<p>Ha! You were all willing to claim that URM preferences advantage only rich kids by one-year data from Duke! What’s the difference?</p>
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<p>You’re right. Who knows? But making accusations that major universities actively discriminate AGAINST Asians – which is, as you well know but refuse to admit, entirely different from giving a hand up to URM’s – well, those are pretty serious accusations, and you’d think you’d want them built on something other than the combined anecdotes of CC’ers who are ****ed they didn’t sweep all the Ivies when look, they got 2400 on their SAT’s. </p>
<p>Find some evidence that a university president or body has the negative disposition towards Asians as a class that even REMOTEDLY approaches the Lowell / Jews at Harvard situation (it’s worth noting he also tried to ban black students from living on campus, too). Find some evidence that an elite university president or body has put on a quota for Asians that in any way compares to the quotas for Jews that existed for many years. Find me one university president who doesn’t brag about increasing minority presence - INCLUDING Asian-American enrollment. Find me one major university that doesn’t have tons of support systems / clubs for Asian-Americans (as they well should). </p>
<p>Frankly, I think the real racism here is that there’s a belief that Asians must be superior and that no matter what the % is of a campus that Asians are, it’s “not enough” and would only be higher in some perfect world. Alternatively, it’s the belief that no matter what lip service is paid to the idea of holistic admissions, it ultimately should come down to numbers and Asian-Americans “should” have more spots than they currently do. Show me proof that they “should”, that isn’t based on the underlying premise that SAT scores are markers of relative merit.</p>
<p>No problem. I understand your reluctance to perform an analysis that will demonstrate that the number of white students who score higher than 700 on the SAT Verbal (an extremely important element in holistic admissions at the most selective schools) represents SEVERAL multiples of the Asian one. I also understand that your claim of abject discrimination would fall flat on its face when considering that you could place every one of the Asians who score above that score in the top TWO DOZEN of universities (as ranked by USNews.) Of course, this might mean very little to members of a sub-culture obsessed with scoring multiple Ivy League “trophies!” </p>
<p>OK, Fabrizio, if your claims of superior qualifications of Asians are not based on standardized tests, please do tell the manner in which you depart from the findings of the study so often quote? Isn’t Espenshade and Chung the “Bible” from which you quote liberally to establish your claims of discrimination?</p>
<p>But, fwiw, we can also leave the E&C study aside, especially since the poor Espenshade had to admit that nothing in his study amounted to establish that there WAS discrimination at Princeton. So, leaving that study and its subsequent discussions aside, please let us what are the basis of YOUR allegations. If is not the difference in standardized among ORM and URM, what … IS IT? Considering that it would be EXTREMELY suprprising that Asians could claim athletic prowesses in team sports, community service or other volunteering activities, the pursuit of non-individual awards, one could wonder what else you use to support your allegations of discrimination.</p>
<p>“Though the authors of that study claimed that it was generalizable to Duke’s peers throughout the country, to be fair, one could argue that Duke might have more students from “well-to-do family backgrounds” than HYP et al.”</p>
<p>Again, I have consistently been fair to you. When you insisted that Asians applied to a narrow range of schools, I quoted your phrase exactly as you wrote it: “HYPSM et al.” I said you could reconcile your belief with the data by playing loose with “et al,” though for the most part, you ignored your own escape route. Even when you admitted that the averages for one school-year observation were robust to a “gazillionaire effect,” I was still fair; I admitted the possibility that Duke in fact had more wealthy students than “HYP et al.”</p>
<p>You, on the other hand, have deceived me by telling me that you “believed” that I don’t hold a SAT supremacy worldview only to try to trap me in the same sentence! Moreover, you’ve straw manned me by alleging that I believe that Asians and only Asians are qualified to be at elite universities.</p>
<p>You have demonstrated very little fairness in your discussions with me, preferring instead to argue against a “straw man fabrizio” who believes in SAT and Asian supremacy than the real me, who believes in neither.</p>
<p>Clearly, you do not if you are writing with that tone. Why wouldn’t we expect that there are more whites than Asians who score >700 on the SAT Verbal section? Aren’t there…more whites than Asians in the U.S.?</p>
<p>(And remember, YOU said that the SAT Verbal section was “extremely important” at “the most selective schools.” Not me.)</p>
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<p>No, it looks like you don’t understand my position at all. I do not believe in SAT supremacy. Your “understanding” is based on the idea that I do. You, like Pizzagirl, prefer to argue against “straw man fabrizio,” who apparently believes in both SAT and Asian supremacy, than the real me who believes in neither.</p>
