Asking who the judge is and what their qualifications are in assessing her high school credentials is not criticism. That you cited that post to support your claim is the height of ridiculousness and lameness.
See that? Right there? That’s criticism.
Sotomayor took the SATs in the 1970s when cultural biases defeinitely existed in the testing.
You can make the case that someone doesn’t test well but it fades as a debate point when you compare the tests used to get a grade (in a grading curve environment) versus a test used to compare all students with no grade curve. Both are testing environments but only 1 test represents an unadjusted score.
And I gave her credit for doing well at Princeton but she bumped out someone with better credentials and statistically that person would have done better. I don’t go to a basketball game or seek the services of a doctor in order to see diversity. I go because I want the efforts of the best possible person.
Not only that, but as everyone seems to be ignoring, Judge Sotomayor did not say she wouldn’t have been admitted to Princeton without Affirmative Action. Indeed, she doesn’t even assert that she wouldn’t have been admitted to Princeton or Yale (she was admitted to both, and chose Princeton) because of her test scores. She simply asserts that it would have been “questionable.”
So the video clip in question isn’t even evidence that she’s the product of affirmative action, only that she believes she may have been admitted to those two universities as a result of some form of affirmative action.
Personally, I think it unlikely, but given when she went to college, it would be impossible to determine to what extent affirmative action played in her admissions, without knowing what her test scores were and comparing those and her grades as valedictorian to the admission profiles of those universities at the time.
You are really making a silly argument here. You cannot say with any degree of certainty that she would not have gotten into Princeton without “affirmative action” without having more information than you do. And once she got in, she demonstrated that she could perform as well or better than all the others who had higher test scores, so obviously test scores aren’t a predictor of the level at which you will succeed in college. But if you want to persist in ignoring the facts, by all means, do so. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that that sort of arguing simply makes most everything you say on the subject quite suspect? :dubious:
Just in case it escaped you the first several times it was mentioned, Sotomayor graduated in the top 10% of her class. That she did this despite having a non-spectactular SAT score is evidence that your assertion is nothing but wrong.
If she’d been passed over by some kid with “better credentials” there’s no reason to believe that person would have been destined to perform better than she did. It’s a lot smarter to bet they wouldn’t because “statistically” the odds are against them. Sotomayor did better than 90% of class, most of whom probably had better SAT scores. So there’s no reason to believe the hypothetical person who deserved Princeton more than she did would have been any different.
This comparison is not apt, first of all students are the cutsomers. You could apply this argument to the professors and staff, potantially, bu t not to the student body. Secondly there may be value (likley there is) in having a diverse student body. To say someone would have statistically done better cannot be proven. Whole someone may be better along one dimension, if they are not in a diverse learning environemnt they will be incredibly lacking (potentially) in another. A doctor exposed to diversity may be a better doctor than one who is not, regardless of test scores.
What?
I wasn’t in any way criticizing anyone but Magiver in the post of mine you quoted.
First things first: my request was “Cite?” not “Restatement of your allegations?” Who knows if Sotomayor does any of the things you claim or whether they’re all figments of your imagination?
Moving on, I think you don’t understand what invidious discrimination (the full name of the legal concept) is. Title VII is the law. I don’t know what you mean by “personally promoted a Title VII case.” Or why you think enforcing the Civil Rights Act constitutes discrimination.
Nor will I accept your contention that affirmative action is discrimination or evidence of racist sentiments. It’s not invidious discrimination for the very obvious reason, despite their preternatural ability to whine about it, white men simply have never been the losers in the American system. Moreover, I think it is a little disingenuous to push the claim, without any elaboration, knowing the origin of the practice and the theory behind it. Or perhaps you don’t know these things and don’t care. But if that’s the case, I have a hard time understanding why we should listen to your take on the matter at all.
I didn’t realize it would be necessary to spell it out in such exacting detail.
*No, I think this was a “gotcha” planned moment. Knowing he was referring to Sotomayor all along, he deliberately kept it vague in an effort to build criticism of the anonymous judge cite before revealing it.
That was a good technique.*
In other words, he would quote this judge without identification, let the criticism of the validity of this source build, let people point out that he shouldn’t rely on this judge’s statement because the judge wouldn’t be in a position to know, and then reveal that the judge was Sotomayor herself.
