<p>Whatever you are a “Professor” of, it is clear that you lack an advanced degree in researching the demographic, racial/ethnic, and unique institutional priorities of the various private universities in the U.S. They are not by any means uniform, nor are they required to be by any constitutional principle in this country. There is not a one-to-one correspondence in demographics and admissions. However, all private universities recognize (as said elsewhere on this thread) large numbers, and somewhat account for that. Thus, gender is often unbalanced in admissions if the application numbers are unbalanced. Racial/ethnic enrollments will differ by year, depending on #'s of applications received, the quality of each of those applications, and the proportions of all the various groups applying (regionally, ethnically, and more). It tends to be easier for an applicant to get accepted where he or she is unusual for the category. (“Easier” for an excellent candidate from Maine to stand out in Stanford’s applicant pool than someone with an “equal” application who lives in Santa Clara, due to the intense competition locally.) Also, Columbia, being in NY, has a special program for the disadvantaged that Stanford does not have: The Higher Education Opportunity Program.</p>
<p>from Columbia’s website:
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<p>Like Stanford, with its 40% CA admissions rate, Columbia advantages its own region somewhat (but not exclusively), in that 38% of admits are from the mid-Atlantic region. Overall, the mid-Atlantic region does a better job of preparing URM’s for college than does the State of CA.</p>
<p>If Asian Americans are underrepresented in college athletic program, Should we give them some preference or quota? An Asian wide receiver who is 1 second slower in 40yd dash takes the place of a black athlete because we need to create a critical mass for Asian athletes in the athletic dept. Does this sound absurd?</p>
<p>I meant what I said. It may be a combination of several different things. Maybe there’s an “intrinsic” qualification gap in which URM’s are inherently less qualified overall, maybe there’s a gap that’s based on uneven schooling opportunity that could be corrected (at least theoretically) by better elementary/secondary schooling, maybe there’s a gap based on likelihood-to-apply-to-elite schools because they aren’t on URM radar screens like they are on white/Asian radar screens.</p>
<p>“They’ve watered down this place with all those undeserving URM’s. It’s not right, because <em>I</em> can’t get in, and only these places offer the kind of top student body that I deserve and can’t thrive without!” Really – if they are so meaningfully watered down, then go elsewhere. The fact that you all still want to go says that you really don’t think the student body is watered down <em>all</em> that much. (Same thing with colleges that give preferences to athletes, legacies, etc.) The simultaneous dissing and drooling is a bit much.</p>
<p>In case you’re trying to trap me again, I do not believe in Charles Murray’s hypothesis.</p>
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<p>Very likely. But the key is that if this is where the problem lies, racial preferences do nothing to correct it. You would have to address it from the beginning of K-12, not at the end.</p>
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<p>Then again, racial preferences do nothing. Simply encourage them to apply. Problem solved.</p>
Well, since you asked, I think this can be answered with one word: assimilation. Jews have become very highly assimilated into mainstream US culture, and many Asians have not yet done so. You can go read the interminable “Tiger Mother” thread for many discussions of this.</p>
<p>It’s my opinion that many Asian families are following an erroneous strategy if their goal is admission into top selective schools. They place too much emphasis on grades and scores to the detriment of ECs, they choose too many of the same ECs (i.e., violin and piano, tennis), and they focus too much on STEM majors. They are also geographically concentrated. Many, perhaps for cultural reasons, do not have the kind of outgoing, larger-than-life demeanors that are attractive to white Americans. Many appear cliquish and spend time with members of a group that speaks a language other than English. Jews formerly exhibited many of these same characteristics, but now, mostly, they don’t. Jews also had the disability of religious discrimination, something that’s not really part of the issue, as best I can tell, with Asians.</p>
<p>So I think that as more Asian kids get more assimilated, and start playing sports other than tennis, and playing trumpets and trombones, and start moving to more places around the country, you will see significant assimilation. Ironically, this might result in fewer Asians at the top schools, because some of that assimilation may result in less super-high-scoring Asians as they decide they’d rather play baseball than prep for standardized tests. But once you get assimilated enough, nobody cares anymore if there are too many of you. Do you think there is any college that is worried about having too many (or too few) students with Italian or Irish surnames?</p>
<p>And let me just add this: one of the reasons I think AA is needed for URMs, especially black kids, is that assimilation hasn’t happened for that group to the same degree as others. I think there are barriers to assimilation that social engineering has to help overcome. This is one reason that I favor artificially adding URMs to selective schools–I think they will ease the way to greater assimilation for more people.</p>
Don’t you agree mid-Atlantic region has a much larger AA population than California, and hence Colubmia draws more AA from the area?</p>
<p>As someone mentioned before, on the diversity issue, everyone has their ow opinion and is very difficult to be convinced by others. It is probably pointless to argue on this issue.</p>
<p>Look, is that what is going on today? Is anyone seriously proposing that the number of Asians at elite schools should be limited, because it would be “good for the Asians,” because there is anti-Asian sentiment that is felt to be increasing on today’s campuses and that Asians needed to be “protected for their own good”?</p>
<p>Unless you have proof that such is happening – please don’t pretend that the situation today is analogous to Jews in the 1920’s and 1930’s and that “all that needs to be done is substitute Asian for Jew.” The situations are not comparable. The discrimination was blatant.</p>
