White and Bright~Steve Sailer
A new study from Georgetown University reveals that if the student bodies of the 200 most selective American colleges were enrolled solely on objective SAT or ACT aptitude test scores, their student bodies would increase from 66 percent white under the current subjective system to 75 percent white.
Ironically, this study was supposed to prove, in the wake of the entertaining and immensely popular Varsity Blues scandal in which TV actresses bribed their lowbrow kids into USC instead of Arizona State, that affluent white people have unfair advantages in college admissions. The authors at the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce state:
The recent college admissions scandal has reinforced a sense that social status, affluence, and contacts allow special access to selective colleges. Our data confirms that the affluent have extraordinary advantages in college admissions.
But instead, their numbers turned out backwards from their desired results.
The black/Latino percentage under a test-only system would fall from the current 19 percent of the student bodies of the top 200 colleges to 11 percent. (Unfortunately, the authors don’t break out blacks and Latinos separately, dubiously asserting, “We combined data for Blacks and Latinos due to small sample sizes,” although my suspicion is that they did it to cover up just how small the black share would be without quotas.)
More surprisingly, the Asian percentage would drop from 11 percent to 10 percent, even though Asian test scores have been climbing throughout this century.
Under a test-only recruitment system, kids from the top 25 percent of family income ($122,000 or higher) would increase from 60 percent to 63 percent of selective student bodies.
And boys would do better than under the present arrangement, increasing from 50 percent of the current student body to 54 percent.
In other words, under a less subjective system of college admissions, the big winners would be the Current Year’s designated losers: white boys.
Amusingly, the researchers tried to assert that, because we all know a priori that white males are bad, their data demonstrates that standardized testing must be bad too. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, sums up the report:
The most prestigious U.S. campuses would be wealthier, whiter and more male—leading researchers to question the role standardized testing plays in a fair, comprehensive admissions process.
But to those of us who have been paying careful attention to college admissions in this century, this new report is just more evidence that smart white males have become the most overlooked demographic.
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