As soon as I saw the headline for the girl accepted at all Ivies I thought "Nigeria. Igbo." The Igbo are called "the Jews of Africa," an historical trading people who know multiple languages and moved easily between groups. Smart people. In America, they get the benefit of affirmative action, because the Ivies don't generally want to take inconvenient black people, preferring to skim the cream of the African elites and the Deltas in America. From this perspective, they then call other Americans racist, which is infuriating.
If you doubt my assessment, you might notice that last year's "all Ivy acceptance" high school senior also has Nigeria prominently displayed in his autobiography.
Bright kids, I hope they go far, and choose fields other than racial grievance. I'm not a believer that having a hero out there actually does change things that much for kids. I think it's a post hoc rationalisation. But for those of you who subscribe to that, pray that they go into chemistry or philosophy or evolutionary biology or something.
I didn't apply to any Ivies for college, but I did for graduate school, and they all accepted me despite my lack of a Nigerian origin. But the standards for grad school may be different.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing from previous comments of yours that your LSAT's were good, which was the gold ticket in those days. (There is extended analysis on some conservative sites indicating that John Kerry's LSAT's must have been pretty weak.) It's not hugely different now, but there is a trend. Elite schools have learned to game the affirmative-action system.
ReplyDeleteNah, I hadn't taken the LSAT yet--I had to give up on architecture first! But it was the same thing with GRE's, of course. Standardized tests are developed with me in mind.
ReplyDeleteWhen it came to law school, I didn't even bother applying anywhere but the University of Houston, knowing I couldn't afford anywhere else and had no plans to move to another city.