<p>"I can't make this any more clear. Let's do this by simple logic:
IF you got into Yale, THEN you had good ECs"</p>
<p>Not necessarily true. They may have admitted him because to Yale, he appeared to be such a scholar that Yale was willing to overlook his lack of ECs. He also may have filled some other need for Yale to create a well rounded class.</p>
<p>No one knows why he was rejected by Yale. He also may have blown that interview. For instance, I heard of a stellar URM National Merit finalist who was accepted to one of HPY, and rejected by another in that group. Student had applied to about 10 elte colleges, and from what I hear, when the student was interviewed by the college that eventually rejected the student, the student was so burned out on interviewing that the student blew the interview.</p>
<p>The same thing can happen if a student puts a lot of time into some applications, but gets burned out and throws together the others or makes stupid mistakes such as writing, "This is why I want to go to Princeton" when the student is filling out the Yale app.</p>
<p>"Oh my god, you hit it right on the dot, all Asians want to go to science and math and medicine and law. And you're telling me I hold steretypes? "</p>
<p>There is an overabundance of Asians applying to top colleges who are premed because their parents forced them to do this. Every year, I interview students as a Harvard alum interviewer, and every year, about a quarter of the students who apply to Harvard from my area are Asian even though Asians are about 1% of my area's population.</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of those students plan to major in biochemistry and go to medical school. It's not unusual for the students to tell me that their parents told them what major to select and what occupation to plan to enter even though the students themselves would have chosen other things.</p>
<p>Most of the Asian students whom I've interviewed also played classical music -- particularly violin or piano -- were on swimming team and were in Mu Alpha Theta and NHS. Some had wanted to pursue ECs such as art, theater or football, but their parents wouldn't let them.</p>
<p>Unfortunately such cookie cutter applicants who are pursuing activities because their parents made them do not stand out in a good way in the admission pool even if they have excellent scores. Places like Harvard don't have a hard time finding Asian or white students who plan to be doctors and have been in NHS or Mu Alpha Theta. It's much harder to find applicants of any race who are interested in majors like sociology, linguistics, art and fields that correspond to those majors.</p>
<p>"Dear load, many Asians were suppressed, poorly educated, starved, and killed in their home countries only 40 years ago. Oh WAIT, that's still happening. Hmmm..."</p>
<p>Very true, but why should that mean that top U.S. colleges should feel obligated to accept even more Asians when Asians already are represented far more than their numbers in the general U.S. population?</p>
<p>If any institution should feel obligated to assist those particular Asians whom you refer to shouldn't it be the countries that killed, starved and poorly educated them?</p>
<p>Your argument would mean that the U.S. should be filling its colleges with students from Bosnia, Rwanda, Afganistan and Sudan because of the atrocities that have recently happend in those countries and that in some cases are continuing.</p>
<p>"Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Harvard educated economist, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Bondo District, Nyanza Province, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. His parents met while both were attending the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama describes a nearly race-blind early childhood. He writes: "That my father looked nothing like the people around me that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk barely registered in my mind."[3][4] When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother then married an Indonesian foreign student, moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Four years later, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents.[5] He was enrolled in the fifth grade at Punahou School, a private college preparatory school in Honolulu, where he graduated from high school in 1979.[6]" (see Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I fail to see the "slavery" legacy</p>
<p>Where is the poverty?</p>
<p>Where was the oppression?</p>
<p>Obama of course was admitted (via transfer) to Columbia and eventually Harvard Law School where he became President of the Law Review after Harvard Law setup an AA program within the Law Review structure</p>
<p>Obama graduated several decades ago - however his solid upper middle class (often combined with private school) background is typical today of THE MAJORITY of black admittees to HYP and most of the other elites - for example upper middle class blacks from Chicago or Atlanta</p>
<p>Sorry URM programs at the elite colleges are not primarily about taking kids out of poverty circumstances</p>
Also, molliebat, MIT does recruit athletes. And if SAT scores don't tell too much about the applicant then why have the SAT at all? Why do top schools even want to see how you think and write and make decisions under pressure? Who are you going to take the lower SAT guy or the higher SAT guy when both have saved a country, are valedictorian, are in 8 clubs?