<p>Fab doesn’t want anyone with “lesser” holistic credentials admitted to a college because they have a different color skin than he does. He does not care that this practice benefits the students or society. He thinks its not fair.</p>
<p>And that’s not even “bias,” “discrimination” or a “quota”, to say “hey, a kid from Kansas - we don’t get a lot of those, let’s take a second look and see if we can include him.” That’s not discrimination against people from NJ, or Mass, or CA, or people who attend elite boarding schools. </p>
<p>Look, you need to reserve discrimination for actual acts of discrimination. If you want to allege that some adcom treated an Asian applicant with anything other than the general respect given to any applicant, find evidence. If you want to allege that an adcom reviewed a folder and said, “He’s qualified, I really want to admit him, but he’s Asian, and we can’t admit more than x% and we’re already at our quota,” find evidence. Til then, it comes across as entitlement, sour grapes, and a fundamental lack of understanding of the random nature of a system where there are simply far more applicants than spots.</p>
<p>Oh my God. Sometimes I wonder why I even discuss with all of you when you have shown time and time again that you prefer to argue against “straw man fabrizio,” who you can beat up on with “The SAT isn’t everything!” than the real me, who acknowledges that it isn’t everything.</p>
<p>I’m fine with holistic admissions. Find a post of mine in this thread where I made your straw man real (i.e. where I said I support the international system of admissions of “one test determines your life”). Find it. And if you can’t, I expect you have the decency to STOP saying it.</p>
<p>What I’m against is racial preferences. Racial preferences ==|== holistic admissions.</p>
<p>There’s a flip side to that, as I’ve repeatedly said. Given that there are “far more applicants than spots,” why is it a big deal that "URM"s might not be admitted in “sufficient” numbers? epiphany’s reply suggests that it’s completely pointless to have racial preferences. Just get more to apply, and the problem will fix itself!</p>
<p>What am I missing here? Admit I had to take a long break from this thread because at times it gets acrimonious but I’m not understanding the attacks on Fabrizio. His posts have seemed to be a model of civility and logic. Those disagreeing with him can disagree but to try to impute other things makes those posters look . . . weak and wrong.</p>
<p>This is very much a case where disagreeing with the prevailing politically correct viewpoint seems to offend many in the first place and then when those who have the audacity to challenge the received wisdom and argue it with energy and discipline, the anger just seems to build.</p>
<p>I’m not seeing either side proving indisputably anything here. I maintain that I think my kid, who is white, was advantaged over his equally qualified (in a holistic sense excluding race) Asian peers when he applied to the very top schools. I feel the same for my kid who will be applying in the next year. </p>
<p>And I really get concerned by some of the generalizations and stereotyping of Asian applicants as math/science drones who play the violin and have prepped for the SAT since age 2. The irony for the side arguing for AA to engage in such really distasteful bigotry is amazing. jmo</p>
Well that’s certainly a moderate, civil tone. It’s not surprising you find fault with those arguing against fabrizio, you agree with him. But I suspect you have little idea what real bigotry is. I beleive you are the poster who took umbrage because we dared to compliment a young man for taking his acceptance results in stride, and moving on. I recall some post about “Uncle Tom.” I had a hard time determining what you meant by that, but I did notice you quickly deleted it. Again, moderate and civil. </p>
<p>To fill you in, the current debate revolves around fabrizio proving his point about this discrimination using something other than SAT scores and anecdote. Granted, this is fairly difficult to do since SAT scores ar really one of the few measures we have ample statistics on. So most researchers, including the author of “The Price of Admission”, who makes the same point as fabrizio, tend to rely on anecdote and SAT. </p>
<p>I for one, feel I am fair to fabrizio and posters who argue his point. If you look at our discussions I grant him several points. Aside from the fact that sometimes I see he doesn’t understand my point (which is often my fault), I think my discussions with him have been reasonably cordial. I also do not think either side has made their point entirely. If I were required to take a point of view, I would likely agree more with fabrizio (based on my general feeling). But I also do not insult people with horrible epithets like racist or bigot because I disagree with them.</p>
<p>I looked at every single one of your posts after my post #962, and never once did you answer my questions, despite your claim:</p>
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<p>Please show me a link, or give me the post number, where you answered my question posed in post #962. Prove your allegations with facts and statistics.</p>
<p>You know, I once asked epiphany to try to argue “my side.” I asked her under what circumstances is it acceptable to oppose racial preferences? She couldn’t answer my question. Her reply consisted of an idea that I had never heard ANYONE opposed to racial preferences employ: it’s OK to oppose racial preferences because the beneficiaries might not be successful.</p>
