Here is the experience of one black student admitted to the University of Texas under the ’10% Rule’:
For Jarius Sowells, an African-American student from Dallas, the transition to academic life at UT-Austin was much more difficult than it was for Tedra Jacobs. Sowells, like many black and Hispanic students in the country, attended a high school that was made up mostly of minority and low-income students. “More than half dropped out,” Sowells says of his classmates. “Overall, the teachers had apathetic attitudes.”
Sowells graduated in the top 10 percent of his class and was automatically admitted to UT-Austin, his top choice. He planned to major in business. But Sowells didn’t know what to expect on his first day of college classes. His older brothers, who are twins, had enrolled in much less selective colleges, and neither of his parents had earned more than a high school diploma. “I don’t think my high school prepared me very well to begin learning at this institution,” Sowells says. “It was a culture shock. I was around people who didn’t look like me, didn’t talk like me.”
He signed up for several tough classes his first semester — microeconomics, business foundations, introduction to psychology, and rhetoric. Within weeks he was failing. “I psychologically broke down,” he says. “I felt I couldn’t handle it.” The following semester he dropped out and returned home.
He didn’t give up completely, however. The following fall he was readmitted on probation. He began to build up his GPA, which is now a 2.7. He dropped his aspirations of majoring in business and switched to African-American studies. His plan is to become a lawyer; he’s counting on getting a high LSAT score to make up for his low grades. He thinks his persistence in the face of obstacles proves he has what it takes to go far.
At another Atlantic article discussing ‘mismatching’, cited in the OP, Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr. wrote:
The student who is underprepared relative to others in that class falls behind from the start and becomes increasingly lost as the professor and his classmates race ahead. His grades on his first exams or papers put him at the bottom of the class. Worse, the experience may well induce panic and self-doubt, making learning even harder.
Sander and Taylor point out that at the University of Texas, the average black student falls at the 52nd percentile in terms of SAT scores whereas the average white student falls at the 89th percentile. Such “large preferences”, as opposed to more manageable “small preferences”, create more negative outcomes than affirmative action proponents let on.
Back to Sowells, who, if he is aware of ‘mismatching’ does not accept it as a valid explanation for his experience:
But Sowells himself sees his story differently. He thinks his UT-Austin diploma will give him a better start in life than a diploma from a less selective school like UT-Arlington — where only 42 percent of blacks graduate within six years — even if his grades aren’t as high. And if he struggled at UT-Austin, he says, it’s not because the school should never have let him in; it’s because it should have taken more responsibility for helping him succeed. He wishes someone had advised him against stacking up so many hard classes in his first semester, for example, or told him where to get assistance when he started to fall behind. “I think they could have done a lot more to help me,” he says.
Looking at the bigger picture, we have a young man who seemingly will graduate from a relatively good school with an inferior degree. Inferior in terms of future job prospects and inferior even on the students’ own terms. He’s going that route because it is too hard for him to earn a degree in the hard sciences or even business. If he went to UT-Arlington he could probably earn a degree in a more substantive field. If we’re looking purely in terms of economic rationality, black students should probably not make a habit of this.
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Jarius represents 5 stereotypes in just the snippets you posted. He’s counting on a high LSAT. Sorry, not happening. He’ll be lucky to hit the 10% percentile for his LSAT score, but he’ll get into a newly minted law school diploma mill and pick up thousands in debt.
One thing he is right about is that the prestige of UT vs. UT-Arlington will help him. The name does carry cache, and it’s not like the diploma has his major and GPA printed on it. It will fool people. My guess is he gets decent jobs in companies but never stays long nor performs well, but he’ll always get hired because someone will think ‘we found a smart one’.
the only way to stop this is to make sure Students of Color get a high quality primary education
this means not letting white students (whio are a minority by the way) haord all the smart schools
The white students are keeping all the good grades for themselves. The grades need to be redistrubuted. All those students who voted for BHO should donate 1/2 a letter grade into a pool that minority students can dip into to bring up their averages.
Or, since the university can manufacture grades from thin air, just give everyone a B to start with.
or just do away with grading as inherently unfair.
“He signed up for several tough classes his first semester — microeconomics, business foundations, introduction to psychology, and rhetoric.”
Are you kidding me? My greatest challenge in University was coping with the moderate-IQ students that needed everything spoon fed to them, and essays that were “Jump through the hoop, monkey!” level of complexity.
“He signed up for several tough classes his first semester — microeconomics, business foundations, introduction to psychology, and rhetoric.”
