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First Review of Quiet Coup is out! And with a star! ⭐️
Mehrsa Baradaran
10.4K posts
Mehrsa Baradaran
@MehrsaBaradaran
Law Professor at UC Irvine School of Law and author of The Color of Money and How the Other Half Banks
- So I'm helping a kid I know with some college applications and I have some thoughts. My friend has a GPA of over 4.0 and a star in track and cross-country. She grew up Black in a white rural town in CA--oh and she's homeless. She's living with a friend's family.
- Replying to @MehrsaBaradaranbut I really hope my friend gets in and I really would love to go back in time and help my 18 year old self fill out these applications and do SAT prep, etc. We have to have a better system.
- Replying to @MehrsaBaradaranAnd the essay questions!!!! Columbia asks "what exhibits, lectures, theatre productions and concerts have you liked best in the last year?" I'm tempted to write "Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera--psych--my town doesn't even have a movie theatre!
- Replying to @MehrsaBaradaranSo I convince her to apply to some top colleges and offer to help her jump thru all the dumb financial and non-financial hoops. It occurs to me, after 10 or so applications in, that if you wanted to design a system to keep out poor kids, this one is probably your best bet
- Replying to @MehrsaBaradaranThese are minor annoying questions. The major one is "tell us what you're most excited about coming to Stanford, etc." She's a first gen college student. She has no idea what Stanford is like. She has never traveled outside her town.
- Replying to @MehrsaBaradaranIt just seems like anyone who can answer these questions has got to be coached. I am trying to help, but I don't even know. I literally only applied to one college because my friend helped me with the application. I barely know what Stanford is like,
- Replying to @MehrsaBaradaranI ask her what kids do for entertainment and she says: "um.... drugs." Another school asks her what her favorite periodicals, newspapers, websites are. She doesn't have access to a computer except when she does homework on a school computer. She doesn't get the New Yorker
- Replying to @MehrsaBaradaranWe've already paid over $1000 (even with fee waivers). I have no idea how she was ever going to pay that money or who in her life was going to help her with the 100s of essays we've written!
- So this undergrad kid "debunks" my book along with a bunch of other scholarship on the causes of the racial wealth gap and says that slavery and fed policy had nothing to do with it and it all comes down to culture. And guess who endorses his completely garbage argument?This Post is from an account that no longer exists. Learn more
- Look, if we’re going to be forced to live in a surveillance state and have our data sold without our consent or knowledge, can we at the very freaking least, in return for our souls and identities, not have to fill out 20 pages of medical forms at every single Dr’s office?
- Replying to @SkinnerLiber8edI'm doing this right now. Crossing my fingers the deadline hasn't passed. She needs a scholarship too so crossing fingers for that
- ANNOUNCEMENT (is this thing on): To all the young people who want to do good in the world and work for justice--especially racial equality: PLEASE STUDY FINANCE, banking, econ, money You may not tear down the house with the master's tools, but you need to know how they work
- My 16 yr old drives an old car with only a CD player. I used it today and this was the CD she’s been listening to, which she says she found in a used bin, which is the CD I had in my car at 16, which fact she did not know, which is to say nature > nurture
