>> Incidentally, San Francisco public schools had a combined admission rate of just under 20%, well below the state average. Mission had the highest rate (26.5%) and Balboa the lowest (15.4%). It may or may not be a coincidence that 90% (the most of any SF school) of the applicants from Balboa were Asian whereas only 25% (the fewest of any SF school) of the applicants from Mission were Asian.
In order to promote diversity of the freshman classroom the college needs to suppress merit to achieve their diversity targets?
The merit metric is just different than you expect it to be. The university wants students who rise to the top of their school.
The state champions all move on to the regional tournament even if 2nd and 3rd place in Illinois are better than 1st place in Ohio.
And I have to say, doing it this way is a fantastic way of breaking the "good school district" rat race when everyone piling on to a few really wealthy schools actually makes it more difficult to get in.
That is illegal in California public schools like this article focused on.
The truth is, UC San Diego admits students who didn't get into the more prestigious UCs like Berkeley, LA, etc. That's probably why you see data like this
Everyone knows that UC still practices AA, though not named as such. And UCSD doesn't just admit students who didn't get into UCLA and UCB. Students who get into the latter also get into UCSD. Some much lower-ranked UCs might not admit these students because they assume they'll not come (yield managing), but UCSD is close enough that some students might choose it, especially if they want to be near on the beach/in SD.
No, everyone does not know that and it's not true. UC have a much different demographic skew than private California schools which do practice AA (e.g. compare Berkeley and Stanford)
That is literally what Affirmative Action (DEI in school admissions) means.
Ignore merit, consider race.
These programs have only succeeded in making a large number of people accept that race is a valid way to screen people, at which point your goal is to win.
In order to promote diversity of the freshman classroom the college needs to suppress merit to achieve their diversity targets?