<p>To me, that was telling. It said that the pro-racial preference side has NO IDEA what their ideological opponents believe. And epiphany is far from alone. Pizzagirl and Bay have recently demonstrated in their posts that they prefer to argue against what I called “straw man fabrizio”: an individual who believes that Asians are superior to other racial classifications and who believes that the SAT is everything.</p>
<p>And I know why they prefer to do that. The real me has far more boring views, like supporting holistic admissions and recognizing that there are more qualified applicants than slots. How can they argue against someone who agrees with them on some big points? Easy. They don’t. They argue against “straw man fabrizio.”</p>
<p>By contrast, I can play Devil’s Advocate. Why support racial preferences? It’s important that our college students interact with their peers from all backgrounds and all racial classifications to create a better tomorrow. I challenge any of you pro-racial preference’ers to say that that isn’t what you believe.</p>
<p>If any of you can accurately represent my position, that would</p>
<p>(a) surprise me
(b) confirm that you DO know what I’m talking about, you just prefer to argue against a straw man. In which case, shame on you.</p>
<p>But that’s just based on a feeling - that you sense that your white kid is advantaged over his Asian peers, because you sense that his Asian peers are somehow disadvantaged. And we’re asking the question - why? Based on what? Beyond anecdotes of disappointed Asian kids on CC who failed to sweep the Ivies even with outstanding scores, and beyond anecdotes of “I know this black kid with only a 2050 who got into Harvard …” type of thing. </p>
<p>Did you see the post that indicated that MIT’s applicant pool was 26% Asian, but its admitted pool was 30% Asian, thus meaning that Asians had an acceptance rate <em>above fair share</em> / above the total applicant pool? It’s kind of hard to take that and argue that there is real “discrimination.” If MIT wished to discriminate, they could have admitted below fair share, had an admitted pool of (say) 15%, and no one would have been the wiser since 15% is still far above general population fair share (which is somewhere around 5%, IIRC).</p>
<p>Look, the big smoking gun is something that looks like this: (Numbers made up)</p>
<p>Overall Admittance Rate to Fancy Schmancy U: 10%
Admittance Rate among Whites: 15% (index 150)
Among Blacks: 25% (index 150)
Among Hisp: 25% (index 250)
Among Asians: 5% (index 50)</p>
<p>Now, having said that, even the above isn’t a true smoking gun, because you haven’t equalized for the relative talent of each applicant pool. But supposing it was … Well, the one data point we have says exactly the opposite when it comes to Asians - in the MIT case, the index was 115.</p>
<p>And here’s the really bad news. For someone to be above fair share, someone else has got to be below fair share. For all you know, maybe it’s whites. (Shrug.)</p>
<p>Interesting take on that in today’s NYTimes. Sort of hard to rationally arrive at “the truth” when one or more sides view themselves as involved in a crusade: </p>
<p>Of course, not only are there more white students taking the SAT, there are several times more white students who score above 700, by a factor that range from 300 to 500%. Now, there is more one step: compare the number of high scorers with the admission numbers, and you will see that the white population fares a lot WORSE than Asians.</p>
<p>Of course, it is obvious that the target of the “discrimination” are not the white student population, but the remaining minorities, especially when the claims of academic superiority or lower admissions’ rates are simply impossible to … verify through research and analysis.</p>
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<p>I do not know about Straw Man Fabrizio. I only know Fabrizio who clings to some of the conclusions of Espenshade. Again, as opposed to say what is NOT your position, why not simply state WHY you believe Asians are more qualified than the rest of a pool at a school that practices holistic reviews?</p>
<p>The reality is that adcoms have long recognized many of the qualities of Asian students as their number and percentages are several times their racial distribution in the United States. This is what makes the current claims of discrimination so off-putting and obnoxious.</p>
<p>Since we have more numbers for MIT than most universities - let’s ask the other obvious question. Is MIT sexist?</p>
<p>(From the Common Data Set)
Total first-time, first-year (freshman) men who applied 11,615
Total first-time, first-year (freshman) women who applied 5,017</p>
<p>Total first-time, first-year (freshman) men who were admitted 878 (7.5%)
Total first-time, first-year (freshman) women who were admitted 798 (15.9%)</p>
<p>I believe that MollieBat years ago also said that average SAT scores for those women accepted were on average lower than the men, but that guess what, the women once they enrolled at MIT on average got better grades than the men did! So is MIT sexist for accepting women with lower scores, or is it sexist but in an okay way because they want to preserve M/F balances, or is it not sexist at all because the SAT for whatever reason is not a good predictor of success at MIT, at least for women?</p>
<p>Fabrizio, I was asking everyone arguing for discrimination against Asians. That most definitely includes you. OK, I’ll ask you directly: please answer my question posted in #962.</p>
<p>I note with bemusement that there is never a CC thread of a male not getting into MIT who claims that his spot was given away to a female or that “it’s not fair, I know a girl in my town who only scored blah blah blah …”</p>