MIT doesn't recruit in the way that division I schools recruit -- that is, athletes aren't given a substantial advantage in admissions simply because they are athletes, and athletic talent doesn't help an applicant unless his/her stats are already competitive in the pool. The stats of varsity athletes at many DI schools are substantially lower than the stats of admits as a whole; at MIT there isn't a difference.</p>
<p>As far as the SAT question, hey, you're preaching to the converted. I found it even more strange for graduate school -- in my field, as long as you're above some cutoff score, schools really couldn't care less what exactly you scored. So why pay the $130 for the test, plus the money to send it to schools? Got me.</p>
<p>Admissions decisions are generally made on a student-by-student basis, so two students are simply never compared side by side. So it's possible that either one applicant or the other got in, or that both got in, or (likely) that neither got in.</p>
<p>He got into bloody CALTECH, which is pretty much THE hardest university to get into on the freaking planet (I should know -- I went there). If you get into Caltech and any other school turns you down, something's fishy.</p>
<p>citygirlsmom, I went to high school with Jian Li, and I can tell you that he wasn't arrogant so it's incredibly rude that you would accuse him of that. Jian is just a brave person who is bringing a legitimate issue to people's attention.</p>
<p>JaceCady,
So are you telling me that something fishy was going on when I got accepted to Stanford and Yale but was rejected by UCLA?
Am I going to sue UCLA for discriminating against my race, or my name or the way I look, my accent or whatever that can be subject to discrimination?</p>
<p>No. I thought "gee, UCLA dumped me? that's wierd. i must have made a mistake on the app." and i got over it. i'm not going to be paranoid about discrimination and sue them for rejecting me. </p>
<p>there's nothing wrong with a school rejecting a kid while another school accepts him. that's natural. it's called college.</p>
<p>"If you get into Caltech and any other school turns you down, something's fishy."</p>
<p>Not true at all. CalTech is very numbers driven, and also is looking for people who are excellent in math and science. It is not trying to select a well rounded class of students with the skills,energy and passion to keep hundreds of different campus ECs going at virtually a professional level while the students also do well enough in their coursework to graduate on time.</p>
<p>One year, every freshman at CalTech had gotten an 800 on one of the SAT II tests in math. That's the way CalTech selects their class. HPYS and similar schools aren't as focused on numbers.</p>
<p>"Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Harvard educated economist, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr."</p>
<p>So what? Barack Obama is such an amazing person that his autobiography is a best seller, he was elected to the Senate despite the difficulty of blacks getting elected to the Senate due to racism, he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law review, and his name is repeatedly being raised as a possible presidential contender.</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that he somehow took some more deserving white or Asian student's place at Columbia or Harvard Law School? What exactly is your point: That any black person who attends an Ivy is somehow undeserving of being there?</p>
<p>Are you somehow suggesting that he made Harvard Law Review or got into the Senate because he unfairly took positions from more deserving white or Asians?</p>
<p>Obama simply took advantage of an (affirmative action type) disguised quota plan (described as a "non-quota" system that would merely take race and gender into "consideration") - such a plan having been voted on and enacted by the editors in 1981, and in simple terms involved designating a special 5th slot for a minority within the top 25 applicants within the group (or by default a female) for each of 4 groups of 5 people ultimately accepted to the Law Review</p>
<p>Yes, Obama did take the place of some other person - who but for the color of their skin - would have made Law Review</p>
<p>I went to high school with Jian, which doesn't mean much, except that I do know his character. He is extremely intelligent, very motivated, and an all-around good guy.</p>
<p>However, that doesn't give him a blanket ticket into the university of his choice.</p>
<p>Admission to top schools is competitive no matter what your race. Rich white students with perfect SAT scores don't always get into Princeton, either!</p>
<p>People who are trying to make this ban on affirmative action (cough, ABC News) about undeserving rich white students getting in over poor hard-working Asian students, are simply lying to themselves.</p>
<p>A ban on affirmative action would primarily target poor students of under-represented minorities - students who might have lower SAT scores because they don't have the same privilege many other students do, but are not necessarily less intelligent or less qualified to go to a top university. Other factors such as teacher recommendations and essays then become absolutely vital in determining whether a student is deserving of being admitted to the academic institution, and whether they have the potential to excel. Certainly studies have been conducted that show there is a greater correlation between SAT score and family income than between SAT score and success GPA-wise at college - and that's not even looking at success in other realms, such as extracurriculars!</p>
