The subject of american asians, as we are discussing here, is entirely separate from the international admission (which may include various races). What the colleges do with international applicants is a totally different matter from the concern we have about the ‘american asian quota’ system that most colleges are practicing now. the old jewish quota system has now become the ‘american-asian quota system’, but sadly most american asians are a tacit partner to it by not voicing the opposition more openly and ‘loudly’.</p>
<p>annasdad - How do you define the term cap? Does it have to be stated this way - we admit 34 Asians, and starting at 35th, we reject everybody?</p>
<p>It is irrelevant what adcoms say about their policies, I trust their numbers more. If you see a number that can vary within two percentage points, there is a cap with an allowed deviation so they claim that there is no cap. </p>
<p>It is not just for Asians, it is there for all the different groups - legacies, african americans, hispanics, athletes, internationals, and caucasians. Otherwise, how does a school get a diverse student population using their holistic process?</p>
<p>i think we just have different definitions of what it means to discriminate. I think discriminate is meant to apply to the whole group (or a significantly large portion of the group) not just some of the members of the group. If the group consists a significant percentage of the group, then by that definition, i don’t think that it can be claimed that (the group) is discriminated against. </p>
<p>Sure, some of the members of the group may be treated differently than other group for some factor like being asian, but this is due to the fact that the group in which they’re a part of constitutes a majority. The same rules would apply to other groups if they constituted the percentages in universities that asians do, but since they usually don’t, it doesn’t happen. In my opinion, this doesn’t count as discrimination, it’s just a reactionary policy.</p>
<p>Once again, texaspg, what evidence do you have that there is a cap for any group? Or that any college takes race into consideration at all, except for giving a preference to URMs, a practice many colleges cheerfully acknowledge? </p>
<p>Simply saying the numbers are thus-and-so, therefore there must be a cap, or a quota, is not evidence. It’s an unproven hypothesis. </p>
<p>There are reasons why some groups are underrepresented, compared to their stats. Those reasons have been elucidated for you, but you don’t like them, and therefore don’t accept them. And there is evidence for them: testimony by adcoms that they are looking for well-rounded and interesting students. Kids who have spent most of their waking hours studying and test-prepping are often neither interesting nor well-rounded and are, therefore, at a disadvantage at many highly selective colleges. </p>
<p>MIT, which deserves kudos for the openness with which it discusses and explains its admissions process, has said it most clearly. They are looking for well-rounded kids, and once an applicant crosses a certain stats threshhold, the scores relative to other applicants play a secondary role. You may not like that, but coupled with the tendency of many Asian parents to push their kids to become academic grinds, it is an alternate explanation to the phenomenon of under-represented Asians at top schools.</p>
<p>Oh, but I do have evidence: statements by admissions officers that they don’t have quotas or caps. You apparently think they’re lying, but you have cited no counter-evidence.</p>
<p>“There are reasons why some groups are underrepresented, compared to their stats. Those reasons have been elucidated for you, but you don’t like them, and therefore don’t accept them.”</p>
<p>What has this got to do with anything? I am not arguing that Asians need more presence or they deserve more because they have better scores or whatever else. Can you cite one place where I am stating that? </p>
<p>The only case I am making is that an Asian boy or girl has to be part of the 8-9 or 10% allocation at an Ivy that is possible. I don’t really care how schools admit their students. I am only considering the odds of someone being admitted based on being an Asian. If the percentages change, odds change. Why is it so hard for you to understand that? </p>
<p>Can you provide any evidence that any percentages of specific groups have changed drastically over the last three years to prove that they can be different next year? Otherwise, I am not even sure what you are trying to sell me.</p>
<p>And the adcoms also try to prove that someone with 3.5 and 1700 can get into an Ivy so they can get a lot more applicants. Who cares what the sales pitch is vs the reality?</p>
