Joanne Jacobs
Ivy dreams, but what's realistic?
"Safe to say Harvard is out," Demar Goodman, who's black, told a friend when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected race-based college...
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Joanne Jacobs
- Oct 11
- 1 min
Rejected by 16 colleges, 18-year-old takes Google job: Yes, he's Asian
Stanley Zhong earned nearly perfect grades (3.97 unweighted, 4.42 weighted) and SAT scores (1590 out of 1600). He founded his own...
Joanne Jacobs
- Sep 16
- 1 min
Yale changes admissions, avoids bias lawsuit
Elite colleges have "rolled out new application questions this fall to provide students with opportunities to discuss their racial...
Joanne Jacobs
- Aug 30
- 2 min
Low-SES Asians are top students: Can 'excellence gap' be closed?
A middle school in a working-class, mostly Hispanic neighborhood in San Jose started teaching algebra after a wave of Vietnamese refugee...
Joanne Jacobs
- Aug 19
- 2 min
Colleges ask students to write about identity -- in a constitutional-ish way
Asked by his first-choice college about a challenge he'd overcome, "Frank" wrote about struggling with algebra in ninth grade. He'd...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 25
- 2 min
Focus on who gets out of poverty, not who gets into Harvard
Obsessing over who gets into elite colleges and universities is an odd preoccupation for progressives, argues Francisco Toro on...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 6
- 1 min
Prep disadvantaged kids for Ivy futures
Elite colleges should create and fund middle and high schools to educate disadvantaged students, writes Roland Fryer, a Harvard economics...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 5
- 3 min
Biden opposes 'privilege,' except when his granddaughter applied to Penn
Harvard's admissions break for children of alumni and donors "discriminates against students of color by giving an unfair boost" to...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 5
- 2 min
Educate the 99%, who got no help from affirmative action
"Affirmative action," a euphemism for racial preferences, "is a misguided, discriminatory policy whose end is long overdue," writes...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 30
- 2 min
Racial 'gamification' will go on unless students refuse to play
Elite universities reward applicants -- students and job-hunting professors -- who can play racial identity games, writes Tyler Austin...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 29
- 3 min
SCOTUS: Universities can admit on 'challenges bested,' but not on skin color
Racial preferences in college admissions are unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, striking down affirmative action plans...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 26
- 2 min
Poor blacks get nothing from affirmative action
Affirmative action in college admissions has failed to help disadvantaged black students, writes Bertrand Cooper in The Atlantic. If the...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 15
- 1 min
Race-based affirmative action isn't popular
Half of adults disapprove of colleges considering race and ethnicity in admissions, while one third approve and the rest are unsure,...
Joanne Jacobs
- Jun 15
- 2 min
If colleges can't use race for admissions, what happens?
The U.S. Supreme Court to end racial preferences in college admissions, very soon, just about everyone predicts. So what happens next?...
Joanne Jacobs
- May 16
- 2 min
Americans like merit, but Democrats aren't so sure
Most Americans -- "ordinary people" rather than academics -- believe in merit, writes Ruy Teixeira on Liberal Patriot. They want to help...
Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 9
- 2 min
Columbia goes 'holistic,' dumps SAT/ACT requirement
Columbia University, know for its core curriculum in humanities, has become the first Ivy League school to drop SAT/ACT scores as an...
Joanne Jacobs
- Dec 6, 2022
- 2 min
Applying while Asian: No violin, no chess, no math club
Asian-American students are advised to be "less Asian" when they apply to selective colleges, reports Amy Qin in the New York Times....
Joanne Jacobs
- Nov 21, 2022
- 1 min
College apps are up again, and crunch season is just starting
College applications appear to be up this fall after a pandemic dip, according to the Common Application's report on early applicants....
Joanne Jacobs
- Nov 2, 2022
- 2 min
America is not black and white any more
Affirmative action was created at a time when most Americans belonged to a white majority or a black minority, writes Megan McArdle in...
Joanne Jacobs
- Nov 2, 2022
- 2 min
Diversity on trial
Diversity is a "fig leaf" for elite colleges' desire to discriminate on the basis of race, says linguist John McWhorter in a New York...
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