I’m sorry, but this argument completely escapes me. Literally – I don’t understand what point you’re making.
“Statistically?” She graduated with an B.A., summa cum laude, from Princeton. Are you saying the average entrant does better than that?
Me too. And in what way has Judge Sotomayor’s experience thwarted this goal?
Huh?
I can’t figure out what in my comment makes you think I didn’t understand any of tha.
My point was simple. You said I was criticizing the judge Magiver was referring to. In fact I wasn’t. That’s it.
You were criticizing Magiver’s reliance on the judge. You were suggesting that this reliance was misplaced.
No, he was asking him to name the judge and state the basis of their credibility.
A question is a request for more information. It’s not criticism.
And those were fair questions to ask given the implausbility of what Magiver was asserting had been claimed about her grades.
No. I was criticizing Magiver for his weak citation. I did not have enough information at that point to know whether and how to criticize the judge. Hence my criticism of Magiver–for a good citation should provide that kind of information.
I was prepared for (at least) two possibilities. One was that the judge would turn out not to be a valid source of information about Sotomayor’s high school education and so on. Another was that the judge would turn out to be a valid source of information about these things. My comments toward Magiver were made on the understanding that either possibility might obtain. My criticism of Magiver was that he should already have provided enough information for us to know which possibility obtains, at the time he provided the original citation.
Of course they were fair questions.
But to claim that they were neutral, and not an implicit criticism, is disingenuous at best. Of course the questions were intended to challenge the strength ofthe citation, as Frylock himself acknowledges.
Which is more of critique of the person who made the citation. That person would be Magiver, not the judge.
If Magiver’s technique had worked as you’re saying it did, I would expect people to scathingly suggest that this judge had an axe to grind, was operating under a racist or sexist agenda, or was a stupid yahoo who shouldn’t be believed. That’s the only way Magiver could turn around and say “gotcha, I was talking about Sotomayor all along!” But no one said anything negative about the judge, so the most he could get away with was accusing someone of bias because they refered to this judge as “he” instead of “she”.
Not knowing why you can’t see any of this. We say “cite?” all the time around here and that’s essentially all that Frylock did.
There’s a nice rule of thumb about scores and public figures: if your scores are good you post ‘em publicly. If they aren’t, you obfuscate. (Speculation, of course, so feel free to call me on it. But I suspect readers here can make their own decision as to whether or not my opinion on that holds water.) Ditto with “Gee I have no idea if AA helped me get in.” Yeah, OK… But of course the school does, and if they don’t come out and say it had nuttin’ to do with it…hmmm. Speculation again, but hey…why do schools make it so hard to get at the statistics around who they admit and why?
In terms of standardized scores predicting grade success: Pretty soft correlation, and the softer the subjects–the less quanitifable the topics–the softer the correlation. “Loved your essay. Really moved me. Your oral argument totally persuaded me. A+ I say!” OTOH the more quantifiable the subject–math or engineering–it turns out standardized scores are pretty good grade predictors.
Take a look at STEM PhDs to see how this works in practice. When the educational system opened up to underrepresented groups and actively admitted folks with lower standardized scores, doctorates in non-STEM programs showed marked increases in PhDs. However in quantifiable fields such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the number of PhDs awarded to underrepresented minorities did not increase to nearly the same extent.
We are wired differently. Equal opportunity does not produce equal outcome. When we can get past that we can get to some solutions.
Consider this a request for your college boards, the name of your undergraduate institution and your GPA there, your MCAT score, the name of your medical school and GPA there, and your USMLE scores.
Thanks in advance!
Or, alternatively, she supports Affirmative Action in general and was speaking to an audience predisposed to support it and wanted to present herself as a shining example of a highly-successful individual that might not have made it where she did without the help of AA. In such a situation I could see her exaggerating her scores downward in an attempt to imply that she required AA in order to get into Princeton (which both her admission to Yale and her status as valedictorian at a highly-regarded secondary school belies).
As to your question about why colleges make it hard to get info about why they admit certain candidates I expect it has more to do with legacy admissions (especially at places like Princeton and Yale) than it does about AA. Also there are pretty obvious privacy concerns as well.