<p>It’s hard for me to understand how you can continue to assert, in the absence of any evidence at all, that the percentage of Asians admitted to any college is a result of (pick your term) cap/quota/allocation.</p>
<p>Your question makes no sense. Applicant pools don’t differ that drastically year after year, so you wouldn’t EXPECT the numbers to be appreciably different. </p>
<p>As an example, I bet the % of incoming students at Harvard who are Catholic floats within a narrow band of a few percentage points from year to year, but that doesn’t mean Harvard has a “quota” on Catholics. It’s just that the % of the applicant pool who is Catholic isn’t going to vary much year to year, and there’s no a priori reason to believe that their qualifications vary much year to year, so you’re going to have roughly the same % of Catholics in the admitted pool year to year.</p>
<p>According to Harvard’s own publications, 10% are international, 20% are athletes, 13% are legacies, and 15% are URMs (2011). While there will be overlaps in these categories, do you think it safe to conclude that this leaves about 50% of the seats available to unhooked Asian Americans?</p>
<p>Of those 50% available seats, it can be reasonably argued that nearly half of them went to Asian Americans. (16% + 6% [half of the race unknowns] + 1% [1/3 of the mixed race] = 23%). Is that enough for you or should there be more, and if so, why?</p>
<p>“It’s hard for me to understand how you can continue to assert, in the absence of any evidence at all, that the percentage of Asians admitted to any college is a result of (pick your term) cap/quota/allocation.”</p>
<p>Princeton University Asian-American First-Year Enrollment Through the Years</p>
<p>Seems that Princeton has eased has eased its quota on Asian-Americans over the years. Seems that it has realized that Asian-Americans can help keep SAT medians high.</p>
That’s almost 50% (48%), WOW, double WOW! No wonder why it was so hard to gain admission for my american asian child.</p>
<p>
Actually, we have 42% seats left for all of the regular admits for our American children! You are asking a wrong question …" is that enough for you ?" I think my question would be, why do you give half of the entire class to that special groups and ONLY USE LESS THAN HALF OF THE CLASS FOR THE REGULAR, MERIT-BASED ADMISSION FOR OUR AMERICAN STUDENTS? IF it was 10-90, OR 15-85 BETWEEN SPECIAL CONSIDERATION VERSUS REGULAR MERITOCRACY, would be easier to accept. But 50-50? Or even worse, 58-42 (if internationals are included in the special-interest group). That 42% of the class is truly used for merit-based admission. This is just absurd. I don’t like Harvard.</p>
<p>It is 42% only if you assume there are no overlaps. I’m sure there are some international legacy URMs who are recruited athletes, or some combination thereof.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My question to you is, why do you assume that the internationals, legacies, URMs and athletes don’t have the same or similar stats as the unhooked applicants?</p>
well, Bay, because they don’t. I don’t have time nor interest to do a time-consuming analysis on the admission data. But I do read the articles of (objective) research done by others and the numbers (which I believe to be true) say that the American Asian high school graduates are screwed by this whole thing. IF colleges do race-blind admission, then the asian student number increases drastically. And this is true. If the fact does not change your opinion, I don’t know who you are.</p>
<p>Annasdad - Statistics is counted as superior evidence, a lot better than a shill for a school spouting a position. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl,</p>
<p>“ROFL at the taking-it-out-to-two-decimal-points.”</p>
<p>i think KWU just proved your assertion WRONG that pools don’t change and so the admit rates can’t change. The Asian population in US has not increased so drastically over 10 years that Princeton had to increase the admission numbers by 50% for Asians from 12.5 to 18%. </p>
<p>As per your kid, legacy is a quota, isn’t it? Some website is tracking the percentage of jews at various schools (I think Harvard has 25%?) but since schools officially don’t break that out, he should be part of the 50% white quota unless he is a super athlete?</p>
<p>KWU - I think you will find similar evidence at all Ivies that they have been slowly inching up in their numbers of Asian admits. </p>
<p>Bay - Glad to know you can come up with a 25% percent statistic for Asians at Harvard (?). Unfortunately, my kid will be declaring ethnicity and so I am still aiming for the one half of 16% as opposed to a number a school has not officially declared.</p>
<p>@texaspg, good luck to your child’s application. My third child is yet 4 years away for college app and by then I will be over 60. I hope the Ivy American Asian admit number will grow greatly over the next few years.</p>