It seems the holistic schools have several different buckets to fill in an effort to create a diverse class, and the applicants battle other applicants in each particular bucket for spots.
Aside from considering race, schools consider SES, home state/region, sex, other demographic factors. There obviously are also “athlete” and other specific-need buckets (like major interests, band parts, etc.).
Because they have these buckets/needs – instead of admitting based solely on test scores, GPA, LORs – the whole process can seem unfair.
Some of the national discussion is now concentrated on the merits/fairness of holistic admissions, especially with respect to the use of race as a variable. Books have been written on the subject, and the arguments on both sides are compelling. There is no easy answer.
But this is how you could have things seem so unfair for Asian-American applicants – they have the highest test scores of any racial group, but not necessarily the highest admit rates. It’s the buckets – you could have 5000 Asian-American applicants at a particular highly rejective school, competing for 300 or so spots in the Asian-American bucket. Meanwhile, there may be only 1000 African-American applicants for 200 African-American spots, 10000 White applicants for for 800 spots, etc. Number of applicants and number of spots allocated affect admit % by race, or any other demographic/quantifiable variable.
Then there’s geography – what if only three people apply from the state of North Dakota, and a school has two spots allocated for that great state? You could have kids getting into Harvard with a 1400, if they care that much about state representation.
@elf1, as to your accusation, is it possible in this discussion to question factual assertions without being accused of gaslighting? Because otherwise I am at a loss as to how to have a meaningful and well-meaning discussion about these issues. For example . . .
At the risk of being accused gaslighting, I don’t think these are “undeniable facts.” Here is a look back at the percentage of degree seeking undergraduates at Harvard in five year increments before and after the lawsuit, per the Harvard CDS reports, starting with the first CDS I could find:
In 2007-2008 (15 years ago) 15.5% of Harvard undergrads were Asian-American.
In 2012-2013 (10 years ago) 18.9% of Harvard undergrads were Asian-American.
In 2017-2018) (5 years ago) 20.7% of Harvard undergrads were Asian-American.
Last year’s CDS shows 22.8% of Harvard undergrads were Asian-American.
Over the past two years, when Harvard became test optional and saw a 50% increase in applications, the Asian-American representation of those admitted has increased to over 27%.
If I am missing something here, please correct me, but it doesn’t look like percentage of Asian students had been “remarkably constant” before the lawsuit, or that the increases after are necessarily in response to the lawsuit.
Not sure, and not sure it matters with regard to my post. I looked at the CDS forms and calculated percentage of degree seeking Asian undergrads enrolled because that best matched the claim. Here are more detailed numbers from the first CDS report I could find to present.
I’m beginning to question the wisdom of eliminating the race/ethnicity box for Chance Me threads. I mean, why should the 100 or so other rejective colleges and universities in the country be penalized because of alleged racism at one university?
A generation ago, all non-whites were considered one big “diversity” bucket at Wesleyan. And the evidence that it may still be true is that Asians and Asian Americans are still included when calculating the total student of color (SOC) enrollment: Facts & Figures, For the Media, University Communications - Wesleyan University
What school wouldn’t want more full-pay, high stat students who also make them look good on their non-white enrollment? Might we consider that Harvard is the outlier and just move on?
Harvard tipped over to having its undergraduate population being majority minority. It probably does not want White enrollment to fall so low that it loses desirability among White applicants and admits. Wesleyan is still majority White, so it is probably less concerned about that.
That’s an excellent way of stating the issue: I am not sure how I understand that every “top” school is following Harvard. Perhaps they are, perhaps they aren’t, but where is the evidence? We have anecdata which is important to know, but it’s not dispositive.
I thought we are a long way from the time Harvard was the key first-mover in US higher ed, and then all the other “top schools” followed. Am I wrong? If not, each school is going to have its own issues, but, if anything, the litigation will have caused schools not to blindly adhere to what Harvard does, but to what IT needs to do.
Even as it relates to Harvard, as @mtmind reminded us, Harvard won at trial and on appeal. Now it will have its time before SCOTUS (heaven help them), and so will UNC. I guess we’ll know sometime in 2023, probably after this year’s admissions season is coming to a close or over.
It would seem a consensus is desired in the original post on how to factor in an identification of “Asian” in a chance me thread (and whether to discourage identification of “Asian” in a chance me thread). After over 400 posts, it appears a consensus is not developing.
In a very unscientific and certainly faulty counting of positions of the posters, it appears to me that the number of individual posters (not individual posts - some posters post much more than others) that an applicant is disadvantaged simply because the applicant is identified as “Asian” is about the same as the number who believe there is no such disadvantage (or that there is no proof of the disadvantage). I counted the posters as 8 to 8. The majority of posters (about 20) appear to not express a clear position one way or the other on that question. And one poster appears to opine that before recently, being identified as “Asian” was a disadvantage, but it no longer is now.
