Word: handicaps
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...nearly 20 years, or possibly even more if we continue on to graduate school (as test-takers hope to do), we will have been judged by our words and by our numbers. But more than anything else, we have been judged by other people, and that is the tremendous handicap school has given us. After spending a quarter of our lives waiting for other people to evaluate us, we risk losing the ability to evaluate ourselves...
What happened? At Berkeley, which saw 29,961 high school grads competing for only 8,034 spots, a major problem was just how selective the admissions process had to be. Although the new policy decreased emphasis on grades and SAT scores, both remained important. That was a handicap to many African-American and Hispanic applicants. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that in 1992 nearly 21% of college-bound, non-Hispanic whites had GPAs of 3.5 and higher, compared to just 10% of Hispanics and 4% of blacks. And 25% of non-Hispanic whites had SATs above 1100, compared...
Given the huge academic handicap burdening black students admitted under affirmative action--their average SAT scores were 288 points below the Berkeley average--this dropout rate is understandable. These students were arbitrarily thrown into an environment with students far more advanced academically. The result was predictable: failure. Even more tragic is the fact that these bright black students, as social theorist Thomas Sowell puts it, "were perfectly qualified to be successes somewhere else" but were instead "artificially turned into failures by being admitted to high-pressure campuses, where only students with exceptional academic backgrounds can survive...
Citius, Altius, Fortius, and they give you the gold: it's the Olympic Way. But figure skating is not there yet, and this makes Nagano tough to handicap. With styles for every judge's taste, the program will include Todd Eldredge, 26, the five-time American champ from Chatham, Mass., who is back on form after suffering shoulder and rib injuries but has yet to land a quad in competition; a pair of elegant young Russians, Ilia Kulik and Alexei Yagudin, exemplars of old-school, glamour-puss skating; and a sleeper. American Michael Weiss, 21, from Fairfax, Va., will hope...
...expert will never be able to convey to the color-blind woman at the Picasso exhibit what she's missing, the bagel-lover will have a hard time converting the uninitiated. The allure of the fresh, well-made bagel, alas, defies verbal explanation. And yet despite this handicap, in recent years the bagel has been popularized across the nation, a development which culminated in the Dunkin' Donuts chains decision to enter the bagel-making field. In cities such as Memphis and Atlanta, bagels are becoming everything from an occasional bread substitute to a dietary staple...