The article dates from 2017 and makes some easy rhetorical points about racial stereotyping (it’s a terrible thing.) But I really don’t think that’s the crux of the problem. It isn’t that Asians have a hard time distinguishing themselves from other Asians. It’s how do they distinguish themselves from other upper-middle-class families who also think the best way to protect their kid’s future is to go into “safe” professions like investment banking, and management consulting which have basically replaced “becoming a doctor” in the previous generation? At least you can still become a doctor without going to Harvard.
Sticking with a domestic focus, there are many low income Asians, they aren’t all upper middle class. For example like at Stuy. I have no idea what the relative proportions are, but have to assume this is another factor some AOs sort thru.
I don’t think we know that it’s true one way or the other. Lots of anecdotes. Little data except the Harvard stuff about personality scores.
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That may be true but they don’t seem to be going to Harvard:
Harvard’s Economic Diversity Problem | Harvard Magazine
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True, but we are talking about the entire domestic set of Asian applicants, not just those going to Harvard.
Most of that entire domestic set of Asian (or any other race / ethnicity) applicants apply to and eventually attend moderately selective colleges, many of which are admit-by-stats-only, or community colleges. The subset who posts here focusing on highly selective colleges is not really representative of the entire domestic set of applicants.
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Small glimpse from our Bay Area competitive public high school that has many Chinese, Chinese American, Indian, Indian American, Mexican, Mexican American, European, European American, Korean, Korean American, African, African American etc. students: students that get grouped as Asian are no less unique than students that get grouped otherwise. Students that get grouped as Asian are more likely to be preoccupied with admission to a select few schools. I don’t know why. As mentioned above, students that get grouped as Asian seem strong and focused on STEM degrees. Students that get grouped as Asian are less likely to have the athletic recruit hook that gets many students into selective universities (the athletic recruits that I know of are also super-star students). I think the combination of limiting schools and majors in consideration is maybe why there is a perception of roadblocks to admission for students that get grouped as Asian. I’m seeing a lot of change in the past five years in the kids that get grouped as Asian in terms of participation in sport/athletics and majors applied to. The goal of an elite degree has not changed much yet.
These observations are from our Bay Area school only and do not apply to all people grouped as Asian. I recently met a really lovely Chinese Montana State statistics grad and he was wearing a Wyoming shirt where his brother went to school, and I was a little taken aback because in our neighborhood that is unheard of (one of my Chinese neighbors told me that UCLA is like community college and it’s beneath my daughter, she’s funny and brutally honest). We might be working together with that statistician and I’m really looking forward to that.
As for the chance me threads, I don’t like the focus on Asian and I don’t think it should matter. I also don’t like the focus on prestige as I also think it shouldn’t matter. So I usually don’t comment.
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Maybe because the families know that these students are going to graduate into a hiring environment that is not as race blind as UC admissions, so the families feel that their kids still need extra strong credentials in order to be taken as seriously as a white guy?
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Maybe. But I have not seen this type of behavior in hiring. Our hiring committee consisting of a “white” European American (I’m not very white but that’s my box) woman, a Mexican man, and a Japanese American man are about to extend an offer to a Montana State Chinese grad. He was not only the strongest candidate, he has also the most charming personality (another thing I have never experienced, the so-called “boring Asian” or low personality score from the Harvard law suit, not in the world I live in).
I will re-iterate that this is the Bay Area. We are also not a super prestigious high salary work place that people know about or strive for. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that our Montana State grad will not turn us down.
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Going back to the topic, I think most posters here don’t consider race if responding to Chance Me posts unless URM.
So it doesn’t matter what kids post.
I disagree with this. When posters mention they are Asian, they are often advised (or at least it is intimated) that they will be held to a higher standard. There have also been entire threads (like the thread on the “Try Harder” movie) where many of the regular posters seemed to accept that Asian students face longer odds of admission as compared to similarly situated white students simply because they are Asian.
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You are correct in your suspicions. The Harvard lawsuits are supported by groups that want to get rid of affirmative action altogether. The allegation is, roughly, that Harvard routinely scored Asian applicants lower than others on personality traits.
What about Indian?
chance-me-indian-male-illinois-resident-trying-to-get-into-grainger-college-of-engineering-uiuc
“Indian” falls within the “Asian” category, so same thing right?
I don’t know. I mean they are considered Asian but is this student including it because he feels that he has he has a disadvantage being Indian?
My guess is that it’s a lot simpler than that, students include this because the pinned instructional post says to include “demographics.” Also if the same student has visited reddit, posts on reddit frequently include this in post title.
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Yes I wondered that too. Have asked him directly. Let’s see.
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Harvard is 27 percent Asian. That doesn’t sound like biased to me.
Both Berkeley and UCLA, which conveniently for comparison’s sake are legally obliged not to consider race, are 40%+ Asian. All three schools hold a very high admissions standard, and while Harvard is obviously harder to win admissions to, the UCs are the race-blind schools closest in caliber.
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Far more recent than that. Open antisemitism was pretty common up until the 1980s. Spiro Agnew was openly antisemitic, and that did not affect his political fortunes, and many of the neighborhoods and towns which are dominated by “Old Money” still have few, if any, Jews living there. My friends who grew up in the USA would avoid wearing anything that clearly identified them as Jewish until the 1990s.
I can also tell you that it’s still alive and well. Growing up in Israel, I know how it feels to be part of the dominant ruling culture/religion/ethnicity. I also know what it is like to live in a society which is free of antisemitism. Not free of racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other bigotry, but free of antisemitism. And it’s different.
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According to UCLA 33% of undergraduates and 22% of graduate students are Asian or Pacific Islander. I believe UCB may be a few points higher, not “40%+.”
Given that 30% of Asian-Americans in the US live in California (and almost 1/2 live in the West), I would expect that California’s Universities would have a higher percentage of Asian American students as compared to a school like Harvard.