I’m sure this count is not completely accurate, but I think it may still indicate non-consensus on this issue.
The better question for me to have researched (but I didn’t and I’m not going back through 400 posts again) was where the posters stand on soliciting race or race that is not an URM in a “Chance Me” thread, as some of the posters who felt being identified as “Asian” was a disadvantage, or expressed no clear opinion on that, did say they would be in favor of nevertheless not soliciting such information for a “Chance Me” thread (and to be fair, in retrospect, after reviewing 400 posts, ugh, that may be more on point to what the original post seems to be soliciting).
I absolutely didn’t say a thing about “discouraging identification of ‘Asian’ in a chance me thread.”
Let me be clear: I asked, in effect, a two-part question: (1) Isn’t the term “Asian” far too broad to be meaningful; and (2) are we sure that being pigeon-holed into an apparent “Asian” bucket is a negative in all or most circumstances when kids apply to “top schools”?
The few Asian kids we know in my area do really well in admissions to top school. They are not competing against many applicants from the same school with similar profiles.
I doubt Harvard is an outlier. If it is it might be in the other direction. While their are factors creating an apparent disparate impact, it is not clear to me Harvard is intentionally discriminating against Asian applicant. It wouldn’t surprise me there were AO’s out there where it was difficult for an Asian applicant to get a “fair shake” because of implicit biases or unspoken “caps,” but I don’t see evidence that is Harvard is such a school. It is worth exploring, but unfortunately we aren’t allowed to talk about it. In this thread at least.
Disparate impact or intentional racism, the point is that most of the conflict seems to involve colleges and universities that have percolated to the tippy-top of the USNews rankings. Maybe it’s something inherent about Harvard specifically; maybe it’s some pattern or practice that Harvard and other universities (cough, Columbia) feel they have to copycat, the point is it still only seems to be a problem involving at most, five colleges.
@mtmind and @circuitrider: aren’t both of you, as well as me, saying the same thing? Harvard may have had issues, but the courts didn’t agree, AND there is no data-based evidence that any other school has an “Asian Penalty” bias.
My opinion is the court got it right, although I expect the SC to replace the current standard and remand. But there still seems to be a belief by many that the data nonetheless suggests that Asian admissions were being intentionally repressed. I don’t see convincing evidence of that, but I nonetheless think it worth discussing since so many believe it and it is shaping the way so many families view the process, but for reasons I don’t quite understand that is not allowed in this thread.
As for other schools, I don’t think the absence of evidence helps much. I don’t know what goes on at all schools, and it is possible there is evidence but we just haven’t seen it.
@circuitrider I’m not sure on what basis one could conclude that the differences in non ALDC stats seen at Harvard would be limited to Harvard and a Handful of schools. I think a deep dive at a bunch of schools would probably end up showing numbers along the line of what was found at Harvard. Whether that amounts to actionable iscrimination is another issue.
For example, for any school that actively recruits "fsparce country” kidscould potentially run into this problem. Or any school that admits by major and draws a disproportionate number of applications from “Asian” students for the more competitive majors. Or any school that recruits and admits based on NMSF status. Or any school that limits (formally or informally) the number of kids they will accept from any single high school or sub-region (the Bay Area for example.)All of these could stack against Asian students and impact the numbers.
You’re basically alleging systemic racism of the sort that we as a country have so far not been willing to really take on when it comes to African Americans. I think it would be a bridge too far to believe Americans as a whole are willing to take up the cause of kids and parents who think Vassar and Middlebury are crap schools.
I’m not @skieurope, but I think his message might be relevant based on some of the recent posts.
For the most part, the last few dozen posts seem to be hitting on some of the same points and ideas mentioned earlier in the thread. As the main people still posting seem to have largely similar viewpoints on this topic, I wonder if it might be better for those individuals to continue their discussion in a private group thread. There has been more than one poster who has expressed feelings of dismissal or not being heard, and the topic seems to have strayed again from the use of “Asian” in Chance Me threads. Although I certainly understand (and have participated in) meandering threads, I suspect that where this thread is meandering is hurtful to some of the members of our community.
Regarding the question of whether Asian-American enrollment at these elite schools is being capped/managed to an “acceptable” number (for the school) or it’s simply an outcome of being unhooked - I personally cannot say conclusively one way or the other.
But I’m mindful of the fact that decades ago when Jews faced a similar issue, post the quota-era, through fuzzy/subjective standards that disadvantaged Jewish applicants, there were plenty who loudly proclaimed there was no such discrimination.
So this is not a concern that I can easily dismiss - but it’s not the purpose of this thread so we should either stay on topic or close this thread.
I’m not, but I’ll heed @AustenNut’s suggestion and forgo the explanation.
I can’t easily dismiss it either. As to the purpose of the thread, I am left wondering how to address the issue in “Chance Me” threads in a manner that is neither hurtful nor misleading.
