Hey fiatmoney. I think you're concerned about some thing that a lot of people don't vocalize civilly, so I'm glad that you are.
Though I don't work in admissions, I work alongside a number of people of that do.
I've gone out of my way to ask about those "white kids from flyover country". I will elaborate on those of my alma mater here.
Very few kids from rural school districts perform highly on standardized testing. Very few receive the encouragement (familial and cultural) to go to high-quality, distant schools. If you want to hear some horror stories about this from me, shoot me an email. I'd be happy to share them in private.
Point being that even within its state, my large public school struggles to recruit from its rural parts.
Contrary to what you assume, they actually do employ recruitment and affirmative action policies towards to the exact folks you're talking about -- predominantly poor and culturally disadvantaged rural people who are predominantly white.
Well, I was a poor white kid from flyover country. I slacked off all through high school while hating the cruelty and boredom, and did my best to get terrible grades. I knew nothing about test-prep, and buying a Kaplan book would have been a stretch. But my HS's counselor gave me a SAT fee waiver so I took the test and got near-perfect scores.
That made me feel like I should apply to good schools, and I liked Thai food and the New Yorker mag so I applied to Columbia. I wrote them an admissions essay about living in an Indian tipi and having a single mom, and submitted an application photo of me standing in front of my tipi. CU admissions ate that up and the rest is history.
However, I did have a supporting, loving, literate mother and I avoided becoming a meth addict/pot smoking loser. Both of those things really help avoid small-town stagnation.
Unfortunately that photo was on a spinning-platter hard drive and I knew nothing about backups. Of course it's still on one of Columbia's servers somewhere but liberating it would involve an unbelievable amount of red tape.
If you email me at jordan at birnholtz dot com, I will get right back to you.
Hell, if you email me right now with your phone number, I'll even call you.
I think these stories are worth telling, but I'm not going to compromise the privacy of my very close friends in the public forum without their consent.
Reasonable question. I don't think I've made my motive for not sharing publicly very clear.
That you'd parse their identities is a secondary concern to me (as I don't think you could). I'm more concerned about their feelings, since they could easily find this post (as my real name is tied to this account).
While I think it's alright to anonymize and subsequently discuss my friends' lives in private, 1-to-1 discourse, I'm not ready to make their lives part of the public record with out their approval.
The Ron Unz link I share below shows this is not an accurate picture. Plenty of high scoring "hicks" do apply to the ivy league but tend to be turned down. Participating in 4-H has been shown to have a large negative impact on your application! At elite colleges there is clearly a strong anti rural bias.
Hi a. I've followed you around HN for a while. I can count at least a dozen times where I've begun to write a comment about one of your comments. Really. So it's a strange honor to see you responding to me.
Anyway, you drive me mad, and I'd be very willing to have a public debate about pretty much anything with you, provided it was teleconferenced.
I've read the Unz article start to finish thrice as it was recommended to me by a dear friend, fellow semite (though he's mostly Mizrahi, and I'm largely Ashkenazi) and recent H grad. It's like a big turd taken after a visit to the cinema -- a pile of crap with kernels of truth in its midst.
I agree that our current college selection process is not ideal nor Pareto efficient, but I reject Unz's suggestions on how to reform them as well as the real nature of the problem.
If you'd like to have a long and serious debate on Unz, let's do it somewhere other than in this thread. How's a month from now? I need some time to prepare.
Though I don't work in admissions, I work alongside a number of people of that do.
I've gone out of my way to ask about those "white kids from flyover country". I will elaborate on those of my alma mater here.
Very few kids from rural school districts perform highly on standardized testing. Very few receive the encouragement (familial and cultural) to go to high-quality, distant schools. If you want to hear some horror stories about this from me, shoot me an email. I'd be happy to share them in private.
Point being that even within its state, my large public school struggles to recruit from its rural parts.
Contrary to what you assume, they actually do employ recruitment and affirmative action policies towards to the exact folks you're talking about -- predominantly poor and culturally disadvantaged rural people who are predominantly white.