After the Supreme Court declared an end to the use of race criteria in college admissions, many administrators pledged to find a way around the decision. Schools are using essay prompts to flag race while rejecting the use of standardized testing to boost diversity in admissions. In the meantime, these schools are rejecting students with stellar credentials. The latest is Zach Yadegari, whose rejection by top schools offers an insight into the skewed criteria still in use for admissions.
Some schools, like the University of California system, previously abandoned standardized testing to boost minority admissions and make challenges more difficult. A few schools have since reversed the decision to restore academic standards. However, schools appear to be using race criteria in more subtle ways, like prompting applicants to discuss how they overcame such discrimination or bias in their essays.
An example of the curious standards is evident in the rejection of Yadegari by 15 of the 18 colleges.
Yadegari had stellar grades, with a score of 34 out of 36 on the ACT and a 4.0 GPA. More importantly, He built an app, Cal AI, which drew over five million downloads and $2 million in monthly revenue, according to TechCrunch. He went on to sell the app for $30 million.
That would seem a tad more impressive than the usual summer internship with Greenpeace or a donation drive found in applications.
However, he was rejected by Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, WashU, Columbia UPenn, Princeton, Duke, USC, UVA, NYU, Vanderbilt, Brown, and Cornell.
Notably, Harvard has fought the hardest to preserve racial criteria for admissions. It recently had to start a remedial high school-level math course for its students.
As discussed on sites like College Fix, he is not unique. Take Stanley Zhong, a 19-year-old with a 4.42 GPA and nearly perfect SAT score. He was also rejected from 16 of the 18 colleges. He and his father are now suing the University of California system for discrimination against Asian-American applicants.
The Trump Administration could assist these students by forcing schools to make greater disclosures. Harvard and other universities have spent millions in litigation resisting such disclosures.
These administrators have shown that they will not yield on the use of race. In California, voters repeatedly voted against using race, and a task force supported using standardized testing in admissions. Yet, University of California President Janet Napolitano still eliminated the use of standardized tests, and, as shown by Zhong, top students are still inexplicably rejected.
If these cases reflect the current criteria, the public and donors must do more to return our universities and colleges to a greater emphasis on scholastic credentials. This culture will not change without a substantial change in the administrators and staff at these schools.
Don’t understand why I can reply but don’t see how to make my own comment. But why aren’t those not accepting students by the rules not fired? I’m white without a racist bone in my body. Can only imagine if I’d worked hard all my life to admitted to a top grade institution but was shut out by racist admission standards.
Sanctimony is not a good look on you. BTW. look up the word pithy. Now use it in a sentence.
Astounding that some people want outlaws from foreign countries walking our streets.
That’s not too far from the truth. TNX for sharing.
Congressmen and high officials are each given a scholarship annually to award for each Ivy League school, and many other prominent universities, hence 500+ scholarships yearly! With the small enrollments, that means govt elites award a quarter to almost half of all enrollees to our elite universities. WHY? For grants dollars and other donations from the committees these govt officials have dominion over. Ever wonder how those endowments got so bloated? Now you know. IT is a quid pro quo – govt elites relatives got to Ivy League caliber schools in exchange for Govt funds going to the universities. We have a grossly corrupt govt, time to fix it….
If there is any “industry” in America that is actually heavily Jewish, besides reporters and dentists and investment bankers, it’s university professors. Discriminating against Jewish applicants? i seriously doubt it. This is some kind of Amen-corner for Israel Republican fantasy
Now if they count him as generally white, well of course he gets a strike against him
Sal Sar
This comment was meant in reply to Aimeslee’s statement below that universities are discrimiinating against the Jewish and Asians., Asians yes. Jews, only because they count them as whites. Trust me universities are heavily jewish, it is not discriminating against Jews as such, it’s likely just discriminating against whites and so Jews catch a part of that trouble as well.
The whole affirmative-action, DEI thing is repulsive, and should absolutely stop.
There will be some groups that outperform others, for myriad reasons. We don’t need to always be fixing that.