Give me a break. I was a Biochem student in college, and I had to take courses like Biochemistry, Physical Chemistry and a POST-calc course (Qualitative Analysis And Boundary Value Problems). Psych and business courses were what we took for easy A’s to bring up our GPA. This guy must be totally clueless if he couldn’t pass his courses.
So he got accepted why, again? Oh, that’s right. Never mind.
Anti-Racist it is refreshing to see your honest race realism. You are the real race realist Brah. We want your opinion on how Women of Color can deal with uppity white females in schools.
Maybe a high Black LSAT
hahaha got to the ending, “he wishes someone had told him to study being black right away instead of trying for an actual major”
@SOBL1
He’ll stay as long as he wants to at a company once he gets in because they’ll be too afraid to fire him no matter how incompetent he is.
I also agree with Aurini on how easy those classes are. Basic microeconomics doesn’t even require math. I took all of those my first semester with a Probability math instead of Rhetoric and I got A’s in all of them without much effort.
At my heavily black high school the black students with even a 1000 on the SAT (old scoring system) had recruiters onsite visiting them from Dartmouth, Duke, Cornell, etc. When the Ivy recruiters arrived they (literally) didn’t care at all about prospecting for suitable white or Asian students, even those like myself with GPA and SAT above the Ivy League average. They rolled out the red carpet to find funding and propose aid packages to these black students.
We did have one black female admitted to Princeton (GPA and SAT lower than mine) and she did graduate with a degree in women’s studies or some other grievance major. She was a strong student, though.
I have a BA in Psych and an MBA. I can attest to the fact that the courses he tried to take are not difficult. Which is, sadly, why I chose those major’s…because they were easy. Knowing how much of a window licker I was at 18 and how little effort it took for me to succeed in college makes me sad for this young man.
@Scott – Agreed, but he’ll self sabotage or just get bored. Look at Jarius’ habits in college, and that was with an academic advisor and chump courses to choose. It is difficult to fire one. We just did, but it took a 30 day investigation of his habits, as well as my boss putting him through our probation process months in advance. I had to come in on a Saturday to run testing of his work vs. peers to justify how bad he was. We have two black females who are competent, but there isn’t a black man in my division of 125 ees. We’d hire one in a heartbeat due to HR diversity pressure, but it is hard finding qualified candidates.
No one’s addressing the point from the last quote which is, as all too common in the black community, they blame their failings on external factors instead of taking personal responsibility.
Read that again, not that it’s new, but that it bears remembering. The black community overwhelmingly thinks they are “owed” something, and every failing is because whitey is out to get them.
“he says… [the school] should have taken more responsibility for helping him succeed. “I think they could have done a lot more to help me,” he says.”
No other possibility is entertained — He’s the smartest black man he knows. If he fails it’s obviously because the system set him up to fail.
What are the easy courses? Oh, right, African-American “studies.” The courses he calls tough are the ones I took to balance highly technical courses, and they are all freshman-level. For instance one could learn about projection by seeing someone who blames their failings on their past school and their current one. (His colleges are among the few things Obummer has not thrown under the bus, lest they release his records.)
Also I might be able to see four courses for the first semester, but this is not exactly the right way to go on the four-year plan (typically about 40 courses, so 5 per semester to finish in 4 years).
Commenters are being too hard on this guy. First, those classes are hard – maybe not for genius commenters, but for ordinary students, that’s a hard schedule. Second, somebody should have sat him down and told him to take a few gut courses. But good luck finding anybody who gives a damn at a school as big as UT Austin. Third, he belongs at a Morehouse or some smaller school that would hold his hand. If he’d gotten a business degree from a school like that, he’d be on his way. As it is, he’s got a much steeper road ahead.
that stuff sounds hard to me
i took micro and macro economics in junior college (basektball scholarship)
i was compeletly lost
i still got an A
but I had no clue what was going on
Your calling Anti-Racist was not nerdy white boy college books. Your mission is Leadership of Soldiers of Justice. This is why you comment here and influence hard Brothers who read you and act in your name..
this means not letting white students (whio are a minority by the way) haord all the smart schools
Problem is, there are no smart schools, only smart students.
Once again, the total lack of personal responsibility thing. Black students are owed hand-holding; I guess a white student from the same background isn’t.
It’s more sad than anything else, to think how banal and limited this perspective is.
It induces pity for black America: trapped by its own internalized limitations, limited by a singular lack of vision.
I doubt if Jaius would have done any better at UT-Arlington while majoring in business. We still would have had to study economic, statistics, etc. UT-Arlington have very low graduation rates because those schools have to weed out students who do not belong. A school like UT-Austin just does bother to admit students who do not belong.