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<p>You don’t get to complain that those spots were not equally open to you, regardless of your race. So you need to factor them into your claims of discrimination.</p>
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<p>This possibility has been discussed ad nauseum in these discussions. Jian Li, anyone??</p>
<p>Bay
Yes, they were equally open to me.</p>
<p>I do not understand what you are saying.
Are you telling me that “just trying” some sports will boost somebody’s chances at top colleges?</p>
<p>How was anyone’s spot “given” to a URM? Let’s say we have a hypothetical Asian student with 2300 SAT’s and a 3.95 average and good ECs. How do you know “his spot” was taken by the black student with the 2200 SATs and the 3.8 – as opposed to the white kid with the 2250 and the 3.85? Or the oboe playing white kid from North Dakota? Or the kid whose family donated the new science wing? Or another Asian kid with 2200 SATs and a 3.9? What is your basis for concluding that it was the black kid who “stole” hs rightful spot?</p>
<p>20more,
No, what I’m telling you is, that when you talk about asians’ chances in admissions, you cannot ignore the athlete spots. They are open to the best scholar-athletes, regardless of race. (Unless you have evidence otherwise, of course.)</p>
<p>I wonder if one day I will post a picture of me and my brother in our “YMHA” tee shirts…was it YWHA? whatever…what WAS my mother thinking?</p>
<p>Bullying? Discrimination? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. A close friend used to say it in patois…looking for it…</p>
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<p>Absolutely no idea how to interpret that, because I can’t see all the information that would be needed to say if you were unlucky or (another possibility) that those applications were not as strong as others that garnered acceptances. </p>
<p>None of this changes the cruel arithmetic of the entire process: far more highly qualified people who want seats at these schools than can be accomodated.</p>
<p>The adventures of a handful of students at one school is not enough to draw any conclusions from.</p>
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<p>My child scores in the 1900s. I’d be happy if you can tell us how to game the system to 2300s!!! LOL</p>
<p>PG</p>
<p>I apologize for one rude comment that I made in the past.
I was very emotional back then (March 30th of 2011).</p>
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<p>what? there are certainly many people who are qualified, but students do get admitted to these schools, competitive students do.</p>
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<p>everybody games universities but it’s pretty well documented that certain asian cultures focus completely on learning how to take tests at the expense of other things like critical thinking skills. This isn’t even just my opinion, this is something that they themselves (the chinese) admit:</p>
<p>[Chinese</a> students’ high scores in international tests come at a cost - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/13/world/la-fg-china-education-20110113]Chinese”>Chinese students' high scores in international tests come at a cost)</p>
<p>Yes, Harvard is so racist, they only have like 17% asians; Let’s not forget Uchicago at like 14% and let’s certainly not forget caltech at only 39% asian (whites 37%)</p>
<p>in the first two rankings, asians are only behind whites; in the last one, asians outrank whites. In all rankings, asians compose the highest % of any minority listed. So how exactly do these rankings discriminate against asians? Is it because whites (of which the one who get admitted to these universities have stats surpassing or equaling asians) comprise a large majority? </p>
<p>Lets get real. Asians aren’t discriminated against in the slightest. The test-taking culture is a Sword of Damocles: in one sense, you get a culture that works really hard to get the highest on test scores; the downside is that it increases competition amongst each other to crazy levels, and even if your child is competitive in general, s/he probably isn’t in comparison to some others who are insanely smart naturally, that your child just can’t compete with.</p>
<p>Lastly, as a matter of politics, nobody wants a culture where the most elite positions (politicians, doctor, lawyers, engineers, etc.) are completely dominated by one race. Every group has differing interests to pursue, so i think it’s a great thing that universities are making an attempt to ‘diversify’ themselves, and i certainly look forward to it. </p>
<p>A lot of asians think that jut if they get the highest test scores they’ll get into the best universities, but the ones who complain in threads like these don’t seem to ask themselves ‘what sets me apart from the thousands of other applicants? why should my kid get accepted and another rejected?’ the lack of asking this question, and adaquately preparing for it, is why many people get rejected.</p>
<p>you’re not entitled to go to a university, no matter how hard you work in your classes, or how good your test scores are. If you’re smart, you’ll plan in advance and make preparations for your child that will set them apart.</p>
