Taking an SAT test is no different than any of the other test. To say she was a poor test taker doesn’t make sense if she did well on other tests.
On average, a student who scores better on tests will do better in college. The test is a measure of achievement.
If she had her way the firefighters we are discussing in this thread would be passed over because of their race. How would you like to be excluded from a promotion or job because of Title VII?
It is hard to imagine a more obtuse statement than the one above.
Some might say graduating summa cum laude and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa is a measure of achievement. That is to say, actual achievements are the measure of achievement.
Does the phrase “out of your depth” mean anything to you? It should. Or as your anti-affirmative-action fellow travelers might put it: Magiver, we can’t all be astronauts when we grow up.
Realistically speaking, do you think judges in general are free of personal bias?
Look, you’re jumping back and forth between arguing what might have happened and what did happen. You said that she took the place of someone who, statistically, would have done better. I point out that this is not true: with her graduation summa cum laude, she did do better than your statistical alternate admittee. You thus have to address the fact that, at least in her case, the standardized test was NOT a useful predictor of her success.
Here again you’re confusing the issue. She decided that the city couldn’t be liable in a suit by the white firefighters, because the action they took was not intended to discriminate against them – it was intended to insulate them from liability for a suit from the BLACK firefighters. It’s true that what you lay out is the result of her decision, but she has to apply the law to the facts and reach a result that way, not look at the desired end result and then craft her decision in a way that guarantees she’ll reach it.
So don’t lay at her feet the result. If you want to criticize her decision, address what was legally flawed in it. The mere fact that some firefighters were not promoted because of race is not enough – the question is, “What does the law say?”
You know, when I wrote this post back on page 4, I was worried that hyperbole may have obscured my point.
But now it’s clear that what I was writing wasn’t hyperbolic after all.
No, it was crooked politics. Here’s some dope on the race hustler behind the Ricci case. Just another one of the many joys and wonders of diversity and multiculturalism.
Sure:
SAT 1320; probably my worst standardized test score ever. I took it as an utterly clueless fairly new immigrant middle of junior year. I did not retake it because I did not need to retake it to get into a college I could afford.
3.85 Midwest Liberal Arts College,mostly Liberal arts w/ premed sciences. In my defense I worked about 32 hrs/week to pay my college bills. And I was kind of a lazy student.
MCATS: 675 math; 690 Gen Information; 745 Science; 710 Verbal (roughly 96-99%iles; ) mostly Liberal arts w/ premed sciences. These are exceptional aggregate scores. The science score was so good I considered it a fluke since I did not have a science major. At the time these were scored on an 800 scale.
I don’t remember my licensure scores. Least of my concerns.
Recert on Specialty Boards last fall 94%. But as I no longer practice you are not in danger on the 6% I screwed up, and in any case I figure on about 3% difference of opinion. Plus at my age I’m definitely losing neurons.
All of which is not only non-verifiable since I prefer anonymity here, but meaningless. I am neither pretending to be some kind of brilliant person nor would it have much to do with anything, would it?
Most of the posters here who post on difficult engineering, math and science topics are way over my head and most of the ones who give responses for factual and historical questions have an arsenal of knowledge way beyond mine.
Oh yeah; you didn’t ask but I took calculus pass/fail b/c I sucked at math. OTOH I took my general physics over the summer at a state university in my home state and did not miss a single question.
Name the schools please. You won’t be giving anything away.
Actually, I would. But other than satisfying your curiosity, what point are you trying to make? I’m uninterested in posting a bio on the SDMB. If, for the purposes of making an argument about standardized scores, you want to know mine, you have them; I still haven’t heard why they are relevant, much less any other personal information…
I wouldn’t read too much into publishing scores for a particular individual either way; it’s just an observation. I do think there is a lot of deliberate non-transparency in admissions process in terms of exposing scores and AA or legacy processes to outside observers. Whenever a process might seem unfair to outside observers (or really is unfair), schools are reluctant to publish the information. I sat on the admissions committee for a medical school for many years. We worked very hard to recruit and admit underrepresented minorities because we felt strongly a diverse representation was important in medicine. We did not voluntarily disclose the inner workings of the committee, and it’s my impression that anti-AA suits frequently have to sue in order to get a fuller disclosure of records.
Because I am in favor of race-based AA quotas, I don’t follow this particularly closely; it’s not a hot button for me. However it’s fair to say the “privacy” concerns relate to the fact that both legacy and AA students have formal academic records significantly inferior to other students–that’s why their “privacy” needs to be protected. If they had similar records, those averages would simply be published and that would be the end of it.
You made the claim that a reluctance to share information about test scores and educational performance indicated poor results in that area. I am only asking you to put your money where your mouth is. Either give us a bio, or admit that another reason even public figures might resist divulging the information is legitimate privacy concerns wholly unrelated to one’s scores and class rank. And that furthermore, this resistance, even if it occasions cheap shots from the pedants of the world, helps ensure that working as a public servant does not require nakedly parading every last intimate detail of one’s life hitherto.
