apply.” In other words, I am not sure that it is even possible to lie. You do not have to “really” be Latino to (honestly or not) want to be identified as such. If your physician father (or grandfather or great-great-grandfather) emigrated from Spain, then there is nothing that prevents you from checking the Latino box. Is a student whose grandfather immigrated from Spain — but who does not speak Spanish or have any particular interest in or knowledge of Hispanic culture — “really” Latino? Even if his other three grandparents are direct descendants from passengers on the Mayflower?
This is not an easy question to answer, but my goal, for now, is just to gather some more accurate data. What would I like to see? Well, in the short term, I would like Williams to be much more forthcoming with its data. For example, I would like to know the number of students who speak a language other than English at home (and what those languages are). I would like to see the breakdown of country of birth as well as first language. All of this is trivial to produce since it is also part of the Common Application.
My guess would be that — if your definition of “Latino” means someone with such a strong connection to Hispanic culture that the education of their classmates at Williams will be further enriched — there are not really 55 Latinos in the class of 2009.
If Williams is going to be in the business of nose-counting, then it ought to count those noses accurately.
August 8th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
David:
I think it is unfair to single out Williams.
The fact of the matter is that what ultimately matters to the colleges is the numbers. As long as they have an impressive percentage of “Latinos” or “Af-Ams”, the admissions office has met its goals.
If the goal were truly one of underlying diversity, “prep school minorities” would not be in such high demand.
IMO, the common app ethnicity question is worded in such a way that 100% of the applicants should check the “Af-Am” box. Who in their right mind wouldn’t “like to be identified as” black in the college admissions process when they know that there is a substantial admissions boost associated with that identification?
If that sounds too cynical, I should point out that I support the idea of diversity on campus and it was a key characteristic in my offspring’s college search. The truth is that playing the quota game is the only viable proxy for diversity that colleges have at their disposal right now. As much as I find race-based quota admissions distateful philosophically, I can’t think of any alternative if the goal is to have something other than a college of rich white kids.
August 8th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
Is it really true that “playing the quota game is the only viable proxy for diversity that colleges have at their disposal right now”? I have two suggestions for how Williams might demonstrate a serious interest in diversity.
1) Show people the data! If Williams takes diversity seriously, then it ought to tell us (especially prospective applicants) how many students spoke a language other than English at home, how many come from families in the bottom quartile of the economic distribution and so on. The data, it is true, will be shocking to the naive among us who do not understand the actual distribution of academic talent in the US, but it is what it is. Moreover, I like to believe that this will set Williams apart from its peers who are too cowardly to be so honest.
By the way, where is the Williams equivalent of this?
2) Buy diversity. Instead of paying $35 million for fancier faculty offices in Stetson, spend the money on getting higher quality diverse students via more international recruiting and domestic merit scholarships. Any high achieving black high school senior (whose family makes, say, $80,000) should be offered a full ride at Williams to convince her not to go to Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford. Increase the proportion of international students from 6% to 20%. There are plenty of highly qualified English-speaking non-white students, both inside and outside the US, who would do well at Williams. Use the College’s resources to get them here.
August 8th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
How, exactly, could Williams justify giving a full ride to a student whose parents make $80,000 a year? That would prevent a poorer student from going to Williams at all.
August 8th, 2005 at 10:46 pm
David, please. Let’s be a little less “we’re upper middle class folk in the richest country on earth” here. I’m an international student, my family’s income is less than a quarter of the $80,000 you suggest, and I pay $5000-$7500 each year to attend Williams. A free ride for an American with an $80,000/year family income? That’s ridiculous.
August 8th, 2005 at 11:04 pm
And I’m sure you’re aware that there are a number of high achieving high school seniors who never even get into Williams. It is nothing short of racism to accept such a student on a free ride simply because they are black.
August 9th, 2005 at 8:16 am
There are several misconceptions here.
1) “How, exactly, could Williams justify giving a full ride to a student whose parents make $80,000 a year?” Ask Morty! Although these sorts of statistics are not public, I would bet that there are at least a few students at Williams right now with family income in this neighborhood with full rides. Not all Tyng and WOS winners are from poor families.
Williams justifies this and other related policies by noting that it wants to have a class with certain characteristics and that, the competitive market among colleges being what it is, Williams has no choice but to compete for highly desirable students.
2) “That would prevent a poorer student from going to Williams at all.” Not really. Williams (like every other elite College) is desperate to find qualified poor students to admit. For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a “poor” student with Williams-caliber grades/scores, who is prevented from going to an elite college for financial reasons.
Note also that, in the Williams context, a family income of $80,000 is poor, or at least below average. (30th percentile?). See here for recent details. 58% of Williams students need no financial aid. Only 19% come from families below the median in income ($65,000 or so). So, anytime Williams can add a student whose family “only” makes $80,000, it is making Williams less of a rich-kids school, if only marginally.