Likewise, there will be nepotism. Another thing that will never go away
Utopian fantasies will be the death of us, more than our usual human sins
Sal Sar
JINOs, I assure you. I’m not religious, but I support my people and Israel, unlike those cowards.
Hello, most jews are far left marxists.
For decades, the DOJ has wantonly utilized demographic disproportion to win oversight over police departments, resulting in external monitoring, consent decrees, etc.. Despite the fraud and failure of this strategy when used against police agencies (reducing enforcement but not crime), it is an approach worthy of consideration for reining in the racist progressives who’ve commandeered higher education, as it will insert a watchful eye where it is needed most: inside.
That’s why Harvard quicky agreed to comply with Justice Roberts’ wishy washy decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Pres. and Fellows of Harvard College. He got to pretend they were finally putting the kibosh on Affirmative Action in college admittance, while leaving the door open for it in application essays. I used to defend him, saying these loophole or incomplete decisions were just his jurisprudence, but it became pretty obvious that he will almost always give the left a loophole for their modern-day fascism. So years, generations go by, of discrimination while the cases make their way up through the courts again.
The belief that a college’s Diversity is essential to the educational experience of faculty and students appears to be falsified by a policy that excludes students who are superior performers.
Excluding those same superior performance based on their race also renders the policy the opposite of Inclusion.
The Democratic Party and its dispersed stooges stick to to their founding principles: bigotry, racism and cronyism….at all costs.
Stanley Zhong is Asian and Zach Yadegari is Jewish. Why is this not surprising? Both groups have been consistently discriminated against academically by the Left.
Aimeslee,
Good point and likely to be true. Asian and Jewish, members of two very smart groups of people with records of significant accomplishments benefiting all of humanity, so of course the universities would disparage and slight them. Disgusting.
I agree, it is disgusting!
This vital news just hit the wires. A U.S. District Court Judge has made an historic ruling over the weekend for which we can all be grateful:
OT
“Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen, has lived in Maryland for almost 15 years. While he initially entered the U.S. without being granted legal status, a federal judge in 2019 granted him protection from being deported, because of concerns for his safety if he were to return to El Salvador.”
– NPR
_________
Abrego Garcia is a criminal illegal alien invader who must have been deported 15 years ago. A “judge” rewarded Abrego Garcia for committing crimes. A “judge” stopped that deportation because the judge felt sorry for this abject international criminal. I’m an American citizen, and I have had my constitutional rights and freedoms violated for decades and decades by a rogue juristocracy. When will a judge protect me and implement my protection from foreign invasion and the takeover of my country? In fact, the judge is not protecting Abrego Garcia; the judge is “facilitating” the invasion and conquest of America by foreigners. “Asylum” is a monumental fraud equal to the Ponzi Scheme that is Social Security. “Asylum” might apply to 100 or 1,000, but not 10 or 20 million, and at 18.7% of the population, Social Security is not even close to “general Welfare.”
That would seem a tad more impressive than the usual summer internship with Greenpeace or a donation drive found in applications
Zach Yadegari’s essay is 660 words, and 600 of those words are about himself. His essay is the type that gets rejected by medical school admissions staff without giving it much thought. Near perfect MCAT scores and stellar science GPA become tertiary with an essay like his. Zach Yadegari is a know it all, sees the world as a playground, to influence it, and this at such a young age. There was nothing of humility, history of community service, no resume of lifting up his fellow man, or seeing himself as a pencil in God’s hands as Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta described herself.
Saint Mother Teresa did not attend college, didn’t start a profitable organization that she could sell for millions of dollars, nor did she enter the Sisters of Loretto global Catholic nuns organization at a young age to influence them. It was in the SL that she heard God’s voice during a train trip to Darjeeling, India with the words: “I thirst”. The words drove her to achieve what few have done. She left the SL, she started, ran, and grew the most impactful religious organization of Nuns ever known the Missionaries of Charity organization. Having personally met Mother Teresa in New Orleans while I was in college, and having met countless executives, MD-PhD types, hospital and pharmaceutical / biotech CEOs, extremely wealthy men and women, none have impacted me like Mother Teresa did. This is what the world needs: more Saints like Mother Teresa, and not yet another smartphone app developer like Steve Jobs.
