<p>[…Continued]
The civil rights investigation of Princeton was started in 2008, the last year of Bush administration. It has been ongoing for 3 years, is it going nowhere? How does anyone not involved in the investigation be able to tell? If Princeton is innocent of the charge as some have claimed, why the result of investigation has not been released? Regardless, these kind investigations are political in nature.</p>
<p>But lets look at what has happened to asian admission at Princeton since Jian Li filed his complaint in 2006. Before 2006, admitted asian students at Princeton had never reach 14% (14% in 2006), always the lowest percentage among HYP. Since 2006, the number of admitted asian students jumped up year after year, and reached over 22% in 2010 and stayed there this year, highest among all Ivys by a wide margin. That is an increase of more than 50% of all Asian American students admitted in Jian Lis year (2006).</p>
<p>Actually, it is effective from the point of view of each (highly selective) school’s viewpoint, but less so when considering the overall effect when looking at all of the schools put together.</p>
<p>UC is an example. There have always been hard eligibility limits in terms of GPA and test scores to be UC eligible. All of the UC campuses compete with each other to admit students from the same pool of UC eligible applicants (and all UC eligible applicants are supposed to be admitted to a UC, though not necessarily the first choice). Race-based preferences in admissions prior to Proposition 209 essentially only resulted in redistributing URM UC eligible students between the different UC campuses (generally resulting in URM students getting into more selective UCs, “pushing down” some non-URM students to less selective UCs). I.e. someone who might have gone to UC Irvine goes to UCLA, or vice-versa.</p>
<p>The real problem in California is the inequality in the K-12 school system, because differences in getting to UC eligibility are the main reason why URM students are underrepresented at UC. (Note that the less selective CSU system is similar, with hard minimum eligibility limits based on GPA and test scores.)</p>
<p>According to College Board, Princeton’s first-year class has 18% Asians.</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting article about this, and related issues, at Princeton:
[Princeton</a> Alumni Weekly: Yearning for recognition](<a href=“Issues | Princeton Alumni Weekly”>Yearning for recognition | Princeton Alumni Weekly)
I note with passing interest that the article says that the biggest issue for Asians at Princeton now is the desire for more Asian-American Studies courses.</p>
<p>Where in the current debate or anywhere on this thread has it been stated or implied that a valid reason for racial preferences is to limit the number of Asians because their mere presence would drive away non-Asians?</p>
<p>But as I said in an earlier post, Harvard was actually one of the least offensive.</p>
<p>Here (from the same book page 112) is what is written about Corwin, the admissions director at Yale -
</p>
<p>He goes on to comment about them being alien in manners and devoid of a moral code. I beleive he also was the one proposing to withhold scholarships for allthose who were not of “sturdy Native stock.” The book is replete with comments like this. But it’s a huge book and I’m not going to transcribe all of them.</p>
<p>Again, you have to look at this from the US Supreme Ct’s perspective to understand why it is not racist. </p>
<p>The purpose for admitting Black students to Harvard is NOT to benefit the Black students individually; the purpose is to benefit the entire student body, by providing them with a racially diverse learning environment. This is why it does not matter what the socio-economic background of the Black student is, because the purpose of AA is not to reward that student.</p>
<p>^Perhaps, Fabrizio, but they’re missing the point. They ARE there for that. And Kate and Timmy are there to provide the same for them. </p>
<p>So long as you substitute “diversity training”, which is a stupid concept, with various viewpoints and new outlooks in the academic and social environment. </p>
<p>The schools only obligation in admissions is to itself, and its only goal is to have the best possible class. This may mean rejecting some equally qualified candidates in favor of others on the basis of political, economic, and intellectual, and yes, cultural grounds. A school with all christians is unlikely to be as strong an intellectual experience as a school with jews, christians, muslims, buddhists, sikhs, atheists, etc. The same goes for any perspective that may be unavailable to some students, and that includes being in any given minority (for the majority members) and being in the majority (for minority members).</p>
<p>Re #545. But how much “diversity” is provided just by skin color? If the black student had affluent professional parents, and attended a New England prep school, how much cultural, social, and economic diversity does he bring to campus? </p>
<p>And while an SAT score of 1900 or 2000 for a URM might not be mediocre by national standards, it is far from stellar in the context of an elite school and especially unexceptional if the student came from an upper middle class or upper class background. And unexceptional does not belong at Harvard et al.</p>
<p>It has been argued in this thread and other threads on this forum that non-asians and even some asians would not want to attend schools with too many asians. And it has been repeatedly stated in this thread that limiting admission of asians would not be racial discrimination unless it can be proven that they did it because they don’t like asians.</p>
[quote]
And while an SAT score of 1900 or 2000 for a URM might not be mediocre by national standards, it is far from stellar in the context of an elite school and especially unexceptional if the student came from an upper middle class or upper class background. And unexceptional does not belong at Harvard et al.