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<p>What do the students attending high schools in China have to do with the current discussion about Asian Americans?</p>
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<p>A little critical thinking will show that it is at least theoretically possible for a school to hold one racial or ethnic group to a higher standard while that group remains overrepresented at the school. While whether it actually happens at universities with respect to Asian American applicants is a matter of dispute (and likely unprovable either way from the outside), it has occurred in a high school context for many years (for many years, Lowell High School in San Francisco required that Chinese applicants score higher on an entrance exam than applicants of all other ethnic groups, to prevent any ethnic group from being more than 40% of the students – only Chinese were bumping into the limit).</p>
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<p>There are 5 students from my D’s Illinois high school in this year’s freshman class at CalTech. </p>
<p>All 5 are Asian males. </p>
<p>Perhaps part of the reason is that her HS intentionally does not focus on prepping students to take standardized tests.</p>
<p>Beyphy-</p>
<p>A public HS I live near has a 56% URM enrollment- 42% of which are Asian American. Whites comprise 44%.</p>
<p>While Asians are nearly tied (as with schools in CA), the thing is a public High School never discriminates who can attend. If the amount of Asians who are eligible for college is the same- or exceeds that of Whites, then so be it. </p>
<p>At the HS I mentioned, Asians have such a strong presence, Mandarin is spoken more than English- even Whites speak Chinese. 40% enrollment by Asians is a high number. But just because Whites don’t have as good of eligibility, who’s to blame?</p>
<p>This is an interesting list - schools with the highest %age of asian/pacific islander students [Colleges</a> with the Highest Percentage of Asian or Pacific Islander Students | InsideCollege.com](<a href=“The Best College Rankings and Lists | Inside College | CollegeXpress”>The Best College Rankings and Lists | Inside College | CollegeXpress)</p>
<p>and this: <a href=“http://www.asian-nation.org/best-colleges.shtml[/url]”>http://www.asian-nation.org/best-colleges.shtml</a></p>
<p>Some of the numbers differ slightly. Probably represent different sampling years.</p>
<p>beyphy</p>
<p>I am very curious.
Do you consider Asian-Americans as Americans?</p>
<p>I have a feeling that we are NOT Americans to you.</p>
<p>annasdad</p>
<p>"Perhaps part of the reason is that her HS intentionally does not focus on prepping students to take standardized tests. "</p>
<p>My HS do not prep for any standardized test. In fact, we don’t even have an AP class.</p>
<p>"There are 5 students from my D’s Illinois high school in this year’s freshman class at CalTech. </p>
<p>All 5 are Asian males."</p>
<p>You highlighted Cal Tech only.</p>
<p>What about other colleges than Cal Tech?</p>
<p>certain racial groups don’t have distinctions for whether they’re american or not: we don’t say ‘white-americans’ for example; while i hear ‘Asian-american’ i also just hear “Asian” to reflect the same relationship, so i use it in that fashion. (with the exception of when i’m comparing asian’s with asian americans, then i make the distinction.)</p>
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<p>If you can’t infer that the two cultures are linked (although to much less extremes for asian american students) then i can’t help you. I doubt it’s more than mere coincidence that both asians, and asian americans are just known for high test scores. Sure, i’m conjecturing, but if there’s another explanation i’d like to see it.</p>
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<p>i reject this definition of discrimination. The one i accept i one where schools hold one racial group to a high standard where their percentages are already low (e.g. how certain minorities have been held historically) but in this instance, it’s just economics: there’s far too many applicants, and far too little seats. So the standard’s rise (i.e things get more competitive) because there’s so many similar applicants.</p>
<p>it seems to me that the main question in a lot of these debates is: should Asians be held in comparison to themselves, or in comparison to every applicant? If we hold that we shouldn’t limit a group and we should just value test scores, then why should the schools value american students? i mean, if test scores are really the thing to value then why not fill up harvard with southeast asian student who get the highest test scores? There seems to be no good reason for denying these people other than they’re foreign</p>
<p>If we hold that we should limit the percentage of certain students who enter a given university solely by virtue of a factor (like their being foreign) i don’t see why we can’t do the same thing with Asian Americans. In both cases, the groups are artificially limited to prevent them from overpopulating a university. </p>
<p>i’ll leave this open: is there any way that we can do the former and not do the latter? [i’m actually interested in what people have to say about this]</p>