3) With regard to Ronit’s comments, my purpose here is not to argue about Williams preferences for different types of students but about how it achieves those preferences. Williams has, for now, decided that it would like 5%-10% of each class to be black. Now, maybe this is a good idea. Maybe there should be more black students; maybe there should be fewer.
But, having made this decision, I would much prefer that Williams achieve this goal by finding highly qualified black students, both in the US and abroad, and then doing whatever it takes to bring them to Williams. (The other approach is to lower standards for black applicants. Ronit and I probably agree that this is a bad idea. Others may differ. Whether or not it is “racist” is a topic for another day.)
The problem is that US-born black students with Williams-caliber scores/grades are often/always accepted by Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford. How do we get such students to choose Williams instead? Money is my answer, but I would be eager to know of a better one.
My guess is that Ronit, like many idealist, would like for Williams to treat all its applicants equally, without regard to their race. In that world, very few (1%?) of the students at Williams would be black. Bug or feature?
August 9th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
David:
“Buying” diversity is the primary mechanism that elite colleges use to attract non-white/wealthy students.
It relates directy to a point I made a while back that the percentage of full-fare students is a fixed target, indicative of institutional priorities.
In recent decades, Amherst and Swarthmore have had a higher percentage of students qualifying for finanical aid than Williams AND a higher percentage of non-white students. This is not by accident. It’s matter of instituitional priority.
IMO, Morty has made an institutional-priority decision to change this — just as Amherst did and it appears that Williams’ diversity stats are on the rise as a result.
BTW, the instituional emphasis on athletics also impacts this process. One way to “buy” students is with money. The other way is to buy them with relaxed academic standards (i.e. lower SATS). Given that none of these schools want their median SATs to drop, they all operate with a fixed number of “low-SAT” slots available in the mix. It is a matter of institutional priority how this limited supply of “low-SAT” slots is invested. They can be invested in ice hockey players. Or, they can be invested in lower-stat URM students.
One of the explicitly stated reasons for Swarthmore’s decision to drop football is that they did not have enough “low-stat” slots available to stock a football team and achieve the diversity that is a strong institutional priority. Amherst’s priorities (and their very high diversity numbers) partially explain their inability to compete with Williams on the athletic field.
August 9th, 2005 at 4:12 pm
If only there were some athletically talented underrepresented minorities out there. Then we’d be in business.
August 9th, 2005 at 4:18 pm
not if you want a winning hockey team…
August 11th, 2005 at 10:09 pm
A story from my own experience of applying to college might be interesting to this discussion.
I hated applying to college — so much, in fact, that I did no serious research until senior year, and then it was patchy and incompetently done because I couldn’t bring myself to bear on the task with any consistentcy. I owe all that went well to my college counselor, Mr. Pallo. He understood how I worked, and managed to get me to do things that were for my own good, when others’ similar suggestions only awakened my stubbornness.
During one meeting of many, he began, “There is something I want to suggest to you, but am afraid to.” “Why?” “I am afraid you won’t like what I’m going to ask you to do.” Of course, I asked him to tell me what it was. He then suggested that, on the Common Applications, I identify myself as Puerto Rican.
Depending on how you reckon, to say I am Puerto Rican is a half-truth or completely untrue. My mother was born there and raised in NYC since age six or so, and my father couldn’t be called anything but Caucasian. On other surveys, I’d sometimes checked the Puerto Rican and White boxes, sometimes just White.
I was bothered by Mr. Pallo’s suggestion, but I’d learned to trust him, and my parents supported his suggestion. A year ago, in fact, they had asked if I would use my mother’s maiden name, Reyes, hyphenated with my last name, Landsman, in my applications. I had flatly refused that. Needless to say, when I discussed my counselor’s suggestion with them, they supported him.
I asked Mr. Pallo if I could check both boxes. He responded with something along the lines of: “My fear is that that would be passed over, that someone would see ‘White’ and ‘Puerto Rican’ would be ignored.” After little more deliberation, I decided to trust him, and count it a small cost. So in that one question, I was Puerto Rican, though nothing else in my applications referred to that status.
Sure enough, I was admitted to Williams. Early freshman year, I received a letter from the Admissions Office. It stated that I had declared myself a minority on my application, specifically Puerto Rican. It asked if I still wanted to be considered so, and if not, to contact them and say otherwise. I thought about this a while. I did not particularly feel Puerto Rican, never have, and still don’t. Mom only spoke Spanish at home when she was being cute, or angry at us. I am not close with my PR family. But I saw no reason to take what I saw as a small risk of some kind of retribution, and I left Admissions with its original impressions.
So I was one of the however many “Latinos” in my year, though I doubt anyone at Williams outside of Bascom knew it.