Today is the last day of Lent. The Catholic Church offers adherents of Catholicism the following reflection in the Liturgy of the Hours, Office of the Readings, second reading, a sermon by St Gregory of Nazianzen, Archbishop of Constantinople 4th Century AD, today’s Muslim occupied Istanbul.
Western Civilization, and especially the United States, was founded as a religious society based on Christian intellectual, moral and philosophical principles. These were lived with conviction and stirred the minds and hearts of the US Founding Fathers. We as a nation have fallen far from the Tree of Life. May Holy Week be a start for “those who have ears to hear” and be a living Saint like Mother Teresa did.
SECOND READING
From a homily by Saint Gregory Nazianzen, bishop
(Oratio 45, 23-24: PG 36, 654-655)
We are soon going to share in the Passover, and although we still do so only in a symbolic way, the symbolism already has more clarity than it possessed in former times because, under the law, the Passover was, if I may dare to say so, only a symbol of a symbol. Before long, however, when the Word drinks the new wine with us in the kingdom of his Father, we shall be keeping the Passover in a yet more perfect way, and with deeper understanding. He will then reveal to us and make clear what he has so far only partially disclosed. For this wine, so familiar to us now, is eternally new.
It is for us to learn what this drinking is, and for him to teach us. He has to communicate this knowledge to his disciples, because teaching is food, even for the teacher.
So let us take our part in the Passover prescribed by the law, not in a literal way, but according to the teaching of the Gospel; not in an imperfect way, but perfectly; not only for a time, but eternally. Let us regard as our home the heavenly Jerusalem, not the earthly one; the city glorified by angels, not the one laid waste by armies. We are not required to sacrifice young bulls or rams, beasts with horns and hoofs that are more dead than alive and devoid of feeling; but instead, let us join the choirs of angels in offering God upon his heavenly altar a sacrifice of praise. We must now pass through the first veil and approach the second, turning our eyes toward the Holy of Holies. I will say more: we must sacrifice ourselves to God, each day and in everything we do, accepting all that happens to us for the sake of the Word, imitating his passion by our sufferings, and honoring his blood by shedding our own. We must be ready to be crucified.
If you are a Simon of Cyrene; take up your cross and follow Christ. If you are crucified beside him like one of the thieves, now, like the good thief, acknowledge your God. For your sake, and because of your sin, Christ himself was regarded as a sinner; for his sake, therefore, you must cease to sin. Worship him who was hung on the cross because of you, even if you are hanging there yourself. Derive some benefit from the very shame; purchase salvation with your death. Enter paradise with Jesus, and discover how far you have fallen. Contemplate the glories there, and leave the other scoffing thief to die outside in his blasphemy.
If you are a Joseph of Arimathea, go to the one who ordered his crucifixion, and ask for Christ’s body. Make your own the expiation for the sins of the whole world. If you are a Nicodemus, like the man who worshiped God by night, bring spices and prepare Christ’s body for burial. If you are one of the Marys, or Salome, or Joanna, weep in the early morning. Be the first to see the stone rolled back, and even the angels perhaps, and Jesus himself.
Blessed Holy Week to all.
Oremus
Estovir– “His essay is the type that gets rejected by medical school admissions staff without giving it much thought.”
I wondered what was going wrong with medical schools.
Apparently the demand for stupid but humble and compassionate doctors is growing and must be met. Anchorites for Doctors!
Estovir – welcome back. I noticed you’ve been absent from this blog for a little while. I’m glad you’re back as I always enjoy your contributions.