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<p>What? why on earth would i think that Asians are not Asian Americans? If you actually knew my personal beliefs, you’d know that i’m a huge supporter of Ius Soli; Asian-american is just more syllables to say (that i don’t feel like saying) so i use the word ‘asian’ substantively. (which i admit is confusing since it can have to different meanings; but this is CC so i don’t really hold myself to the highest standards)</p>
<p>this is actually an interesting article that i randomly bumped into a long time ago. i’ll post it here if anyone is interested in reading it:</p>
<p>[How</a> the Asians Became White](<a href=“http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/asian.htm]How”>How the Asians Became White)</p>
<p>20more - Don’t worry! Be happy! You made it. Those who follow you will make it too even if they don’t get into that Ivy. </p>
<p>Those who follow you need to understand stats won’t get them into Ivies and should cast a wide net. 8.5% is the cap at any Ivy for Asian males and that translates to roughly a 110 seats or 140 to 150 admits. So if 30-40 Asian males apply to one Ivy from a single high school in California, they probably all cancel each other out and no one gets in.</p>
<p>Best way to address it is go to a referee system within your own school and stop sending an application to every school and limit what a school receives.</p>
<p>Make use of national merit and go to some of the schools out there like University of Alabama giving full rides and churning out Fulbright and Rhodes scholar applications on your behalf by the time you graduate.</p>
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<p>Well, in the last four years, we’ve had exactly one (out of about 140 applicants) admitted to Harvard (in 2010).</p>
<p>He was an Asian male. </p>
<p>He was also admitted to Yale - and turned down at Stanford.</p>
<p>Just for you, I arbitrarily selected a list of schools that I would consider “very highly selective” and tabulated the 2011 graduates attending those schools (I do not have access to who applied where and who was admitted where, only to who’s actually going where). My arbitrary list of schools (in no particular order) includes Northwestern, Duke, Chicago, Caltech, MIT, Penn, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, CMU, Wellesley, CWRU, Rochester, Notre Dame, WashU, Yale, Michigan, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Out of a class of exactly 200, about 40% Asian, slightly more than half male, these are the admit statistics for those schools: Asian males, 18; Asian females, 6; non-Asian males, 9; non-Asian females, 11.</p>
<p>If you want to refine it to just the Ivies+MIT+Stanford+CalTech, then the statistics are Asian males, 10; Asian females, 1; non-Asian males, 5; non-Asian females, 3; just the Ivies+MIT+Stanford, 5/1/5/3; just the Ivies, 4/0/2/1; just YPSM, 3/1/5/2.</p>
<p>Obviously this is anecdotal, and from one school one year, and I don’t have access to the GPAs and test scores of who was and was not admitted. But I do know (anecdotally) that when the school publishes lists of NMSFs, Intel winners, etc., there is not a preponderance of Asians, so I think it’s fair to say that at this highly selective school, you can’t say that Asians are statistically higher achievers than non-Asians.</p>
<p>And it’s no more anecdotal than the frequent “I knew an Asian kid with a 2400/4.0 who didn’t get into Yale and an URM with a 2200/3.7 who did” rants.</p>
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<p>More broadly, her high school (the top math and science school in the state and one of the top ones in the nation) specifically says that its mission is not to get kids into better colleges - although its top kids do get into very, very good colleges. They focus on igniting and nurturing creative and ethical scientific minds and on developing the whole person with the goal of inspiring kids to devote their lives to advancing the human condition. (I’m not claiming, nor would they, that they achieve that in every kid - but that’s the goal, and the school really does focus on working toward achievement of its mission.)</p>
<p>I suspect that part of the reason that Asian males seem to do better than some of the other (admittedly anecdotal) evidence would indicate is that there are Asian parents whose kids apply, or consider applying, but as soon as they hear the message that the mission of the school is not to get kids into super prestigious schools - and that almost no one (generally ~2%) graduates with a 4.0 average - they decline to apply or to enroll them, figuring their odds will be better with 4.0 averages at the good suburban high schools that most of them attend. If that is indeed true, perhaps the Asian kids who enroll at my D’s school are a self-selected group whose parents are less driven for grades and test scores than the stereotype would indicate is the norm. And I do believe that at the top schools, it is not race that matters, but rather an assessment of the whole person, and that plays against kids who have been pushed their whole lives to fit into the stereotypically Asian cultural norms.</p>
<p>EDIT: And another reason, in my opinion, is that the school does focus on developing inquiring learners and the whole person, which makes them more attractive to super-selective colleges.</p>