[quote]
My belief is that the URMs enrolled by Harvard and similar schools are all exceptional people–but they may not have exceptional SAT scores. On balance, they may be somewhat less exceptional than unhooked students.</p>
<p>I was bemused, though, by this quote from the Harvard article:
If the weakest student was a white hockey player, or the child of a billionaire, this is not a very strong response.</p>
<p>bovertine #530
I don’t think this is a good analogy because very few people will agree that joining that group gives anyone a better chance to have a successful career but many people believe (doesn’t matter whether it is true) that going to Ivies does give you a better chance.</p>
You’re confusing “racial discrimination” with “racism” or with “unlawful racial discrimination.” Of course, any consideration of race in admissions is discrimination, just as consideration of location is geographical discrimination. The issue is whether it’s wrong or not. As to whether schools are discriminating against Asians to prevent there from being too many of them, I’m not sure that anybody has really defended that practice, although some (including me) have said that it could be happening. It’s certainly the case that students express views about whether they’d want to go to a school that has “too many” of some group, whether it be whites, blacks, men, women, Mormons, Jews, conservatives, liberals, Southerners, etc. It’s a little hard to judge when this goes from a reasonable feeling that, for example, a non-Mormon might be unhappy at BYU, to a bigoted desire to avoid an unfavored group.</p>
I guarantee you many people in the South probably believed joining the Ku Klux Klan gave them a better chance in their society.</p>
<p>So you believe it is okay to belong to a group and support it with money if it gives you a better chance, even if you believe that group is evil? Because IMO real racism is evil. But I don’t believe Harvard is racist - possibly just misguided</p>
The quote you presented said the practice of admitting Jews “drove away the gentiles.” I don’t think it is fair to say that anybody on here has said that admitting Asians “drives off” the non-Asians.</p>
<p>I’ve read some posts that argue that students might not want to attend a school that is purely racially homogenous (or homogenous with respect to any other number of factors). To me that’s different than implying and accepting the notion that the mere presence of Asians or any other single ethnic group is drviing off white students. If that was a fear, you would think these schools would curb Asian popoulation even more drastically - as it is they make a large portion of all of these student bodies.</p>
<p>I went to high school (1970) with absolutely no African Americans or Hispanic students (that I knew of). My school was maybe 10% Asian, the rest white. When I went to college my mom insisted I room in a dorm with a significant minority population.</p>
<p>Who is too say that they haven’t tried?
UC Berkeley certainly did in the 1980s, and some believe that UC is still trying very hard today; and I don’t think that they did it because they disliked asians.</p>
<p>Thank you to those who dug up the stats on Asian admissions to Princeton of late. Am I off base to surmise that Princeton is responding in some measure to the lawsuit? It would be really a good thing if this just evolved to a better place without it going to a court decision. Those never seem to get that well processed by our society. Maybe the heads of admissions at these schools have become more sensitized and are responding gradually. That would be so admirable.</p>
<p>Whatever we may think about HYPS they are important symbols for the country. I’m going to be optimistic this situation is going to improve.</p>
<p>Percentages of Asians at Ivies range from 12% to 19%–I don’t think a change at Princeton from 14% to 18% necessarily represents a change in policy.</p>
<p>I think it is highly likely that there is some percentage of Asians that would make non-Asians (and even some Asians) reluctant to go to a particular college. I don’t know what that number is though–I don’t think it’s 20%, or even 30%. 95%?–definitely. 50%? I don’t know. I continue to think that it may not be necessary for any of the Ivies to take any particular action to avoid getting to those high percentages.</p>
<p>Seems that some believe that if only objective measures of academic performance are used our best schools will be dominated by Asians. Using AP tests as a proxy, the mean score of Asians is actually not that much higher than whites 3.15 vs. 2.99. In addition 280,000 5’s were scored by white kids vs. 95,000 for Asian kids. Since only about 45% of Princeton kids are white americans(and most of those are athletes and legacies) I would argue that the group really being discriminated against here are whites.</p>