Best,
OMFK
Synopsis of book exposing the fact that Mother Theresa did more harm than good —
The introduction is devoted to Mother Teresa’s acceptance of an award from the government of Haiti, which Hitchens uses to discuss her relationship to the Duvalier regime. From her praise of the country’s corrupt first family, he writes, “Other questions arise … all of them touching on matters of saintliness, modesty, humility and devotion to the poor.”[15] He adds other examples of Mother Teresa’s relationships with powerful people with what he considers dubious reputations. He quickly reviews Mother Teresa’s saintly reputation in books devoted to her and describes the process of beatification and canonization under Pope John Paul II. Finally, he disclaims any quarrel with Mother Teresa herself and says he is more concerned with the public view of her: “What follows here is an argument not with a deceiver but with the deceived.”[16]
The first section, “A Miracle”, discusses the popular view of Mother Teresa and focuses on the 1969 BBC documentary Something Wonderful for God which brought her to the attention of the general public and served as the basis for the book of the same title by Malcolm Muggeridge. Hitchens says that Calcutta’s reputation as a place of abject poverty, “a hellhole”, is not deserved, but nevertheless provides a sympathetic context for Mother Teresa’s work there.[17] He quotes from conversations between Muggeridge and Mother Teresa, providing his own commentary. He quotes Muggeridge’s description of “the technically unaccountable light” the BBC team filmed in the interior of the Home of the Dying as “the first authentic photographic miracle”.[18] Hitchens contrasts this with the cameraman’s statement that what Muggeridge thought was a miracle was the result of them using the latest Kodak low light film.[19]
The second section, “Good Works and Heroic Deeds”, has three chapters:
Asserting that Mother Teresa serves her own religious beliefs and reputation, Hitchens questions the popular belief that Mother Teresa is nevertheless addressing the physical needs of the poor. He quotes several who have visited her institutions or worked in them to establish that the medical care provided does not compare with that provided in a hospice, lacked diagnostic services, and eschewed even basic pain medications. He says that rather than asceticism, her institutions are characterized by “austerity, rigidity, harshness and confusion” because “when the requirements of dogma clash with the needs of the poor, it is the latter which give way.”[20] He quotes a former member of her order who describes baptisms of the dying performed without their consent.
Hitchens reviews the Catholic Church’s moral teaching on abortion, sympathizing in general but objecting first to its “absolutist edict”[21] that makes no distinction between a fertilized egg and later stages of development, and second to its proscription on birth control. Noting conservative Catholics who have dissented from this last teaching, he identifies Mother Teresa as “the most consistently reactionary figure.” Hitchens quotes her speech when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979: “Today, abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace.”[22] Hitchens goes on to argue that women become empowered when given the right to contraceptives. He writes that giving women control over their fertility and empowering them is the only known cure to poverty.
Hitchens describes the prize money awarded Mother Teresa, “the extraordinary largesse of governments, large foundations, corporations and private citizens”,[23] to call into question whether her avowed poverty is not the affectation of poverty. He describes her ties to financier Charles Keating, who gave her $1.25 million before being convicted for his role in the savings and loan scandal (1986–1995). He includes a facsimile of a letter she wrote testifying to Keating’s good character, followed by a letter from the prosecutor’s office to Mother Teresa detailing Keating’s crimes, the thousands of people he “fleeced without flinching” of $252 million. The prosecutor asked her to do “what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen, … if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience”. Hitchens ends by noting that the letter has not had a response.[24]
The third section, “Ubiquity”, has two chapters:
Hitchens describes Mother Teresa’s Albanian background and political events in the Balkans to establish the importance of her 1990 visit to the nationalist Mother Albania monument in Tirana, an assertion of Catholic expansionist sentiment in the unstable former Yugoslavia.[25]
Hitchens notes the consistency with which Mother Teresa has backed powerful interests aligned against the powerless: Union Carbide following the 1984 Bhopal disaster, the government of Margaret Thatcher, the administration of Ronald Reagan. She visited Nicaragua to side with the CIA-backed Contras against the Sandinistas.[26]
Anon: “Mother Teresa’s relationships with powerful people with what he considers dubious reputations. ”
I believe Jesus did the same. Perhaps there is a lesson to be found.
“Western Civilization, and especially the United States, was founded as a religious society based on Christian intellectual, moral and philosophical principles.”
You’re still peddling that lie.
Yours is either massive ignorance or willful deceit. And you continue to evade the society that was based on Religious ideas: The Dark/Middle Ages.
Turley– “This culture will not change without a substantial change in the administrators and staff at these schools.”
True, but the need for highly intelligent people in our society is, unemotionally, a demand for a high quality tool or product.
