But none of that is required to be filled out, is it? If distrusting, people can just leave it off.
At least two colleges we visited this summer had over 10 percent Asians and double digits for international - Harvard is 27 percent Asian. That doesn’t sound like biased to me.
These days? It’s been there for a decade, if not longer
Yes, and if H loses the lawsuit, Asian percentage may increase…based on the data we have from when the UCs stopped considering race in admissions (Asian enrollment increased).
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The Common App also has several sub categories for Caucasian
Based on this 2019 article, the trend seems to be upward no matter what:
Share of Asian Americans hits record high in Harvard’s class of admitted applicants (insidehighered.com)
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Just addressing the issue as to whether AO’s care or can distinguish between applicants classified as broadly “Asian”. Even in the absence of applicants filling in this information, last names and parents’ names and education are often giveaways. But IMO, for Asian applicants coming from lower SES backgrounds, and especially those who are first generation college, those factors trump any related to cultural/national origin.
Responding to @MDparent22 not Ski.
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But in reality, the suit is about reducing the number of Black and Hispanic students to increase the spots for White and not just Asian applicants.
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Yes, I was curious about that so I looked up the person behind the suits. Edward Blum - conservative activist against affirmative action in general but using strategic suits to reverse precedent.
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As many of you know, our family is Asian. My kids have done great in terms of college admissions, so no sour grapes, but I have looked long and hard at whether there was and still remains an “Asian penalty” in terms of admissions.
I have based these opinions based upon looking at data for a long time. Here is the short version:
- Perhaps as recently as 2015, there seemed to be a definite cap on Asian students at some elite colleges at below 20%.
- Due in large part to exposure from the Harvard lawsuit, Harvard and other colleges effectively removed this cap, thereby allowing a significantly larger percentage of Asian students.
- Today, at elite colleges an unhooked Asian student has the same likelihood of admission as an unhooked white student, which is pretty low. But because most Asian applicants are unhooked, more of them face higher admission standards than groups that have more hooked students.
- Because many Asian students focus upon the same fields such as math or CS, they are competing for the limited number of spots in those fields. This also makes admission difficult.
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I think the number 4 point is a big factor - esp since there’s been an explosion in interest in these areas more widely.
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We often hear how colleges receive more applications from students with 4.0s and top test scores than they can accept. Yet, students with those stats don’t try to hide it.
An application should tell a college who you are, how you think and how you will be an asset at their institution. Many universities have incorporated a diversity essay into their application. Rather than trying to hide one’s ethnicity, sell it. Tell them outright if you are first generation or 8th generation. Tell them how your ethnic or cultural background has (or hasn’t) influenced who you are. Tell them why they should accept you.
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Some of it builds upon the (proven) record of keeping Jewish enrollment below a fixed % in the early-ish part of the 20th C.
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This is true. The amount of casual antisemitism that pervaded the upper echelons of American (and obviously European) society just a hundred years ago is mind-blowing when perused from our supposedly “enlightened” present. I pray that we’re in a different place now, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant against all forms of bigotry.
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For the record, I don’t think that if there was any Asian capping, it rose to the level of conspiracy.
There was a good article by someone (New Yorker?) that pointed to the difficulty that many high achieving (mostly East) Asian students had in being perceived as individuals, just because taken in the aggregate, their achievements made them same-ish.
I had never heard about this until I started on CC. ABSOLUTELY shocking that this stuff went on. I was really floored when I found out about this.
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It is already the case that widespread belief does not necessarily match reality. For example, it seems widely believed that race / ethnicity matters in admission to many state universities in states which have explicitly prohibited consideration of such in admission.
The general opaqueness of admission policies and practices, particularly at more selective colleges, fuels more popular speculation on this front.
Prior to the 1940s, various kinds of bigotry and related discrimination were the norm in most societies. It was only then that examples of how nasty bigotry can get became well known that bigotry started to become seen as a less than nice thing. But it still took decades of political turmoil to end much of the existing legal (and often government sponsored) discrimination based on bigotry that existed in the US.
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In fact it was one of the primary drivers behind the move to holistic admission reviews.
Great points @hebegebe.
I think there are two separate questions: “are Asian-Americans discriminated against in admissions?” and “do Asian-Americans face higher odds at the most selective schools?”. I can’t answer the former question (I hope it’s not true, but I don’t have any data or experience to say one way or the other). But I think the latter is true. The majority of these schools take race into account and try to actively manage racial diversity (thereby placing some sort of soft cap on the number of Asian students they admit) - therefore these applicants will face tougher odds because there are more qualified applicants than the (capped) number of slots. Anecdotally, watching admission results in my local area over the past few years this does appear to be the case.
I also know several Bay Area Asian parents who hired college consultants to help package their kid’s college application (seems to be fairly common out there to do this). The vast majority of these consultants are ex-AOs and they typically tell these applicants that they have to pass a higher bar to be admitted and some even suggest activities and ECs that in their view will be seen as less “stereotypically Asian” by admission committees. So it’s seems like it’s not just aspiring applicants here on CC that have this perception about the odds for Asian American applicants, but also those who have been in the decision rooms.
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Here is the article from the New Yorker - Jeannie Suk who is the first Asian American Harvard female law professor.
First paragraph:
The application process for schools, fellowships, and jobs always came with a ritual: a person who had a role in choosing me—an admissions officer, an interviewer—would mention in his congratulations that I was “different” from the other Asians. When I won a scholarship that paid for part of my education, a selection panelist told me that I got it because I had moving qualities of heart and originality that Asian applicants generally lacked. Asian applicants were all so alike, and I stood out. In truth, I wasn’t much different from other Asians I knew. I was shy and reticent, played a musical instrument, spent summers drilling math, and had strict parents to whom I was dutiful. But I got the message: to be allowed through a narrow door, an Asian should cultivate not just a sense of individuality but also ways to project “Not like other Asians!”
Final paragraph:
Harvard and other schools will vigorously defend their use of race-conscious affirmative action along the lines previously upheld by the Supreme Court. Outside of court, the Asian-discrimination claim may move colleges to refine their admissions procedures and better calibrate for diversity and fairness. It is unrealistic to think that universities like Harvard can immediately stop privileging white applicants, given the current whiteness of their donors, but that picture will change over time. It was as Jews gained more political power and became more likely to be donors that élite schools’ discrimination against them waned. And, for the first time, racial minorities are a majority of this year’s entering class at Harvard. The enrollment of Asians is the highest ever, at more than twenty-two per cent, with their increased share cutting into white, rather than black or Latino, enrollment. Those trends will be hard to reverse, and other schools will follow suit. For Asian-American students, the imperative to show originality will continue. But I hope that we can soon say goodbye to the admissions ritual whereby an Asian student is paradoxically expected to represent other Asians by proving she is different from them.
Jeannie Suk’s article is not about the discrimination faced by Asians. But I find it telling that an academic superstar has had first hand experience of the need to distinguish herself from other Asians. This is the reason why kids mention race in Chance Me - the fear that they are compared to their “racial” cohort.
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