<p>Jian applied from Livingston High School. We have a fairly high Asian population (mostly Chinese and Korean) at LHS - however, it is certainly significantly lower than 50%, which is the percentage of Princeton students admitted from LHS who are Asian. The data set is fairly small, admittedly (6 students), but Jian is trying to argue that a white high school classmate who was less qualified than himself got in - and I would argue that this is not true. Statistics are not the full story in the college admissions process, nor should they be.</p>
<p>While I admit that subjective standards such as teacher recommendations and essays come with their own potential for biases and discrimination, I still feel they are far better than the alternative - an entirely statistics based algorithm of how qualified you are to get an education from a top university.</p>
<p>"A ban on affirmative action would primarily target poor students of under-represented minorities "</p>
<p>Not true, two-thirds and often more of URM admits at the very top universities are from middle class or better family backgrounds, and many went to private schools</p>
<p>ABC News, by the way, is not in favor of elminating AA for blacks or hispanics - they are clearly in favor of race based admissions for select groups</p>
<p>well i can safely say that this guy has POTENTIALLY screwed himself over for getting into a similar caliber grad school...no one is going to want someone like him, even after this whole issue blows over</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yes, Obama did take the place of some other person - who but for the color of their skin - would have made Law Review
[/quote]
I think you're making this up. Show me another person in Obama's Harvard Law School class who was more qualified than he to be editor of the review. </p>
<p>I can't believe the bigoted crap that some of you people are spewing. Barack Obama is one of the most esteemed Democratic politicians (of any race) in America. And you're demeaning all of his accomplishments by saying he only got this far because of his race? Are you saying he wouldn't have achieved the same things if he was 100% white? Where's your proof of this?</p>
<p>Aren't you just making things up with no justification whatsoever?</p>
<p>just want to point out an irony if this is what it is. The EC litmus test is meant to prove that the applicant exists outside of books, cares about the rest of the world and will use the education offered at a premium school to serve humanity. That's how the mantra goes. When people are accused of being merely numbers or cookie-cutter canditates (insulting oversimplifications. There are singleminded geniuses. Emily Dickinson would be rejected everywhere these days. Should Emily play rugby to enhance her resume) they are considered to be passive, live in a bubble, social misfits, clones, not the type to change the world. Well, this fellow Li has shown initiative, courage and resourcefullness in creating this fight. Isn't this the activist making a difference? You may question motives, but everyone has motives. He should reapply to princeton next year and list this as an ec. He will get in, mark my words.</p>
<p>"initiative, courage, and resourcefulness"???? Hardly. What he showed was:</p>
<p>(1) that he lives in a cultural bubble -- meaning the bubble of expectations of elite college admissions, within a region where students so prepared by parents, by peers, by others making up this culture of expectations, that he lost even the perspective & broader humility to understand how privileged he was to have gained an equivalent admission to a peer University</p>
<p>(2) that he narrowly focused on quantitative factors in admissions, and a "study" that "proved" nothing except that a particular cohort of accepted Asians during one admission cycle at one university had achieved higher test scores than URM's admitted. That in itself showed that he failed to appreciate wider humanity (i.e., other factors possessed by other students -- students that he never met.) </p>
<p>As one who has recently interviewed college students who have in fact demonstrated an appreciation of wider humanity -- a CONCRETE appreciation as evidenced in self-sacrifice & ongoing commitment to others, often to others much less fortunate than themselves -- I hardly find Jian's actions in the same laudable category as "serving humanity."</p>
<p>I find the criticisms & belittling of Barak Obama by other posters sickening.</p>
<p>I find the assumptions both sides are making about Jian Li and Barack Obama sickening. Can we stop with the hate parade and argue rationally based on what we know, and not what we assume?</p>
<p>I do not see "a hate parade" directed at Jian Li. I see an exposure of his actions (not "assumptions"), and an exposure of the narrowness of others who scream "discrimination" without a review of "what we know."</p>
<p>It is Jian Li who made assumptions. He knows zero about the lower-scoring students accepted to Princeton in the named "study," which I repeat is an unscientific study, whose "conclusions" do not follow from the data in the study, and which "conclusions" those not doing the study follow even less.</p>