As I pointed out earlier, grading curves make school grades an innacurate measure of achievement. Straight A’s in one school are D’s in another. College entrance exams are the only yardstick from which to measure the discrepancy. The same applies in college. You may get straight A’s in Accounting but it’s the CPA exam that certifies your understanding of the subject.
Agreed. Thanks for your “inside account” - I have no doubt that many admissions boards work very hard to ensure a diverse student body, and that process probably requires them to weight attributes differently than just ranking everybody by GPA and SAT score.
I do tend to disagree that those that refuse to give their scores have something to hide. Sometimes people chose to keep information private just to keep it private, even if releasing it would not harm them or their cause in any significant way.
Are you honestly claiming that you believe that Sotomayor’s SAT score is a more accurate reflection of her suitability to be a SCOTUS justice than being summa cum laude at Princeton?
Magiver, Bush was a legacy student. His SAT score was so-so.
Did you hold that against him?
I make the observation that, when a public figure whose academic competence–using standardized scores, for instance–is challenged chooses not to divulge the information, it’s more likely the information is not particularly stellar.
It is silly of you to pretend that a desire to remain anonymous on a message board somehow diminishes that observation.
It’s even more silly when you consider that academic track records which were beneficial–in Judge Sotomayor’s case, her grade and rank performances–were released. That alone belies the argument for privacy around her academic competence (which, for the record, I am not questioning).
While you may think it effective rhetoric to pretend I have somehow suggested “parading every last intimate detail of one’s life” is a some sort of litmus test, I have made no such suggestion. Nor am I a public figure. Nor has anyone suggested I benefited from AA (therefore creating a reason for me to post a bio).
Like many who react to this issue, you show the weakness of any counter positions you have by creating a rather silly strawman. Why not, instead, do your own due diligence around whether there are genuine race-based score differentials and whether or not efforts to eliminate them by providing equal opportunity have been succesful? That’s the crux of the issue here, not my personal bio.
I could, of course, invent one and post it here. It’s laughable and rather petulant to even ask for something that would be unverifiable, don’t you think? But I’m uninterested in proving further you have no substantive point to make.
You’re missing the conversation. Her SAT scores were waved to accomodate her ethnicity as part of a defacto quota system. She is on record as supporting and promoting this form of discrimination.
This thread is about the New Haven firefighter case and how Title VII harmed them. I do not support this and therefore do not support her.
Bush was an elected official with a limited term of office. He was not capable of changing laws based on personal biases. Supreme Court justices are not elected, do not have a term limit, and are capable of “interpreting” laws.
And I do not support any system of college entrance that is not based on academic achievement.
What I find disturbing is that a summa cum laude graduate from Princeton needs to have her academic competence challenged in the first place. Did we see this with Roberts? Or Alito? What about GW Bush? Why should we expect her to divulge anything that no one would ever think to trouble a white man with?
If Magiver finds problems with Sotomayor because her SAT score wasn’t in the top 99th percentile, that’s cool and all…if he can show that he assesses all public officials by the same meritocracy metric. I doubt he can do that, though.
How high was Alito’s SAT score? What about Roberts? Do you even know? Did you even think to wonder if they might have gotten in as legacy or because their mama plays bridge with the wife of the dean of admission?
Quite wrong on all counts. You are a public figure on this message board, you have staked out a position that you know to be controversial and you quite readily advocate for it. This is your thing and you are well-known among other message board posters for this very advocacy. Therefore, the claim that you are not a public figure is simply false. You have courted notoriety and now you’ve got it.
You have earlier argued that a refusal to release information about one’s academic performance is an indication that one did poorly. I called this bullshit and challenged you to reveal your own details. You have declined the invitation to give specifics, all the while claiming you did spectacularly well (or, by turns, that you forgot how you did). Under your rubric, we should assume that this is puffery. Nevertheless, you claim the inference you otherwise insist we should draw about Sotomayor should not be drawn about you because you are “not famous.”
In fact, what you really have experienced, and what Sotomayor has experienced, is that people just don’t enjoy revealing a wealth of personal information just because you had the audacity to participate in a public conversation or seek public office. There is, quite naturally, a difference between providing indicia of one’s abilities and meeting overbearing demands for a life’s dossier. All I ask is that you admit this very pedestrian fact and that your “rule of thumb” was misbegotten.
Lastly, there is some natural curiosity regarding your educational details given that the position you are so celebrated for–the insistence on a biological-cum-racial basis for differences in intelligence and academic performance and the unwisdom of affirmative action and diversity programs in light of this fact. For you to press this position while declaring your own record off-limits is unrealistic at best. If you do not want your own record scrutinized, you may want to refrain from insinuations about the records of others merely because you hope it will corroborate your theory of eugenics.