If that demand can no longer be met by public education and universities, then businesses like X or Meta may have to fill the gap. Perhaps they are already doing so to some degree. Knowledgeable autodidacts are already getting technical jobs without high school or university diplomas. Actual ability and knowledge are more important than a diploma that is basically a receipt for wasted money rather than evidence of acquired knowledge.
Interestingly the current male high school graduates are rejecting college in favor of learning to be a plumber or electrician or something else marketable.
Women with degrees can look down on them as they serve them coffee at Starbucks or a Big Mac at McDonald’s. Perhaps universities should teach them how to politely ask, “Would you like fries with that?” At least they would get something for the half million spent on their diploma in womyn studies. Good luck getting a mate.
Young – my son, high school class of ’26, is opting for one year of auto mechanics followed by one year of diesel mechanics. He’ll be able to earn a decent living that way, and he will be satisfied with that (I know him).
Women with degrees can look down on them as they serve them coffee at Starbucks or a Big Mac at McDonald’s
The blue-hair nose-ring women will indeed look down at him, and that’s good, I would hate for him to end up with one. OTOH, he may work at a place with pretty Mennonite girls wandering about in search of a good husband. Such girls are in my experience friendly and modest. He will find young woman of virtue, and they will make each other happy. That’s my story, at least, and I’m sticking to it.
Best,
OMFK
Oldman–
My grandson has made a similar choice and I am glad for him and for his thinking clearly. Along with learning a skill that will pay well and not be overturned by AI on his own, I may show him what we have learned in R/E investing. He can do very well in that while working in a trade.
Sounds good, Young, I only wish I could be a fly on the wall when you teach him about R/E investing, haha.
You hit the nail on the head. Trades like auto mechanics, plumbing, and A/C work not only train someone for a good life, they also open the door to building a million-dollar business. I tell my grandchildren: whatever you choose to do, take a course in business and law. It gives you the tools to create even greater opportunities.
S. Meyer– “tell my grandchildren: whatever you choose to do, take a course in business and law. It gives you the tools to create even greater opportunities.”
Very wise advice.
# perhaps this blog is false. Perhaps it is spam and just entertainment.
Just an educated guess … These 2 young men (and so many others, young women as well) submitted essays that failed to identify them as checking the box of “black” or “person of ‘color'” – whatever the latter category is supposed to identify. Or they have family names that the schools decided check some box other than the two just mentioned. Institutions of so-called higher education do not disguise their intentions to discriminate! they take disgusting steps to make decisions based on unlawful criteria.
U R correct amoondoe and spot on.
Thank you for this info. I just retired from my D.C. job and will soon be moving to a less expensive area. I definitely won’t select Xfinity as my new provider, because I’m not paying for corporate censorship!
Defund universities and colleges who discriminate by race, sex and sexual orientation. Such discrimination violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. These schools should get no federal money until they prove they’re not discriminating. Adverse impact statistics should work great against them. Fund only schools who select based on merit. Fund cuts should include all funding, including research grants and federal student loans. Enough already. Hit then in their wallets.
#. Are they really private when the public is served?
IMHO none of the so called schools should be getting funding from any government entity period. They survive or die by their ability to educate. Enough said. This is not part of the governments responsibility. And another reason our taxes ARE TO DAMN HIGH lol.
May private universities matriculate students by each institution’s particular internal criteria?
Do private universities enjoy the 5th Amendment absolute right to private property, or is their property public?
The only thing to be done regarding the one-party communist state of California is for President Trump to send the U.S. Army in to reclaim California after its de facto secession into the jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of La La Land from the United States.
________________________________________________________________________________
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
____________________
5th Amendment
No person shall be…deprived of…property…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Private property no longer exists. It’s communal property now. Wishing they’d do their own laundry.
Absolutely correct.
Americans lost the right to private property by arbitrary and corrupt “partial indecision” of the “Dictatorship of the Juristocracy.”
Just look at the fine communistic work of “Fair Housing” and “Non-Discrimination” laws, rent, wage, and price setters everywhere, and any and all local Building and Safety
Departments—who the —- do these people think they are?