<p>The very fact that so many Asian / Asian-Amer families follow these strategies – that they look assiduously for “the formula” to get into certan schools, define their acceptable set of schools as being incredibly narrow (how many kids on CC tell about their parents being Ivy-focused and disappointed if they get into “lesser” schools?), and express a belief that certain performance on these characteristics “entitles” them to be admitted to multiple of these schools and lack of admittance is “unfair”, tells me that they have not assimilated American cultural norms. Which they don’t need to do, of course – it is a free country, which is why they came here. But it’s still a grafting of one set of values onto another. It’s as silly as if I went to China and said that I deserved to get into a top university because look at all the charity work I did.</p>
<p>By the reasoning of several users on this thread, Jews in the 1930s WANTED to be discriminated against because they continued to apply in large numbers to HYP et al. Unless you agree with that, I will continue to remind people when their statements do not make sense.</p>
<p>“everyone has their ow opinion and is very difficult to be convinced by others. It is probably pointless to argue on this issue”</p>
<p>Agree, it just when the tread is “are colleges racist” and some posters agree, perhaps some proof should be provided. Rather then have those that disagree prove a negative. </p>
<p>Perhaps we can also agree a problem in admissions is that the reason a student is not selected is not always apparent to that student or parent.</p>
<p>In a way, the Italian and Irish experience shows just how meaningless a racial classification can be. By all means, they were white, yet other whites viewed them differently and treated them differently.</p>
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<p>Blacks have been here since the Founding, and they haven’t “assimilated”? Well if they haven’t, has any visible minority “assimilated”?</p>
<p>Asians are already “overrepresented” by following this “erroneous” strategy. You appear to be arguing that they would be even more “overrepresented” if SOME “wised up” and deviated from the “erroneous” strategy.</p>
<p>Call me cynical, but I’m sure some of the parents here would prefer if Asians continued to follow this “erroneous” strategy, as I doubt they’re keen to see elite schools’ Asian percentages come close to the Jewish percentages in their lifetimes.</p>
Wher is your evidence that Jews in the 1920s and 1930s applied “in large numbers” to these schools? What do you consider a large number?</p>
<p>Do you honestly think it is correct to compare college admissions in the 1920s and 1930s directly to college admisisons today? The differnces are so readily apparent it is absurd.</p>
<p>In the 1920s and 30s almost everyone applied to schools in their region. Do you really believe there were huge numbers of Jews from across the country applying to these schools? Again, evidence please. As I quoted from the Chosen, the vast number of Jewish applicants to Yale, for example, were from Hew Haven. I do not believe there were the kind of choices people have today. If you wanted to get any knid of decent education it wasn’t a matter of filling out a digital common ap and flying across the country wherever you wanted to go. People just didn’t do that. And in some cases, you actually had to risk going to schools where people REALLY didn’t like you, and didn’t want you there, not schools filled with students of your own race, where administrators were merely trying to get a handful of URM students in.</p>
<p>Whatever you think about the fairness of it all, and I have stated repeatedly I think itis unfiri and possibly unnecessary, trying to compare situations and racial attitudes from almost 100 years to today is ridiculous and undermines the argument.</p>
<p>In 1922, before “holistic admissions,” Jews made up more than a fifth of Harvard’s freshman class. True, Harvard very likely had a smaller freshman cohort than it does now. But you don’t get to be a FIFTH of a Harvard cohort if no one in your “group” applies, and that figure is just for Harvard.</p>
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<p>Are they really? “If this new admissions system seems familiar, that’s because it is essentially the same system that the Ivy League uses to this day. According to Karabel, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton didn’t abandon the elevation of character once the Jewish crisis passed. They institutionalized it.”</p>
<p>“Lowell tried restricting the number of scholarships given to Jewish students, and made an effort to bring in students from public schools in the West, where there were fewer Jews. Neither strategy worked.”</p>
not really, because you selectively pick Harvard, which with it’s 20% was a bastion of equality compared to Yale and Princeton, which topped out at 4% and 7% then began a concerted effort to get rid entirely of Jews pretty much.</p>
<p>But of course you ignore my question. What “large numbers” of Jews from across the country were applying to Harvard?</p>
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I have absolutely no idea what the relevance of this statemetn is, and see not a single statsitic in it.</p>
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“Admissions” relates to a lot ofthings, not just your narrow focus. For example, admission rates then were around 50%. If you don’t think that is different than today I assume you are not a math major. And if you think racial attitudes and social mores have not changed in the intervening years, that’s pretty bizarre.</p>
<p>I believe it was NCL who quoted a passage from The Chosen where Lowell recounts that Columbia supposedly served as a warning of what would happen if you admitted “too many” Jews. Again, you can’t be “too many” of the final class if few applied to begin with.</p>
<p>But if you want a NUMBER, well–I can’t give it to you because I don’t know. If that’s what you need to read so you can continue thinking that few Jews applied to HYP et al., be my guest.</p>
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<p>Oh please. You wrote, “In the 1920s and 30s almost everyone applied to schools in their region.” I quoted Gladwell’s observation that Lowell tried to recruit students outside of New England, specifically the Western states. He reasoned that since there were fewer Jews in the West, he’d be less likely to get them. He was wrong.</p>
<p>Again, I have no hard number, so I can’t give to you what I don’t know. If that’s what you need to read so you can continue thinking that few Jews from the West applied to HYP et al., be my guest.</p>
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<p>So it’s become more competitive since then. Ooh, big difference! Do they still use holistic admissions? Yes? They do? Then really, what’s changed?</p>